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Permit me to hasten and say that whenever one mentions a scientific scholarly treatment of black social concerns you have to call the name of Wade Nobles. Whenever one thinks of a systematic scientific study of the black family, its problems and possible solutions, you have to call the name of

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Wade Nobles. Wade Nobles currently serves as the director of the Institute for the advanced study of black family life and and culture located in Oakland, California, my neck of the woods. I'm delighted to say that he after having received his letters made it his business to get out there in the

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community where the masses are to study the situation to give intellectual and academic respectability to the nature of the problem and I'm delighted this morning to present him as he speaks to us as our stated order of the program indicates on the subject Afrocentric development of perfected black manhood.

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Let us hear now Dr. Wade Noble. [applause] I need to begin very quickly but in one sense very slowly because it has become my custom as an African scholar to utilize the rituals of the African tradition.

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And in my presentations, the ritual is something that has been invented by human beings as a way of internalizing those aspects, those psychological aspects of our existence that may appear to be esoteric or abstract.

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And so we create rituals as a way of internalizing those things and those of you of the cloth understand the importance of ritual and the practice of worship. I have adopted two Afrocentric rituals

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that allow me to begin and to place my remarks in context. The first ritual is that I must ask permission from my elders to speak to you. It is the tradition in our culture

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that the elder is the repository of wisdom and of wealth and that it is our responsibility to always seek that permission from an elder. And so I will simply ask an elder, if I may use you,

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do I have your permission to speak? And I need you, yes, you just turn your head. I need you to say out loud that I do or do not have your permission.

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And you have said yes. My students ask me, what would I do if the unknown elder said no. And I tell them that I will simply

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take up my notes and go home, because it is that kind of serious proposition that we begin to reestablish as we look at this issue of rescuing our culture.

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We begin to reestablish the meaning that underlies the practice. And so with your permission, I then must ask you all to allow me to assume

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a posture of reverence and respect while I give praise and credit to the source of all knowledge and all truth. And I do that by saying out loud that the Almighty, who is sometimes called Amun, and is sometimes called Ptah, and is sometimes called Jehovah, and is sometimes called Obatula,

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and is sometimes called the Christ, and is sometimes called Shango, and is sometimes called Allah and is sometimes called Ola Tamari, that Almighty God, Amun-Petah, Ra, although hidden, is the source of all knowledge, all truth, and all wisdom. And I pray in what I say to you that Amun-Tehuti, or Rumila, will be satisfied. My task is to talk about

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the Afrocentric development of perfected, in quote, perfected black manhood as a key to our rescuing of black men. It is important for me to begin by noting for you the obvious that black men from the beginning of the European ascension have been under attack and that that attack has been formed in many different ways

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some physical in terms of brutality in recent times all psychological in terms of trying to define who the black man is and also creating a situation where all black men of any kind of status are raised to question so that we look at black leadership always with a scant eye we look at black accomplishment always

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with the question of whether or not it was true we even look at the issues of our achievements in antiquity as issues of debate that is all orchestrated and as a psychologist I understand the orchestration of that because it has to do with the ability to create the imaging and the icon of a

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people so that those people will not achieve and maximize their full potential and their full possibilities. And so we're in a sophisticated situation where the imaging of black men is always questioned even to the point where people don't question those things that other folk would like to say black

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men did and we didn't do. Point in case is the all you have to do is to shoot your wife, shoot yourself, and then say a black man did it and everybody believes that. No question about it, no assumption about whether or not there is innocence before proving one guilty. Simply say a black man does it and no

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one questions the issue at all. So we have to begin to talk about these issues issues of understanding where black men are situated, understanding in part what are the cultural and political constraints that place us in that situation,

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but more importantly, to understand the process that we must reclaim as we reestablish our position as black men in the world. And I think that that is the responsibility.

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And my remarks will, I hope, support this position, that that is ultimately the responsibility of black men. Let me share with you a couple of definitions and put something in context so I can move quickly

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to the heart of my thinking today. The first is the definition of community, because when we talk about black men, we are talking about, one, the community of black men,

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and two, the black man's position in the community of black people. And so we have to look at both our fraternity as black men, but also our relationship and our responsibility

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in our community. We can't do that if we don't know what the community is. And in many instances, we use language and words and concepts and try to communicate, but we never

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stop to ask what do we mean by those words, that language, that concept. Most of us would recognize that a community is some place that has recognizable geographical boundaries.

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It's found in time and space. And we all can see that. We can talk about the black community and having some boundaries that distinguish it.

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And when you walk across the street or walk across the track or walk across the stream, you know you're out of the community. But we seldom recognize that the community also

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represents a place that is defined by the sharing of a common set of experiences, a common worldview, a common value system, and common social institutions.

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It is not accidental that the African community in the United States, or for that matter, in the new world, re-established three fundamental institutions that were common to us that gave us community.

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The first was the family. The black family is the evidence of our common institution and therefore community. The second was the black church, and the third

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was the black historical college. Those three institutions-- family, church, and knowledge-- have been the basis of our community. Yet we don't talk about those from a black perspective.

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And in many instances, those social constraints that I talked about as relating to trying to redefine the black man as something deviant and something pathological have tried

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to do that by simply taking us outside of our intellectual frame and having us to think like other people. Now, understand I'm a psychologist.

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So when I say that the issue is one of how we think, it is because I am embedded in a particular kind of framework. But the fact of the matter is that the most devastating thing that has happened to African people

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has been the ability of European people to have us to begin to think not as African people, but to think and make analyses as European people. Consequently, we end up making the same kinds of error

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in perception that our European teachers have made. And so we end up, for example, we end up talking about the issue of illegitimacy in the black community.

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Think about it. In the African tradition, there is no such thing as an illegal life. In the European tradition, there is a belief

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that one's status can be legal or illegal. Consequently, depending upon how a man and a woman produce life, one condones it as either legal or illegal. In the African tradition, as far as I can see,

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we've only talked about life as being natural, unnatural, and supernatural. And that has to do with its relationship to the spirit, in terms of whether it's condoned as natural, unnatural,

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or supernatural. But we end up thinking like Europeans, so we run around trying to figure out how we can label some child as illegitimate, or even worse,

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as a bastard because of some status, and not recognizing that as we think like Europeans, so do we act like Europeans. And therefore, our ability to solve

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the problems of the black community diminished based upon the degree to which we are European in our mindset. The third aspect of community is the fact that the community has to have a sense of its own beingness. And it is in my opinion that the attempt now for African scholars to begin to talk about an Afro-centric

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framework is really the intellectual foundation for us to begin to reflect back on our own sense of beingness, that we can't see ourselves as African people with white eyes. We have to begin to reflect on our own sense of beingness through our own cultural framework, and that's what the Afrocentric model attempts to do, and I'll talk about a little bit of

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that in a moment. But just quickly in terms of historical perspective, it is important to recognize that from the beginning of time, African men and women have been viewed as the standard bearers of humanity. It is only recent that that kind of relationship

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has been turned around. It's been turned around as a consequence of the ascension of the Arab community for a little while, but the European community for most of recent time.

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See, the task of white racism and oppression-- and we have to always look at that until that human ailment has been cured, and it has not been cured, the issue of racism and oppression--

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that we have to look at the task of white racism and oppression terms of how it related to black people and more particularly how it related to the imaging of African manhood. The psychological dehumanization of African people was done both again in terms of physical bondage but also in terms of

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spiritual oppression and it's that spiritual oppression that we sometimes fail to analyze properly because we think the spiritual oppression has to do solely with the rituals of worship in theology and not necessarily have to do with the essence that makes one human. The spirituality that makes one human is

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equally important as the set of rituals that we utilize in our theological relationships. The way in which the European community in the African, I'm sorry, the European community in the Arab community attempted to dehumanize African people was in two places. First was the the so-called attempt to destroy

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the black family and you all know that you probably even still are getting some of you students are probably still getting this misinformation in your classes about slavery destroying the black family and and that's why we're in such a bad position that we're in. But the attempt to destroy African

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familyhood was part of the tools of oppression. The second issue was even though it was not effective. I need to put that on record. It was not effective.

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And the fact that we are here, the fact that we even have a sense of our beingness as community is evidence par excellence that the destruction of the black family never did occur.

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But people running around wanting you to believe that the black family was destroyed and we somehow are these special made in America individuals like Barbie dolls or Snoopy dogs.

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And we run around taking pride in that kind of status. The second attempt that oppression attempted to do was the destruction of the African man. And the African man was targeted not

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because the African man had any special status in the African family, but because in the Europeans' mentality, being both racist and sexist, it viewed the man as the primary and fundamental enemy

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and believed that by destroying the black man, they were able to conquer African people. not understanding anything about our family dynamic, not understanding anything about the egalitarianism

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of and the complementarity of male and female elements in the African worldview. Therefore, they felt they could take one piece and destroy the structure and not realize

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that the structure and the function in African context never was dependent as we see it in the European context. In fact, our artists often pointed out to us that a house is not a home.

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And so you can look at a house as a structure, but there's an essence that makes it a home. There's an essence that makes it a family. And that's the thing that was attempted,

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that was not able to destroy. But the attack on the black man was part of the scheme in terms of the destruction, the dehumanization of African peoplehood.

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African societies understood that the role of the man and the woman was to protect and to provide, to protect and to provide. And it was in that protection and in that

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providing for the next generation, that we acted out our fundamental responsibility as a generation. I like to talk about this notion almost as a law,

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a law of genesis, in the sense that every generation has the responsibility to reproduce and refine the best of itself. And so when we talk about education, when we talk about the role of the church,

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When we talk about all the institutions that come to impact on a community, what we recognize is that our responsibility as church, as family, as black college is to reproduce and refine

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the best of what it is to be ourselves. And as African people, then our task becomes very specific. How do we reproduce and refine the best of African-ness in ourselves?

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We can't do that if we are solely dependent upon an intellectual body of knowledge that is Eurocentric. You can't reproduce African people

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and refine African people, building upon the misinformation that a whole plethora of scholars are now identifying and showing as the legacy of European-based knowledge. We can look at the concrete conditions in our community

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and see that you can't reproduce and refine the best of African peoplehood when you recognize that this system structurally has created a dynamic that results

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in the status of black manhood being on the lower rung of almost every single status that once identified. Life chances of black men are lower than anyone else.

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Black male mortality rate. We can look at the criminality of black youth. The fact of the matter is there's a new published article in New York Times and the local newspaper

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is talking about 1/4 of all black men in age 20 are in jail. There are more black men aged in the 20s in jail than there are in universities.

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You can't reproduce the best and refine the best of oneself if, in fact, we are being criminalized rather than socialized. And so we have to begin to look at these issues in terms

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of what they mean for us. You can't begin to talk about the issue of the economic condition of the black community and recognize that black men in most quarters

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either 30 to 50 percent of the unemployed rate and those are the folks who are still trying to find jobs not looking at the black men who are not even looking anymore to find jobs and so this so the statistic is even itself inflated you can begin to talk about the the whole new phenomenon of black youth

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being involved in drugs and gang violence and black male sexual misconduct and the risk of AIDS and health related diseases all being orchestrated these are not natural phenomena that occur as a consequence of us somehow being inferior people or ignorant and less intelligent people.

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These are orchestrated dynamics that we must understand as we engage in the process of developing the perfected black man. All these data suggest to me that when one raises the age old boogable, and some people want to call it boogable, of genocide, that it is not a question of just a scare tactic.

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genocide has to be understood intellectually as well as emotionally. And oftentimes we respond to the charge of genocide as an emotional response. And we African people say, "Oh no, no one's committing genocide. There's no three or four or five white folks somewhere in the corner thinking about

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how they're going to wipe out all the black people and they're sitting around in the smoke-filled rooms. There's no such thing. That's paranoia. But when we break down and look at genocide as an intellectual mode, what we find is that genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural

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group by acts of omission and/or commission resulting in and designed to destroy the life force of an entity. It is the life force piece of this issue that we must understand because all the social constraints that I talked about are designed to be acts of omission or

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commission. Doesn't matter if someone says I did it, you can also not do it and cause the same result. And so we look at the destruction of our life force, brings us to the question of what is the life force? What does the life force do? And then what we in fact find is that a people's life force, which I will share

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with you, I argue is the culture of a people. A people's life force allows them to transmit their hereditary character and information. The hereditary character we talked about in terms of black involvement, black being involved in what people

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see as the history of man's primary understanding of his relationship to the divine. Blacks being involved in every major development of human recognition of our own humanity.

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How do we transmit that hereditary character to information if our life force is cut or destroyed through these acts of genocide. The second thing the life force does

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is give people a capacity to obtain the resources necessary to sustain life. I can't be up here talking if my father, who had a third grade education, and my mother, who

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had a seventh grade education, weren't able to figure out how, in spite of their absence of formal education, to obtain those resources that were necessary to sustain the life of their five

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children in the hostility of a racist and oppressive environment. So the life force is a critical part for our ability to have that capacity.

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That's why black folk were able to make do in things when there were no resources. We somehow became magicians. We could make things happen when there

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was no kinds of resources, because the life force was there. And thirdly, the life force determines people's human possibilities and potential.

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What is the possibility of black manhood and the potential of black manhood, given the position of our life force. We have to understand, I believe,

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that the attack, the genocidal attack on black men is no longer the kind of, well, it's not only the physical brutality, but it is psychological brutality.

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So people create images and ideas of black men. Understand that power is not just a gun in brute force. Power is the ability to define reality and to have other people respond to your definition

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as if it were their own. So some people simply said black people are ignorant. We say, OK, they got power. Some people say black men are lazy.

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We say, OK, they got power. Some people say that black men are dumb. Black men do poorly in school. Black men won't work hard.

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Black men won't support their children. Black men disrespect and won't protect their women. Black men are independent of attitudes, a sort of single, independent agents in their own community

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beholden to no one but themselves. Black men are non-monogamous, and you know that's the intellectual term for black men will chase anything that has a skirt on. Black men are sexually aggressive, black men are lazy, black men are violent.

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We say, "Okay." Black men are superior athletically and inferior intellectually. We say, "Okay." Black men are materialistic, black men are lustful, black men are insecure.

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We say, "Okay." All that is interesting, all those are stereotypes, but the problem is that power is the ability to define reality and to have other people respond to your definition as if it were their own.

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When black men begin to respond to those meanings of black men as if it were our own, then it becomes real. And we, in fact, see it in our community. We, in fact, see that caricature that was simply a vulgar lie about black men is now

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becoming the reality of black manhood because power is the ability to define reality and and make other people believe it is in fact their reality. And so we walk around now as black men believing that that's our nature,

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not understanding that our nature was something that was formed and shaped long before other people even had a clock, even understood that there was time in progress existing and going on,

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that our way was the way of perfected black men. And I want to share with you my understanding of that concept because it's not just something I chose to be fancy here,

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but the concept of perfected black manhood was a concept that was created by our tradition as African men and women that had to do with the notion of human development, human development.

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And it is now almost no longer the debate, even though some people want to debate, of the centrality of African beingness in terms of humanity.

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I like to point out that you can't be human without being African. And so it's no longer debate, that people wanna talk about what do black people do

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and all the great philosophers wanna argue that black people never did anything. Well, I also think that we have to simply have a pattern response for that low level kind of analysis.

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It's sort of stupid for people to debate it anymore because the evidence seems to show, and even now biochemists in major white universities are acknowledging that everyone on earth

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seems to have descended from a single mother who lived in Africa. And now they debate whether she lived in Africa 100,000 years ago or 500,000 years ago.

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You see, so they want to get us debating about whether she's 100,000 years old or 5,000 years old. And we missed the point that what they're saying is that the single mother,

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if there was in terms of this analogy of Eve, was a black woman. And so I sometimes in my frustration, when we get into these intellectual debates

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about the centrality of African people in the world, I simply say, go ask your mama. As simple as that. Simple as that.

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If the mama of the world is a black woman, then anytime you ask me some food, I say, ask your mama. And if they say black men are inferior,

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I say, ask your mama. They say black women don't want to do anything but live on welfare. They say ask your mama. They say black kids can't learn until your mama.

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You see the issue here is not really an issue of that kind of debate, but it's important to get off of that silliness and to reflect back. The silliness is what it's about. The fact of the matter is that we now recognize both in the hard biological sciences,

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the centrality of African people in the world, but we also know about it in terms of the historical and sociological sciences. It is in our folklore, it is in our folklore that our ancestors talk about a time before time.

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A time before time. That's very much like what Ali talked about when he says that we are people of the day before yesterday. That we exist in a time before time.

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And I've watched the patterns of the African way to see the consistency because in science we know if you see consistency in pattern then there is a relationship there

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that is constant and possible because they're causal. And so I look at the patterns and what we see is that black folk do that, we do that. We talk about things that violate the Aristotelian logic

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that we like to claim to be the supreme basis of reasoning. Black folk say it's time before time, that you blacker than black, that I'm faster than fast. And we make these kinds of analyses that if you use,

00:27:07.320 - 00:27:17.820

if you limited yourself to Aristotelian deductive reasoning, would not make any sense. But it's because we are not European people that we have an intellect and a mentality that

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allows us to make these kinds of statements and to back them up. And we need to back them up with hard scientific methodical research. In this time before time, our ancient folklore

00:27:29.280 - 00:27:40.760

talks about 10 divine dynasties that were the archetypal wisdom of light. It was that notion of light that represented knowledge, understanding, humanity.

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And that these dynasties had to do with the transformation of humanity, and that that really was the issue of our development, the transformation.

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Our ancestors talked about the initiatory process of alchemical transformation of perfected man. Let me say that again. The initiatory process of alchemical transformation

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of perfected man. You all know, of course, that people like to make us believe that we should be ashamed of depending upon affirmative action programs and set-asides,

00:28:14.320 - 00:28:23.960

et cetera, because that's an indicator of our inferiority. But recognize, if you will, please, that the first affirmative action program in human history was an affirmative action program

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that we established that allowed the Greeks to come into our universities as affirmative action children and to be able to see and to learn our wisdoms. And so we talked about, in these ancient times,

00:28:37.940 - 00:28:55.440

the initiatory process of alchemical transformation. You all know and you can read, you can perceive where I'm going, that the affirmative action children, the Greeks, misunderstood the concept. And so they ran away and talked about alchemy as a process of changing base materials into gold.

00:28:55.440 - 00:29:10.860

And so you know, you know the little story about them running around chanting over gold and putting it in the water and hoping that they can make lead into gold. They missed the understanding. The understanding that our ancients said was the alchemical process was one of transforming man.

00:29:10.860 - 00:29:34.860

not transforming matter, transforming man. And that the task was how do you transform man from a lesser material being to a greater spiritual being. That's the key. That's the perfected man. The perfected man, and I'm using generic man here, I'm not talking about male biological man, but human,

00:29:34.860 - 00:29:47.820

that the key here is the transformation of man from a lesser material being to a perfected or a greater spiritual being. That's the task that we, in terms of understanding

00:29:47.820 - 00:29:58.860

the destiny and the role of rescuing black manhood, have to reclaim. The ancients talked about, thirdly, that there were, after the time before time and time began,

00:29:58.860 - 00:30:12.060

there were 30 dynasties of the sages. 30 dynasties long before Ahamenes established Egypt as one nation. The 30 dynasties of sages begin some 40,000 years

00:30:12.060 - 00:30:18.780

before the Christian era. 40,000 years. I tell my children, 'cause sometimes it's easy to talk to children

00:30:18.780 - 00:30:29.580

than intellectuals, that if we had 40,000 years of working around this notion of the perfected man, we could have taken 5,000 years and did it the wrong way.

00:30:29.580 - 00:30:37.820

Just out and out wrong. took another 5,000 years and been mad because we made a mistake and did nothing. Took 10,000 years and went on vacation.

00:30:37.820 - 00:30:48.440

That left 20,000 years for us to do it right. You understand, African people know something about developing human beings. But the problem here is that we have followed

00:30:48.440 - 00:31:00.780

other folks' theories about human development and therefore have not been able to reclaim and reestablish the kind of man, the kind of woman that was responsible for the great achievements

00:31:00.780 - 00:31:10.380

that we talked about. We're following Dr. Sparks, and we're following other theorists about human development and not recognizing that we knew how to do this long before

00:31:10.380 - 00:31:21.900

they even were conscious of their own consciousness. And then we see, you know, 3000, 4000 years ago, the onset of what everyone now wants to recognize as dynastic Egypt as being a great and glorious place,

00:31:21.900 - 00:31:32.460

as long as they can take it out of Africa. So they say it's Egypt, and it's Arab, and they say it's Egypt, and it's, well, it's the Middle East,

00:31:32.460 - 00:31:45.060

and then they say Egypt is the Middle East, and so we run around thinking about the Middle East and not looking at that Egypt is in Africa. It's very much like saying Atlanta is not in Georgia.

00:31:45.060 - 00:31:53.500

And so we run around trying to find Atlanta and not recognizing that it is in Georgia and that Egypt is in Africa, and all the accomplishments of that place

00:31:53.500 - 00:32:04.800

were African or Afrocentric based accomplishments. The notion of perfected man really recognizes that there are three basic attributes to the life process, to all living things.

00:32:04.800 - 00:32:15.680

All living things have three basic attributes. They have desire, they have thought, and they have action. If it's a flower, if you understand the essence of the flower, the flower has desire,

00:32:15.680 - 00:32:23.040

it has thought, it has action. If you understand a gazelle, the gazelle has desire, thought, and action. You understand a man or a woman,

00:32:23.040 - 00:32:37.240

a man or woman has desire, thought and action. It is understanding the desire, the thought and action that allows you to communicate with those beings. It is not accidental that when,

00:32:37.240 - 00:32:49.200

what's the brother who did all the stuff with the peanut? You tell me about your student, huh? George Washington Carver, I'll test you quick. George Washington Carver, when white folks said,

00:32:49.200 - 00:32:54.880

How did you produce all these things of the penium? How did you know this stuff? Where's your lab books? Where's your systematic analysis?

00:32:54.880 - 00:33:07.520

Where's your chemical breakdown? His brother said, I get up early in the morning and I walk out in the woods and the plants tell me what they can do. And they said, oh, no, he's keeping secrets.

00:33:07.520 - 00:33:18.040

He is, this is, this is industrial espionage. He don't want us to know what he did. But what we see as African and operating from an Afrocentric basis is that he was telling the fundamental truth.

00:33:18.040 - 00:33:29.440

That if you understand the desire, the thought, and the action of all living things, you can communicate with those living things. But our ancestors argued that it wasn't just desire,

00:33:29.440 - 00:33:39.420

thought, and action, but they must go through the alchemical process of transformation. That desire does only be desire. Desire transforms to become pure love.

00:33:39.420 - 00:33:56.040

That thought doesn't just remain thought, but thought transforms to become clear understanding. And that the last one, action, doesn't just become doing stuff, but action transforms become acts in service or sacrifice

00:33:56.040 - 00:34:05.760

to the whole. It is that last one that we need to look at, because it is the last one I believe, as I'd make a post-analysis of black political and social

00:34:05.760 - 00:34:19.420

movements, is that we've always been driven by doing things on the benefit of the whole, in sacrifice to the whole. the movements of Marcus Garvey, the movements of Martin Luther King, the movements of the Nation of Islam,

00:34:19.420 - 00:34:27.820

just in this country, we're always driven not by, what do I get out of it? What do I get out of it? Because I want to be an egomaniac

00:34:27.820 - 00:34:38.340

leader of a movement. But rather that we are driven by-- the black church included-- we are driven by sacrifice, doing things in service to the whole.

00:34:38.340 - 00:34:49.820

That is that Afrocentric way, the transformation. And so when we look at the condition of our community in our relationships, there's desire. Every black man in this room who just talk real and regular,

00:34:49.820 - 00:34:54.940

when you go and see a sister walk across campus, there's desire. There's desire. And you know there's desire.

00:34:54.940 - 00:35:00.200

You know the way it goes. There's desire. You start thinking about what you're going to run on her. That's what?

00:35:00.200 - 00:35:06.700

That's thought. That's thought. So you're thinking about what can you tell her, what you've got, who you know, to get over on her.

00:35:06.700 - 00:35:12.200

That's thought. And then what do you do? You try to do what we say in the community. You try to turn the corner on a sister.

00:35:12.200 - 00:35:20.480

You start moving to do something. You approach the proposition. That, in fact, are the three aspects of life-- desire, thought, and action.

00:35:20.480 - 00:35:31.360

What we missed is that you don't be driven by desire, thought, and action. But when you relate to the black woman, your desire has to be transformed to pure love,

00:35:31.360 - 00:35:43.120

to pure love which connotes respect and protection, that your relationship to the black woman is one out of respect and protect, And not, am I going to get over tonight?

00:35:43.120 - 00:36:00.520

So the transformation has to be understood. When you look at thought, when we look at thought in our schools, as well as in many learning tasks in religious organizations, we think about thought and critical thinking,

00:36:00.520 - 00:36:11.960

because we're tied to Aristotle. We think that the real fundamental thought is critical thinking. Can I make nomological, deductive, reasoned arguments? And so we talked that kind of talk.

00:36:11.960 - 00:36:23.440

And I recognized that thought was the lesser material base. And we're the transformer to the higher spiritual base. And so thought becomes not thought, but clear understanding.

00:36:23.440 - 00:36:33.880

That's what your mama was doing when she simply looked at you, knew you did wrong. She didn't have to think about it and say, well, based upon the sequence of time that when I left this house,

00:36:33.880 - 00:36:43.520

this was on the table. and I came back and the table is no longer on the table, it is on the floor broken, therefore I can deduce that somebody touched it

00:36:43.520 - 00:36:49.840

and it fell on the floor, and since you're the only one in the house, I will conclude that you must be the guilty party. Your mother just looked at you

00:36:49.840 - 00:36:56.140

before she even went in the room and knew you had done wrong. That is clear understanding. You see, that's the transformation.

00:36:56.140 - 00:37:04.040

We need to look at our own dynamic and look at our own relationships and see how these things happen and then develop the process for reclaiming those.

00:37:04.040 - 00:37:15.320

acts of sacrifice or service to benefit the whole. The final thing, we don't just do stuff. Even though now we see in our community, because we have followed other folks' theories

00:37:15.320 - 00:37:27.480

and intellectual premises about what it is to be a black man, we are just doing stuff. In many instances, the intelligentsia, which is the folk that are blessed to go on to college,

00:37:27.480 - 00:37:38.800

are doing stuff for themselves. I'm getting this degree so I can get this so I can do that. and not recognizing that the act was never an act of selfishness in the Afrocentric mode.

00:37:38.800 - 00:37:49.800

The act was an act of sacrifice. And please understand that I know the miseducation. So when I use the word sacrifice, your mind automatically goes to that icon of some big old dude

00:37:49.800 - 00:37:59.440

grabbing a woman and throwing her over the pit to appease the gods so that they would have a sacrifice. That ain't what sacrifice is about. That's that old stupid European miseducation.

00:37:59.440 - 00:38:13.520

Sacrifice had to do with the understanding that you have an obligation to act sacred toward other. That's what sacrifice is, to act sacred toward other. And so acts become acts of sacrifice.

00:38:13.520 - 00:38:23.600

How do I act sacred toward my woman? How do I act sacred toward the African community? That's the goal of transformation. And we begin to do that so we don't simply

00:38:23.600 - 00:38:34.480

believe that getting an education means getting something and then going and finding how do I get away from all them other black folk. I get my degree, I can get out of town.

00:38:34.480 - 00:38:44.120

I ain't got to worry about it, I ain't got to live amongst you, I ain't got to look at you, I ain't got to talk to you. I don't do nothing because I am now the first one of something. Don't care what it is, but I'm the first one of something.

00:38:44.120 - 00:38:55.760

And never realized that we never were a one people. I mean, being an individualistic people. We were always, always, the Afrocentric mold said we were people who operated on a principle.

00:38:55.760 - 00:39:06.200

And it's a technical principle, because we were miseducated, we don't even know our own technical terms in terms of our culture. The principle was the principle of consubstantiation.

00:39:06.200 - 00:39:16.800

They even got us afraid to use big words. The only big word we use is MF. But we don't, but in terms of the same number of letters, we recognize that the principle of consubstantiation,

00:39:16.800 - 00:39:25.780

a big word, more letters than MF, says that we are of the same stuff. That's what the principle means, not in a theological context,

00:39:25.780 - 00:39:34.720

but in its sociological and cultural context. The principle of consubstantiation says We are of the same stuff. We are of the same spirit.

00:39:34.720 - 00:39:47.560

We are of the same energy. That's why a black mother-- a black mother will recognize that her sons are a preacher, a psychologist, and a prisoner, all Ps.

00:39:47.560 - 00:39:57.240

But all of her sons are her sons. And she would say, I don't care about any of that. These are all my children. And the way she relates to the attitude of her children,

00:39:57.240 - 00:40:11.640

regardless of the status that they have obtained, is built in the principle of consubstantiation. You are not my son because you became a psychologist, or you are not no longer my son because you are a prisoner.

00:40:11.640 - 00:40:25.260

You are my child because we have the same spirit, the same essence, the same culture, the same life force. It is that life force that we must understand. It is that life force that allows us to see

00:40:25.260 - 00:40:34.840

that even in dynastic Egypt, the kinds of accomplishments that we did have to be understood in their clarity. The building of the great pyramids,

00:40:34.840 - 00:40:49.200

people want to talk about as being done by slave labor. But you have to recognize that the building of the great pyramids was done some 6,000 years before Christ and it was built by a black man and his old lady.

00:40:49.200 - 00:40:59.020

See, we understand these things in our own terms, that Khufu was a brother. And he and his old lady got together and decided to create an institution,

00:40:59.020 - 00:41:10.820

and the institution was built upon the idea of protecting ideas. The place of that institution was the brick and mortar, just as this place here is brick and mortar,

00:41:10.820 - 00:41:22.300

but it is a place that represents a certain kind of idea. It ain't the brick and mortar that's important, it is the idea that the institution's built, that the institution is supposed to protect.

00:41:22.300 - 00:41:30.980

And so the building of the pyramids by Khufu and his son, Khafre, and then his grandson, Makari, all being built by what? The black family.

00:41:30.980 - 00:41:43.380

But when you ask someone, what is a black family, your mind doesn't go to the fact that every single person in this world who gets a postcard from Egypt sees the accomplishments and the achievements

00:41:43.380 - 00:41:50.180

of a black family. You don't go to that. You don't go to seeing those three little pyramids in a row and a little camel on the postcard

00:41:50.180 - 00:41:56.900

as a black family accomplishment. You think about the projects. You think about the single parent mama. You think about the woman who's got all these kids

00:41:56.900 - 00:42:07.980

who's on welfare. Because they create these images and these icons as a way of determining power is the ability to find reality. So you don't talk about black people,

00:42:07.980 - 00:42:19.980

the black family being the original human family. You talk about the black family as the welfare family. You go on and on and on, looking at what Tutankhamen and Hatshepsut and Ramses all did.

00:42:19.980 - 00:42:39.660

It's amazing. this country ran around crazy about finding Tutankhamen, the boy king's wealth, and seeing all his wealth. Think about this analogy. Tutankhamen was a boy, meaning he had boy money. What would that do to find a black man's money? I mean, I'm a man. I have two

00:42:39.660 - 00:42:54.140

sons. My son's wealth and my wealth are very different, because I've been doing it longer. Plus I know more than they know. And so I have more wealth and wisdom than they do. So when you look at Tutankhamen, you're talking about Trump change.

00:42:54.140 - 00:43:04.740

You're talking about boy change. And these people went crazy over Tutankhamen. If they had found Ramses, the man, they would have blown up. They would have exploded, imploded, because they couldn't handle the fact

00:43:04.740 - 00:43:17.020

that here's something with black men associated with it. You can look at the Moors' conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. One thousand years ago, Moors, the only European who wanted to acknowledge them and who they were was Shakespeare.

00:43:17.020 - 00:43:25.740

He tried to do it poetically by talking about the Black Moors. But the Moors were black men and women who went into the Iberian Peninsula and drugged Europe out of the Dark Ages.

00:43:25.740 - 00:43:32.860

I mean, drug them out of the Dark Ages. They were glad. They were comfortable being in ignorance and poverty. We established that.

00:43:32.860 - 00:43:41.860

And that's not to brag about them. It is not even with all due respect to say that we're replacing-- making ourselves to have some chosen and divine position

00:43:41.860 - 00:43:54.840

in the world. It is a historical fact. But how we speak it has to do with the energy and the spirit by which we communicate. And some folks get confused by the energy in which we communicate information and think

00:43:54.840 - 00:44:12.060

that we are saying something more than what we're saying, like we're bragging about ourselves. But it is the energy of our beingness that makes us African people. It is the same energy that causes the welfare mama who does go and has to negotiate with folks and talk passionately about the conditions of her family, that folks say, "Well, you

00:44:12.060 - 00:44:17.120

just have to calm down. You have to control yourself. If you want this welfare, you're going to have to be better than that.

00:44:17.120 - 00:44:24.860

We're not that kind of people. We don't do that. In fact, the black church oratory style is the best place to see it.

00:44:24.860 - 00:44:35.700

That's where the passion lies. And we confuse the passion with the message. And the message is that we are central, that's all Afrocentric means.

00:44:35.700 - 00:44:46.620

Afro-cen-tric. to situate oneself as the center of the understanding of one's reality. That's what Afrocentric means.

00:44:46.620 - 00:44:57.860

And so we center ourselves in the middle of the stuff so we can understand from our position and not from someone else's position. Looking at the fact about it, that our children,

00:44:57.860 - 00:45:12.500

in terms of education, if they had an Afrocentric education, they would understand that-- [BLANK_AUDIO]