We seek interactive and international blogger opinions about what matters to them and their cultural heritage that might be useful and helpful to artists, writers, publicists, publishers and others with a vested interests in “the least of us” media patrons about what is critical knowledge to know and understand critics of historical African heritage bodies and souls they disdain/dislike/disagree with.
Does Critical Race or Culture Theory Matter?
Critical race theory resolutions done right (msn.com)
[Opinion] Tut, a Language Used by Enslaved Africans, Is Resurfacing on Social Media (msn.com)
Black conservative group pens open letter urging schools to drop CRT, adopt 1776 Unites (msn.com)
US history is complex. Scholars say this is the right way to teach about slavery, racism. (msn.com)
It has occurred to us that screams of fear and anguish among Americans about drumming sounds among people of non-European heritage in the United States has a long history. So far as we can determine, from the very beginnings of slavery in year 1619, Africans beating the drums for music, messages and dance have raised alarms among people not asking but telling drummers to be silent.
The question now is what and why do so many damn writings like critical race theories researched and written by legal scholars’ decades ago for use by lawyers. It appears that Professor Derrick Bell (deceased) tried to break the silence about legally applied racism in the United States by beating ancestral drums legal scholars and judges can hear.
Not unexpectedly, some gifted and talented teachers and students at the K-12 education levels can also read well and have the curiosity to understand history of legalized racism in American society. The out roar from some Americans has gotten our attention as to what is it all about?
Who wants to silence the drumming of past centuries, decades, and years. Surely, by now most Americans believe and know United States is ruled by Rule of Laws, not men who beat the drums all enlightened folks like to hear in pursuit of life, liberties and happiness?
Microsoft Word – N0747109.doc (un.org)
http://www.moremarymatters.com/african_heritage_matters.htm
What does the world know about the continent and people of African history unless scholars teach and tell what is and has been known in war and peace.
Italian Fascism – Wikipedia Africans are more than human matter critical as property.
MALAIKA – African Love Song –YouTube Video
Thomas Jefferson changed the original thesis of John Locke about Life, Liberty and Property to read: Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness as the moral center critical in cultural revolution theories appealing to Africans as well as Europeans and Asians.
Alexander H. Stevens of Georgia, the first Vice-President of the Confederate States of America, in his inauguration speech of 1861, proclaimed against Jefferson’s first line in the U.S. Declaration of 1776. He was not the first to do so with many White men in America and Europe decidedly opposed to ideas of liberty and pursuit of happiness for non-white men who they universally perceived inferior to themselves as human beings.
We think it is critical that scholars understand depths of sentiment that existed and continued in beliefs people of African heritage were property and potential property as slaves, nothing less. And, even viewed people of African heritage in context of European property rights, granted by God Almighty on their ancestral racial behalf. And, cited Hebrew and Protestant Bibles as their documentation.
Vice President of the Confederate States of America – Wikipedia
It is critical to us that we seek together to first understand who we are, as human beings in a world filled with billions of humans, born not made. People are of all types of cultures with languages and literate that make them one and the same DNA but vast differences about what matters to them.
Who belongs where, when and how? Is there GOD for new generations to believe and seek to know as more than matter listed below? Where is the soul that the Akan cite as the Kra? Is such critical?
We do not dare ignore that the Akan and other African Ancestors strongly believed: even though they had bodies when enslaved to others, spirits of their ancestors were with them and their personal souls belonging to GOD dwelled within. For so many we know by name and place like a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. it was not a theory but deep held belief we can see and hear in Accra, Kumasi, Atlanta and other places today if we look and listen. Behold cultures that overcame horrors of the slave trade and slavery when turned to Jesus Christ as a new beginning, leaving no child behind, left or right of the moral center faith we hold near and dear less we perish without it.
“We Shall Overcome” – Martin Luther King, Jr. – YouTube
It is so complicated that thousands of cultural based religious beliefs came into existence in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific Islands during past several thousand years. Many still exist, and the most well known are ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Hindu, Greek, Latin, Buddhists and Anglicans because of their scholars.
http://www.moremarymatters.com/generation_tables.htm
The one scholar we know well enough to cite in our standing before eternal truths in the moral universe cited by our generation’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: is Thomas Jefferson of generation #57 because he dared to write and declare in the American Declaration of Independence beyond critical race and culture considerations by all mankind:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
So, what else did the genius at Monticello say? We are told that he also cited Jesus of Nazareth as the greatest philosopher in human history with his philosophy of belief, faith, hope and love. Was the man, only a slave owner, a sinner that we should honor for two hundred years after-life.
Is God real? Who determines that GOD is creator within or beyond what? Me? You? Them? Their? We? Property? Like our mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers who embraced Jesus Christ as new beginning, we are believers in God and inclined to wonder “Why doth the Heathens Rage?” King Solomon raised the question, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. answered on behalf of us: Not simply about their color, but contents of their character.
Black King Solomon History – Bing images
So, Pan-Africanism is determination to not overlook African beliefs compatible with pursuits of goodness we believe in: Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. We reject documented determinations such as slave trade and human sacrifices that occurred in now deposed Dahomey Kingdon as necessary for religious beliefs, nor offspring beliefs in Africa, the Americas and Caribbean cited often.
https://www.axios.com/pew-survey-partisan-divide-racism-436017af-36d8-4404-8cf2-86cf97e89b67.html
So: We begin this blog with beginnings taught and not taught for children we know of many colors and causes. like agriculture and labor by slaves.
Jamestown Settlers, Captain John Smith and Pocahontas in year 1607, King James Bible Version in 1611, Import of White Women to Jamestown in year 1619, and West Africans bought in from the Motherland, and sold as slaves to American colonists in same year and later years? So, being inclusive, not divisive, about beginnings, we have the desire and personal liberty to think about our African heritage in Virginia. We like to think the early ones were likely of the Ibo and Akan cultural dynamics in West Africa. We tried to learn more about contents of characters, not just bodies, in various cultural groupings.
https://www.persee.fr/doc/outre_0300-9513_1978_num_65_238_2075
Were any super-bad cultures from the Fon ethnic group in the Kingdom of Dahomey imported as slave bodies into America, and if so, when and where other than Cuba, Brazil and Haiti? Were all African culture implants in United States the same? What about Louisiana and South Carolina? If so, is that also a topic for critical race theory?
Perhaps divisive indeed that African heritage cultural beliefs and experiences can or should not be defined on basis of color alone. The new critical reality is that millions of Americans think that color is all they have to define themselves, as perceived/seen by encompassing societies.
Settlement of Anglo-Saxon Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in year 1620 exercising religious liberties is not acceptable beginnings of United States history portrayed in school textbooks. It was never truthful to me about African ancestral beginnings a year before in Jamestown launching the Anglophile slave trade. The Latin origin Portuguese, Spanish and French, proclaiming themselves to be Christians were already deeply engaged in finding, buying and selling human flesh from African heathens willing to do so.
African Tribes of American Slaves (Part I) – Black Voice News
There were many bodies and souls seen and heard to generate goodness for new generations like my own seeing and hearing with my own eyes and ears. How and why forget what matters. Like the recent past slogan “just get over it.” We have no desire to do so, knowing as we know that our American heritage began in year 1619 Virginia, the Civil War to retain slavery began in 1861 Virginia and the ending of the War participated in by our ancestors occurred in Virginia witnessed by Lincoln, Grant and Robert E. Lee. So, Virginia matters as to what was critical.
COLEMAN HAWKINS Body & Soul (Jazz at the Philharmonic 1967) – YouTube video
I am not a Prince Hall Mason, as was my father, but have travelled, inquired and read about many people and matters in laboring to learn about masonic beliefs and traditions. Rather than relying on hearsay by new generation masons who think they know before I ask any questions, I determined to learn more about the Masonic founders and times of their existence such as the Anglo American Revolutionary War; beginning with George Washington who was also a Mason by virtue of his life’s hard skills, deeds and associations in his generation.
Prince Hall Freemasonry | Prince Hall
Our interest in Prince Hall begins with did he know George Washington, when and where? Certainly, like other Americans hoping for personal liberty he would have known about the newly emerging hero to millions of White poor people; but what else did he know about calls to young men by military recruiters for psonal liberty volunteers in the newly emerging Continental Army and Navy.
I always hungered to learn about my own ancestry up from slavery and lives of hard and difficult living in pursuit of liberty and happiness. Prince Hall was a American patriot during the Revolutionary War of 1776-1783. He was sponsored, trained and given a Mason’s charter by the Irish Free Mason Contingent in the British Army stationed in Boston.
He joined with Richard Allen as an abolitionist in the African Methodist Episcopal Church pursuant African-American, Caribbean and African liberty. Their Masonic Christian faith, hands, hearts and minds helped baptize my father in spirit of Jesus Christ generations later, and thus critical history. It’s up to scholars to know and tell up to and including wars men of African heritage of many colors participated; and seen and heard for the world to know as critical also to its own existence pursuant liberty and happiness.
Pan-African scholars have to be determined not to allow monumental events in human history, such as Christianity and World Wars, to ignore outcome contributions by Africans. Perhaps the greatest most recent example of anti-Black critical race theory has been historical accounts that people of African heritage did not contribute to the victories against fascism exploits. Black men fighting as conscripts under British-French-American flags are ignored by anti-Black writers. North, east, and west battles were fought where men of color served and were visible; but divided from human history.
So, we must travel to learn, not sit and wait for hearsay or antebellum writers. So, it was critical that believers learn that Africans opposed fascism; and many were free masons with a deep knowledge of masonic history in the Caribbean, African and Latin traditions.
It is equally important to understand Pan-Africanism as critical to functional knowledge and understanding that Black lives matter. Felix Eboue is an excellent example as to Pan-Africanism in Caribbean and Africa during prewar, world war II and post-war activities of men like Leopold Senghor of Senegal.
I suspect there are many who do not know spiritual history of free Masonry among men of color such as occurred during World War II when Felix Eboue, a Black Frenchman and avowed Free Mason born in the Caribbean used all his skills and powers to encourage and help the Free France resistance of General Charles DE Gaulle against Fascist Germany and Italy in Africa. It was a critical time and place for Pan-Africanism and free masonry.
Related note: As a U.S. Army officer, I was stationed in France during year 1966 when President DeGaulle required American and other foreign forces to relocate from France, and also soon after when Colonel Kadafi of Libya overthrew Libya’s post-war king; and took control over American, British, Dutch and Italian Petroleum operations in Africa. African material resources very much mattered.
https://www.princehall.org/prince-hall-freemasonry
So, I do not seek theories about what is critical to me as a human being in one human race of the same human origins throughout the world. I read a lot about what other folk critics write about me and mine that might have come in from West Africa.
We are inclined to believe our African ancestry came into America via Jamestown or Williamsburg shipping ports established by folks from Europe, their own Motherland.
So, motherhoods are critical in our reasoning pursuant goodness since birth of Jesus on Christmas Day . I respect but have no illusions about what is critical in my own life experiences and inheritance from Africa, America and Europe .
Thames River to Jamestown (moremarymatters.com)
The River Thames (/tɛmz/ ( listen) TEMZ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At 215 miles (346 km), it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the River Severn.
It flows through Oxford (where it is commonly called the Isis), Reading, Henley-on-Thames and Windsor. The lower reaches of the river are called the Tideway, derived from its long tidal reach up to Teddington Lock. It rises at Thames Head in Gloucestershire, and flows into the North Sea via the Thames Estuary. The Thames drains the whole of Greater London.
What is it? For What purpose: Federal Judge Appointed By Trump Bashes Critical Race Theory During Discrimination Case (msn.com) Is justice via laws also a theory?
So, Critical race theory: I never read the publications conceived and published by former Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell and project members. So far as I have learned from critics that they joined together in an effort to research and publish reasoning that United States of America as a society is founded and fused with legal reasoning and applications of laws based on historical racism; and exposure or teaching such in schools is racist and divisive. The Confederate States of America were divisive leading to the Civil War, and Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations were divisive, not racial integration in America as many sons and daughters of draft dodgers have sought to believe.
I have tried to stay aware of the anti-Black gifted and talented journalists who think they know my ancestral stories like:
Quin_Hillyer – They are the bodies and souls of the men and women my ancestors were confronted with down in the ante-bellum years leading to the vanquished Confederate States of America. I know who they are, not by color of their skin or even proper use of the English language but remembering what I have seen and heard in my own ancestry chain back into Africa itself. So, in reality my reading and learning by and about anti-Black racist histories and journalism led me to seek more knowledge and understanding leading me to become Pan-African in sentiment “to thine own self seek to be true.” Curiosity of my own ancestry is critical to me, including Native American and African origins, more-so than classification and categorization as slaves.
Psychological Warfare (moremarymatters.com)
My psychologist wife Mary has counseled me that people who commit suicide do so when filled with uncontrollable rage at themselves; and that has satisfied my theory that Derrick Bell, though was not filled with enough anger and rage to do so, but used his gifts and talents in life to define critical race theory surrounding what he saw and heard during his life. He was smart and patient enough to attend Duquesne University, a Roman Catholic institution that waved him into their world view on a lot of matters. He was not a jock and learned about what mattered to those who administered his education experiences. I do not know when or how he became a Roman Catholic.
My non-critical theory is that based upon assumptions by a relatively few non-Black potential student applicants to prestigious institutions after the Civil Rights Act was passed, anger about being rejected for admission was vetted against black students waived in with points added because of their racial identity and documented education disadvantages.
The critics were real and others followed suit throughout the nation about racial preferences and reverse discrimination/racism. I was at Fort Gordon Georgia having returned from Vietnam when a fellow student suggested to me that Milton Olive had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Lyndon Johnson, because he was Black and there were likely other dead heroes who were White and equally deserving but laying dead somewhere simply not discovered. Incredible thinking for a guy seeking be an army officer.
That comment by a guy who had not served in Vietnam alerted me to realities of racism via a Boston born Irish Catholic. It prompted me to better understand that culture and religious beliefs are not one and the same. To me, Irish Catholics like the Kennedy Brothers epitomized what I embraced about philosophy of life by Jesus Christ, but not all Irishmen were of the same culture. It prompted me to recall Dr. King’s sermon, not his religion, about Contents of Character; and that not Black folks here or in Africa and the Caribbean are of the same culture.
So far as I know, Derrick Bell was a Roman Catholic, and lawyer like Clarence Thomas sharing their higher education level teachings about Jesus Christ. Like me, he was also an R.O.T.C graduate experiencing 4 years extra hours courses and training including a special summer training to be commissioned as an officer. And, he also served overseas, him as an Air Force lawyer in Korea interacting with a network of interracial lawyers and judges. The two men were both Black Catholics but lived with different contents of character so far as I can determine. Bell in a life of service to others, and Thomas a life serving what for who, when, where, how?
I am compelled to wonder, like my view of Clarence Thomas, “what did he know and when did he know it.” If Bell had committed suicide and not written “Critical Race Theory” there would be no angry and enraged readers for me to know about. In fact, I have to wonder, if all the gifted and talented Black minds of men simply kept silent and accepted their privileged benefits from White society, they could have happiness, maybe like United States Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina? Pursuit of happiness is a normal mental desire by all human beings, so I believe. Is it critical?
MORE MARY MATTERS Brady Enterprise Association
Justice Thomas appears to be teamed up with Justice Antonin Scalia also having not pursued, voiced or voted for any legal opinions sought for and by Black policy makers. I must wonder did or does he see Black politicians as what Trumps son-in-law allegedly said, “there are no Black politicians, they are all hustlers.” But, whether or not Thomas perceives Black politicians as hustlers, he is loved by conservative critics of Black life in America for being silent about it, other than saying “me too” following remarks by the super conservative Scalia who claimed to be a devout Roman Catholic but in reality a reinvigorated Roman lawyer against a perceived culture in name of constitutiona law.
My criticism of organized Judeo-Christian cultures in Africa, America or anywhere else is their failures to call out against the Roman Latin cultural mindsets. Institutions that exist claiming their founding on the principals of life in and on teachings of Jesus Christ; but consistently fail to defend same when visual adversaries to it exist, and rule as Romans critical to life, liberty and happiness. To many of the least of us, that religious mindset is also critical.
Cultures matter in understanding racism functions and systems. Many Christians and Jews have a cultural heritage of not learning or understanding the history and intents of gospel origins and methods among African-Americans and even in Africa and the Caribbean, by non-Catholics.
Richard Allen and the Origins of the AME Church – Rediscovering Black History (archives.gov)
Pittsburgh is an excellent example, tearing down and chasing away the very essence as to how goodness came into existence in nurturing new generations as Mother Bethel AME tried to do since it’s founding and administration in year 1793. It was the Abolitionist Church for spreading the good news of Jesus Christ both before and after the Civil War by bishops seeking to spread the gospels among regional youth and in Africa and the Caribbean.
Bethel AME Church—Oldest Black Congregation in Pittsburgh he United States, University of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church have in common their 1787 beginnings.
Bethel began when Black members of Philadelphia’s St. George’s Methodist Church walked out in protest of its practice of racial segregation within the church. Led by Richard Allen, a lay minister and former slave in two states, and the Reverend Absalom Jones, they established the Free African Society in 1787, and Allen was ordained and named pastor of its Bethel AME Church upon its establishment in 1794.
In 1808, an AME congregation was established in Pittsburgh, the first AME church west of the Allegheny Mountains. It was on Front Street, just steps from the Pittsburgh Academy, today the University of Pittsburgh. Ultimately, the congregation became Pittsburgh’s Bethel AME Church. Abolitionist Lewis Woodson served as one of its pastors. After several moves, the church relocated to the Hill District in 1906.
Their bishops joined with Episcopal Ministers like the Episcopal Reverend Crumel of New York to champion both preaching and teaching by ministers and institutions to indoctrinate new converts to religious ministries and churches including the Baptists. My ancestors were both AME and Baptists up and out of slavery and I believe their stories. I believe it was perhaps Richard Allen whose experiences likely inspired Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute to note that many/most ex-slaves required training as to proper use of bibles. And, they all required opportunities to work and earn a living with their hearts, minds and hands.
There is no reason to doubt that before World War I, Booker T. Washington encouraged the huge migration of young Black men from places like Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama to Pittsburgh in pursuit of opportunities for standard wage jobs his benefactor Andrew Carnegie had promised in the last decade of the 19th century. And, many became fathers of Pittsburgh Regional church pastors for coal miners and mill workers in particular. I view that connection to be critical in understanding Pittsburgh history.
Homestead Strike – Summary, Causes & Impact – HISTORY
Though the Homestead workers initially enjoyed widespread public support, this changed after their brutal treatment of the Pinkertons, as well as an attempt made on Frick’s life in late July by the anarchist Alexander Berkman, who had no connection with the union. Homestead resumed operations in full by mid-August 1892, thanks to some 1,700 strikebreakers, including some of the state’s first Black steelworkers.
Indeed, African-American laborers and their families, including farmers, had flocked into the Pittsburgh region even before the Irish Potato Famine and the U.S. Civil War, and later mass migrations of other European immigrants.
It was a shock to read a University of Pittsburgh comments by an Associate Professor of History noting that “African-Americans began migrating to the region during the 1920s,” making them secondary to European immigrants via Ellis Island. He was a very much uninformed African-American pretending to know what he did not. And obviously not familiar with the U.S.Colored Troop Regiments recruited in the region and serving honorably in the Civil War. He was not racist, simply not indoctrinated about what existed before he came from Ohio to Pittsburgh for a good job.
The Strike at Homestead Mill | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
Scabs had been assaulted in the street; a non-union boarding house dynamited. Many local businesses refused to serve strikebreakers, who included Pennsylvania’s first black steelworkers. Barracks, a barbershop and even a saloon were built in the mill yard. Yet even Fort Frick could not provide complete security. In November, tensions exploded into a massive riot against black strikebreakers. Two thousand white workers attacked Homestead’s 50 black families. Gunfire was exchanged; many were severely wounded.
Even before the American Civil War ended, the AME Church pursued evangelization and indoctrination for people of African heritage to be missionary work in the mandate of Jesus of Christ. Their concentration was teaching future ministers to help educate and train youthful Black men to be helpful and useful Christians in the Philosophy of Life by Jesus.
https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-katharine-drexel
A gifted and rich child, Katharine Drexel was born in year 1858 before the Civil War began and by year 1942, she had established a religious order of Catholic nuns in a string of Roman Catholic Schools in 13 states to help mother children like future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She also founded Xavier University in New Orleans to foster young Black women becoming missionary minded mother hoods for children in need.
Learning about both men have fostered my beliefs that ideas about Mother Churches were tied to understanding that motherhood matters in all matters including Christianity, and people of African heritage critically needed their own motherhood churches to train ministers of the gospels with their own bishops to guide and support them in spreading the good news. For more than a hundred years, the Mother Bethel AME Church of Pittsburgh and its Bishops had shined their light on more than a hundred labor intensive growing communities that very few White politicians saw or recognized as spiritually connected.
They embraced and cooperated with the independent colored womens club throughout the region that sponsored everything imaginably needed in the culture to bring youth into Christian fellowship: baseball, softball, picnics, roller-skating, marching bands, music lessons, night schools, and community counseling of mothers, fathers and children. Pittsburgh Black Republicans tried to be helpful in appeals to White political leaders.
Duquesne was named Holy Ghost College when founded in year 1888. It matters to see and hear what Derrick Bell likely saw and heard growing up in the City of Pittsburgh during a time and places wherein there was a very deliberate functional assault against existence of a impoverished Black population in the Lower Hill District. Institutions such as below had grown to amass power over their existence but were silent as to how the gospels had originated and spread from among them. They did not know or care about so-called Black Mother Churches like Bethel AME crying out for help against imminent domain laws.
However, I have read many other publications of the past seventy plus years that armed me with knowledge about race theories, whether critical or not. In readings from the past, I have tried to keep my reasoning joined to my own belief that GOD exist, plus faith in philosophy of life attributed to Jesus Christ as the new beginning and world’s greatest philosopher beyond all cultural dynamics.
I know what I have seen and heard such as story of below African-American Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh torn down the urban renewal that displaced and literally destroyed the Lower Hill District residences of places where young boys to men like future professor Derrick Bell lived. I still do sense his pain.
I never knew Derrick but remember my Aunt Adeline Atkins Brown crying and screaming about City of Pittsburgh demolishing Mother Bethel AME Church and African-American neighborhoods where kids like Derrick growing up nearby likely saw and heard the critical pain inflicted as “imminent domain critical laws to allowed a sports complex to be financed and constructed for suburban Whites to patronize.
Helpless to stop the racially inflicted horror of a Christian mother church source for many regional Christian protestant churches torn down but never forgotten. I heard early as a teenager the reasoning among Black Pittsburghers as to how and why White folks did the morally dirty deeds of tearing down Black churches and sparing adjacent White run churches like Saint Benedict the Moor below:
Did or should it have mattered to young Derrick Bell to see a Roman Catholic Church operated by Whites and built in early 1900s spared, while an older Black protestant church established in the early 1800s was demolished in the name of imminent domain law. What did he see and hear Black folks say?
Saint Benedict was an African and Black Catholics are welcome at Saint Benedict established to spread the gospels among newly arriving immigrants from Europe and elsewhere, just like Bethel AME did for 19th century slaves.
I admire and respect Professor Bell advocacy for teaming up with other scholars to theorize about what critically matters a lot in America for gifted and talented folks my color and kind. How and why should I forget what I saw and heard about race critical to understanding my own family’s community experiences in the critical cause of Jesus Christ.
And, I seriously doubt if any or many of the critics in daily news, like former Congressman Newt Gingrich have read it or other topics relating to African-American scholarly labors and works. I read a few and remember, about guys like Newt legally maneuvering to dodge Vietnam as a bad war. I wondered then what folks like him theoretically perceive to be a good war.
Years afterwards, I was so resentful of him and them that ducked Vietnam that I looked up Newt’s bio and learned that as an Army brat of a active duty Sergeant, he researched and wrote his PhD thesis about Belgium government failures to properly educate their colony, the massive Belgium Congo. It made no sense to me then or now to imagine Newt having interests or theoretically care about education of Africans without African input, utter racism. I think it is critical to understand him and those millions in America who believe like him that they are ever superior to people of African heritage because race matters most because their European ancestry said so, not mine so far as I know about Africans.
RaceandHistory.com – Africans Contributions to Rome
Topinard states, “In the first century when Christianity was beginning to establish itself in Rome the doctrine of a separate creation for whites and Africans was defended by the Babylonian Rabbis and later by Emperor Julian. In 415 A. D. when one council was debating whether the Ethiopians/Africans were descended from Adam and the theory they were not was making considerable progress,
St. Augustine in his “City of God” interjected and declared that no true Christian would doubt that all men, of no matter what form, color, or height were of the same protoplasmic origin. These early Rabbis did say with conviction that a Black skin was the result of a “curse” on them by Noah.
The signs of this “curse” said the Rabbis were a “Black skin, misshapen nose, lips and twisted hair.”
Lastly, Africans in ancient Rome before the philosophical structure of color prejudice and racism, like others conquered by the Romans, were treated as captives. There is no historical record from my studies that suggest wanton cruel treatment on the basis of color or ethnicity.
A slave was a slave whether he was a Syrian, Thracian, or an African. The Romans after becoming accustomed to Africans from various parts of Africa and their varying complexions treated them with consideration and respect.
So, this blog is mainly about critics of Black scholars known by what they have said and written as their own personal theories critical to thoughts of past activists like Derrick Bell and Bob Moses.
Who were those guys? Were they Pinkerton type detective scholar activists classifying, teaming-up and hunting down outlaws to American critical property theories?
professor derrick bell of harvard law school – Bing
But, is the most really critical: life, death and God theoretically or otherwise? media criticisms and even wounded parental war cries by historic anti-black advocates against any educators using it to teach students of any ethnic group.
It has prompted our attention in Critical Pan-African reality as to why we must strive more telling of stories breaking historic ignorance and silence. We believe there are many stories to be written by new generations of gifted and talented potentials.
Definitions
- Critical is adverse or disapproving comments or judgments.
- Race definition is – any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry; also : the fact of dividing people, or of people being divided, into such groups : categorization by race
- Theory is a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
I read a recent criticism of Critical Race Theory allegedly penned by a young man of Asian heritage who complained that theory is not true because Asians-Americans have excelled in America overcoming similar cultural, legal and societal experiences as African Americans.
Those are critical thoughts for certain by a writer who does not know what is truly critical like: lives and deaths of generations that proceeded or will follow us. Silence is no way to march forward. Fear of being rejected is not the way forward in liberty and pursuit of happiness, by and for impoverished African-Americans or any other group with grievances. It is truly hypocritical to hear cat calls that African-American experiences are divisive in a nation that prides itself on overcoming obstacles that once divided it, such as the American Civil War rebellion about slavery and loser claims after their defeat and surrender, that abolitionists against slavery had divided nation by making men, women and children free with promises instead of punishments.
It prompted me to read and recall that like myself, Derrick Bell born and raised in the Pittsburgh Region was also a military officer with service-time in Asia: him in Republic of Korea and me in former Republic of Vietnam And, true that during the 20th century, the Japanese occupations of Korea for some 40 years forced millions into near starvation, but that was not the chattel slavery black folks experienced for 200 years pursuant laws enacted beginning in year 1787 by a American society government reclassifying black residents as less than humans/three-fifths of a person.
The constitution was written by lawyers pursuing power by laws very critical and unique in human history propagating evil by any other name. And, there were some African-Americans who saw and heard the great event occur in 1787 followed by Fugitive Slave Act in year 1790.
So, I do not know what similar circumstances the writer critic could possibly imagine as similar to African-American heritages during and up from slavery. We also believe it is very critical for all people of African heritage in the Americas and Africa to know their own ancestral heritage and stories, not leaving it to novelists of any or various colors to speak truths to powers that are or were immoral and unjust.
The great powers of nation states assembled in Berlin, Germany organized in 1884-1885 by German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck followed the first World Zionist Conference in the same place and time-line. Both conferences were about pursuit of wealth and liberty that would greatly impact Africa and African offspring of centuries in the slave trade wars and wars of manufactured steel and death in the near future. Wars back then, later and now still matter for African Centric thinkers to understand who, how, when, where and why there are few clean hands, historically.
Nicole Hannah Jones reporter – Bing
We do love the courage of our gifted and talented journalists like Nicole Hannah Jones the professor who researched and pushed to publish the NY Times 1619 Project. It focused on our ancestors who were slaves in the United States of America, and their existence and stories that were or might have been matter very much to me and mine.
The spewing out of outrage by so-called enlightened and educated scholars and journalists caught us by surprise since facts speak for themselves that United States was founded based upon slave labor drawn by traders with cash and chains. The evidence is clear as black and white that critics seek to deny students learning about. Why should we be silent about our own flesh? Indeed, by being or remaining silent about evil seen and heard, the matter of concern is more so a spiritual issue because God only knows what is truth.
There human beings of African heritage in year 1619, and they all had names and places of births that mattered. The ancestors of Kunta Kinte that Alex Haley wrote about is only one story told. And, even therein, Haley did not live long enough to finish his story as to who they were pursuant his research and travels.
Jeffersonian Overview (moremarymatters.com)
It is the challenge for new generations of scholars to research and tell their own stories of interests to people interested in their matters. They are not called by God almighty to be silent because most or least do want them to read, write or remember what was seen and heard, including Jesus Christ who was not silent.
I only recently challenged an African born young man from Kenya to tell the story about his grandfather and many tens of thousands other Africans who served in World War II fighting to defeat the Axis Powers in Africa, Asia and Europe. Silence has not been helpful or useful to Africans, Americans, Asians or Europeans. Africa is about more than “Hotel Rwanda” to entertain movie patrons.
Antisemitic contagion contaminates college campuses (msn.com)
I know enough about Pan-Africanism to know our theory per se is not about anyone else’s this or that such as anti-Semitism, capitalism, colonialism, communism, fascism, racism, zionism, or any described matters devoid of ancestral spirituality and origins in Africa’s self-interests.
Our hopes and prayers are that Focus Groups and others in their own racial and righteous causes do not seek, find and choose a person or persons of color to oppose so called “critical race theory” and Pan-Africanism as existed during era of the Cold War from 1948-1990 and longer. “Africa for the Africans” embraced by George Washington Williams and others in later years of the 19th century has it’s own theoretical meaning not tied to other ism this and ism that.
Cold Warriors in the recent past managed to concoct and reason activist people of African heritage to be everything except children of God as they claim such blessings for themselves, as did the Romans that crucified and Jesus and called it good.
I do not like the term critical race theory because God, life and death are not about theory; but I admire the steel town nerve of men like Derrick Bell who refused to be silenced like Clarence Thomas and others I have known to avoid being useful and helpful in the cause of teaching new generations
Related people
- Derrick Bell (above image)
- Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
- Richard Delgado
- Patricia J. Williams
- Kemi Badenoch
Critical race theory is a body of legal scholarship and an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists in the United States that seeks to critically examine U.S. law as it intersects with issues of race in the U.S. and to challenge mainstream American approaches to racial justice. CRT examines social, cultural, and legal issues primarily as they relate to race and racism in the United States. Is silence helpful useful in what matters?
Our problem and dislike of people like Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the suggestion that African-Americans and others not talk about matters relating to racial experiences and pains had and held as a result. To them and theirs, we should surrender our so-called free speech rights (First Amendment) and get on in life talking about what matters that do not address race.
Wow! A local king/paramount chieftain in Ghana once exclaimed “I cannot turn myself into twice, this person wants this and that person wants that. I cannot please everybody with what they want. If I do not, they complain that I am talking nonsense and not serving their interests.”
Don’t talk about racism is purely theoretical hype intended to silence mindsets like Justice Clarence Thomas, perhaps? Scalio and other founders and practitioners of the Federalist Society of legal scholars reasoned that American Declaration of Independence in year 1776 is not legally binding on the Constitution of the United States enacted in year 1787 wherein Government of the United States was created with a Supreme Court and system subordinate courts and law clerks to oversee its laws.
As with Attorney Derrick Bell, we were born, raised up, and partially educated in the same Pittsburgh region and times as him seeing and hearing realities of racial animosities, rampant daily sarcasms and differences, and going away to study and serve American government pursuant a better world practices and theories following the horrors of World Wars I and II that killed over 100 million human lives, known and unknown. God forbid we should not remember.
In fact, CRT is important to comprehend that legalized racism mattered as much or more than anti-Semitism in the killings that ravaged Africa, Asia and Europe. By ending of WWII, the population of Libya had been reduced 10 percent by the Axis war-machine in Africa. And, American racist attitudes among its scholars and artists who chose to keep silent was not a mystery or theory. And dead men tell no tales about what they saw in World War II.
We would argue that no theory whether biological, political, legal, religious or scientific reasoning, must be allowed to pull us away from the doctrinal beliefs that lifted our ancestors of African heritage up from a past where and when they were down and not able to rise up to the goodness in life that matters in all human beings of every color, hue and shade. We reiterate that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness matters most.
CRT theory is important that lawyers like Derrick Bell took the time and effort to write something useful to help scholars in the field of law understand the law is a lot more than Americans want to know and understand in its functions such as murderous police officers, and historically immoral and corrupted souls of African, Asian, European, Native and Pacific Islands heritage.
So, who matters equally, less than, more than or not at all in past, present or future by skin color or what? Were or are all human beings born or simply made by men of means with power to enact laws that conquer, suppress or redress grievances by writing and talking about it.
Does race matter more, the same or less than critical doctrine such as:
- Spiritual Doctrine set forth in Sermon on the Mount by Jesus of Nazareth given 67 generations ago for intelligent human beings;
- American Declaration of Independence Political Doctrine authored by Thomas Jefferson in 1775-1776.
- On July 4, 1776, General George Washington was in upstate New York, leading the Continental Armed Forces but when given a copy of the doctrine written by Thomas Jefferson he arranged to have officers and men at his military headquarters, slave and free including slave aide William Lee, born abt 1756 (moremarymatters.com) William Lee: hear the doctrine read by his adjutant. There was no constitution or law spoken or written for them to follow, but they all heard meaning in the doctrinal words: life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. They were all men who wanted it, and believed Washington would help secure it.
Doctrine (from Latin: doctrina, meaning “teaching”, “instruction” or “doctrine”) is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system. The etymological Greek analogue is “catechism”
Critical doctrine to me and mine that I believe in is that GOD exists and teachings/philosophy of Jesus were that in addition to loving GOD not seen, we should honor our ancestral fathers and mothers most of whom are ancestors we have never seen. That pushes our thoughts to honor Thomas Jefferson who used his power and privilege to write the first thirty-six words in the United States Declaration of Independence that acknowledged existence of humanity as one race so created by GOD.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Even before those words were denounced in year 1860 by founders of the American rebellious Confederate States of America, Abraham Lincoln had called it “a rebuke and a stumbling-block to tyranny and oppression.”
Booker T. Washington was opposed to the Niagara Movement pioneered by Dr. Dubois and others, but in open mindedness, we confess to believing both he and DuBois cared and loved about the future for unborn African-Americans. The great differences were in the American environment of functional liberty and freedom compared to theoretical liberties and freedoms.
Dr. Dubois was critical to enlighten and educate black children; and Booker T. was equally determined to avoid conflicting views with White southerners in training boys and girls to be helpful and useful. Booker T. died in year 1915, and in year 1921, the White southerners in Tulsa, Oklahoma waged war and became first place in history to air drop bombs on a civilian population, followed in year 1936 by Italian bombings in Ethiopia. DuBois became a ardent Pan-Africanist, not a much hated racist often depicted.
And, not ironically, the writings and publishing about both men, during and after their lives, were not erroneously but legally removed from the libraries and teachings of both Black and White American high school and college students of the 20th century. President Theodore Roosevelt was criticized by racist journalists for daring invite and host Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House. Critical race theory is a reality we learned about by the Black Press, and lived through including the lifetime of Derrick Bell, who also heard and learned about racism in America and abroad. Why should forget and be silent about what we know? Divisive and harmful to who, how, where?
The National Cyclopedia of The Colored Race.pdf
Filled with the spirit of Jesus Christ and their own ancestors, both Booker Taliaferro Washington and Edward B.. DuBois went into Africa searching to find knowledge and understanding even unto Ghana and beyond what we see and hear as doctrine and theory we know or believe. In their lifetimes they gave light to new births like Coleman Hawkins who gave us the gift of music long remembered as Body and Soul: And, like us, Derrick Bell grew up in a music loving Pittsburgh region where all gifted and talented young men and women heard the Hawk’s music as akin to the gospels in lives seen and heard as critical to hearing and believing in the term love.
Coleman Hawkins-Body and Soul – YouTube video
Professor K .K. Amos Anti assures millions of African-American and other tourists to Ghana their ancestors indeed believed they had a soul identified by them as their Kra..
Akan Beliefs-Thoughts (moremarymatters.com)
It really matters a lot to those of us born again believers in God of our own ancestors.
So, not being silent about us, we dare Lift Every Voice and Sing as did many before us in the 20th century
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Niagara Movement – Wikipedia The men and women of African heritage that gathered in Niagara, New York during first years of the 20th century were cognizant of the Supreme Court Justice who said “Negroes had no rights that White men were bound to respect.” The end of the 19th century statement was indeed critical race theory for the 20th century White Americans to hear, know and act upon truths seen and heard. Truth #1 was that people of African heritage possessed souls linking them to GOD Almighty, the same as Whites who ought not imagine otherwise.
How paying colonizers for freedom stunted economic growth in Haiti, other nations (msn.com)
We perceive all the above doctrinal statements embraced, at least suggested, a philosophy of life that bounds me and mine to remember what is critical more so than theoretical thinking. But, how do I know them and that I should honor them? All the above occurred decades before I was born and even prior to my parents conceiving me into the life I now live.
In facts for me to remember, my critical racial realities heritage were not at all for theoretical or theological thinking masters to define but me, myself, and I to understand that I was born, not made, and I have freewill to believe or not believe I am also an output of Pan-African functional thinking about matters that I see and hear for new generations of “Action Jacksons” still being born.
So, I very much like what Jesus, Jefferson and even Dr. DuBois said about my expected creation many years before I emerged. I believe as American historical facts, not theory, that my cultural/societal heritage includes African, Native (Cherokee) and Caucasian ancestry generated in war and peace, liberty and slavery. My demographic and DNA research confirms that I am who I believe I am as put forth on below 6 generation pedigree chart. And, I have reasoned that because I do not know ancestral origins of the enslaved African mother of my ancestor Easter Frog, it does not diminish my desire to know my African origins. I need science and travel to learn more, much more critical knowledge than theory, albeit does matter to learn and know.
Spiritual believers, like me, still believe that GOD is greater than all matter created, including humanity and humans of various cultures who would be living gods to other humans such as those of African heritage.
I think It is critical that “the least of us” should know those who progressed us into being who we are in the human chain of life, much more so than learning about or even overcoming those who labored to oppress and suppress us, regardless of color or cause. Taking down the statue of Tennessee Confederate terrorist Nathan Bedford Forrest does not stimulate increased knowledge about my direct ancestor Charles Kyle, a Union Army veteran, who was murdered in or around Nashville, Tennessee sometime before the 1890 federal census, not reflected on the 6 generation pedigree chart below. My father William Atkins, born in 1906, was the son of Julia Frog Kyle Atkins, born abt. 1849 whose father was Charles Kyle Atkins, a Union Army war veteran born into slavery abt. 1840, and as a free man married Adaline Kyle at the AME Church, Roanoke-Salem Virginia abt 1880. There is a lot that we do not know, and more academic research is needed by and for his offspring. The challenge is to inspire gifted and talented ones to care, and the others to at least know they are somebody.
Charles Kyle, born 1840 (moremarymatters.com)
Google Generation pedigree charts are useful and helpful in displaying research that can be documented beyond hearsay rhetoric from relatives and non-relatives who think they know more than you know what information is critical to me being here and now. Damn the thoughts but my ancestors could love another but were not allowed until the 1870s to even marry pursuant laws in Virginia and most other rebel states against personal liberty. Black preachers could perhaps preach but not administer the holy sacraments until the critical laws allowed it. In fact, the laws of a society are etched in the beliefs that created and maintained them, such as birth certificates of life itself, not testimony or tales by a midwife as was most often the case during legalized era of slavery glamorized and Christianized by Hollywood writers to depict the benevolent slave owners wife or daughter helping a slave mammy make delivery.
Ante-bellum hype about White kindness in caring for black women giving birth to children was pure hype published to combat slave abolitionist advocates. Midwives for slaves were not women like Hattie McDaniel, America’s favorite Hollywood image. Slave plantation midwives were never ever family befriended members of the slave owner, adored by his wife and children as critical to help enslaved mother deliver their newborn babies. It was 19th century critical race beliefs concocted to support slavery.
Yes, my mother Cora Hill Atkins had help of a midwife, Mrs. Jenny Jackson, in delivering me and my eight siblings at our home because our family could not afford the $675 cost of delivery at 1 of the 2 Pittsburgh area hospitals that pediatrician Dr. Graham was registered to practice in. He was a good doctor and man, often arriving after baby came forth. He was employed by Pittsburgh Coal Company to help midwives care about coal miners’ families.
Women like Mrs. Jenny Jackson had many civic skills and devotions including being teachers, midwives, housewives, music teachers and God knows the Sunday School teachers that ushered children into knowing Jesus Christ.I remember many so well with smiling faces that looked at boys to behave themselves, treat girls with respect and show an ability and willingness to get along with each other, especially when in their presence at sponsored events like community picnics and roller skating outings.
My generation of boys and girls seemingly loved the mothers who made real local clubs of women including midwives who loved us back, watching and inquiring about our health, even into our teenage years and graduation from high school.
The charts allow the researchers to go back into their own family histories to preview who they ought care about specific to trying understand lives lived, suffered and died. I am compelled in my spiritual beliefs to care about and mourn for and remember my ancestors Charles and Adaline Kyle because they suffered hardships of enslavement, combat against slavery, being murdered and impoverishment for my sake to be here now. It was critical for me being able to learn and tell my own story.
