TUNE IN: The 53rd Annual Malcolm X Black Unity Awards - Dr. Maulana Karenga Keynote Speaker

 

The New York Chapter of the National Association of Kawaida Organizations (NAKO) and the International African Arts Festival (iAAFestival) will Host the 53rd MALCOLM X BLACK UNITY AWARDS     KEYNOTE SPEAKER Dr. MAULANA KARENGA Rightfully Reading Haji Malcolm's Liberating Message: Means and Measures Necessary for Freedom   2022 AWARDEES NKECHI TAIFA, Esq.   Cultural Presentations PATSY GRANT / SHARP RADWAY   Thursday May19, 2022 8PM-9:30PM   This is a virtual zoom event   Log on at: www.iaafestival.org   For information call (718) 789-3264 (718) 638-6700 email nakoinfogroup@yahoo.com www.iaafestival.org   CLARK ARRINGTON, Esq. CHIFE BABA NEIL CLARKE

 

International African Arts Festival | 1360 Fulton Street, Suite 401 (4th Floor), Brooklyn, NY 11216

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Ida B. Wells and Kawaida Womanism: Considering the Mission and Meaning of Woman

 

Dr. Maulana Karenga | 03-14-22

Part 1.

 

This offering is in rightful homage and deep appreciation, not only for Nana Ida B. Wells-Barnett, but also for the awesome and audacious women of Us, the Malaika and Matamba, the Simba and Senut who created and put forth in thought, dialog, discourse and practice what we now call Kawaida womanism. It is they who engaged in the practice of Kawaida womanism before it was given its name and challenged the Simba, Saidi and Senu, the men of Us, to feel, think and act in ways more worthy of them and more in line with the best of our culture and Kawaida philosophy. They asked us to rid ourselves of oppressive practices of sexism in all its forms and to prefigure in our practices and relations the good world we all want and work and struggle together so hard to bring into being.

 

Here in this month and historical moment of uplifting and raising Black women, we raise our beloved, beautiful, brilliant, sacred and soldier sisters along with the models and mirrors they have learned so much from and whose legacy they seek to emulate by the ways they live their lives, do their work and wage their struggles. And we focus on the women, not in opposition, erasure or superiority to the men, but always in principled and personal interrelationships, stressing each of their own weight and ways and the special and particular gift each gives in unique and equal measure and meaning.

 

Indeed, Seba Tiamoyo Karenga and Seba Chimbuko Tembo, Kawaida womanism’s major theorists in defining it, state that “Kawaida womanism is culturally grounded thought and practice directed toward the liberation of African women as an integral and indispensable part of the liberation of African people as a whole.” And this liberation “includes not only freedom from oppression, but also the creation of conditions necessary for the well-being, development and flourishing of women, men and children in family, community, society and the world.”

 

Moreover, Seba Tiamoyo and Seba Chimbuko state in particular, “Kawaida womanism involves struggles directed toward reaffirming the equal dignity and divinity of African women, achieving and protecting their human and civil rights, and increasing their capacity to live free, full and fulfilling lives in relationships of reciprocity and good.” In this regard, Kawaida womanism seeks to provide and practice an African-centered womanism as a culturally distinct, self-determined and self-standing intellectual and social project, not needing to turn or refer to others for vision, values or validation.

 

Therefore, Kawaida womanism seeks sources and support from African culture, continental and diasporan, ancient and modern for its intellectual and practical initiatives. The Kawaida term womanism, then, is not taken from Alice Walker’s womanish womanist which she defines as “a feminist of color” and thus a darker form of White feminism, i.e., purple v. lavender. Rather, the Kawaida term womanism derives from Ida B. Wells’ category and concept of “womanly” woman and her use of it in defining the mission and meaning of woman in an expansive and open-textured way. Thus, in this and her other intellectual work and personal and social practice in a wide range of activities, she provides a critical source of Kawaida womanism. And we pay rightful homage to her and the enduring model, mirror and legacy she left us.

It was not only in her incisive and insightful writings that Nana Ida B. Wells Barnett defined the mission and meaning of woman and womanhood, but also in the way she lived her life, did her work and waged her personal struggles and participated in the collective liberation struggle of her people, the African American people. For she, like other great leaders and activist intellectuals at all levels realized that ultimately the criticism of the pen must be joined with the criticism of practice, corrective and transformative practice. And that practice is none other than righteous and relentless struggle on every level of life.

Born in the hell and horror of the Holocaust of enslavement to James and Elizabeth Wells, she was raised in resistance by her father and mother who taught her the importance of education, the foundational value of family and community, and the moral imperative of righteous and relentless struggle. She comes into her own in the midst of struggle, resisting both racism and sexism, wherever she found them. At the age of 16, Nana Ida assumes the responsibility of guardianship for her surviving siblings after the tragic death of her parents and infant brother during a yellow fever epidemic. She also continues school, teaches and counts on her grandmother and aunt to assist her in childcare and to ground her in the best of our culture, reaffirming the foundational value of family and community.

 

She was also an activist and a wife and mother, having married and produced four children with the distinguished lawyer and rights activist, Ferdinand L. Barnett. And she writes of having to balance different but interrelated duties without neglecting or being inadequately attentive to each. Nana Ida is also famously a journalist, writer, researcher and anti-lynching activist with an unbreakable courage and commitment, defying death to do research, speak truth to the people and to power and organize to resist the savagery of lynching, racism and other oppression in its various forms. She defiantly asserted that “the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth on them.” However, she knew this was a first step and ultimately requires an active resistance at every level. She thus was an activist in a wide range of fields, including racial justice, civil rights, human rights, anti-lynching activism, voting rights for women, economic boycotts, political organizing and confrontation, and the advocacy and practice of armed self-defense.

 

Yet, she is in the context of her time also concerned with considering, defining and the fulfillment of the mission and meaning of woman and womanhood. Her writings vary in definitions with some commentaries in contradiction with her best ideas and constant practice. When this occurs, it seems to be focused around what all Black women had to deal with: defending their reputation, reaffirming their moral character, and continuously waging heroic struggles, as Nana Anna Julia Cooper wrote, “to keep hallowed their own persons.” Thus, there is a constant need and will to defend the moral character and bodily sanctity of the Black woman while not restricting or restraining her to domestic life without the possibility and support for choice among many paths to pursue in coming to the fullness of themselves.

 

In her important article titled, “Women’s Mission” (1885) written in Thomas Fortune’s paper, New York Freemen, Nana Ida B. Wells outlines essential aspects of her concept of the mission and meaning of being woman in the world. Some of the context is particular to her faith, Christianity, but her specific definition of women’s mission on earth speaks to central concerns and concepts relevant and resonant in today’s dialogs and discourse on being woman, especially Black women, African women in the world.

 

The anchoring idea in Nana Ida’s conception of the mission and meaning of being woman in the world is agency, the capacity and will to choose and act in the interest of good in the world. It is by social context and self-determination, a liberational understanding and message. She asks, “What is or should be woman?”, and dismisses trivialities, self-masking, self-deforming, flesh-and-fashion focus, soullessness and selfish self-presentations and practices as ultimately unworthy of woman. And she calls instead for “a womanly woman” with inner strength, intellectual and spiritual brilliance, ethical grounding, a world-encompassing consciousness and mission, and a steadfast commitment to carry it out against all savage challenges and seductive changes.

 

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture and Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis, www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org; www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org.

International African Arts Festival | 1360 Fulton Street, Suite 401 (4th Floor), Brooklyn, NY 11216

Dr. Maulana Karenga | The Ethical Imperative of Serudj Ta: To Repair, Renew and Remake the World

The Ethical Imperative of Serudj Ta: To Repair, Renew and Remake the World Dr. Maulana Karenga | 01-24-22 | The ancient African ethical imperative of serudj ta, to repair, renew and remake the world, remains as relevant today and perhaps more urgent for us and all human beings, given the times in which we now live and the damage, devastation and dangers we sense and see all around us. This sober and sobering assessment is drawn from a close, depthful and continuous reading and reflection on the conditions of the world and the Husia¸ the sacred texts of our ancestors in the Nile Valley civilization of Kemet, i.e., ancient Egypt. It was during my studies for my second doctorate that I developed and formally introduced the concept of serudj ta, in an 804-page dissertation titled Maat, The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt: A Study in Classical African Ethics (1994). As with my philosophy Kawaida, the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles), and Kwanzaa, I first shared, discussed and further developed the concept with advocates (members) of my organization Us, an invaluable circle of intellectual collaborators, co-workers and co-combatants in our varied projects and practice of striving and struggling for African and human good and the well-being of the world. In my book, Maat, I posed serudj ta and continue to pose it as an ethical imperative and practice for our times in a relational, societal and environmental sense. For it addresses relational alienation and antagonism, societal structures and policies of oppression, and environmental degradation through human plunder, pollution and depletion of earth, waters and sky. The term serudj ta appears in Pharaoh Ramses III's enumeration of his good deeds (akhu) for the Divine, earth and human beings. He says as one of these good deeds, "I restored the whole land (serudj ta) with trees and vegetation." Moreover, he makes these declarations of doing good in the world in the midst of restorations of temples, walls, groves and the city itself. Also, he says that he restored the land to rightful order where it was laid waste. And elsewhere, he relates as part of his akhu, his restorative actions, that he brought peace, freed prisoners, ensured security and shared abundance. Given the Maatian conception of the interrelatedness of the Divine, the natural and the social, these good deeds, this doing of good in and for the world, are not only physical acts, but also moral and spiritual acts of repairing, renewing and remaking the world. In modern Kawaida Maatian ethics, building on this ancient concept and practice, it is put forth as an ethical imperative to repair, renew and remake our relations, society and the world in the interest of African and human good and the well-being of the world. In a word, it is an ongoing moral, social and ecological or environmental practice. This coincides with Kuumba (Creativity), the Sixth Principle of the Nguzo Saba, which I authored years before, i.e., the moral imperative "to do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it." And as we know, we are, as Africans, human beings (watu), and world beings (walimwengu), and thus, our community is not only our local, national and world African community, but also our world human community. Thus, we are to work and struggle for good within both the small and large circles of our lives. Using the language from the abundance of references in the Husia, the sacred texts of Kemet, Kawaida Maatian ethics poses as our duty in the practice of serudj ta: to raise up what is in ruins; to repair what is damaged; to rejoin what is separated; to replenish what is depleted; to set right what is wrong; to strengthen what is weakened; and to make flourish that which is fragile, insecure and undeveloped. Clearly in repairing, renewing and remaking the world, we can't start overseas or in another city. Indeed, we cannot save humanity if we cannot and do not save ourselves. And we must do this self-saving not in isolation or achieve it fully before we act for others. For it is emphasis, not exclusiveness, we speak of here. Indeed, as Lady Ta Aset teaches us, we do good knowing that "the good we do for others we are also doing for ourselves." For we are building the good, reciprocal, caring and supporting community, society and world we all want and deserve to live in. So, we must begin with ourselves but not end there. Thus, beginning and continuing emphasis must be placed on the quality of our own lives without neglecting what we can do for others to end the evil of poverty, suffering, aggression, war, injustice and oppression, and help build a new world of shared good and flourishing for all. We must, then, begin by building ourselves, our families, our communities, and all our essential relationships as sites and sources of mutual respect, genuine caring, reciprocal support and shared goods of all kinds. And we must together, in small and large circles, develop not only ways to repair, renew and rebuild our relations with each other, but also to strengthen and expand our capacity to achieve full freedom, real justice, and the good and meaningful life. In a word, so we can be ourselves and free ourselves and come into the fullness of ourselves. The Black Freedom Struggle, by any honest measure, has been a critical formative factor in the reconception and transformation of American society since our first contact with the colonialists, enslavers, segregationists, racists and others of the world's rogue gallery of oppressors. And we remain obligated to finish the unfinished and ongoing fight for freedom, justice, equality and other human goods. It is our legacy and as Nana Dr. Martin Luther King tells us, "This is our challenge and overwhelming responsibility." And the repair, renewal and remaking is not the "saving of the soul of America," but saving, securing, freeing and uplifting the peoples of America as a moral imperative, a material necessity and a central political goal. Likewise, we are to honor the ancient African moral imperative "to bear witness to truth and set the scales of justice in their proper place," especially among the voiceless and devalued, the disempowered, degraded and downtrodden, not only in society, but also in the world. Indeed, Nana Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune rightly reminds us of our serudjic duty to repair, renew and remake the world. She tells and teaches us in word and deed that "Our task is to remake the world. It is nothing less than this." For clearly the problems in U.S. society are reflected in the same and similar problems in the world: issues of unnecessary and undeserved poverty and suffering; insecurity of persons and peoples; fractured and false claims of peace; continued enslavement and human and sex trafficking; the absence and inadequacy of healthcare and housing; unemployment, and the grossly immoral, unequal and inequitable distribution of personal, communal and public wealth; and ultimately the planetary threats and devastating results of environmental degradation: climate change, extreme weather events, drought and flood, famine and forced migration, and cycles of suffering that are severe and sustained among humans and also for the whole world and all in it. It is in this context of great damage already done and continually being repeated and expanded that we must center and strengthen ourselves, recommit ourselves to our highest values and best practices as African persons and peoples, and actively embrace the awesome relational, societal and ecological task of repairing, renewing and remaking the world, ever conscious of our role as a key moral and social vanguard in this country and the world. And as the sacred texts say, we are to make the world more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it. For it is a legacy left us born of righteous and relentless struggle that we are obligated to leave for those who come afterwards.  But again, it is also a sacred good to be achieved for us now, so that even in our time and no matter in what land or place, we and all others can self-consciously participate in creating and living well in a radically repaired, renewed and remade world in a real moral, material and political sense. And we must engage this world-encompassing and world-transforming task remembering the sacred Husitic of our ancestors that "every day is a donation to eternity and even one hour is a contribution to the future."     Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture; The Message and Meaning of Kwanzaa: Bringing Good Into the World and Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis, www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org; www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org.

International African Arts Festival | 1360 Fulton Street, Suite 401 (4th Floor), Brooklyn, NY 11216

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Dr. Maulana Karenga: The Joy and Justice of Archbishop Tutu

The Joy and Justice of Archbishop Tutu: In Remembrance, Reflection and Honor Dr. Maulana Karenga |01-02-22 | Surely, we as African persons and an African people, join our South African sisters and brothers, other Africans everywhere, and other freedom and justice loving people of the world in paying rightful and reverent homage at this moment of the grievous passing and joyous rising of Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu; son of Zacharias and Aletha Matlare Tutu; husband of Nomalizo Leah Schenxane Tutu; father of Trevor Thamsanga, Naomi Nontombi, Mpho Andrea and Theresa Thandeka. We honor him in his name and work, as honored priest and prophet of his faith; self-giving servant of his people; theologian who placed at the center of his thought and practice the good of humanity and the well-being of the world; human rights activist who taught and fought for the dignity and rights of human beings in all their differences and diversities; and highly esteemed, eminent and essential African witness to the peoples of the world. We praise him in his name Mpilo, life and health, which was a sign of the work he would do and the struggle he would wage in the interests of the life and health of the people. A sign too of the life of joy he would live and the struggle he would wage in the midst and movement of his people to end the racist sickness and savagery of apartheid and achieve with them liberation, justice and a good life, a life of health, happiness, well-being and flourishing. May the joy he brought and the good he left last forever. Hotep. Ashe. Heri. Makube njalo phakade (May it be so forever.) I had met and briefly talked with Archbishop Tutu twice: once at a reception for him at Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's house, May 1985, during the apartheid period and afterwards, May 1990 when he visited and lectured at California State University, Long Beach where I serve as professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies. And I've read his works and listened to interviews and lectures by him, and his joy of life and struggle and his profound commitment to justice were at all times vital, visceral and visible. His joyful approach recalls the sacred teachings of our ancestors in the Odu Ifa that says, "Let's do things with joy. . . For surely humans have been divinely chosen to bring good into the world" and this is the fundamental mission and meaning of human life. Our beloved brother thought and talked in world-encompassing ways, for he knew with Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune that "Our task is to rebuild the world. It is nothing less than this." But he asked us to work for justice, peace and good wherever we are and know that will add up and affect the way of the world. Thus, he tells us, "Do your little bit of good where you are; (for) it is the little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." He considered silence complicity and claims of neutrality in the struggles for liberation and justice sinister and self-deceptive. For he said, "Those who turn a blind eye to injustice actually perpetuate injustice. If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor." Clearly Nana Mpilo was deeply rooted in his Christian faith and understood that the moral measure of our work and societies is defined and determined by how we treat the most vulnerable among us. Indeed, this is an ancient African moral imperative, summed up in the sacred teachings of our ancestors in the Husia which says we are morally obligated "to bear witness to truth and set the scales of justice in their proper place, especially among those who have no voice," the devalued, the disempowered, the poor, the downtrodden and the oppressed. Reaffirming this principle in the context of his faith, he declared that he serves "a God notoriously biased in favor of the weak, of the oppressed, of the suffering, of the orphan, of the widow, of the alien," i.e., the stranger, the immigrant, the different and vulnerable. Indeed, he not only criticized and condemned the racist and brutish White apartheid rulers and regime for their savage suppression and denial of the rights and dignity of African people, he also criticized the post-apartheid ANC government for not delivering the anticipated and deserved benefits of liberation and ending the grinding poverty of the masses. He criticized all schemes and policies which in his assessment fell short of substantive freedom and justice. Thus, in his visit to the U.S. during the height of internal and world-wide resistance to apartheid, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, "We do not want to make our chains more comfortable. We want to remove them." This recalls Nana Frederick Douglass' liberational contention that the need and way forward is not to hug our chains, but to break them. Again, Nana Tutu worked and struggled for liberation, justice and peace, not only in South Africa, but in the whole world. Although the corporate media did not cover or praise him for it, of all his audacious and uncompromising positions taken, none was more consistent and definitive than his stand for the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian people from what he described as a brutal apartheid Israeli occupation with parallels to apartheid South Africa. And as President Nelson Mandela before him, he would not retract or relent in his support of the self-determination and human rights of the Palestinian people. He maintained that "Goodness will prevail in the end." And in this hard-won, carefully and caringly built and constantly defended space, real freedom, justice and peace will emerge, not only for the Palestinian people, but for each and every one everywhere, in a word, all the peoples of the world. Archbishop Tutu stressed our shared humanity, using the Zulu concept of ubuntu which he defined as "the essence of being human." Like similar communitarian concepts in other African cultures, it, he says, "speaks particularly about the fact you can't exist as a human being in isolation; it speaks about our interconnectedness," our interdependence and our capacity for collectively creating and sharing good. Against vulgar isolationist individualism, he maintains that "You can't be human all by yourself." Indeed, he affirms, "we can only be human together in relationships." This is expressed in the essential ubuntu affirmation, "umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu – a human being is a human being through other human beings!" Thus, Nana Mpilo wants us to see ourselves in each other, in how we relate to and treat each other, and how we work and share goodness with each other. If we are self-consciously related and interconnected, and we think and act in other-directed ways, he teaches us, we become generous and just, gentle, kind, compassionate and considerate, in a word, we do good in the world. And he taught "when you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity." This recalls and raises up the sacred teaching of Odu Ifa that says, "Doing good worldwide is the best example (expression) of character." His assertion that "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up in what is yours" recalls Dr. Martin L. King's earlier statement "We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." Nana Mpilo tells us that "No human made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with their earnest desire to overcome them." And "no peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it." But he knew, as Nana King rightly asserted, "True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice" for all of us. Archbishop Tutu, it is reported, when asked how he would like to be remembered, said we should say: "He loved. He laughed. He cried. He was forgiven. He forgave. Greatly privileged." Clearly, he felt greatly privileged and honored by the mission which heaven and history had assigned him and he carried it out with deep sensitivity, sagacity, compassion and courage. He loved the people and the struggle. He laughed with joy at the presence and possibility of the good. He cried about injustice and resisted it. And he posed solving the problem of forgiving and being forgiven as key to our future. We don't have to agree with every point he made, but we must concede he was a model and mirror in the best of African and human traditions of work and struggle to bring and sustain good in the world and leaving a legacy worthy of both preservation through self-conscious commitment and emulation through sincere and sustained practice. Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, The Message and Meaning of Kwanzaa: Bringing Good Into the World and Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis, www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org; www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org.

International African Arts Festival | 1360 Fulton Street, Suite 401 (4th Floor), Brooklyn, NY 11216

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