Africa: Before Slavery

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onthor

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Africa: Before Slavery

Post03 Dec 2016

AFRICA: Before Slavery...

The Destruction Of Black Civilization - Dr. Chancellor Williams & Dr. John G. Jackson

Hidden African History You Were Never Taught In School

I will try to post stuff that has been produced by the courageous people who have gone through Western education systems and speak truth as they have learnt it, despite the ridicule they know will come their way when they tell the masses because it is easier to reap personal reward than enlighten the masses.

onthor

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Anything Goes

Post03 Dec 2016

I humbly submit these few items in the Anything Goes section as a record of my ongoing education after I left the BKWSU. The ability to consider these issues in my onward journey is a blessing and NOT meant to stir up ignorant tub-thumping on any side of the fence. Trully educated persons know the real nature of the Matrix we are living in - it is shocking, truly shocking. And any human who thinks that the pursuit of truth is an easy road, then I say good luck.

There is a lot of heartache on the road to finding oneself, and I mean this in the broadest sense of the word. I shudder sometimes because my mind is unable to comprehend the reason why these lies have been wilfully told to everyone but recently whilst posting here I have started to enquire on the nature of POWER.

I now question it ALL because we are living in a Matrix - a deliberately constructed falsehood, and it continues. Some will ask what does it matter and yet still claim to be pursuing TRUTH. The spiritual field is no different.

If this topic is allowed to stay on this website - and I am able to - I will share some of my research on a great man whose works are being exploited today by mega corporations but in his lifetime he was robbed shamelessly. That man is Nikola Tesla. A great human whose legacy has been relegated to a thing of myth while others can reap untold riches. All you have to do is check the US Patent records office and you will see the evidence of Nikola Tesla's greatness. I am reading a book written in his own words and it is a joy.

ex-l, may be leery of my occasional mention of the Ordering of the New World, but really I don't care because we aren't all going to see the same things. I will lose nothing if these posts are taken down because my post-BK life will go on. When one's vision of the world changes one begins to see how organisations like the BKWSU fit into the whole.

The New Age Movement is a wedge that contains a bit of truth to appease the many who have grown weary of traditional religions but the game is the same: CONTROL & POWER.

I now explore the possibility that I was born with the key to my own Spiritual Awakening and once the Creator discerns that I am ready to grasp it many doors will be open.

onthor

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Isaac T. Gillam IV

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ex-l

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post03 Dec 2016

I am conscious that this is all just a big reaction to a simple question re Black experience within the BKWSU.

My primary concern is that our purpose here relates to Brahma Kumarism;
    assisting individuals exit from it,
    providing support for them discharging it,
    explaining what on earth is going on to friends and family of BKs,
    protecting people from being enculted in the first place,
    documenting it accurately, and
    encouraging adherents to wake up and reform the BKWSU to make it less harmful if possible.
For example, to give it relevance, you might ask, "how does the Brahma Kumaris World Spirituality portray Black history and evolution, or assist us in understanding Black experience?" Squaring what the BKs teach with reality, and adding your own experience.

Given the above, it's not helpful for our directly relevant content to be buried by widely unrelated stuff. That would be better for your own personal blog, linked back to from here as and when it is relevent to BK discussion. Links rather than large copy land paste are better.

Tesla, I am well aware of, but he and his travails have no relevence to BKism. BTW, he was White, but Thomas Edison's assistant - who actually did much of his work on electricty - was Black.

And what on earth is the connection to Isaac T. Gillam IV ... proof that there are "distinguished or academic African Americans"?

We have direct evidence on this forum of how the Brahma Kumaris have responded to distinguished or academic African Americans in the case of discussions relating to Erol, one of the first - if not the first - Black BK. I would say he was a victim of racism within the BKWSU.

FYI, in understanding "Africa", I'd like to encourage you to add this to your reading list ... 'Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years' by Professor Jared Diamond. It help me understand why, despite "having everything" Africa suffered what it did ... in very rough terms, the simplest of bad luck when it came to a few specific genes (things as mundane as zebras instead of horse, ) etc.

For a brief summary, see also his 'The Shape of Africa' from National Geographic magazine. It's fascinating.
In effect, Africans enjoyed not just one but three huge head starts over humans on other continents. That makes Africa's economic struggles today, compared with the successes of other continents, particularly puzzling. It's the opposite of what one would expect from the runner first off the block.

Here again geography and history give us answers ...

BTW, I think his work also answers why today's most prominent religions also arose from around the "Fertile Crescent", although I don't think he goes into that.

onthor

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There again geography and history give us the same answers .

Post03 Dec 2016

ex-l, why don't you do yourself a favour and discover something that does not reinforce your world view. Is it that you are so insecure that you dare not challenge yourself? Attitudes like you portray here are just why injustice will never come to an end on this planet unless the masses get a big shock. How can you say that you are fighting to keep others out of the 'clutches' of the BKWSU but you are happy to reinforce other myths.

Anyway, I thank you for your website and your 'interest' in the nonsense that I have written over the last few months.

Good luck with your mission.

regards

onthor
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Pink Panther

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post03 Dec 2016

We have direct evidence on this forum of how the Brahma Kumaris have responded to distinguished or academic African Americans in the case of discussions relating to Erol, one of the first - if not the first - Black BK.

Before Errol there were other black BKs.

One was Wesley (his last name escapes me, he was well known, from London, Jamaican by birth, singer-songwriter for early Beyond Sound, a BK music group). Also in London was Cynthia, also Jamaican I believe. She was the person who, in the 1990s, found out about Ranjana Patel’s suicide when she recognised the photo of her corpse in the local newspaper months later, captioned "Do you know this person”.

Both were definitely BKs from late 1976 - early 1977, possibly a bit earlier.
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ex-l

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Re: There again geography and history give us the same answe

Post03 Dec 2016

onthor wrote:ex-l, why don't you do yourself a favour and discover something that does not reinforce your world view ... you are happy to reinforce other myths.

Please be specific as to what you are refering, I am not psychic and so I cannot guess. Anything I say is open to be tried and challenged.

In this case, I am bowing to someone of obviously far superior and extensive understanding of the subject than I.

On Jared Diamond's own website, he offers a touching introduction and summary to his book, here; 'GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL'. He acknowledges its limitations, which is humble of him, and offers extensions based on recent discovery and answers some of the criticisms of it.

Unfortunately, I don't have the internet bandwidth to watch the videos you linked to at present ... I am pretty much stuck with 'text only' sources at present ... links rather than 'copy and pastes', please.
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ex-l

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post04 Dec 2016

How about framing this as something like, 'Africa from a BK and post-BK point of view', 'an Afrocentric look at BKism', 'the place of Africa within BKism' etc? Or as part of your own personal growth, post-BK ... e.g. why you were attracted back to ethnic or cultural roots?

Otherwise, I really don't get your angle here, onthor.

It seems 'The Destruction Of Black Civilization' is an early 1970s book. There may be a download of it, here but, again, I, personally cannot download such a big file yet. It seems it's full title is '"The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. To 2000 A.D." which is to throw a huge spanner in the BKs.

Notably, all the figures - the "religious fathers" of BKism are Eurasian. Perhaps even what used to be called "Aryan". None of African history, none of its contribution to humanity's evolution ... which I cannot deny ... is featured in the BK world view. None of the dynamics between races. Thinking back to the BK view of world history; The Tree and The Cycle, they are ridiculous in their paucity.

Did you ever question BKs leaders about Africa and Africans, and how did they respond? What answers did they give you?

However, from reviews, more a document of the rise of Black Consciousness in the 1960s, it appears to be a little dated, even faulted on the basis of more recent finding, e.g.
How do we know that North Africa was black? The word Africa means black people’s land; the Latin’s, Romans word for black is afir and since they saw afir, black people living in their province of what is now called Africa they called it Africa.

The above are historical facts and Dr. William built his thesis around these historical facts.

Well, hold on ... the Latin word for black is niger. 'Niger, nigra, nigrum' depending on gender. There is no Latin word "Afir".

It also blames "the white race" ... for all times and as if it was one ... for the wrongs committed to Africa and Black people. Much of those crimes being committed by Arabs or Semites which Whites would not consider their own.

How does that work out karmically?

Oh, I see where you are coming from ... from here.
So, why is it that white folk are always displacing and enslaving black folks?

Dr. Williams suggests that the cause of black subordination to white folks may lie in the fact that Africans are a gentle and religious people whereas white folks are aggressive and lacking in spirituality.

Bobby Wright, an African-American psychologist advances the hypothesis that white folks are psychopaths and sociopaths by nature. As he sees it, living in caves during the ice ages transformed the Africans who moved up north into predatory animals without social conscience (as well as changed their skin color to white from lack of melanin due to lack of sun light).

- Ozodi Osuji Ph.D from UCLA

Ozodi's views are interesting.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post04 Dec 2016

The notion of Africa as some monolith is surely mistaken. A recent program on TV about research into genetic variations stated that there was more genetic difference between three tribes that lived next to each other in Angola & South Africa than there was between a Celt and a Han Chinese. I have linked to it elsewhere on this forum. Compare the over 2 metre tall warriors of Nubia and Sudan to the central African Pigmy or Kalahari bushman.
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ex-l

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post04 Dec 2016

I've been reading up about the Khoisan (Southern Africa) ... yellowish brown skin, flat faces and epicanthic eyelids like Asians ... and, interestingly enough, how the most linguistically similar cultures to native Madagascar tribes are to be found in Malayo-Polynesian islands (according to a mitochondrial DNA study, native Malagasy people today can likely trace their genetic heritage back to 30 different mothers from Indonesia) ... And I did not know Swahili was Arabic-influenced.

The gist I am getting is that pre-European colonialism, Africa suffered and "benefited" from both Arab/Islamic imperialism but also West African expansionism (e.g. Bantu), displacing older and even driving into extinction more vulnerable peoples such as the Pygmies, Khoisa and San ... and that it engaged in its own Imperial wars (Ashante, Yoruba, Benin Songhai etc) and slavery, just as Europe did.

I'd really encourage any interested members of the African diaspora to do DNA testing to see exactly which team they originally "batted for" in the past. For example, I read one African describe Nigerians as "the Germans of Africa" refering to their martial expansionist tendencies.

Something else that is largely undiscussed is how approximately 15-30% of the enslaved Africans who arrived in the New World were Muslim. A fact which has interesting ramifications today.

The difficult thing with blankly condemning imperialism, is that it clearly also brought benefits, especially in the mode of accelerated evolution*, albeit at a price, as many Indian would admit. Generally speaking; education, healthcare improvements, life expectancy, agricultural and technological development etc.

(* "Evolution" being a difficult word to use because it depends on us accepting that the end result is a lasting improvement).
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Pink Panther

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post05 Dec 2016

"Evolution" being a difficult word to use because it depends on us accepting that the end result is a lasting improvement

Actually, evolution just means ”spun out from”, it is neither necessarily better or worse. Many cases where evolution has left later species with less facility than earlier ones. e.g. the dodo, the penguin.

And as for German martial expansionism, is this coming from the land that brought us the British Empire? :D
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ex-l

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post05 Dec 2016

Pink Panther wrote:And as for German martial expansionism, is this coming from the land that brought us the British Empire? :D

No, no, it was another African expressing anti-Nigerian sentiments; within Malawians, Cameroonians, South Africans etc "Nigerians" generate a lot of negativity ... as indeed they are doing in India and elsewhere ... but I agree it does not work very as an analogy. If the British built the railways in Africa, the Germans made them run on time ... and these days it's the Chinese doing it both more cheaply and efficiently.

Which has the great impact on people's lives, a BK centre extracting time and money from the local community, or a railway line where there was none?

There's a lot of anti-Nigerian sentiment in Africa and elsewhere, due to tendencies towards corruption and criminality which flies in the face of Dr. Williams suggestion that "Africans are a gentle and religious people". But, there again, can one blame an Igbo or Hausa for the habitual crimes of the Yoruba? Can you blame all Yorubas for the habitual crimes of the "Boys from Lagos". Where skin colours are the same, tribalism replaces racism but amounts to the same thing.

However, I suspect this importance of topic is a recognition of the need of positive Black or Africa archetypes and stereotypes, and wider, more extensive knowledge of its history; and the recognition that the needs for them by members of the Black/African diaspora are not met within BKism any more than it is by, say, Hollywood.

As "God's cure for all ails", does BKism really have anything to offer? Do the BKs deal in anything more than token figures as fronts to pull in other ethnicities into the same shop, selling the same product?

Does it offer the specifically required personal growth?

The BKs are obsessed with Maha Bharat ... a 'Great India' not a Great Africa. According to their philosophy Africa is doomed and suffering from it's own bad karma.

GuptaRati 6666

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post10 Dec 2016

With respect to Blacks and BKism, there is a Guyanese perspective, global in nature, which historians have neglected.

Dr. Walter Rodney, a world authority on African history, was Guyanese and a Pan-African. His classical book, derived from his doctoral dissertation is, 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa'.

The late professor Rodney was assassinated by the CIA in June 13, 1980 in Guyana. He was politically active in Guyana in the late 1970s. His political movement almost overthrew the Forbes Burnham regime. Dr. Rodney earned his PhD at the age of 24 years old from the University of London School of African and Oriental Studies.

There was a reason why the BKs never officially reached out to him, even though he was a global icon in academic circles and would have become the director of UNESCO. Many high ranking officials in the Burnham government were active in raj Yoga and Dr. Rodney's political activism was a threat to the Burnham regime and American interest in Latin America.

Walter's younger Donald was Errol's grade 9 mathematics teacher at Central High School in Georgetown, Guyana.
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ex-l

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post10 Dec 2016

Results of a 2014 investigation into his death are here.

Interestingly, considering the ground we have been covering, Walter Rodney wrote his dissertation on the slave trade on the Upper Guinea Coast and 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (download file)' was published in 1972. I have not read either as I write but I'll have a look over the latter. The former was "widely acclaimed for its originality in challenging the conventional wisdom on the topic"; the latter "groundbreaking" posing that European imperialists had deliberately underdeveloped the continent.
"... an overall view of ancient African civilisation and ancient African cultures is required to expunge the myths about the African past, which linger in the mind of Black people everywhere. This is the main revolutionary function of African History in our hemisphere."

"Every African has a responsibility to understand the system and work towards it's overthrow." - Walter Rodney in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

"If there is to be any proving of our humanity it must be by revolutionary means".

He was banned from Jamaica because of his advocacy for the working poor. The Americans were behind that too as they were engaged in a "full-scale repression of a Black Power insurgency at home", which included programmes of false imprisonment and even murder.

"Recognized as one of the Caribbean’s most brilliant minds", I can see why the Beakies would avoid him like the plague; social activist, a voice for the under-represented and disenfranchised, interested in the struggles of the working class, influenced by the Black Power Movement in the USA, third world revolutionaries and socialist theory ... he is the epitome of the opposte of them as they snuggle up to whoever is in power wherever they find themselves.

In particular, he was sharply critical of the Black middle classes in many Caribbean countries - for selling out their Brothers and Sisters - which would place him as diametrically opposed their "always back the establishment" and "don't rock the boat" political strategies; strategies that increase and protect their own interests, and minimising any risks.

On the other hand, he also had time to write books for the children of Guyana. "Lakshmi Out of India" I would have thought would have had the BKs' ears tingling ... but it's political too, about how the plantation owners devised a system of importing labourers from India to the Caribbean as indentured servants (1838 - 1917).

In my opinion, the BKs still pretty much base their economy and religion on an army indentured Indian women servants. Slaves really. Indentured servants could earn their freedom after so many years free labour. In BKism, there's no freedom except for death for them, unless they are willing to leave with absolutely nothing for all the years they put in; no land, no money, no real skills, no real education.

Rodney's magnus opum was written in 1972 ... and how much further are we today from "genuine liberation and socialism in Africa and internationally"?

Perhaps something that is more important than "Africa: Before Slavery" are alternative and positive histories both individual and collective to the usual negative narrative about Africa and the African diaspora. Even moreso today for young Black males where the only apparently role models portrayed in the media are extremely negative and materialistic, e.g. the typical rapper/gangster/'bad guy' in the movies stereotypes.

Recently, I watched a Swedish documentary called 'The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975' which contained a lot original footage from that era. That movement was stomped down upon incredibly harshly. Tying it back to onthor's original topics about New World Order, there is no doubt there was a conscious "conspiracy" to do so, and to keep Black people in the USA down.

And what did the BKs' god spirit have to say about any of this and any of that?

It's true there are any number of great and very brave Black activists attempting against all odds to uplift the Black "Shudra" classes, just as there are any number of great Black scientists, intellectuals, artists etc. If I was a Black BK, I would be asking the god of the BKs exactly what he is doing, or not doing, about their conditions and why?

I don't think I'd accept the "It's your karma" answer.
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ex-l

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Re: Africa: Before Slavery

Post21 Dec 2016

I am continuing to read Dr Rodney's book and if you want to flesh out your interest in Africa before, during and after slavery, and its largely involuntarily nourishment of the development of Western capitalism, his wide ranging work is a must read. (At the same time, I've been reading up on how extensive Africa's support of Great Britain during WWII was, the extent of which I was not fully aware of, e.g. how only 2 out of 10 soldiers in Burmese front were actually White).

One of the big problems, from a BK point of view, is that any potentially positive Afro-centrism opposes and clashes entirely with core BK philosophy, i.e. The Cycle.

According to the BK theory of time and spiritual 'devolution' ... Africa simply did not exist prior to 2,500 years ago, except for a few islands in the middle of a vast ocean where BK centres had been 5,000 years ago.

Yes, that is what the BK god spirit literally teaches.

Further more, he goes on to teach that the past is "more pure" than today. Therefore, the 1500, 1600, 1700s during which slavery had it peak were "more pure" than the 1800s and 1900s when slavery was abolished and, slowly, civil rights were extended to include the African diaspora.

Therefore, in essence, the BKs are teaching that the era slavery and 'pre-democracy' were a higher state than the current "Fag End" of civilisation in which human, civil or democratic rights for African have been fought over and evolved ... democracy, and all that it entails (e.g. rights) being the most impure form of governance.

Rodney's books poses the unfortunately misfortune Africa had of evolving into a feudal era quickly enough and instead was swallowed up the beginning of Western capitalism for which it provided the gold, the unpaid labour, and raw materials to fuel ... and continued supplying them right up until WWII (which Britain would not have survived without its raw materials and fighting men), and until today. Albeit African states have clawed back *some* rights and a privileges.

For me, this - along with its karma theory (slavery and the destruction and exploitation of Africa was Africans "own fault") - should pose a huge problem for Black people fitting into BKism and accepting the rest of its teachings.

I fully support your position for the need of a revised understanding and full appreciation of real African history, onthor.

However, I am afraid it must surely rock and destroy faith in the spiritual integrity of BKism.

For example, what I did learn from Rodney's work was that there was a system of monasteries in Africa - carrying out the same social and education functions - perhaps 600 or 700 years before Europe (in Ethiopia), and how many "great" institutions and cities were founded on its direct slavery and exploitation, e.g. European banking and insurance to port cities like New York, Boston ... and how their rise led indirectly to American independence.

It would seem to me that the blood and sweat of Africans was the "oil" of early capitalism.

One in which Indians were only too happy to take a slightly more advantageous position becoming involved the hands on administration for the White man.
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