Africa America
The Building of a Nation
Can African Americans build a nation in America? According to the 2020 Census report by the U.S. Census Bureau, African Americans have a population of 41.1 million, which accounts for 12.4% of the U.S. population. With these population numbers, African Americans would rank as the 36th largest country in the world, larger than countries like Canada (37.7 million) and Iraq (40.2 million). UGA Today studies show that African Americans have a buying power of $1.6 trillion, which is 9% of the U.S.’s total buying power. According to Investopedia’s Top 25 World Economies, African Americans would rank 11th, having more buying power than nations like Russia ($1.48 trillion) and Spain ($1.28 trillion). By the numbers, African Americans are one of the richest nations in the world. However, they do not possess the consciousness to control their socio-economic behavior to eradicate their oppression in America. African Americans must develop consciousness to ensure their survival in America.
We all want to live in a nation based on the high ideals of peace, harmony, and justice. Unfortunately for African Americans in America, these ideals seem unattainable because the white power structure controls the unconscious forces that determine their patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action, and emotional responses. These behavioral patterns determine whether you can live in a peaceful, harmonic, and just society. But what determines your behavior?
Knowledge of reality determines your behavior. African Americans lack knowledge of reality which results in their pathological oppression. Dr. Amos Wilson, a theoretical psychologist, and Pan-African thinker states, “The very essence of pathology, whether political, ideological, economic, social, or psychological, is a lack of knowledge of reality.”
How can African Americans deal with reality if it is distorted? How can they control these unconscious forces that determine their behavior? It is interesting how the function of the brain is to decode and solve problems in the physical world. Our senses provide information about the physical world, and our reality, to the brain to determine our behavior. With this information, and knowledge of reality, individuals can solve their problems in any environment and master themselves. Wilson states, “if that information is distorted, then the brain determines behavior on that distorted information and the individual is maladjusted. This is the case then with people.” Miseducation serves as the foundation of distorted information for the sole purpose of destroying African Americans.
The purpose of miseducation is to suppress any potential greatness in African Americans resulting in possessing an alien identity. Dr. Na’im Akbar, a clinical psychologist, and champion of Afrocentric psychology states that “The first function of education is to provide identity. At birth, our potential to be human is not fully realized…To become human, our humanity must be educed, brought forth, or brought out. Identity is the consciousness of our true nature”. During enslavement, the initial step was to strip away the African identity from the Africans which resulted in the erasure of their history, values, and culture. “We could not be Afrikans and slaves at the same time; we could not hold onto our Afrikan identity, our Afrikan selves, knowledge of our Afrikan culture, and be enslaved — the subordinates of another people…It is then that identity is placed upon us by other people and by external forces” says Wilson.
The spelling of Afrika and Afrikans with a K is the original spelling. When Europeans colonized the African continent, they tainted their languages by substituting the letter K with a C. Except for Dutch and German, no European language has the hard C sound. Reverting to the “K” spelling is a form of reclaiming the Afrikan identity.
If you do not know who you are and if you do not know your history, then you cannot control your behavior. European Americans have complete control over the behaviors of African Americans in all human endeavors (education, entertainment, economics, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and war). Dr. Claud Anderson, in his book, Black Labor, White Wealth, states:
“The root problem in black communities across America is race and the unjust distribution of America’s wealth, power, and resources. One race, the descendants of white Europeans, seemingly has checkmated blacks’ efforts to improve themselves. Whites live in privileged conditions, with nearly 100 percent ownership and control of the nation’s wealth, power, businesses, and all levels of government support and resources. White society has a monopoly of ownership and control”.
An African proverb states, “The tree grows strong and tall only to the extent that its roots are deep and firmly planted in the soil.” Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a psychiatrist, interprets the proverb by saying, “If Black people are at all disappointed in our present level of achievement, it may be because our roots are not planted deeply enough in the past — resting upon such a shallow, inadequate and faulty data input of only 400 years of history.” For African Americans to control their destiny, they must control themselves, and to control themselves they must reclaim their African consciousness through knowing their history, values, culture, and identity which has its roots in Africa to ultimately build a nation in America.
Upon this reclamation, African Americans must acquire a nation-consciousness, seeing themselves as a nation. The acquisition of an African-centered consciousness would empower African Americans to work in their interests.
In America, African Americans are deprived of equal opportunities to participate in the American economy, the government, and the political process. Wilson expresses that “If we are not a part of these things and yet these things are what define a nation, then we are not a part of the American nation: that nation is a White nation!”
African Americans are in fact, a de facto nation, that allows their resources to be used by other people, that they are an over-indebted nation, a nation that owes money to a white person, a white institution, or a non-African institution.
“One of the reasons why we are poverty-stricken is not because we don’t have money; it’s because all of our money is being used to service the debt that other nations own — that the White nation in America owns” — Dr. Amos Wilson, Afrikan-Centered Consciousness versus the New World Order
African Americans spend so much money out to other nations of people they cannot save their money and build wealth to ensure the survival of their people through employment, schools, hospitals, grocery stores, communication systems, and other systems because they are in debt to other nations. Wilson states, “But you can only see this when you look at yourself as a nation. When you look at yourself as a nation you can see that you can change this problem by changing the debt relationship you have with other people.”
African Americans are one of the largest consumer groups in the world. Kori Hale, CEO of CultureBanx, wrote an article in Forbes reporting how businesses can take advantage of big opportunities through African American consumerism:
“In 2019, consumer expenditures by Black households totaled approximately $835 billion, and combined spending by all Black households has increased 5% annually over the past two decades. CultureBanx noted When you read that African Americans have $1.4 trillion in spending power, it’s an incredibly impressive number. Even more so when you realize that’s more money than Spain, Mexico, Netherlands, Turkey, or Switzerland generate annually. It’s nearly unimaginable to think that the collective purchasing power of Black Americans is greater than most developed nations.
There are two strategies for companies to pursue: expanding local access to goods and services and creating offerings that are better tailored to the needs and preferences of Black households to take part in this $300 billion opportunity. Nielsen’s research shows black consumers are tastemakers when it comes to setting the tone for mainstream brand choices. “Our research shows that black consumer choices have a ‘cool factor’ that has created a halo effect, influencing not just consumers of color but the mainstream as well,” according to ratings company”
Once African Americans see themselves as a nation, they can change the exploitation nature of their economic relationships to one that is revolutionary in servicing their own interests.
They must do what all other nations do: “They must capture their own internal resources; they must capture their own internal markets; they must trade within themselves as a people and as a group and generate wealth within their own nation as a means of counterbalancing their dependency on Europeans and upon the white nation itself” says, Wilson.
Look at other nations of people that control their internal resources and markets in America; The Chinese have Chinatowns, the Koreans have Koreatowns, the Italians have Little Italy’s, and so on and so forth. These nations of people control their destinies, they are organized and force outside people into agreements and place conditions on their entry into their markets. Meanwhile, these same nations of people are in the African American markets (neighborhoods) setting up businesses and shipping out wealth day in and day out. Leaving African American neighborhoods impoverished in the name of “free markets.” African Americans have the markets, but they cannot seem to put aside their differences to take advantage of it.
African Americans have everything they need to build a nation. They have cellphones, social media, computers, roads, bridges, airways, waterways, trucks, and so on and so forth. They have everything available to them that many nations wish they had.
“It is not enough to have gold in your soil, oil in your soil, diamonds in your soil; you must have a consciousness…We cannot just have telephones, faxes, and money in our pockets and such. We must have a consciousness that transforms those phones and those faxes into a communication network that unites a people across cities, regions, continents, and it becomes a basis for a system of distribution, basis for creating and uniting a market from which one earns wealth that feeds one’s family and thus stabilizes one’s situation” — Dr. Amos Wilson, Afrikan-Centered Consciousness versus the New World Order
African Americans can have all these things but if they do not see themselves as a nation — if they cannot work together as a group, then these things are mere instruments.
How much money are African Americans worth in America? $1.6 trillion. What does that mean? Look at what would happen if African Americans were to reinvest that $1.6 trillion into African American businesses, African American trade, and an Afrocentric educational system if they invested that $1.6 trillion in gaining equity in major American corporations if they invested that $1.6 trillion in gaining equity in African countries. They would have African towns all over America. Ultimately, that means African Americans would have transformed the ideas of living in a peaceful, harmonic, and just society into a reality.
African Americans can build a nation in America only if they have the consciousness and moral capacity to see past the instant gratification of dependence and into the depths of nationhood. They must immerse themselves in African history, values, and culture, and identify with their ancestral legacy to control their destiny and ensure their survival in America.
