The way black history has been colored over the centuries would lead a lot of people to believe that black people (in particular African Americans) didn't have much of a history that wasn't connected to slavery. But nothing could be further from the truth. Think about it, if all humanity emanated from Africa and spread throughout the world the only way current thinking about African Americans and civilization would be true was for there to be no early civilization in early Africa, and that is the African history that must be unlearned.
Not only was their early civilization in Africa, but the continent of ancient Africa was once a world trading power, trading its resources of gold, diamonds, and produce with the rest of the known world in ancient times which included the Americas. African civilizations build the pyramids, ruled Egypt, and the Kindom of Kush thousands of years before European civilization existed.
Then came the colonizers Belgium, Spain, France and more using their high-tech technology in weapons to take over large parts of Africa's riches, included Africa's people. Slaves were first brought into Africa and traded for Africa's bounty before the Atlantic slave trade would begin to drain Africa of its generations to feed the growing need for labor in the Americas. Spain and France supplied African slaves to South America and the British eventually became the major supplier of Africans to the newly developed North American colonies.
Where once African resources were controlled and sold by Africans, colonization cut deep into most of the African economies, and over the years the constant drain of African people to the slave trade and African resources to the colonizers would leave most of Africa at the mercy of its colonizers. Eventually, Great Britain would reanalyze its role in the slave trade and end its participation in the taking of people out of Africa. A revolution in France would bring about the French giving up its slave trade, which was followed by the Haitian Revolution and the French selling its Louisiana Teriorries to the colonies. After the Civil War, the Atlantic slave trade to the colonies turned states was ended.
Colonization continues to this day in Africa and parts of South America. Today Africa seems to be on its own build-back-better plan, and while Africa's future, with regard to colonization is TBA (to be announced) the history of Africa's greatness and the African Americans connection to it, though their ancestors, should be taught in schools.
I think the history of the ancient world as it relates to black people would not only be informative but very spiritually uplifting to Americans that suffer from the misconception that African American history starts with the end of slavery in this country. An effort should also be made to show modern Africa as it is today, complete with the Bushman's funny surprise attacks on unsuspecting African people living in the city. The truth about Africa's past and present is often not televised by mainstream media, or talked about in school books, Africa is not all third-world-county.
While a lot of the negative images from mainstream media are true they don't show the modern clean streets of Africa cities like Kigali Rwanda which should also be in the mix of things colonization media wants you to know about the mother land. Slavery may have taken the descendants (us modern-day African Americans) away from any African roots that can still be traced it should not be allowed to keep African Americans from knowing Africa. African Americans, and Americans in general, should understand why so many major world powers don't want Africa to achieve the world power status it once held in ancient times.
And why many of those world powers feel pretty much the same way about the Island Nation of Haiti where the slave population overthrew colonial rule to rule as an independent black nation on their own. You would think that nations based on "freedom" would view the Haitian Revolution as a success for freedom. Africa's true history, The island of Haiti, as well as other nations who have released themselves of colonial rule may not be the kind of historical success story fit for the colonial narrative, but they are still African historical events that deserve a place in American history school textbooks, if you ask me.
once-upon-a-time, black people, slaves, were forbidden from learning: no reading, no writing, because that knowledge was power. Imagine if that same sort of effort was applied to black people, ex-slave ancestors today, when it came to learning the true history of Africa's early civilizations and racism in America because that knowledge is powerful too? School should be the proper place for learning history but what do you do when a small number of American, don't want taught from the classroom to the majority of young Americans, the truth about Africa's early civilizations or facts about American racism? Well, there's always the internet.
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