For The Love of My People

By BaBa Omowale Eng

BaBa Omowale Eng

(Part 2)

Cheik Anta Diop’s research revealed that human beings began leaving the birthplace of Afruika hundreds of thousands of years ago and ended up at the farthest extreme possible on the planet; all the way up in the Caucasus mountains.

Our Elder Cheik Diop was not only an historiographer, but he was also a linguist, a psychologist and an archeologist and an anthropologist. He was a scientist in the tradition of Imhotep of ancient Kemit. He called his theory the Northern Cradle and the Southern Cradle development theory of human development. He maintained that everything from physiology to psychology and spirituality is impacted by the environment that a human being develops in, based on that human beings genetic capacity that The Creator placed within all of us.

One of Cheik Anta Diop’s major books is The African Origin of Civilization, Myth or Reality, and in that book he scientifically presents the facts of that reality based on the research of archaeological and anthropological archives discovered in his years of lifelong research.

Now, the way that all of these studies impacts my consciousness as a Black Man in America in 2024 is that it gives me the solid foundation of knowing exactly who I am, where I come from, who My God is and what my responsibility in the world is; to myself and to my people.

Again, Naim Akbar talks about the self on three levels and it is important to know that the self talked about is not the individual self, separate from the extended self of family and community. When Naim Akbar talks about self identity he is talking about the Mbuntu, the identity of the family-self and community self and one’s personal responsibility being tied up in that which to me means that the knowledge of self that I achieve must be internalized in ways that connects with my family and my community.

That requires studying and teaching, inspiring and motivating and then protecting our youth and ourselves from the harms of oppression, exploitation and physical/psychological enslavement. That is the duty of self identity, self acceptance and self love.

So, today as I learn that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the very act that pushed back at the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott decision which said that the Black man/ woman in America had no rights that the white man/ white woman was bound to respect, is being reviewed by The Supreme Court of the U.S. , I am troubled that we still have to push the value of our humanity and have it legislated so that all Americans are forced to accept it.

Think about it, my people – the very law that gave Black people the right to be recognized as equal under the law is something that we must research, protect and push forward in 2024. The right to make and enter into contracts. The right to be treated equally in education and housing, health care and business. These are four issues that are now still on the table for Black people in America and being conscious in 2024 demands that I be conscious of that and make my thinking and my voice heard and considered in all of these matters.

I must ask our people to have a conversation about our right to vote and our right to be recognized as human beings. My people, we must have these conversations so that we can develop the strategies to fight back, because there are those in this society that are convinced that the only way they can survive is to put us down and keep us down.

So, please hear me, my people. Self love requires that we research and share this information with our families and our communities. Black consciousness demands that we be prepared to respond to this society as it deals with our demand for equity and equality as we access our freedom and build our systems of justice appropriately.

(To Be Continued)