Traditional African Religion is Science

Specific problems are solved by common sense. General problems are solved by theory.


From Pattern of Thought in Africa and the West by Robin Horton

I suggest that in traditional Africa, relations between common sense and theory are essentially the same as in Europe. That is, common sense is the handier and more economic tool for coping with a wide range of circumstances in everyday life. Nevertheless, there are certain circumstances that can only be coped with in terms of wider casual vision than common sense provides. And in these circumstances there is a jump to theoretical thinking.... But it is only from the more recent studies of African cosmologies, where religious beliefs are shown in the context of the various everyday contingencies they are invoked to explain, that we have begun to see how traditional religious thought also operates by similar process of abstraction, analysis and reintegration. 

A Goal of Black Religious Studies and more?

From African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology -- Edited by Gayraud S. Wilmore

"But what is ultimately desirable is what might be called a "second conversion experience" -- away from naive faith, unduly influenced by white evangelicalism appropriated during slavery--to a new persona grounded in mature learned reappropriation of faith in the "God of our weary years...of our silent tears...who has brought us thus far along the way." The liberating God of Africa and of Afro-America: this God alone is the source of the power that holds the entire system of faith and praxis together, with creative energies flowing back and forth between the student, the classroom and congregation; all within the context of a specific sociopolitical situation and analysis."

This is Gayraud Wilmore's vision for African American Religious studies, but I think it should be broaden to include African American religion as a whole.

1624 Christianized Blacks Granted Freedom

In Virginia, the baptism of Blacks conferred special privileges. Since Virginia was a royal colony, the laws of England generally governed the colony. English law declared that a slave who had been "christened or baptised" became "infranchised." Thus, John Phillip, a black "christened" man, could testify in general court against a white man. Philip was considered a free man because he had been baptized twelve years before in England. - from Black Saga by Charles M. Christian. 

As you can see giving up your native African religion to practice Christianity could be a path toward freedom. Once you were baptized or christened you now had a soul; whereas before, if you were Black, you didn't. Later on, of course, becoming Christian didn't make you free. Many slaveholders used the Bible as a justification for slavery.

Women in Traditional African Religion

This is a small snippet from a larger scholarly article. http://www.mamiwata.com/women.html

"With few exceptions African Societies have been described from a masculine perspective. However, a feminine perspective on women’s' roles in traditional religion can be richly illuminating .  This paper will therefore focus on the possibility of a feminine image of deity in African traditional religions and the functions of women, in a world which is fundamentally masculine." 

from

WOMEN IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGIONSby Kenneth Kojo AntiFaculty of EducationUniversity of Cape Coast

Cape Coast, Ghana, West Africa 

"All of us are interracial"

DNA study seeks origin of Appalachia’s Melungeons

Check out this article:

http://news.yahoo.com/dna-study-seeks-origin-appalachias-melungeons-201144041.html

Miles and Coltrane

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch9yMBDgqRU&feature=related

First Slave Revolt in Hispaniola

The first slave revolt in Hispaniola (the island of Haiti and Dominican Republic) occurred in 1522. Reports noted that approximately forty African slaves, apparently reacting to harsh laws passed to control them, killed their masters and escaped to the hills. Later, new legislation was passed to ensure that slaves were treated with more consideration." - Black Saga by Charles M. Christian

Lesson: Sometimes you have to fight for freedom.

African Religion

In continuing my discussion on Africa starting with the first humans and then moving on to humans leaving Africa, I thought the next step should be talking about the traditional religions of Africa. This is what I found on the Internet. First is a pretty comprehensive website. Second, is part of a paper that gives an overview of African Traditional Religion:

http://www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/

What is African Traditional Religion?

 By J. O. Awolalu*

Dr. J. Omosade Awolalu is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies,

University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and has specialised in the field of the African Traditional Religion.

Source: Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 10, No. 2. (Spring, 1976). © World Wisdom, Inc.

www.studiesincomparativereligion.com

            RELIGION is a fundamental, perhaps the most important, influence in the life of most Africans; yet its essential principles are too often unknown to foreigners who thus make themselves constantly liable to misunderstand the African worldview and beliefs. Religion enters into every aspect of the life of the Africans and it cannot be studied in isolation. Its study has to go hand-in hand with the study of the people who practise the religion.

            When we speak of African Traditional Religion, we mean the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Africans. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, and which is being practiced today in various forms and various shades and intensities by a very large number of Africans, including individuals who claim to be Muslims or Christians.

We need to explain the word „traditional‟. This word means indigenous, that which is

aboriginal or foundational, handed down from generation to generation, upheld and practised by Africans today. This is a heritage from the past, but treated not as a thing of the past but as that which connects the past with the present and the present with eternity. This is not a “fossil” religion, a thing of the past or a dead religion. It is a religion that is practiced by living men and women.

            Through modern changes, the traditional religion cannot remain intact but it is by no means extinct. The declared adherents of the indigenous religion are very conservative, resisting the influence of modernism heralded by the colonial era, including the introduction of Islam, Christianity, Western education and improved medical facilities. They cherish their tradition; they worship with sincerity because their worship is quite meaningful to them; they hold tenaciously to their covenant that binds them together. We speak of religion in the singular. This is deliberate. We are not unconscious of the fact that Africa is a large continent with multitudes of nations who have complex cultures, innumerable languages and myriads of dialects. But in spite of all these differences, there are many basic similarities in the religious systems—everywhere there is the concept of God (called by different names); there is also the concept of divinities and/or spirits as well as beliefs in the ancestral cult. Every locality may and does have its own local deities, its own festivals, its own name or names for the Supreme Being, but in essence the pattern is the same. There is that noticeable “Africanness” in the whole pattern. Here we disagree with John Mbiti who chooses to speak of the religion in the plural “because there are about one thousand African peoples (tribes), and each has its own religious system …“1

Peculiarities of the Religion

This is a religion that is based mainly on oral transmission. It is not written on paper but in peoples‟ hearts, minds, oral history, rituals, shrines and religious functions. It has no founders or reformers like Gautama the Buddha, Asoka, Christ, or Muhammad. It is not the religion of one hero. It has no missionaries, or even the desire to propagate the religion, or to proselytize. However, the adherents are loyal worshippers and, probably because of this, Africans who have their roots in the indigenous religion, find it difficult to sever connection with it.

The Supreme Court--Cooper v. Aaron

In the following video U.S. Supreme Court Justice Breyer discusses, among other things, two cases that showcase the growing power of Supreme Court in the United States. This is a part of Black Heritage because the Supreme Court has had more more impact the rights of Black folks than any other institution.

Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG_v8gXPLzI

This is an overview of Cooper v Aaron. This gave teeth to the Supreme court because it solidified the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

What makes this relevant today is that Newt Gingrich advocates the repeal of Cooper v Aaron. Since many conservatives agree with Newt on many issues and he was try to curry the favor conservatives during his run for presidency, I assume that at least some agree with him.


Cooper v. Aaron (1958)

In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Arkansas could not pass legislation undermining the Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. In establishing that the states were bound by its rulings, the Supreme Court affirmed that its interpretation of the Constitution was the "supreme law of the land." 

In 1954, the Supreme Court, in the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education, declared that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution forbade the states from segregating students in their public schools on account of race. In a 1955 follow-up decision (Brown v. Board of Education II), the Court directed all federal district courts to monitor the states' compliance with the Brown decision. The states were ordered to integrate their schools "with all deliberate speed." Soon thereafter, the school board of Little Rock, Arkansas, developed a court-approved plan to integrate its segregated school system. However, around the same time, the Arkansas governor and legislature passed new state laws and constitutional amendments outlawing integration in the state. 

The Little Rock school board and the state clashed on September 4, 1957, when the Arkansas National Guard, under the direction of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, prevented a group of nine African American students ("The Little Rock Nine") from enrolling at Little Rock's Central High School pursuant to the school board's integration plan. Under threat of violence, a local federal court nevertheless ordered the school board to carry out the plan. The next day, again meeting resistance from the Arkansas National Guard, the U.S. government obtained an injunction (legal order to stop) against Governor Faubus in the local federal court, forcing Faubus to withdraw the state national guard. President Dwight Eisenhower then sent in federal national guard troops to protect the nine students from mobs. By the end of September, the students were finally able to enter the school and began attending classes there.

The drama had not ended, however. In February 1958, the Little Rock school board petitioned the local federal court to approve postponing their integration plan. The board cited "chaos, bedlam and turmoil" that had engulfed Central High School since the African American students enrolled. The court agreed, ordering that the students be removed from the school and that plans for integration be delayed another two and a half years. Acting on behalf of the Little Rock Nine, the NAACP appealed the decision to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court's decision and held that the delay would violate the constitutional rights of the Africa American students. Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the case.

The Supreme Court unanimously held that the constitutional rights of the African American students could not be sacrificed for the sake of "order and peace" in public high schools. The African American students could thus remain at Central High School and the school board's original integration plan must go forward. The Court did not stop there, however, and insisted that the governor and legislature of Arkansas were bound by its orders. First, the state government is bound to the terms of the U.S. Constitution under the Supremacy and Oath Clauses (see Article VI). Second, because the Supreme Court is the "voice" of the U.S. Constitution (see Marbury v. Madison [1803]), the state government is bound to the Supreme Court's decisions and may not annul them with legislation, amendments, or orders. 

If Brown v. Board of Education provided the foundation for school integration in the 1950s and 1960s, Cooper v. Aaron provided the muscle. Though Cooper simply reiterated constitutional principles that were already accepted, the decision affirmed the power of the federal courts to enforce federal civil rights laws and court decisions against the states, and the primacy of the Supreme Court in defining what the Constitution requires. As the Court declared, the states' compliance with the principles of civil rights, as articulated by the federal courts, is "indispensable for the protection of the freedoms guaranteed by our fundamental charter for all of us. Our constitutional ideal of equal justice under law is thus made a living truth." 

	AUTHOR'S BIO
	Alex McBride is a third year law student at Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He is articles editor on the TULANE LAW REVIEW and the 2005 recipient of the Ray Forrester Award in Constitutional Law. In 2007, Alex will be clerking with Judge Susan Braden on the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington.

Moors, Slavery and Exploration

From Black Saga: The African American Experience by Charles M. Christian


1492 Black Explorer Nino joins Columbus - Blacks were among the first explorers of the Western Hemisphere
1501 Spain permits African slaves in the Americas
1502 Spain begins slave trade
1512 John Garrido, a slave, initiated the cultivation of wheat in the Americas
1512-13 Africans accompany Spanish explorers

Below is a youtube video called, "When Moors Ruled Europe."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8HnvuKbAo&feature=related

 As you know Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. What you may not know is African Muslims, known as Moors, had dominated Spain and other parts of Europe from the early 700's until 1492, yes more than 700 years.  After 1492, the Moors who chose stay in Spain were forced to convert to Catholicism, the Jews were kicked out of Spain, and we see the beginnings of the Spanish Inquisition. Just ten years later, Spain begins slave trade in the New World. Connections? More to follow.

Human Diaspora

Modern Humans Evolve in Africa -
from - http://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/change

"During a time of dramatic climate change, modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved in Africa. Like early humans, modern humans gathered and hunted food. They evolved behaviors that helped them respond to the challenges of survival. The first modern humans shared the planet with a least three other species of early humans. Over time, as modern humans spread around the world, the three other species became extinct. We became the sole survivors in the human family tree." 

 This is the beginning of African influence around the world. We are all Africans in this sense. It makes the differences in race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation all seem so petty.

Aspects of Black Heritage

There are many aspects the Black Diaspora. As I continue this blog, these are some of the broad areas I will attempt to address.

Aspects of Black Heritage

1. Homo Sapiens – First humans in Africa
2. Agriculture
3. Early Civilizations: Egypt, Nubia, Kush, Napata, Meroe, Axum, Carthage
4. Egyptian influence on Greece
5. They came before Columbus – Black in America
6. Moors civilize Europe
7. Blacks with European explorers
8. Freedom and slavery in America
9. Civil Rights
10. Black arts – Worldwide
11. Black academia – Worldwide
12. Blacks in sports – Worldwide
13. Blacks in politics – Worldwide
14. Black churches – Worldwide
15. Black business – Worldwide
16. Black technology – Worldwide
17. Black relationships and family structures
18. Black Religion and Theology 

More Black Heritage!!

As I find more sites, I'll post them.

http://discoverblackheritage.com/

Opportunities to make a difference and money

Make your own online videos. The more of us out there, the better for everyone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/faster-forward/post/in-online-video-minorities-find-an-audience/2012/04/23/gIQAQneobT_blog.html

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

We overcame slavery and Jim Crow; we can improve our lives now.

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/index.htm

The new Jim Crow Museum is now open to the public. The Museum features six exhibit areas -- Who and What is Jim Crow, Jim Crow Violence, Jim Crow and Anti-Black Imagery, Battling Jim Crow Imagery, Attacking Jim Crow Segregation, and Beyond Jim Crow.

The Museum also offers a comprehensive timeline of the African American experience in the United States. The timeline is divided into six sections: Africa Before Slavery, Slavery in America, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights and Post Civil Rights.

The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University strives to become a leader in social activism and in the discussion of race and race relations. This new facility will provide increased opportunities for education and research. Please join us as we embark on this mission.

Regular hours are Monday thru Friday 12-5 p.m. or group tours by appointment. To schedule a tour, please contact the museum at (231) 591-5873 or atjimcrowmuseum@ferris.edu. Please refer to the calendar of events for availability.

The mission of the Jim Crow Museum is to use objects of intolerance to teach tolerance and promote social justice.

Gay Black Heritage

There is a powerful heritage of people who are both Black and gay. Check out this website.

http://newsone.com/653265/the-top-10-black-gay-and-lesbian-figures-of-all-time/

The Big Payback!

http://www.theroot.com/buzz/blogger-who-trashed-black-studies-fired

How to Be Black

Funny, but real. This brother is from D.C., and ended up going to Sidwell Friends and Harvard. This is an interview about his experiences and about his book How to be Black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNqrIvwDBgw&feature=youtu.be

Human Origins 2

Great, simplistic description of skin color differences:

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color

Modern Human Diversity - Skin Color

Why do people from different parts of the world have different colored skin? 

Why do people from the tropics generally have darker skin color that those who live in colder climates? Variations in human skin color are adaptive traits that correlate closely with geography and the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

As early humans moved into hot, open environments in search of food and water, one big challenge was keeping cool. The adaptation that was favored involved an increase in the number of sweat glands on the skin while at the same time reducing the amount of body hair. With less hair, perspiration could evaporate more easily and cool the body more efficiently. But this less-hairy skin was a problem because it was exposed to a very strong sun, especially in lands near the equator. Since strong sun exposure damages the body, the solution was to evolve skin that was permanently dark so as to protect against the sun’s more damaging rays.

Melanin, the skin's brown pigment, is a natural sunscreen that protects tropical peoples from the many harmful effects of ultraviolet (UV) rays. UV rays can, for example, strip away folic acid, a nutrient essential to the development of healthy fetuses. Yet when a certain amount of UV rays penetrates the skin, it helps the human body use vitamin D to absorb the calcium necessary for strong bones. This delicate balancing act explains why the peoples that migrated to colder geographic zones with less sunlight developed lighter skin color. As people moved to areas farther from the equator with lower UV levels, natural selection favored lighter skin which allowed UV rays to penetrate and produce essential vitamin D. The darker skin of peoples who lived closer to the equator was important in preventing folate deficiency. Measures of skin reflectance, a way to quantify skin color by measuring the amount of light it reflects, in people around the world support this idea. While UV rays can cause skin cancer, because skin cancer usually affects people after they have had children, it likely had little effect on the evolution of skin color because evolution favors changes that improve reproductive success.

There is also a third factor which affects skin color: coastal peoples who eat diets rich in seafood enjoy this alternate source of vitamin D. That means that some Arctic peoples, such as native peoples of Alaska and Canada, can afford to remain dark-skinned even in low UV areas. In the summer they get high levels of UV rays reflected from the surface of snow and ice, and their dark skin protects them from this reflected light.

Human Origins

The beginning of Human history and Black Heritage is in Africa.

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/humanorigins/?gclid=CNeoqbP6668CFYYHRQodnEzb1A

1492 Black Explorer Nino Joins Columbus

"Blacks were among the first explorers of the Western Hemisphere. Pedro (Peter) Alonzo Nino, a pilot on Christopher Columbus' ship the Santa Maria, was identified as a Black Man." from Black Saga: The African American Experience by Charles M. Christian.

Being Black

According to K. Anthony Appiah in "Racial Identity and Racial Identification," The large collective identities that call for recognition come with notions of how a proper person of that kind behaves; it is not that the is one way that blacks should behave, but that there are proper black modes of behavior. These notions provide loose norms or models, which play a role in shaping the life plans of those who make collective identities central to their individual identities; of the classifications that fly under these banners. Collective identities, in short, provide what we might call scripts: narratives that people can use in shaping their life plans and telling their life stories. ...[S]o it seems to me, those who see potential for conflict between individual freedom and the politics of identity are right.

There is some truth to what Dr. Appiah says, but I think the constraints of identity politics, when in comes to Black folks, gives them a structured place from where they can grow and express their creativity. Much like jazz improvisation, where there is the structure of the song, the beat, the rhythm, and the other players, the clarinet player can blow his own tune--do his own thing. Blackness does provide "loose norms and models" to be used as starting place or a historical reference, but should not be see a constraint. Black heritage is the framework for evolving Blackness.  

  

Black Heritage?

So what's so special about Black Heritage? Black Heritage is in a sense greater than the sum of its parts. Black Heritage is special, not only because it has been unappreciated, but also because it has been misrepresented--even by Black folks themselves. Typically, Black Heritage with a capital H is limited to music, sports, and a kind of homespun, native wisdom. What I am going to argue for is our revolutionary heritage, the heritage of intellectual and creative greatness. The heritage influences every achievement by the human species, from science and art to religion and philosophy. In the book Invisible Man there was a character who worked in a paint factory. The biggest selling paint was this extremely pure and bright white paint. The character who was the only one who could make this paint, ironically, was this old Black man. There are many symbolic meanings behind this, but from my perspective, this passage means that there is an ancient Black intellectual spirit that runs deep in the DNA of all creative pursuits that comes directly out of Africa. This is Black Heritage to me. In the posts that follow, the constant theme will be the resilience and greatness of that ancient Black intellectual spirit that exists today in our best and brightest creators. 

Africana Philosophy

Philosophy Born of Struggle
One's philosophy colors everything. Much of what I will be doing with this blog is philosophizing. But this philosophy will be done with respect to Black heritage. Let us begin with some definitions... 

From Outlaw, Jr., Lucius T., "Africana Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/africana/>.

“Africana philosophy” is the name for an emergent and still developing field of ideas and idea-spaces, intellectual endeavors, discourses, and discursive networks within and beyond academic philosophy that was recognized as such by national and international organizations of professional philosophers, including the American Philosophical Association, starting in the 1980s. Thus, the name does not refer to a particular philosophy, philosophical system, method, or tradition. Rather, Africana philosophy is a third-order, metaphilosophical, umbrella-concept used to bring organizing oversight to various efforts of philosophizing—that is, activities of reflective, critical thinking and articulation and aesthetic expression—engaged in by persons and peoples African and of African descent who were and are indigenous residents of continental Africa and residents of the many African Diasporas worldwide. In all cases the point of much of the philosophizings has been to confer meaningful orderings on individual and shared living and on natural and social worlds while resolving recurrent, emergent, and radically disruptive challenges to existence so as to survive, endure, and flourish across successive generations.

The emergent third-order work defining the field has been focused on identifying for research and teaching, and for further refinements and new developments of, instances of philosophical articulations and expressions regarding what has been, and is, of thoughtful, aesthetic significance to persons African and of African descent. This work has produced educative catalogings and critical surveys of particular ideas and idea-spaces; intellectual and aesthetic expressive agendas, practices, and traditions; and networks of individuals, organizations, and institutions serving philosophizing in African and African-descended life-worlds.

Shameless Self-promotion (getting this out of the way)

Being and Happiness by Rodney Ferguson 285 pages Being and Happiness will make one happier by explicating existence. Share on Facebook Paperback $15.95   + Flat-rate shipping & handling as low as $4.00 for US customers. Faster shipping and international shipping available for more.

Category: Fiction:Spiritual
About the Book
Seeking to prove that the world makes sense and everyone can be happier, Being and Happiness is a duet of worldviews. It challenges old assumptions and posits new juxtapositions in an attempt to fathom the depths of metaphysics and human psychology. It calls for an analytic spirituality that is informed by science, history, economics, and art. By using dialogue to confront assumptions and poetry to explicate various phenomena, Being and Happiness is written with direct simplicity but post-modern sensibility. Unlike new age books, every assumption is challenged in an effort to arrive at honesty, if not an approximate truth. This book is the self-exploration of someone who is extremely happy by any measure. It uses a fictional setting to illustrate a path to complete happiness from deepest depression. A dialogue format is used to question bold philosophical and psychological claims. There are two characters: Virgil, who is trying to prove that the world makes sense and is a great place to live, and Dante who is a skeptic yet happens to be his wife. It is a philosophical bouillabaisse that subtly dialogues with Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, Richard Bach's Illusions, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained, and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Don't forget the slices of Proustian French bread on the side. Being and Happiness will make you happier.

About the Author
	Rodney Ferguson has worked in inner city adult literacy programs for 15 years. He has helped innumerable students, faced with overwhelming challenges, become happier members of society. He is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Philosophy. You can purchase this book at:  http://booklocker.com/books/1420.html

The American Legends Series plus

"Black Heritage Network is the first Black TV channel built on non-fiction programming. We feature contemporary “in the moment” programming and Classic Black heritage. Viewers can consistently expect to enjoy a Black American focused  entertaining programming service consisting of in the moment programs dealing with contemporary real-life issues, documentaries, docudramas, interviews, news and movie programming, including current events and issues of interest to all Americans.

Black Heritage Network delivers originally produced content. An agreement is in place to develop programming with the National Basketball Association. Our first series in development is On and Off the Court, stories of basketball’s brightest stars on and off the court.  Access to 70 years of the CBS News archive enables us to bring viewers dramatic, historically significant interviews with pioneers like Malcolm X, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Muhammad Ali and Walter Cronkite as he anchors the March on Washington. A slate of original series is also in production by the BHN creative team with 40 years of EMMY and Peabody award-winning top rated programming on CBS, A&E, Disney, Discovery, Bravo, National Geographic, and TLC.

Black Heritage Network is based in the Washington, DC area." - From http://www.blackheritagenetwork.com/

Although, in this blog, we will keep up with what going on at the Black Heritage Network (BHN), we will also dig deeper into important Black American legends, African, and African-American history, Black theology, and other issues important to those interested in Black Heritage.

We also will deal with current issues in light of Black Heritage. For example, what is the connection between the Trayvon Martin killing and the interaction of Black youth and law enforcement throughout American history?