Rediscovering Our African Identity

Perhaps one of the most Machiavellian effects the introduction of Christianity had on people of African ancestry was the erection of a firewall between the Black psyche and Black spirituality. Christianity, its gods, holy book, angels, saints, and adherents were all elevated to the highest pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder. Anything that contradicted the basic tenets of the Christian faith was viewed as propaganda and support for the other side which was quite hellish to say the least. As Kenyan Member of Parliament Peter Kaluma said, the choice is always between Christians values and Sodom and Gomorrah and by extension between Jesus and the Devil or between heaven and hell.

Once Black people bought into the world-view promoted by the Bible it was match, set, point for the African identity. This was inevitable since African identity was firmly rooted in African culture, and religion. The uprooting of African culture and religions meant that Africans were destroying two of the foundational pillars that defined their own African identity. The corollary to the jettisoning of African culture and religion by people of African ancestry was the wholescale embrace of the culture, customs, languages, names, educational norms, and religion of the European colonizers.

Colonized Africans became nothing more than a cheap knock-off version of their European colonizers. Since advancement and the European conceptualization of progress were intricately linked to the process of assimilating to the European rhythm of existence, Africans had every incentive to abandon their way of life and embrace the seemingly more lucrative European mode of living. Oreos, coconuts, and Negropeans became the default personality position of millions of Africans across the continent.

Christianity and Islam now account for approximately 91% of Africa’s exploding population. The phenomenal growth of the Abrahamic faiths on the African continent has come at the expense of indigenous traditional religion. Togo is probably the only African nation which still has a majority of its population practicing traditional African spirituality. Africa currently has the largest Christian population on the planet.

In 2018 a study done by Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimated that there could be as many as 631 million Christians living on the continent of Africa. By 2060, Pew Research Center suggests that number could rise to as many as 727 million. This may help explain why Caucasian conservative evangelical Christians have shifted tactics and transferred their culture war to the African continent where they have scored a number of supposedly impressive legislative victories.

Identifying with Eurocentric values regrettably has not transformed any African societies into thriving democracies. The perpetuation of Eurocentric institutions, norms, and values by people of African ancestry both on the continent and in the Diaspora has served the interest of the colonizers far better than it has served the interest of Africans and Black people in the African Diaspora.

Christianity, for example, has encouraged people of African ancestry to love and forgive their sworn enemies. The notion of turning the other cheek and repaying good for evil has many Black people falling over their own feet in their haste to be good, kind, and loving to people who in many instances need a speedy send off into the afterlife. Black people are the only ethnic group who practice this strange annihilationist style of religion which is suited only to a people bent of their own extermination.

People of African ancestry on the continent and in the Diaspora will eventually have to become settled in our minds whether we want to continue being oreos, coconuts, and Negropeans or whether we want to rediscover our own unique African identity, replete with all the trappings of authentic African culture and religion. This of course will entail parting company with deities in the image of Jews, Europeans, and Arabs. It will mean putting down the holy books of the Abrahamic faiths and diving into the rich currents of spiritual energy that pervaded the African continent before the Arab and European invasions

A paradigm shift is therefore needed in Black thought that will allow people of African ancestry to think outside the box of Eurocentric religion, philosophy, education, political science, economics, and language. The great religious, moral, social, political, economic, and scientific issues of our day demand that Africans learn how to think in a way that is uniquely African and that is rooted in the spiritual traditions of our own African ancestors. The mental emanations of Jewish, European, and Arab ancestors do not constitute the foundation upon which Africans can rebuild a new, great, Black civilization. Africa will be great again but this new greatness will only materialize when Africans learns how to access the wisdom of our own ancestors and utilize this wisdom in pragmatic ways to solve many of the pressing problems facing the global Black collective.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Black Paradigm: New Thinking for a New Age.