Listen Siblings, I come in peace,
“I hold that colored persons, whatever the complexion, can only obtain an equality with whites by the descendants of Africa of unmixed blood. [. . . For] the instant that an equality of the blacks with the whites is admitted, we being the descendants of the two, must be acknowledged the equals of both. Is not this clear?” — Martin Delany (As Placido)
Most Multi-Racials (hereafter implying significant African ancestry) are the result of rape. For the gross Power imbalances between Africans and Europeans or Africans and Asians makes a mockery of ‘consent.’ This tosses Multi-Racials into a world where neither fully Powerful nor Powerless they are apt in their Pride to hurt the Powerless. The African Blood Siblings here invites them to help the Powerless and in turn help themselves. African Power is the solution to African and Multi-Racial Powerlessness. As the only organization obedient to the Laws of Nature, Harmony and Morality, the African Blood Siblings is the most capable vessel for African Empowerment. We are in need of membership, you are in need of power. Let us exchange and make good of our future. Subscribe, share, love.
Multi-Racial Pride!
By Onitaset Kumat
Membership of the African Blood Siblings are trained in Natural Philosophy. In order to harmoniously engage with the Human world, one must understand the Human world’s constituents: The Nature of the Human Races. Mis-Education deceives that there’s only one Human Nature: incidentally the Mis-Educator’s Nature; yet, in the African Blood Siblings we educate how Africans follow Originalism; Asians, Orientalism; and Europeans, Occidentalism. This leaves the Multi-Racial able in the Natures of her ancestry. Rather than Pride herself in Multiple Natures, the Multi-Racial, especially in a culture of African Domination, should embrace Originalism and dismiss Orientalism and Occidentalism.
Historically, this has not been the case. John Edward Bruce documents a disgusting, disturbing article where a Multi-Racial man, supposed African, was arrested and, expecting special treatment, told the New York World that he was Thomas Dixon’s half-brother. Thomas Dixon responded, “Yes, I know that darky, he is always getting himself into trouble and I have helped him a number of times. His mother was cook in our family in N.C.” To wit, Thomas Dixon wrote “The Clansman,” the book which became “Birth of a Nation.” He was a White Supremacist among White Supremacists and his half-brother, the product of a raped mother, proudly vaunted his relation, even though Thomas Dixon regarded him as “darky” and had a large role in reviving the Klu Klux Klan. See more here: http://books.google.com/books?id=9N44oRFDOaMC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=%22Yes
Other examples of ugly Multi-Racial Pride include the Brazilian Africans who refuse to identify as African and those members of the NAACP during Garvey’s time who would hide their mothers when entertaining company.
That Multi-Racials are by and large the product of rape is not hyperbole. In the Autobiography of Malcolm X we read this informative passage:
“. . . my beautiful, black brothers and sisters! And when we say ‘black,’ we mean everything not white, brothers and sisters! Because look at your skins! We’re all black to the white man, but we’re a thousand and one different colors. Turn around, look at each other! What shade of black African polluted by devil white man are you? You see me-well, in the streets they used to call me Detroit Red. Yes! Yes, that raping, red-headed devil was my grandfather! That close,
yes! My mother’s father! She didn’t like to speak of it, can you blame her? She said she never laid eyes on him! She was glad for that! I’m glad for her! If I could drain away his blood that pollutes my body, and pollutes my complexion, I’d do it! Because I hate every drop of the rapist’s blood that’s in me!
“And it’s not just me, it’s all of us! During slavery, think of it, it was a rare one of our black grandmothers, our great-grandmothers and our great-great-grandmothers who escaped the white rapist slavemaster. That rapist slavemaster who emasculated the black man . . . with threats, with fear . . . until even today the black man lives with fear of the white man in his heart! Lives even today still under the heel of the white man!
“Think of it-think of that black slave man filled with fear and dread, hearing the screams of his wife, his mother, his daughter being taken-in the barn, the kitchen, in the bushes! Think of it, my dear brothers and sisters! Think of hearing wives, mothers, daughters, being raped! And you were too filled with fear of the rapist to do anything about it! And his vicious, animal attacks’ offspring, this white man named things like ‘mulatto’ and ‘quadroon’ and ‘octoroon’ and all those other things that he has called us-you and me-when he is not calling us ‘nigger‘!
“Turn around and look at each other, brothers and sisters, and think of this! You and me, polluted all these colors-and this devil has the arrogance and the gall to think we, his victims, should love him!”
I would become so choked up that sometimes I would walk in the streets until late into the night. Sometimes I would speak to no one for hours, thinking to myself about what the white man had
done to our poor people here in America.
The truth of rape is not only spoken by Malcolm X. You can hear it from the horse’s mouth. Thistlewood, a typical Overseer during the 18th century, maintained a diary which shows how alone he raped over 100 of our ancestors and often used sex as punishment or observed enslaved Africans refuse sex and get killed (besides all the other horrid tortures like forcing an enslaved African to defecate in the punished’s mouth.) By today’s standards Thistlewood would be a serial rapist. Yet Trevor Burnard, another European, comments on the brutality understanding how typical it was for Africans to be raped; and how typical it was, and is, for Europeans to be serial rapists. He documents his findings here: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/guy60/History326/Burnard.pdf
Here is a notable recognition of rape culture (red print signifies a European or Asian auditor thus cautioning the reader [These people lie, speak half-truths and rarely "Know"]):
“Tolerance of white male licentiousness was an even more prominent feature of eighteenth-century Jamaican society, even if that tolerance was forced on the part of all except white men. The key fact about Jamaica’s sexual culture was that it allowed extreme latitude to white men, who acted virtually as they pleased, without needing to fear that they would suffer any social consequences for their persistent philandering.”
Trevor continues with what’s actually a commentary on today’s times masked as a commentary on Thistlewood’s. Note that the Power relationship between Europeans and Africans remains severely unbalanced. Power resources remain in European hands. Therefore the Psychological Analysis of Consent to Interracial relations during Slavery remains legitimate today as a Dependent, Impoverished, Individualistic people, as Africans are, are definitively Enslaved. In short, as the horse himself reasons for the past, in the present Interracial Sex is Rape:
Power relations between blacks and whites were so unequal that to talk of the possibility of truly consensual sexual relations may be fanciful. Indeed, some commentators, looking at the unequal power relations between slaves and masters, have considered all interracial sexual relations within slavery to be forms of rape. Clearly, Thistlewood’s female slaves lived in a world of systematic sexual coercion, where at any time they were potential victims of sexual exploitation. Female slaves suffered, through their presumed sexual availability, from frequent acts of sexual violence, whose consequences were seldom addressed.
Thistlewood was probably a racist in deed and certainly in thought. He harbored attitudes toward the sexual explotation of black women that were deplorable, even for men of his time and place. One story he relates speaks volumes about his attitude toward violent sex. A Mr. Banton told Thistlewood “of ye Barb[ados] woman that was rap’d by three of them (at Kingston) in a short space, he ye Middle one yet she laid ye Bastard Child to him and how he made her explain herself.” A gang rape of a black woman was only cause for comment when there was a story attached to it. Sex and violence were intimately linked in Thistlewood’s mind, even if in his diaries he never describes his sexual actions as violent. But the threat of violence was always there. Thistlewood made clear to female slaves caught transgressing, for example, that they could have sex with him in lieu of other forms of punishment. In February 1753 Clara was absent, “wanting,” all one afternoon. On her arrival home, Thistlewood promptly had sex with her “by the Coffee Tree.” In September of the same year Thistlewood had sex with “Waadah in the Still House sup floor,” having “found her hid there, runaway I suppose.” Refusing to have sex with Thistlewood was not an option that was realistically open to any slave woman save Phibbah, whose relationship with Thistlewood was sufficiently well established to allow her to have some say in their sexual interactions. Clara and Waadah, however, knew that they needed to submit to Thistlewood’s sexual demands or else receive physical punishment–punishment that may have been all the more severe as a result of their refusals.
Black women’s capacity to resist the sexual advances of white men accustomed to having near-absolute power over their slaves was extremely limited, as the following two accounts show. On 12 March 1755, Thistlewood noted that his employer, John Cope, brought a party of six men to Egypt estate, where they caroused. Late in the evening “all except Cope and one other, after being heartily drunk, haw’led Eve separately into the Water Room and were Concern’d with her [.] Weech 2ce [twice] First and last.” Thistlewood’s tone suggests that he disapproved of this gang rape of an innocent house slave. That he did not punish Eve when she ran away following her ordeal confirms his disapproval of the men’s treatment of her. But he did nothing to stop the rape–it was hardly possible for him to do so considering that Cope was his employer–and continued to associate with the men involved in it. Two years previously, however, he had intervened in what was an attempted rape: “At Night Mr Paul Stevens and Thomas Adams going to tear old Sarah to pieces in her hutt, had a quarrel with them. They burnt her and would fire the hutt Note they both drunk.” But Thistlewood was not so much concerned at the attack on Sarah as alarmed by the white men’s presumption in interfering with his charges and disturbed that Steven and Adams had attempted to damage estate property. This episode demonstrates how perilous it was for slaves to resist white advances: Sarah got burnt for trying.
As I said, Trevor’s analysis on what Interracialism means in such gross Power Disparities continues to this day. European people control virtually all of the resources of every society which they share with Africans. In such a situation, the psychology of Africans to “voluntarily” engage in rape remains. Power itself influences these relations, a Power without which would never even make the interracial interaction possible.
An Ancestor Harriet Jacobs documents her own submission to rape. Notice how her “decision” to be raped by a European is related to how Europeans are seen as “Superior” and how importantly she esteems her Enslaver. The Power analysis is implied and readers should read and reread the passage until it becomes clearer how White Power (in relation to her rapist and Enslaver) influences Harriet Jacobs’ submission:
And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly forget if I could. The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame. It pains me to tell you of it; but I have promised to tell you the truth, and I will do it honestly, let it cost me what it may. I will not try to screen myself behind the plea of compulsion from a master; for it was not so. Neither can I plead ignorance or thoughtlessness. For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I knew what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation.
But, O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished, I, also, could have married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by the laws; and I should have been spared the painful task of confessing what I am now about to relate; but all my prospects had been blighted by slavery. I wanted to keep myself pure; and, under the most adverse circumstances, I tried hard to preserve my self-respect; but I was struggling alone in the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery; and the monster proved too strong for me. I felt as if I was forsaken by God and man; as if all my efforts must be frustrated; and I became reckless in my despair.
I have told you that Dr. Flint’s persecutions and his wife’s jealousy had given rise to some gossip in the neighborhood. Among others, it chanced that a white unmarried gentleman had obtained some knowledge of the circumstances in which I was placed. He knew my grandmother, and often spoke to me in the street. He became interested for me, and asked questions about my master, which I answered in part. He expressed a great deal of sympathy, and a wish to aid me. He constantly sought opportunities to see me, and wrote to me frequently. I was a poor slave girl, only fifteen years old.
So much attention from a superior person was, of course, flattering; for human nature is the same in all. I also felt grateful for his sympathy, and encouraged by his kind words. It seemed to me a great thing to have such a friend. By degrees, a more tender feeling crept into my heart. He was an educated and eloquent gentleman; too eloquent, alas, for the poor slave girl who trusted in him. Of course I saw whither all this was tending. I knew the impassable gulf between us; but to be an object of interest to a man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable to the pride and feelings of a slave, if her miserable situation has left her any pride or sentiment. It seems less degrading to give one’s self, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment. A master may treat you as rudely as he pleases, and you dare not speak; moreover, the wrong does not seem so great with an unmarried man, as with one who has a wife to be made unhappy. There may be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible.
When I found that my master had actually begun to build the lonely cottage, other feelings mixed with those I have described. Revenge, and calculations of interest, were added to flattered vanity and sincere gratitude for kindness. I knew nothing would enrage Dr. Flint so much as to know that I favored another, and it was something to triumph over my tyrant even in that small way. I thought he would revenge himself by selling me, and I was sure my friend, Mr. Sands, would buy me. He was a man of more generosity and feeling than my master, and I thought my freedom could be easily obtained from him. The crisis of my fate now came so near that I was desperate. I shuddered to think of being the mother of children that should be owned by my old tyrant. I knew that as soon as a new fancy took him, his victims were sold far off to get rid of them; especially if they had children. I had seen several women sold, with babies at the breast. He never allowed his offspring by slaves to remain long in sight of himself and his wife. Of a man who was not my master I could ask to have my children well supported; and in this case, I felt confident I should obtain the boon. I also felt quite sure that they would be made free. With all these thoughts revolving in my mind, and seeing no other way of escaping the doom I so much dreaded, I made a headlong plunge. Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another. You never exhausted your ingenuity in avoiding the snares, and eluding the power of a hated tyrant; you never shuddered at the sound of his footsteps, and trembled within hearing of his voice. I know I did wrong. No one can feel it more sensibly than I do. The painful and humiliating memory will haunt me to my dying day. Still, in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others.
The months passed on. I had many unhappy hours. I secretly mourned over the sorrow I was bringing on my grandmother, who had so tried to shield me from harm. I knew that I was the greatest comfort of her old age, and that it was a source of pride to her that I had not degraded myself, like most of the slaves. I wanted to confess to her that I was no longer worthy of her love; but I could not utter the dreaded words.
She continues. You can read from her how effective White Power is when Black people are Powerless. Though she formerly had a Black Suitor, her Enslaver forbid his contact and ultimately this White Rapist gained access to Harriet Jacobs and his contest was her White Enslaver for whom she “cut her nose to spite her face.” What’s noteworthy too is how she comments on how “So much attention from a superior person was, of course, flattering; for human nature is the same in all” Not only does this African woman contend that a European man is her superior, she also claims the fabrication that Europeans and Africans have the same “human nature” (How do we explain no indigenous European Civilization in the face of innumerable African Civilizations?) This Power Dynamic of Rape continues in interracial relationships today. Yet, like Harriet Jacobs, participants are unaware that rape is the by-product: This is how Powerful White Power is; and how Powerless Black people are.
Harriet Jacobs has several other passages on the origin of Multi-Racials in the rape culture of slavery. Here’s a few:
V. The Trials Of Girlhood.
During the first years of my service in Dr. Flint’s family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress. Though this seemed to me no more than right, I was grateful for it, and tried to merit the kindness by the faithful discharge of my duties. But I now entered on my fifteenth year—a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import. I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master’s age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months. He was a crafty man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purposes. Sometimes he had stormy, terrific ways, that made his victims tremble; sometimes he assumed a gentleness that he thought must surely subdue. Of the two, I preferred his stormy moods, although they left me trembling. He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred. But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him—where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men. The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage. The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe. Surely, if you credited one half the truths that are told you concerning the helpless millions suffering in this cruel bondage, you at the north would not help to tighten the yoke. You surely would refuse to do for the master, on your own soil, the mean and cruel work which trained bloodhounds and the lowest class of whites do for him at the south.
Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows. Even the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her children, will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that her mistress hates such and such a one among the slaves. Perhaps the child’s own mother is among those hated ones. She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave. I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it. I cannot tell how much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs, nor how I am still pained by the retrospect. My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings. The other slaves in my master’s house noticed the change. Many of them pitied me; but none dared to ask the cause. They had no need to inquire. They knew too well the guilty practices under that roof; and they were aware that to speak of them was an offence that never went unpunished.
No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery. The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear. The lash and the foul talk of her master and his sons are her teachers. When she is fourteen or fifteen, her owner, or his sons, or the overseer, or perhaps all of them, begin to bribe her with presents. If these fail to accomplish their purpose, she is whipped or starved into submission to their will. She may have had religious principles inculcated by some pious mother or grandmother, or some good mistress; she may have a lover, whose good opinion and peace of mind are dear to her heart; or the profligate men who have power over her may be exceedingly odious to her. But resistance is hopeless.
The poor worm
Shall prove her contest vain. Life’s little day
Shall pass, and she is gone!The slaveholder’s sons are, of course, vitiated, even while boys, by the unclean influences every where around them. Nor do the master’s daughters always escape. Severe retributions sometimes come upon him for the wrongs he does to the daughters of the slaves. The white daughters early hear their parents quarrelling about some female slave. Their curiosity is excited, and they soon learn the cause. They are attended by the young slave girls whom their father has corrupted; and they hear such talk as should never meet youthful ears, or any other ears. They know that the woman slaves are subject to their father’s authority in all things; and in some cases they exercise the same authority over the men slaves. I have myself seen the master of such a household whose head was bowed down in shame; for it was known in the neighborhood that his daughter had selected one of the meanest slaves on his plantation to be the father of his first grandchild. She did not make her advances to her equals, nor even to her father’s more intelligent servants. She selected the most brutalized, over whom her authority could be exercised with less fear of exposure. Her father, half frantic with rage, sought to revenge himself on the offending black man; but his daughter, foreseeing the storm that would arise, had given him free papers, and sent him out of the state.
In such cases the infant is smothered, or sent where it is never seen by any who know its history. But if the white parent is the father, instead of the mother, the offspring are unblushingly reared for the market. If they are girls, I have indicated plainly enough what will be their inevitable destiny.
These explanations of how Multi-Racials come about, which are truly descriptions of how Europeans exploit their Power to sexually assault African people is the continued phenomenon we observe in Interracial Relations today. Africans can suppose otherwise, but that is part and parcel due to European Domination and African Subordination (a confusion of our thoughts); or in other words, were African people Powerful, they would never consent to a people who Hate their Africanness (or in commoner terms, we would never consent to people who loved White Power; the ancients said “Leave him in error who loves his error.”)
This interracial pattern can be seen at a cursory glance of Craigslist, nightly visits to certain impoverished neighborhood, or Trucker stop’s where innumerable African women and men now prostitute themselves to Europeans for a share, albeit paltry, of European Power (many times money.) It’s an exploitation that African people often deem themselves ‘consenting’ to. In “Europeans, Pedophilia and Re-Organization” we watched Kenyan teenagers seek out Europeans to sexually exploit them, themselves believing free will; though their Power dictates that it’s either Rape or Death. A quotation:
In Kenya, for instance, one of every two teenage girls have participated in prostitution with European men. In a normal nightclub, girls of twelve and thirteen are publicly molested by Italian, German and Swiss (among other) “tourists.”
We saw this same paradigm in Celia, Diallo and a Somali woman’s rapes. In “Missouri V. Celia (1855) and Nafissatou Diallo (2011)” we read that Celia, an enslaved woman in 1855, only accidentally killed her rapist and powerlessly received the death penalty as a result; we also hear from Diallo in 2011 that despite being actively raped by Dominique Strauss Khan she opined, “I don’t want to hurt him . . . I don’t want to lose my job.” We know from her story how her own lawyer refuses to defend her; himself dismissing her case. In “A Solution to the Rape of our Women” we read of the Somali woman who remarks of her Muslim rapists, “I’ve had some very bad dreams about these men. I don’t know what religion they are.” Even though Asian/Muslim rapes are notoriously historic. Black Powerlessness makes African people ineffective at even self-protection, and this is what created Multi-Racials, and this is what Multi-Racials should not be proud of: the “Rape” of their Mothers and Fathers, raped by European and Asian Women and Men.
Multi-Racials should never take Pride in the Rape or the Rapist, but, if with African ancestry, should feel African Pride and stay away from Interracialism. An excellent example comes near the end of Carter G. Woodson’s “The Mis-Education of the Negro.”
A well-to-do European woman, the daughter of a Dutchman and an African mother, is similarly enthusiastic over her Negro blood. The first thing she mentioned in conversing with the writer was that black mother. This young woman expressed the regret that she did not have more of that color that she, too, might say, as do members of certain tribes of Africa: “I am black and comely. I am black and beautiful. I am beautifully black.”
We are a long way from,
“I am black and comely. I am black and beautiful. I am beautifully black.”
Yet it’s of the utmost importance that we encourage this in all Multi-Racials. Especially as Historically Multi-Racials have been used against African people. Dr. Chancellor Williams (The Destruction of Black Civilizations) studied Ancient Civilizations and concluded that:
The melting pot of the races began around the northern perimeter. The end result was always the same: The Blacks were pushed to the bottom of the social, economical, and political ladder whenever and wherever the Asians and their mulatto offsprings gained control. This scheme of weakening the Blacks by turning their half-white brothers against them cannot be overemphasized because it began in the early times, became the universal practice of whites, and is still one of the corner-stones in the edifice of White Power. The White Asians were generally very proud of their sons by Black women. But these Black mothers remained slaves, while their mulatto sons and daughters were born free and, moreover, classified as “white.” As such they formed a social class that, while never recognized as equal with the “real whites,” had just about all the other priviliges of free men.
The picture was generally the same from about 4,000 B.C., onward.
Marcus Garvey (Philosophies and Opinions of Marcus Garvey) observed this too:
Some of us in America, the West Indies and Africa believe that the nearer we approach the white man in color the greater our social standing and privilege and that we should build up an “aristocracy” based upon caste of color and not achievement in race. It is well known, although no one is honest enough to admit it, that we have been, for the past thirty years at least, but more so now than ever, grading ourselves for social honor and distinction on the basis of color: That the average success in the race has been regulated by color and not by ability and merit; that we have been trying to get away from the pride of race into the atmosphere of color worship, to the damaging extent that the whole world has made us its laughing stock.
There is no doubt that a race that doesn’t respect itself forfeits the respect of others, and we are in the moral-social position now of losing the respect of the whole world.
There is a subtle and underhand propaganda fostered by a few men of color in America, the West Indies and Africa to destroy the self-respect and pride of the Negro race by building up what is commonly known to us as a “blue vein” aristocracy and to foster same as the social and moral standard of the race. The success of this effort is very much marked in the West Indies, and coming into immediate recognition in South Africa, and is now gaining much headway in America under the skillful leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of “Colored” People and their silent but scattered agents.
Irritated Genie calls this “The Illusion of Inclusion.” The Multi-Racial however should not regard embracing their African identity as a denial of themselves. Rather, the Multi-Racial benefits solely and greatly from Africa’s uplift as Martin Delany so reminded us over a hundred years ago in this insightful dialogue.
“I do not wish to be troublesome,” interrupted Madame Cordora, rising to her feet, “but I must here ask another explanation. Engaged as we all are in a common cause for liberty and equality, I would not have a difference to be made at the start. The poet in his prayer spoke of Ethiopia’s sons; are not some of us left out in that supplication, as I am sure, although identified together, wea re not all Ethiopians.”
“No,” rejoined Placido, “we are not; but necessarily implied in the term, and cannot exist without it.”
“How so; I’m sure I cannot understand you!” replied the Madame with surprise.
“I’ll explain,” said Placido. “I hold that colored persons, whatever the complexion, can only obtain an equality with whites by the descendants of Africa of unmixed blood.”
“You surprise me, Señor Placido! I certainly cannot comprehend you. That is a positive admission that the mixed bloods are inferior to the pure-blooded descendants of Africa. I did no expect it to come to this, I think the acknowledgement of an equality of classes is sufficient for any purpose, without having to regard ourselves as inferiors–just what we are all contending against.”
“I see you do not understand my position, Madame Cordora; let me make it plain to you,” further explained the poet. “The whites assert the natural inferiority of the African as a race: upon this they premise their objections, not only to the blacks, but all who have any affinity with them. You see this position taken by the high Court of America, which declares that persons having African blood in their veins have no rights that white men are bound to respect. Now how are the mixed bloods ever to rise? The thing is plain; it requires no explanation. The instant that an equality of the blacks with the whites is admitted, we being the descendants of the two, must be acknowledged the equals of both. Is not this clear?”
“I certainly see it, Señor Placido, as I never saw it before, and you have given me a greater idea of the relation we sustain to the African race, than I ever had before; and the same certainly obtains in regard to Africa as a country, and her people as a nation or nations.”
“Of course it does. Heretofore that country has been regarded as desolate–unadapted to useful cultivation or domestic animals, and consequently, the inhabitants savage, lazy, idle, and incapable of the higher civilization and only fit for bondmen, contributing nothing to the civilized world but that which is extorted from them as slaves. Instead of this, let us prove, not only that the African race is now the principal producer of the greater part of the luxuries of enlightened countries, as various fruits, rice, sugar, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, spices, and tobacco; but that in Africa their native land, they are among the most industrious people in the world, highly cultivating the lands, and that ere long they and their country must hold the balance of commercial power by supplying as they now do as foreign bondmen in strange lands, the greatest staple commodities in demand, as rice, coffee, sugar, and especially cotton, from their own native shores, the most extensive native territory, climate, soil, and greatest number of (almost the only natural producers) inhabitants in the universe; and that race and country will at once rise to the first magnitude of importance in the estimation of the greatest nations on earth, from their dependence upon them for the greatest staples from which is derived their national wealth.”
“How surprising! What a different requisition this places us in to the whites. And are there really hopes of Africa becoming a great country, Colonel Montego?”
“Nay, Madame, not only ‘hopes’ but undoubted probabilities, and that too at no distant day. The foundation of all great nationalities depends as a basis upon three elementary principles: first, territorial domain; second, population; third, staple commodities as a source of national wealth. The territory must be extensive, population numerous, and the staple such as the world requires and must have; and if the productions be not natural, they must be artificial. This will be seen in the case of Great Britain, which being but a small island, extended her dominions by conquest, thus adding an immense population, and taking advantage of her coal, established manufactories to supply the world with fabrics, in addition to her natural mineral productions, also made available by art. Africa, to the contrary, has five thousand miles of latitude, and four thousand longitude, with two hundred millions of homogenous population, all of whom readily assimilate themselves to civilized customs, and their continent, as shown before, producing the greatest staples of wealth to the world. Do you now understand it, Madame Cordora?”[36]
“Indeed I do, Señor Placido; and although I thought I had no prejudices, I never before felt as proud of my black as I did of my white blood. I can readily see that the blacks compose an important element in the commercial and social relations of the world. Thank God for even this night’s demonstrations, if we do no more. How sensibly I feel, that a people never entertain proper opinions of themselves until they begin to act for themselves.”
“This is true, Madame,” added Placido, “and I might call your attention further tot he fact that by a comparison of the races, you may find the Africans in all parts of the world, readily and willingly mingling among and adopting all the usages of civilized life, attaining wherever practicable, every position in society, while those of the others, except the Caucasians, seldom acquire any but their own native usages.”
“And these are really the people declared by American Laws, to ‘have no rights that a white is bound to respect’? Why have we so long submitted to them?” said the Madame with a burst of indignation, taking her seat amidst demonstrations of intense emotion.
“It is indeed a sad reflection,” said Blake, “to contrast the difference between British and American jurisprudence. How sublime the spectacle of the colossal stature (compared with the puppet figure of the Judge of the American Supreme Court), of the Lord Chief Justice when standing up declaring to the effect: that by the force of British intelligence, the purity of their morals, the splendor of their magnanimity, and aegis of the Magna Charta, the moment the foot of a slave touched British soil, he stood erect, disenthralled in the dignity of a freeman, by the irresistable genius of universal emancipation.”[37]
“Let us then,” said Placido, “make ourselves respected.”
So let’s follow this call. What’s more let’s recognize in the creation of Multi-Racials through Interracial Rape another African problem. Not that Multi-Racials are problems, far from, but let’s recognize how Black Powerlessness is at the root of Multi-Racial Birthings. Delany also explained this in his novel Blake.
“One thing I do know, if our men do not decide on something in our favor, they will soon be called to look upon us in a state of concubinage; for such treatment as this will force every weak-minded woman to place herself under the care of those who are able to protect them from personal abuse. If they have no men of their associations who can, they must find those who will!–O, my God, the thought is enough to drive me distracted–I’ll destroy myself first!” said Ambrosina, startling every person present.
“You speak rationally, my child, regarding yourself, that is just what white men desire to do, drive colored women as a necessity to seek their protection that they may become the subjects of their lust. Do you die first before thinking of such a thing: and let what might come, before yielding to such degradation as that I would be one of the first to aid in laying the city in ashes!” replied the mother.
It’s so that Africans are in a state of concubinage. It’s upon us to uplift ourselves. African power should be the root of African Pride and Multi-Racial Pride. African Power is only achieved through Intelligent Organization. Africans and Multi-Racials should realize that theirs is a timeless struggle for African Civilization. Both should identify with Africans and Reproduce with Africans (after appropriate self-improvement and vetting) and definitely Organize with the African Blood Siblings. Only Organization will give to them what they yearn: Prosperous, Independent African Communities with which they can navigate with their heads high and their abilities appreciated. BLACK POWER! Whether you are Multi-Racial or virtually Pure: BLACK POWER!
