Is Pan-Africanism Dead?
Since the 1960s, Pan-Africanism has steadily lost its currency amongst leaders and citizens in the African continent and throughout the African Diaspora. During the past fifty years, Pan-Africanism has suffered a series of seemingly insurmountable setbacks, including the assassinations of prominent activists and statesmen such as Patrice Lumumba, Steve Biko, Malcolm X, and Thomas Sankara to name a few. Furthermore, Pan-Africanism flagship organization the African Union (AU) has had its fair share of challenges, and criticism leading its detractors to call it a “toothless bulldog.” Additionally, the growing disillusionment amongst Africans in the continent and throughout the Diaspora towards an ideology that has promised so much but delivered so little has caused Pan-Africanism to be seen as an antiquated model of resistance to global white hegemony. This stance has also caused many to question the efficacy of the philosophies and opinions of Marcus Garvey in the age of globalization, in which the forms of oppression African people face have evolved through sophisticated social structures that produce contradictory forms of consciousness. Moreover, the pessimistic undercurrent toward Pan-Africanism that permeates the African world leads one to ask the question, is Pan-Africanism dead?
America is said to be the land of opportunity, a place where the poor, the despondent, and the oppressed can lay down their burdens and start anew in the land of milk and honey. However, this well-known platitude has not been a reality for all in America; as we live in a country rife with numerous forms of inequity and inequality in which, access to better opportunities (e.g., higher education, affordable healthcare, and economic mobility), are blocked due to one’s racial/ethnic identity.
Brave talk is not enough. Presidential order to provide constitutional rights needed
Commentary provided for Dayton Daily News regarding the need for an executive order to provide African Americans full protection under the law.
Black voters must break free of 'conveyor belt system'
In "Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete," William C. Rhoden argues that Black athletes are subjected to the "conveyor belt" of the American sports industry. Their raw material — Black athletic talent — is siphoned from Black neighborhoods and shipped off to make money for white colleges, corporations, and sports teams. Bakari opines that a conveyor belt system also is active concerning the Black voter and the American political system's complex web of local, state, and national organizations, and its think tanks, lobbyists, congressional districts and politicians.