People of Africa ancestry unlike the majority of their counterparts from Europe, China, India, Japan and the rest of the world are foremost in their rejection of the religion and customs of their ancestors. It is estimated that currently only about 10% of the billion-plus people on the African continent identify as practitioners of traditional African religion. In the Diaspora the majority of transplanted Africans have gravitated to the religion of their tormentors to such an extent that even today African spirituality is spoken of pejoratively by the majority of Africans in the Diaspora.
European missionaries, as they paved the way for European military penetration of the African continent painted so hideous a picture of the spiritual traditions of the African people that the indigenous African population recoiled from their own religious traditions. Africans were told that ancestral reverence was akin to witchcraft and that all the spirits that were appealed to were nothing more than demons straight from the pits of hell.
Africans were encouraged, and in many instances, compelled to jettison their traditions that encouraged the maintenance of ancestral memory. For some inexplicable reason African were taught to substitute their own ancestral memory for the ancestral memory of Jews and Europeans. To complete the transformation from their backward and devilish paganism, Africans were bamboozled into trading in their languages and names for European languages and Christian names.
European military dominance over Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora was all the proof needed to establish as an unassailable fact the superiority of the deity and religion of the Europeans over the demons worshipped by African people. It mattered little that European military superiority was being buttressed by gross exploitation and outright theft from African on the continent and in the Diaspora. In a world where might was right, Europeans made certain that all things European were accepted as normative.
A cadre of professional European boot-lickers were developed among Africans whose role was to convince Africans that if the continent was ever to escape the moniker of the dark continent, then a through whitewashing of the continent was absolutely necessary. This new class of Negropeans received their apprenticeships in European colleges and seminaries which equipped them with knowledge that was designed to tighten the chains around the hands, feet, and minds of African people.
Whenever the masses became agitated due to the climate of exploitation and abuse, Negropean politicians and preachers were deployed among them to placate their anger and to reroute revolutionary aspirations into more placid social action. These Negropean politicians and preachers, like the grand old Duke of York, would march the black masses up to the top of the hill and back down the hill in a never-ending parade of useless marches up and down to the European citadels of power.
Occasionally, despite all the best efforts of the European over-lords, some really revolutionary leaders would emerge from the bosom of the African masses. Some of the revolutionary leaders were repentant Negropeans but more often than not the truly revolutionary leaders were men and women who still had intact much of their African ancestral memory. Many of these leaders, like our brave and noble ancestors from Haiti and the maroon communities that emerged among other Diasporan Africans, maintained much of their African continuity
African continuity on the continent and in the Diaspora contributed significantly to struggle for Black liberation and pride. To this day, the greatest push-back against European domination on the continent and in the Diaspora comes from groups with a strong affinity with African ancestral memory. The Rastafarian community that has mushroomed all over the Diaspora and on the African continent is known for its vocal opposition to the European system of Babylon. The Black Live Matter movement in the US also represented a resurrection of African ancestral memory in the Diaspora.
While it is not uncommon to hear boot-licking Negropean preachers castigating witchcraft in traditional African societies it must also be stated that Eurocentric Christianity has failed to transform African and other Black societies in the Diaspora. Ethiopia has had Christianity for nearly two thousand years and yet that country remains one of the poorest nations on the earth.
China, India, and Japan were all touched by the blight of European imperialism. These nations unlike the Africans resisted the cultural and religious penetration of Europeans in their societies. Today China with its traditional religion and culture is thriving. India with its ‘pagan’ Hinduism is also thriving. Japan also gave the thumbs down to European culture and religion. With its religious culture intact Japan became the initiator of the economic miracle that helped to transform Asia.
Learning from others is a sign of maturity. Imitating others to the point of the loss of self-identity is just plain dumb. Ancient Egypt with its worship of Osiris, Isis, and Horus led the world in knowledge and achievement. Ancient Egypt was so great that the Jews of the Bible often had to rely on the Egyptians for their own national survival. Africans still have much to teach the world but our ancestral memory bank will only release its secrets when Africans turn their hearts towards home and embrace the same genius that was gifted to our ancient ancestors.
Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Rebirth Of Black Civilization: Making Africa and the Caribbean Great Again.
