“The more widely publicized rebellions and plots such as; (1) the Mingoe Rebellion of 1691, (2) the Cato Rebellion of 1739, (3) the Gabriel Prosser Rebellion of 1800, (4) the Denmark Vesey Rebellion of 1822, and the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831 merely scale the surface of the true incidence of large scale rebellions that actually occurred…. African attacks were often mislabeled as ‘Indian attacks’ because so many Maroon African individuals and groups had formed very tight alliances with the (so-called) Native American groups.” Kobi K. K. Kambon “African/Black Psychology in the American Context: An African-Centered Approach” Page 92 “Far too many miseducated/Europeanized African scholars… have tried to lead us to believe that the enslaved Africans actually transformed Eurasian cultural traits into a comfortable African fit. However, later discussions in this text will demonstrate otherwise. Nevertheless, it is our purpose here to show how the religion of Christianity was forced upon the enslaved Africans by the Europeans as a means to facilitate compliance and total acceptance of their condition of enslavement. The enslaved Africans who were simply trying to find ways to cope with their wretched circumstance used a variety of means (literally whatever they had available) to do so. Hence, they even attempted to use basic aspects of European/White supremacy culture that was forced upon them by the slave masters, but it ultimately worked against the Africans psychologically…. Thus, religion was often used very effectively as a method of control by the European slave owners through brainwashing many of the enslaved Africans to accept their predicament of enslavement as a part of God’s design for them as inferior-primitive human beings (i.e., ‘it was God’s will’). It should be quite easy to see how the many Christian holidays such as Good Friday, Easter, and, most especially, Christmas, could become such an ingrained part of the (victimized) African psyche in America. This is no doubt primarily because the initial association of these religious observances was directly related to the experience of ‘relief’ (temporary rest breaks) from the minute-to-minute, daily back-breaking brutality and savagery of plantation enslavement.” Kobi K. K. Kambon “African/Black Psychology in the American Context: An African-Centered Approach” Page 97 “… it is not an overstatement to note that the entire area of knowledge (concerned with human origins, racial differences, genetic causation of cultural traits, and most other areas related to biological-psychological propensities) is steeped in racial-cultural politics-ideology and controversy. One suspects that much of this controversy, as well as most others, whether involving different racial viewpoints or not, are influenced by the reality of European cultural domination of world knowledge…, which must never be overlooked or underemphasized in our quest for a full understanding of human life on the planet. This penetrating fact of our contemporary reality is consistently, conveniently, and effectively discarded or ignored in the discourse over such controversies. One is literally stunned by its lack of widespread treatment in the African-centered literature as a major barrier to true African understanding of the world. I would argue that the European cultural influence over knowledge is a constant barrier that we must always deal with in our search for African-centered knowledge. It is such a deeply ingrained part of the colonized (Europeanized) African scholarly consciousness… that we always have to first analyze its influence out of the situation (as much as possible) in order to get at the (African-centered) truth of the matter under consideration.” Kobi K. K. Kambon “African/Black Psychology in the American Context: An African-Centered Approach” Page 118 “A cultural paradigms analysis proposes that every individual operates according to some group’s conception of reality, whether they are aware of it or not, and it is a conception which they share with other members of their reference group; the group with which they are identified (in terms of values, beliefs, customs, etc.). The group that we identify with is usually our own indigenous cultural group under normal-natural circumstances. In abnormal-unnatural circumstance, i.e., those in which we identify with a group that is not our indigenous cultural group (such as an alien group, or an acquired alien group identity), then the conception of reality out of which we operate is not naturally our own. This is so even though we may have adjusted to it so intimately that we do not experience it as alien to us.” Kobi K. K. Kambon “African/Black Psychology in the American Context: An African-Centered Approach” Page 119 “… worldview systems provide for the organization, structure, and content of culture. As the ideological-philosophical basis of culture, worldview systems articulate the basic assumptions, values and beliefs undergirding culture and are expressed through its various structural or institutional manifestations. Worldview systems also define the power base of the culture because through it the indigenous group defines their own collective reality, and it is thereby their natural base of empowerment. Finally, worldview systems are resilient and enduring across generations of the cultural group. The worldview system is passed on from one generation to the next and thus defines the consistency and stability of the culture.” Kobi K. K. Kambon “African/Black Psychology in the American Context: An African-Centered Approach” Page 126 “Given the racial pluralism and so-called multicultural nature of American society, it is inevitable that conflict between these oppositional worldview systems would occur. The African and European worldviews have undergone vigorous analysis by African scholars, both on the Continent and in America, in particular over the past three decades…. These analyses have organized the worldview differences between these groups…. ,these analyses have concluded that the fundamental assumption or ethos defining the European worldview may be categorized as an ‘Humanity versus Nature’ orientation. This basic thrust of the European worldview defines an antagonistic and conflictual theme in human-nature relations. The emphasis is placed on human intervention into nature to achieve mastery and gain control over nature through the power-based (or power-motivated) mechanisms of aggression, domination, oppression, suppression, repression, and the unnatural alteration or reordering of all objects in nature….” “A major theme emanating from this basic assumption of human-nature relations is that of ‘Survival of the Fittest’…. The principle underlying this theme is that those humans (i.e., individuals, races) who achieve the greatest degree of mastery, control, suppression and manipulation over nature represent the fittest among the human community. Fittest, then, represents the lofty position of human achievement attained through competition (i.e., aggression) and is indexed by the amount of psychological and physical distance that one is able to establish between himself (self-consciousness) and nature-phenomenal experience/objects…. This usually occurs in terms of the degree to which one has gained effective manipulative power and/or dominance over nature through the objectification of nature. Therefore, one’s degree of mastery or control over nature establishes the ‘fittest’ level of the individual, race-culture, etc.” “Hence, the European worldview is defined by the basic values of materialism, control, aggression and linear-ordinal raking, conflict and opposition-dichotomy….” Kobi K. K. Kambon “African/Black Psychology in the American Context: An African-Centered Approach” Page 130 “The African worldview, by contrast, defines human-nature relations as interdependent and inseparable. The fundamental assumption or ethos in African cosmology is that of ‘Human-Nature Unity,’ Oneness or Harmony with Nature, including complementarity, balance and reciprocity in all of existence…. Humanity, or the Self, and Nature, then, are conceptualized as one and the same phenomenon. Thus, positive, affirmative and complementary themes define the character of human-nature relations within the framework of the African worldview. The ‘Maatian’ Principle… defines much of this process beginning at the level of the person and extending to the society and the whole of the universe. The primary emphasis is on the survival of the corporate whole of nature, which includes all living things, rather than simply advancing some special interest group or some segment apart from the corporate whole. Hence, the basic values, beliefs and psychobehavioral modalities characterizing the African worldview relate to the principles of inclusiveness and synthesis, cooperation and collective responsibility, groupness, sameness and commonality, and at the core of it all, of course, is ‘Spirituality.’” Kobi K. K. Kambon “African/Black Psychology in the American Context: An African-Centered Approach” Page 132
Posted on: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 15:31:24 +0000
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