This beautifully packaged series of articles
on the African family in America contained important data and trends we
should all be aware of. These articles fell into the category of people
outside of our community addressing an issue we should be addressing ourselves.
Since the early 1900's, Black and white
scholars have written much on the African family. When one examines the
card catalogue of any library in America they will find volumes of books,
articles, and newspaper clippings discussing some aspect of African family
life. So we can add Newsweek 's feature to the list. Most of this research,
over the years, has been aimed at the African family in America. What we
need in the African community in America is a framework to examine and
solve the problems of Black family life on our own terms.
The capturing of African people, who were
placed in chattel slavery in North America, has left some devastating scares
on the most basic unit or any group family. There is no question that the
family has been that unit that provides the basic foundation for any group
of people to survive and develop.
Families constitute grandmothers, grandfathers,
mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and in-laws. Sometimes
families extend beyond blood relatives to those persons we bring into our
families for whatever reason. Families function in the context for their
racial and ethnic identity, this identity, is shaped by the historical
and external forces of a given society.
Although the problems of the African family
in America appear to be very complex on the one hand, on the other, the
problem is very simple.
First of all, African people who were captured
and introduced into the western hemisphere as property and commodities
were removed from their land and institutional arrangements of African
life.
Second, this process of white takeover
of African life, through the most brutal form of oppression-- the slave
trade and the eventual enslavement of African people on the plantations
of North America, has been a back breaking experience for our people.
Even though our survival techniques have
been superior, in the face of brutal psychological and physical violence
against us, we are now at the crossroads. We face the challenge of preserving
some of the traditions of the Black family, developed by our ancestors,
who fought so hard against racism and white supremacy in this country.
This must be done, in part, through the
rising and growing African Centered Education Movement. As renown, deep
thinker, Dr. Jacob Carruthers explains, African Centered Educations should
focus on the following:
1. Advocates that restoring the historical
truth about Africa is the priority for African thinkers (including Africans
in the diaspora).
2. Holds that there is a distinct universal
African Worldview which should be the foundation for all African intellectual
development.
Involves the massive education or rather
re-education of the African people of the world from an African perspective
in the interest of African people and directed by African thinkers. It
is a necessary pre-condition for the freedom of the African mind and subsequently
African liberation.
We must not abandon family life. It is
the basis for our survival and development. It is the strategy of our white
oppressors to place so much pressure on us that we give up our fight for
independence and freedom.
When the family unit begins to wither away,
we must rise to the occasion and fight to keep its basic elements alive
in our communities.
It is the duty of all African people to
understand that we are faced with a genocidal set of circumstances in America.
Look around our communities and what do we ! you see?
We witness the absence of that fighting
family spirit among us that has been so much a part of African family life.
The family is the support mechanism for
all that we do and it is sacred institution that we must preserve and protect
on our own terms.
This should not occur on the terms of major
features in the mainstream like Newsweek and other publications who seek
to interpret and define who we are.