USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: FW: Brainwashed bootlickers Africa's bane

I agree with the overall sentiment, but some of the details need clarification. Yes, changing our mindsets is an absolute must, and, of course, its not just a matter of elites--I think we have all of internalized eurocentric ideas in varying degrees. Elites can and should model better examples. I suspect that the textbooks in many black/African communities are still Eurocentric. Even topics like math that we imagine to be neutral can have a western slant. For example, the pythagorean theorem was supposedly developed by students of Pythagorus, yet it is never mentioned that he studied in Africa (Egypt) for 22 years and that the theorem was already in use there. 

Although the essayist suggests that there has been no effort to repatriate African names for African landmarks, South Africans have been engaged in an ongoing rhetorical struggle over nomenclature for several years. So its not entirely true that there has been no movement on this front.

New Names in South Africa

http://africanhistory.about.com/cs/southafrica/a/sa_new_name.htm

A city, by any other name

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/10/worlddispatch.southafrica

Last, we should be mindful that Mobutu cloaked his massive theft in Afrocentric garb--he decreed the replacement of Euro names with African names in order to distract people from his criminal acts. kzs

On Monday, March 19, 2012 8:10:32 AM UTC-4, Abdul Bangura wrote:

AfricanConstitution.Org   Decolonizing the African mind Salt Lake City, 19 March 2012 -- It looks like the Mormons, an American religious cult founded on racism and who believe that the black race is doomed and will not share space in heaven with white people, have successfully converted Africans into self contempt. In their quest to look Caucasian, the rate at which Africans are bleaching their skins is alarming. They do not seem to realize the health consequences of this affront on their natural complexion. How an entire generation of Africans has grown up to believe that black is ugly and white is beautiful, your guess is as good as anybody else's. If skin bleaching is not enough, add to this self contempt the hordes of Africans throwing away their African names and assuming European names. Needless to mention the blind adoption of deviant and obnoxious Western lifestyles. A half-century since so-called independence, Africa's largest fresh-water lake still bears the name of a European queen. Roads, rivers, waterfalls, wildlife refuges and a plethora of other landmarks and national heritage sites retain their colonial names all across Africa. It is not that there is a shortage of African names. Rather, the boot-licking African elite of is too brainwashed and Westernized to entertain any idea of renaming African landmarks for Africa's own. Africa is the continent which continues to associate African names with primitiveness. In the federal Union of Afrikan States, there shall be a department of education and culture to decolonize the African mind and correct the doctored history books. A brainwashed mind is worse than no mind at all. In the year 2015, see you at the federal convention for a Union of Afrikan States. Bring your brilliant ideas for the decolonization of the African mind and join the action and solutions team that is getting things done for the motherland. Bosire Mosi AfricanConstitution.Org AfricanConstitution.Org ï¿½ 2012

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