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People of African descent prepare for year of activities

Dec 14, 2010 News

The Region Ten organising Committee for the International Year for people of African descent, which will be commemorated next year, is optimistic about the positive role they will play in helping to create a region of dignified Africans.
Recently launched in Linden under the theme ‘Commemorating the African past, Acknowledging the present, Creating the future,’ members of this relatively new organisation, while enthused about their mission, which is dedicated to facilitating the nurturing of a wholesome (African) self identity, are nonetheless cognizant of the fact that the task won’t be an easy one.
“It has become acceptable for things African to be ignored and despised,’ observed Jonathon Adams, Chairman of the organising committee.
They are however not disillusioned and will continue with their mission, which is to educate, encourage and support persons of African ancestry, in the quest for economic, social, political and cultural excellence.
Adams, along with a few other executive members, spoke candidly, last week, of the group’s vision, which is to develop a region of dignified Africans with a correct self identity.
Adams said that the year’s activities are expected to commence early January with an opening ceremony. However, the venue for this activity has not yet been determined.
There will be the showing of the film, “Goodbye Uncle Tom’, a film that highlights the socio psychological aspect of the period of enslavement. This film would be the first of the 52 films to be shown every Friday night throughout 2011 in Linden.
“We have been led to believe that the Europeans put Africans to work on the plantations mainly to make money; what we have not been taught is that there had been a lot of psychological and scientific experiments aimed at creating in those very Africans, an altered state of consciousness, what Bob Marley has been described as mental slavery.
The film ‘Good bye Uncle Tom’ is probably the best chronicle of a lot of those experiments and activities, according to Adams.
It is therefore the intention of the organising committee to use the film to show and educate African people and by extension the society at large about some of the atrocities, that were meted out to Africans on these plantations, and the resultant behavioural patterns that they developed, due to the these processes of conditioning.
The objective is to get African people to understand and recognise where a lot of stress and unanswered questions in their own lives originated.
Adams added that in order to address these issues, clinics would have to be set up where Africans who recognise that a lot of their responses to daily life fit this mould, could go to be treated and counseled for what is a clinically recognised disease- post traumatic stress disorder which Dr Leary has taken and crafted into the post traumatic slave syndrome.
‘’It is important to note that violence used by the slave masters was the main deterrent to disobedience on the part of the slaves; it was used as a means of social control on the plantations, which ensured their perpetual subservient attitude and mindset.
Today we see its perpetuation in our society, through abuse and other social ills, another executive of the organising committee Gary… pointed out.
A lot of the abuse and violence prevalent in today’s society, have their genesis in the slave era, as slaves were beaten into subjection, and controlled through violence.’’
This system of abuse, violence and control which was ‘handed down’ to us, and been perpetuated throughout the years, has to be addressed; and the only way to cure this ‘disease’ is to treat the source and not the symptoms, Gary declared.

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