RBG Afrikan- Centered Cultural Development and Education

RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Purpose:
This Educational Program and Research Project is Dedicated to Further Building the Hip Hop--Black Liberation Movement Connection by Integrating Conscious Digital Edutainment with A Scholarly Self Directed Learning Environment.

Welcome to one of the baddest EduTainment Resources on the Web. A one-stop-shop for education,consciousness raising, entertainment and liberation. And the nicest thing about it is that you can become a contributor. Just start out by reading this overview and learning how things work. You can play a video right within this start page and even browse to it's music. Or turn on an audio playlist to facilitate your browsing. Tons of other options, too numerous to mention here are also right at you finger tips. Ride it however you like, it's all good. Once you get going, check out a Multi-Media Article that interests you and make a comment. I, RBG Street Scholar-Your Zine author, editor and guru will respond. The aforementioned approach is a kol gateway to doing bigger and better things in and with the Communiversity.

WHAT IS RBG STREET SCHOLARS THINK TANK AT ZIMBIO ALL ABOUT?

It's about creating and maintaining the best "Afri-Conscious Cyber EduTainment Portal / Communiversity on the Web".

It's about saving time doing study, learning / teaching together and having madd fun doing it.
The merticulously researched choice of links can be thought of as our votes in the popularity contest that is the "Best of the Best in Black Internet" . The intention is to provide a diverse and concise starting point for you to begin your quest for whatever information you are looking for from a progressive/radical/revolutionary Black perspective . As most of these sites have vast links sections of their own, so do the sites they link to, and so on, and so forth—starting from these links, you can delve further into whatever area interests you.

You got a myspace, youtube, odeo, website etc.
Add your Stuff Folx--and let's learn from each other, build together and teach the world

Our Zines are intended to help us develop and maintain a resource for scholarly research, build together and learn about any subject / topic related to what we're already about: Namely, the "Africentric Idea of Education" let's take the learner from G.E.D. to Ph.D in the contemporary liberal arts and sciences;

Including:
> computers & information technology,
> history and cultural development,
> religion and spirituality,
> sociology,
> political science,
> creative productions/ entertainment,
> education,
> health promotion and disease prevention
> economics and
> psychology
A one stop shop using all forms of media to interactively showcase our ideas of relavent education, unification, collectivity and self definition.

They say " Black Folx Can't Unite, I say they're a lie" Let's show the world our truth and culture; all under the umbrella of Black Nationalism> PanAfrikanism> Scientific Socialism> Revolutionary Change>Afrikan Internationalism.

Browse existing content in any of our four Zines and you will discover that they are all concentricly integrated, thus providing you with a most rich and wholesome interactive learning experience.

Help RBG Street Scholar, your Resident Guru, build our school with your good works.

Rate each others work as to keep us on point.

I'VE STARTED US OUT WITH SOME SOLID CONTENT. NOW WE MUST CONTINUE BY BUILDING TOGETHER. A GOOD WAY TO START IS BY FIRST SIGNING UP AND THEN BROWSING EACH FIELD IN THE TABLE OF CONTENTS PANE TO THE LEFT AS TO GET QUICKLY ORIENTED. A LINK BELOW TO "RBG STREET SCHOLARS THINK TANK RULES OF ENGAGEMENT" WILL TAKE YOU DEEPER STILL.

THE FOLLOWING IS A GUIDING SYNOSIS TAKEN FROM THE COMMUNIVERSITY PROPER:
With strick attention to developing our student’s basic education skills in the context of the highest standards of academic excellence, suitable for one to confidently sit for high stake exams(ie. SAT/ACT and MCATs, LSATs), we simutaneously advance the psycho-emotional healing and spiritual upliftment of our people by providing KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM AND OVERSTANDING of the historo-cultural, socio-political and psycho-educational experiences of Africans in America in away that RADICALLY REAPPRAISES EDUCATION from the pained and angry perspective of the oppressed black community.

WHY WE NEED TO DO THIS:
With the present day high rates of Black on Black homicide, suicide, and imprisonment and a rise in single-parent homes, rampant police brutality, unprecedented unemployment, and Blacks use of popular (ENEMY) culture (through music, video games and popular movies) to celebrate "anti-intellectualism, ignorance, irresponsible parenthood, drunkenness, dope dealing, weed smoking, cocaine, x-pills, loose sexual behavior and criminal lifestyles / thuggism"; we have chose to design a curriculum that, rather than getting caught up in the entertainment / BLACKPLOTATION aspects of hip hop/rap, will use hip hop/rap within a historo-cultural, socio-political and psycho-educational framework to address these various death walks forthrightly. Our new methodological style is intended to get our young people to begin to think critically about themselves, their world and their role as people of Afrikan descent.

WHERE WE ARE AND WHERE WE WANNA GO:
This work is a comprehensive (but only a core framework) sequenced survey of subjects and topics that have confronted Afrikans in America throughout our 246 years of chattel slavery, 100 years of aparthied and only “one generation of freedom” here in America. I like to describe the school as a “cultural development and leadership training communiversity”. From our research, we have determined that the idea of Sankofa, which means "We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today", really encompasses the whole Afrikan-centered ideal. Nonetheless, as this is a work in evolution and always under construction, we have chosen to focus our teaching/learning journey most directly on the past 45 years of our struggle for human and civil rights—

THE THEME “THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THINGS STAY THE SAME, WE NEED A REVOLUTION, THE SYSTEM AIN’T GONA CHANGE UNLESS WE MAKE IT CHANGE”.

The content and character of the curriculum is Afrikan-centered and the goal is academic excellence in persuit of black power. We tease out the social, political, economic and moral imparatives of black power in the 21st century by zooming in on two povital questions throughout our course of study:

“WHAT IS BLACK OPPRESSION IN AMERICA AND WHAT IS AFRIKAN LIBERATION.”

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African Culture and the Ongoing Quest for Excellence Dialog, Principles, Practice by Maulana Karenga, Ph.D.

Written by RBGStreetScholar on

Companion Lesson:
RBG CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT, A WORKING DEFINITION

African Culture and the Ongoing Quest for Excellence
Dialog, Principles, Practice

by Maulana Karenga, Ph.D.

The nearing of the next millennium unavoidably evokes concerns and calls for a critical assessment of where we are and to what tasks we should direct our attention and efforts in our ongoing quest for a free and empowered community, a just and good society and a better world. In our assessment we are of necessity directed toward the continuing struggle to free ourselves both socially and culturally. In fact, the two struggles are unbreakably linked. For to free ourselves socially, we must build a consciousness, cohesion and sense of specialness in community only culture can give. But to bring forth the best of our culture, we must struggle to clear social space for its recovery, reception and development. It is in this context that our organization Us (Us, African people) argued in the Sixties and continues to argue that the key challenge in Black life is the cultural challenge. And this challenge is essential to break beyond the boundaries of the culture of the established order, recover, discover and bring forth the best of our own culture, and effectively address the fundamental questions of our world and our times. The task, as Us perceived it then and contends now, is to forge and embrace a culture that both prepares the people for the struggle and sustains them in the process of the struggle for a world of human freedom and human flourishing. This meant then and continues to mean selecting and stressing elements of Black culture that represent the best of African and human values, values which protect and promote human life, human freedom and maximum human development. It means also recreating liberation-supporti ve values, views and practices which were lost, damaged or transformed in the midst of oppression and creating new ways of seeing and approaching the world that reinforce and raise up the people, support and sustain the struggle, and point toward the new world we struggle to bring into being. Key to this process of cultural construction and reconstruction is the ongoing dialog with African culture. Kawaida, the philosophy of Us organization, defines this dialog as the constant practice of asking questions and seeking answers from African culture to the fundamental and enduring concerns of the African and human community. At the heart of this project is the continuing quest to free ourselves, live full and meaningful lives and become the best of what it means to be both African and human in the fullest sense of the words. Moreover, it involves an ongoing search for models of excellence and possibilities within our culture by which we speak our own special cultural truth to the world and make our own unique contribution to the forward flow of human history. To truly dialog with African culture means, first of all, using it as a resource rather than as a mere reference. This is the meaning of posing questions and seeking answers within African culture concerning central issues of life and the world. To simply use African culture as a reference is to name things considered important, but never to use it to answer questions, solve problems, or extract and shape paradigms of excellence and possibility in thought and practice. To dialog with African culture, then, is to constantly engage its texts, i.e., its oral, written, and living-practice texts, its paradigms, its worldview and values, its understanding of itself and the world, in an ongoing search for ever better answers to the fundamental questions and challenges of our time. We must always recognize and respect the fact that our culture comes with its own special way of being human in the world and that this particular African way of being human in the world provides a pathway to the universal. For it represents African peoples' way of engaging the fundamental concerns of humankind. Furthermore, our culture has evolved in the longest of histories and thus has amassed a rich and varied array of ancient and modern knowledge, understanding, and wisdom concerning the world. Ours is a history of struggle, creativity, achievement, and constant concern for the right, the just, and the good. It is a history of ancient wonder and achievement in the Nile Valley, awesome tragedy and destruction in the Holocaust of Enslavement, and impressive triumph in our constant struggle against overwhelming societal odds against us in modern times. And ours is a history of an ongoing commitment to raise up the good even in the midst of the most horrific evil and to pursue the possible in spite of the catechism of impossibilities repeatedly offered us.

Seven Core Areas Of Culture

It is within the context of this rich and most ancient of histories and cultures that we must constantly search for and bring forth the best of what it means to be African and pose new paradigms of human excellence and possibility. This ongoing search for solutions and models of human excellence and possibilities must occur, Kawaida contends, in every area of human life but especially in the seven core areas of culture:
history; religion (spirituality and ethics); social organization; economic organization; political organization; creative production (art, music, literature, dance, etc.) and ethos, the collective self-consciousness achieved as a result of activity in the other six areas.

History In the area of history, Us maintains, we must study history to learn its lessons, absorb its spirit of possibility, extract and emulate its models of excellence and possibility and honor the moral obligation to remember. We must measure ourselves in the mirror of the best of our history and constantly ask ourselves how can we use the past as a foundation to inform, expand and enrich our present and future. We must always be conscious of our identity as the fathers and mothers of humanity and human civilization in the Nile Valley, the sons and daughters of the Holocaust of Enslavement and the authors and heirs of the Reaffirmation of our Africanness and social justice tradition in the Sixties. Surely this is a challenge for intellectual, social and moral excellence, active opposition to all forms of enslavement, and an enduring commitment to cultural rootedness, justice, and good in the world.

Religion (Spirituality and Ethics) In the area of religion (spirituality and ethics), our culture has the most ancient of ethical traditions, the oldest ethical, spiritual and social justice texts. We introduced the concept of human dignity and the divine image of the human person as early as 2140 BCE (before the common era) in the Sacred Husia, in the Book of Kheti. We are the ones who spoke to the world in the earliest of times saying, "speak truth, do justice, care for the vulnerable, give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked and a boat to those without one, care for the ill, be a staff of support for those of old age, a father to the orphan, a mother to the timid, a raft for the drowning and a ladder for those trapped in the pit of despair, honor the elders and ancestors, cherish and challenge the children, maintain a right relation with the environment and always raise up the good and pursue the possible." This is a tradition we must neither ignore nor abandon.

Social Organization Our social organization must be constantly concerned with values and practice that affirm and strengthen family, community, and culture. Certainly, the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles of Kawaida, which under gird Kwanzaa, independent schools and rights of passage, family maintenance, school retention and numerous other community development and action programs are key to this. They are: Umoja (Unity); Kujichagulia (Self-Determination ); Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) ; Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics); Nia (Purpose); Kuumba (Creativity) ; and Imani (Faith). It is within this framework of communitarian values that we build a peaceful and harmonious togetherness; respect our special way of being human in the world; build together in responsibility the relationships, family, community, society and world we want to live in; share work and wealth; accept the collective vocation of struggle for freedom, justice, peace and human flourishing in the world; constantly repair and restore the world, making it ever more beautiful and beneficial and maintain our faith in the right and the good by working and struggling to define, defend, and develop them in the world.

Economic Organization In the area of economics, our culture teaches us the principle of Ujamaa which in its most expansive sense means shared work and wealth rooted in a profound sense of kinship with other humans and the environment. It teaches us to be constantly concerned in our economic practice with the dignity of the human person, with the well-being of family and community, the integrity of the environment, and especially with the vulnerable among us: the poor, the ill, the aged, the captive, the disabled, the refugee and the stranger. For ours is a consciousness born not only of ancient ethical teaching but also of the historical experience of the vulnerability of the "motherless child, a long ways from home" as expressed in our sacred songs.

Political Organization Our culture teaches us to view politics as a collective vocation to create a just and good society and advance human good in the world. It calls us to honor our most ancient social justice tradition that, as I noted in the Million Man March/Day of Absence Mission Statement, "requires respect for the dignity and rights of the human person, economic justice, meaningful political participation, shared power, cultural integrity, mutual respect for all peoples, and an uncompromising resistance to social forces and structures which deny or limit these."

Creative Production The best of African culture insists that our creative production or art not only be technically sound but also socially purposeful and responsible. It is at its best functional, collective and committing. To be functional is to self-consciously have and urge social purpose, to inform, instruct and inspire the people and be an aesthetic translation of our will and struggle for liberation and ever higher levels of life. It also means searching for and creating new forms and styles to speak our truth and possibilities. To be collective, Black art must be done for all, drawn and synthesized from all, and rooted in a life-based language and imagery rich in everyday relevance. It must be understandable without being vulgarly simplistic, i.e., so pedestrian and impoverished that it damages art as a discipline and the social message it attempts to advance. And it must celebrate not only the transcendent and awesome but also the ordinary, teaching the beauty and sacredness of everyday people and their struggles to live full, decent, and meaningful lives. Finally, Black art must be committing, i.e., not simply inform and inspire Blacks, but also commit them to the historical project of liberation and a higher level of human life. To do this, it must demand and urge willing and conscious involvement in struggle and building of a new world and new men, women and children to inhabit it. And it must move beyond protest and teach possibilities, beyond victimization and teach Blacks to dare victory. The best of the Black aesthetic teaches that art, then, must commit us to what we can become and are becoming and inspire us to dare the positive in a world often defined and deformed by the negative.

Ethos Finally, our culture provides us with an ethos we must honor in both thought and practice. By ethos, we mean a people's self-understanding as well as its self-presentation in the world through its thought and practice in the other six areas of culture. This cultural self-understanding and self-presentation are best summed up in the conclusion I posed in the MMM/DOA Mission Statement. The challenge I posed there is the one I pose here as we move forward toward the next millennium. It is above all a cultural challenge. For culture is here defined as the totality of thought and practice by which a people creates itself, celebrates, sustains and develops itself and introduces itself to history and humanity. And so the challenge of our culture is to come to the tasks before us, "bringing the most central views and values of our faith communities, our deepest commitments to our social justice tradition and the struggle it requires, the most instructive lessons of our history, and a profoundly urgent sense of the need for positive and productive action. In standing up and assuming responsibility in a new, renewed and expanded sense, we honor our ancestors, enrich our lives and give promise to our descendants. Moreover, through this historic work and struggle we strive to always know and introduce ourselves to history and humanity as a people who are spiritually and ethically grounded; who speak truth, do justice, respect our ancestors and elders, cherish, support and challenge our children, care for the vulnerable, relate rightfully to the environment, struggle for what is right and resist what is wrong, honor our past, willingly engage our present and self-consciously plan for and welcome our future.
DR. MAULANA KARENGA is chairman of The Organization Us and The National Association of Kawaida Organizations. He is also professor and chair of the Department of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach; Dr. Karenga is also the creator of Kwanzaa and the Nguzo Saba and author of numerous scholarly articles and books including, Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, Kawaida Theory: A Communitarian African Philosophy; and Selections From The Husia: Sacred Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. Moreover, he was a member of the Executive Council of the Million Man March/Day of Absence and author of the MMM/DOA Mission Statement.

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