Lavonda Staples on USAAfrica Dialogue Series
Thank you very much, sister, for coining the expression 'professonal student'. I just love it.
It reminds me of the concept of "bullet-burst" derived from the story "Sugar Baby" in Chinua Achebe's collection of Nigerian Civil War stories Girls at War in which a former Biafran, having survived the hellish starvation that the Nigerian government is described as having used to defeat the Biafran war effort, tears apart bags of sugar, rice and other foodstuff, declaring as he scattered them in an orgy of enablement, of power, "Sugar, bullet burst your brain"!, recollecting the scattering of brains under the impact of bullets in the civil war, the war that had deprived him of food, food he could now demonstrate absolute freedom with.
Deprivation of the food of the mind could also lead one into a "bullet burst " mentality, in which one determines to use every available minute of time in making up for that time when the yearning for that food was unfulfilled or when might not have even have appreciated what one wanted.
"Beauty, so ancient and so new , too late have I loved you" declared St. Augustine of Hippo, referring to the creator of the universe, but is that creator not understood by various schools of thought as the essence of knowledge, the ultimate goal of existence expressed in the striving for knowledge, as the cosmos strives to know itself through the human person's hunger for knowledge, a hunger that culminates, in one perspective from Indian philosophy, in the unity of what is known, the agent that knows and the medium of knowledge?
Whatever one might think of the validity of such philosophical interpretations of the value of the quest for knowledge, many would agree that the act of stretching the mind by increasing its ability to assimilate, criticise and organise information provides a unique pleasure, a fulfilment different from any other kind.
Please forgive me if I seem to be preaching. I don't want to pass up this opportunity to declare this passion.At least I am sure one or two people might find these perspectives of some interest on a forum like this one.
" When my library was in the front room instead of the basement people would notice that I have many sacred texts. Folks would say, "you're confused." I just like to study. I like to know. I like to know culture and perspective. I also know when its time to pull the plug and watch "South Park."
Lavonda Staples
Of course, you are confused. Your confusion is demonstrated in the fact that you are surrounding yourself with instruments for filling gaps in your knowledge. If you were not confused, and realise that you are confused, why would you go to all that trouble to educate yourself out of your confusion? After all, those sacred texts you are collecting indicate that the entire planet on which you find yourself is significantly confused since the sacred texts are marked by such diversity of opinion. But if humans are confused, being travellers on a planet on which they did not ask to find themselves, who is better off, the person who acknowledges their confusion and tries to resolve it or the person who is not even aware that he or she is confused?
"You couldn't make me, at gun point, pay 1,000 United States dollars for a weave but sisters be investin' in that stuff! It's so sad. It can't be to catch a man because we get married less and divorced quicker. We don't save for college and we're not monetarily prepared for college and yet and still folks are making the Koreans richer than all the kings in the Bible.
I'm … talking about creating our own markets for African and African American Studies. By exploring these issues, where our students, where our demographic spends their money, we can see what's really on their minds. I don't mean to imply that I don't "wear" some hair. If I feel like it, I'll wear a wig or some braids, but you have to know I'm talking about something far, far, far deeper than hair. I'm talking 'bout the money and the mind and how do we start the process of creating a movement where our people are screaming for… knowledge"
Lavonda Staples
How does one ignite hunger for something that, on one one hand, is intangible and on another has tangible benefits but which to appreciate one must cross significant social and personal barriers to access? Its demanding enough to exercise the mind but the challenges are greater when social values militate against appreciating such efforts in the first place. I don't know much about the African-American experience, but a number of reports suggest that the efforts to keep Black people uneducated during slavery have been internalised by many African-Americans so that the culture of being intellectually oriented could be seen by such unwitting victims as being un-Black.
"How do we start the process of creating a movement where our people are screaming for… knowledge" (?) This implies the need to cultivate a community wide culture of appreciation of knowledge as an inherent good as well as a socially empowering enablement.
Those who understand the social and psychological dynamics of African-American life would be able to suggest how best this may be achieved.Of course, the influence of parents is of unequalled value in this. How does one get parents to champion the culture of learning to their children?
Toyin Adepoju
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