I apologize to African-Americans for your history that was erased
Let's rescue it, let's find it.
I want to win it back. We can do this. I believe in me, you, and God. Together we can bring us back to our roots, and heal our souls. As one human family, we can do this. Like all things so challenging and complicated, it will be difficult and require incredible effort, but it will be worth it. We can bring forth, bring back, bring to bear your history and identity that has been tragically missing for the history of the African-American.
Disclaimer: I have my ways, my beliefs that you may not agree with... However, I believe it will happen. What will happen? What is happening? Justice will be found. Healing will be achieved. The things that I claim to know and believe and practice do work, they are true, and these things are worth finding out for yourself. I believe humanity, the human family, is following the long arch of history towards finding out who we truly are, and this is a big thing. In some ways it is everything.
How to start? Explain the problem, acknowledge the issues, and go about rectifying and reclaiming, restoring who we are...
To win back our lives and families and heritages for all of us, black, white, and whatever other hue or heritage, because we are one human family, we are all brothers and sisters. We need each other. We need to know who we are, where we come from. We need to know our parentage and family histories.
"The first will be the last and the last will be the first." Jesus said that almost 2,000 years ago. It is true. The man, this person, according to my beliefs and understanding, the Son of God to so many of us, did not lie. But what does it mean? The first last. Do any of us mere mortals fully fathom what such a statement entails? None of us do entirely, but we know some parts that we can affect...
Death and tragedy may bring new life, new hope, new perspective, new inspiration and motivation -- Say their names: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Patrick Underwood, died tragically in 2020... And many more dead before them, and there will be more since this gut wrenching week... People victimized while trying to live normally, others while doing their jobs to protect, others while committing crimes or suspected, but nothing worth the death penalty, nothing worth passing up U.S. constitutional due process. Too many of them, these bullied and pilloried victims, disproportionately black. Things do need to change. We can help fix some things. We can all help in different ways, of all races and backgrounds.
In an intense week plus of soul searching, debates, tears, threats, posturing, ugly images of violence, surprises and shocks, groans, old stereotypes perpetuated, mourning, marching, protesting, demonstrating, screams and shouts, flash bangs, pepper sprays, sermons, eulogies, heart wrenching pleas, songs, curses, elegies, masses, arguments, shows of force, and a million and another billion other types of energy and actions across our literally sickened world of humanity, I do believe that God is shining through. He is there. He is shining in our blood, sweat, and toil. He hears your prayers, He always has. From our first earthly parents Adam and Eve, Seth and thousands of others, thorough our earliest progenitors Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, and on and on till us.
Alex Haley had a large part of the solution to which I am referring, through his life and research; I am old enough to have been young enough to be very impacted by his seminal T.V. series "Roots" in the 1970s, when a whole new generation of Americans and perhaps others were captivated by what family history means and and what it implies. It means so very much; in the case of millions of African-Americans, and those of mixed races with them, much of the lines have been blurred, glossed over, buried, forgotten, erased. We know most of the reasons why. Some are obvious, which would include slavery and bondage, discrimination. Some other reasons are not so obvious: lack of interest in the present. Ignorance of priorities and tools available in the present to get the work done. Unawareness of the supreme priority of knowing your people, identifying your tribe's history. We need that knowledge in the present and future, the former history of where we come from.
Allow me to discuss and pontificate about family history: how genealogy it fits into being a holistic human, for all of us to be more complete as people in securing a better knowledge of our individual and collective identity, it gives us meaning, for an American of any rank or privilege, or to a world citizen, beyond the American landscape, and how, in the spirit of Alex Haley and all those who do care and should care about their bloodlines and family backgrounds, it allows to be rich in thought and soul. Many African-Americans do not have this, because they were robbed, they were the subject of the ultimate robbery. Their families! In this endeavor of ancestry knowledge European and others of different ethnic groups of Americans have had advantages, for obvious reasons. Not all the European immigrants (so many white ancestors) came in optimal circumstances where family names were kept in some permanent searchable, stored, or preserved format for future reference of those generations. Family history data can be hard to come by for people of all races, persons of all backgrounds.
Finding the clues, details, and data of our familial past will help heal us, resulting in more prosperity for all. It will help us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, even physically. As recognized in June of 2020, African-Americans need this, and the opportunities and know-how is there.
Does this make a difference in overall health and contentment? I would argue that yes, it helps many individuals feel an intrinsic satisfaction to their consciousness and soul. Knowing who we come from and who we were before our birth is a source of comfort, strength. The opposite can leave a blank awareness, it ultimately is frustrating and Something that the majority of Americans have access to, while plenty of people since the revolution of family research and genealogy in the 1970s, again Haley being a part of the zeitgeist of family identity, plus even more records available through newer technologies like computers and microfiche and soon enough the Internet and DNA technologies.
Which brings us back to African-Americans. This many days into June of 2020 (this has taken me a few days to compose, the first week or so of this incredibly historic and momentous month), the ever swirling and ubiquitous theme is that not only do Black Lives Matter, which is an indictment of police brutality against past and current law enforcement and U.S. brands of justice, but it is the idea of the problems of systemic, structural racism in the United States, or even white supremacy in the land of the free since the beginning of the cultures now constituted in the United States and its colonies, dating back to the first African slaves in 1619.
Also, let me reiterate, we are focusing on the United States as a type of social experiment, and from it the rest of the New World, the Western Hemisphere, where many other countries newly amalgamated and created the various Hispanic and Creole cultures, as well as the societies where black slavery was employed, particularly in the Caribbean and Brazil. And whites and blacks, as we are mixes of the nations of Europe and Africa, and now Latin America and East and South Asia.
Whole histories and family lines were abolished for African-American slaves, brutally and by heartless forces, of this there is no denying. This is not to say that European and other populations have not had their awful hardships over the centuries, that native Americans, Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Italians, Germans, Slavs, Arabs, Jewish, and later Hispanics and Asians did not have their terrible trials and parts of their histories erased. But none have had it harder than the former slaves.
All the above mentioned ethnic groups and races can trace their history back through tribal names from regions or villages, and get a decent sense of who they are as kin, as having cultural context, a literal place of origin and a place of self. Not so much the African-American. Pointing to a general "Africa" is not enough. It needs to be more specific. This is where research and family history identification becomes key. This is where I and my faith will combine with the academic cultural historians and the rest of us common folk need to come together and figure out what we need to retrieve: specific kin, clan, tribal, and cultural knowledge. We all need to know this better to be whole.
In the further comparison with other populations, let us think about native Americans, who despite some of the worst waves of genocide, population decimation, poverty, and till this day are normally culturally embattled, they at least mostly have a good sense of who they are, where they are from and what their particular heritage means. African-Americans, not so much. A mostly white person with some Cherokee heritage can take some knowledge of who that part of him is. A white or brown or mostly black person, or Asian or whoever, (think of the epitome of the diversity example Tiger Woods) has parts of him that are unknown, and many of this phenomenon occurs in all of us, be we white, Asian, Latino or Arab. Most of us do not know where all our fourth or fifth generation ancestors really come from. 23andMe, AncestryDNA, and other gene mapping mechanisms show us mysteries that we never knew were a thing, and have changed quite a few peoples' sense of their own racial or human composition, it can change perceptions of who we are in the present by knowing where we came from genetically in the past.
We, (I am speaking for all Americans, as first I am before Canadian or Mexican or Haitian or Dominican) need to map out better who and what tribes we are, where we are from and who we are genetically. The blood in our veins and hearts, literally, will become mapped out in our individual psyches, which is important for mental and spiritual health. People need to know if they come from a land and culture that will further inform them of how their genes and past history categorize and form them. Not all people will immediately latch on to this newfound knowledge of their heritage, or not everyone will directly benefit from knowing of these older world origins. However, I strongly believe it is necessary and will help the entire human family to discover our human origins. In particular, African-Americans will fill gaps that Alex Haley and thousands of others have had the grand vision of for many generations.
I will share an example of my own personal identity and knowledge, things affecting my self concept. This has to do with learning of my genetic make up in my early forties. Growing up I learned that my own father's family heritage is a bit complicated when it comes to his parents and his/our last name, but I knew that we were mostly English, Irish and some Scottish and possibly some French ancestors, who came to the New World and lived in the Canadian Maritime provinces, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, before moving to New England, and the Boston area. They were generally white, or Anglo-Saxon. On my mom's side we had a lot of Irish and German; as far as I knew the German part was 1/4 of me, 25 percent.
When I found myself working in a German dominated compound overseas for many months, every day collaborating with, speaking to, listening to, eating with, and sharing with Germans, I learned a few more things about them and my German heritage. For one, as of 2012 the United States was about a quarter genetically German, as was I. I would tell my German colleagues and friends that I was typically American in that sense. Perhaps what I did not share with them was that within the German line of my maternal grandmother there was perhaps some Gypsy blood, which further complicates the genome map of my lineage. So, interestingly, my Eisenhaur European heritage may not be be so Aryan or Anglo as some might think at first blush. On a personal side note, my mother lived in West Africa as a nurse, and she would always joke that we shared sub-Saharan African blood. I think a little bit of the culture from those areas entered her conscious, or sub-conscious. And this I find good.
After weeks of learning more about German culture and language and idiosyncrasies, I asked my mom back in Indiana what part of Germany my grandmother's people were from. They were from Wilhemsfeld, in the state of Swabia, or Schwabe. I came to find out from my German peers that this state was historically agricultural and poor, and when someone was a Swabian, they were considered a moocher, or in effect a poor beggar. That became a go to joke for me trying to endear myself with the good people of Deutschland. I got some good laughs; it seemed to connect me to them, and in essence connect me to myself more, to my own identity, yet as a white man in his young forties. I am not just white, I have family histories from Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, and France. And maybe more? "White" does not do me justice. "Black" does not do the African-American justice.
Speaking of "white", my dad learned in that same time while I was away with all these Europeans (Germans and quite a few others) that his biological grandmother was full blooded First Nation, or native American, from the Micmac tribe! This news changed how I thought of myself, for sure. As a child I loved learning about native Americans, sometimes I strongly identified with them, as I learned so much of their tragic histories I would very much empathize and sympathize with them. Here I was turned 42 years-old and finding out from my 76 year-old father that I was 1/16 native American? This new revelation filled my conscience with new ideas, inspirations, consolations, all about me, yes, but also how would that information connect me to others, the ones living now and all the ones in the past? My oldest daughter at the time was 11 years old. Based on this new identity knowledge she thought it would be great to go to the Micmac conferences or reunions in Canada. I thought this sounded really great, myself.
Unfortunately, through some genetic testing (and believing in its accuracy of results) and perhaps a couple other sources, my father figured that the nature of his maternal grandmother was not 100 percent Micmac, therefore he was not 1/8 first nation, nor I 1/16 native American, nor my daughter 1/32 of the Micmac peoples. Our history is again perceived to be as profoundly European again, even with a possibility of my mother's gypsy connection. So it goes, we find out things about ourselves over time, and our self-perceptions, self-concepts, self-esteem, and self-awareness evolves and changes, and hopefully progresses.
This is the spirit of Black Lives Matter, and so much of the other social and economic justice that we are in need of, right? We find out who we have been, and it enriches our present wholeness and wellness. Some of us are part black, part white, part native, part Latino (which within itself is a mixed bag of heritage, usually). We need to find out who we are, or at least, as my stories about myself about Germany and Micmac intimate, who we might be.
I am not suggesting this family history awareness is the main thing to get things changed for the sake of people of color in the United States and elsewhere to fix all our problems, but what I am very strongly messaging is there are spiritual and psychological aspects to ourselves that need improving, healing, recovering, restoring, or simply establishing for the first time. These efforts and results will have a salubrious and positive effect on so many. The time has come to restore what was tragically and painfully lost. Our identity as people.
The Outlier Historians and Griots; to the Unknown Reaches of Humanity
Let's talk about the outlier family historians who are of European or Asian descent, and let's discuss the continent of Africa. Alex Haley was one of the pioneers of African and African-American history, but there is much more to be done. I believe some of the answers lie there.
I have met men and women of all backgrounds who become highly invested in their own family histories, but they are usually outliers from the rest of us. I have known at least two or three Caucasian men who have strong connections to their roots and tribes or villages in the United Kingdom or Ireland. They know things about the land and origins of their parents, or grandparents, or way beyond them back into the centuries. They have gone back and either visited or lived with some of the locals of their people; they are both intellectually and spiritually, or we might say sociologically enhanced by this knowledge, which is intimate and powerful hard to replace.
There are many Anglo-Saxons, Mediterranean, Slavic, South and East Asian, plus the natives of the Western Hemisphere and the those of the Pacific Islands that know the home cultures from where their blood and people come. Many white or Latino Americans know enough of their own bloodlines in the United States to not be too curious for their ancestors of England or Sweden or Serbia or Spain. Some Irish-Americans, like Italian-Americans or Mexican-Americans are satisfied with the what they have of their family and kin since being in the Western Hemisphere, while others care deeply and go back to Madrid or Rome or Dublin or perhaps Guadalajara to get in touch with their roots.
When it comes to African-Americans (always generalizing, never wishing to use absolutes because we will always find exceptions) in this sense I perceive a two-sided problem, which is:
1. Too many African-Americans, compared to U.S. citizens of most other ethnic backgrounds, have no idea who their peoples and places were, which was due to forced captivity, devastatingly dehumanizing and records erasing, or family genealogy deleting (again, Haley was one who did wonders to help alleviate this problem, bringing much more history to light of Africa and its heritages) and, problematic access and awareness this deep into the 21st century of African-Americans' particular cultures that make their ancestors' unique persists.
and
2. The African continent itself and its diverse populations are not known well enough by Americans of all races, including whites and blacks, so that we are left bereft of that potentially life inspiring insight into who they and we are on this side of the Atlantic. For example, apart from the glaring fact that millions of Americans are ignorant that there are currently 54 politically autonomous nations in that great continent, many more of us are very unaware of the ethnic diversity within those countries. I had a friend from UCLA who was getting his doctorate in political science who hailed from Cote d' Ivoire, or Ivory Coast. He remarked that there were 61 ethnic groups in his nation alone. Would it make a difference to an American that his genes originated in a group or clan in one part of that country that has distinctive traits, physical and cultural, that he may identify with now?
I would argue that yes, a large number of African-Americans would benefit from knowing of the long distant cousins of their kin in the countries interspersed among West Africa and any other land where they share genetic history.
We need to conquer the apathy of the need to know these things and connect the dots, connect our family histories, link our souls, and restore our shared humanity.
Three reminders or thoughts about this principle of knowledge of physical places of origin:
1. The outlier family historian (aka genealogist) who digs up and retrieves the data, recording the past and present, which perhaps really only stimulates herself initially, provides immeasurable richness and stimulation to their intellect and their internal well being to begin with, but then the life affirming knowledge spreads. These people do exist! I have known them in the flesh. Alex Haley would be doing this now, I believe, if he had not died in 1992. I have known people who do this in all parts of the United States, even though they are a small minority. However, despite their smaller numbers, their research and legacy leaves behind a trail for the rest of us, making this hard to get obscurity and arcane minutia, mere trivia to some at first, a rich treasure trove of human identity and self-awareness, wholeness, wellness. Bringing us back to our shared humanity and true selves.
2. There are many academic and other scholars and researchers who find out about the separate ethnic groups of places like Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone, Niger and Mali. We have the people, respources, know-how to make this happen. Now we simply need the impetus to do our connecting. Is it worth it? I believe so, otherwise we as a nation are perpetuating the argument of "white supremacy", that Black Lives do not Matter. If we cannot put our minds and financial efforts into such endeavors, are not neglecting the social and spiritual vestiges of tyrannical slavery and racism? It is nigh time to to reverse the curses of cultural brutalization, co-optation, thievery, thuggery, near cultural annihilation-- all the things that the modern 21st century indictments of the U.S. police and the overall justice system is accused of against African-Americans now, the former slaves-- there are needs of reparations going backward and laterally to help repair the dire ills of the past and the present, which can be a healing balm to the future.
African-American lives matter now, in the past, and forever? Right? All of us count, true? Let us figure out who they are and who we are, and in the same vain save some beleaguered foreign friends and brothers and sisters as well, making bridges to Guinea, to Ghana, to Togo, where my mother served as a nurse. To the hundreds of ethnic groups that exist now, and that were extant 400 years ago. Connections, links, bonds. Bonds of freedom transformed from the shackles of oppression. The last of us, human tribes, may one day be first.
I had the privilege and honor of being taught by Professor Calloway-Thomas at Indiana University. She knew the cultures and sub-cultures of West and Central Africa. She, among how many others in the world, many Caucasian, others black or of other backgrounds, like the African anthropological and geographical experts that I met at UCLA, discussing the Dinka of the Sudan among others (until he excused himself at his office door due to time), or the man legend named John at my former work place in northern Virginia who retired from the government as a subject-matter expert of dozens of tribes across the width of Africa, particularly the Sahara and Sahel, like the Tuareg and Tooboo and Kambari and Fulani, of distantly known Niger or Chad, places ignored and forgotten. Yet their lives matter, too, and they should be remembered rather than cast off and ignored, as not part of our modern society. Chadian lives matter. Nigerien lives matter. Hausa lives matter.
They should all matter to us as we as their distant cousins should matter to them. We look to serve and share with all people, of all colors, of all nationalities. But there ought to be special connections with all our former kindreds, tongues, and clans. To know, perhaps only in small part, like me with Swabia in Germany, or me perhaps partially Micmac, where our forefathers come from.
3. What efforts can be made to literally and physically connect to and exchange with the peoples of our roots? Many white American Caucasians are able to do exchanges with their cohorts in Spain, England, Germany, France, Scandinavia. East Asians nations are also a popular way to connect with the outside world, and Asian-Americans do this with their kin and cultures in Japan or Korea or Philippines or Vietnam . Are the nations of Africa and the people there too forlorn and risky to commune with? Is this a poor and impoverished people that will only drag is down, that will offer too little reward to visit and to know, to share with and grow with?
My parents lived in West Africa for over two years; and, despite the conditions of newly post independent colonies and endemic poverty, they found a richness and beauty in the people there, with different cultures, traditions, ways of living that were different but good to be exposed to. The Mende and the Temne of Sierra Leone, and the other smaller ethnic groups and societies of that nation all have their parts to impart to us. My parents knew people, even youth, who would speak 14 different languages. These people had gifts and wisdom and important offerings to share. My dad was fellowshipped and honored with the invitation to be initiated in the Poro society, an exclusive and special group to which they made him feel welcome. Would African-Americans like to know of these ancestral cousins and their customs? Like a Scottish-American being welcomed back to clan of the highlands, this renews our senses and familial camaraderie.
Also in the country of Sierra Leone my nephew spent two years in the same country areas of the Mende and Temne, on the "elbow" of West Africa, and drew from the culture many powerfully good associations and lessons. My brother-in-law lived in Cape Verde, drawing experience and knowledge from those island people of Africa. My wife lived in Spanish Morocco, enjoying the differences of the Arab world mixed with the sub-Saharan migrants. Other families of my wife's relations have done missionary excursions to South Africa, and I have know people living in almost all the others: Zambia, Cameroon, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya... Every single one and the cultures within had something very positive to offer us, the Western Hemispherians of the New World, the ones with first world wealth and modern technologies and medicine. Barack Obama learned from his father's native country of Kenya.
On and on are the lessons of and from the peoples of Africa. They, like Europe, and Asia, and our natives of the Americas have contributed to our shared humanity and deserve a time to connect and reconnect with us. The history, lessons, and humanity of them has been too long overlooked, underappreciated, and even maligned or mocked. Become the butt of jokes, which in a more real sense is racism and bigotry, ethnocentrism and "first world supremacy". These beliefs and practices are wrong.
We should make things right. We should restore the heritage, legacies, and cultures of all Americans, not just the privileged (of all races), or the predominant white society, of whose mother language we speak, of whom it is acknowledged forcefully in 2020 is the dominant paradigm or template in the United States. Structural and systemic white supremacy. This is not what America should be. Let's change it, let's do better.
We need African-Americans, African-Americans need us. We need our family histories to be known, shared, and celebrated. All of us, not just certain nations. All of our kin and ethnicities.
Until then, a large, important part of us is erased, is blurred, is unclear. Not just erased from the African-American communities, but from all of us, rich and poor, white or of color, urban, suburban, and rural.
Let us restore our histories. Continue on the path to enlightenment. Find your and my family histories. Live the dream of Doctor King and Alex Haley. Follow the long arch of history and let us let the first be the last and the last be the first, or as Malachi proclaimed at the end of the Old Testament, "let the hearts of the sons [and daughters] return to the fathers [and mothers], and the hearts of the fathers [and mothers] return to the sons [daughters].
Proclaim it. Claim it. Live it. Celebrate and rejoice in finding out who we really are, who we are all trying desperately and valiantly to become. One people, under God.
