ON QUESTIONS OF RACE, ETHNICITY AND NATIONALITY

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1.       Various peoples from the African continent were kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved in the territories that became the United States of America. Are the descendants of those people living in the United States today still African? To answer this question, it is important to clarify in what aspect is meant “still African”. Who or what is “African”?

 

a)       First of all, let’s consider who it was that is being referenced. Let’s think about the person that was put in chains, survived the middle passage and brought to the Americas. Was that person “African”? In what sense? Here, I can only speak on what I know. So, let me paint a picture. My great, great, great, great, great grandfather was captured and brought to the Carolinas in the late 1750’s. His father was a cattle herder and rice farmer living along what is today called the Cacheu River. If you were to ask him about his identity, he would tell you that he was a b’alante b’ndang of the B’urassa people. That was his identity. That was his concept of himself. That was his being. He did not know anything about this thing called “African”. So the very question of this debate, as posed, makes no sense to my 6th generation great grandfather. HE was not AFRICAN. He was a member of the B’Urassa people. Other people refer to the B’urassa as Balanta. In this sense then, I will reinterpret the question at hand to fit MY understanding and my circumstances. In short – am I still B’urassa?

 

b)      The answer to this question is very simple and my seven-year-old son can answer this. Let’s start from a basic, common sense understanding that anyone can understand.

 

c)       YOU ARE ALL YOUR ANCESTORS – You (every single person reading this) is the union of your mother and father. That’s how you got here. Your father planted his seed in your mother’s womb, she nurtured it for nine months, and then you were born. Every human being that has ever lived was born from the union of male and female. The very BLOOD that circulates in your body was given to you from your mother and father. The very LIFE FORCE energy, the BREATH OF LIFE, and the GENETIC INSTRUCTIONS that are responsible for the life that you have – you received all of it from your mother and father. Therefore, your mother and father live inside of you. Because this is also true of your mother and father – that their mother and father live inside of them – then it is also true that your grandparents – their blood, their life force energy, their breath of life, and their genetic instructions, also live inside of you. From this it follows, that ALL your ancestors live inside of you. Your blood, your life force energy, your breath and your genetic makeup are shared by all the ancestors living inside of you. Therefore, your life is not your own. ALL your ancestors depend on you for their existence.

 

d)      Genetic testing through African Ancestry shows that my paternal ancestry is a 100% match with Balanta. So here is definitive, scientific proof, the answer to the question. Yes, I am still B’urassa and all of my sons and male descendants after me will also be B’urassa.

 

e)      There are, however, other aspects to the question we are debating, since the spirit of the questions goes beyond just genetics and into other areas such as culture as well as such things as legal status. So let’s deal with the issue of legal status.

 

f)        My great, great, great, great, great grandfather, before he was captured, was a very young boy in the B’urassa age group of Nwatch. His father was a  b’alante b’ndang which is the head of the household and thus eligible to sit in the Council of Elders. And that’s where B’urassa state formation stops. B’urassa were a stateless society by intention because they understood state formations created inequality. So, at the time of capture, my great, great, great, great, great grandfather was the son of a sovereign head of household.

 

g)       Now the question is: what was his legal status upon arrival in the Carolinas? The answer is simple – he was a prisoner of war. The B’urassa were at war against the Mandingo of the Kaabu empire which were the biggest man-hunters in the area. The B’urassa were also at war with the Portuguese, English and Dutch slave traders. My great, great, great, great, great grandfather did not relinquish his “B’urassa” identity or status upon arrival in the Carolinas. He was, however, designated by the name “George”. I will use this name temporarily because I do not know his B’urassa name. Remember, George, like most B’urassa that were captured, was a young boy. He had not advanced through any of the age grade initiations that formally teach B’urassa culture.  George fathered a son who was called Jack around 1789. Was Jack still B’urrassa? Good question. Genetically speaking, the answer is yes. We already answered that. Legally, Jack’s status (under international law) was “a B’urassa prisoner of war”. Culturally is where we start to have questions, and then there is also spirituality, another aspect. George was brought to the Carolinas before there was a nation known as The United States of America. Jack was born after the formation of the United States of America, so legally, Jack was a B’urassa prisoner of war in the United States of America. In 1819, Jack had a son that was designated by the name Yancey Blake. Was Yancey still B’urassa? Genetically, yes. Legally, in 1819 he wasn’t a citizen of the United States, so he was still a B’urassa prisoner of war. Culturally, he was best described as a slave – he had a slave culture. He neither lived in the B’urassa culture of his grandfathers, nor did he live in the culture of his slave owner. In this sense, he was neither American, nor, as the question has been posed, African. More difficult to answer, however is the question of his spirituality. I can address this later.

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This Dred Scott Supreme Court decision attempted to settle the legal status of slaves in free territories to avert a civil war, but it provoked one instead. Dred Scott, who was born a slave in Missouri, traveled with his master to the free territory of Illinois. As a result, Scott later sued his master for freedom, which the lower courts usually granted. However, when the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, it ruled that Scott would remain a slave because as such he was not a citizen and could not legally sue in the federal courts. Moreover, in the words of Chief Justice Roger Taney, black people free or slave could never become U. S. citizens and they “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The dissenting justices pointed out that in some states people of color were already considered citizens when the Constitution was ratified. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision by granting citizenship to all those born in the United States, regardless of color. But was the 14th Amendment a “grant” of citizenship?

h)      1865, the year of Emancipation, is the critical point of departure. No African who was taken captive and transported against his will to the Americas ever renounced their tribal identification and status vis-à-vis their original "citizenship". From 1444 up until Emancipation, all Africans held in slavery were not considered citizens of in the country of their captivity. The legal status of Africans in America after the Emancipation is undetermined. According to Imari Abubakari Obadele (founder of the Republic of New Africa):

"We are not American citizens... the Fourteenth Amendment, in an attempt to bestow citizenship upon the African newly freed from slavery, incorporated the rule of jus soli, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside.' A sound principle of international law, the rule of jus soli was obviously intended to provide American citizenship for persons born in the United States through what might be termed 'acceptable accidents' of birth. Thus, a person born in the US as a result of his parents' having come to this country voluntarily -- through emigration and settlement or vacation travel or business -- could not be denied citizenship in the country of his birth. He might have dual citizenship, gaining also the citizenship of his parents, but he could not be left with no citizenship. His birth in the US under such conditions would meet the test of an "acceptable accident."

By contrast, however, the presence of the African in America could by no stretch of justice be deemed 'an acceptable accident' of birth. The African, whose freedom was now acknowledged by his former slavemasters through the Thirteenth Amendment, was not on this soil because he or his parents had come vacationing or seeking some business advantage. Rather the African -- standing forth now as a free man because the Thirteenth Amendment forbade whites (who had the power, not the right) to continue slavery -- was on American soil as a result of having been kidnapped and brought here AGAINST his will.

What the rule of jus soli demanded at this point -- at the point of the passage of the slavery-halting Thirteenth Amendment -- was that America not deny to this African, born on American soil, American citizenship -- IF THE AFRICAN WANTED IT. This last condition is crucial: the African, his freedom now acknowledged by persons who theretofore had wrongfully and illegally (under international law) held him in slavery by force, was entitled as a free man to decide for himself what he wanted to do -- whether he wished to be an American citizen or follow some other course.

The rule of jus soli, in protecting the kidnapped African from being left without any citizenship, could operate so far as to impose upon America the obligation to offer the African (born on American soil) American citizenship; it could not impose upon the African -- a victim of kidnapping and wrongful transportation -- an obligation to accept such citizenship. Such an imposition would affront justice, by conspiring with the kidnappers and illegal transporters, and wipe out the free man's newly acquired freedom.

Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment is incorrectly read when its Section One is deemed to be a grant of citizenship: it can only be an offer. The positive tone of the language can only emphasize the intention of the ratifiers to make a sincere offer. On the other hand, the United States government, under obligation to make the offer. also had the power to create the mechanism – a plebiscite-- whereby the African could make an informed decision, an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer of American citizenship. Indeed, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear that Congress could pass whatever law was necessary to make real the offer of Section One. (Section Five says, 'The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.)

The first 'appropriate legislation' required at that moment -- and still required - was that which would make possible for the now free African an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.

Let us recall that, following the Thirteenth Amendment, four natural options were the basic right of the African. First, he did, of course, have a right, if he wished it, to be an American citizen. Second, he had a right to return to Africa or (third) go to another country -- if he could arrange his acceptance. Finally, he had a right (based on a claim to land superior to the European's, sub- ordinate to the Indian's) to set up an independent nation of his own.

Towering above all other juridical requirements that faced the African in America and the American following the Thirteenth Amendment was the requirement to make real the opportunity for choice, for self-determination. How was such an opportunity to evolve? Obviously, the African was entitled to full and accurate information as to his status and the principles of international law appropriate to his situation. This was all the more important because the African had been victim of a long-term intense slavery policy aimed at assuring his illiteracy, dehumanizing him as a group and depersonalizing him as an individual.

The education offered him after the Thirteenth Amendment confirmed the policy of dehumanization. It was continued in American institutions . . . for 100 years, through 1965. Now, again following the Thirteenth Amendment, the education of the African in America seeks to base African self-esteem on how well the African assimilates white American folk-ways and values Worse, the advice given the African concerning his rights under international law suggested that there was no option open to him other than American citizenship. For the most part, he was co-opted into spending his political energies in organizing and participating in constitutional conventions and then voting for legislatures which subsequently approved the Fourteenth Amendment. In such circumstances, the presentation of the Fourteenth Amendment to state legislatures for whose members the African had voted, and the Amendment's subsequent approval by these legislatures, could in no sense be considered a plebiscite.


The fundamental requirements were lacking: first, adequate and accurate information for the advice given the freedman was so bad it amounted to fraud, a second stealing of our birthright; second, a chance to choose among the four options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to Africa, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new African nation on American soil.

On the other hand, the United States government still has the obligation under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to ‘enforce' Section One (the offer of citizenship) in the only way it could be rightfully 'enforced' -- by authorizing US participation in a plebiscite. By, in other words, a reference to our own will, our self-determined acceptance or rejection of the offer of citizenship. There are further important ramifications. A genuine plebiscite implies that if people vote against US citizenship, the means must be provided to facilitate whatever decision they do make. Thus, persons who vote to return to Africa or to emigrate elsewhere must have the means to do so. . . .

Now then, we repeat: an obvious and important ramification of the plebiscite is that there must exist the capability of putting its decisions into effect. If the decision is for US citizenship, then that citizenship must be unconditional. If it is for emigration to a country outside Africa, those persons making this choice must have transportation resources and reparations in terms of other benefits, principally money, to make such emigration possible and give it a reasonable chance of success. If the decision is for a return to some country in Africa, the person must have those same reparations as persons emigrating to countries outside Africa PLUS those additional reparations necessary to restore enough of the African personality for the individual to have a reasonable chance of success in integrating into African society in the motherland. If, finally, the decision is for an independent new African nation on this soil, then the reparations must be those agreed upon between the United States government and the new African government. Reparations must be at least sufficient to assure the new nation a reasonable chance of solving the great problems imposed upon us by the Americans in our status as a colonized people."

i)        After 1865 and the 13th and 14th Amendments, our legal status in the United States of America became “colonized people through forced integration.” This is your/our current legal status until one makes an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.

IF YOU DID NOT KNOW AND UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLE OF JUS SOLI AND THE LEGAL REQUIREMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO CONDUCT A PLEBISCITE FOR THE EXERCISE OF SELF DETERMINATION, THEN YOU DID NOT MAKE AN INFORMED FREE CHOICE, AN INFORMED ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF THE CITIZENSHIP OFFER. THUS, YOUR AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP, IS NULL AND VOID UNLESS YOU WAIVE YOUR RIGHT TO MAKING A FREE AND INFORMED ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF THE OFFER.

 

j)        So at this point, we have systematically proven that genetically speaking I am still B’urassa. Legally speaking, I never renounced my B’urassa status (knowledge of which was taken from me through the process of terroristic brainwashing) and I never made a valid acceptance of American citizenship, so I am not American. Properly speaking, I am a B’urassa colonized through forced integration in the United States of America. Culturally, I am neither B’urassa (knowledge of which was taken from me through the process of terroristic brainwashing) nor American. By American, I mean, I don’t practice white supremacy. My culture is what is properly referred to as #ADOS – American Descendants of Slaves. Here, American refers to location, not ethnicity, consciousness, spirituality or nationality.

 

k)       Spiritually, I am neither Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or any of the most well-known organized religions, nor have I ever been a member of any of their churches. The only organized religion or spirituality that I ever identified with and attended services for was Rastafari. However, I left the Rastafari movement and after discovering and studying my B’urassa ancestry, I have come to learn that spiritually, I am still B’urassa.

 

l)        So now I have answered the question(s) at hand. I am neither on paper nor in actual practice, American nor African. Genetically and spiritually, I am still B’urassa. Legally, I am a B’urassa colonized through forced integration in the United States of America, and culturally I am #ADOS (because of the process of terroristic brainwashing).

 

m)    CONCERNING THE QUESTION OF PAN AFRICANISM – In the past, because knowledge of our ancestral identities was erased through the process of terroristic brainwashing, many #ADOS have searched for an identity. Until the advent of genetic testing, for the vast majority of #ADOS, we could only learn that we came from “somewhere in Africa”. As a result, the entire continent of Africa became our identities, a place holder for our actual, SPECIFIC ancestral lineages. As a result, we built bonds with all the people of the African continent, and in particular, with those who shared the trans-Atlantic slavery experience. This bonding, based on this level of knowledge of self, formed the Pan African movement. However, I am a new kind of Pan Africanist. My Pan Africanism is not built on a sentimental feeling of a vague understanding of my relationship to the African continent. I know who I am and I know my history. I have written three volumes on my family history dating back to 42,000 BCE and am finishing the 4th and final volume entitled Balanta B’urassa My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain. My new Pan Africanism is based on the fact that I believe that knowing my history, our history, we can tell the truth, acknowledge our mistakes so that we don’t make them again. For example, my brother Foday is Temne and his ancestors were part of the Soninke or Mali Empires. When we discuss how his ancestors oppressed my ancestors, he apologized on behalf of his ancestor for what they did to my ancestors. We realize that BOTH of our ancestors ended up enslaved here in the United States because we did not have the advantage of understanding the threat against us. Now we do and now we see the pitfalls of not uniting against this threat. So we can be proud of our ancestral heritages and work together in better-informed Pan Africanism without falling into the pitfalls of tribalism. We can also empathize with each other about the experience of both losing and regaining our specific ancestral lineages. Once everyone knows WHO they are and WHOSE they are, then that truth can provide the answers to the questions we have today surrounding the who, what, where, when and how of REPARATIONS and how we will work with each other. There is no conflict between #ADOS and Pan Africanism once everyone knows their specific ancestral lineages.

 

n)      AND THIS IS THE REASON WHY I AM ISSUING THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT.

 

1.       Because the purpose of any reparations is to repair, then the first action requires answering, "Repair to what?" - What was the condition before the injustice that needs to be repaired?

 

THEREFORE, THE FIRST STEP IN REPARATIONS is to train and develop a professional class of African American genealogy researchers and deploy them as part of a modern day government Workers Project that will go throughout the United States and determine the genetic ancestry and family history of every black person claiming to be the descendants of slaves.

 

Because I have done this myself for my family, and reconstructed our family history for the last 18,000 years, including the first encounter with Europeans and their capture by Mandinka slave traders of the Kaabu empire who sold them to Luso Africans (mixed breed Portuguese and African) slave traders who then sold them to English rice planters in South Carolina (names are known), I know what it takes to do such a research project. The first step is removing the "negro problem" - getting rid of an identity that is not established in historical fact. Upon arrival in America, black victims of human trafficking were terrorized into forgetting their names, their language, their culture, and knowledge of where they come from. As the movie clip shows, not knowing yourself, only knowing yourself as "negro" or "black" or "from somewhere in Africa" is the continuing legacy of slavery. . . .

It is now the 21st century and the science, the tools, and the means for repairing this exist today. At this point, the government needs to provide, free of charge, maternal and paternal dna testing through the company African Ancestry as well as a professional genealogy case manager to work with each person to re-establish their historical ancestry. This is step #1

Every college and university should have a special program for training this class of genealogy researches and all African American students entering the program should be granted free tuition and a living stipend for four years of study. Within ten to fifteen years, every African American could then have their ancestral identity restored. This would then become the basis for further reparations. The process itself feeds several birds with one seed - a significant number of black students would be able to attend college free of charge with a useful vocation and guaranteed employment (through the government program) that is directly related to the "repairing" of the African American community.

THE SECOND STEP IS THEN USING THE SAME TECHNOLOGY AND WORKFORCE TO CALCULATE WHO OWNED WHO AND HOW MUCH WEALTH WAS CREATED AND STOLEN.

I suggest everyone start by reading Daina Ramey Berry's book, The Price For Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a NationTop of Form

 

A note to #ADOS– go back to “i)” and consider carefully. The way #ADOS is proceeding, they are waving their right to make a free and informed rejection of the citizenship offer. By waving this right, #ADOS is ceding valuable legal territory. In the same way that #ADOS founder Antonio Moore has done his homework when it comes to the economic and wealth aspects of Reparations, he must also do his legal homework lest he compromise other allies doing that aspect of REPARATIONS work. Essentially, #ADOS must make it clear – are they advocating integration into America or liberation from America? I am without question a liberationist and not an integrationist. I recommend that #ADOS add to its platform the demand for a US Sponsored Plebiscite while educating #ADOS that the movement is not divisive on this question – it is not an either/or choice. All 4 natural options are valid and must be provided for – 1) those who want to integrate into America; 2) those who want to return to their ancestral homelands; 3) those that want to form a new nation of their own on land that is currently within the United States of America; and 4) those that want to emigrate to some other country. We need not fight amongst ourselves on this question. We respect each person’s right of self-determination, but we struggle or the provisions for ALL FOUR OPTIONS EQUALLY.

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Reflection and citizenship (article reposted from Facebook by Nafanda Cidadão Camais)

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In my opinion achieving a political system that can suit our socio-political realities, could be a valid alternative to this vicious cycle of chronic instability that parents have been immersed for more than two decades and without end the view.

Socially Guinea-Bissau is a mosaic of different sensitivity, although "Virtual" in my opinion.
With more than 20 ethnic groups each with its own identity (language, uses and customs, etc) the democratic fragility known until today, suffers from a logical evidence of what the system or semi-Presidential plagiarism that copy from Portugal, perhaps Do not be suitable at this time for Guinea-Bissau due to the very structure of guinean society itself

So making a deep reflection on how to act to turn this jinx would be a serious challenge for each of us..

That said and by the structural similarity of the two societies, I usually define guinea-Bissau from the point of view of social composition as a "Miniature" of United States of America, and consequently i also believe that a similar political system but not equal to Of them, it could help break this vicious cycle of our instability

Now the understood of political and social sciences, here are matters to discuss.

Chances:

1. Assumption Number 1 would be that political parties would have to be groups on the basis of the social or ideology policies that they defend, which are

Right, center, left.

2. All parties would be required to sign a certificate of their ideology in the supreme court before the general elections.

3. of the parties that defend
The same policies should be a consensual leader through internal interim elections without state costs.

4 In the end we would have only two groups of parties fighting for the general elections, expense by

5. Whoever won, elect a president of the republic and this in turn forms his own government.
So in one election we would have the president of the republic and Prime Minister of the same

Let's go to

Cbnf

A Swimmer's Race: https://myswimpro.com/blog/2019/08/06/a-swimmers-race/

This post is guest-written by MySwimPro Ambassador Siphiwe Baleka. Support his swim at the 2019 International Swimming Masters Championships in Cairo, Egypt by donating to his GoFundMe page.

DON'T LET THEM FOOL YOU! BLACKS CAN SWIM. WE HAVE ALWAYS SWAM. AND IT SAVED OUR LIVES THE FIRST TIME WE ENCOUNTERED THE PORTUGUESE.

Gomes Eannes de Azurara’s account of the Portuguese’s first arrival in the land of Guinea (in the land of the Balanta), 1445 AD

"And therefore he armed a very fine caravel, and the captaincy of this he bestowed on his nephew, named Alvaro Fernandez, whom the Infant had brought up in his household,.... And he was not to hinder himself by making raids in the land of the Moors, but to take his way straight to the land of the Negroes.... From thence they went forward until they passed Cape Verde, beyond which they decried an island (Goree). . . . Thence they went forward to the spot where the palm tree is . . . . And when they were near to the Cape as it might be a third of a league, they cast anchor and rested as they had arranged; but they had not been there long when from the land there set out two boats, manned by ten Guineas, who straightaway began to make their way direct to the ship, like men who came in peace....from this it seemed to them that they could easily capture them. And with this design there put off six boats with thirty-five or forty of their company prepared like men who meant to fight....And the Guineas stayed some way off until one of their boats took courage to move more forward and issued forth from the others towards the caravel, and in it were five brave and stout Guineas, distinguished in this respect among the others of the company. And as soon as Alvaro Fernandez perceived that this boat was already in position for him to be able to reach it before it could receive help from the others, he ordered his own to issue forth quickly and go against it. And by the great advantage of our men in their manner of rowing they were soon upon the enemy, who seeing themselves thus overtaken, and having no hope of defense, leapt into the water while the other boats fled towards the land. But our men had very great toil in the capture of those who were swimming, for they dived like cormorants, so that they could not get a hold of them;"

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As one of the greatest Balanta swimmers that ever lived, I am calling on my Balanta family for some support. Please read this article and make a contribution to my Blacks Can Swim and Win campaign. I want to honor our Balanta ancestors who came from the Nile Valley where they first learned to swim! We have raised $2,380 of the $3,000 fundraising goal. https://www.gofundme.com/manage/blacks-can-swim-and-win

On October 4th and 5th of 2019, I hope to compete in the most important swimming race of my life. This race is more important to me than the 1989 Illinois High School State Swimming Championships in which, as the #1 seed in the 200 I.M., I ended up finishing fourth.

It is more important than the YMCA National Championships and the Junior National Championships in which I made the finals in every event that I swam but failed to win any event. More important than the 1991 and 1992 Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League Championships where I swam on winning, record-setting relays and made the All-Ivy League Team in the 100 Freestyle.

More important than the legendary inaugural Harvard -Yale -Princeton (HYP) tri meet that we (Yale) won to clinch the Ivy League title. More important than the 1991 US Open in which I failed to qualify for the 1992 US Olympic Trials by 0.8 seconds.

And more important than the USMS National Championships in which I have won thirteen individual titles or the 2017 FINA Masters Swimming World Championships in which I won four silver medals.

What swimming competition can be more important than any of those?

Let me explain. This is not your typical swimming article because my story is not a typical swimming story.

Two things have dominated my life: swimming and race(ism). I was born and raised in the all-white subdivision of Boulder Hill, in Oswego, Illinois. My family was one of two black families in the community. In 1976 when I was just five years old, a book was published called Roots: The Saga of an American Family. That same year, a blonde hair, blue-eyed boy and his friends called me a racial slur and hit me with a broken metal bar from the bicycle rack (we later became teammates on the football team in high school). The book was made into a TV movie in 1977 and viewed by 130 million people in America, including myself.

After Roots came on television, I did not want to go to school. This was the first time I became aware that there was a difference between black people and white people. And the white people were more powerful. This is called white supremacy. As a result, black people were made to feel less important, less intelligent, and inferior. Somewhere inside me, I felt ashamed, but I also felt that I would prove that I am not inferior.

In 1978, a lifeguard at the Boulder Hill Civic Center named David Stevens saw me playing with the other kids and asked me to swim across the pool. I did, and then he asked me to do it again but this time on my back. I did that and he told me to come to the pool the next morning at 7:00 am. And just like that, I joined the Oswego Park District Lil’ Devils Swim Team. I hated the cold water, but I now earned the coveted red and white striped speedo swimsuit that all the swim team members wore. I was “on the team.”

The following year, I was winning all the summer league races and setting team records. Whatever inferiority complex that racism was fostering, swimming was doing the opposite. Swimming races gave me confidence, a sense of achievement and pride. It also made me feel accepted. Everyone on the team was happy when our relay won or our team won and I was included in that happiness. Coach Dave, who later qualified for both the US Olympic Swimming and Triathlon Trials, instilled in me the desire to work hard in the pool and become the best I could be.

In 1980 I joined the Aurora YMCA Sharks swimming team in order to swim all year. By 1981 I was the Illinois YMCA State Champion in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 1:00.68. Around that same time, at school we were reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Naturally, I identified with the heroes of the story, and so when the teacher asked who wanted to read the parts of Tom or Huck, I rose my hand. One of the students in the class said, “You can’t be Huck. You have to be N***** Jim”.  Can you imagine being the only black kid in class and reading a book which uses this racial slur more than 200 times? These were the kind of onslaughts to my psyche that I suffered everyday as a kid. But everyday I also went to swim practice. For me, the pool was an equalizer. If you were fast and you were helping the team win, you were respected and liked. My teammates were my friends. Ironically, in a sport that, at that time, was mostly all-white (and mostly still true today) I never felt out of place or inferior. 

After winning several events at the age of 14 at the Ohio Valley Championships in 1985, I gave my first interview to a newspaper.  The article stated, “An articulate youngster who smiles easily, Blake has no problem explaining his decision to forgo the more traditional sports that black youngsters participate in. ‘I play all the sports, but I like swimming the most. It’s just fun, especially when you win. It’s a good way to stay in shape. Besides, all my friends swim… Swimming is probably what I am best at. I get more satisfaction out of it, I want to get a scholarship, that’s the first thing.’”

Two years later, just days before my 16th birthday, on April 6, 1987, Al Campanis told Nightline anchorman Ted Koppel that blacks can’t swim because we lacked buoyancy. 

That year I was ranked in the top 16 in the nation in the 100 freestyle. The success in the pool sustained my esteem, earned me status among my peers, and created opportunities for me. In 1988, the swimmers at the Illinois Swimming State Championships voted me to be one of their two athlete representatives to United States Swimming. My senior year in high school, I was recruited by scores of NCAA Division 1 schools. I applied to just six schools – Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, The University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia. I was accepted at all six. Was it because I was super smart? Probably not. I graduated only 9th in my class of just over 300 students. My SAT verbal score was in the 85th percentile, my math score was 91%. I did a little better on the ACT test, scoring in the 97%. That’s not enough to get you into those schools. Why did they accept me? It was because of the swimming. But it was also because of my race. Division 1 caliber black swimmers were a rarity – just a handful of us at the time like Tim Jackson and Byron Davis. Accepting me, these schools got a two-for-one: a great swimmer and a diversity-quota-filling black student. Here, the intersection of my swimming and my race, helped me.

The January 26th, 2015 issue of Sports Illustrated told the rest of my collegiate swimming story.  That article also told another part of my story, how I had an identity crisis and left Yale and traveled around the world. Describing that experience, I told Jon Wertheim, author of the article, “I didn’t feel like I knew who I was. I didn’t know my history. Like a lot of African-Americans, we don’t know our past. All of a sudden, connecting with my ancestral heritage became very important.”

So, I traveled to Ghana, Benin, and Togo. I lived in Ethiopia for a year. According to Wertheim, Yale swimming coach Frank Keefe “recalls meeting Blake for lunch that semester and doing a double take when his former star walked into the diner. ‘He was a Rastafarian,’ Keefe said. He said that he wanted to be the national swim coach of Ethiopia”. It was true. When I went to Ethiopia in 2003, I discovered that the Gihon hotel in Addis Ababa had an Olympic-sized swimming pool with no water in it. At altitude! Immediately I thought of the boys I saw at Lake Tana, the source of the Nile. They grew up around water. They were natural swimmers. What if I took them and trained them to become the world’s best long-distance swimmers? I did not think this was a crazy idea. They had already proved they were the best long-distance runners. All I had to do was get a group of boys from eight to ten years old and coach them for the next twenty years. They had the advantage of living and training at altitude. I planned to fund it by offering high altitude training camps in this “exotic” location for American college swimming teams which are allowed one foreign trip every four years. I met with the Ethiopian Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture and discussed my idea. In my mind, if Michael Phelps really wanted to go to the next level and transform the sport of swimming – taking the poorest country in the world, and making black, Ethiopians the best swimmers in the world – he would help me finance this.

In 2007, I returned to South Africa. While there, a council of elders explained to me that whenever a “son of the soil” returns home after a long journey, he receives a new name. Having journeyed far and long, the person returns as a “new” man, thus requiring a “new” name. The elders told me that while I was on ancestral soil, my ancestors required that I have an ancestral name that they could call. Thus, the elders gave me the name “Siphiwe” which means “gift of the creator” and the surname Baleka which means “fast” and “he who escaped”. This was profoundly important to me. In the movie Roots, the main character Kunte Kinte, when brought to America, was stripped and tied to a post where he was whipped until he gave up his name and acknowledged that his new name was “Toby”, the name given to him by the slave master.

At Yale, where I started to study African American history, I learned that most slaves took the names of their slave masters. All of a sudden, my birth name, Anthony “Tony” Blake, started to really bother me. Why did I, a black person, have a Spanish or Italian first name and an English surname when I am neither Spanish, Italian or English? Why, now that I am “free”, did I continue to use the foreign names of slave-owners? This was part of my identity crisis that started back in 1977 when I watched the movie Roots. Thus, when I returned to the United States, I had my name legally changed to Siphiwe Baleka in order to honor my ancestors.

On September 28, 2010, I received my genetic DNA results from African Ancestry. My paternal DNA was a 100% match with the Balanta people in Guinea Bissau. Since then, I have researched my Balanta ancestry and discovered that they originated in East Africa.  Haplogroup E1b1a is a direct basal branch of Y-chromosome haplogroup E-V38 which originated in the Horn of Africa about 42,300 years before the present. Further research showed that these ancestors of mine migrated down the Nile River and settled a place called Wadi Kubbaniya in modern day Sudan around 18,500 BC.  Research also showed that they continued to migrate down the Nile River and established the first city called Nekhen. By 3200 BC, they had migrated into what is called Upper and Lower Egypt and settled the first areas called Nuits or Nomes. The 13th Nuit/Nome that my ancestors settled was called Iunu. In the Bible, it is called “On”. The Greeks called it “Heliopolis” and today, the city is called Cairo. 

On October 4-5, 2019, the Heliopolis Sporting Club in Cairo, Egypt will be hosting the 1st International Swimming Masters Championships. Now you can understand why competing in this event is so important to me. For the first time, the world’s best Masters Swimmers are going to compete in Africa, in the very city that my ancestors founded. It is important to me that one of the descendants of the city’s original founders – me – not only competes but wins. To be honest, I get upset whenever I see that the “African Swimmer of the Year” is in fact, of European origin. This year, Ed Acura gained attention with his short movie, A Film Called Blacks Can’t Swim. I want to make my contribution, my statement, that not only can blacks swim, we can win! I think it is important that one of the champions at this inaugural competition, is a black swimmer. I think it can inspire a new generation of young swimmers as well as adult swimmers on the continent of Africa.

As a boy, I wanted to be a professional athlete.  However, there was no opportunity for professional swimming back then. That is changing. Swimmers like Michael Andrew are making a living traveling around the world and competing. This was my dream. It still is. Just because I am a 48-year old Masters swimmer doesn’t mean I have to give up on this dream. I, too, can travel around the world and compete and try to prove I am the fastest in the world. However, right now, there is no money in Masters Swimming. There’s very little sponsorship and definitely no prize money. But we have to start somewhere. I’m going to need help. 

I have already made arrangements to travel to Guinea Bissau this December. It will be the first time in 269 years that anyone from my family has returned to reconnect with our Balanta relatives. This is a true, Alex Haley Roots’ type reunion for me. Honoring the ancestors is one of the most important aspects of Balanta culture. The only thing that could make this year even better is if I could also return to my family’s most ancient and original ancestral homeland and honor them by doing what I do best – compete in and win a swimming race. 

To do this, I need to raise a little money. Please go to my GoFundMe page and make a contribution. The meet organizers have promised that if I bring five swimmers with me, they will pay my in-country expenses, so if you would like to join me, please contact me and let me know.

I want to thank MySwimPro for supporting me, sponsoring me, and helping me to truly be a MySwim “Pro”.

Sincerely,

Siphiwe Baleka