MAY 2007

Mental Decolonization Begins In Us
From the Ramparts*
Junious Ricardo Stanton
**

“A part of the problem of mental illness is not what people do to each other and what mama or daddy or somebody else does to a child. A part of it (mental illness) is also how what momma does is reacted to on the part of the child. It is not so much that the European says we are inferior and that we are this and that, and that the European maligns our character, et ectera: It is the belief on our part that what he says is true that drives us crazy. It is a crazy reaction to what he says, an insane and unthinking kind of approach to dealing with what he says about us that maintains the craziness.” Amos N. Wilson _*The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness Eurocentric History Psychiatry and the Politics of White Supremacy*_ Page 95

Watching the hoopla over the killing spree at Virginia Tech University made me even more aware of how insane and pathological this culture is. Even if the story and time line the corporate media is spinning about Seung-Hui Cho are true I have doubts and reservations about that simply because the corporate media lies routinely, but even if the stories about this young man’s emotional problems are true that does not obfuscate the factual reality AmeriKKKa is an extremely violent nation.

It’s not just the guns and weapons that make AmeriKKKa so violent, it’s the mentality and values behind them. The values of AmeriKKKa are anti-life and anti-peace! The Western paradigm of interpersonal relationships is best described as a predatory Win-Lose scenario. Success in the twisted mind of Europeans is: on an individual or collective basis when they, their tribe or country is able to defeat, exploit, demean, swindle or subjugate anyone else particularly the racial “other” to gain some advantage, material possession or position for themselves while depriving the original custodians of it altogether. Europeans have fashioned an "in order for me to Win-you must Lose" reality/world. Their language about relationships is full of analogies about war, conflict and combat. For example their notion of male-female interaction is called the “battle of the sexes”.

Given the omnipresent and immutable principles of reciprocity, sowing and reaping and KARMA, that civilized people used to structure their societies, is in opposition to the European paradigm of reality; what usually happened when dealing with Westerners was a Lose-Lose scenario. The pattern of modern interracial and inter-cultural contacts went much like this: Caucasians would come on the set pretending to be friendly while discreetly checking out the aboriginal or indigenous people, looking for whatever they could steal and expropriate. Once they discerned or discovered whatever it was they coveted, their rapacious behavioral patterns set in, conflict, genocidal wars, colonization/debasement always resulted. Due to the Europeans’ superior weaponry and their homicidal behavior over the last five hundred years, whites usually won the wars and subsequently dominated the people militarily. In order to maintain their political hegemony they would bring in missionaries or “cultural workers” to pacify and colonize the people mentally and psychologically. They used fear, terror, intimidation and brainwashing they called “education” to pacify the natives once they had been defeated militarily.

Often the Europeans would take selected members of indigenous people to be “trained and educated” in their colonial schools or sent back to the European’s home country for further indoctrination and brainwashing into Eurocentric thinking with the goal of creating self-negating, self-hating pawns and sycophants. Eurocentric white supremacy was the core curriculum, the natives and captives were taught to internalize and believe they were sub-human, innately inferior and “less than” their European colonizers.

The invaders, colonizers and kidnappers were always fearful of retaliation and liberation struggles so they would employ heinous and time tested (on their own people, study their history) techniques, torture and murder to instill fear into their targets so they would not rebel or overthrow the colonizer’s system. This is what the whites did during slavery, during the colonial period and during the apartheid era in AmeriKKKa.

In the modern times in AmeriKKKa they used COINTELPRO to eliminate our righteous leaders when the Civil Rights and Black Power movements threatened their hegemony especially when their cities when up inflames following the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. Subsequently they saw how empowering the Black is Beautiful, the Black Arts and Black Esthetic movements were and how they raised our consciousness, so the oppressors determined to use this same creativity against us.

This is why and how they high jacked Black Music. Read Nelson George’s _*The Death of Rhythm and Blues*_ and extrapolate and juxtapose those and similar corporate techniques to Hip Hop and you’ll see how they now manipulate and control the music industry. This is how and why our young people dehumanize, degrade and debase themselves and us individually and collectively for a few dollars more. The Don Imus situation finally forced us to look at ourselves and examine what we are willing to accept. Yeah this culture still promotes vile and demeaning images of us everyday, so what? The question we must address and answer is, what are we going to do about it; how can we counter this filth and garbage with life affirming values, pro-African images and messages?

We’re not obliged to support P Diddy, Snoop Dog or their clones. We can choose not to support Radio One, ViaCom or Disney’s values, advertisers and programming. There are other venues, conscious newspapers and magazines out there we can support. There are conscious artists like Paris and Immortal Technique, conscious Internet radio and television stations we can support to get our music, news, entertainment and information. It’s not what corporate AmeriKKKa pushes or what their paid Sambos and Hoochie Mommas say or do, it’s how we react. We have the power to act and/or react. We can react by not buying or consuming Eurocentric media and Minstrelsy . We can act by being proactive and creating our own media, our own messages and our own distribution networks.

To accomplish that means we have to stop whining, stop going for the okey-doke get up off our duff and do something different and wonderful! We have it in us, the challenge is to bring it out in time to save ourselves and ultimately by extension, the whole world. Mental decolonization is possible. It begins in us, it begins when we transform our thinking, when we alter our behavior so our creativity reflects a renewed African consciousness. The good news is we don’t have to wait, we can begin right now, right where we are to make our world better, sane and life affirming. Begin now, our future depends upon it! [TheBlackList] Mental Decolonization Begins In us

Jazzkaar – Manu Dibango 

A man who defines himself Afro-European generates wave upon wave of euphoria in the music halls all over the world. Cameroon’s jazz saxophonist Manu Dibango gives his concert in Sakala Night Stage on April 23.

Emmanuel N'Djoké Dibango was born in Cameroon on December 12, 1933. He studied French in the local “white man’s school”, and was theresafter sent to Marseille in 1949. Manu Dibango achieved skills in mandoline and classical piano before taking up the saxophone around 1954. After finishing his studies in Paris he moved to Brussel where he contributed to the jazz music of various groups.

Manu found Amstrong and Sidney Bechet the emblems of jazz. In 1960, he went to perform his saxophone music in the Brussel night-club Les Anges Noirs. In venue for people of repute from Zaire the western music practised by Manu was not in favour. The man of great talents had an opportunity to find his roots again in African music.
Manu’s first success in Africa was gained together with his new companion Joseph Kabasélé. When the concert tours in his homeland reached the end Manu began his own club business where the orchestras played his own compositions.
In 1973 a huge success was gained in USA. Manu was recognizable for showing the Afro-Americans their new path in jazz music. After the New York fever Atlantic Records bought 150, 000 copies of Manu Dibango’s music. The jazz star was nominated for the Grammy Award for the Best R&B Instrumental Performance.

In 1980 Manu began to record reggae music. The new albums “Ambassaador” and “Gone Clear” featured the Jamaican music of Sly And Robbie. Manu Dibango became famous with his avant-funk movements. On March 14, 1986 the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang awarded Manu with the title “the Medaille des Arts et des Lettres”.

Manu Dibango makes up his music of soul, reggae, spiritual and jazz elements. But he never stops to expand in new directions. Although Manu has not been after perfection and success in his cross-cultural works, it has been said that his contribution to music has had a strong influence on every outstanding contemporary jazz artist of the world.
www.jazzest.blogspot.com

BLACK AND PROUD