Haitians Have a Legacy to Reach

Ezili Danto
Windowsonhaiti.com
Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 11:25 pm    Post subject: Haitians have a legacy to reach for.......
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Jete dlo, Jete dlo, Jete dlo!

I was born Haitian precisely because of what happened on August 14, 1791.

I was born Haitian because Africa’s children, for once, stopped identifying with their captors and their captors creed(s) and called on what they could remember of the original Black mother’s creed.

Children in Mauritania still awaits Her return as well as all over Northern Africa where they are still enslaved, ensnared in creeds reinterpreted to destroy the Black mother’s significance in human history.

They say, it was these invaders who brought in female circumcision; that such things as patriarchy and female circumcision did not exist in traditional Africa.
Are we ready, in this Forum, to see Haiti’s significance yet?
Are there many modern Haitian men ready, like Boukmann was, on August 14, 1791, to "Kanga Mundele."

Boukmann listened to a Manbo - who could have been raised/converted in the Muslim creed in Africa, just as Boukmann may have been. Boukmann, this Neg Bossal listened to and heard a "mere" womanly spirit, who told him to "Kanga Mundele." The Black goddess inspired him and showed him his destiny, helping him to bring into existence the first Black nation founded on the Black mother’s culture, Vodun. Not, the captors’ creeds. Nothing like this had happened in world history after 900 years of Islamic conquest and more than 300 years of Christian conquest.

"Kanga Mundele" the goddess told Her Sons. Boukmann listened. Can her other Sons hear?

Given that, back then, there had been more than 900 years of Jihads in Africa, where the indigenous Black men where destroyed, assimilated or became, like today’s Black neocons, overseers for the captors, leaving the Black woman, all over North Africa, as the captors' chattel and sexual slaves. Yes, it’s no wonder the Black woman lost her tongue. Can you still hear Her cries. Daughter Africa’s cries, like I can? Many lives, just one. Yet, few remember Her. Most, deny the Black mother of all the races, every day, in a myriad of ways.

Given that in the "New World", for more than 300 years, Black woman where, not only tied into chattel bondage, but sexual servitude to both old white men, young white men - any kind of white, and, any Black overseer or then Black opportunist who felt the urge - is it any wonder, so many, brainwashed into believing they were responsible for being made "the whores" and "beasts of burden." Is it any wonder so many of my sisters, in the US especially, flocked to the Jesus creed.

The Nazarene forgave the prostitute. Is it any wonder, pious- asexual-church-going-mammy became our model of accepted Black femininity….Is it any wonder Black men still say it’s easier to be with a "white woman" because she doesn’t have "issues" -sexual or social. Her place is taken for granted where "the beast of burden" must still prove herself and her children's worth.

Who will jete dlo in oblation, erect alters in tribute to reclaim the Black mother?
Besides Haiti, what country, on this earth, do you know that came into existence by reclaiming the traditional, African-derived culture of mother Africa?

Spilled blood, labored, sacrificed and defended themselves in order to keep that culture alive for 200 years of Christian-sponsored containment-in-poverty? Go all around the world, and the answer is: None but Haitians! The most formidable protectors of Africa’s sacred trust.

Being so associated with the Black mother has given us-Haitians a vilified image. For Vodun is, the Mother of the Races' vilified image never lain to rest, attacked from all sides, so pitiable and yet so unpitied. Vodun, is how She became folklored and memorialized in song, dance, drumming and sacred arts. Vodun is what we have left of Her in Haiti. And, Vodun is why Haiti came to be.

Yet the task is huge – a whole continent awaits our recognizing our purpose. A whole world awaits. In India, the Black untouchables await the rise of the Black Goddess. In Mauritania, the African traditionalist who are being enslaved by the Arab Africans, await Her. They await Her rise in the Sudan. In China with their Blacker caste segregated. In America, we await in the ghettos in prisons, both literal and mental prisons. What a task, for a small piece broken away from Africa, floating in the Caribbean Sea. The Black mother's sons and daughters never earn any rest as we are sure, at this very moment a child of the darkest part of Africa is being beaten somewhere, killed somewhere, tortured somewhere, on this planet, solely because their skin is darker in the societies in which they live.

Boukmann knew the ancient ancestral names to call forth in times of trials, for inspiration. Makandal knew. The Cacos knew .…The children of Mauritania, parts of Nigeria, Benin, Sudan are waiting to be reintroduce to these ancestors. Haiti must not drown in shame, paralysis, or confusion. Ayiti was forged out of the crucible of neither greatness of title nor high birth, but from killing the stranger within ("Kanga Mundele"), rejecting the captors' creeds to reach back to what is source, plowing through the scarlet past to touch what is wholeness and enlightenment - to touch the greatness of exploring one's self and of bringing vision to others who had lost pigmentation and/or had been unhinged from the Black womb.

It's a great legacy to rise and meet. Why bow in humility before their "gods." Do as Haiti did. Lift up your heads, save your own Black psyche - help liberate the world.

Ezili Danto
Li led li la

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Ezili Danto's Post: The Black Mother - she's Moroccan too! It's true

Ezili Danto
Windowsonhaiti.com
Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 10:54 pm    Post subject: The Black Mother - she's Moroccan too! It's true.
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The Black Mother - she's Moroccan too! It's true

Guy, I surely don't know a thing about the superuniverses to comment. But about the Black mother of all the races, I could re-explain. But the answers are in my posts....

Let's, for a minute, move further ahead, go directly to racism and the denigration of the Black mother. Her existence is no longer questioned. So, let's go down the road less traveled…….Are you ready?

What did pre-history Africa look like? Not just Egypt and North Africa but West, Central and South Africa? Do my Haitian children know? Do my African-American children know? In fact, do the African leaders know?

And, do we also know the role of the Black woman in society, before the Mediterranean males arrived; before the Romans got to Africa; before, the 7th century, when the first light-skinned invaders - these wild bands of marauding Asiatic/Arab males, arrived in North Africa?

Historically, part of the answer to your question, Guy, lie in the answers to the above questions. No doubt, there are metaphysical, allegorical and spiritual facets to your questions. I don't directly address them. We accept the Black mother is mother of all the races. Now what? What does this mean? Let's take it a few steps further, shall we?

It is recorded that at the dawn of time, as the gender that gives birth, women were the primary divine figures.

If that is true, how did the Black mother become so denigrated? And her dark issues so persecuted, globally. How did racism start?

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Here is a small personal anecdote that covers part of the issue:

Last week, on Friday, I was sitting at the bar of a popular restaurant waiting for our table to be ready. When a very-light-almost-white Moroccan man began a conversation with me. "You look Moroccan, he said. "I like your headwrap." "You’ve got such fine features. Where are you from?"

He was full of good cheer and wanted to buy us drinks.

"Where are you from, he asks me again?" "I am from Haiti."

"Ohhhh, but you look Moroccan!"

He was so into it. I did not want to further deflate. So, I said, "We are all related you know. All the races come from one Black woman, the scientists say. So, you too, are Black-like-me" I said.

Now, everyone who knows me, my work and my reference points, know I am sincerely giving this man a HUGE compliment, right? No so the world. No so he.
"No," he responds. "I am a white African!"

"No such thing." I responded. "Yes", he insists. "I am a white African!"

"Not if you consider Africa is the Black continent and, go deeper, and consider you are related back to that original Black woman, no matter what your journey back to Africa looked like when your light-skinned forefathers invaded North Africa."
"Well," he reconsiders, "O.K, But I am a discolored Black."

This was going to hurt him more than me. My friends are looking at me sideways to say "Don’t," But, you know I did.

Poor man. This was "Happy Hour" at the place. His bad luck. He had sat down to try his macking routine on the wrong woman. He figured, I would be enthralled by "He," being a "White African," telling me, I looked like "His own." He figured also, to place this anecdote, within the Forum question at hand, that I would deny my Black mother as most of us cultural hostages tend to do. But, here I was pointing out that I don’t only consider Sub-sahara Africa as "Black" But that I claim the whole African continent for the Black mother, if not the world! Here I was telling him to drop the "discolored" bit and just say ‘I am Black."

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Why are the Chinese, who were originally Black so racists today? Why are the Japanese so racist? Why do the Chinese and Japanese grudgingly admire the "white race" and think they fall second in the global racial hierarchy line? When and why did the Black Woman’s darker child get to be so maligned? Can we go back to that junction in world history and explain it? Did it happen when the Black goddess was demoted to the "virgin mother?"

What an oxymoron, a mother who is a virgin?

Why where the Arab males, then European males, who invaded the motherland, so afraid of the Black mother’s civilizations, which civilizations, provided the initial seed for all the world's cultures? Why was the Black goddess re-imaged? Neutralized, circumcised (literally and ideologically) by theologies and cosmologies and ideological concepts that make no practical or scientific sense? Does it require immigrants to the motherland to do this to the Black woman? Did the settlers have to rule through the elevation of "The Sons?" Is that the genesis yet to be uncovered of the "Son" as the only "Light of the World?

What was the role of the African mother, and therefore the oldest women societies on earth - what did these oldest woman-based societies look like before the Romans, Arabs, then Europeans male and their armies and guns got to Africa? What was the Black women's role in traditional African cosmologies, mythologies, legends, history, science, politics? Before Christianity? Before Allah and Jesus took root within Africa’s Black female wombs. How did the Goddess, the Black Madonna Goddess de-evolved as the primary religious figures into the "discolored" Virgin Mary?

No wonder Ezili Danto lost her tongue!!!!!!

Can you reach for BLACK?

Did Haiti do just that........at Bwa Kayiman?

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Politically, a brief answer is that there is a global racial hierarchy out there, with the European "white race" at the top, Chinese/Japanese just below (or so they would like to claim), the "white" Arabs following, then "white" Indians and then all Black Africans at the bottom, which started more than a few millenniums ago, destroying women, as the primary divine/or religious figures in society; - meaning therefore, there is a global racial hierarchy constructed to destroy the Black woman, as she was the first race of females on earth and the first primary divine/religious figure in ancient society.

This is simplistic, but I don't have much time today. So here goes:

Ancient male priests learned, early on, if they rewrote the rules and tweaked the biological fatalistic agenda, control "God-"the-female-through subordination and the assimilation of Her sons into buying their own superiority over their mothers, they could maintain their domination and dynasties. Thus, the ancient Goddess myths were rewritten. All the great religions come out of Africa and re-wrote the Goddess scriptures by changing her alphabet and points of references to suit patriarchic purposes. Then as each series of male invaders marched in and out of Africa and around the world, this patriarchy and lighter skin-color became a surefire way to maintain the conquest of this Woman's societies. Today, all the races are involved with the denigration of the Black mother. Racism cuts across the races, began millenniums ago. But, there is a global racial hierarchy, led by European whites, in the last 500-years that has taken the denigration of the Black mother and goddess to the 'nth degree.

It's not a class issue of rich vs. poor within these Western or Eastern societies. No, because the skin issue cuts across class and is held together by the white global racial hierarchy that helps to shape the power and the prejudices of each race. The power enjoyed within this hierarchy that was built on the denigration of the "Black goddess" and divine mother, does not simply reside in an abstraction of "economic class" within a given culture or race, but in the skin pigmentation, and, to a lesser extent, in the physical characteristics of each and every person on this planet, no matter their actual race or culture.

It could be summed up as the "moving away" of humanity from source, from Go(o)d - the Black goddess or original Black mother.

Red pours, red pours, red pours. Reaching...for BLACK....

History tells us that if not for the migrations of Black people out of Africa, first to the East - then North across the planet, all peoples today would still be Black. Can we trace the global racial hierarchy, with light-skinned at the top, to the first African groups that migrated out of Africa into the Asiatic/Middle East and Arab worlds, to China and on to Europe, losing their pigmentation along the way. How did this translate to the racism and theologies the Arabs brought back to help decimate, Vodouist Africa. To divide the Black motherland from the 7th century up, which a racism that was, later, globalized by the European Christians, from 1438 to now, 2003.

Today Africa cannot be analized separate from the devastation of Islam and Christianity. Today in Nigeria the Yorubas are being persecuted by the Nigerian Christians. We know the slavery going on between the Black Arabs and Black Africans in the Sudan. It all goes back to the denigration of the Black woman.

Haiti is the only Black nation that reached.......No African nation has yet made that leap. M'beki, I ask you "How deep is that?"

Whenever someone insists on their mythical "whiteness" I am always wondering, is there any remnants of the Black mother, the Black divinity, still buried deep within the psyche of these old invaders whose ancestors, had, over the centuries outside of Africa, lost their pigmentation and began to base their cultures on the glorification of said lost of melanin? Is this memory truly lost to those at the top of the global race hierarchy, or, merely vociferously denied for very profound psychological and political reasons?

Ezili Danto