Intellectual Genocide in the U.S. & Why Africa Is Important for Humanity

Published in Issue 519 of The Black Commentator on May 6, 2013
By Larry Pinkney

“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
–Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz] 

“…I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball…I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.”
–Rosa Luxemburg

The wondrous rainbow of humanity on Mother Earth emanates from Africa. Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people all come from the womb of the African continent.

Humanity’s great thinkers and strategists did not begin with Plato, Socrates, Alexander ‘the Great,’ Julius Caesar, Leo Tolstoy, or Karl Marx, etc. Long before the births of any of the aforementioned persons there were scientists, builders, strategists and thriving civilizations in what has now become commonly known as ‘Africa.’ Africa’s significance, both past and present, is not limited to its enormous material resources and its natural wealth. Africa’s often ignored or forgotten significance continues to be the pivotal role that it has played in the birth of human civilization itself.

Why is this of enormous importance to everyday ordinary people of all colors in this 21^st century?

The narrative of the U.S. and global power elite is one that keeps people ignorant, divided, manipulated, and controlled based upon a warped and distorted presentation of everyday ordinary people’s national and global history. The systemically manufactured color, economic, and/or social status divisions are potent weapons that are utilized to keep people in a perpetual state of psychological, political, and economic servitude. Over many centuries, as humankind spread throughout the four corners of our precious Mother Earth there were often those greedy few who sought to elevate themselves as masters over their fellow human beings by utilizing social control and manipulation mechanisms. Thus, certain humans were said to be ‘primitives,’ ‘savages,’ ‘barbarians,’ or ‘uncivilized’ – while others were ingrained with the utter nonsense that they were somehow innately superior by virtue of some supposed unique divine right or destiny. This of course was, and remains, an integral part of utilizing social control and manipulation mechanisms. For example, wholesale physical and cultural genocide was committed against the Indigenous Native peoples on this North American continent in the name of so-called ‘progress’ and the ‘Manifest Destiny.’ These atrocities however, were NOT simply based upon color, as there were many horrible pogroms carried out, in Europe and elsewhere, by and against people of the SAME color — in the fallacious name of eliminating the inferior ‘barbarians’ through supposed ‘ethnic cleansing,’ etc.

The distorted narrative of and by the U.S. power elite (through its corporate-stream media and ‘educational’ institutions) continues to the present day. For example, the very bloody U.S. civil war, which was fought primarily between people of the same color, was a contest between the U.S. power elites of the north and the south for economic power. Nonetheless, the myth continues to be propagated by the present-day U.S. power elite that the civil war was fought first and foremost to free black slaves in the southern United States; when in fact that bloody contest was fought over money – economic power – plain and simple. Framing the civil war around the narrative of the freeing of black slaves was nothing more than a means to keep certain European powers (most notably England and France – both of whom had already officially abolished slavery from aligning themselves with the power elite of the southern Confederacy whose economy was blatantly based upon institutionalized slavery. Abraham Lincoln, and the northern U.S. power elite were by no means in favor of equality for black people. In fact, prior to the outbreak of the U.S. civil war, Abraham Lincoln, on September 18, 1858, speaking before an audience of 12,000 persons in Charleston, Illinois, made his position crystal clear regarding his firm belief that there should never be “social and political equality” between black and white people. He said, in relevant part,

“…I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race…”

Once again it was the everyday ordinary people of all colors and on both sides of that conflict who were the canon fodder of the power elites in that bloody ‘civil war.’ And still the distorted narrative of the power elite continues.

Today in the year 2013, the everyday people on the African continent continue to be the pawns of external power elites whose objective remains that of dividing, robbing, and economically exploiting the continent, at the horrible expense of the ordinary people. Former blood suckers and butchers such as Mobutu Sese Seko (of the African nation formerly known as Zaire) are being replaced by various other puppets of external power elites throughout the African continent. Drone man Barack Obama’s AFRICOM is busy militarizing Africa for the purpose of controlling the vast natural wealth of the continent. Once more it is the everyday people who are the canon fodder of the avaricious national and global power elites whose contemporary African puppets do the bidding of external elites for their own personal gain.

We must ALL understand that Africa IS important. What happens there is a direct reflection of the corporate / military elite’s insatiable greed and lust for power – not only in Africa – but throughout Mother Earth. What happens there is happening to us all.

Intellectual Genocide In the Alleged ‘Age of Information’

The long and protracted liberation struggles, particularly of the latter part of the 20^th century on the African continent, are part and parcel of everyday people’s struggles for political, economic, and social equity around the globe. Yet, far too few persons of any color, especially in the U.S. (and sadly in Africa itself) are aware of the urgency and ongoing and protracted nature of these struggles.

In the U.S. many people can readily tell you who Oprah Winfrey, Steve Harvey, Whoopi Goldberg, or the current ‘stars’ of American Idol, etc. are. But if asked about the likes of Nzingha (Jinga), Nehanda Nyakasikana, Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, Lillian Ngoyi, Steve Biko, or Sam Nujoma – you will receive only a blank stare. Yet, these and other such persons, gave so very much to the struggles on behalf of ordinary people on the African continent, and concomitantly, throughout Mother Earth. Had it not been for the sacrifices of these persons the situation in Africa would be even worse. We must not let drone man Barack Obama, and his cohorts of the U.S. power elite, erase the enormous contributions to Africa, and humankind as a whole, by these intrepid women and men.

There is a deliberate and ongoing intellectual genocide being waged against everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in the U.S., and most especially against young people. Everyday people in this nation are being intentionally and callously miseducated by a system bent on controlling and manipulating what we know, how we think, and ultimately what we do.

The just, necessary, and legitimate struggles against the global power elite by everyday people in Haiti, Palestine, Ireland, Bahrain, Venezuela, Greece, Portugal, Australia, the UK, and elsewhere – including right here in the U.S. – are of immense importance. But let us also remember the intense struggles for self-determination being waged by everyday ordinary people throughout the African continent, for Africa is the mother of civilization and her well-being IS important to humanity as a whole.

The power elite’s corporate-stream ‘news’ media (including much of the so-called ‘alternative’ media) and its ‘educational’ institution plantations will not teach us our true histories or tell us how that history relates to the ongoing people’s struggles of today. We must do our own research, create our own media, and learn from as well as teach one another. We everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people are the only ones who can and will put an end to this intellectual genocide. It must be stopped!

Mother Earth is our home and Africa is our foundation.

Remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward…!

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)