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.”

RSS

DEFINITIONS IN AFRIKAN-CENTERED EDUCATION

Written by RBGStreetScholar on

Required Reader/ Declonizing the African Mind:
Further Analysis and Strategy by Uhuru Hotep

rbg

A RBG Street Scholar Learning Tip: The Foundation of Knowledge is Knowing Definitions of Words

BEST DEFINITION OF AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATION MY RESEARCH HAS TURNED UP:

African Centered Education is a system of sequentially planned educational opportunities provided for African heritage children, youth and young adults to develop the necessary and required skills to participate in the global marketplace with specific interest on the upliftment and empowerment of their African-American communities and the total development and growth of the African continent. -
Dr. E. Curtis Alexander

***African Centered Afrocentric Africentric Afrocentricity Africentricity

Wade W. Nobles

"Afrocentric, Africentric, or Afirican Centered" are interchangeable terms representing the concept which categorizes a quality of thought and practice which is rooted in the cultural image and interest of African people and which represents and reflects the life experiences, history and traditions of African people as the center of analyses. It is therein, the intellectual and philosophical foundation which African people should create their own scientific criterion for authenticating human reality."

Steve Biko (1978)

Obviously the African culture has had to sustain severe blows and many have been battered nearly out of shape by the belligerent cultures it collided with, yet in essence even today one can easily find the fundamental aspects of the pure African culture in the present day African One of the most fundamental aspects of our culture is the importance we attach to Man A man-centered society The capacity we have for talking to each other-not for the sake of arriving at a particular conclusion but merely to enjoy the communication for its own sake We regard our living together not as an unfortunate mishap warranting endless competition among us but as a deliberate act of God to make us a community of brothers and sisters jointly involved in the quest for a composite answer to the varied problems of life Any suffering we experience was made much more real by song and rhythm. There is no doubt that the so called 'Negro Spirituals' sung by black slaves in the States as they tiled under oppression were indicative of their African heritage African society had the village community as its basis This obviously was a requirement to suite the needs of a community-based and man-centered society. Africans do not recognize any cleavage between the natural and supernatural. They experience a situation rather than face a problem More as a response of the total personality to the situation that the result of some mental exercise We thanked God through our ancestors before we drank beer, married, worked etc. We would obviously find it artificial to create special occasions for worship. God was always in communication with us and therefore merited attention everywhere and anywhere ( p. 41-45)."

Molefi Asante (1987)

Afrocentricity [African centered] as the placing of African ideals at the center of any analysis that involves African culture and behavior. (p. 6)

I suggest three fundamental Afrocentric themes of transcendent discourse: (1) human relations, (2) humans' relationship to the supernatural, and (3) humans' relationships to their own being. (p. 168)

Paul Hill Jr.'s interpretations

Currently there are many misconceptions about the African Centered Paradigm. Most of its critics have not read the literature. It is primarily an orientation on how one views data, involving location, place and perspective (Asante, 1993). On a more personal level it provides the African American a window to view the world by becoming a transforming agent affording new attitudes, behaviors, beliefs and values. This transforming agent is the only reality for African people (Asante, 1989). African Centeredness is nothing more than what is congruent to the interpretive life of an African person. It is his richly "textured
standing place" (Asante, 1993).

African Centered study is not a matter of color. It looks at any information involving African people and raises questions that allows Africans to be subjects of historical experiences rather than objects on the fringes of another's experience. For example, an Afrocentric view of African conditions during enslavement would view the people not as "slaves" but as "Africans." This view assures a different mental orientation providing a new perspective and attitude closer to the reality of the people (Asante, 1993).

When we center each ethnic group in their own historical and cultural experiences, we expand our knowledge of and appreciation of the human experience. Afrocentric education and its advancement enrich and humanize our world. It is not about cultural separation or racial chauvinism. The African Centered
scholar recognizes that an Afrocentric view is not the only view. This perspective seeks no advantage, no self-aggrandizement, no hegemony in its relation to others (Asante,1993), thus it humanizes our world by fostering mutual dignity and respect.

Maulana Karenga (1994)

Afrocentricity can be defined as a quality of thought and practice rooted in the cultural image and human interest of African people [and their descendants]. To be rooted in the cultural image of African people is to be anchored in the views and values of African people as well as in the practice which emanates from and gives rise to these views and values. (p. 36)

A. Wade Boykin (1986)

Traditional West African culture is centered around: 1) Spirituality, 2) Harmony, 3) Movement, 4) Energy, 5) Affect, 6) Communalism, 7) Expressive Individualism, 8) Oral Tradition, and 9) Social Time Perspective.

Lathardus Goggins II (1996)

To be African centered is to construct and use frames of reference, cultural filters and behaviors that are consistent with the philosophies and heritage of African cultures in order to advance the interest of people of African descent. (p. 18)

Kean College Africana Studies

The African centered perspective rests on the premise that it is valid to position Africa as a geographical and cultural starting base in the study of peoples of
African descent (Keto 1989). The objective therefore is to view the world from the perspective of the people studied. The Afro-centric comprehensive model for the teaching and learning of knowledge about African peoples makes possible an understanding of, and appreciation for the social, institutional, cultural and intellectual patterns of African people.

Some things to consider:

1. "African Centered" is a thought (philosophy) not continent or appearance.
2. African Centered is a "how process."
3. Cultural heritage provides the lenses by which we view and the foundation on which we interpret the world.

Pan Africanism

Kwame Anthony Appiah

In its most straightforward version, Pan-Africanism is the political project calling for the unification of all Africans into a single African state, to which those in the African diaspora can return. In its vaguer, more cultural, forms, Pan-Africanism has pursued literary and artistic projects that bring together people in Africa and her diaspora.

Black Nationalism

James Clyde Sellman

Black Nationalism, also known as black separatism, is a complex set of beliefs emphasizing the need for the cultural, political, and economic separation of African Americans from white society. Comparatively few African Americans have embraced thoroughgoing separatist philosophies. In his classic study Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915, August Meier noted that the general black attitude has been one of "essential ambivalence." On the other hand, nationalist assumptions inform the daily actions and choices of many African Americans.

Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, Black Nationalists have agreed upon two defining principles: black pride and racial separatism. Black Nationalism calls for black pride and seeks a unity that is racially based rather than one grounded in a specific African culture or ethnicity. Those espousing nationalist or separatist philosophies have envisioned nationalism in quite different ways. For some, Black Nationalism demanded a territorial base; for others, it required only separate institutions within American society. Some have perceived nationalism in strictly secular terms; others, as an extension of their religious beliefs. Black Nationalists also differ in the degree to which they identify with Africa and African culture.

www.blackhistory.eb.com

political and social movement prominent in the 1960s and early '70s in the United States among some African Americans. The movement, which can be traced back to Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association of the 1920s, sought to acquire economic power and to infuse among blacks a sense of community and group feeling. Many adherents to black nationalism assumed the eventual creation of a separate black nation by African Americans. As an alternative to being assimilated by the American nation, which is predominantly white, black nationalists sought to maintain and promote their separate identity as a people of black ancestry. With such slogans as "black power" and "black is beautiful," they also sought to inculcate a sense of pride among blacks.

***Source of Text:
www.afrocentric.info/AfricanCentered/Definitions

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