Kweku’s Korner
By Kweku Akyirefi Amoasi
Kweku Akyirefi Amoasi, formerly known as Ramel Smith
In America, February is the season of awards for the entertainment industry. This year there were four films that I believe explain the depths of the soul of America. The first film is entitled “American Fiction.” This film explains how difficult it is for Black elites to show excellence in the entertainment industry. Those who control the narrative in Hollywood would rather promote buffoonery and self-destructive behavior than excellence and positivity. The second film was “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Another movie which shows the carnivorous nature of the colonizers to further feast on the monetary gains of the Indigenous people of this land; even after displacing them from the land of their ancestors. Another film, “Origins” demonstrate that America does not have a monopoly on colonization, corruption, and caste-like system that continually creates a society with untouchables. Lastly, the movie “Oppenheimer” illuminates the lack of humanity in the creation of weapons of mass destruction that has the ability to eliminate the entirety of the earth. A film that ensures that no one will win in the end, if White Supremacy can’t win.
In America, February is also the season of Black History, which Initially began as Negro History Week on February 7, 1926. Carter G. Woodson felt is what imperative to highlight the achievements and accomplishments of the pre and post antebellum Negro. Half of century later in 1976, the week of celebration elevated to an entire month. The purpose of this extension was to destroy the legacy of White Supremacy. where the Negro felt inferior to the colonizers and captors of their ancestors. Woodson understood that Knowledge of Self was important. Dr. Amos Wilson, renowned psychologist, stated that “Eurocentric history is used to motivate forgetting the Afrikan personality, to create amnesia, to maintain repression.” A person that is robbed of knowledge of self is easily deceived and defeated.
For example, whenever the Afrikan consciousness begins to arise, the colonizers not only find a way to destroy the revolt, they employ members of the oppressed group, seeking meritorious manumission, to neutralize the very weapon that can produce their freedom. For example, many Black Americans have been manipulated to believe that America is a capitalistic society. She is a fraudulent caste masquerading as capitalism, which allows the citizenry to believe that financial freedom for the masses is a possibility when we see the wealth gap significantly increasing, at an alarming rate, between the haves and have nots. Further, when there are vocabulary terms that ignites an investigation and produces action, like Woke or Critical Race Theory, they are quickly hijacked by colonizers, and collaborators, to dissuade the oppressed from utilizing this knowledge for fear of seeming “Un-American.”
Consider, that when enslaved Africans wanted to escape the bondage of their oppressors, they were deemed to have a condition known as “drapetomania,” In essence, this meant a negro had to be crazy to want to leave the comforts of the plantation. However, the chains of White Supremacy have been properly secured around the hands and minds of the colonized Afrikan, that even if the chains are broken the victim will not run away; but fight to stay. Have you ever heard someone from the diaspora say “I ain’t never going back to Africa!” It is impossible to defeat your captor when you are complicit in your own oppression. And, that is why the winner is…. White Supremacy. My question to ponder is, “How can you heal in the same place that made you ill, if the status quo remains?”