New Afrikan Socio-Educational Networking Is Here, "Decolonizing The African Mind"

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Decolonizing the African Mind:
Further Analysis and Strategy

by
Uhuru Hotep

The central objective in decolonising the African mind is to overthrow the authority which alien traditions exercise over the African. This demands the dismantling of white supremacist beliefs, and the structures which uphold them, in every area of African life. It must be stressed, however, that decolonisation does not mean ignorance of foreign traditions; it simply means denial of their authority and withdrawal of allegiance from them.

-Chinweizu-

An Overview of the African Centered
Perspective in Education

Uhuru Hotep

"Utopia is an African's fuel."
-Amiri Baraka

Introduction

The concepts outlined in this paper were presented in 1997 at the Norham Centre for Leadership Studies' 9th Annual Conference held at Oxford University. I am indebted to Dr. Vivian Williams, director of the Norham Centre, for his kind suggestion that I further refine my thoughts on this topic. This paper attempts to acknowledge his request by providing a framework for a discussion of the African centered perspective in education first by presenting its recent historical background, second by identifying its guiding concepts, and third by delineating its major goals and objectives.

The Historical Context 1

African centered education is an evolving liberatory project having a philosophy and practice informed by the 500-year history of unrelenting struggle waged by Africans in the Americas to first maintain and now recover and reconnect with the best of our African intellectual and cultural heritage. Among the 20th century pioneers in this movement, perhaps no one is more important than Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950). Dr. Woodson's major contributions include not only the establishment of Negro History Week (now Black History Month) in 1926, but also the 1933 publication of what remains the definitive critique of African American education, The Mis-Education of the Negro. Equally important are the pioneering school-building efforts of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975), founder of the Nation of Islam, who during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, established dozens of independent, private African-Islamic schools for the children of his followers and supporters.1
Ascending on the sweet winds of freedom that criss-cross the African World, the youth who energized the U.S.-based Civil Rights/Black Consciousness movements of the 1960s and 70s began to realize in varying degrees that a different type of education was imperative if African Americans were to elevate their group status in American society and the world. In such ideological disparate formations as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at one end of the political continuum and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPPSD) and the Congress of Afrikan People (CAP) at the other, there was a growing awareness among the youth that African Americans had not only been politically and economically disenfranchised by the ruling elites, but educationally disenfranchised as well.
Further politicized as much by Kwame Ture's (Stokely Carmichael) clarion call for Black Power in 1966 as by the assassinations of El-Hajj Malik Omowale El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) in 1965 and Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, these student activist established what were known in the African American community as freedom or liberation schools, in part inspired by SNCC school-building efforts in rural Mississippi initiated earlier in the decade.

At these schools, PE (political education) classes, as the Black Panthers called them, routinely included readings in and discussion of African and African American history and culture. Three of the most successful Northern freedom schools of this period were the Freedom Library Day School, established in 1968 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by John Churchville, Uhuru Sasa Shule, established in 1970 in Brooklyn, New York by Jitu Weusi and the African Students Association, and the Oakland, California-based, BPPSD-operated Intercommunal Youth Institute, established in 1971.2

These efforts at re-centering and politicizing African American education represented not only a growing community demand for schools offering a historically-inclusive and culturally-affirming education for African American children, but led to the establishment of the Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI) in 1972. As the premier association of Pan African nationalist educators, school administrators, and parents committed to developing counter hegemonic curricula and pedagogies for Africans in America and around the world, the creation of CIBI institutionalized this shift in educational vision from cultural assimilation to cultural nationalism.3

During the 1970s and 1980s, CIBI-affiliated African centered shules (schools) sprung up in nearly every major American city with a significant African American population. Washington, DC and Pasadena, California are the homes of two of the better-known CIBI institutions, NationHouse Watoto and Omowale Ujamaa, respectively. Many of these enterprises, like the two just mentioned, have grown into full-time operations.4

The 1990s have witnessed the internationalization of African centered educational theory and its embrace by increasing numbers of African educators and parents both in the U.S. and abroad. Advocates are impressed with the high self-esteem, wholesome social values, and abundant academic skills of African centered students, and depressed by the public schools' half-hearted efforts, lack-luster commitment, in short, dismal failure at unlocking and then developing the genius potential of African American learners.

Guiding Principles

There are five key concepts essential to the African centered perspective in education. First, African centered education is immersed in sankofa. Sankofa is an Akan principle which in African centered education means to reach back, bring forward, and reconnect African students and their communities with the best of those life-enriching philosophical principles and community-building cultural practices that sustained for thousands of years what Agyei Akoto calls the "classical African civilizations" of Kemet (Egypt), Nubia, Axum and Meroe5, as well as the Yoruba, Asante, Zulu, Gikuyu, Dogon and other traditional societies in Africa and around the world.

One life-giving principle resurrected from the ancient Nile Valley cultures embraced by African centered educators is ma'at, which means not only justice, but also truth, righteousness, order, harmony, reciprocity and balance. According to Maulana Karenga, ma'at was the "heart of Kemetic ethics and spiritual striving;" today it is the "soul" of African centered pedagogical theory and practice.6 As an emancipatory and humanistic enterprise whose terminal objective is the empowerment of African people who will restore ma'at to human affairs, African centered education seeks no hegemony over others, but only a "pluralism without hierarchy" where the African centered idea would take its rightful place, "one perspective beside many."7
Next, African centered perspectives in education aspires to provide African students and their communities with the cognitive and affective tools required to reconstruct the African World and end the maafa. Maafa is a Swahili word meaning "disaster," and is usually associated with the African Holocaust, or the past five centuries of European and Arab orchestrated destruction of traditional African societies and subsequent devastation of indigenous African people first through enslavement and colonialism, then segregation and apartheid, and now miseducation and genocide. The reign of terror - resulting in the deaths of tens of millions - unleashed by Europe alone against African people is without precedence in the annals of human history.8 Among the warriors in the struggle to end the maafa and restore ma'at, African centered education is the weapon of choice.

Operating on the premise that all true education begins with and is centered in self-knowledge, and therefore is autocentric, African centered education relocates African students and their communities to the center of the educational process for elevation and then placement back on to what Marimba Ani calls "our ancestral power base."9 Education is meant to be empowering, and to be so it must be rooted in the history, traditions, and culture of the people it is intended to serve. As a refocusing and relocative vehicle, African centered education re-positions African students and their communities not to the margins of the educational enterprise as does the prevailing eurocentric view, but to the very heart of the teaching and the learning.

Lastly, African centered education in the American context is unabashedly nationalistic, and thus committed to the intergenerational transmission of nationalist theory and practice. Though it rejects the assimilationist outcomes inherent in mainstream American education, it is not isolationist or exclusionary. It is Pan African and global. In a pluralistic, capitalistic society like the United States, each nationality must organize its members to advance their group interest or risk being the victims of those who do. At the same time each nationality must cooperate with others for the good of the larger whole.

Goals

African centered education has as a major goal providing African students and their communities with African-based educational philosophies, curricula and pedagogies designed to:
• Elevate self-esteem
• Broaden cultural references
• Deepen spirituality
• Shape social values
• Heighten political awareness
• Accelerate skills development
• Improve life chances
These seven educational goals, I believe, would, as Safisha Madhubuti teaches, "contribute to achieving pride, equity, power, wealth and cultural continuity for Africans in America and elsewhere."10
On a sociopolitical level, African centered education recognizes that 21st century Africans struggling to end the maafa and to restore ma'at will require what Kwame Nkrumah called "liberated zones" honey-combed with sets of interlocking institutions where they can grow, develop and create in a wholesome, loving and nurturing environment. Mwalimu Shujaa teaches that our shules are the seedbed of Nkrumah's "liberated zones."11
Least we loose njia (the way), Molefi Asante, the grand architect of African centered theory, reminds us that, "We do not seek education to reign over others or to amass great wealth; we seek education to become better people which means to work for harmony and peace in the world."12 But, implicit in the restoration of ma'at, the end goal of African centered education, is the termination of the maafa. The one cannot be achieved without the other, and neither can be realized without first recognizing that the thoroughly utopian but absolutely essential task of establishing a New World Order is the goal.

In preparation for world leadership and service, for five centuries the sons and daughters of the most ancient societies on earth - the sons and daughters of Africa - suffered the torturous middle passage in the bellies of slave ships; suffered the brutalizing chains of physical slavery; suffered the crippling shackles of mental bondage, but now are being gloriously resurrected, moved toward their "ancestral power base," and called by their history to redouble the struggle to humanize the world. Armed only with the wisdom of their ancestors, African centered educators seek to perfect and then accelerate this historical process.
The meta-goal of African centered education is to create the conditions on earth where not only African people, but all people, can live in peace free from privation and want, free from exploitation and oppression, free to grow and develop to their fullest.

Conclusion

The African centered view in education is both theory and praxis informed by a world view shaped by the best of the indigenous philosophical principles and cultural practices of African people without regards to time or place. Only in this way is it universal. Like other curricula and pedagogies, it is cultural group specific. In this case, centered in African epistemological and axiological systems and thus uniquely suited for African upliftment, yet all of humanity will benefit from the truths and the outcomes of this emerging educational idea.

A little more than 25 years ago, the visionary sage Amiri Baraka wrote in the Mwalimu Texts, "Africans, now, are the unleashed energy that will force change and new vision."13 The African centered perspective in education is most assuredly a dynamic articulation of this righteous, ascending, "unleashed energy" generated to reinforce the movement toward positive "change" by creating a "new vision" for African people in the 21st century.

Glossary

autocentricism - A feature of African centered education that holds that true education is centered in self-knowledge.
nationalism - A feature of African centered education that posits that the intergenerational transmission of nation-building and maintenance skills are the sine qua non of African centered education.Notes and References
1. Clegg, C. (1997). A nation of
shopkeepers. In An original man: The life and times of Elijah Muhammad. (pp. 239-240). Clegg reports that by 1972, the Nation of Islam had established 47 independent private schools (p. 252). New York: St. Martin's Press; Lincoln, C. (1961). The Black Muslims in America. Boston: Beacon Press; Essien-Udom, E. (1962). Education of Muslims. In Black nationalism: A search for identity in America. (pp. 253-273) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2. Payne, C. (1995). Transitions. In I've got
the light of freedom: The organizing tradition and the Mississippi freedom struggle. (pp. 302-306). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; Ture, K., & Hamilton, C. (1967). The search for new forms. In Black Power: The politics of liberation in America. (pp. 164-177). New York: Vintage Books; Van Peebles, M, Taylor, U. & Lewis, J. (1995). Growing pains. In Panther: A pictorial history of the Black Panthers. (pp. 119-120). New York: New Market Press.
3. Hotep, U. (2001). Dedicated to
excellence: An Afrocentric oral history of the council of independent Black institutions, 1970-2000. doctoral dissertation. Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA.
4. According to the Washington, DC-based
Institute for Independent Education, 90 percent of the nearly 400 independent community-based schools listed in their 1995 Directory were created by African Americans, and enrolled close to 60,000 students, pp. ii,iv.
5. Akoto, A. (1994). Notes on an African
centered pedagogy. In M. Shujaa. (Ed.). Too much schooling, too little education. (p. 322). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
6. Karenga, M. (1986). Restoration of the
Husia: Reviving a sacred legacy. In M. Karenga, & Curruthers, J. (Eds.). Kemet and the African worldview. (p. 93). Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press.
7. Quoted in a Detroit Public Schools
position paper on African Centered Education, p. 12.
8. Rodney, W. (1982). How Europe
underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard University Press; Williams, C. (1974). The destruction of Black civilization. Chicago: Third World Press; Ani, M. (1994). Yurugu. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press; Gallen, D. (1994). Black America: The FBI files. New York: Caroll & Graf.
9. Ani, M. (1996). Kuugusa mtima: The
Afrikan "aesthetic" and national consciousness. In E. Addae. (Ed.), To heal a people: Afrikan scholars defining a new reality. (p. 120). Columbia, MD: Kujichagulia Press.
10. Madhubuti, S. (1994). African-centered
pedagogy. In H. Madhubuti and S. Madhubuti African-centered education (p. 16). Chicago: Third World Press.
11. Shujaa, M. (1996). Coming home again:
Re-Africanization as personal transformation. In E. Addae. (Ed.), To heal a people. (p. 50) Columbia, MD: Kujichaulia Press.
12. Asante, M. (1994). The Afrocentric
project in education. In M. Shujaa, (Ed.), Too much schooling, too little education (p. 397). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
13. Baraka, A. (1969). Mwalimu texts. In
Raise, race, rays, raze: Essays since 1965. (p. 167). New York: Vintage Press.

(A version of this paper was published in Casile, B. (Ed). (1997) Leadership in schools: The national curriculum and self-development in self-governing schools. Oxford, England: Norham Centre for Leadership Studies)
Uhuru Hotep, Ed.D., is the associate director of the Michael P. Weber Learning Skills Center at Duquesne University and the creator of the Johari Sita: The Six Jewels of African Centered Leadership. He holds degrees in African American studies, adult education, and educational leadership.

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