No, this doesn’t mean that I’m going back to Africa.

When Africans sold slaves to Europeans, I imagine they didn’t know that it would turn into an evil institution. Slavery existed in Africa as a different institution than when it was introduced to the west. In Africa, slaves owned slaves who could buy themselves out of slavery and travel freely, etc.

Some people (including other blacks) think blacks and Africans come from inferior and barbaric cultures, and that we need to sit the hell down and appreciate what Europeans have done for us. But we didn’t need anything before they got there. And, please, I’m not referring to Egypt, where some of the people don’t even consider themselves black. Egypt has an ancient history that’s compatible to the way that Europeans think about “progress,” so black people here today want to claim that as part of our history, but most African Americans don’t come from there. I think we should find new ways of describing “progress.”

There was this African interviewed for Humans of New York who spoke about the degrading image of Africans covered in flies, begging and holding their hands out, helping to project a negative image. It has become part of the propaganda. But there are scientists, doctors, and engineers in Africa. Unfortunately, in the States, the stereotypical goal for blacks is still to become either a singer, dancer or sports star.

Nowadays, with the environmental issues that we face, and with the problem of fake food, etc., people can really appreciate the simple wisdom of those African proverbs that speak of mother earth. Certain indigenous tribes couldn’t even grasp the idea that anyone “owned” land, because it belonged to everyone. But now since the natural institutions of Africans have disappeared, superficially, it’s easy to blame them for a degraded state of existence, instead of remembering where they had come from, which a lot of us back-to-nature folks are trying to get back to.

And some African leaders have been corrupt — not to condone the behavior, but we’ve all been tainted with the idea of owning a lot of stuff (maybe it’s too late to turn back).

One culture isn’t better than the other. We should respect everyone’s contribution, without the underlying tone of hierarchy. It may be the only way we know how to relate to each other now, but it should change. We should have a different way of relating to the environment, and see simply that nature used Europeans, creating an environment that made it necessary for them them to move outward, to help us move closer together; as opposed to seeing one group as superior to the other.

It wasn’t innate genius in relation to others that propelled Europeans to start the swell of technological “advancement.”Africans and blacks are just as capable of learning and absorbing knowledge that inspires this kind of expertise.

But we all know of the practices that prevent that from happening, beginning with slaves and blacks being prevented from learning to read and going to school at the inception of this nation — this shit still exists today in subtler ways.

When people complain about racism, gun violence, and political corruption, etc., I think about how we just go round and round in circles with the same shit happening. Charleston, Newtown, unarmed black men being murdered — this is not the end. Now that we’ve figured out ways to get more resources to the masses with technology, we need to figure out how to distribute them in healthier ways.

Under the current market system, I don’t think it’s possible, because it requires cutting large percentages of the population out of the competition, and that involves propaganda. Or, maybe we should continue to promote a system that encourages murder, excess and degradation — and the use of anti-depressants to deal with it all. How sophisticated and advanced is a society such as this?