WHY WE MUST EDUCATE OUR OWN

This clip is over 50 years old, but it still hits hard. Clinical psychologist Naim Akbar reminds us that Africans have rarely benefitted from our education being given to others.

Under colonialism, we were taught that Western culture was the gold standard by which all others must be measured, and this created an internalised self-hatred. Our own stories were erased.

Beyond self-loathing, the colonisers only wanted us to know enough to do the menial jobs that served them—never to actually use our minds to explore our own advancement and liberation.

European ‘scholars’ such as Gaston Maspero and Jean Vercoutter pushed the idea that Africans were uncivilised savages who didn’t invent or build anything. They argued that the marvels of ancient Egypt must have been created by non-African people. This false narrative held sway until it was debunked by pan-African historians like Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986). He showed that this advanced civilisation, which contributed so much to early science, philosophy and culture, was, in fact, of Black-African origin.

US-born Black historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) wrote that the schools of his day were committed to teaching our people ‘to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton,’ with Black people dismissed as ‘nonentities.’

Structural racism means things are still bad for Africans in Western classrooms. In 2022, Virginia’s Department of Education caused anger after its new history curriculum downplayed the impact of slavery and omitted the role of Black resistance, such as the Civil Rights Movement. Since Trump came to power, he escalated the assault on books centring on the experiences of Blacks in America, claiming it taught students to “hate their own country”.

Video Credit: TransAtlantic Productions (YouTube)

Sources

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000156750

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1545428-the-educated-negroes-have-the-attitude-of-contempt-toward-their

https://www.axios.com/local/richmond/2022/11/18/youngkin-history-virginia-standards

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220272.2024.2322502

https://blackwestchester.com/carter-g-woodsons-warning-and-the-urgency-for-black-educational-independence/#:~:text=Woodson%20warned%20that%20the%20American,became%20unwitting%20enforcers%20of%20white