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... [more]
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.”
RBG4Life Caveats: 8 Things We Need to STOP Doing Today!
STOP
Doing Today!
1. STOP believing that marching, protesting, demonstrating, boycotting, and picketing alone will free us...
These are only tactics to bring attention to an injustice or to affect a business economically. We must eventually face the fact that we must pool our money, time, and resources in order for us to begin the process of freeing ourselves economically. Otherwise we're gonna march all over this country and still be in the same dependent condition we were in prior to our marching. March with a purpose and a clear goal. That goal must expand from social freedoms to ECONOMIC FREEDOM. We must not be dependent slaves to any man for our food, clothing, shelter, and employment.
2. STOP thinking that white people will change and all of a sudden wake up one day and accept us as equals...
NOT GONNA HAPPEN PEOPLE!...We've been here over 400 years and we are still regarded by the so-called powers-that-be as NIGGERS!.....Don't believe me? Remember KATRINA?...Remember the Rodney King case and the rebellion/riots that followed? Remember Sean Bell? Abner Louima? Amadou Diallo? Mychal Bell and the JENA 6? The young brother in Florida that was beaten and killed at the boot camp? Genarlow Wilson just now being freed after 2 years in prison. Mumia Abu-Jamal still languishing on death row for crimes he didn't committ? Leonard Peltier? Assata Shakur? Jamil Al-Amin? Megan Williams?...I CAN GO ON FOR DAYS, BELIEVE ME! They, as a whole, don't have any real love for us. They TOLERATE us and they are finding us less and less useful to them and therefore more and more intolerable. WE MUST LEARN TO LOVE OURSELVES!
3. STOP thinking that we can't unite!
The negative thinking is killing us in droves. We don't come together because we've been made distrustful of one another. OUR unity in opposition to white supremacy is the greatest fear of our oppressor! Nothing is beyond our reach and it is only our belief in lies taught to us by our enemies that makes us impotent as a people. When we come together, the world stops and takes notice. BELIEVE THAT!
4. STOP degrading ourselves.
We are more than 'niggers, niggas, bitches, hoes, tricks, dogs, mf's' and any other degrading word we use to refer to each as other as. If we are what we think, then if we think we are niggas and bitches, then we'll act like niggas and bitches! So if we can change the way we think, then we are on the road to changing the way we act. We are gods and goddesses, king and queens, brothers and sisters. The Scriptures teach that "Ye are all gods, children of the Most High God."(Psalms 82:6) And there ain't nuthin' a god can't do in the Name of the Almighty God!
5. STOP waiting on God or Jesus or Muhammad or whoever to come down and change our condition!
Stop thinkin' that Hilary or Obama is gonna ride in some damn white horse and save the day! If you believe that, you are surely LOST! Stop listening to some of these Negro preachers who are telling you to put it in God's hands. God helps those who help themselves. We can't be a lazy people and expect God to do it all. He don't like laziness. He gave us the wherewithal to do whatever we wanna do to raise ourselves up out of this condition and has given us all we need to do it. We must DEMONSTRATE this faith in God that we sing and dance and shout and pray about in the church or mosque we attend. We are holding ourselves back through ignorance, faithlessness, and fear! If we are gods as I pointed out earlier, then we need to stand up and show the world where God is!
6. STOP teaching our children to get good grades so they can grow up and get a good job.
Teach them to make good grades so they can grow up and MAKE GOOD JOBS for themselves and their people! Give yourself and your children the dual education necessary to help make present slaves future free men and women. Teach them principles like dignity and respect and to be willing to die for what they believe in. If we fail to use the gifts we've been blessed with as a people to advance our struggle for freedom, justice, and equality, then WHAT GOOD ARE OUR GIFTS??? We would be disgracing the gifts and the Giver of the gifts! It would all be just vanity!
7. STOP being islands unto ourselves! We must work to recapture our sense of community.
We must see ourselves as family again. We must get out of this Eurocentric mindset of 'every man for himself' and bring back 'it takes a village.' Seeing the world thru Afrikan eyes is key! We must read books by our own authors that are stressing self-reliance and self-determination. Stop believing everything you hear on mainstream news and from mainstream text' and media. So read Dr. Na'im Akbar, Anthony T. Browder, Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke, Kenneth Clark, J.A. Rogers, Chancellor Williams, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Josef ben-Jochanon, Ivam van Sertima, and so many others who are teaching black consciousness. Knowledge of self is the way out of mental incarceration! When we can think free and enlightened thoughts, we can maximize free actions!
8. STOP the killing! Stop shooting down your future! Stop robbing, stealing, lying, and trespassing on one another.
Stop hating one another and being jealous and envious and covetous!..All of these things are in opposition to unity efforts. We have to discover our own gifts instead of envying somebody else for theirs. All of this leads to a crab-in-the-barrel mentality that impedes our progress. Congratulate one another for our success whatever they may be and learn to always HELP ONE ANOTHER to reach greater heights. If you wanna be a leader, understnad that you are a SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE, NOT GREATER THAN THE PEOPLE! We must know ourselves in order to truly love and respect ourselves. So we can stop the killing and all the things that lead to killing by stopping it where it begins, in our minds!
Related Articles
There is no longer a need for dire predictions, hand-wringing, or apprehension about losing a generation of black boys. It is too late. In education, employment, economics, incarceration, health, housing, and parenting, we have lost a generation of young black men. The question that remains is will we lose the next two or three generations, or possibly every generation of black boys hereafter to the streets, negative media, gangs, drugs, poor education, unemployment, father absence, crime, violence and death.Most young black men in the United States don’t graduate from high school. Only 35% of black male students graduated from high school in Chicago and only 26% in New York City, according to a 2006 report by The Schott Foundation for Public Education. Only a few black boys who finish high school actually attend college, and of those few black boys who enter college, nationally, only 22% of them finish college.
Young black male students have the worst grades, the lowest test scores, and the highest dropout rates of all students in the country. When these young black men don’t succeed in school, they are much more likely to succeed in the nation’s criminal justice and penitentiary system. And it was discovered recently that even when a young black man graduates from a U.S. college, there is a good chance that he is from Africa, the Caribbean or Europe, and not the United States.
Black men in prison in America have become as American as apple pie. There are more black men in prisons and jails in the United States (about 1.1 million) than there are black men incarcerated in the rest of the world combined. This criminalization process now starts in elementary schools with black male children as young as six and seven years old being arrested in staggering numbers according to a 2005 report, Education on Lockdown by the Advancement Project.
The rest of the world is watching and following the lead of America. Other countries including England, Canada, Jamaica, Brazil and South Africa are adopting American social policies that encourage the incarceration and destruction of young black men. This is leading to a world-wide catastrophe. But still, there is no adequate response from the American or global black community.
Worst of all is the passivity, neglect and disengagement of the black community concerning the future of our black boys. We do little while the future lives of black boys are being destroyed in record numbers. The schools that black boys attend prepare them with skills that will make them obsolete before, and if, they graduate. In a strange and perverse way, the black community, itself, has started to wage a kind of war against young black men and has become part of this destructive process.
Who are young black women going to marry? Who is going to build and maintain the economies of black communities? Who is going to anchor strong families in the black community? Who will young black boys emulate as they grow into men? Where is the outrage of the black community at the destruction of its black boys? Where are the plans and the supportive actions to change this? Is this the beginning of the end of the black people in America?
The list of those who have failed young black men includes our government, our foundations, our schools, our media, our black churches, our black leaders, and even our parents. Ironically, experts say that the solutions to the problems of young black men are simple and relatively inexpensive, but they may not be easy, practical or popular. It is not that we lack solutions as much as it is that we lack the will to implement these solutions to save black boys. It seems that government is willing to pay billions of dollars to lock up young black men, rather than the millions it would take to prepare them to become viable contributors and valued members of our society.
Please consider these simple goals that can lead to solutions for fixing the problems of young black men:
Short term
1) Teach all black boys to read at grade level by the third grade and to embrace education.
2) Provide positive role models for black boys.
3) Create a stable home environment for black boys that includes contact with their fathers.
4) Ensure that black boys have a strong spiritual base.
5) Control the negative media influences on black boys.
6) Teach black boys to respect all girls and women.
Long term
1) Invest as much money in educating black boys as in locking up black men.
2) Help connect black boys to a positive vision of themselves in the future.
3) Create high expectations and help black boys live into those high expectations.
4) Build a positive peer culture for black boys.
5) Teach black boys self-discipline, culture and history.
6) Teach black boys and the communities in which they live to embrace education and life-long learning.
Phillip Jackson
Executive Director of the Black Star Project
Chicago, Il.
blackstar1000@ameritech.net
Interests: RBG Movement, Revolutionary Change, Africentric Education
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