Poetry, Style and Verse

I have not blogged in so long now. Even when I want to, I try to login and it's dern near impossible. Frustrating, exhausting. Isn't technlology supposed to make our lives easier? I so often ask myself this question.

Went to this event the other night at the Writers' Guild. It was great. I have rarely seen so many white people on a spoken-word stage. But they were good and I managed to catch up with Oneness. I have been trying to track her down for ages. She did some of the interviews for my website (http://www.kuumba-survivors.com/) and I still owe her money.

The poetry was great but what was even better, in a way, was the sense of being part of a writing community, even a spoken word community.

Things have been so hectic. The cat has been unwell and I have been so depressed. Think there's a link there somewhere.

I'm busy writing at the moment, words that will be spoken by actors. I'm excited and terrified.

African People's Self-Liberation

On Tuesday, I attended one of Brother Omowale’s talks at South Bank University’s Pan-Afrikan Society. See details below.

Brother Omowale is an excellent, very knowledgeable speaker. I had intended to leave the meeting early but I just could not leave, so transfixed was I by this brother’s words.

He spoke at length about the fact that African people liberated ourselves from enslavement. We did not wait for someone like William Wilberforce to say to Parliament that the ‘slave trade’ should be made illegal. The Transatlantic trade had been going on for 300 years before he decided it should be abolished.

I found this meeting so inspiring. This was the first time I had attended this series of talks, but I plan to go again.

Brother Omawale started off by saying that this year, we are going to be hearing so much about William Wilberforce as if he were some kind of hero, but African people liberated ourselves in all sorts of ways. These included things like publishing books and pamphlets, and giving public talks. Of course, I knew this already. My mother used to teach me about Black people’s resistance to enslavement from the time I was a young child. But it is useful to remember this in the context of the ‘Wilberforce fest’ which is about to descend upon us.

For example, see Frederick Douglass’s “My Bondage and My Freedom”. The introduction tells us that, having visited England, Douglass decided to publish a newspaper “against the wishes and the advice of the leaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society”.

One story Brother Omowale told was of a slave ship which was freed by the Africans on board. Sometimes, the women were allowed onto the decks of the ships so that the ships’ crews could use them sexually. Apparently, one group of sistahs worked out where the guns were kept, where the keys were kept, and which ship had fewer guards on it. Then they took over the ship and liberated the brothas from below decks.

Usually, when African people took over a ship, they would kill most of the Europeans, but keep one or two alive to navigate the ship back to Africa. But these sistahs were so angry with the white men, they killed them all. Unfortunately, this meant nobody could steer the ship back to Africa, so eventually they were caught.

See also: Soul Survivors.

Kuumba-Survivors

The meeting overran by about an hour, and nobody wanted to leave. On the contrary, more and more people kept coming in all evening. They had to keep putting out more chairs. I found it heartwarming to see so many Black people wanting to connect with our history and our heritage. Many of the people there were very knowledgeable already, but I think we all learned something.

Venue for Pan-Afrikan Society Meetings:

London South Bank University, London Road Building, London, SE1

Meetings start @ 5:30pm

Tues, 6th Feb: PAS Room: L119
Ways to Overcome the William Wilberforce Propaganda (Part 1)

Tues, 13th Feb: Brother Omowale Room: L119

Ways to Overcome the William Wilberforce Propaganda (Part 2)

Tues, 3th Feb: Dr Rashid Room: L120
The Truth about Valentines Day

Tues, 20th Feb: PAS Room L119
Screening: 'The Assassination of Malcolm X'

For more information call: 07908 204788

To Spank or Not To Spank

I was reading this piece today in a forum I belong to. The piece was entitled To Spank Or Not to Spank. All these parents were saying, ‘I have a right to hit my kids if I want to’, ‘Who are the government or anybody to tell me not to hit my children?’, ‘My parents hit me and I’m okay’, and I’m upset about this.

It started with a story about a little girl, I believe she was about three years old, who was distressed on an airplane and her parents were made to take her off the airplane because she was making so much noise. All these people were saying her parents should have hit her.

Now, none of us knows what she was upset about. Maybe she was terrified of flying, as are many adults.

There are lots of ways of calming down a child, but hitting her is just going to make her more distressed. This seems obvious to me. So why is it that parents rush to defend their ‘right’ to spank? Surely no one has the right to hit another person.

I am also thinking, if we think it is okay to hit our children, then how can we complain about how those who have power over us treat us?

I remember Diane Abbott produced a report about Black parents in which she said, a lot of parents feel they are not able to control their children because they are not allowed to beat them. I am thinking, if the only way you can control your children is to beat them, then maybe you should not have children.

This is one of the reasons why I am running the Improving Relationships workshop on 10th and 24th February. If you would like more information, click here.

A lot of the problems we face as adults are also experienced by children. You can read about surrogate tapping (i.e. Emotional Freedom Technique) as it was used on an airplane, click here.

To read about how surrogate tapping was used to calm a frightened child, click here.
To read more about EFT, click here.

Keywords: Black parenting, African Caribbean, parents, families, relationships, UK

Henry Bonsu Sacked

Remember the day Henry Bonsu was sacked by the BBC for being 'too intellectual'? Click here to read all about it.

In my new book, Black Success Stories, Henry gives me all the details about what happened and why he is no longer on the Wright Stuff, and talks about life after the BBC. He also talks about how we need to return to the spirit of Ujamaa, co-operative economics, when Black people would work together to achieve their goals.

Click here to order you copy today.

See also: Do Black Consumers Buy Black?

Keywords: Black Success Stories, BBC, Henry Bonsu, Ujamaa, Co-operative Economics

Do Black Consumers Buy Black?

As we know, one of the seven principles, or Nguzo Sabo, of Kwanzaa is Ujamaa - co-operative economics.

Yet people on my e-mail list, Black Business UK, tell me Black people won't buy from them. I've asked why, but no one has offered me any answers.

Click here to read this article.

In my free e-book, More Black Success Vol. 2, Tim Campbell, winner of The Apprentice UK, talks about the need to return to co-operative economics like we had in the old days. To order your copy, click here.

Keywords: Black business, African Caribbean, UK, Ujaama, Co-Operative Economics

Healing Our Relationships (3)

Click here to read part 1.

Click here to read part 2.

In her talk on 'Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome', Dr. Leary did not put a lot of emphasis on family life - at least, not in the part of the film that I watched. She did say that our patterns of relating are 'generational' - I would have said intergernerational.

Black men and women learned not to trust each other, not to rely on each other. Family life is crucial to all of this. We learn these patterns of relating from our parents - from the way they treat each other, and the way they treat us.

We have inherited toxic patterns from enslavement. They have infected our families for many generations- and we are in danger of passing them on to our own children.

Many of the problems faced by our Black youth today, particularly African Caribbean boys and young men, have their roots in enslavement, these toxic patterns of relating, and the self-hatred we internalised. Self-hatred became part of us. We were taught to fail. We were taught to be less-than.

My work is about solutions. About loving ourselves and each other, valuing ourselves and each other. Improving Relationships/Improving Communication is a practical workshop to help us learn methods of healing our relationships. Click here to check it out today.

Keywords: Black, African, relationships, healing

Healing Our Relationships (2)

Click here to read part 1.

Click here to read part 3.

Dr. Joy De Gruy Leary spoke about how Black women learned to use harsh words in order to protect ourselves.

She also spoke about how we are harsh with each other and negative about each other’s success. When we see another Black person doing well, we immediately find some reason to put that person down.

Dr. Leary says this is due to fear of abandonment. I don’t completely agree with her assessment. Why should we fear abandonment? When one person is doing well, he or she needs to help others to succeed.

I write about this in my article, ‘Do You Think Like a Success?’. Click here to read it.

We need to celebrate Black people’s successes and achievements all the time. Harriet Tubman has always been a positive role model for me. She was not content to escape from enslavement herself. She risked her life time and time again to help as many other people escape as she possibly could.

My Book, Black Success Stories, is full of people who have that collective mentality, that collective intention. Having achieved success in their own lives, they are working to motivate and inspire others. Click here to order your copy today.

Keywords: Black success, history, relationships, healing, Dr. Joy De Gruy Leary

Healing Our Relationships

Click here to read part 2.

Click here to read part 3.

I watched the DVD of ‘Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome’ on Tuesday night, at a meeting of the PanAfrican Society at South Bank University. Click here to read more about Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome.

Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary is a brilliant speaker. She spoke about how Black people’s relationships have been damaged by the legacy of enslavement.

This is familiar territory, especially for those of us who have read the Willie Lynch letter and How to Make a Slave. Dr. Leary described how Black women don’t believe we can rely on our men to protect us, and how Black men don’t believe it is safe to show us their vulnerable side.

This was aptly demonstrated in the Tsunami programme on the BBC on Tuesday night. The wife was saying, ‘Why didn’t you protect me? Why didn’t you protect
our child?’ And the husband did not safe to express his grief, his vulnerability and his fear. They each blamed the other.

Because of the damage that was done to us during enslavement and colonisation, we often find we are afraid to trust those we should be closest to. My work is about healing. We can heal these toxic patterns in our relationships, and in the ways we communicate with each other.

My workshop, Improving Relationships/Improving Communication, is a practical workshop to help us with the healing process. Click here for more info.

Keywords: African American, African Caribbean, History, Relationships, Healing, Dr. Joy Leary

Alex Wheatle, the Brixton Bard

The novelist Alex Wheatle, known as the Brixton Bard, was brought up in a children's home, left school with no qualifications, and has since completed six novels so far. He tends to write about his characters within the context of their community, and says that Island Songs, his most recent work, draws on the history and culture of the Akan people of Ghana within Jamaica. I interviewed Alex recently. Click here to read it.

Alex states that, as a young person, he was very influenced by Alex Haley's Roots.

René Carayol, whom I interviewed for Black Success Stories, told me that Roots was stolen from his family's history in Gambia and the family's documents. To read this interview, click here to order your copy today.

Keywords: Black history, literature, African Caribbean, Alex Wheatle, Alex Haley, Roots, Black Success Stories

See also: Caribbean Thinkers

Caribbean Thinkers Part 2

Further to the previous blog, another thinker we were introduced to on this course was Dr. Robert Love.

Born in the Bahamas, Love moved to Jamaica in the 1890s and founded a newspaper, the Jamaica Advocate, in 1894. In it, Love published many articles which Dr. Scholes sent him from Africa, in which he described the sophisitcation of African civilisations. These articles would have been seen as works of sedition, designed to agitate the masses.

Love argued that Black people in the Caribbean were capable of running their own affairs, and that they derived dignity and identity from identifying with their African roots.

Jamaican people probably more Akan-speaking (Ashanti and Fanti) people than any other island in the Caribbean, and a lot of their African traditions survived. This led to their having a rebellious spirit and a sense of superiority.

Traditionally, in some African societies, the griot, or storyteller, told stories that were meant both to instruct and to entertain. They used humour and a lightness of touch. The folk tradition was brought to bear in the Caribbean, where educated people in the villages would read the paper aloud to locals who could not read and write. In this way, the message was communicated to people in the rural areas.

However, the local education system in the Caribbean was based on what was dictated by the colonial authorities, and often on the education that was available in Britain. It did not reflect the culture and concerns of local people.

Everybody has his or her own unique story to tell. Black Success Stories celebrates people of African heritage in Britain today. Click here to order your copy of Black Success Stories today.

See also: Caribbean Thinkers

Keywords: Black history, African history, Caribbean, identity, education, Dr. Love, Dr. Scholes

Caribbean Thinkers

Last week, I attended a course entitled Black Thinkers in the Caribbean at the City Lit. It was brilliant.

The tutor, Clem Seecharan, from London Metropolitan University, spoke about Caribbean thinkers and academics dating back to the mid-19th century. I was very inspired by the fact that so many of them related their African heritage and antecedents to a sense of dignity and identity. Some of them travelled in Africa, and wrote about the societies they found there and how advanced and sophisticated those societies were. This was in stark contrast to the thinking of the time, which was that African people were backwards and had been ‘civilised’ by enslavement and colonisation. Many people in the Caribbean had been brainwashed by the educational system there to have a negative view of our African traditions, and we can still see remnants of these negative attitudes today.

I was particularly interested in Dr. Scholes, who wrote three books including Glimpses of the Ages, which was published in 1904. Unfortunately, all of his books are now out of print.

Scholes was born in St. Ann in Jamaica. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and also did a Doctorate of Divinity in Brussels. He then became a medical missionary and travelled in the Kongo.

Although trained as a Christian, Dr. Scholes had great respect for African traditional spirituality. He said that the traditional beliefs and spiritual practices were an expression of the reverence and respect that African peoples had for their environment.

Scholes wrote that African societies had great traditions in art and learning. Travelling in the area now known as Senegamia, he celebrated the people there including the Mandingos/Mandingas and the Fulani, and celebrated their physical attributes as well as their work with iron, gold, wood carving, ceramics and textiles, and their architecture. He also celebrated the crafts and skills of other African peoples.

In my book, Black Success Stories, René Carayol MBE states that he witnessed first-hand the effect that Roots, by Alex Haley, had on people of the African Diaspora, i.e. the Caribbean and the United States, in giving them a sense of their history and culture. Carayol, who was born in Gambia, also states that Roots was taken directly from his family’s documents, and he has copies of a great deal of correspondence on the subject between his father and Alex Haley. To read more, order Black Success Stories today.

Keywords: Black history, African history, Caribbean, Roots, Black success, Rene Carayol, Alex Haley

African American Leadership: Recovery for the New Millennium

Joseph Chapman of Columbus, OH (a former addict in recovery for more than 13 years) has developed in conjunction with a non-profit corporation Recoverlove.com, an Afrocentric recovery program called "Recovery for the new millennium." Mr. Chapman states passionately, "The 'Recovery for the new millennium' goes beyond the traditional 12 step approach and looks at the vestiges of deep seated inferiority complexes and how African American addicts are also simultaneously facing poverty, slave mentalities, poor education and a lack of marketable job skills."

Dr. Alvin Poussaint on a controversial PBS special commented, "Of the two million people in jail, about 45 percent are African-American, most have been males. Of the homicides in the country, about 45 percent are African-American males, mostly killing other black people and black males. So there is a crisis, and the dropout rate from high school is still very high. It's better, but it gets camouflaged in the statistics. In Baltimore again, 50 percent of 9th graders don't graduate from high school. Well, if you get pockets like that in urban areas like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, there's a serious problem for the black community."

Joseph Chapman states discerningly, "The need for new African American leadership to address the above-mentioned problems in an unfeigned substantial way that does not continue in the blame game is imperative." Mr. Chapman has also created a recovery from dysfunctionality program that is designed to combat and alleviate the crisis in the African American community. Mr. Chapman has developed - through thorough exhaustive research and perspicacious insight - practical tools, CDs, DVD's, lectures, and workshops in order to facilitate the instituting of the necessary mental, emotional, and behavioral changes that need to take place in the African American community. Joseph Chapman goes on to say unwaveringly, "People need real workable tools in order to facilitate real workable change in their life situation."
CONTACT:Joseph Chapman AS, BS, MBA614-668-2075
now@recoverlove.com www.recoverlove.com

Taken from: http://www.blacknews.com/pr/recoverlove201.html

Success Strategies for Black People Order from Amazon

The Blood - African Heritage and the Arts

The next The Blood event will be held on Friday 20th October at 7:30 p.m. Click here for more details.

People were bought and sold like fax machines, cars and mobile phones, as if we were being traded on eBay.

Given our history of enslavement, how can we as artists of African heritage can uplift and inspire our community?

In popular, mass-produced depictions of Black people, where are we? Where is our experience? Click here to read more.

Black Visual Arts

I attended the Black Visual Arts course today at the V&A, on which there is a strong emphasis on the historical context, plus lively discussion. Click here to read more about it.

There are still places on this course, which runs for the next two Fridays, 13th and 20th October, 11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Click here for more details and to book.

Click here for more BHM arts events.

Click here to read about Black British artists' responses to objects on display at the National Maritime Museum.

The Blood event

Arts Event - The Blood - Building Our Future

Given our history of enslavement, how can we as artists of African heritage uplift and inspire our community?

The next The Blood event will be held on Friday 20th October, 7:30 p.m., at Yaa Asantewa Arts Centre.

Panellists will include novellist Alex Wheatle, author of East of Acre Lane and often called the Brixton Bard.

For more info, click here.

Dancehall Queens

Queens of Sound– A Herstory of Reggae and Dancehall
Dir: Sandra Krampelhuber

This film explores the long neglected female side of Reggae and Dancehall music in Jamaica. Three generations of women in the Jamaican music business tell us about their roles, their first steps into the career, their struggle for acceptance in a male-dominated business, their life paths and success.

There are several showings during BHM. For this and other BHM arts events, click here.

Keywords: Black History Month UK, arts, films, reggae, dancehall, women

Sonia Boyce at Greenwich

This follows on from my previous post about the event at the National Maritime Museum last night. Click here to read it.

Sonia Boyce started out by saying that it has been said that political subject matter can never make good art.

One of the two objects she chose was a ladies’ whip. This was clearly designed to be decorative yet functional, and had a silver-plated, carved handle. Boyce then screened a short film she had made, part of which included her reading from the slave narrative of Mary Prince, an enslaved African Caribbean woman.

Prince described how familiar she became with the different types of pain inflicted by each of the different instruments used on her by her mistress, including fists used on her face and head.

Boyce had a white woman on screen describing each of the objects and her own responses to them. The second object Boyce chose was an iron ring designed to be worn around the neck, with a long iron arm and hand to be worn in front of the face. This was to serve as a constant reminder to the enslaved person of his or her status of subjugation to the white master.

The film concluded with a dance performed by young people in Carnival-type costumes. The dance celebrated and commemorated resistance by enslaved African people. We must always remember that the enslavement of our ancestors was met with constant, continuous acts of resistance by our ancestors and that our creativity was and is part of that resistance.

There followed a long discussion about the collusion of African people in their own enslavement, i.e. we were sold by other African people. Bonnie Greer pointed out that the situation is very complex and needs to be addressed. She asked whether this was the moment to address it.

I feel that this situation has been addressed for many years, in ways that are not that helpful. People say ‘I ain’t no African, I am Jamaican’. We hear our contemporaries from the Continent refer to us as ‘sons of slaves’. Greer mentioned that Ekow Eshun had stated that the Fanti people of Ghana, his ancestors, were unhappy when the Transatlantic trade ended.

One person in the audience pointed out that among the complexities we need to address – and possibly a higher priority than addressing the complexities of African people’s complicity in our own enslavement – was the complexity of the ways in which we resisted our enslavement.

Clearly, greed and exploitation occur in every society. The Buddha taught that greed, hatred and delusion are part of each and every one of us. However, we need to discuss these issues in our history and address them in ways that are going to heal us, heal our communities, heal our people and heal our species. This ongoing culture of blaming is destructive and must end. And our creativity is one way in which we can heal ourselves and each other.

See also: Poem - The Blood

Kuumba-Survivors

Keywords: Black Arts, African creativity, African history, Transatlantic trade

Carnival – A Deeper Rhythm

The establishment, the Powers that Be, have long tried to control, curb, limit or eliminate Carnival. When the veil between past and present, the dead and the living, grows thin, the divide between Black and white, rich and poor, narrows. Carnival awakens energies which are beyond anyone’s control. The authorities are right to fear them. These forces linger from ancient times and come to life once a year.

The dancers dress up in fantasy costumes which allow them to take on altered personae. They evoke other worlds, other realms, and a deeper rhythm beats beneath their feet.

Calypsonians’ tongues lick the politicians with their observations and their wit. They mock and taunt those in authority, reminding all of who has fulfilled his responsibilities, and who has ripped off, exploited or deceived the people. Those in power may duck, dive and dance, but they cannot escape the sting in the tongue. Those in power are right to fear them.

In 1881, riots erupted in Trinidad when the colonial police attempted to clamp down on the festivities, particularly the Canboulay (canne broulee). The rioting continued for a further two years’ carnivals.

The Notting Hill Carnival began after the African Caribbean community was put under ongoing racist attack in 1958. The Carnival was seen as a way to unite local people across the cultural divide, and it has grown to become the largest street festival in Europe.

In 1976, it was the turn of the Notting Hill Carnival to be the scene of riots. It was reported that the police were attacked by African Caribbean youth after arresting a pickpocket.

For many years since then, the police have clamped down on Carnival and the authorities have repeatedly called for the celebrations to be moved from their traditional home. However, Notting Hill Carnival is a tradition which belongs to the local people and will remain local for the foreseeable future.

The organisers do everything to protect public safety. However, the forces and energies of Carnival are drawn from ancient times. Taken from their homes in distant lands, the ancestors were forced to labour, to toil and to die. Ripped from their families and loved ones beaten, raped, bled and worked to death.

At Carnival time, they were allowed briefly to remember who they were, that they were human beings, with all the creativity humans possess.

These energies lie dormant, but not dead. Once a year they are awakened. The costumes, the colours, the songs, the dances, wake the sleeping energies of the ancestors. If you dance with them, sing with them, play with them, they will bless you, protect you, or at least let you be.

Dance and sing with them, enjoy them, dress up, play mas, but do not try to control or contain them, for within them moves a powerful force. Like placing a lid on a volcano – try to contain it and it will explode, either around you or inside of you.

Click here to read an interview with Shabaka Thompson, Artistic Director of Yaa Asantewa Arts Centre.

Keywords: Carnival, Notting Hill, London, Caribbean culture

The event at the National Maritime Museum last night was excellent. Bonnie Greer chaired a panel of artists, each of whom had chosen two objects from the museum’s collection.

It is interesting to see artists engaging with these objects because they tend to see things in a way the rest of us don’t, and to bring out points we might otherwise miss.

One of the objects chosen by Keith Piper was a clock which, apparently, has been described as the most important clock in the world. It even has a name – H4. It was invented by John Harrison in 1761 and was used to solve the problem of longitude so that ships could work out where they were in the world, horizontally, as well as vertically. Vertical navigation, i.e. latitude, had been worked out by the Moors centuries before.

In 1714, the Crown offered a huge prize, the modern equivalent of which would have been around £20 million, to the person who could work out how to calculate longitude. Harrison was eventually awarded a smaller prize, in 1773.

Piper pointed out that the reason why the British were desperate to solve the problem of longitude was completely tied up with the so-called slave trade – the Transatlantic trade in African people. This is never mentioned with reference to H4, even though a book – Longitude by David Sobel – was written about it and a film has been made about it.

H4 made it much easier to transport enslaved African people because the ships’ navigation became much clear after H4’s invention. The clock was even tested on two ships – the first, the Deptford, sailed from London to Jamaica.

Piper presented a chart which showed the markup on the price of African people. At one time the markup had been 975 percent, and from 1688 to 1692, I was over 600 percent. Between 1703 and 1707 – the height of the Transatlantic trade – the markup dropped to 197 percent. After the invention of H4, the markup dropped still further.

I find it disturbing to think that my ancestors not only had prices on their heads, they had a markup. But of course they would have done, as they were considered to be goods for sale.

The evening was moving and challenging. More later.

See also: Kuumba-Survivors

Keywords: slave trade, Transatlantic trade, Black history, African heritage, arts, museum

Reparations + Slavery Remembrance Week

Black Britain today publishes an excellent interview with Esther Sanford who states that “What colonialism and enslavement did was to take away the African psyche and replace it with a European mindset.” Click here to read this article.

This clearly continues to have a powerful impact on us as African people, our self-image, self-esteem and creativity.

Artists have a great deal to contribute to this discussion and one of the events of Slavery Remembrance Week will be a Freedom debate to be held tomorrow night at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. Click here to read more.

I am collecting interviews with artists on the subject of enslavement and emancipation. Click here to read some of them.