Black Liberation in the New Age
© Black Liberation in the New Age
“Black Liberation in the New Age” is a framework, a movement and a method that describes people of African descent obtaining full liberation including limitations derived from colonization by using ancient African ancestral technologies and other foundational African ideas. They can be used on an individual level or for the collective i.e. family, community, national, and or diasporic levels. These technologies, whether it be Hoodoo, Rootwork, Vodou, Ifa, Santeria, Lucumi, Palo, Candomble, Numerology, Astrology or any other African diasporic tradition, were discouraged among the enslaved by their enslavers in the West because they were associated with slave revolts. However, Haitians notably petitioned their ancestors using their practice of Vodou carried with them when they captured into slavery in Benin. They offered the sacrifices requested by their ancestors as currency or an energy exchange for their guidance and direction and ultimately won their independence.
These conclusions are my observations inherent to the experiences on my journey of: growing up a preacher’s kid in the U.S. South; becoming a seasoned educator in higher education; earning a Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies with in emphasis in Multicultural Education; independently researching African cosmologies which are largely oral traditions though more books are being printed due to high demand and interest; reconnecting with my own ancestors and allowing them to take me through the process of becoming and practicing as a rootworker that works with ancestors regularly; and traveling to Nigeria to initiate into the Yoruba tradition Ifa. Also, after working as a DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) specialist since 2003, I found that these ancient technologies were the missing link to healing multigenerational trauma and soul injury related to what was thought to be cultural genocide from slavery and colonization and to full liberation for African people across the diaspora. Colonizers would call it a cheat sheet, however, we were never meant to come here alone without the guidance of our ancestors.
These ancient African traditions are advanced technologies that work with nature in order for Africans to communicate with their ancestors and other spirit guides for the purpose of guiding the living in a literal sense. This is made possible because the technology allows them the ability to see the past, the present, the future, up, down, and sideways because their sight is not confined in a body. The technology also has the ability to influence outcomes with the understanding that everything that happens in the physical realm, manifests and can be controlled in the spiritual realm first. These technologies are not magic but are ancient sciences that work like quantum physics, but better. Designated elders who embodied ancient alchemy, studied the language and protocols of energy, the patterns of its currents and mastered controlling its flow. However, our African forefathers and foremothers didn’t call it science, rather, they deemed it tradition as it was always tradition to use these technologies to commune with nature and the spirits in it until the world was colonized. It was the natural order of things, a way of life, and sustained them for thousands of years before slavery and colonization.
They consulted the ancestors on marriage, rites of passages, infertility, counsel, weather forecasts, defense, health issues, clothes/dress, trading, medicines, housing and other construction, food, naming of children, rites of passages, burial rites for easy transition to the ancestral realm, disputes and overall organization of the village including duties and positions held (there was no need for police in these cultures). In return, the living sacrificed different kinds of offerings as currency that fueled the spirits i.e. liquor, foods, money, deeds, drumming, special songs and dances that used kinetic energy to connect with the spirits never meant to be used to entertain our oppressors, animal sacrifice which was often used to feed the community afterwards (but never human blood sacrifice at least in West Africa where most American Africans were taken), or other items that carried special meaning at the request of the ancestor or deity (personifications of energies found in nature) being petitioned. The answers were given telepathically, by channeling the living in a trance state using their coarse hair and melanin as conductors and/or by using special divination tools that would offer the answer visually based on how the tools were used. In fact, the nickname ‘bones’ for the classic game of dominoes once popular among American Africans is originally derived from the Vodou tradition using the bones of small animals as divination tools to speak with spirits.
It still isn’t popular or safe in many spaces to identify with practices that amplify the voices of our ancestors or other spirit guides because it doesn’t fit within the confines of the religions that have colonized the world with mission work that called it the work of the devil. This ultimately influenced the word christian to be synonymous with good person. The physical, mental, spiritual and emotional violence enacted on Africans over time during slavery was the catalyst to forgo our ancestral legacies and eventually submit to christianity, leading us to fear what is natural to us. Unfortunately, while Africans were discouraged from practicing these ancient traditional technologies out of fear that it would free them from slavery and colonization, it has been, and is still used by major corporations like insurance companies and other corporations, to forecast statistical rates of deaths, births, etc. to determine what prices they will charge the public for their goods and services.
Sometimes ancient African ancestral technologies are referred to as religion or ATR’s (African Traditional Religion) however, religion is a western misnomer influenced by colonization. Religion attempts to organize the overall meaning of life using repetition but lacks the uniqueness of people of the world and the fluidity of spirit, projects a cookie cutter formula applied to all, and is amendable according to the power structure using it to maintain its power. These African traditions were only meant for those in the region of the world where the ancestors created it based on what their ancestors and their deities taught them how things are. They were never meant to be spread to other areas of the world as each area had its own tradition. In contrast, Black Liberation Theology, coined by the late minister and theologian James Cone, takes the oppressors’ god and makes it into our own by attempting to reconcile race within christianity. While it was a valiant step toward freeing our colonized African mind from the chains of induced christianity, it still had allegiance to christianity itself, the oppressors religion. Today, more and more young American Africans are moving toward ancient African ancestral technologies to reconnect and revive our birthright of total freedom. Appropriate designations are the actual names of the specific technology, i.e. Ifa, Vodou, Santeria, Lucumi, Candomble, Palo, Hoodoo, Rootwork, Numerology, Astrology, etc. or can be collectively referred to as: African Spirituality, African Spiritual Systems, African Spiritual Traditions, African Traditions, African Ancestral Traditions, Ancient African Technology, or Ancient African Ancestral Technology, Ancient African Ancestral Traditions.
Black Liberation in the New Age can liberate Africans in the diaspora by: 1. offering elevated direction and assistance on our paths to success and the ability to thrive, 2. operating as a line of defense against seen and unforeseen threats, 3. decolonizing our minds and priorities and re-shaping them into having a relevant and meaningful existence, 4. offering age old medicines for the body and soul, 5. Providing clarity and purpose to life, 6. (re)building a healthy relationship with nature and death and 7. building stronger American African families and communities.
Black Liberation in the New Age recognizes that ancient African ancestral traditions deem that ancestors remain a vital part of the family. Their consciousness lives in each of us along with their memories. They also have a home base on ancestor altars. This is in opposition to the white coerced definition of what family should be and look like for us. There is something about individualism over community in american culture that is the antithesis of the African spirit. It divides us and makes us weak. It was always the young, the old, and everyone in between that communed and represented, defended, and took care of the tribe in whatever role they played. They were interdependent. This has been since the inception of tribes, even as much as was allowed during slavery when families were being broken apart at auction blocks, and even up through part of the 20th century. The children belonged to the community so they weren’t limited to only one or two people responsible for raising them. The cultural shift away from this has presented an unnecessary burden that many American African parents have felt for way too long. Over time, some of us worked hard to get out of our impoverished American African communities to live like our oppressors, not realizing that it was depleting us spiritually. Our strength has always been in our connection to each other. Community service wasn’t extra curricular for us, it was our way of life. We survived because we saved each other; resisting this is to resist ourselves and it makes us more like our oppressors.
Africans prior to slavery and colonization valued women as sacred because of their intuitive nature and their ability to birth life onto the planet. Congruently, Black Liberation in the New Age recognizes American African women as powerful manifestations of the divine. It is African at its core, at least prior to colonization, for African men anywhere on the continent to learn respect for a woman’s body at an early age, therefore it was normal for women and girls to feel safe around men in the village. These cultures were not sexually repressed and therefore had no need to overindulge in sexual activities. In the rare case that a man took a woman sexually when there was no consent, the community would severely and openly punish him in front of the entire community. The cultural priorities and cultural strengths were always focused on what’s best for the village and it would be detrimental to the community to sully those who are responsible for bringing life into the community.
Black Liberation in the New world recognizes that there have always been Africans on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender spectrum. In fact, those that were transgender were often revered among indigenous groups. God is known to birth and therefore must be made up of both feminine and masculine energy which means that those that encapsulate forms of androgyny are actually closer to God than those who claim to have only the energy associated with sex organs. It was the influence of european patriarchal religious philosophies which held that we are our bodies and not a conscious spirit temporarily in a body. Therefore, it is logical to assert that God in their nature created an influx of the lgbtq spectrum in the last several decades to offset the excessive regard of patriarchy in the world by balancing it with adding more feminine energy to reflect more God in the world. Because all African people are purposely followed and loved by their ancestors, they have a vested interest in the living so they know to answer when called on by their descendants regardless of how they physically pleasure.
Fragments of these ancient African ancestral traditions were strategically remembered when enslavers enacted violent measures to force them to stop. Those along the Caribbean whose enslavers were largely spaniards and/or catholic, synchronized their West African deities with the names of catholic saints to keep the traditions alive which helped them to survive their impossible and seemingly endless situation. For example, praying to the orisa Sango by pretending to pray to the catholic saint barnabas, kept them from getting killed as practicing ancestral traditions carried severe punishments and/or death if they were caught, unless of course, if their enslavers needed them to use it to help a sick loved one or themselves. In doing so, they were able to remember more of who they were as Africans than those of us who were enslaved by the english. Those enslaved in the U.S. remembered the least of being African but hid what they could in American African churches. Some examples of Africanisms that were hidden in plain sight in American African churches are:
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- We are a communal people and church was the time we were allowed to gather.
- It was forbidden to have ancestor altars on plantations like in Africa so we took the altar to the church and called it ‘altar call’ using the name jesus instead of the names of our own ancestors so our true intentions weren’t caught. While jesus was real, he was someone else’s ancestor and from a place on the continent far away from West Africa with a different culture.
- The most powerful group of women in any American African church are named ‘The Mothers,’ of whom no one wants upset because they hold a reputation of being mean. This is indicative of a group of powerful women and mostly female deities in West African traditions. They are known as the Iyaami in the tradition of Ifa, but are nicknamed ‘The Mothers.’
- Being baptized in the river has more to do with the energy and healing powers found in rivers. That healing power is from the energy of the river deities that live there. The most popular deity that lives there is named Osun from the tradition of Ifa. However, when churches moved to having baptismal pools inside of the church, the river energy nor its healing power were present.
- Catching the ‘holy ghost’ or the ‘holy spirit’ in the American African church experience is an act where the ancestors and/or deities channel participants which can also be found during orisa (deities of the Ifa tradition) celebrations and festivals today. Many of the diasporic traditions have what is called a bembe, which is a celebration of a particular orisa or the ancestors. The experience is like going to a night club and church all at the same time. There may be people with cups of liquor and a few smoking; groups doing orisa dances until they sweat that look to us like modern line dances; instead of our modern day tambourines, traditional African shekeres are used to a company drumming; orisa songs and chants are sung during the dancing and often by call and response while the spirit being recognized periodically channels a participant and looks the exact same as what American African churches have referred to as catching the ‘holy ghost’ or ‘holy spirit.’ All the while, priestesses are on hand to cool them off and make sure attendees don’t hurt themselves, reminiscent of usher board duties in the American African church.
- Drumming, singing and dancing in groups, especially call and response is directly related to how West African traditions venerate ancestors.
- Getting the divine word from the pulpit traces back to mediumship or the ability to hear from spirits telepathically which was always available in villages. These divinations were usually done via a particular divination system using cowrie shells, palm nuts, bones, kola nut or other tools to verify the message. The major difference is the nonexistence of any divination tools in the pulpit to verify the message in addition to a spiritual sacrifice to be offered. Instead, they were taught that the blood of jesus was the last sacrifice ever needed. However, if you have a new problem, you need a new sacrifice. Therefore, the technology had little to no fuel to work well.
Bonus: Even today, across West Africa, no matter how christian or muslim a person is, many go back to the village to get divination when they get in real trouble, including the imams and pastors who teach against it.
These are just a few examples to show a pattern of how we are Africans, who have been Americanized. Much is encoded in our memory from our time here before as well the memories of those ancestors that live inside of us. We need only to slow down enough to remember and accept what we hear.
Some of these traits along with various superstitions are considered parts of Hoodoo, an American African term for an infusion of repurposed bible texts with any amalgamation of African ancestral traditions that mixed when the enslaved were bred and ancestries combined. Examples are jumping the broom at weddings which signifies new beginnings, making medicines from nature (home remedies), and putting salt around your house to prevent evil spirits from entering the home. The mixed technologies worked together and unknowingly at the time made the Africans being Americanized stronger because an aspect of what one tradition didn’t have, another did.
Ritual and altars/shrines are important in Black Liberation in the New Age as they are home to the place energy can exchange between realms. In fact, confederate statues and confederate names on streets and public buildings are sacred ancestor shrines that continue to give their descendants strength and direction, whether they or anyone else is aware or not. That’s the power of ancestor shrines. Having an even stronger current is the energy exchange with money having the pictures of slave owners on it. American Africans will never be fully liberated while the money we use to eat, sleep, and live has the energy and face of our oppressors. The free market isn’t the same as freedom. Freedom ain’t free. The free market costs economic, political, and social freedom to those being sold in the market but to win any war against your enemy is to break down their economic system. Abolishing slavery was an act against the free market but Black capitalism is still capitalism. It doesn’t matter how much money you have if you are sick at the soul level. Accordingly, one tenant of Black Liberation in the New Age is the push to eradicate all of the oppressor’s public shrines, thus debunking their power while being intentional about establishing Black altars/shrines that give life to our ancestors.
Black liberation in the New Age emphasizes individual and community mental health. However, it rejects traditional psychology created by dead white men for white women who were thought to talk too much and which does not address the complexities of American African experiences. It honors the work of American African psychologists that push to decolonize psychology for themselves and for the American African community at large by considering ancestral and other racial experiences of American Africans that often go unrecognized by traditional psychology and/or by personalizing therapy using ancient African ancestral technologies. In her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, clinician Dr. Joy Degruy lays the groundwork for discussion and understanding of how violence and trauma from the past, but particularly from slavery, influences the present. She loosely defines it as a multigenerational trauma disorder that causes multigenerational stress passed down to descendants of the enslaved from their ancestors who endured slavery’s white systematic racial terrorism on a daily basis. Black Liberation in the New Age expounds on that theory by asserting that it is related to triggered trauma responses from soul injuries of unelevated and/or unhealed ancestors who currently live inside of American Africans. A hard soul injury takes more than the accumulation of wealth, counseling/therapy, changing behavior, or simple prayer to resolve. Many times we are in survival mode so often as American Africans in the U.S. that lines get blurred between triggers of a soul injury, an actual curse, the breaking of spiritual taboos, or simply not living a lifestyle that encourages us to be happy. We feel the pain of the injury deep within but can’t always identify it as a pain in the soul. We were made to come back from natural traumas, like breathing in air for the very first time. However, unnatural traumas like experiencing slavery, colonization, genocide/attempted genocide, extreme bullying, rape, war, etc. need more intentional work to heal from because they harm the soul. Fortunately, there are ways to heal at the soul level using our birthright to these ancient technologies. I have personally gone through healing processes involving traditional therapy from both white and American African practitioners as well as making ebo (sacrifice) in the Ifa tradition. Therapy worked but I found it emotionally grueling while the effects of ebo required less emotional investment.
Black Liberation in the New Age recognizes nature as the sustenance of life and therefore respects it and attempts to live in harmony with it. Nature exists to be herself and does not change until something in the environment changes. This is how humans can directly impact changes in nature. However, when there is an imbalance in nature, there needs to be sacrifice to swing the pendulum back to balance. If there is no sacrifice, the debt grows and soon a modified version of life is birthed out of chaos. While both beautiful and ugly things can be born out of chaos, it is rarely recognizable to the world that bore it. This is how introducing slavery and colonization into the environment changed the climate of humans.
One of the things I appreciate about the Yoruba tradition of Ifa, as well as some other ancient African ancestral technologies, is that with the appropriate spiritual reading/divination, one’s name and destiny is told. This means you never have to figure out who you are, why you came, or even your name. The same reading can be done for children so parents never have to assume or figure out which path to guide them along to encourage their success. Here, success is defined by being on the path of a person’s predetermined destiny rather than the widespread general goal of wealth and fame, both of which are driven by capitalism. We all have free will to choose our direction however, free will can be expensive. It can cost relationships among other things to tune out the world and listen to the direction from the ancestors and it can cost one’s destiny not to, making you prone to come back for a do over. Many of us are our ancestors returned to accomplish what we could not before because it was interrupted by slavery and jim crow while others will come back to reconcile it.
In conclusion, The issue of race is woven into the very fabric of U.S. culture and it has never been intentionally reconciled or repaired (reparations). That’s why everything keeps coming back to race. The transatlantic slave trade was centuries long, legal human trafficking of West Africans to the stolen land of natives of whom the european traffickers attempted genocide. Add almost another 100 years of jim crow apartheid legislation in place of reparations to the Africans and their descendants, while today we sit at 60 years post the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the most regarded and most peaceful of the noted freedom fighters.
There have been tried ways to Black liberation and valuable lessons to be learned from each, including those of Dr. King who admitted just before his death that he feared he was leading his people into a burning house. It is illogical to believe that two enemies can live side by side in peace without justice and/or reconciliation. His mistake was appealing to the conscience of those who had none. The approach Malcom X took was unapologetic in the face of the oppressors but he didn’t consider that the religion that drove his efforts was the religion of non-Africans who enslaved Africans before the europeans. It was like attempting to fit a circle in a square peg, meaning it wasn’t a good fit for the whole of American Africans. Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement was promising but it lacked the foresight. However, the technology in the information age has bridged those gaps and has made it a reality for many. A notable mistake all three made was the patriarchal decision to keep American African women in subservient roles in each of the movements instead of sharing roles of leadership but the biggest mistake was to not consider the ancient ways of our African ancestors for direction. Although Harriet Tubman claimed christianity, the spells or visions she claimed gave her direction when entranced were reminiscent of being channeled by the ancestors. She was also keenly aware that our people were so badly wounded by slavery and colonization, that she couldn’t wait for all of them to get ready in order for her to move forward with her railroad to freedom. She learned that some would sabotage it while others would be too slow.
When the American African mind is no longer colonized, it remembers, thinks, and acts more like the ancients pre-slavery and colonization, translated into modern day situations. For instance, it’s difficult to suspend disbelief when mostly American African NFL and NBA players are bought, sold, and traded by white owners or to use the british english, enslaver, colonizer vernacular, ‘Lord’ to describe the god that we worship.
The Free American African:
- Doesn’t need a white presence to broker justification of their existence.
- Doesn’t allow whiteness to keep them or other American Africans sleepy about unresolved and current indignities against them.
- Doesn’t allow whiteness to buy or sell their dignity in entertainment, politics, at work, or at play.
- Doesn’t allow whiteness to use them as pawns to create or justify white perceptions of American Africans.
- Doesn’t allow whiteness to make them fight against other American Africans or any group considered to be the enemy of whiteness.
- Doesn’t deem success as the ability to live like white people or white adjacent i.e. glorifying vacations in the home country of our enslavers and colonizers, disconnecting from our communities, and agreeing to a white definition of being (dress, speak, hair, mannerisms, etc.).
The Free American African:
- Defines success and lives void of white influence or the fear of white perception.
- Centers their community.
- Controls their narrative.
- Values American African women.
- Knows that death is never the end.
- Takes care of their mind in order to remain free.
- Knows that the forests hold secrets that can heal that which synthetic medication cannot.
- Unapologetically values the importance of connecting with their ancestral ways.
Black Liberation in the New Age also shifts American African stories. Representation matters, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough to have American African representation on television and movie screens. We have to examine the lens of writers, producers, and directors and the purpose behind the images of us they portray for the world to see. We have to question the lens, motivation, and the choice of stories being told. Ask what is being left out and reshaped, are the stories authentic to our lived experiences or are they made up for someone else’s own benefit, and what do they say about our place in society? It’s not enough to have American African politicians. We need revolutionaries who resist respectability politics that serve the interest of our oppressors and who aren’t afraid of death by speaking our truth. It’s not enough to have Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU’s) or an African-American history curriculum. We must examine who wrote it, who funded it, and the accuracy of what is being taught. Is it the intention to keep us at bay, to be less African, and/or to give us just enough so that we don’t revolt? Representation with a colonized mind is a different form of blackface.
Furthermore, I contend that the dignity and full potential of the African anywhere in the diaspora is found in the reclamation of relevant African traditions, language, and knowledge systems. Fortunately, through Black Liberation in the New Age, our ancient African ancestral technologies are not lost to us. It only takes the willingness to accept and access them. The ancestors remember us even if we don’t remember them. These technologies do not guarantee an easy life, however the benefits on a large scale can cause revolution like Haitian Independence. On smaller though highly liberating scales, other benefits include helping to navigate your personal path, including roadblocks, set backs, and major decision making.
For critics who call for more evidence in this research, my unapologetic response is that I have been educated in white schools enough to understand research methods and passed my dissertation defense years ago. I recognize that evidence based on only what you see is a white masculine construct which has been used to make American Africans to ignore our inner voice(s), the voices of our spirit guides. They have used their limited two sighted evidence to justify slavery and jim crow via legislation based on the absurd study of eugenics and to justify using us in medical research because their research claimed American Africans are inherently incapable of feeling pain like white people do. Furthermore, with my experience, I do not need someone else’s research to validate my own voice or experience. And, who’s gonna check me?
“When the missionaries arrived the Africans had the land and they had the bibles. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed and when we opened them, the Africans had the bible and the missionaries had the land.”
-Jomo Kenyatta
Kenyan anti-colonial activist & first President of Kenya