Queen Latifa and Kujichagulia — a case for U.N.I.T.Y.

It’s important to align ourselves (read: UMOJA/unite) in this new year with the goal of focusing on finding our kindred tribesmen… Those people who we consider to be our ‘second family’ and with whom we share a strong kinship to on a mental, social and spiritual level (as opposed to natal/birth families in which kinship exists on the biological level). It’s a part of self-care to have a social environment that manifests love and a sense of belonging, which is the hardcore fact that has long been our rebuttal to that Katt Williams joke about self-esteem having nothing to do with intimate interpersonal relationships and being generated soley by the individual… It is, a matter of our basic individual (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual) needs to exist in a healthy environment; and environment which includes people, places and things.

How does this align with self-determination? Take an example where this joke about “esteem of yo’ mutha’ f*ckin’ self” is the rebuttal to an attempt by a black girls suggestion that the way she is treated and portrayed has a direct effect on her self esteem. The point of view expressed in this suggestion that self-esteem is an individualized experience is the type of thing that others use as leverage to mistreat us. It is a political framing that is used by others who want to justify the way one group is treated. The mythical “Black Girl Magic” is rooted in our ability to use a unified field of thought, speech and action to focus on the manifestation of our own alliances, the definition of our own political status (how others interact with us and vice versa), and independence from the trappings of a neo-colonial world (read: valuation of Eurocentric standards of being/beauty/family etc).

Self-determination allows us to break free of the negative karma of the current corruption of the social world… We ARE the upgrade. We ARE the antidote.

Here’s to a new and holistic Afrofuture.