Unity. Unity is the most fundamental principle of every people. The word people couldnt even apply if there wasnt some sort of unifying quality about said people. We have many units as human beings. Being on Earth, alive, eukaryotic, an animal, a human being, having a homeland, an ancestry, a career, a belief system, etc. In all these things we display some form of unity. In the African Diaspora unity is a principle that we have to constantly work to achieve. The reason being is that African people and their descendants have been systematically disunited by colonization and capitalism. There would be no need to promote unity if there were not pressure from power structures that worked against a united African community. That would completely contradict the tactical practice of divide and conquer. The continent of Africa was a target because of its vast resources and in order to over take such large body of land and millions of people, colonial countries divided land amongst themselves, made and enforced unnatural boundaries and forced people into compliance. This began the siphoning of goods out of the continent without anything positive in return for the indigenous people. Many years later in the New World, slave masters would implement a mentality that would claim the minds of the distraught and bonded Africans for generations. The Willie Lynch letter as it is called is still up for debate in its authenticity but the blueprint laid out in it is far from fiction. I HAVE OUTLINED A NUMBER OF DIFFERENCES AMONG THE SLAVES; AND I TAKE THESE DIFFERENCES AND MAKE THEM BIGGER. I USE FEAR, DISTRUST AND ENVY FOR CONTROL PURPOSES. The letter then go on to list many opportunities for separation. Age, intelligence, gender, location, and skin color are only a few areas where separation could occur. Once a group begins to divide itself it is most vulnerable. The same way schools of fish must move together and in large numbers to become a harder target, people must be united for their own benefit. Its a survival technique. Even today, with Black people in America being disproportionately impacted by poverty, lack of education, incarceration, etc. Blacks are still dividing themselves. We have light skin vs dark skin, ratchet vs bourgeois, naturals vs perms, Christians vs Traditional African Spirituality, etc. all these difference are completely irrelevant when we all are affected by the same system. The same system that infiltrated any Black social movement in order to disband it. The same system that saw any unification of Black people as a threat to national security. The reason why Umoja is so important is because we have always had to fight for that basic and fundamental principle as a people. Heres an example of the importance of this concept. Many historians will acknowledge that before integration you had strong division in what we would now consider the White community. The White immigrants from European countries such as Poland, Ireland, Italy, etc. were not treated the same as the White descendants of the first Anglo-European settlers. Many lives in ghettos and had low paying jobs. Once the idea of Black people integrating schools and public life the idea of what is White began to shift to include all people of European descent currently in America. That unity gave White America an even greater majority and boost in socio-political power. This lesson is to show how important unity is. There need not be any rants about racism or anything because nobody I know personally is responsible for anything but themselves and what they represent. Hopefully it shed light for most people.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:25:35 +0000