Lately....

Hotep

This has been a tiresome 48 hours but the knowledge that I have gained so far is incredible. In the past 2 days, I have been to the to visit the mummies of great kings and queens, I have been to the sacred mosque a past leader in Islam, Muhammad Ali, I have walked inside of two pyramids in Giza, one of the wonders of the world, I have studied the governance system of Ancient Egypt, architecture, the astronomy, the mathematics and technology, the language, the early, middle and late Kingdoms, and the periods of instability. I have interacted with Egyptian people, observed their way of life and observed how different the country is in terms of religion and prosperity. I’ve done a lot so far.
With all the thoughts that are running thru my mind, I cant help but feel a sense of pride in knowling for sure that the people that I am observing are black and of African descent. Race has had so much power and has made my people out to be inferior; however knowing that my ancestors were the ones to build one of the wonders of the world, in a place that they knew would not flood, where the top of the pyramid was symmetric to astronomy and where even the sides of the pyramid had ties to religious beliefs…how could we ever believe that we were inferior.
The problem lies in our history of ourselves being told with a beginning in slavery. From the perspective of slavery, everything indeed looks like progress. From slavery to Obama, we as black people believe that we have truly progressed. However if we study ourselves before slavery and acknowledge the intelligence of our ancestors, the fall of their dynasties and the events that took place thereafter, our perspective has changed. When we being to look through the lenses of our beginning being in Africa, instead of our beginning being with the middle passage, we may look towards the future with a new light. We would have to then challenge ourselves to meet our ancestors with true progress, not just politically with Obama; we need to be doing more.
One of the main reasons, I think we are stuck at the bottom and that people refuse to believe that we are the ones that built these pyramids is because we are relaxed and not working nearly as diligently as our ancestors were. It is not that we need to prove ourselves to others, it is that we need to prove to ourselves that were are better than our current circumstance. We should be continuously putting the world in awe at our intelligence, because then, they would have no choice but to associate us with our ancestors. We have to be motivated continue to press on and supersede our ancestors who are still putting the world in awe, thousands of years later.
Therefore, we need to stop looking at slavery as the beginning. Malcolm X said that you can’t stab a man 8 inches deep and then take the knife out 2 inches and call it progress. Honestly, true progress is progress in which we challenge ourselves to move beyond the progress of our ancestors and continue their legacy as true intellects. That is why Im here…
Dana Racine Hall

P.S. – Shout out my mommy, Tiaaaaa, Daddy, Jus, my sisters and brothers in Ubiquity, Incorporated and everyone else who is reading my blog to see how Im doin!