“Belief in your self that you are equal to the other in the endowments of body and mind is the only solid foundation known for the tallest skyscraper.”
There is no disputing the fact that confidence, belief or faith – whatever one might choose to classify it – is a vital ingredient in the success of a person. Even the slave master recognized its importance in the sustenance of this inhuman system. This Lerone Bennett Jnr. notes in Before the Mayflower, “More was needed: the slave, if slavery was to be successful, had to believe he was a slave …Each slave was taught that he was inferior to the meanest white man and that he had to obey every white man without thinking, without questioning. Finally, if these lessons were learned, the slave looked at himself through the eyes of his master and accepted the values of the master.”
This is exactly the case of the present day African. For far too long, the African has not been doing for himself what others are doing for themselves i.e. the provision of his needs and wants because he has been made to believe he cannot do it. This is summed up by one university student, who presumably should know better that “the most stupid Caucasian (“white man”) can manufacture a balloon but this the most intelligent African cannot do”
Well, I don’t blame him. He like many African students is a product of an inherited colonial educational system that does not allow the African to exercise his creative capabilities. Rather, he is made to absorb and reproduce (chew and pour) what others – the Caucasians, sometimes erroneously – have produced. Hence he is made to believe that he is incapable of creating anything and has to look to others for the provision of his basic needs and wants. Consequently, he has resigned himself to fate hoping that some miracle might happen to change his situation or that the Caucasian would one day come up with solutions to his problems.
However, if we are to lift Africa up where she truly belongs – in the highest regions - this must change NOW! Simply because neither has chance ever “satisfied the hope of a suffering people” nor has and people “… that solely depended on foreign aid, or rather upon the efforts of those, in anyway identified with the oppressor, to undo the heavy burdens, ever stood forth in the attitude of freedom.” Only “action, self-reliance, the vision self and of the future, have been the means by which the oppressed have seen and realized the light of their own freedom.” And this starts with the belief in one’s self.
Belief in self means the recognition of one’s ability to achieve what he wills, of course with the help of the Father. It is high time we realized we are as capable as the other races in the endowments of both body and mind. An article in The Georgetown Weekly Ledger of March 12, 1791 about Benjamin Banneker whilst noting the arrival of the commission which made the original survey of Washington, D.C of which he was a member buttresses this fact. It stated, “…an Ethiopian [African] whose abilities as a surveyor and astronomer already prove that Mr. (Thomas) Jefferson’s concluding that that race of men were void of mental endowments was without foundation.” Other evidences of the African’s ability to achieve what he wills abound in the creative artistic and scientific inventions of Africans. These include classics like The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas.
The message therefore to the African is that, “there is no height to which we cannot climb by using the active intelligence of our minds.” And in pursuit of the propagation of this gospel, I would like to suggest an African Heroes and Heroines Day to honour our heroes and heroines and secondly, the establishment of an African Hall of Fame where the statutes, busts and photographs of these heroes and heroines with their biographies and achievements would be exhibited to inform Africans of what has been achieved by one of our kind. It is sad to note that because our African heroes and heroines have been neglected the African has no African to look up to either in the arts, business or sciences thus depriving the African of the belief in his race as one of achievers and consequently in himself as an achiever.
We have the God-endowed talents that can and must be harnessed to do for ourselves what others are doing for themselves. After all, is God not a just God? If he is, does that not presuppose that He created all men equal?
san-kofa
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