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A Need To Study
By Dr. John Henrick Clarke
I were able to direct a new generation of students in historical
studies, I would have them do a number of studies that are not being done. We
need to see general studies as well as detailed specializations on the peoples
and cultures of the world. The work on Africa, Asia and
Europe, that European scholars initiated in the nineteenth century, needs to
be carefully reviewed. We will undoubtedly find much to re-do without the assumptions
and bias of European supremacy. We need to see students trained in the
different periods of African history, doing studies of European peoples in the
same periods. What they would look to study are the connections and interactions
between Africans and Europeans.
New European Studies
In particular, there is a need for Africanists to study the
emergence of Europe from 1400 to 1600 AD. This period was a 
critical
turning point in the history of the world. We need studies of the 700 years
before 1400 AD when Islamic Africans, Arabs, and Berbers had isolated Europe,
controlling commerce in the Mediterranean. Europe was hemmed in and struggling
with its own internal conflicts. The Crusades gave Europe an external reason
for certain ideas and certain people to dominate. In the process, a lot of pressure
was taken off the Catholic Church to reform and Europe was forced to look at
the world beyond itself. Europeans looked at the world beyond Europe and realized
that they could not conquer it, not until they learned maritime skill. This
maritime knowledge, primarily from China, was translated at the University of
Salamanca in Spain by Arab, African and Berber scholars. The acquisition of
this knowledge by Europeans in the 1400s is an essential turning point in world
history. Europeans would now punish the world for what it had suffered
at its own hands and because of its own failures during the period between the
decline of the Roman Empire and the second rise of Europe in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Within this 200-year rise, they would turn to Christianity
to justify their criminal assault on the rest of the world. With religious justification
and at best the church’s indifference, they created and expanded the slave
trade and the expansion of European people in settler nations beyond Europe.
This period needs to be studied specifically with attention to the impact it
had on African and Asian peoples. Consider two small points. First, Europe is
really not a continent. It is a part of Asia. Europe does not qualify as a continent
by the dictionary definition of a continent. Second, Europeans are multiracial.
These two points have major implications for how we view European cultures and
the European identity. We need more work which looks at the ways that European
scholars used to argue that Egypt was not a part of Africa. We need to study
the relationship of Egypt to the rest of Africa, especially before the European
distortion of their own and Egyptian history. For students to understand the
twenty-first century, they must understand the centuries of disruption that
led us to where we are today. We really have to study the last 500 years of
world history and the last 500 years of disruption in favor of Europe and the
downgrading of other peoples. Once things are placed in their proper historical
perspective, they might have a better idea of where the world can go tomorrow.
South America and the Caribbean
We need to study South America were the majority of the population
is neither black nor white and could go either way in 
whom
they identify with, depending on the future flow of world power. South Americans,
in particular Brazilians, claim white or European preferences because they assume
that blacks and African peoples will not come to power in the world community.
We need to study the formation of nations in South America and the slow destruction
of Indian cultures in Mexico and in Canada. There needs to be in-depth studies
of the destruction of indigenous cultures in both South and North America. There
have been no in-depth studies of how these people came to America since they
are supposed to be of Asian descent. The Asian ancestors of North and South
American Indians could have come due to curiosity, or overcrowding. They could
have been cattle-raising people who needed space. By studying the Asian migration
patterns I have not been able to identify a disruptive period in Asian history
that would have made that many people want to leave Asia. What happened to the
indigenous people of the Caribbean? They have disappeared. We need to study
the Caribbean mentality after 1850 because the Caribbeans had a rebellious mentality
up until the middle of that century. They identified themselves specifically
with Africa, but they lost this after 1850 and became imitation-English, imitation-Dutch,
imitation-Spanish, and now they have a color complex indicative of a confused
racial identity. At what point did they lose their revolutionary attitude, and
start to refer to their heritage from the viewpoint of their colonial masters?
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Historic Africa
Africa as a place of history, migrations,
cultures and influences on the world is older than Europe and is rich and diverse
in a
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human experiences. Yet we still know so little about Africa as a pace with people
central to world history and to the future. We need studies of the migration
patterns of the peoples of Africa and the impact those migrations have had on
present cultures. This would mean looking at the infusion of one African culture
into another, creating still another culture that had vitality. The Ashanti
and the Fante social order and world systems are examples. These people of the
Upper Niger migrated and blended cultures. We need to study cultural retentions
where Africans have held on to their culture through centuries of wars and all
sorts of other difficulties. They have held on to their concept of nation and
concept of self. A good example is the Zulu. The Zulu nation is not South African
in origin. They have East African origins and were called “Inguana.”
They migrated to central Africa and then down to South Africa. We need to study
the marital and courtship habits of some Africans, such as the Herro who pledge
to bring virginity to their wedding bed, in contrast with the Mandi who have
trial marriages. Among the Mandi the couple live together and have two or three
children before they are married later with a big ceremony. In cases where they
do not marry, the children belong to the family of the wife because their lineage
is matrilineal. Whoever later marries her becomes the guardian of the children
she had by the previous man. This is a very civilized custom. We need to study
Africa since 1957 with the beginning of the independence explosion when African
states started to receive their so-called independence. What happened? Africa
may have gone down the wrong road to freedom because we did not first have stable
African states. There was no African state methodology, and we did not observe
African political traditionalisms. What we adopted were European parliamentary
forms. Africa should have adopted some form of African traditionalism in government.
As a result, I see where so-called independence has done more harm than good.
The methods and directions towards independence we took should be an issue with
in critical studies of neo-colonialism. It would have made a great difference
if there had been one African state in existence with stability and vitality.
It would have been a role model for other African states. But the former colonial
powers do not intend any one state to be such a role model.
The USA
We need to study the period between 1619 and 1776 in America
history. Very little is said about what happened between the arrival in Jamestown,
Virginia, and the American Revolution. Very little has been said about the contradictions
of the American Revolution. In fact, the American Revolution
and its proclamation of liberty and democracy was a contradiction because it
was clearly not meant for African Americans—we had not been accepted as
citizens. Northerners and Southerners had no difficulty in classifying us as
three-fifths of a person. Southerners voted according to our presence
in their political constituency. A white man could cast votes for us without
our consent as though we were cattle. Liberty and justice for all did not include
people of African descent. We need to study the small number of freedmen in
the South who were stripped to the point of not being free—who were they,
why did they stay, what did they think, and how did they maintain their free
status? Many of them were craftsmen, barbers, builders and blacksmiths. They
were restricted in where they could go, and what they could do. When they went
into a new town, they had to give notice. They were watched, and had to carry
papers on them at all times. This was humiliating. I challenge the idea that
they were free. They just had a little more ability to move about a little more
than bondsmen. We know even less about the status and experiences of New England
freedmen.
Asia
We need
to investigate the large historic African presence in Asia, especially in India
where there are 100 million people of partly African descent. We need to investigate
the African presence in the pacific islands. There are entire nations made up
of people of African extraction. We need to investigate Australia before the
British destroyed its black inhabitants.Tasmania was black before the British
destroyed every man, woman and child on the island.
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The Future
African Americans will play a key role in the new and second
political awakening of African peoples. Despite our subordinate 
domestic
status, African Americans are already the most politically active Africans outside
Africa. The first political awakening was with Nkruma in the independence of
Ghana. The second will have to be based on the various nationalisms, Pan-Africanisms,
and other forms of African unity that go across all religious and political
lines. We can no longer discuss who is Baptist, who is Protestant, etc. If you
are African, even if you are a Moslem, being African will have to take precedence
over what else you are. By asserting that there will be new a African awakening
does not mean that I am ignoring the declining African American domestic plight.
The destruction of black communities in the U.S. is very deliberate and the
power and responsibility for this destruction rests squarely on the shoulders
of government and economic leaders. They know that, if we succeed in building
sound communities after all that we have been put through, we can build and
run a nation. Successful communities are small role models for a successful
nation. It is from the community that you get the ideas and impetus to build
a nation. Those who do not want us to come to power are intent on keeping our
communities so disrupted that we will never build a sound community. And these
people behind this destruction are not black (no black men or women have that
kind of power), do not live in our community, and cannot succeed forever.
Conclusion
We have a lot of scholars, writers and politicians doing more
talking than writing and more talking than acting. We have enough actors. We
have enough people to talk about us and to beg. We now need people who understand
what real liberation is all about and who will act to make positive change for
black people happen. Our people and scholars are focusing on their “blackness”
as an historic and cultural value. They struggle and are confused about whiteness,
which is everywhere, and everything good and of value in this culture. But this
does not always mean that self-appreciation is lacking. What is lacking is a
proper value on blackness. I think a lot of black scholars are misleading us
with statistics and charts and examples that do not make sense. They are explaining
us to whites and their explanations make no sense to black people. Their unwillingness
to come before black people and explain their explanations suggests that they
do not believe their own explanations. Once we solve the internal problem of
who we are, we can solve the external problem of what we will be. It is understandable
why I would grow up to fight Jim Crow and racial prejudice and the separation
of races. I have literally risked my life fighting these things because I knew
racial hatred and ignorance was so damned unnecessary. I also knew one other
thing: if there is a superior race in the world, it damned well is not white
people. I have always been clear on this point from early in my life. No people
can do to other people what they have done to the world. European culture has
produced people who are terribly insecure and frightened. No one on this earth
should tremble at the sight of them. I would fear because a coward has the upper
hand and not because he is brave. He is not brave. That is something I will
never get out of my mind. If I ever have any influence over a state, the first
thing I would build is a decent hospital—some place to care for children
and old people. A civilization has to be measured by how it takes care of its
old and its very young.
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