STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF THE AFRODESCENDANT NATION WHO ARE DESCENDANTS OF AFRICANS ENSLAVED IN THE UNITED STATES (DAEUS) ON THE 72ND HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

72 years ago, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. December 10th, or “Human Rights Day” has thus become a celebratory day for all human rights defenders worldwide! United States Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, in celebration of Human Rights Day 2020, made the following statement:

“On International Human Rights Day, the United States celebrates the rights and freedoms enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This day has a special resonance for Americans, as the United States was the first nation founded on the belief that all individuals are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Indeed, it was an American First Lady who convened the United Nations conference that created the 1948 Declaration.

Under the Trump Administration, the State Department has taken a leading role in the promotion and protection of unalienable rights. Earlier this year, the Department released the report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, which reaffirms the indispensable role the United States has, and will always play, in the respect and protection of human rights.  And around the world, we have demonstrated strong support for those fighting for their unalienable rights and human dignity, from Xinjiang to Lagos, Minsk to Islamabad.

History demonstrates that governance that respects human rights and upholds the dignity of all human beings makes the world a safer and more prosperous place. But history also teaches that human rights must always be vigilantly protected. Today, the United States reasserts our commitment to stand always in solidarity with those fighting for their rights, and urges all nations to safeguard the human rights we all cherish.”

As President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America, a member of the Inclusive Policy Lab of the UNESCO E-team for the People of African Descent and the Sustainable Development Goals, and a member of the National Coalition of Black for Reparations in America (NCOBRA), I take great issue with the Secretary Pompeo’s Statement which, while noting that, “the United States was the first nation founded on the belief that all individuals are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights”, failed to clarify that it did so while simultaneously, hypocritically, immorally and criminally enslaving African heritage peoples, denying their humanity, and sanctioning the dehumanizing slave manufacturing process that has destroyed the genome of the Afrodescendant Nation (DAEUS) through the Transgenerational Epigenetic Effect. This has also resulted in the ethnocide of the Afrodescendant Nation (DAEUS).

Moreover, the Report of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its mission to the United States of America, August 18, 2016 reiterated that

“The United States has not signed and ratified any of the human rights treaties that would allow United States citizens to present individual complaints to the United Nations human rights treaty bodies or to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.”

Secretary Pompeo’s statement celebrating Human Rights Day 2020 is thus another misleading piece of propaganda designed to deceive the world into thinking that the United States’ historical legacy is honorable and that it is the world’s leader on human rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I call attention to the Swedish submission of Advanced Questions to the United States of America ahead of the third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States in May, 2020.which states:

“Sweden notes the usage by representatives of the United States of America of the term ‘unalienable rights’ to hold forth certain, but not all, human rights. This shift in terminology could be interpreted as a step to redefine human rights, contrary to the globally agreed definition of them being universal, interdependent and mutually reinforcing. How will the United States of America ensure that any development of its human rights policies continue to adhere to international human rights law as the norm that human rights are universal, interdependent and mutually reinforcing?”

This is especially troubling given that the Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Compilation on the United States of America submitted to the Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review , 36th Session, May 4-15, 2020, noted that,

“C. Economic, social and cultural rights

44. The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty noted that the United States had refused to accord domestic recognition to economic and social rights, except for some social rights, and especially the right to education.”

Both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) clearly state,

“Recognizing that, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ideal of free human beings enjoying freed from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights, . . .

PART I

Article 1

1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

2. All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.

3. The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

Here I remind you of some of the Afrodescendant Nation’s (DAEUS) efforts that have already been made to hold America accountable to the ideals which Secretary Pompeo insists the United States is committed:

September 2, 1924 - The Universal Negro Improvement Association submits its Petition of Four Million Negroes of the United States of America to His Excellency the President of the United States Praying for a Friendly and Sympathetic Consideration of the Plan of Founding a Nation in Africa for the Negro People, and to Encourage Them in Assisting to Develop Already Independent Negro Nations as a Means of Helping to Solve the Conflicting Problems of Race

1946 - The National Negro Congress submits its Petition to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations Stating The Facts on The Oppression of the American Negro.

October 23, 1947 - W.E.B. DuBois submits AN APPEAL TO THE WORLD!: A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress. Fearing that the double standard would be exposed, President Truman’s State Department worked relentlessly to undermine the emerging human rights infrastructure at the U.N. In internal documents, the State Department admitted that it was worried about the creation of an international forum where it would be too tempting to raise the “Negro problem.”

December, 1951 - William Patterson and Paul Robeson submit We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of The United States against the Negro People . The petition detailed, among other things, 152 incidents of killings of unarmed Black men and women by police and lunch mobs between 1945 and 1951.

April 3, 1964 - Malcolm X gives his famous, “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech stating, “Human rights are something you are born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time anyone violates your human rights, you can tak them to the world court.” Thus, Malcolm X revealed his intention to utilize the United Nations. On May 21, 1964, Malcolm X stated,

“The American black man needed to recognize that he had a strong, airtight case to take the United States before the United Nations on a formal accusation of ‘denial of human rights’ - and that if Angola and South Africa were precedent cases, then there would be no easy way that the U.S. could escape being censured, right on its own home ground.”

On November 29, 1964, Malcolm X stated,

“You and I must take this government before a world forum and show the world that this government has absolutely failed in its duty toward us.”

Finally, Malcolm X mentioned the United Nations topic for the last time on February 16, 1965, just days before his death. stating,

“as long as you call it civil rights your only allies can be the people in the next community, many of who are responsible for your grievance. But when you call it human rights it becomes international. And then you can take your troubles to the World Court. You can take them before the world. And anybody anywhere on this earth can become your ally.” A few days later, Malcolm X was killed.

1977 - The New Afrikan Prisoners Organization (NAPO) petition to the United Nations.

December 11, 1978 - The National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the Commission on Racial Justice for the United Church of Christ submit a petition to the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

November 5, 1979 - The National Black Human Rights Coalition organized a march of 5,000 people at the United Nations under the banner “Black People Charge Genocide” and “Human Rights is the Right to Self Determination.”

1994 - Mr. Silis Muhammad delivered Petition for Reparations to the UN under 1503 Procedure – to the UN Working Group on Communications on behalf of African Americans. This was followed up in 1997, 1998, 199 and 2000 with written and oral statements urging the Commission on Human Rights to assist African Americans in their effort to recover from official U.S. policies of enslavement.

May 1997 - As a response to revelations that the CIA was involved in the explosion of crack/cocaine in African American communities, the National Black United Front launched a historic Genocide Petition Campaign Against the United States Government and traveled to the United Nations Human Rights Center in Geneva, Switzerland to present the petition with over 200,000 signatures to Mr. Ralph Zacklin, Officer in Charge of High Commission of Human Rights, Centre for Human Rights. Also, this same Petition/Declaration was submitted to the High Commission of Human Rights in New York on May 27, 1997.

September 3, 2001 - World Conference Against Racism - 18,810 delegates from 170 countries, 16 heads of state, 58 foreign ministers, 44 ministers, 7,000 non-governmental representatives, and 1,300 journalists attending the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR)

declared that "slavery, and the slave trade, including the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their magnitude, organized nature [and] especially their negation of the essence of the victims . . . [and] that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity..."

At the conference, on September 2, 2001, in a meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney presented Robinson with two documents as evidence of the US governments violations of both US and international law and, in particular, specific violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The first document given to Robinson was a confidential Memorandum 46, written by National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski on March 17, 1978 and it details the federal government's plan to destroy functioning black leadership in the United States. This document provides a critical insight into the federal government's concern at the apparent growing influence of the African American political movement. The second document is a report entitled "Human Rights in the United States [The Unfinished Story - Current Political Prisoners - Victims of COINTELPRO]" and it was compiled by the Human Rights Research Fund, headed by Kathleen Cleaver. This document provides an overview of the counterintelligence program which, from the 1950s to the 1980s, was run in the United States against political activists and targeted organizations.

Rather than face these charges, the United States Government's delegation to WCAR walked out of the conference. Days later, the World Trade Center in New York was destroyed.

November 22, 2010 - The National Conference of Black Lawyers and the Malcolm X Center for Self Determination submit a report on Political Repression – Political Prisoners to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review, Ninth Session of the Working Group on the UPR Human Rights Council. The report was endorsed by 34 organizations and 53 individuals.

June 2013 - Racial Justice Now!, on behalf of 62 community organizations and 221 community activists and supporters submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination the Status of Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States and the United State’s Violation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in response to the Periodic Report of the United States of June 12, 2013

December 23, 2015 - Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and Global Justice Clinic, New York University School of Law submits the report, Excessive Use of Force by Police Against Black Americans in the United States to the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent

Despite all of these efforts, the condition of the Afrodescendant Nation (DAEUS) has worsened. Cecile Johnson of the Pendo Center for Human Rights and Self Determination elaborates,

“For a number of years we have been educating the public on the issues and taking steps to secure the Native born Afro Descendants in the USA ( descendants of the American colonization and enslavement) nearly 50 million strong, on their Right to Self Determination as guaranteed by International Law. Specifically the ICCPR article 1.

We have been working on behalf of the Afro Descendants here in the USA in response to the UN Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent 2016 findings on behalf of Black people here in the US. I provided evidence along with Vickie Casanova and hundreds of others at that visit. That report clearly identifies the atrocities against us and gives recommendations which the USA has failed to comply with even when under the Obama administration. It included that the US owed our population REPARATIONS. And 60/147 addresses how that could be handled. However, it has been 4 years since that visit and it has been very difficult to get in touch with the UN agencies and get adequate follow up, even from your working group which is suppose to address over 1.5 Billion African people's troubles globally.

The 2016 UN Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent brought awareness to our plight globally, but said “we would have to do the work on the ground.” So we responded by doing the work! Filing a Declaration of Self Determination on 10/01/2017 and this was presented to the OHCHR in Geneva in March 2018 and accepted. We filed all the required notifications to the UN and State Department following that and even made a request to the UN Decolonization Committee to list us on the Decolonization List in October 2018. We are still waiting to hear from them on that request.”

Concerning poverty and the condition of the Afrodescendant Nation (DAEUS), the Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Compilation on the United States of America submitted to the Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review , 36th Session, May 4-15, 2020, further noted that,

2. Right to an adequate standard of living

48. The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty noted high poverty and inequality levels. There was a dramatic contrast between the immense wealth of the few and the squalor and deprivation in which vast numbers of Americans existed. The face of poverty was not only black or Hispanic, but also white, Asian and many other backgrounds. The Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice noted that the percentage of women in poverty had increased at a higher rate than for men. That had predominantly affected women of colour, single-parent families and older women. The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty stated that high child and youth poverty rates perpetuated the intergenerational transmission of poverty. The persistence of extreme poverty was a political choice and with political will it could be eliminated.

49. The same Special Rapporteur stated that punishing and imprisoning the poor was the distinctively American response to poverty. Workers who could not pay their debts, those who could not afford private probation services, minorities targeted for traffic infractions, the mentally ill and fathers who could not pay child support were locked up. He noted that in many cities, homeless persons were effectively criminalized for the situation in which they found themselves. The Working Group of Experts on Persons of African Descent was concerned about the criminalization of poverty, which disproportionately affected African Americans.”

Finally, the report identified the racial wealth and health gap of the Afrodescendant Nation (DAEUS):

“IV. Implementation of international human rights obligations, taking into account applicable international humanitarian law

A. Cross-cutting issues

1. Equality and non-discrimination

7. The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights noted long-standing structural discrimination on the basis of race and stated that the United States remained a segregated society. In 2017, in the wake of the demonstrations and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, three special procedure mandate holders warned that racism and xenophobia were on the rise.

8. The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent stated that the persistent gap between African Americans and the rest of the population in almost all the human development indicators reflected the level of structural and institutional discrimination. Mass incarceration, police violence, housing segregation, disparity in the quality of education, labour market segmentation, political disenfranchisement and environmental degradation continued to have detrimental impacts on people of African descent. The Working Group noted that hate crime groups were active, targeting African Americans.”

It is, therefore, quite revealing that the Report of the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, highlighted,

“8. Reparations concern both our past and our present; the Durban Declaration clearly states that transatlantic slavery and colonialism remain among the root causes of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance against Africans and people of African descent, people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples. States in the Americas have also recognized the existence of “a mestizo population of different ethnic and racial origins, to a large extent as the result of the history of colonization and slavery in the American continent, in which unequal relations of race and gender were joined”. In addition to implicating individual wrongful acts, reparations for slavery and colonialism implicate entire legal, economic, social and political structures that enabled slavery and colonialism, and which continue to sustain racial discrimination and inequality today. That means that the urgent project of providing reparations for slavery and colonialism requires States not only to fulfil remedial obligations resulting from specific historical wrongful acts, but also to transform contemporary structures of racial injustice, inequality, discrimination and subordination that are the product of the centuries of racial machinery built through slavery and colonialism.

9. Reparations for slavery and colonialism entail moral, economic, political and legal responsibilities. The present report outlines a structural approach to providing reparations for slavery and colonialism under public international law and international human rights law, according to which States must pursue a just and equitable international order as an urgent dimension of reparations for slavery and colonialism. Full implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination must also be understood as a central pillar to achieving reparations for slavery and colonialism. The present report also provides detailed information on the duties of States in providing reparations for racial discrimination and injustice under public international law and international human rights law.

10. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur discusses legal hurdles to providing full reparations, while also highlighting legal obligations related to the provision of reparations for which States are fully liable today. In addition, the Special Rapporteur emphasizes that the pursuit and achievement of reparations for slavery and colonialism require a genuine “decolonization” of the doctrines of international law that remain barriers to reparations.

In the face of the grave historic injustices of slavery and colonialism, as well as their continuing legacies, the use of legal doctrine by Member States to impede redress is distressing. The Special Rapporteur stresses that international legal doctrine has a longer history of justifying and enabling colonial domination than it does of guaranteeing equal rights to all human beings. Law that perpetuates neocolonial dynamics – including the failure to eradicate the legacies of slavery and colonialism – must itself be recognized and condemned as neocolonial law.

The impetus should be on developing legal doctrines that can ensure justice and equality for all, irrespective of race. Colonialism and slavery were legal once, but both were abolished. This then raises the question as to why defenders of liberal justice are not preoccupied with achieving the legal reform that would make comprehensive reparations compatible with international law.”

The the Report of the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is so important that I include it here for all to read.

In conclusion, if the United States wishes to make good on Secretary Pompeo’s claim that “Today, the United States reasserts our commitment to stand always in solidarity with those fighting for their rights, and urges all nations to safeguard the human rights we all cherish,” then the United States should pay special attention to the Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Compilation on the United States of America, particularly section “III. National human rights framework” which states,

“III. National human rights framework

5. The Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice regretted that no national human rights institution had been established in accordance with the principles relating to the status of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights (the Paris Principles).

6. The same Working Group recommended establishing a high-level inter-agency working group with a mandate to oversee and coordinate the implementation of the international human rights obligations of the United States domestically.”

Such a United States Working Group on Human Rights could then make as its highest priority the ratification of the human rights treaties that would allow United States citizens to present individual complaints to the United Nations human rights treaty bodies or to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In addition, such a working group could then begin to implement the Agenda for Black America’s Restoration and Self Determination while facilitating the AfroDescendant Nation request to the UN Decolonization Committee to list us on the Decolonization List. Were the United States to do this, it could then legitimately claim to be making progress towards protecting human rights domestically.

BBHAGSIA President Presentation to the 1st Africa Diaspora Summit, Nairobi Kenya

On December 9, 2020, the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society President Siphiwe Baleka made a presentation entitled The Lineage Restoration Movement and the Future of Africa to the Plenary Session on Economic Emancipation and the Black Lives Matter Movement at the 1st African Diaspora Summit in Nairobi, Kenya organized by The Africa Diaspora Alliance and the Kenya Diaspora Alliance. The Keynote address was given by H.E. Amb. (Dr.) Arikana Chihombori-Quao.

The Lineage Restoration Movement and the Future of Africa

“Since the 22 million of us were originally Africans, who are now in America, not by choice but only by a cruel accident in our history, we strongly believe that African problems are our problems and our problems are African problems. . . . The American Government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of your 22 million African-American brothers and sisters. We stand defenseless, at the mercy of American racists who murder us at will for no reason other than we are black and of African descent. . . . We have lived for over three hundred years in that American den of racist wolves in constant fear of losing life and limb. Recently, three students from Kenya were mistaken for American Negroes and were brutally beaten by the New York police. . . . Our problems are your problems. . . . Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved. You will never be fully respected until and unless we are also respected. You will never be recognized as free human beings until and unless we are also recognized and treated as human beings.”

  – Malcolm X, Memo to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), 1964

These are extremely strong words from brother Malcolm. Perhaps my words today may be equally as strong.

It is a great honor to be asked to present a paper to the 1st Africa Diaspora Symposium and 7th Edition of the Kenya Diaspora Homecoming Convention. I have been to many places in Africa, but never to the beautiful Mt. Kilimanjaro and the land of the beautiful Kikuyu, Luo, Jaramogi and other peoples as well as the brave Mau Mau. I hope someday to correct this.

My first visit to East Africa was Ethiopia. On February 3-4, 2003, the 1st Extraordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa adopted the historic Article 3(q) that officially “invite(s) and encourage(s) the full participation of Africans in the Diaspora in the building of the African Union in its capacity as an important part of our Continent”. I was the only member of the Diaspora from the United States present at that historic moment. I felt an incredible sense of pride and duty, as Malcolm must have felt, when I, like him, served as the bridge reaching across the Atlantic to connect the two African peoples separated by the criminal European Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of People with African Lineage and Heritage.

Malcolm X visited Kenya in 1959 and developed a friendship with Pio Gama Pinto. Together, they planned a common strategy to deal with the daily humiliations and indignities suffered by both Africans and African Americans. When Malcolm returned from the OAU in 1964, he created the Organization of Afro American Unity (OAAU) to organize the African American people for the next phase of their liberation struggle. As part of that plan, Malcolm X wanted African Nations to support his petition to the United Nations charging the United States government with genocide. On February 21, 1965, the day Malcolm X was to explain this strategy of the OAAU, Malcom was assassinated. Three days later, Pinto, a strong supporter of Malcolm’s genocide petition against the United States at the UN, was also assassinated. Truly, Malcolm X’s words came to pass: “Our problems are your problems. . . . Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved.”

I have begun this presentation with the story of Malcolm X and Pio Gama Pinto to place the topic of the Diaspora participation in the African Union in its historical context and to highlight the close connection of the liberation struggles of Kenyans and African Americans.

When Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie made his first visit to the United States in 1954, the first ever visit of an African Emperor to the United States, the Chicago Defender newspaper reported on this seminal event with the headline, “Emperor Selassie Links Negro With Africans Throughout World.”

Just days before, however, the British launched Operation Anvil. 40,000 British troops captured 26,500 “suspects” and held them in concentration camps.  Pictures of Field Marshall General Musa Mwariama inspired many people across the Atlantic to start growing dreadlocks. The Mau Mau inspired the liberation struggle of Africans in America, and many members of the Black Liberation Army took Swahili names. The Mau Mau and the Kenyan people succeeded in overthrowing their colonial masters. African American people, were not successful in overthrowing theirs and achieving national independence. Our liberation movement was crushed by the United States government. Our leaders, like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton and many others, were targeted by the FBI, assassinated, and our formations, like the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Republic of New Afrika, the Black Panther Party, and many other “suspects” like the Mau Mau, were targeted, surveilled, imprisoned and destroyed.

You may forgive me for making such a point, but the theme of this workshop is “Economic Emancipation and the Black Lives Matter Moment.” Therefore, we can not talk about Economic Emancipation without talking about what this Black Lives Matter Moment is. And this Black Lives Matter Moment didn’t start with the police murders of Sean Bell in 2006, Kimani Gray in 2013, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice in 2014, Sandra Bland in 2015, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in 2016, Chinedu Okobi in 2018, Breonna Taylor in 2020, or my cousin, Jacob Blake, a descendant of the Balanta people of Guinea Bissau, who miraculously survived seven bullets in his back from white police officers in Kenosha, WI in August, 2020. The Black Lives Matter Moment started with the African Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic and included the Mau Mau. In America, it is the unfinished business of the liberation struggle and decolonization of the African American.

So, let us now, then, talk of economic emancipation. Upon his return from the OAU, Malcolm X said,

“One of the things I saw the OAAU doing from the very start was collecting the names of all the people of African descent who have professional skills, no matter where they are. Then we could have a central register that we could share with independent countries in Africa and elsewhere. . . . The 22,000,000 so-called Negroes should be separated completely from America and should be permitted to go back home to our African homeland which is a long-range program; so the short-range program is that we must eat while we’re still here, we must have a place to sleep, we have clothes to wear, we must have better jobs, we must have better education; so that although our long-range political philosophy is to migrate back to our African homeland, our short-range program must involve that which is necessary to enable us to live a better life while we are still here.”

Have African Americans done this? Have they lived a better life and improved their economic position since the time of Malcolm X?

The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission 1968) stated,

"This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal. Reaction to last summer's disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American. . . . What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget--is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."

African Americans live in apartheid communities and this is de facto colonialism. Fifty years after the Kerner Commission Report, the Economic Policy Institute concluded that

·         African Americans today are much better educated than they were in 1968 but still lag behind whites in overall educational attainment. More than 90 percent of younger African Americans (ages 25 to 29) have graduated from high school, compared with just over half in 1968—which means they’ve nearly closed the gap with white high school graduation rates. They are also more than twice as likely to have a college degree as in 1968 but are still half as likely as young whites to have a college degree.

·         The substantial progress in educational attainment of African Americans has been accompanied by significant absolute improvements in wages, incomes, wealth, and health since 1968. But black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family.

·         7.5 percent of African Americans were unemployed in 2017, compared with 6.7 percent in 1968 — still roughly twice the white unemployment rate.

·         The rate of homeownership, one of the most important ways for working- and middle-class families to build wealth, has remained virtually unchanged for African Americans in the past 50 years.

·         Black homeownership remains just over 40 percent, trailing 30 points behind the rate for whites, who have seen modest gains during that time.

·         The share of incarcerated African Americans has nearly tripled between 1968 and 2016 — one of the largest and most depressing developments in the past 50 years, especially for black men, researchers said.

·         African Americans are 6.4 times as likely than whites to be jailed or imprisoned, compared with 5.4 times as likely in 1968.

It is now known that it will take black families in America 228 years to earn the same amount of wealth white families have today. The top 10% of African Americans hold 75% of black wealth. That means that the vast majority of black people in America – 90% - have just 25% of this much-glorified spending power of the black community. In fact, the bottom 50% of the black community is worth less than $1.

Meanwhile, African Americans are just 2% of landowners in America, holding 7.7 million acres or just 0.9%, of all private agricultural land in the U.S. It is with chagrin and alarm, then, that I realize that the primary, even sole focus, of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 project concerning the African Diaspora, is centered around business investment. When it comes to the African American community that descended from Africans that were enslaved in the United States, the African Union is expecting this colonized landless peasantry to do what????

None of this comes as a surprise to me because I was there in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the African Union when they created the African Union “Sixth Region” to include the Diaspora. The Senegalese delegation proposed the amendment after it was “inadvertently omitted from the items listed on the Agenda.” They then read out the amendment to “Invite and encourage the full participation of Africans in the Diaspora in the building of the African Union in its capacity as an important part of our Continent.” The delegation of Senegal, the proposer of the amendment, informed the Meeting that the issue could be addressed from two perspectives, namely;

a) a narrow sense, whereby the Diaspora includes all Africans currently residing anywhere outside the Continent of Africa;

b) a broad and historic sense, whereby the Diaspora comprises all Africans who had left Africa by force and still consider themselves Africans."

Ever since, the primary operational definition of the diaspora has been the narrow sense, now referred to as the “contemporary” diaspora as opposed to the “historic” diaspora – i.e. those of us whose ancestors were taken against their will and brought to the America’s and enslaved. Why? Because it was the intention of the former Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and the African Union, to reverse the major problem of “brain drain” at the end of the 1990’s and early 2000’s. I know the details because I was doing research at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and studying the “Brain Gain” proposals. These amounted to glorified working vacations for African expatriate doctors and engineers. For the same amount of money these programs were spending, they could get ten times as many members of the “historic” diaspora to come and permanently repatriate to Africa. But that was never their intention. Accordingly, at the First AU-Western Hemisphere Diaspora Forum in Washington DC, December 17-19, 2002 prior to adoption of Amendment 3(q) in Addis Ababa, it was decided that “The African Union should consider the African Diaspora as Business partners” and “Establish official programs to identify and qualify Diaspora businesses.” The African Growth & Opportunity Act should “identify and prioritize products that can be traded between Africa and Africans in the Diaspora” and “enhance opportunities for Africans in the Diaspora to provide appropriate equipment and technical services to enable African countries to meet AGOA standards.” Remember, the use of the word “diaspora” here is code for “contemporary” diaspora, meaning expatriate Africans to the Americas.

Notably, however, the Forum did make a recommendation that the AU should “include in its agenda the ‘crime against humanity’ concept and work with Diaspora organizations to suggest a process for reparations.” What has the AU done towards seeking reparations? Which European country have they brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as Malcolm X and Pio Gama Pinto planned? What did Kenya do to pursue reparations when it’s grandson, Barack Obama, became the United States President?

I will spare this session a detailed recounting of what has happened since 2003. You can read my article, The Au 6th Region Diaspora Initiative Is Failing Members of the Diaspora Whose Ancestors Were Enslaved In The United States and How The African Union Was Established To Include The African Diaspora. Suffice it to say, countless business and development schemes have been created and marketed to the contemporary diaspora in the United States and Europe. Numerous forums and expos have been held which were largely attended by the contemporary diaspora of expatriate Africans in America. This is because the AU and its networks in the United States do not do outreach to the historical diaspora – let us call them Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS). DAEUS, while welcomed, is not usually specifically invited. When there is outreach, however, it is primarily to use heritage tourism as an engine for economic growth. This was the case in 2007 when Ghana launched the Joseph Project to commemorate the 200-year anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade (1807) and the 50th anniversary of Ghana’s impendence (1957). Ghana did the same in 2019, this time commemorating the 400-year anniversary of the Africans brought to the Jamestown colony in Virginia (1619). Neither program was designed to repair the long-term spiritual damage and Transgenerational Epigenetic Effect of slavery. They were designed to achieve tourism. That is not what the historic diaspora needs.

So let me finally get on with the main point then. What is Economic Emancipation and the Black Lives Matter Moment? How can Economic Emancipation be achieved now?

First, we must learn the lessons from history. “Our problems are your problems. . . . Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved. You will never be fully respected until and unless we are also respected.” The African continent is not respected. Kenya is not respected, even though a Kenyan-European became the first black president of the United States in 2008. The general perception is that Africa continues to be a neocolonialist territory controlled by its former colonial masters and subject to new colonial overtures from China and Turkey. Civil society has roundly condemned the African Union, and hardly a black person in America even knows anything about the African Union. At best, there is only the great Pan African nostalgia for a powerful United States of Africa as envisioned by Marcus Garvey and Kwame Nkrumah but betrayed by today’s African elite.

Why are there both traditional rulers and political rulers in Africa? Why aren’t these the same? Is that not an admission that Africa is still not free? That it has two sets of “leaders”, one official and the other marginalized?

Why are we talking about “contemporary” diaspora versus the “historic” diaspora? Are we not simply Bam’faba, all descendants from the same ancestors?

We have tried this project before. Prior to the American civil war, African people in America were returning to the African continent, to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Men like Martin Delaney were talking about African economic development and planning a transcontinental railroad 170 years ago! Why did this not succeed? Why has the partnership between the African continent and the Diaspora not realized its potential? It is because such projects did not have as their aim spiritual and human repair. They were not concerned with restoring ancestral lineage. Instead, they were infected with Christian religion and missionary ideals that were not different than white Christian teachers except for the black face. Because the repatriates did not know who their ancestors were, which tribes they came from, they did not seek to restore those connections. Instead, they came as religious missionaries and the histories of Liberia and Sierra Leone reveal to us the pitfalls of this. You can not have long-term economic sustainability without first integrating into the local population. And “foreigners” can not integrate. For Africans to truly realize the benefits of a great African Renaissance, it will require undoing the “crime against humanity” that took place. And for those of us on this side of the Atlantic, that crime is the crime of Ethnocide.

Fortunately, it is now possible to reverse Ethnocide. The African Ancestry genetic test can identify a person’s maternal and paternal ancestry. 750,000 tests have already been done. We now know where we came from, who we came from. A small number of Kikuyu, Somali, Turkana and Maasai from Kenya have already been identified.  For there to be Economic Emancipation during the Black Lives Matter Moment, it will require reverse engineering the dehumanization process that enslaved African people in the Americas and colonized people on the African continent. You can not expect people still suffering from the dehumanization process to become the economic engine for Africa. So what are we talking about?

There are 47 million people of African descent in the United States. That means there are almost as many people of African descent in the United States as there are in Kenya (51 million). There are 97 million people of African descent in Brazil. Hait has 9.9 million, Colombia has 4.9 million, Venezuela has 3.7 million, Jamaica has 2.5 million, Mexico has 1.4 million, Canada has 1.2 million, the Dominican Republic has 1.1 million, Cuba has 1.1 million people, Ecuador has 1.1 million and there are more in Peru, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Grenada and elsewhere. The problem is the same in each and every one of these territories: The problem is IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM. Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African Peoples Socialist Party states,

“All throughout Africa, we have this false national consciousness, just as we do here (in the United States).

I spoke recently at Oxford, where the question of Africa and African freedom has begun to resurface during this era of the crisis of the social system that’s based on slavery and colonialism. Everything that you see—all the wealth, all the resources—in this country and throughout Europe, stem from the enslavement of African people and the colonization of Africa and other peoples around the world. In this country, Africans still live under colonial domination, just as we do in other places. We’ve concluded that there is no way out of this just trying to fight this struggle within the U.S. Our struggle is one that is global. The imperialists understand that.

The definition of institutional racism is called colonialism every place else in the world.

Everyone else calls it colonialism, now you come up with this concept of institutional racism.

All the institutions do that to us because they're colonial institutions. We have a colonial relationship. When a foreign alien, hostile entity, captures you, your resources, controls and dominates everything: that's colonialism. It's important to say that because I don't know how to cure racism. Although people are making fortunes doing that—setting up schools, and trainings to cure your racism. When they leave those classes to cure their racism and they go home and relieve their Vietnamese, Mexican, or African baby sitter, the conditions in the white community are just as they were when they took the course, before they took the course and the conditions of the African community are still the same.

You say you're fighting against racism? How do you know when you've won? Does someone come out waving a white flag? Do you sign a peace treaty? Racism now surrenders?

No! But colonialism, you know that. That's a foreign power that dominates our lives. We've seen people fight and defeat colonialism and we can fight and defeat colonialism as well. We came to those conclusions, many of them, in the 1960s, when our revolution was defeated. I don't talk about the 60s as some kind of nostalgic waxing, to say how wonderful the 60s were. It's important to us only as a means by which we can get closer to understanding where we are now.

We didn't just drop out of the sky, into this situation in 2019. There's a process that brought us here, that's really important for us to understand. We need to understand the nature of the social system that we're dealing with. That's part of what it is we intend to do.”

We now know that Economic Emancipation cannot happen without reparations. African American economist Sandy Darrity has shown that the racial wealth gap in the United States can not be closed by pursuing any of the ten myths:

Myth 1: Greater educational attainment or more work effort on the part of blacks will close the racial wealth gap

Myth 2: The racial homeownership gap is the “driver” of the racial wealth gap

Myth 3: Buying and banking black will close the racial wealth gap

Myth 4: Black people saving more will close the racial wealth gap

Myth 5: Greater financial literacy will close the racial wealth gap

Myth 6: Entrepreneurship will close the racial wealth gap

Myth 7: Emulating successful minorities will close the racial wealth gap

Myth 8: Improved “soft skills” and “personal responsibility” will close the racial wealth gap

Myth 9: The growing numbers of black celebrities prove the racial wealth gap is closing

Myth 10: Black family disorganization is a cause of the racial wealth gap

This is because the racial wealth gap was created by the dehumanization process that occurred in a controlled environment – i.e. state sanctioned ethnocide by the American Government. In order for the Historic Diaspora to contribute to any Economic Emancipation on the African Continent, there must be some Economic Emancipation on this side of the continent. That can only happen in a controlled environment in the United States that is conducive to reversing ethnocide and the rehumanizing process. In other words, to reverse engineer The Transgenerational Epigenetic Effects of slavery that occurred in environments that used trauma and terrorism, it is going to require controlled environments of the opposite kind: peace, security, and most importantly, autonomy, self-determination and liberty.

This can be achieved through the exercise of minority rights and self-determination under a framework of democratic pluralism in the Americas. And this is exactly what was presented to the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent at the United Nations at their regional meeting with civil society in North America, November 23, 2020. However, such autonomous environments for African descendant peoples in the United States will not be achieved without support from African nations themselves. This Malcolm X and Pio Gama Pinto understood very well.

What can Kenya do in international forums to encourage the United States to pursue the Agenda For Black America’s Restoration and Self Determination? Will Kenya support the Afro-Descendants Confederate Nation’s request to be placed on the decolonization list at the United Nations which was made September 24, 2018 to the UN Decolonization Fourth Committee? Is it right for the African Union and its members to seek the economic support of African Americans without supporting African American civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights at the United Nations?

Meanwhile, the rehumanization process will require controlled environments on the African continent itself. The Lineage Restoration Movement is pursuing just that. This, we believe, is the key to the Economic Emancipation. DAEUS is now using genetic testing from African Ancestry to identify and restore their ancestral lineages. Those that have done this are now starting to return to the territories of their maternal and paternal ancestors.  Why is this important? Because the members of the Lineage Restoration Movement are primarily concerned with human-centered development first instead of economic development. Our members have a genuine interest in learning and preserving their indigenous language, spiritual systems and culture at the same time that many people on the African continent are willing to abandon them for European languages, religions, and cultural models. Thus, the Lineage Restoration Movement serves as a new force for African self-determination and anti-colonialism on both sides of the Atlantic.

What does this mean? Members of the Lineage Restoration Movement are pursuing authentic connections with the people who share their actual ancestry. This means going out of the city and returning to the villages where they come from. It is these villages where development most needs to happen and which continue to be ignored. Consider Ghana’s recent 2019 Year of Return event. The average Ghanaian knew nothing about what was happening because they weren’t consulted or informed beforehand. Members of the Diaspora that returned were sold the idea that returning to Ghana’s “Door of Return” was somehow a healing ritual without regard for whether or not the ancestors of those who returned actually departed from Ghana. Many of the people who returned to Ghana had no idea whether or not their ancestors were from Ghana. They were not interested in learning any of the languages or living any of the traditional culture. Many of those that came were from the class of people of looking to invest in real estate and upscale coffee shops. That is not what the vast majority of people on the African continent need or want, neither is it what DAEUS needs, either. When business investment happens before there is a solid relationship and bond between people, the potential for xenophobic conflict is great. We have seen this in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1800’s, and given the current division between Africans on the continent and Africans in the Diaspora, and exacerbated by the further division between the “contemporary” diaspora and “historic” diaspora, pursuing the current models of AU 6th Region economic development in Africa is not likely to lead to Economic Emancipation during the Black Lives Matter Moment. Significant segments of the Black community in America already feels that the AU initiative is disingenuous and is only trying to reach into the pockets of black Americans while not caring enough to pursue reparations. Meanwhile, current outreach programs further convince the historic diaspora that the AU 6th Region is mostly concerned with the contemporary diaspora. The irony is that the black Americans most genuinely interested in the future of Africa – those who can do the most to popularize and promote it - are the grassroots Pan Africanists and Black Nationalists who are not part of the top 10% of black wealth owners in America and who are being ignored by AU outreach efforts.

How can the situation be improved? The AU must approach the problem by asking the question, what can the AU offer the Diaspora instead of always asking, how do we get economic investment from the Diaspora? Indeed, in May, 2003, the Executive Council of the African Union met at the Third Extraordinary Session in Sun City, South Africa and issued the "Decision on the Development of the Diaspora Initiative in the African Union". The Declaration stated,

"b. What can the African Union offer the Diaspora?

Discussions during the Washington Forum also offers a picture of some of what the Diaspora may expect - a measure of credible involvement in the policy making processes, some corresponding level of representation, symbolic identification, requirements of dual or honorary citizenship of some sort, moral and political support of Diaspora initiatives in their respective regions, preferential treatment in access to African economic undertakings including consultancies, trade preferences and benefits for entrepreneurs, vis a vis non - Africans, social and political recognition as evident in invitation to Summits and important meetings etc. These deliberations must also focus on possibilities, criteria and qualification for Diaspora representation in the Economic, Cultural and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Pan-African Parliament, etc.”

Clearly, what needs to be done is well known. Since 2003, the first objective was to elect the 20 Diaspora representatives to the AU ECOSOCC. I myself, along with Dr. David Horne, were the first to pursue this, following the guidelines that were inadequately presented by the AU at the time. We began the process of organizing and hosting elections in the United States, Canada, Central and South America, and the Caribbean with communication with our colleagues in Europe. And what did the AU do? They did everything to prevent the elections. And that is why until this very day, after 17 years of struggle, the historic African Diaspora still has zero representation in ECOSOCC. Even Shem Ochuodho, a “contemporary” diasporan, took 8 years before he could be seated as Eastern Africa’s Representative to the AU ECOSOCC. So what are we, the historic diaspora, to make of the authenticity of the AU 6th Region Diaspora initiative?

If we are to effectively utilize the potential of the 175 million people of the “historic” diaspora in the Americas, it will depend on the deepening of their identification with Africa. This will be accelerated and strengthened through African Ancestry genetic testing and participation in the Lineage Restoration Movement. Programs for these people, aimed at repairing the damage of the Transgenerational Epigenetic Effect of slavery, must replace superficial heritage tourism if there is going to be any Economic Emancipation now and in the future. It would be well for Africa’s intellectuals and scientists and spiritual practitioners to study and master the Transgenerational Epigenetic Effect and for Africa’s politicians to aggressively pursue in international forums the decolonization and reparations for victims of the criminal European trans-Atlantic trafficking, enslavement and ethnocide of people with African lineage and heritage.

BBHAGSIA Winter Celebration, Sunday, December 13 at 6:00 PM CST

“ngubur a mada yíndi janj awoda”

'The turtle can't have the roof on its own'

There is nothing you can do without helping each other. This means that we always need the next in life”

- Balanta Proverb

This is a social event to celebrate the holiday and a very successful first year of BBHAGSIA operations. There is lots of recent events and news to discuss. We have many new members, there is the upcoming Naming Ceremony for nine of our members. I am traveling to Guinea Bissau from December 18 to January 10th and meeting the President, Umaro Sissoco Embalo. And we are finalizing the details for the Decade of Return Africa Day 2021. Let's all gather as one Balanta bendembah (family) at this wonderful time!

Siphiwe Baleka is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: BBHAGSIA Winter Celebration

Time: Dec 13, 2020 06:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

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BBHAGSIA President Siphiwe Baleka on the cover of Sports Illustrated

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