African Diaspora 101: Black History
by K. Omodele .@TheAbeng
“It’s not all that glitters is gold/and half the story has never been told…”
~ Bob Marley; Peter Tosh
They gave the whole, entire month of February in recognition of Black History? Wow; Imagine! One problem with the whole dolly house, though; feels like somebody hand-picked history and white-washed the story with a set of sanitized plots. Now it’s like viewing a cropped, air-brushed photo through a borrowed, out-of-focus lens. Our story needs narratives from our perspectives. Since, history hasn’t delivered our Truth, we must demand our writers and djeles do so. (Calling all Diops, Fanons, Jan Carews and Rodneys)
You see, people’s perceptions are based on our experiences and affect how we relate with each other and the world in general. As independent thinkers, our views shouldn’t be founded on the mainstream; status quo views should not define our experiences for us. We must examine and discern from our experiences then propagate our own perspectives. And we don’t need nobody else to validate our views.
Photo-cropped Heroes and Sanitized Plots: Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro
Take Nelson Mandela’s visit with Fidel Castro, for instance. Soon after he was freed from prison in 1990, Mandela went to Cuba to meet the Cuban leader. Tata Madiba’s face was beaming with reverence as he shook Castro’s hand and asked why the Comrade had not come to Africa as yet. Right then, BRADAP, a whole slew of politicians, media and Cuban exiles started ranting and railing, bawling ’bout how Mandela friending-up this “evil dictator” so. Some of us who didn’t know the fullness of our story, black history, might have scratched our heads wondering the same thing.
But see! Look how history done blurred up the lens and fogged up we views. In reality, Fidel Castro supported the African fight for liberation from colonialism way back in the 1960’s when Che Guevara set up camp in the then, so-called Belgian Congo; then, Mr. Castro supported Africans again in the Seventies and Eighties by sending tens of thousands of Cuban troops to Angola to fight alongside the MPLA* against the Portuguese and an invading South African army.
Now for those of us who can’t remember, in them days, Britain and the U.S. backed the racist, apartheid South African government and opposed Mandela and the A.N.C.**, branding them terrorists, subversive elements, etc. Back then, Madiba was vilified by many in the West, let’s not forget. To many, he was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, the left side of the Cold War. It didn’t matter to them that he was fighting for black people’s human rights, fighting against racist oppression and colonialism. And so was the MPLA.
In its December 20, 2013 edition, THE WEEK magazine reported Peter Beinert stating on TheDailyBeast.com that “America isn’t always a force for freedom,” and pointed out how Reagan and other conservatives viewed the plight of Black South Africans “through a Cold War lens,” when they politically supported the murderous apartheid regime.
So see? People need to learn what’s going on for ourselves and stop relying on the mainstream media to shape our views. I am not necessarily endorsing Castro nor condemning Reagan; I’m just making the point that the status quo and popular opinion are subject to change. Mandela, like Muhammad Ali, was reviled by many in the mainstream at one time. Slavery was legal in most countries at one time. Black history is our story and we must not rely on someone else to relay our stories. If we do, then expect that our perspectives might be distorted. To paraphrase The Right and Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, we need to see the world through our own spectacles. In other words, through our own lens, in our own voice. “None but ourselves can free our minds.”
*Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola
**African National Congress
