Education for Liberation in Black Africa By Chinweizu © Chinweizu, 2010 Paper presented at the Codesria Conference on 50 years of African independence, Legon, September 2010 Some questions to ponder 8] What are the flaws of the neo-colonial education we have entrenched? (3/5) Principal flaws in our neo-colonial education: It is said that “by their fruits ye shall know them”. Let us therefore judge the failings of our neo-colonial education system by the behavior of its products: 1] It doesn’t teach us loyalty to our race, the Black race –which is why a grown up Nigerian Muslim could say: “I am a Muslim and I worship Allah and I follow the way of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). I have no relationship with you, except that your skin is black. The lightest Arab is closer to me than you. If there were to be war between Muslims of any shade of color and the darkest of black people, I will be on the side of Muslims.” --Najib Bilal in email to B Bankie, Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:53:45 -0700 (PDT) 2] It doesn’t teach us racial solidarity, which is why we have been unconcerned, and have shown no outrage at-- let alone tried to do something to stop--the current torture of Haiti by the USA, France, and their UN, a torture which has been going on for the last two decades, since President Aristide was first deposed by a coup in 1991; that is also why we have not rallied to defend the African peoples of Darfur and South Sudan who, for decades, have been under military attack by Arab expansionists. 3] It doesn’t teach us that we as a people have enemies, let alone who our enemies are; in particular, it doesn’t teach us that the Arabs and Europeans are our enemies, and have been so for thousands of years—which, for instance, is why we embrace the Europeans as our “development partners” despite their success in diverting us from pursuing industrialization policies, and despite their pressuring us to sign economic partnership agreements (EPAs) that will push African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries deeper into poverty and negatively affect the livelihoods of people living in ACP countries. In other words the EPAs are instruments of economic war on the ACP countries, yet we refuse to see their imposers as our enemies. 4] It doesn’t teach us how the world is structured and functions against us—which is why we are not suspicious of the UN and such of its key agencies as the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and the WHO (the WHO—World Health Organization, during an anti-smallpox vaccination campaign, vaccinated 97 million Black Africans with HIV-contaminated vaccines and thereby brought AIDS to Black Africa). Being unsuspicious of these UN agencies, we naively seek guidance and take orders from them. 5] It doesn’t teach us how to triumph against the forces arrayed against us; 6] It doesn’t teach us about ourselves and how to overcome our weaknesses; 7] It doesn’t teach us who we are as a people, and how we came to be in the despised condition in which we find ourselves in the world; 8] It doesn’t teach us why there are no jobs in our country for the teeming millions of our youth, or what we must do to create jobs for everybody —which is why our governments have no inkling about what to do to end the situation. 9] It doesn’t teach us why we stay poor despite our abundance of resources; 10] It doesn’t teach us how we can make our country and Black Africa prosperous and powerful; 11] Our education does not teach economic patriotism, which is why our leaders loot and plunder our countries and export the loot abroad, to “safe havens” in Europe, America and Arabia. 12] It doesn’t teach us how we can defend our country and our race from every form of attack. 13] It doesn’t teach us about our enemies and how they have been defeating and exploiting us for centuries. 14] Our neo-colonial education doesn’t give us an understanding of the world in which we live, and of how it came to be the way it is. 15] It does not equip us with a world picture—a global-political picture of the way the world is structured, and how it functions, and our Black World’s place within it--let alone an understanding of how the world is rigged against us. If it supplies any coherent global-political picture at all, it is the vague pro-imperialist picture in which the UN system is presented, quite falsely, as serving the interest of all of humanity rather than just the imperialist interest. 16] Its cardinal failure is that it leaves us oblivious of global power realities. In particular, it doesn’t teach us that those who have vital and highly desired assets, but lack the power to defend those assets, are prone to exploitation and even extermination by the powerful.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:34:52 +0000
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