Back To School: RBG (Redeemed By God) Style, Feat. Brotha's Keepa

IN CLASSICAL AFRIKAN (KEMETIC) PHILOSOPHY THE HUMAN BEING AND HUMAN REALITY WERE GOVERNED BY THE BASIC DIVINE LAW OF “TO BE A SPIRIT”. THE MORAL MANDATE OF AFRIKAN HUMANITY WAS “TO BECOME AND IN BECOMING”---THE PURSUIT OF SUCH DIVINE LAW AND MORAL MANDATE WAS REFLECTIVE OF ONES PURSUIT OF GODLINESS. EDUCATION WAS KEY TO THIS PROCESS-TO BECOME AND IN BECOMING A MORE PERFECT BEING. FOR OUR AFRIKAN ANCESTORS EDUCATION AND SCHOOLING WAS ULTIMATELY ABOUT A PERSON BEING TRANSFORMED FROM A LESSER MATERIAL BEING TO A GREATER SPIRITUAL BEING. DR. E. CURTIS ALEXANDER DEFINES AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATION AS SYSTEM OF SEQUENTIALLY PLANNED EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES PROVIDED FOR AFRICAN HERITAGE CHILDREN, YOUTH AND YOUNG ADULTS TO DEVELOP THE NECESSARY AND REQUIRED SKILLS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE WITH SPECIFIC INTEREST ON THE UPLIFTMENT AND EMPOWERMENT OF THEIR AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITIES AND THE TOTAL DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE AFRICAN CONTINENT.
HENCEFORTH, RBG STREET SCHOLARS THINK TANK WILL USE HISTORY, CURRENT EVENTS AND THE MANY VARIABLES OF NEW AFRIKAN CULTURE TO FACILITATE A FORWARD-LOOKING AND FUTURISTIC EDUCATION, SOCIALIZATION AND NEW AFRIKAN PEOPLES DEVELOPMENT PROCESS. AN EDUCATION MOST FUNDAMENTALLY GROUNDED IN PSYCHO-CULTURAL, SOCIO-POLITICAL AND MORO-SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION.

AKOBEN
"war horn"
symbol of vigilance and wariness
Akoben is a horn used to sound a battle cry.

With the present day high rates of Black on Black homicide, suicide, and imprisonment and a rise in single-parent homes, rampant police brutality, unprecedented unemployment, and Blacks use of popular (ENEMY) culture (through music, video games and popular movies) to celebrate "anti-intellectualism, ignorance, irresponsible parenthood, drunkenness, dope dealing, weed smoking, cocaine, x-pills, loose sexual behavior and criminal lifestyles / thuggism"; we have chose to design a curriculum that, rather than getting caught up in the entertainment / BLACKPLOTATION aspects of the hip hop / rap industry, will use hip hop culture/rap within a historo-cultural, socio-political and psycho-educational framework to address these various death walks forthrightly. Our new methodological style is intended to get our young people to begin to think critically about themselves, their world and their role as people of Afrikan descent.

RBG BLAKADEMICS

An Educational Paradigm Long Overdue:

Below is an overview of what one can expect to learn while using RBG Street Scholars Think Tank, as is related to the above mentioned precepts.

"Healing is work, not gambling. It is the work of inspiration, not manipulation. If we the healers are to do the work of helping bring our whole people together again, we need to know such work is the work of a community. It cannot be done by an individual. It should not depend on people who do not understand the healing vocation….The work of healing is work for inspirers working long and steadily in a group that grows over generations, until there are inspirers, healers wherever our people are scattered, able to bring us together again."
From The Healers by --Ayi Kwei Armah —

What We Believe
(Link for Full Lesson)

We believe that the Afrikan American experience in the United States is an integral part of the "American" experience. For the past forty seven years scholars and students in the "Black Studies Movement" have worked to include courses on the Afrikan American experience in the curricula of American colleges and universities. Beginning in the late 1960s, they began one of the most important endeavors in American education: the creation of departments, programs and courses in Afrikan American studies.

In their efforts they have continued the work begun eighty-five years ago by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the "Father of African American History." In 1915, Dr. Woodson organized the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. A year later, he began publishing the Journal of Negro History Dr. Woodson's goal was to encourage the "scientific study of the Negro" and to dispel the ideas and notions prevalent in his time that Afrikan Americans had no history and had never contributed to the development of world civilization. An important part of Woodson's mission in popularizing the study of Afrikan American history was to ensure that young people learned the history and culture of Afrikan Americans.

The purpose of the RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Core Curriculum and "Cultural Development and Leadership" Education:

To over-stand the global character of the New Afrikan Liberation Movement and struggle in the U.S. and the Diaspora in such a way that we will be more properly equipped to repel the repressive yokes of America’s governmental-corporate-police nation state, and become proactive liberators of self and kind. We will look at the historical, cultural, social, political, psychological and educational developments which have/are shaping our movement/struggle and analyze the cultural and institutional arrangements shared by people of Afrikan descent in different parts of the U.S. and the world. Our goal is to born out the fact that “we all suffer under the same rain of terror”.

It is important the learner understand that our analysis and discourse will in all cases be a nation-class-gender confluence. In this way we intend to acquire a full over-standing that Afrikans in America and Afrikans throughout the diaspora have more in common than difference, regardless of ethnicity, class or gender. Henceforth, our marching order of

“One People, One Luv, One Struggle, One Destiny and All in the Same Game”

Defining the Black (Afrikan) Experience

The systematic study of Black ( Afrikan) life, politics, socialization and culture as it exists “under the boot heels” of global white supremacy/racism is grounded in a number of basic concepts. Among the most outstanding is the historical legacy of the European Holocaust of Afrikan Enslavement and its Vestiges. We have become comfortable with the discussion of slavery in the eighteenth century but what about the 20th/ 21st century? The core curriculum argues that shackles were taken off our arms at ending of chattel slavery, only to be placed on our minds—21st century mental slavery in Amerikkka is alive a well.

See: Decolonizing the African Mind: Further Analysis and Strategy by Uhuru Hotep

The Making of the Black (Afrikan) Diaspora

The dispersal of people of African descent around the world is largely a result of our holocaust, however modern day colonialism (ghettoized police state inner-cities) neo-colonialism (pro-racist Negro leaders), capitalism, socio-structural and institutional racism , sexism and imperialism (“globalization part 2”) maintain the historical legacy and consequences of slavery.

Capitalism and Slavery and the Making of America

See "Life Without Black People"

RBG Street Scholars Think Tank documents that without slavery the economic development of Europe (and the Americas) would have looked very different. Slavery was an economic prerequisite of a flourishing capitalism; and our continued political disenfranchisement, economic exploitation and social degradation is maintaining it. America and Europe were built of the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors. Now congress won’t even consider a discussion of reparations (H.R.40). This is why we are thoroughly convinced the nation within a nation approach is the only way for our children and yet to be born to have a chance in life. The notion of pluralistic integration for the masses of our people was, is and always will be a lie and legacy of hypocrisy.

Chattel Slavery and Emancipation in the United States:

A Long Time Coming Resistance was an integral part of the institution of slavery; slaves were the originators of their own emancipation. And despite the media white-out, we continue to organize, agitate, educate and resist. All the race riots from the 1800’s forward were Black reactions to white police and /or private mob violence.

Reconstruction / Post Reconstruction: Who’s going to control and exploit the *******, the north or the south?

The years following the Civil War marked a Constitutional Revolution in the U.S. However, 1877-1898 witnessed a continuation for the Black population of an earlier repression by way of lynching and white mob violence (private and state). Internationally, U.S. foreign policy was marked by the policies genocidal hegemony.

Civil Rights Struggle, Nationalism, Pan Afrikanism and Black Power

Black (New Afrikan) resistance has always been influenced by a concern for, and effort to reconnect with, mother Africa. The Black liberation movement in the twentieth century became more sophisticated in its language and vision; and continues to date. Championed by Marcus Garvey in the 1920/30’s, the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X and Robert Williams in the 1940/60’s, the Black Panthers Party, RNA, RAM, SNCC, CORE,CAP,US etc. in the late 60’s and early 70.

RBG Street Scholars Think will challenge the hip-hop generation to take the torch.

Culture and Politics

Resistance did not stop with protest in the street. Writers and artists throughout the diaspora laid the intellectual basis for the opposition to imperialism, colonialism, and domestic racism in their writings which blossomed in the 1920’s to the Harlem Renaissance, conscious jazz, the Black Arts Movement, the Black Studies Movement, Reggae, R and B/ message and luv music and conscious hip hop/rap music. This discourse will comprise the meat of our core curriculum from a solution perspective, as “nothing in the world happens outside the context of history, politics and culture”.

The Second Reconstruction

The Civil Rights and Human Rights Movements ushered in a second constitutional revolution in the U.S. and echoes were heard around the Black world. But like its predecessor the Second Reconstruction came to an end with Cointelpro and the murder of Malcolm, Martin, and Black Panthers etc...

"prevent the rise of a black messiah," use of Jewish Defense League against, use of La Cosa Nostra against, cartoons, "Blackboard", Rabbi Kahane, William O'Neal, and numerous victims including: Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Revolutionary Action Movement, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality, SNCC, Nation of Islam, Poor People's Campaign, Republic of New Africa, US organization, Black Liberators, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, H. "Rap" Brown, Elijah Muhammad, Maxwell Stanford, Dick Gregory, Huey Newton, David Hilliard, Ron Karenga, Charles Koen, Sylvester Bell, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Geronimo Pratt, John William Washington, Richard Henry, Muhammad Kenyatta, Jeff Fort. www.cointel.org

CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS THAT
NEED OUR SOLUTIONS:

There is no separation between the past, present and the future. All history is current events, and all current events are history. Ever this cursory overview borns out the fact that the more things change, the more things stay the same for the masses of our people. RBG Street Scholars Think Tank is an EduTaining and street scholarly (outside the ivy towers / halls of traditional academia / white box) solutions oriented study of the issues below. A honest look at the Afrikan experience in America based on proper historical contextualization; this will be the CommuniVersity's major contribution.

*FEAR, DEPENDENCY AND DIS-UNITY (De-Afrikanization)
*CRIMINALIZATION OF BLACK MEN
*POLICE BRUTALITY/MILITARIZATION/ DWB/RACIAL PROFILING
*POOR PHYSICAL HEALTH AND MENTAL HYGIENE
*UNDER , MIS AND DE-EDUCATION (Mental Colonization)
*PROFESSIONAL EDUCATIONAL GAPS AND THE COMPUTER LITERACY/ DIGITAL DIVIDE
*LACK OF WEALTH AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE MASSES
*FAMILY AND COMMUNITY SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION/ALIEN CONTROL/DEGRADATION
*POLITICAL DISENFRANCHISEMENT
*ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION
*HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT RATES
*POOR NEIGHBORHOODS AND SUBSTANDARD HOUSING AND OTHER STRUCTURES
*THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND IT RECONSTITUTION OF SLAVERY
*ALCOHOLISM, DRUG ADDICTION, NARCOTIZATION OF OUR COMMUNITIES AND HIV/AIDS
*NIGGERIZATION AND HUMANIST-INTEGRATIONIST INBETWEENITY
*PASSIVIST PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

We approach these issues academically and with a solutions oriented focus by studying, discussing and engaging in both Afrikan and Afrikan American History, culture, education and socialization; which you will dis/recover to be one continuing peoples story.

We hope that you take full advantage of this well researched, media rich, razor sharp and deep cutting educational resource.

Respectfully, RBG Street Scholar

A great NEW place to get into the Zine

U.S.History 101:"We The People"? and 100 Milestone Documents, Focus on Afrikans in America