ReUniting the African Diaspora

[Music]

know from whence you came

if you know whence you came there are

absolutely no limitations to where you

could go

james baldwin

i’m not a i’m african

you are a these words were spoken

to me by an african cab

driver who refused to drive my friends

and i to the south side

that’s one side of the story the other

you just left africa did you ride any

elephants

my name is vic mensa i’m a hip-hop

artist from the south side of chicago

i’ve never ridden an elephant and i am

in a most literal sense

an african-american my father is from a

small slum

called the ossicore zongo in a town

called capuardo in the eastern region of

ghana

my mother is white american from a town

called ithaca in upstate new york

africa existed in the imagination of my

childhood friends primarily

within a framework of caricatures

most famous of which was by far african

booty scratcher

with spirit chukka coming in a close

second

although these caricatures are very

one-dimensional

they are however not so much of a

departure from what black americans are

shown of africa

take for example the unicef commercials

emaciated african children and

mud huts that you could save for a

dollar

although well-intentioned the narrative

is one of scarcity

not of africa as the most resource-rich

continent

on the planet i’ve often heard

africans view african americans in just

as stereotypical ways

as lazy criminal and violent

the disjointing of the african diaspora

has been the most

effective tool of white supremacy

in the continued disenfranchisement of

peoples of african descent

by the year 2050 a quarter of the

world’s population

will be african african americans

having come from a collective wealth of

absolute

zero during chattel slavery having a

period of under 200 years

amass the spending power of over a

trillion dollars

reuniting the broken bond

of the african and the black american

can combine strength in numbers

with strength in dollars and a level of

cultural

influence unprecedented in world history

with which we can begin

to address the devastating wounds of

colonization

but it will require strategy today

i’ll be discussing three first of which

identification of a common enemy and a

naming

of our shared oppressions secondly

transcending neocolonialism and third

fostering cultural understanding through

the use of

art technology and education

in 1962 when addressing a delegation of

african freedom fighters kwame nkrumah

said

in our paraphrase this meeting gives us

the opportunity

to assess our strengths as well as

those of our enemy who is the enemy

the enemy is imperialism with its

weapons colonialism

and neocolonialism

let’s define imperialism imperialism is

the practice

of a nation imposing its rule or

authority

over another nation most often through

the use of brute military force

it is no secret that we as black people

from ghana

to south africa to nigeria to haiti to

jamaica

from louisiana to bus when i have been

the victims of a ruthless imperialism

at the hands of the british the french

the spanish the dutch the portuguese

pretty much all white people and

in a more distant past the arab world as

well

it is the same british empire that

colonized the land of my father

that is responsible for the

proliferation

of african slaves across the americas in

the caribbean

same enemy it’s the same

counterintelligence arm of america

that’s responsible for destabilizing the

black community

with crack cocaine that’s responsible

for destabilizing governments across

africa by meddling in their politics

same

enemy let’s backtrack for a second

in 1957 kwame nkrumah led

ghana to independence becoming the first

nation in sub-saharan africa to achieve

this feat

he subsequently became the nation’s

first president

kwame nkrumah was an unabashed enemy of

imperialism

he was a pan-africanist with ties to

other leaders such as

agave and lumumba and amassed

a fortune in his time

in power with which ghana was able

to fund liberation movements for african

nations across the continent

this was a significant threat to america

and in 1966 the cia was involved in a

coup

that deposed kwame nkrumah setting ghana

and the continent at large back

considerably

let’s fast forward a little bit in 1979

in another military power graph this

time in south america

the cia collaborated with a nicaraguan

rebel group called the contras

to overthrow the government how did they

fund it

they brought nicaraguan cocaine into the

united states

at the dawn of the crack epidemic

effectively opening the doors for the

sliding of the prison cells

that would begin the age of mass

incarceration

and today there are more african people

in bondage in a prison cell than we’re

ever on a plantation

same enemy

now private prisons in america are big

business

one of the largest companies it’s called

geo group

that same geo group owns carson

facilities

in south africa where the dutch have

bastardized the african people

now if we go to west africa dutch-owned

shell gas company

is one of the primary drillers of

nigerian oil

same enemy when you begin to peel back

the layers

a clear imperialist shadow is cast from

the cells of sing-sing to johannesburg

to the oil fields in nigeria if we can

identify

our common enemy at that point

we can begin to collectivize our power

but without strategy power is useless

any effective strategy has to include

transcending

neo-colonialism neo-colonialism is the

use

of economic political

and other forces to influence nations

especially former dependencies

97 of africa was colonized

by the year 1913 roughly 60 years after

the end of slavery in america

here we are in the year 2021

roughly 60 years after most african

nations achieved independence

but in most cases it’s little more than

a facade for an imperialist puppeteer

behind the scenes

pulling the strings ghana is rich in

gold

why is ghana not rich from gold nigeria

is rich in oil why they know nigerians

not rich from oil

the congo is rich in diamonds why is

congo not rich

from diamonds black queer feminist

theorist audrey lord has a quote in

which she says

we cannot dismantle the master’s house

using the master’s tools on the

plantations of tennessee

masters tools consisted of colorism

separating light from dark house from

field negro

the banning of drums or the speaking of

native tongues

in west africa tribal divisions were

exacerbated

through the lure of trade with europeans

effectively leading brother to cell

brother sister the sales sister and

father the sales son

when we adopt the same uber capitalist

dollar over everything ethos as our

oppressors

we have effectively become them we’re

doing their job for them

the five richest men in nigeria have a

collective wealth

of over 30 billion dollars enough to end

extreme poverty and yet five million

face hunger

we have adopted the master’s tools one

of the master’s most

destructive tools has been the use of

religion to divide

african spiritual systems of traditions

such as voldun

across the middle passage to become

voodoo or euro but across the middle

passage to become

santeria have been demonized and

outlawed

and christianity has often been used to

enslave

justify and commit genocide i don’t say

this to offend and salt anyone’s

spiritual system just to bring light to

the fact that when you have

made a man hate and fear

the gods of his grandfathers well you’ve

made him hating for himself

when i was in ghana recently i came

across my father’s birth certificate

i was stricken by the fact that in bold

print at the top of the document it read

christian name first my father’s name is

edward quaker mensah his mother would

call him kwaku

the name quaker wasn’t even on his birth

certificate actually was replaced with

kingsley

i was taken aback by the fact that to

take part in society

my people had to discard their names

they had to discard their gods

and they had to turn their back on their

ancestry

if we’re going to be able to dismantle

the master’s house we need to be able to

look into our toolbox

identify which of our tools belong to

said master

and discard those tools so we can make a

plan

of deconstruction using our own devices

devices such as education art

technology there’s a song by one of my

favorite hip-hop groups

dead press the song is called day

schools

it goes kind of like this

day schools ain’t teach us my

people need freedom

we trying to get all we could get all my

high school teachers could suck my dick

telling me white man lies straight

african history for the black american

in public schools begins with slavery

and ends with the civil rights movement

there is no discussion of the history of

the

universities of timbuktu of mansa musa

as

history’s richest man of the mali empire

of the ghana empire

santiwar driving away the british

of the medieval castles of zimbabwe

or even of the construction of the first

pyramids as being the work of a black

pharaoh named kufu

they would have you believe however that

elizabeth taylor is a spitting image of

cleopatra and matthew mcconaughey looks

like timbuktu

these are the same people that cast tom

cruise as the last samurai so i can’t be

that surprised

um but what we need is a complete

overhaul a shift

from a eurocentric curriculum to one

that properly represents

us and our contributions to society

to civilization two of the fastest

growing global markets are black music

and technology what’s referred to as the

urban aspirational market

it’s basically everything we influence

with hip-hop

is in america worth over a trillion

dollars

and hip-hop is global afrobeats is

global

collaboration between black american and

african artists

fashion designers engineers

affords us the opportunity to redefine

our narrative

in contrast from the master’s tool of

division to one of a unified front

the tech industry is globally valued at

over three trillion dollars

what’s known as the fourth industrial

revolution cloud computing artificial

intelligence

advanced wireless and mobile technology

has disrupted things

everywhere in 2018 africa was

responsible for

half of the global mobile money accounts

really are more connected than we’ve

ever been

tech gives us the opportunity for the

underprivileged to have access to job

opportunities

to have access to information and

quality of life

that we haven’t before and the

possibility for collaboration is greater

than ever

it can be easy as black people to feel

as if we’ve been under the hill since

the dawn of time but there was

a time before colonization

and we truly are the cradle of

civilization

and above all we’re hopelessly connected

if the diaspora are the limbs

or the continent is the skeleton we are

one body every system in the body

can work with itself but without the

skeletal system

everything collapses our growth and our

mobility has been

purposefully stunted for the creation of

a permanent underclass by the world’s

imperialist masters

if we are to overcome this status

of second class global citizen

we’re going to need to be able to look

together

and identify our common oppressors

to reject the structures of those

oppressors

and to replace them with structures of

our own of

understanding art education

at that point that’s when we can begin

to mend the fractures and our damage for

strong bones

thank you