Black History Month, is a compelling occasion to emphasize the importance of three evolutionary challenges, confronting our race—not only in the U.S.A., where this annual commemorative event originated, but also globally.
The challenges I refer to, are changes in African thought and action that are critical for group survival. This entails what evolutionary biologists call “fitness relevant” behavior: Behavior designed to promote the production and successful rearing of offspring.
In existential terms, continued survival on our planet, impels people of African descent, everywhere, to meet certain specific criteria. We must learn to: (1) Let intellect dominate emotion; (2) put theory before theology; and (3) stress genetics over geography.
That’s how African minds need to think, for us to become competitive and avoid racial extinction. I will discuss the ramifications of each criterion, momentarily. But first, it is important to explicate “Black History Month” and its relationship to History, as a discipline.
Psychologists consider the study of history, as a form of “mental time travel”: A way of revisiting past experiences and using them to enhance understanding of the present, as well as to make projections about likely occurrences in the future.
“If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile traditions,” wrote Carter G. Woodson, perhaps the most influential exponent of Black History, as a discipline, “it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated”.
Woodson was reporting, in The Journal Of Negro History, on the first national celebration of Black History. It had begun as “Negro History Week, in 1926,”; and was especially well-received, Woodson noted, in areas like Washington D.C., North Carolina, Maryland and West Virginia.
“But what,” many readers are certain to ask, “could be our interest, in African American history?” The answer lies, partly, in a forgotten fact: “Black American history” is African History—the history of slaves, shipped mainly from West Africa, between 1619 and 1859.
Arising from this fact, is the cardinal supposition that the African American past, is the continental African’s future. The history of Black people in the U.S.A., is a predictive metaphor, a political mirror that reflects the racial fortunes of the Black world—with certain variations.
Twentieth century developments, impacted the self-perceptions of Africans, globally, and African Americans, in particular. These included the advent of independent states in Africa, together with the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles and racial turmoil in the U.S.A.
In the U.S., for instance, Blacks rejected use of the term “Negro,” to describe their race—preferring “Black” or “African”. Hence “Negro History Week” was changed to “Black History Week” and the “Journal of Negro History” became the “Journal of African American History”.
The surge of racial pride, powered a groundswell of interest in African history and culture. “Black Studies” departments proliferated at major U.S. universities, for example, while large cities rushed to open museums featuring exhibits of Black artifacts, culture and history.
Two other seminal trends flowed naturally. First, the duration of Black History commemoration, was expanded from one week, to one month, in 1970. U.S President Gerald R. Ford consummated the expansion and name change, in a White House ceremony.
Secondly, Black History Month has extended beyond U.S. borders to become a truly global event, celebrated variously, in February, March and October. Participating countries, range from Germany and the Republic of Ireland to Russia, Canada and numerous African nations.
Woodson—only the second Black (after W.E.B. Du Bois) to earn a doctorate from Harvard—chose February, in memory of Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. president who prosecuted the war that ended slavery, and Frederick Douglas, the great Black abolitionist. Both were born in February.
But why do human societies need to remember? Why do most known cultures have organizations, whose roles are similar to Woodson’s Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now “African American Life and History”)?
The answer cuts to the core of “criterion (1),” in the opening of this essay: History is a memory system; and memory is related to both collective and individual intelligence. Much of the content in our collective memory, comes from books, film, lectures, visual imagery, etc.
A critical weakness of African people, is what I call “cinematic insouciance”. After watching an illusory catastrophe unfurl on the screen—with cities destroyed, people dying—we leave the cinema, feeling that everything is alright. Because it was just an “entertaining” film.
Strictly speaking, there is nothing like “entertainment”—either in film or any other cultural production. The term more aptly applies to the attractive psychological force, generated to hold you still, and with lowered guard: While the artist imparts fitness relevant information!
Be that as it may, our attitude towards survival problems, evince a similar insouciance. But life is not a movie. Threatening catastrophes—such as Chinese settlement in Africa, the failure of Black states to arm themselves and the possible breakup of Nigeria—are real.
The intellect, is a survival asset. Its purpose is to fend off these and other looming symbolic and political threats to the Black Reproductive system—to probe beneath the aesthetics of visual images, for example, and expose the hidden insidious influences.
Unfortunately, religion has become an impediment. It provides African intellectuals, activists and policymakers with an avenue of escape, to avoid meeting their social responsibility. The much-vaunted “devoutness” of Nigerians, actually masks a deep-seeded apathy.
Africans, worldwide, must seek to understand, and master, their environment. They must grasp the social and physical forces that are at work, shaping not only our lives but also those of unborn generations.
Theory is the sine qua non of Black Survival. The theologians have help provide the moral leadership our people need. But the racial challenges of the 21st century are mostly beyond them. We need informed projections, more than prophesies.
Any clergyman who climbs into the pulpit to preach, ought to be extensively versed in the precepts of modern social and natural science. He is expected to have mastered, above all else, Darwinian Theory—which hold that “fighting and f———” are the keys to racial survival!
He must be able to know the theories that are helpful and those that are harmful. That means, for instance, explaining fascist theory to his congregation and telling them why “bigness” and “complexity” are theoretically preferable to small and simple tribal states.
Using “theory,” to guide our struggle, presupposes a knowledge and understanding of “genetics”—the science of heredity. What you do in bed today, will determine the appearance, intelligence and capacity of the unborn to survive tomorrow.
No meaningful or workable Nigerian domestic or foreign policy, can be formulated, without taking genetics into consideration. What is the point in having a state system, if it cannot (or will not) promote and facilitate reproductive activity?
Genetic reasoning, will also enable policymakers to transcend geography—which divides our people and allows Nigerian leaders to escape their racial obligation to Blacks in the U.S.A, India, Pakistan, the South Pacific and the Middle East.
Genetically and otherwise, Nigeria is the most important Black country on planet Earth—and the historically ordained leader of the Black race. Each of the two largest groups of dispersed Africans—in Brazil and the U.S.A.—should have a minister in Nigeria’s cabinet.
Conversely, Nigeria must take an active interest in the condition of dispersed Africans, such as the Negritos of Asia and Blacks in India, Pakistan, the South Pacific and the Middle East. Trade and other sanctions are available, to use against those who are maltreating Black people.
