Koola Boof calls out Afrocentric community

Kola Boof calls out Afrocentric peeps who, according to her, care more about dead languages and the ancient past than they do about actually existing indigenous black Egyptians (Nubians) living in Egypt under oppressive conditions.

The Black Americans run around saying, "HOTEP". Can you believe that? We never speak this way, but they want the fantasy grandeur of ancient Kings and Queens and they crave the past. Many of them "talk, talk, talk" about Africa and being BLACK....but their wives and children are white. It's all a farce, because they don't know who they are.

Ifi Amadiume also has a smart critique of the valorization of Ancient Egypt in her work Reinventing Africa.

I have some unpublished work on the topic: 

In Afrocentric circles there are only two exceptions that I am aware of to the otherwise blanket endorsement of the centrality of Afrocentric Egyptology: the Ghanaian novelist, Ayi Kwei Armah, and the African American scholar Amos Wilson. Armah has in recent years increasingly focused on Afrocentric Egyptology. In his work KMT: in the House of Life (2002), Armah argues that the reclamation of ancient Egyptian moral philosophy is a fundamental component of undoing cultural imperialism, decolonizing of the African mind, and advancing Afro-modernity. He maintains, however, that the massive Egyptian architectural projects and the hegemonic state-sponsored religion are less evidence of the anteriority and superiority of complex African societies and more the case of a negative testament of the machinations of a tiny African elite who manipulated the intellectual and material resources of the African Egyptian masses for their own self-interests. Amos Wilson, in his book, The Falsification of Afrikan History (1993), issues a more of a frontal assault on Afrocentric Egyptology. Wilson, another scholar who is highly regarded in Afrocentric circles, argues that the Afrocentrists’ inordinate focus on ancient Egypt is reactionary and satisfies a dysfunctional need to prove to Euro-westerners that blacks and whites are social and cultural equals.

To be fair, Boof does not acknowledge the fact that African Americans have been attacking the racist conspiracy to remove ancient Egypt out of Africa for centuries. David Walker wrote matter-of-factly about the Egyptians being black in 1829. A few decades later (1854) Frederick Douglass bitterly denounced the attempt to

separate the negro race from every intelligent nation and tribe in Africa, may fairly be regarded as one proof, that they have staked out the ground beforehand, and that they have aimed to construct a theory in support of a foregone conclusion.  The desirableness of isolating the negro race, and especially of separating them from the various peoples of northern Africa, is too plain to need remark.  Such isolation would remove stupendous difficulties in the way of getting the negro in a favorable attitude for the blows of scientific Christendom (Douglass 1854: 16). 

African Americans have to be given credit for raising this issue consistently for well over 100 years. That said Boof's critique is an important one. Why can't we study the Nubian language with the same vigor that we study the language of the ancient Egyptians? It is, after all, less challenging to speak for a dead civilization than to dialogue with living Africans who might not see the world as we see it. Wouldn't our energy be better used trying to communicate with actually existing black Egyptians? A dialogue with "Black" Egyptians (Nubians), I think, would put us in a better frame of reference for reflecting on the broader Nile Valley cultural/historical context which in turn would lead to better intuitive ideas about the ancient past and a concrete engagement with the Egyptian present. As it stands now, African Americans tend to dominate the conversation on ancient Egypt. We need a more robust and dynamic engagement. 


Boof also calls out minister Farrakhan for siding with Sudanese "Arab" oppressors rather than oppressed "black" Sudanese. Likewise she wonders about African American support for Palestians who are, she says, racists. The NOI has pointed to some serious problems in how the Sudan conflicts are framed (for example, jewish NGOs have been subversively manipulating the narrative to serve their own anti-islamic imperatives. I have witnessed some of this first hand) But I do think NOI is compromised to some degree by the need to shield Bashir and the rest of the gang in Khartoum from criticism. 


Minister Farrakhan and the NOI's international representative, Akbar Muhammad, on Darfur

		KOLA BOOF presents TODAY'S BLACK EGYPTIANS
	KOLA BOOF presents TODAY'S BLACK EGYPTIANSI Still Hear the Lion--Theo Van Gogh PHOTOS of KOLA BOOF THE BIN LADEN I KNEW by Kola Boof NEWS FROM AFRICA HOT NEWS TOPICS: Kola Boof takes on Jackie Susann and Kurt Cobain BOOKS by Kola Boof KOLA BOOF Awarded Sweden's Writer's Pen 2007, SCHOMBURG CENTER Osama Bin Laden and Kola Boof Kola Boof Gives Speech In ISRAEL Kola Boof Hoax Kola's Private Address Book BINT il NIL--KOLA BOOF File Photos of Kola Boof Radio Interview with Kola Boof's Adoptive American Mother Page 5--Controversial Poems PICTURES of Kola Boof KOLA BOOF mobipocket/Kindle e-books POEM HONORING WARD CHURCHILL Kola Boof----WIKIPEDIA	TODAY'S BLACK EGYPTIANS: 2006 An Essay through PHOTOS by Kola Boof About a year ago, one of my uncles wrote to me from Egypt, quite bitterly. He said: People are so busy discussing and fighting over whether or not the ancient Egyptians were  "black" ---that they forgot we're still here. We still exist. The Arabs who claim to be Egyptians have not exterminated ALL of us yet. Kola, you live in America, you're somebody over there. Why don't you say something? You're only claiming SUDAN. But that's not right. Your father was an Egyptian. And he's right. Because of my own bitterness...my hatred and loathing for my father's country...I have been remiss to mention anything about the country.

Read entire post @ Poetwoman.

tags: afrocentric, arab africa, black africa, egypt, kola boof, louis farrakhan, palestinians, racism, Sudan