Commitment
to the Truth:
Essential
Knowledge for African People
William
HT Bailey
TABLE OF CONTENTS |
Comments |
PREFACE |
Thanks to everyone who gave me positive feedback and encouragement for my first book, Building a Healthy Sense of Self: Essential Knowledge for African People. That book was a manifestation of my intent to spread the word that self-affirming, self-celebrating knowledge is key to individual and collective development. Many of us feel the rumblings of the awakening African mind. This awakening is a reflection of a general paradigm shift being experienced by humankind. In the old paradigm, one adopted the wisdom and beliefs of the family and society into which one was born. Beliefs were programmed through repetition and shielded by repressing conflicting knowledge. In the new paradigm, one recognizes the power of programmed repetition and retains adopted wisdom, but also adopts beliefs-and consequential thinking and behavior-based on the way the world and people actually are. For African people, this includes rejecting Western society's ingrained distortions about us and resurrecting knowledge that fosters our growth. This book is based on articles that I wrote for the Praxis newsletter. Praxis is a production of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). ASCAC is a grassroots African-centered organization doing serious "nuts-and-bolts" work to rescue and restore our history and culture. Section I is based on the newsletter's Sense of Self column. It continues my first book's theme of validating and defining ourselves-for us and by us-and borrows passages from it. Section I expounds ASCAC's principle, "Our commitment is to the truth." (ASCAC's complete set of principles can be found on the inside front cover of this book.) Section II is based on the newsletter's Knowledge from the Scholars column, which presents information and insights from African-centered scholars. The first chapter of Section II discusses Cheikh Anta Diop's eleven categories of evidence for the Black African origin of ancient Kemet (Egypt). The remaining chapters are reviews of the first five chapters of ASCAC's African World History Project: The Preliminary Challenge. ASCAC's book is a tangible milestone for our African thought (r)evolution. It assesses our situation and provides background and direction for current and future activity. The challenge before us is great. We must heal ourselves from a 500-year physical and psychological onslaught. The current difficulties we face in mustering and maintaining the fundamental behaviors essential for growth, such as uniting for a common cause or supporting our own businesses, are symptomatic of the pathologies we harbor. Relieving ourselves of the disempowering thinking and behaviors that fuel these pathologies is a goal of our thought evolution. In my opinion, we will reach that state of psychological and economic liberation three to four generations into the future. Our task today is to take the first steps, touching one person at a time with self-affirming, self-celebrating knowledge. Once clear, critical thinking breaks through resistance and reveals the expansive vista of personal and collective potential, no person is likely to return to disempowering thinking and behaviors. This book is my humble contribution to the ongoing Weheme Mesu (African Renaissance). |
COMMENTS |
"The information contained in this book is pertinent to a broad audience. There are many scholars and learned individuals who know and understand what this book presents. They will be reinforced by the concepts presented. Yet others who may be uninformed can come to learn the essential truths and perhaps be inspired to begin their personal quest to find the calling to enlighten others the way that William Bailey has done."
Elbert M. Saddler, II, Ph.D. |
"African-centered psychologists and sociologists have been telling us for decades that "every maladjusted characteristic of the Black personality serves an economic function." Commitment to the Truth: Essential Knowledge for African People speaks to a number of issues around the reconstruction of the Black economy and its state of maladjustment from the perspective of a grassroots organizer."
Charles Darnell Witherspoon |
"Mr. William Bailey's passion for freeing the African mind is exemplified by Commitment to Truth: Essential Knowledge for African People. Mr. Bailey continues in the tradition of his first book, Building a Healthy Sense of Self, of effectively sharing vital information for African people. His first book focuses on the importance of the individual subconscious in establishing a healthy sense of self. His more recent book continues with this topic in its first half and goes on to review works of true African history scholars. The two sections complement each other in that the first deals with individual self-knowledge and the second deals with collective African self-knowledge. The first half forces the reader to evaluate his or her state of mind (is it free or not?). The second presents the reader with excellent examples of steps we have taken collectively as African people to achieve intellectual and cultural freedom. Together, these two sections provide the information needed to initiate liberation of the African mind."
Carnley L. Norman, Ph.D. |
"In this book you will find timeless knowledge that will enable you to live a more productive life and become an exemplary inspiration to those around you. Mr. Bailey draws from the great wisdom of Ancient Kemet and the research of contemporary African scholars. He offers secrets to succeed through society's psychological matrix. The first part of this book explains subconscious motivators that control our dicisions. In the second part of this book, African history and culture are expounded upon and the uplifting value of reclaiming our heritage is explained. By the end of this book you will gain a greater understanding of how the mind works and the importance of knowing your African history."
Gabriel Bandele |
My grandfather, in his characteristic thoughtfulness, calmly told us a story of why they the elders rejected the message brought to them by the early European Christian missionaries. In his words: "These people came and pompously shouted at us that they were bringing us "the truth"; and so we asked them 'whose truth'? Yours or ours?; and they answered, 'Our truth which is from God'. And so we asked them, whose God, yours or ours? And they answered, there is only one God. And so we told them, if there is only one God, why don't you leave us alone to find our God where we are. Why is your truth supposed be more valid than our truth, when you don't even know anything about us? Why can we understand what your God says, when you can't even speak our language. Our truth depends on where we stand. We cannot accept your truth because you do not know where we have come from and where we are going. Leave us alone to pursue our truth, because our God understands our truth, yours does not" During their time my grandfather and his age group never succumbed to what they considered as the Whiteman's religion, but they lived long productive, righteous and honorable lives. Without the benefit of western literacy they built the villages and towns, and developed their own social institutions, economic institutions and political institutions that we modern, western educated (or is it mis-educated) Africans have neither been able to replicate nor advance. In some cases we have even helped to destroy them. We undermined our commitment to our own truth and chased after some truth that was neither relevant to our survival nor a guarantee to our holistic development. This is the crux of Brother Bailey's message as poignantly expressed in the title of his book: Commitment to the Truth Essential Knowledge for African People. Given the emerging globalization and its attendant exploitation and social confusion, the survival of African people in the 21st Century, unquestionably depends upon our commitment to the search of our own truth and how we can apply the inherent knowledge as the fuel that drives our engine towards economic, political and spiritual survival. Brother Bailey eloquently, and yet in simple fashion, lays out the ingredients of this re-emerging paradigm within the African World. He emphasizes the need for a clarity of the vision and the appropriateness of the strategies to realize it. Relying on our African sages, he employs historical and psychological precepts to delineate the essential components of our personal and group empowerment rooted in a strong commitment to the search for our own truth. He does not stop there. He gives us the road map to the search for the truth and what to do with the inherent knowledge. Our task today, he says, "is to take the first steps, touching one person at a time with self-affirming, self-celebrating knowledge". Knowledge is divine and universal, but our knowledge, like our truth should reflect our past and present and lead us on the right path into yet another glorious future. Today, Mr. Bailey is rejuvenating the message of my grandfather and his cohorts. If only we had listened. Luckily, the spirits of our forbearers have been reborn in the persons of such new African sages like Brother William H. T. Bailey. We have to listen and act on it this time.
Kwaku Ofori-Ansa, Ed.D. |
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