WHITE POWER, THE LEADING HBCU, AND BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2016

Once there was a PhD.program in Spanish at the nation’s leading HBCU (historically black college / university); now we are struggling to keep the undergraduate major. A slightly built white woman appears to have been the most effective weapon employed by the upper administration in this process of debasement and destruction of the academic program in Spanish.

It is not too late to reverse the process. Black History Month 2016 would be a good time to start.

JUSTICE SCALIA, VERY ROMAN CATHOLIC AND VERY WHITE

The doctrine of the absolute continuity between the Kingdom of the Living and the Kingdom of the Dead is as central to Roman Catholicism as it is to every traditional African spirituality system, from the Mystery System of Kemet to the spirituality systems of the Yoruba, the Akan, etc. Justice Scalia was very Roman Catholic; his son is a priest. But Justice Scalia was very, very, very, white—were there any Blacks in the group of 98 who had clerked for the Justice?

Roman Catholicism is the most African of the so-called world religions of our times. Roman Catholicism is, then, more Black than White. Justice Scalia in the Kingdom of the Ancestors must now understand this. Would that his loved ones still in the Land of the Living would be open to this understanding.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA AND THE THREE-FIFTHS HUMAN QUESTION

Now that Antonin Scalia has passed to the other side, he sees clearly that, as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be, Africans are the most fully human of human beings. Africans are the original human beings—who were made in God’s image and likeness. Africans are the originators of civilization; so much so that Homer and the ancient Greeks deemed Africans—also known as Cushites, Nubians, Aithiops (the burned faced people)—the blackest people on the planet, to be the holiest and most beautiful of human beings.

The best way to honor Antonin Scalia’s memory would be to ensure that the fundamental error on which this nation was founded be corrected forthwith.

NOW THE “MIMIC WOMEN”

V. S. Naipaul portrayed our society as one of “Mimic Men.” Now the “Mimic Women” have taken over. In this society where talking stupidness is the order of the day, a lynch mob of “Mimic Women” is hounding a black man out of office for saying something stupid; as if saying stupid things were not the norm for politicians all over the world.

Our “Mimic Women” hear that feminism is the big thing, the “in-thing,” in the metropolitan countries. So they have jumped on the band wagon. In unthinking mimicry, they have created their Womantra organization. And they have decided to flex their muscles by gang-banging—politically, at least—the current mayor of Port of Spain, Raymond Tim Kee, an African with a Chinese last name.

I say with David: “Oh, how I love this country”

JUSTICE SCALIA, GENERAL HOWARD, AND PRESIDENT FREDERICK

Justice Scalia, RIP, declared that the 2640 universities in the United States are of two kinds: the more advanced (the University of Texas, for example) and the less advanced or slower paced, which latter are more suitable to Blacks. When, in 1867, General Oliver Otis Howard, a white man, founded his institution for Negroes, he called it a “university,” as distinct from a “college.” President Frederick interprets this as Howard’s intention to create a more advanced university. And President Frederick notes that the highly respected Georgetown University was founded as a “college” and not a “university.”

Interesting!

BERNIE JOINS TRUMP IN CRITICIZING PRESIDENT OBAMA

Bernie and Trump are both championed by the white working class. Trump’s popularity with the white working class is based on his outrageous criticisms of President Obama. Now Bernie has begun to criticize President Obama, although not with the same outrageous vitriol as Trump.

Is this a case of Bernie consciously or unconsciously signaling to the white working class that if push comes to shove he’s one with them? What does this signal to African Americans? 

BLACK MEN AND BOOKS

It is said that if you want to hide something from a black man you should put it in a book. However, it was his contact with books by and about black people that significantly enriched young Ta-Nehisi Coates during his student days at Howard University. The classrooms at Howard, on the other hand, were, for him, “a jail of other people’s interest.” There was an unbridgeable gap between books by and about black people and the books used in the classrooms at Howard University.

We established the Afro-Hispanic Institute, the Afro-Hispanic Review, the Afro-Hispanic Review Press, and finally Original World Press specifically in order to bridge this gap. And, wouldn’t you know it, the upper administration of Howard University has done everything it can to frustrate our efforts. It would seem that the Howard University upper administration is bent ensuring that books continue to mean little or nothing for black men.

BERNIE, TRUMP, AND THE WHITE WORKING CLASS

Yesterday’s New Hampshire primary clearly manifests that the WHITE WORKING CLASS is overwhelmingly committed to Bernie and Trump. Trump is a mean-spirited bigot; Bernie is a big-hearted socialist. They are polar opposites. However, they both have the overwhelming support of the WHITE WORKING CLASS. And the one thing that Bernie and Trump have in common is the fact that they are both older white men.

Are there, then, two fundamentally different white working classes: one bigoted and racist, the other socialist? African American voters would be well advised to take a long hard look  at things before rushing in to “feel the Bern”

IS HOWARD UNIVERSITY “MORE ADVANCED” OR “LESS ADVANCED”?

The evidence appears to support the conclusion that the Howard University upper administration has resolutely refused to climb to the pinnacle of Academe in the field of Hispanic Studies. Indeed, the upper administration has done everything to ensure that when it comes to the field of Hispanic Studies, Howard University remain in the category of what Justice Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court described as the “less advanced” or “slower-paced” institutions of higher learning.

In 1978, with much fanfare, a PhD program in Romance Languages (specifically French and Spanish) was inaugurated at the University. This would have placed the University beyond any doubt in the Justice Scalia category of “more advanced” institutions of higher learning. There is compelling evidence that, over the past three decades, the Howard University upper administration has taken measures to degrade the program in French and Spanish; so much so that the undergraduate major in French has been effectively eliminated and the undergraduate major in Spanish is also well on its way to extinction.  

HOWARD UNIVERSITY AND BLACK CONSCIOUNESS

Ta-Nehisi Coates in his Between the World and Me (2015) makes a distinction between Howard University, the institution of higher learning with its classrooms which were a jail of other people’s theories, ideas and Howard University, the Mecca, “the crossroads of the black diaspora.” Whereas the Mecca nurtured his black consciousness, the institution of higher learning disabused him of his hopes and dreams generated by Howard University as The Mecca.

Coates says quite clearly that he has the History Department of Howard University to thank for disabusing him of his fantasy black consciousness. He writes: “My history professors thought nothing of telling me that my search for myth was doomed, that the stories I wanted to tell myself could not be matched to truths. Indeed, they felt it their duty to disabuse me of my weaponized history” (52). Coates singles out Linda Heywood, whom he remembers as “slight and bespectacled, spoke with a high Trinidadian lilt that she employed like a hammer against young students like me who confused agitprop with hard study” (54) The entire scholarly edifice of Cheikh Anta Diop, even Martin Bernal, James P. Allen is debunked as “agitprop,” “fantasy history.”

Heywood is guided by the views of her husband John Thornton, a white man from Virginia, whom the white supremacist Academy has transformed into a black history expert. Thornton is proud of having concocted his thesis and first book The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718 (Madison, 1983) “by mining carefully the extensive documentation of the Capuchin missionaries in the country… [and] deliberately [ignoring] using either earlier or later materials and much of the ethnographic materials so as to determine continuity and change in the kingdom” (Wikipedia).

FREEDOM ISN’T FREE

The young black writer Ta-Nehisi Coates in his celebrated book, Between the World and Me (published 2015), speaking of his beloved Howard University writes: “It was still a school, after all. I wanted to pursue things, to know things, but I could not match the means of knowing that came naturally to me with the expectations of professors. The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests” (48).

Our slogan at Original World Press is: Scholarship to the People, the People to Scholarship. Our publications bring to African descendants—and, indeed, ultimately, to all humanity—the freedom that is the pursuit of knowing. But FREEDOM ISN’T FREE. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to publish our books; and they are priced to ensure accessibility to our students. We consistently subsidize the publication of these books with OUR PERSONAL FUNDS.

FREEDOM ISN’T FREE