Black Child Development Under White Supremacy / Audio, Text and Video, The Honorable Dr. Amos Wilson and Afrikan Cultural Studies

From: RBGz Blue Print Study Cell In this group we study in detail one of RBGz required textbooks ( Dr Amos Wilson's Blue Print for Black Power) in both it print and video overview formats.

In two masterful lectures contained within the pages of this modest text, Dr. Wilson challenges the all too pervasive assumption and false perception that the "New World Order" is somehow ordained -that if Afrikan people are to progress, they have no other Alter-native but to remain colonized by White Western Interests, This of course is patently false. Dr Wilson de-bunks this myth with an insightful analysis of the Legacy of Marcus Garvey and the proven validity of Afrikan Centered Consciousness as necessary. Please listen to his audio lectures intently and then view/ study the videos in the context of his pearls of wisdom.

Areas covered in the book and audio include:

• Are Black and White Children the same?

• Are there any significant differences in the mental and physical growth and development of Black and White Children?

• Are such leisure time activities as the playing of certain games, watching T.V., going to the movies, listening to the radio, hazardous to the mental health of Black Children?

• Why do Black Children generally score lower than White Children on I.Q. tests?

• Is the Black Child merely a White Child who "happens" to be "painted" Black?

• What effects does race awareness have on the mental and personality development of Black Children?


• Is the use of Black English a sign of mental inferiority?


• Do Black parents socialize their children to be inferior to White Children?


• Why have integrated schools and busing failed so many Black Children?

As Dr. Wilson explains very eloquently , the cognitive, psychomotor , psychological and affective development of the Black (Afrikan) child is grounded in an overstanding of Afrikan peoples history and culture and the neurobiology of neuromelanin. For the past fifteen years "The Melanin Systems of Afrikan People" has been my primary area of research focus and the nexus of my current pedagogical approach. What follows are some opening volleys into my work. My thesis is that "Afrikan peoples cultural development, education and socialization (social sciences) are grounded in biological science/ biochemistry (i.e., a fostering of functional melaninization)." My academic approach is simultaneously historocultural, sociopolitical, psychoeducational and moro-spiritual.

A) MELANINS STRUCTURE

For now, just remember that both melanins and catacholamine neurotranmitters have the same tyrosine amino acid as their rate limiting precursor. I will build on this fact further along in the learning series.

B) MELANIN BIOSYNTHESIS



C) NEUROTRANSMITTER

(catacholamine)

BIOSYNTHESIS and DEGRADATION

D) DISTRIBUTION OF MELANIN WORLDWIDE

"Melanin is a conductor and a stable free radical, holding positive charges, balanced by counter anions and exhibiting a small gap, 1.4 eV. Experimental data, molecular modeling studies and molecular quantum mechanics calculations agree describing DHI-melanin, the best known synthetic melanin , as a structure fundamentally constituted by repetitive units of 5-gem-diol-indol-6-one linked at 4,7 positions (VII). Electric and conformational properties explain different roles of melanins. As a UV filter and a radical scavenger black it has a protective function in epithelial tissue; in dopaminergic neurons of substantia nigra, an area of the brain involved in fine motor control, it can act as a conductor allowing rapid electron passage which, generating a magnetic field, can sense the Earth's field and control movements. Melanin destroys, in Parkinson’s disease it can participate to the symptoms and development of the neuro-degenerative process.Finally their may be considered a cell assembling factor ." From: The Pigment Cell and its Biogenesis


Neuromelanin is the dark pigment present in pigment bearing neurons of four deep brain nuclei: the substantia nigra (in Latin, literally "black substance") - Pars Compacta part, the locus ceruleus ("blue spot"), the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus nerve (cranial nerve X), and the median raphe nucleus of the pons. Both the substantia nigra and locus ceruleus can be easily identified grossly at the time of autopsy due to their dark pigmentation. In humans, these nuclei are not pigmented at the time of birth, but develop pigmentation during maturation to adulthood. Although the functional nature of Neuromelanin is unknown in the brain, it may be a byproduct of the synthesis of monoamine neurotransmitters for which the pigmented neurons are the only source. The loss of pigmented neurons from specific nuclei is seen in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. In Parkinson's disease there is massive loss of dopamine producing pigmented neurons in the substantia nigra. A common finding in advanced Alzheimer's disease is almost complete loss of the norepinephrine producing pigmented neurons of the locus ceruleus.
Neuromelanin has been detected in primates and in carnivores such as cats and dogs.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin

Also see:Neuromelanin in human dopamine neurons../Progress in neurobiology 2005, vol. 75, n^o2, pp. 109-124 [16 page(s) (article)]

RBGz Melanins Learning Series

1) RBG On The Role of Melanin In Our Afrikan Re-Education / ReAfrikanization Process

2) Black Child Development Under White Supremacy / Audio, Text and Video, The Honorable Dr. Amos Wilson

3) TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE MELANIN, AFRI-ESSENCE, GOD-FORCE CONNECTION

4) Melanin, Negative Music and the Dope Game

5) AFRIKAN HEAL THYSELF:The Role of Melanin In Our Afrikan Re-Education / ReAfrikanization Process

A DEEP CUT ANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN (ARYAN AND SEMITIC) SCHOLARSHIP AND CULTURE (INCLUDING PHILOSOPHY, MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION, POLITICS/GOVERNANCE, SOCIAL THEORY AND HISTORY, CURRENT EVENTS, EDUCATION AND ECONOMICS, LAW AND MEDICINE, MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS, CREATIVE PRODUCTIONS, ARTS AND HUMANITIES) DEMONSTRATES THAT THEY ALL SPEAK IN ONE VOICE, AND ALWAYS IN CONCERT WHEN IT COMES TO THOSE WITH THE ABILITY TO PRODUCE COLOR (MELANIN). BUT, PRECISELY BECAUSE MELANIN IS MORE THAN A MATTER OF... Read Full Story

A Quick Sneak Preview:

Also study this school's
recommended text:

RBGz WORKING DEFINITION AND INSIGHT INTO AFRIKAN CULTURE:

Europe's attempted occupation of practically all human space resulted in Africans being considerably removed from their own cultural base to be relegated to footnote status, to the periphery, the margin of the European experience and consciousness. This mental disenfranchisement is held responsible for Africans often not existing on their own cultural and historical terms but on borrowed European ones....Link to read more

Afrocentricity - Afrocentric Organizing Principle And Concepts

mouse over for snap mp3 player

play Professor James Smalls — Culture )
play Dr. Marimba Ani — African Worldview
play Dr. Amos Wilson — On Multi-Cultural Education, Identity and Liberation
play Dr. Na'im Akbar — On Afrikan Marriage to White
play Dr. Ani — Black American Individualism

RBG Blakademics reflects the cultural continuity and recurring spiritual and pedagogical themes of Afrikan peoples education and socialization across space and time; from ancient classic Nile Valley Civilizations to West Africa (from which we most directly come from) North , Central and East Africa and throughout the diaspora, right on up to our present day experience here in the hells of north America. So the process does not put in as much as it draws out what is already pre-existing in our mind and spirit (our collective ancestral unconscious).

For deeper layered study of OUR CULTURAL ROOTS
please seem RBGz annotated photo lessons/Group on
OUR African Vines Network:

Culture is not one of life’s luxuries: it is life itself.

“Culture” may be defined as “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour… language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components…” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1989).

At times,“culture” and “civilization” have been regarded as synonymous; at others, culture has been regarded as the end and civilization the means. In anthropological terms, culture encompasses a broad range of material objects, behavior patterns and thoughts. In western society, culture is commonly regarded as something highbrow, a luxury rather than a necessity. Certain activities are deemed to constitute culture, while others are excluded. This paper argues that a democratic culture where there is access, respect, coherence and/or relevance in the public interest is not elitist, but a basis for human and social development.

Senegal’s former president, the poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, once stated in an interview: “At intellectual conferences in the Third World culture is made an instrument for politics, although Marx was of the opinion that politics should be the instrument for culture. To Marx the purpose of politics is to make man free in order to be able to ‘create works of beauty’. Culture, not politics is the weave that keeps a society together. But industrialized countries in East and West do not accept the notion that cultures be equal although different. They do not take African culture and philosophy seriously as long as we have no economic power.” 4

“Is ‘culture’ an aspect or a means of ‘development’, the latter understood as material progress; or is ‘culture’ the end and aim of ‘development’, the latter understood as the flourishing of human existence in its several forms and as a whole?” 5

These quotations reflect a longstanding and ongoing discussion of two viewpoints. These can, however, be combined without one overshadowing the other. They are interdependent and nurture one another.

On the one hand, the importance of culture is thought to lie in its function as a medium of messages for educational or other social purposes. Here, the sharpness of the instrument depends on the dedication, skills and depth of the conveyor.

The other viewpoint emphasizes culture as a means of paving the way for creativity and showing experience that can be neither measured nor weighed. The artist’s imagination, or the world it builds, is a laboratory of the not-yet-experienced.

In the words of John Gardner, the American novelist, “Art is as original and important as it is precisely because it does not start out with a clear knowledge of what it means to say.”

To stimulate our imagination and nourish our dreams, we seek art, literature, film, music and theatre for a varied range of aesthetic experience. This applies to people all over the world, of all social classes and ages, women and men alike. What we cannot dream about cannot be realized either.

Culture helps us transgress limits, self-imposed or otherwise; to challenge ourselves; and to discover talents we were unaware of – talents that are valuable in every kind of situation in life. Without imagination and creativity, we are prisoners of the structures and thoughts of others.

Four aspects of the role of culture in development may be discerned. There is no competition between the four: rather, they empower one another.

They are:

* using culture to illustrate or clarify a medical, political, educational, agricultural or family problem = culture for development
* strengthening the cultural sector = cultural development
* the importance of analysing the consequences of development cooperation on the culture of a country, community or group.
* mainstreaming culture in all development work.

Text modified from: The Power of Culture

Companion Lessons and Further Study Resources:

Black Infant Mortality: Your Generation At Risk





RBG State of the Black America, The Masses of Our People

Learning and Overstanding Black Psychology with Dr. Na'im Akbar

RBGz Education and Psychology Link Roll