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The following is significantly quoted or paraphrased from Dr. John Henrik Clarke's lecture given sometime between 1989 to 1993 on
Education: The Highest Form of Struggle.”
The Struggle To Communicate
“We lost something by way of communication one to the other. There was a period each one of us understood each other's struggle and we gave it a single name,
“The Struggle of Africans Away From Home.”
African Only
“Up until the early part of the 20th century, Blacks in America and in the Caribbean had a good relationship and were also hanging out with the word “African,” not “Colored.” We still knew who we were and “African” was the name of choice without hesitation. This singular name of our origin was a unifying factor.
It wasn't until the early part of the 20th century that our desire for education, within the context of a foreign situation, became a problem to our communication.”
We began to stray away from self-education and community education and indoctrination. Thus we lost more and more of our deeper-bonding cultural bearings. We began to take on even more of the suboptimal worldview of those who obviously had faulty thinking. Why did we? Because we placed a higher priority on the short-term and the material rather than the long-term and the spiritual while attending to the short-term and the material as a community rather than as individuals. The enslavement period sufficiently separated us from our value system to leave us adrift. Then we slipped and fell into integration which was essentially a fight to be given a disease-ridden education. In other words, the adoption of a European-centered educational perspective on the world was just like saying, “shackle me again with all your ways of thinking. My mind is willing because my stomach needs filling.”
All of these factors affected and shattered our communication one to the other. We lost full consciousness and deep cultural control of our Africanness because we no longer had one name to tie it all to. Thus we see the journey of multiple naming mistakes and other related detours along the way to reclaiming our African communication.
