Transcript for:
Blueprint For Black Power

thank you thank you thank you very much thank you kindly thank you thank you very much for your warm welcome it's great to be back here with you again this evening it's been a while and I always appreciate coming and being with you and of course appreciate your support and I know each time that I've been here I promise you how about next publication but it's definitely on the way we we we are definitely now expecting to be out in November and of course each time I talk with you the book gets larger at last count brother sir Babu my co partner there told me we were round about 800 pages so we're gonna try to split it up for you maybe four and four gives you some good wintertime reading but then in a way it's when we recognize that we are eight we are as complicated as any other people and one of the things sometimes we underestimate the degree to which we must address ourselves as a people and too often we have people who think that our issues and the things that we have to deal with can be described in 25 words or less and that and so they're people who think that we are small people and small minded people so they don't have to write sometimes some sizeable material if other nations and other people require libraries to deal with their issues so do we and the interesting thing about the upcoming Brook is that with that ain't under pages it's basically a survey looking at various areas of life if you recall we title it blueprint for black power and we are essentially then trying to lay out a blueprint a prescriptive book now we are coming into more and more into prescriptive type of writing laying out very practical kinds of steps and very practical methods for achieving what it is we must achieve as African people this means we have to cover a lot of territory we are covering psychology covered of course history sociology a great deal of political science a great deal of economic economics and related fields anthropology and so forth because all of these have to be combined in the process of nation-building and this is what we really have to be about is the process of building a nation as a people if you're not thinking in terms of nationhood then I must say frankly either not thinking seriously of being liberated trying to integrate and merge with our enemies is not going to solve our problem and it's not going to happen as a matter of fact it is a fantasy that has kept us from taking care of business for far too long the idea that we are going to one day be one with these people [Applause] then we're going to merge into invisibility with these white folk and even if that were possible we should question our motives for wanting to do so No why would you want to merge with the world's greatest criminals and thieves with the people who have the worst values the world has ever known it amazes me sometimes how we can hear some of our parents telling our children we want to be just like them yeah it's a joke it's an insult to hear Dan Quayle or to hear President Clinton come and lecture black folk on values this is a how dare we let these people into our churches to try to lecture us on values [Music] it's an amazing situation to try to talk to us about values to try to talk to us about population control another joke yeah yeah be good the first thing we think about what people talk about population control is the overproduction of African people you know so called third world people as I said we can solve the overpopulation problem quickly if we could reduce the European population bhrastika yes and people of course I tell you this world has always be backwards you see the ones who need to be reduced most vastly have the world speaking the other way around because a good deal of the problem sometimes is not the number of people in the world but the number of greedy people in the world where you have a so-called minority of people who consume the vast majority of the world's resources this large population that they talked about could eat better if these people weren't eating everything up and so to a good extent sometimes to have more for everybody to eat you have to get rid of the greedy ones run through our over-consuming who are taking the food out of other people's mouths your say but here you have the people who robbed you to take everything you've got and then say you don't have enough to support yourself you know this is the kind of joke that we got going out here and we're going to come back to this issue of values but we're going to talk a little bit about after consented consciousness personality and culture as instruments of power because ultimately this is what this whole struggle is about power not loving one another and all those things we here power and to a great extent the problems that we are confronted with today as African people and African people in America controls from our powerlessness or inappropriate use of power we've been made to even talk about it we've been made to think that power is sinful and that to pursue it is a sinful pursuit and that it's wrong but you cannot exist without power without power there's no life a battery with our power is dead you need power to act to behave in the world to deal with the world and consequently then we must interpret what we are about in terms of power and we have the power ladies and gentlemen we have the possibilities we just need to reorganize ourselves we organize our consciousness in our personality and our culture and see them as instruments of power and use them as instruments of power to transform our situation so we should not look at consciousness as some abstraction as I often tell people the most practical thing you can have is a good theory it's a good concept to guide your behavior to be used as an instrument to measure reality as an instrument to test reality a good theory then organizes the world and organizes one approach to the world if permit you want to be able to evaluate the world in terms of where one wants to go and in terms of what one wants to do to be without theory then is to approach the world on an ad-hoc basis you know just to meet it here and there and and to not approach it in a systematic form to live reaction airily always reacting to what other people are doing always being overwhelmed by events and overwhelmed by the future instead of creating events and creating the future and making the future see when one half then a good theory and a good concept one is able to do that consciousness without human consciousness there is no world it is the presence of human consciousness that brings meaning into the world without human beings in this world consciously would be in this world in effect that would not be a world we bring the world into being through our consciousness and through our consciousness we create the world we live in out of the totality of reality our consciousness cuts out a world at the business itself in other words the kind of world you exist in reflects the kind of consciousness that you have and notice if you change your your your your consciousness or change your values and orientation you enter into a different world you interact with different people people who obstinate you didn't even know existed in the world social situations that you might not have even recognized until you entered into a new level of consciousness you see people say for instance who become addicted say to crack or something and now enter into a whole world and enter into a whole social system that before they became a think that they have to notice they didn't know what it was all about and they picked up new friends and new relations hold new ways of acting new purposes in life they lost old friends broke with old families and all kinds of in other words the consciousness that addicted consciousness brought into the world a new foreground and put other things into the background therefore man's consciousness is a creative act and the kind of consciousness you have will determine the kind of world you create and consequently when you look at the world that we live in African people we must recognize to a great extent it is a world of our own creation it is a world that has been generated by the type of consciousness we've been permitted to be instilled in us as a people as I told you earlier today on the radio we talked about the white man is having power and I want you to recognize that power ultimately has to do with a relationship between people and that the white man so-called power is to a great extent based upon the nature of the relationship he has with the black men we empower him by the nature of our own behavior and attitudes as a people he cannot be as I said earlier what he is unless we are what we are and darling to a good extent to a good extent the European is our creation yes if we look at our behavior we will see that to a good extent it is our behavior our values our consciousness the kind of personalities we've established in ourselves our tastes our desires and needs that maintains the European in this position we talked about the civil rights movement and the apartheid system of the south when blacks decided just to get out of the buses and walk the system changed yeah when they just stopped sitting behind the white driver just changing that relationship change the nature of power in that system when they decided to walk side by side when they decided to walk abreast and line themselves up because they had not walked that way before for the ends before the relationship changed when they kept their monies in their pockets when they said on those stools and brought the other people from them and change the nature of the interaction between themselves and European the nature of the system changed so therefore we have tremendous power it depends upon how we align ourselves as a people and how we decide to relate to other people in the world because they cannot have what they have unless we are who we are and that is why we don't have to spend a great deal of time always appealing to them and analyzing them because we can better appeal to our own sense of self and our own consciousness and we waste a lot of time trying to transform them win through transforming ourselves they will be transformed automatically the power is in our hands we are not destined to be the servants of white folk that is not the destiny of black folk no way and then we have to change this idea because many of us are still operating on that concept as I said this point of many of us go to these schools to become what qualified to work for whom for them why do we assume that they're gonna have the job for us yes these people are having difficulty making jobs for themselves the greatest problems that the Europeans are facing today and the European economies are facing today is that they are not generating enough jobs for their own people and even though America is bragging about the millions of jobs it's creating those jobs are part-time jobs a bulk of them are part-time jobs low wage jobs and jobs that have little or no future so when people talk about creating jobs you got to ask what kind of jobs are being created that is why of course this system is not investing in black education did no longer need like people to maintain its employment structure you see it bringing in people from outside of the nation to be employed you see it even is hiring in the world itself in other nations and other places already it is reached a point where it's need for black males is pretty much saturated and it literally then is warehousing us in the jails and prisons and provoking us to kill each other and to destroy each other out here in these streets and yet we are still organizing the education of our children as if the right there still has jobs waiting for them in multitudes how different our education would be if we set our children to school to create jobs for themselves to create their own economic and political systems to see themselves as the major sources of their employment as I remarked earlier today while we were in the radio station I heard something about some people out here protesting for jobs and pushing these other people for jobs and I asked the question do we know how many jobs we really create for other people we are a job-creating people we don't realize it because we don't think in terms of nation you see we saw ourselves as a nation we could see that we create jobs like any other nation I mentioned there today how many jobs are created by black music yeah look at the whole structure of the music industry from promoters to to manufacturers of the records and the tapes and what have you to hold entertainment feel to the sellers of music in the stores you know what to be said the Tower Records and the other great sellers of records and music and so forth advertising that uses our music and Holly said how many thousands of jobs are we creating as people we're creating them but they have them you say we sing the music they sell it we sing the music they market it we sing the music they promote it you see we sing the music they produced great are conglomerates like Sony CBS music creating all kinds of jobs we're creating tremendous job for a lot of people how many jobs we create just buying from Koreans buying from other ethnic groups out here how many people are we creating employment for in terms of our spending habits as a people in our consumption habits as a people how many jobs that we create and going to jail we're creating all kinds of jobs and wealth and we must come to understand this we would creating these jobs and yet we are begging for jobs this means then somewhere our consciousness has been impaired we're begging for what we are making already and we cannot use our own creations as a source of our own wealth I told you earlier today that the Creator could not have intended for us as African people to be a poor people if the Creator implanted in our soils or the wealth that was planted there we talked about the minerals and the oil in the gold into this and the debt that's implanted in African soil so it seems as if the Creator blessed us from the very beginning with wealth and possibility therefore for us to be going hungry over this wealth and to be starving in the midst of it and to be perceived as a dependent indebted people while our wealth is being shipped out to other people we're actually selling a lot of it for pennies and nickels and dimes and less means that there is something wrong without consciousness because ultimately ladies and gentlemen we've said what that the wealth of the people is ultimately not in their land but where is it in the mind the wealth of man is in his mind in his consciousness you got a look at and we mentioned the example of Japan no mineral wealth to speak of whatsoever nothing at all a nation by the way which is totally dependent of course we get them we get things back with our way we see ourselves as depending on Europeans when the reality is the other way around when they depend on us and our swords and our people we have to be backwards in order for this situation to be the way it is our reality has to be turned backwards and we have to live in an almost permanent state of deception in order to be used the way we are used the Japanese must depend on others for their vital resources there are out there timber all of these things that they use to create their technology and so forth is taken from the soils of other people and then so back to them and yet they are seen is rich and powerful and the peoples whose wealth they take or buy are seen as poor and poverty-stricken ultimately then you cannot rob or take from well from a what poor people you cannot get wealth from a poverty-stricken people people who have nothing you can get nothing from so if you're getting all your diamonds and your goal and your magnesium and all this other stuff then from African people then African people must be what wealthy and rich and therefore if Africa people are poverty-stricken with this material wealth then it must be because our consciousnesses of people is impoverished and we are suffering then an impoverishment of our mentality as we said before if you have a good mind you can con another Joker out of his land you can con him out of his diamond and is gold and this is what the other people have done they have used their mind and their cleverness and taken from us what they did not have originally and therefore consciousness is not an abstract concept it is not a theoretical concept it is a concept that is directly related to the reality one lives in and to the reality that one's experiences it is directly related to the type of life that one wouldn't live and doesn't live so I'm going to look at this for a minute particularly the consciousness of Africans in America I'm often somewhat amused and taken aback by the number of people in the society who claim that slavery occurred somewhere back there that and you got some so-called black conservatives who claim that slavery no longer influences the nature of African people I wonder what those people have to conserve in the first place are they conserving power they're conserving well what does it black conservative conservative enough to conserve something and since they have very little if anything they must only be conserving the system that has created their poverty to begin with and you see them ultimately justifying the poverty of African people and justifying the political and social and economic subordination of African people in the name of some kind of higher principles so slavery is not suppose the experience of slavery is not supposed to be operating in the mentality of like folk you hear a lot of our youngsters will say that as well how do you talk about slavery that was back there or you know white start to that well you know that back there we don't have anything to do with that anymore you see and it's an amazing situation because you have to remind them that you're still living off the interests of the wealth that your forefathers earned from slavery you are still enjoying the accumulated wealth that began with the enslaved that of our people and if you're going to enjoy the wealth that was generated by evil then you must take the curse that comes along with it [Music] and therefore even though you personally had nothing to do with it but because you have received stolen goods you must pay the price as well and because you fight and struggle to protect those stolen goods and you defend them and you organize your society and your relationship to by people to maintain them and to continue to enhance them then you must pay the price that's why you live in terror that's why you're stabbed in these streets that's why you're gonna suffer no matter how good you are no matter how liberal you are mm-hmm ladies and gentlemen when we behave as adults we must recognize that our behavior will be visited upon our children and that our children pain from misbehavior as we say an act does not end at the point of its occurrence it continues to reverberate into the future and down across the generations and that's why when you behave in a particular way you have to think in terms of seven generations from your behavior as to how what you're going to do is going to affect those generations later on and even though those children may appear to be so-called innocent they will still pay the price of your own misbehavior this country whose parents the news adults have misspent it's treasure and and while they have enjoyed that treasure ultimately their children will have to pay the taxes and will have to pay the price so we have a bunch of people out here who think they can rape and Rob the world and think that they could have enslaved the world and think then that they're going to sleep well at night it doesn't work that way so we have some of our people here who think then that slavery was back then it had nothing to do it has nothing to do with them later determined we've never escaped slavery we still share the slave consciousness of our great-great-grandparents we are of the same mind to a great extent that they were we have not advanced beyond these people how can I say that I generally ask a series of questions you say that you that slaver has nothing to do with you and slavery was back there and I asked you the question then what language do you speak when did you learn that language was that the language African people were speaking when we were taken into slavery in America in other words the language we speak the language we speak at this moment is what a slave language the language that I craved ancestors were forced to learn and we still speak it and you can still hear the pidgin the Creole and the other kinds of stuff in our language right at this moment that they had to go through that language with its words defined by a history and by an experience is the language we use today to guide our behavior is the language we use today to talk to ourselves is the language we use today to learn about ourselves and to learn about the world is the language today we use to try to understand ourselves is there no wonder then that we are still confused so we have not escaped slavery because we are still using a slave language and we speak the language of slaves what kind of food do you eat you say soul food was that the food of African people slave food the food that we find most satisfying the food that we find that sticks through our ribs the food to recall down home or food that we learn to eat in the quarters and yet we dare say that we have escaped slavery that we have nothing to do with those people back there that that was back there we're not home very social life and social relationships our very definition of ourselves as a people our very attempt to commune with ourselves is mediated by the food of slaves understand what I'm trying to get at and how can you say that you exist in a different consciousness from another people what kind of uniforms are we wearing what kind of clothes are we wearing were these the clothes of African people huh this is what we got to look at yes what is this to say then that we've escaped slavery what kind of names do we respond to [Music] yes [Applause] tamika's and all these other things we got caught out here what kind of names we identify with why is it that African name sounds strange to us now there's a people and yet we dare say that we have a different consciousness from our great slave grandparents how can we say that we are still of the same consciousness and we are still in the same position because we are still servants of the right man and our reason for being in America is to serve white folk and to generate wealth for them and there has been no change at all in terms of our relationship to these people [Applause] the values that we pursue a slave values and the values of servants the social relations that we create and interact with were built and developed during the periods of slavery we have not escaped it at all but it is time for us to change the slave consciousness this consciousness of servitude that is still too much with us today and ultimately we ask the question that's closest to home for a lot of people when we claim that we've escaped slavery and the slavery was something back there which had nothing to do with us today and then I asked you the question what kind of God do you wish [Applause] [Music] what's the name of it who taught you to praise him resistor God you were praying too before you were about to these shores this is the religion you had before you about to these shores can you name one African God how can you then who define yourself the very essence of yourself and the very essence of your soul and organize the very nature of your life here on earth based on a God handed to us by a slave masters claim that you have no slave consciousness and are not related to slavery in other words then ladies and gentlemen we are not Africans we are possessed by spirits and demons we have let another people spirit take possession of our bodies and take possession of our minds when we speak it is not with our African voice it is with the voice of that demonic presence that uses our lips to speak its own language yes yes and we have to recognize this we are possessed and if we are to transform ourselves and to transform that the nature of our relationship with those who are our masters we must engage in an exorcism and clear the Devils out of our minds and at this time they need to pay you to read a little bit about demonic possession and you have to be diplomatic we have to be demonically possessed because if we talked about black-on-black violence self-defeating behavior self-destructive behavior then we could not be possessed by a beautiful and wonderful God we must be possessed by a demon it's interesting to look at the literature on possession we have a couple of types of possession one is called a sanam the ballistic possession some name ballistic so my innocence was having to do with sleep you hear it in the word sominex you know ambulance ik to move around Angela torii right so we are talked about people who are what sleepwalking not a unit they're not awake but they're walking around the body is moving and it is walking in an organized fashion and walking systematically but the person is still asleep anundson am ballistic possession then the individuals original self has been repressed and displaced and the spirit and he identifies with the spirit that possesses him and his eye and the spirits I are one and the same and we have a lot of that here today we're at the spirit that has been implanted in us we have taken to be us and we're identified with it that is why in in defending ourselves we end up defending the people who rule over us in defending our ego we end up maintaining the social structure that is destroyed our ego to begin with and you see it in our youngsters who will fight and kill in the name of respect and fight because their egoistic orientation has been insulted and therefore in defending their ego they do not kill the people who destroyed their ego they killed each other and maintained the ones who destroyed them in the first place in power and that's why the subtitle of my book black on black violence Roth black self annihilation in service of white domination we are killing each other in order to maintain this system we have let ourselves become possessed by a spirit such that when we become aggressive we aggress against the self instead of those who are the source of our aggressive orientation we talk a lot as a people about self hatred South Africa's a personality configuration it is a form of personality organization it is an orientation toward the world and toward oneself self-hatred then is the white man's greatest protection against being destroyed by a black man to a good extent self-hatred is the white man's defense mechanism is the white man's form of self-defense how can we say that to a great extent one function of the personality is to direct energy to direct aggression to channel aggression and energy and wishes and impulses in particular directions to organize feelings to organize energy to achieve certain ends those things that we hate often then when we are angry a hostile we aggress against them don't we we attack them often we destroyed them didn't we have a problem don't we if we attack the things we hate if we attack the things toward which we hold hostility when we already frustrated and when we are angry then what happens if that thing we hate is ourselves it means then ladies and gentlemen that when we become frustrated and angered as a people when we are overwrought by feelings of hostility and our self hating personality seeks to channel that hostility and channel that aggression it's going to channel the aggression right back on to the self because that's the thing we hate most so consequently like anger then becomes a conduit for black self-destruction for black self defeat the object of our hostile aggressive feelings becomes ourselves and you can see then how the white man is protected by that personality structure right while he Stokes our anger while these Stokes are hostility while these Stokes are frustration and while we get mad and we want to spike out when we decide to strike out in a grass we strike out and aggress against the self and by doing so he is left untouched and unscathed and therefore our self hatred becomes his principal means of defending himself and of maintaining himself one of the things that frightened him most about the Ferguson case was that Ferguson self hatred mechanism broke down [Applause] unlike many deaf dumb and blind Negros he's moved his enemies work and so when he got angry and hostile instead of going out to drink himself to death instead of going out to smoke crack and destroy himself instead of going out to killing someone who looked like himself instead of going out to commit suicide and put himself in a place to be destroyed by somebody else he went directly to the source of this reference [Applause] and this is what frightened those people [Applause] they wonder how many more are there like that and are they increasing yes so you can see why the seed of self-hatred is planted in the minds of the black man we spent a lot of time about what it does to us but we got to look at it because I've told you before every mouth adapted characteristic in the black psyche is there for white folk and it's not purely there because they hate you or they misunderstand you or they don't know who you were what you're doing all of that I tell people when you analyze the so-called aberrations and the black personality you must always ask the question what their social functions enrolled who benefits from this aberration in the black man's mind what is the social and political and economic benefits and for whom who gains from this particular orientation in our minds and then you begin to see why it's there and what its function is and so every complaint we have about ourselves has a political economic and social intent beneficial to white folk and detrimental to ourselves and that means then somewhere along the way we became possessed by these orientations and they were implanted in our personalities we have come to identify with them as our natural selves as our natural orientations we have assumed that they represent who we are and we have now been found many ingenious ways to defend the demons that possess us and ultimately then those demons destroy us and have us destroy others like ourselves there's another form of possession we called lucid for possession in this sense the person at least has a sense ourself and they have the sense that there's another spirit in them and they struggled with that spirit sometimes losing the battle every now and then they become obsessed with their struggle with their spirit and in a sense then are disabled by that struggle so some of us are in that state we're not quite satisfied with the identity we have we know somehow that there's a deeper Africa and self in us we also aware that there's a Eurocentric lis implanted demon in us and we wrestle with it daily there's another type of possession we talked about in and that's spontaneous what it sort of occurred spontaneously against our will this is in contrast to one we talked about as artificial one deliberately created what do we mean by that when we go into a particular social setting such as the church or such as a rock concert or the like and we go through a set of rituals and behavior we go there and go through these behaviors and rituals and songs and dance as a mean of deliberately being possessed by what the spirit and having our bodies taken over and being possessed and then we say we feel what the spirit we feel the spirit living within us and so consequently much of our life is about provoking throughout official means spirits which take over us and assume control of our behavior latent possession means when we possess and we don't even know that we are possessed and I think that defines a lot of us we're not even aware and those are the hardest ones to break through because they don't sense any kind of split within the personality day and there's possessed experience of one and the same and when you try to exercise exercise there possess the spirit they feel as if you are attacking them personally and in defending their person they defend the spirit that possesses them let's be a little more concrete and I want to just give you an example of what I mean by this you know and in the literature we talked about these spirits as what we call the intra bag and the succubi spirit lies in the body or lies on the body the Incubus and the one that lies under the spirit the succubus when we talked about this spirit though that possesses us when we talk about this spirit that the European have planted in us in terms of the language in terms of the food in terms of the religion in terms of the values in terms of the social relations in terms of the name we are talking about a spirit that just not a spooky into the in ourselves it actually incarnate in us what we talked when we talk about incarnated we're talking to our deal in with the Latin root Cardinals which has to do with what meat flesh in other words the Spirit comes to dwell in our very flesh and comes to sculpt our very bodies and therefore the Spirit is a physical thing as much as it is a psychological thing the bodies that we have tonight ladies and gentlemen our bodies that have been created by the European experience and are not our natural bodies as African people [Music] just as the surface of our bodies reflect the influence of another people the very internal nature and the physiology of our bodies reflect those people as well that's why when you get rid of them you're gonna have a healing experience and your whole body will change I've read some of this before let me read it again I think in this context this is most dramatic and the things I'm talked about a most dramatic when we study the so called multiple personality and let me read your description here that was printed in two times and those who might have briefly with it indulge me here because I think it did points that something it begins when Timmy drinks orange juice he has no problem but Tim is just one of close to a dozen personalities who alternate control over a patient with multiple personality disorder and if those other personalities drink orange juice the result is a case of hives what do we say again we got one body but depending on what consciousness possesses that body that body will react to the treatment of orange juice with or without hives will flake out in blisters so if it drinks orange juice when one of the other personalities is possessing it Wealth's and hives will break out right there if Timmy comes back if the new consciousness comes back and takes over that body the hives will disappear almost on the moment in other words then there's a different body for a different consciousness it goes on to say then that medical disorder that are found to differ from one sub personality to another in other words even though these so-called personalities possessed the same so-called body each personality has a different order of illnesses associated with it each personality is vulnerable to a particular type of ailment one way or the other so what are we talking about we are saying that each consciousness which is represented by each personality creates its own body creates its own physiology and thereby creates its own vulnerability to various ailments and so forth you see you get people in medical school who try to teach you that disease only occurs as a result of some kind of viral syndrome or some kind of entry into the body of some bacteria other thing and certainly that is a part of it and certainly there is reality there but the body must interact with the viruses and must interact with the disease entity and this is what we talk about when we talk about the immune system that help is not necessarily the absence of the disease but the capacity of the divider to resist the disease to stand up against the disease and so consequently then when these bodies are taken over by different personalities these personalities apparently change the nature of the immune system of those bodies making them vulnerable to diseases when one but when one personality is present and not so when another is present which means ladies and gentlemen then that the nature of the consciousness which possesses us as persons will to a degree determine the illnesses to which we are vulnerable as a person and as people and a lot of the illnesses physical and other diseases that we suffer then are mediated by the nature of the consciousness that we permitted to possess us as a people so to a great extent the defeat of disease the maintaining of health must not only be pursued in terms of discovering new drugs and these kinds of things but must involve self-discovery and self-knowledge it goes on to state that in people with multiple personalities there is a strong psychological separation between each sub personality each will have his own name and age does that strike the bell what did we say earlier to what names do we respond are they the same names to which we responded prior to slavery do so in other words as we got the new slave personality we got what new names yes yes and we were changed to a good extent our names were given us to designate our new consciousness and our new situation each will have his own name and age and often some specific memories and abilities in other words each personality has its own history has his own biography has its own memory and you look at Negroes when they have a certain consciousness and look at the history they remember look at the things that they keep in their memories and look at the histories they study and identify with look at them fight African history yes look at them more to identify with the history of Europeans look at the water to define themselves in terms of that history and look at them having memories only for that history look at those Africans who are still under the possessive influence of the European implanted spirit and know that they have little or no knowledge of African history and therefore little or no knowledge of their own history as a person in an individual so there's a consistency between the consciousness and the history that a person has and the memory that an individual has they often have they are frequently for example personalities differ in handwriting artistic talent or even in knowledge or foreign languages speak a different language depending on the personality this in their multiple personalities typically developing people who were severely and repeatedly abused as children our parent is Amin to protect themselves against the pain of abuse does that strike another note in you often only one or two of the sub personalities will be conscious of the abuse while the others would have no memory or experience of the pain to a great extent the personality of the african-american today has been shaped by our desires to escape the memory of the slave experience to deny its existence we don't want to talk about it we don't want to come in terms with it we don't want to agree experience it psychologically we don't want to know about it and therefore our lives becomes defined by eternal escape and avoidance of reality and of history and of a knowledge of who we are and how we came to be who and what we are and consequently we cannot act upon the reality of our history and we our behavior and define ourselves in terms of a fantasy as history and a misinterpretation of reality this is what it is yes how did we get this religion we talked about earlier I talk about Star Trek and we talked about the what the time warp that our Trek depict quite frequently now how people move from one state of consciousness and one world and a suddenly flipped into a new world they go through a war and sudden all of a sudden everything that they used to use to guide themselves no longer counts the language that they used to speak can no longer be understood in the new world the values that they used to guide their behavior are no longer workable in fact it gets them into trouble the guards the culture the nature of the social relations and all of the things that they use prior to meeting the rock no longer suffice now if they must learn new values and new behaviors and new orientations in order to adapt themselves to the new universe that they live in we're in that kind of position today think about the African in the world the African lived in prior to being bought across the oceans think about the gods we praise think about the organization of our society think about the languages that we spoke the food that we ate the dress that we wore the music the song the dance and all of those things that defined us as African people and think how horrendous it must have been for us to be thrown into this world where there was a whole new language a whole new social hierarchy a whole new set of authorities people pushing you around who you don't understand people who are putting strange tools in your hands people who are trying to get you to relate to them and to relate to each other in a very different kind of way from what they're used to relating true think about the stress and the confusion and think about the abuse think about the horror of that situation our parents and great-grandparents were put in and there was somebody that said then if you pray to this God if you talk this way if you dress this way if you relate this way you'll get a greater sense of security your anxiety will be reduced you will feel good and you'll be able to withstand the pain of your existence and the God then that I'm gonna hand you there's one that I have created for you and a theology that comes with it is one that I have created so that you will continue to serve me as you continue to serve it and we come to believe in the veracity of that God and that religion why because we feel so secure when we follow it and we feel so relieved when we follow it and yet we wonder why despite all of our prayers despite all of our devotion we still suffer the way we do I often ask the question why is it that the people who prayed the most have the most of their children in the jail's of America today who shout and kick over the benches and so forth are filling up the prisons and have the children killing each other and addicted out here in these streets there must be a problem here ladies and gentlemen we must reorient ourselves to our religion we must reorient ourselves to our God's because apparent that we are not we are not we don't have the appropriate orientation because as that book you read says you can tell a tree by what the fruit it bears and therefore if it bears bitter fruit or if it bears no fruit at all the god you worship says it is but fit to be hewn down and thrown into the flame and consumes read your own Bible it gives you a very practical measure that's the wealth of the religion you are pursuing is an appropriate one and that major says look at the fruit that it bears and if the kind of religion and the guard your purse or ends up having your sons in the jail's of America and then ZUP maintaining African people in slavery and servitude in their own lands and everywhere then something is wrong in terms of how we relate to that religion and that God because the outcome is wrong and the outcome is destructive and it's because we don't want to confront the abuse that we went through and deal with you see when you go through that time war the only way you can ultimately come to understand the new world is to understand what happened when you went through that war that transformed what the personality that made the personality what it was and I find that interesting when further over when I read here of what happens when the personality moves from one personality to another when the body is possessed by one personality and that personality is this place and another one comes in it says during the switch there is typically a period of seconds or even minutes when heart rate rate our breath rate and other physiological markers showing this organization that is followed by a new pattern typical of the personality that is emerging in other words then we go through a period of disorganization of stress and then the personality is reorganized to fit into the new circumstances we can't continue to pursue this but it's interesting to look at the changes in blood pressure that each personality brings about the other kinds of changes physical changes that are representative of the personality so what are we saying here then that each personality has its own name its own history its own memory biography way of speaking language way of thinking way of perceiving itself its own vulnerabilities each personality generates its own life space and generates its own types of social relations each personality has its own taste and appetites and its own morality so to a great extent then if we look at the problems and issues that confront us today is Africa people and see those issues in terms of the consciousness we would recognize that we must rid ourselves of the consciousness that has been implanted in us by our European masters one other thing I want to bring about in this situation we notice that if you engage people in behavior therapy and you scan their brains and look at how their brains metabolize energy there's a relationship between the areas of the brain that are rapidly using energy and the type of mental activity a person is undergoing and the type of physical behavioral activity the person is undergoing each personality each type of orientation has a blueprint in the brain in terms of the various areas of the brain that are functionally relating one to the other and it's interesting to note for instance that we look at something called the obsessive-compulsive personality the person who cannot stop repeating a particular behavior no matter how irrational it may be the person who must wash their hands every 30 minutes even if they are not dirty but who are compelled to the point that they wash their hands to the point of rawness because they cannot stop is this kind of person the person who is absorbed by a particular type of image by a particular kind of thought or orientation that they cannot get out of their minds this is what we talked about when we talked about the obsessive compulsive personality a rigid repetitive personality we know then if you scan the brains of these personalities that certain areas in their brain are intensely active for instance we talked about their frontal lobes the so called orbital lobe of the brain the orbital cortex of the brain the part of the cortex that is above the eyes the part of the cortex that concerns itself with intentionality and purpose and direction and motivation and the connection of that cortex through the through the lower brain to the what we call the caudate nucleus that part of the lower brain that deals with repetitive behavior that deals with mana rating that deals with modulating behavior that deals with in its connection with the hypothalamus with alamos which senses with the distribution of the senses and with organizing the senses when we look then at the compulsive personality we notice that these areas are intensely active and active in a way that they maintain the symptoms of that personality it has been shown then that when these people take a drug such as prozac the intensity of the and they they respond to them in a way that their that their symptoms are relieved the intensity of the interaction between these three brain areas is decreased or delinked it has also been noted then that you can put these same types of people through behavior therapy that is by changing the nature of the social relationship between the therapists and the patient changing the nature of the rewards and punishments that the patient undergoes in an effort to change the patient's behavior by changing the way the patient thinks about what is in their mind thinks about the problems that they're in and when you had can successfully then reduce the symptoms of a decomposing disorder through this social conditioning we know - the same kinds of physiological brain changes that occurs with the intake of the drug occurs with the intake of social training now what are we saying that that de yes that true but what we're saying ultimately then is that the nature of the consciousness and the nature of the experience of the individual physically transforms the brain and physically transforms the way the brain operates and therefore when we talk about consciousness we are talking about something that is real we're talking about something that transforms both the psyche and the body one of the things that you note when the individual is possessed that the facial muscles change and that the body self changes in a way that it literally in coordinates and represents the nature of the spirit that contain that it that is possessing the individual so to a good extent if you are in certain religions you can tell what particular spirit is possessing the person by the very nature of the behavior that the individual is exhibiting and the very shape of their very physiological body and their face in other words as ladies and gentlemen once we get the spirits of these demons that the Europeans have implanted in our bodies our faces and our bodies themselves will be transformed to a great extent then a lot of the way we look at a lot of the way we have organized ourselves physically as a result of the type of consciousness that we have to a great extent and I will begin to wrap it up here to a great extent the kind of consciousness that inhabits us reflects the kind of culture that we live in the nature of the culture that we are a part of recognize ladies and gentlemen that culture cannot exist outside of our minds and of our bodies culture does not exist out there history does not exist out there history and culture can only exist in the minds and bodies of people if there were no people in the world there would be no history in the world no culture in the world culture does not stand outside and direct us it is we're inside of us and it directs us from the inside culture is instilled in our bodies and in our minds and we have to keep that in mind because sometimes we tend to see it as something separate from ourselves culture in dwells in us and in in habits our bodies our history dwells in us and it inhabits our bodies we reflect our history Andy and we reproduce our history when that history becomes a part of us and there's one with us we tend to see culture in terms of music in terms of the kind of dance we have in terms of the songs we see and that is a part of culture but ultimately culture is deeper than that culture is a way of thinking ultimately culture is a conspiracy that is it is a means by which a group of people organize the way they think organize the way they believe organize the way they see the world so as to create a consciousness back which they can cooperate in achieving certain ends so that they can mutually aid each other and gain ends that they cannot gain as separate individuals so culture is an instrument of power the individual through culture extends his power and the culture extends the power of the group when we talk about music and song and dance what we are talking about here then is how culture ultimately comes to be implanted in our bodies you see we tend to look at it song and dance the music as entertainment and this is a serious mistake we have a lot of our youth out there looking at music as mere entertainment when we say that we are being enculturated enculturated it means that a spirit is being implanted in us by the culture it means our group is instilling in our bodies and in our minds a possessing spirit such that when our culture calls our name we respond to it when our culture is in need of defense and support we then defend it and support it because we are at one with it in other words why does the black man respond through the right man why does the black man serve the right man why it does everything the black men do benefit the white man why does the black man says freedom is doing what I want to do and why is it that everything he wants to do enriches the European you say that they are being free and that they doing what they want to do and they are expressing themselves and it involved buying a hundred dollar pair sneakers for life oh yes yes all of this kind of stuff why because the spirit that is implanted in the human mind and in the human psyche is there to only respond to its creator and to its master and therefore when you let another people generate a spirit in you when you let another people generate certain values in you when you let another people generate a certain look and generate a certain reality for you from your letting other people let you see yourself in a particular sort of way and see your own people in a particular sort of way they have been planted a spirit and that's has been created by them and that spirit only responds to them and it only responds to them in terms of furthering their interests and working against the interests of the body it possesses and this is why there's that self-destructive spirit in us because the demon that possesses the body is not there for that body it is therefore the creator that placed it there and if necessary to obey its creator it destroys that body it will destroy the body it inhabits the taste that that spirit has will be taste that can only be satisfied by buying from its master creator the values that that spirit wishes to to satisfy and realize can only be realized by going through the ages of the master that created it that is why every value and every taste and every desire and every need that provokes us every one of these things that we seek to desire ends up having us going through white folk and that's why we think we need them and every time we satisfy them they in some way benefit in our seeking satisfaction because of their demon that we call ourselves is answering to the call other of its master so a culture creates its own possessing spirits and enculturate sand inculcate those spirits into the bodies of its members so that those members in defending their own egos in defending their own interests in defending what they perceive as their own needs and satisfying their own tastes if satisfying their own values satisfy the needs of the culture which the culture empower the culture defend the culture advance the interests of the culture and how then does the culture implant its spirit into its members it does it in a very strong and primordial way it uses vehicles and one of the major vehicles that use is music rhythm song dance a culture involves people moving what together in tandem in rhythm it involves them having the same temporal sense the same kind of time clock so that they can move in synchrony one with the other and music is about synchrony poetry is about synchrony song is about synchrony music is about symbols and you see ultimately it is through symbols that you evoke behavior from people so when a culture creates symbols those symbols are designed to evoke particular types of reactions and feelings and moves in its members and a culture establishes the potency of those symbols through ritual through sound and through dance and one of the best ways did to inculcate cultural values a cultural spirit is through entertainment is while the members of being entertained while they are feeling good the song is carrying the cultural values into the mind and into the body the lyrics that represent the cultural interest the lyrics that represent cultural values are being carried on the vehicle of the music carried through the vehicle of the poetry the togetherness the cooperativeness the mutual movement together in the synchrony of the culture is being entrained through the music and through the rhythm of the dance therefore you see when you let it up over your music when you never know the people take over your dance and attach their content to it they will use your own music and your own dance and your own rap lyrics and your own poetry and your own cultural symbols to carry their message into your body and into your mind such that you can only respond then to their beck and call and to their wishes and you see their yes you see then that they get you to buy those sneakers and they get you to buy all of those things by what associating them with your what your music with your cultural symbols you see with your poetry with the rhythms and so they attach their content to our rhythm their content to our song yes but in a way they take our own instrument and turn them against the cell notice how quickly when one of our youngsters was rhyming killed the police the that kind of content was rushed right out immediately yes but what washout occurs when they sing about shooting each other with their Glocks and the other things when their contents of self-destructiveness ride on the rhythm of their song and of their dance and when the cymbals are loaded dead with self-destructive elements and content so what are we saying here then that enculturation is the process of building in responsivity and ultimately responsibility the ability to respond to a particular call and we then have appropriately enculturated ourselves when we can respond to our own culture and to our own values and to our own needs one other thing here then as we rapidly bring these things to a close we have to look at personality in this light as well we think our personality is ours you must recognize ladies and gentlemen that the human being is a social animal we exist in society we exist in groups we are born dependent not independent we have long periods of dependency and it is the social relationship between ourselves and our mothers and ourselves and our crew that protects us during our long periods of dependency and in a sense we quite get over our dependency a need for one another and so consequently we are social animals and we must then respond to social situations our personalities because they may be our personality does that mean that they are not inculcated with a social spirit and they're not designed for social in in other words the individual exists for the social unit not for himself we see individuality that's something that that that is just for ourselves why are we individuals we're individuals to a great extent because when our coach and our group confronts problems we want to maximize the possibility that we will solve those problems by the fact that different individuals look at those problems in different ways and they can contribute their particular perspective to the group and those perspectives can be used as a mean for solving the problem for the group so even individuals are there to strengthen the group you see if all the people in the society thought just alike and solve the world just alike they thought no differently one from the other the society would be soon defeated because of to be uncreated it would be uh not be innovative it would not be able to change its perspective of a problem in a way so that they can solve it so what does it do then it creates individuals it's like the reasons why we have genetic variations we say no matter how intense a plague may be in a nation or people there are always one or two people left standing because in some way another their genetic structure that's permitted them to withstand the plague and as long as we got a few of those survivors left and as long as they can reproduce the race continues and goes on but if the had all exactly the same genetic structure then a plague would wipe out the total race and the species would cease to exist and the same thing then operates in terms of differences in personalities we differ in personality ultimately because these differences contribute to the survival of the species and therefore our differences adhere to maintain the hold so the main problem of a society is to maintain enough cohesion so people can act together and behave together and act in synchrony one with the other cooperate with each other but not be too overly organized so that they cannot bring their own creative perspectives to problems and issues you see and this becomes the problem with society so there must always be that tension between being in the society and obeying its rules but being a little bit off so that we can say hey maybe if you look at it this way we can work it out and we can deal with it this way so the personality itself must carry the element our society within itself but the thing we must note that personality consciousness and culture our cultural creations and the type of culture that people exhibit in the type of consciousness we exhibit and the type of personality we exhibit reflects the type of history and experience we've undergone as people when you let another people then be the determinant of your history and experience they then become the determinants of your consciousness of your personality and of your culture ultimately we must recognize that we reuse consciousness to deal with the world culture is an adaptive tool it's an instrument by which we deal with reality that which we adapt to reality and which we adapt reality to ourselves the kind of consciousness we have will determine how we deal with reality consciousness then will in the fact that it determines how we are going to deal with reality how we change reality then is a power because ultimately cut that power is about enabling something to take place the ability to do something the ability to change something the ability to adapt the ability to defend oneself the ability to change oneself in order to solve a problem this is what culture of that is about culture is not static culture is not stuck in one place culture itself must reconstruct itself if the system in which it exists is reconstructed and rearranged that is why some of us get in trouble because we want to find an African culture stuck somewhere back in the 13th century and want to apply it to ourselves at this point in a different context African culture is not a culture stuck in place a time African culture is constantly changing and evolving because the context in which African people live changes and evolves what makes it African culture is that it operates in the interests of African people it is designed to advance African people and therefore the consciousness must be measured in terms of the degree to which it maintains our survival and advances our interests and puts us at the center of our concerns and at the concentr of our purposes when then we talk about black culture make sure we are not talking about a reactionary culture a culture that has been generated by our reaction to our abuse by white folk and to our control and domination of white folk because it's a good part of what we call black culture that we need to exercise from our psyches so that we can evolve a culture in an African centered culture to advance our interests as a people another very important aspect then of consciousness it's what we call values those things that we prefer those things that we see is right those things we think we should we should need those things the pursuit of which determines our behavior organizers our minds cont use our what I call that the directional factors of consciousness what are we talking about here when you value something and that value is implanted in your brain the brain calls forth all of its resources all of the contents then it has the knowledge it has available to it the behavioral skills that has available to it the cognitive skills the thinking skills and things like that that it's available to it and organizes those things and relates those things one to each other in such a way that the value can be achieved when we then think about something that we value and we want to realize something that we value we consciously or unconsciously assess our minds and say do I have the relevant knowledge do I have the relevant skills do I have the relevant thinking and cognitive skills so that we can organize these knowledge and skills in a way that we can achieve those values if we believe we have those skills if we believe we have the content if we appropriately organize those contents through thought then we pursue those values and chances are we may realize those values if though we have those values and we assess ourselves we recognize that we don't have the appropriate skill we don't have the appropriate knowledge and content we don't have the appropriate thought styles and so forth we didn't say well maybe we should develop the requisite skills maybe we should learn the regulate knowledge maybe we should develop the means of thinking and once we do this we will then organize them away in a way to achieve our values once we then have values and are guided by values and those values guide those skills and contents or so forth we are empowered to realize those values and therefore values are a type of power where am I going with this I'm going with this to say this if values are a type of power if values of the things that guide our behavior if culture is a type of power and consciousness is a type of power and personality is the type of power if we let another people determine the nature of our consciousness our personality and our values they been gained power over us if consciousness culture personality and values are instruments of power they then use our consciousness our values our culture as their instruments of power how does this work out in reality they take our cultural products our music our song and use them as their instruments of power yes and benefit from them so then what is an African centered consciousness an African centered consciousness is one that is based on African centered content based on African centered knowledge based on African centered values based on an African centered consciousness through the degree that our consciousness is based on African centered values and so forth we are empowered as people to the degree those values and consciousness are determined by other people we become dead instruments of power and they use us against ourselves so consequently if we are to be empowered and if our powers to work in our interests then our consciousness must be in African consciousness our values must be African values our personality must be an African based personality if not we may suffer first etna side and then genocide what are we saying it means that our culture will not be functional in a way that it protects our interests we must then as a people develop a new African consciousness a and African centered consciousness and that means we must develop a base on an African history African culture and African values most of all we must develop an African sense of nationhood [Applause] to a great extent many of the problems we suffer today is a result of the fact that we do not see ourselves as a nation and yet we complain about how we are segregated from everybody else we complain about how we are not a part of the mainstream how we are not a part of the economy how we a shout out from the government in the political process if we are not a part of these things and yet these things are what defines a nation then we are not a part of the American nation that nation is a right nation we are then in effect a de facto nation but we are afraid to recognize it if we looked at ourselves as a nation we see many of the reasons why we are where we are as a people why because if we looked at ourselves as a nation we would see why we have the problems we have why do we have some of the problems we have for the same reason of the African nations have the fathers they have why because we permit our resources human resources and material resources to be used by other people we export them we like any other African nation or an indebted nation we're over indebted when we talk about the African nation suffering from over overburden being overburdened by debt we don't recognize we're talking about ourselves when I ask here tonight how many of us owes another black institution or another black person major debt we would get very few hands but if I ask how many of us in this audience tonight or a white person a white institution or none African institution great debt we probably all have to raise our hands if you recognize that then and you add this up in terms of a nation not if you just yourself as an individual but if you look at all of us as individuals and in terms of the nation you will recognize then that as a nation we owe an enormous debt to other people and one of the reasons why then we are poverty-stricken is not because we don't have money is because all of our money is being used to serve as the debt that other nations own that the right nation in America owns and because we spend so much time paying our installment plans and paying our money out to these other nations of people we cannot save our monies we cannot accumulate our money and create wealth so that we can employ ourselves as a people so that we can support our families as a people so that we cannot build the schools we need to build to educate our children the way we need to educate them as a people and consequently we have the similar problems that all African nations have our most where they cannot build highways or build schools or build hospitals or build institutions communication systems and other systems because all of the wealth that they are generating is being exported out to European nations in other nations through them they all debt but you're going to see this when you look at yourself as a nation and when you look at yourself as a nation then you can see that you can change this problem by changing the debt relationship you have to other people I was looking at an issue here the other day when we talked about looking at African nations that we talked about the African nations as monocultures meaning that they often exist by shipping out one or two major products cocoa or a cocoa beans or oil or gold or something like that and they ship these products out into what we call a buyers market that is the people they sell these products to set the prices that they're going to pay for these products so that many of these nations now are being paid less for their products and they were paid 30 years and yet the nations that buy their products and lower the prices on their products are selling them back those products and progress form and selling them back their own products that have been manufactured here for higher and higher prices and then we wonder why Africa is in debt and why Africa is impoverished but that is the result of the fact that they are you caught up in an impoverished mechanism but we need not talk about the continental African because we are in the same situation here today African the African American nation is a monoculture what is the commodity that we sell labor we're not selling much manufacturing we're not selling much other products the major commodity that we have to sell was the commodity that we were brought over here for in the first place and rubbers that labor and now we are selling our labor in a buyers market meaning that the people who buy our labor are buying it at the prices they set and they keep me valuing the price that they are willing to pay for our labor on top of devaluing the price they are no longer even demanding the labor so after a while we won't be able to sell our labor at any price and we will then be totally deprived as a people and therefore we account in a similar position and just as there's social disorganization in our African nations their social disorganization in the American nation you cannot have your wealth flowing out of your nation you cannot enrich other people at the expense of yourself and not have social disorganization and that means then if we look at ourselves as a nation the African American nation must do what all African nations must do we must capture our own internal resources we must gain control of our own internal markets we must trade within ourselves as a people in and generate wealth within our nation as a means of counterbalancing our dependence upon europeans and upon the white nation itself but in order to do this we must have a nation consciousness we must now organize and relate to realize ourselves as a nation of people when we look at our relationship we say to the Koreans as a nation we see the same relationship that Japan has to America as a nation you notice that they are bargaining right now ago she ating right Japan is building up this resources it is blocking out US industry from its nation yet it is entering into the American markets and selling there and taking out the wealth of the American markets if we look at our relationship to Koreans to Dominicans through other groups we will see the same relationship where those groups can enter into the african-american nation set up shop ship out this wealth day by day and night by night and yet the african-american entrepreneurial nature is not permitted to set up shop in their miss is not permitted to carry wealth from their from their Nations and they then grow fat on the surplus that they gain from the African American nation this means then that if we think of ourselves as a nation we must protect our internal markets from the intrusion of outsiders we must not permit them entry into our nation as I look and I see down to the hundreds and 25th streets yes and look at our people locked outside there in the outside and some people claim that they are protesting this kind of thing I agree with our vendors there then if black men and black women cannot make a living on that Street then no other people should be permitted to make a living on [Applause] we are not obligated in any kind of way to feed the children of other people before we feed oh but it's only if you think in terms of nationhood that you can resolve this kind of problem we have tremendous possibilities as a black nation that we don't know where you can see these white boys over there pursuing China don't you write there over the China knocking over each other to get to it what is the China market word to the European you know what the China market is worth through the European five hundred billion dollars at this point do you know what the black market is worth to the European here in America four hundred billion dollars our market is as much worth as much as the Chinese market the Mexican market which they've grown up to bring in after it is worth as much and is worth more than the market of Canada you know we are not able to place conditions on their entry into our markets by saying if you enter here you are going to pay taxes if you enter here you're going to leave something here if you enter here you're going to leave money in the institutions you're going to contribute to our schools you're going to contribute to our recreational centers you're going to contribute to the employment of our people and to the stability of our families if you cannot contribute to these things if you cannot create jobs if you cannot contribute to the education of our people then we cannot permit you to operate within our borders this is the way a nation rise you don't let another people walk in and have their way and walk out and leave here impoverished there's the people in the name of a free market there's no such thing is a free market yeah that's right folks propaganda free and open market no free market people into that market cash flow was not free to say I don't want to be a part of it when you said another one to be a part of it they did what embargo of them and lock them out the child a Japanese in the early part of the century said we don't want to be a part of your market what did the United States do so then we're a period there and blacks that those markets open right free markets do you have there there are no such things as free markets and when you learn that you're going to you're going to be the better for it and we got the markets but we are not taking advantage of them we've gotten ourselves in a situation where we are locked out of other people's markets and we permit them into our own such as we are locked out of our own market and then we wonder why we suffer the way we do it is not because we're poor if we were that poor and impoverished then why do those people come to us to earn their living and their wealth it means then we must be a wealthy people I was looking over here at a recent report you see we have as a people everything that it needs to make a nation we have telephones fax machines computers highways bridges river ways waterways trucks everything that many nations in the world in fact the vast majority of nations in the world wish that they had available to them what the African American nation has available to it they wish they had the highways they wish they had the trucks they wish they had the trains they wish they had the ships they wish they had their computers the telephone and all of those kinds of things that you can just pick up and dial right away and they don't have to be routed through France and somewhere else the lights don't go off it through a clock every day just flip on and off you got it all here then why then are we not better off than we are because it is not enough as I turn to earlier it's not enough to have gold in your soil or oil in your soil or diamonds in your soil you must have a consciousness it is only with an appropriate consciousness that these things can be transformed and converted into what wealth and power work and can be used for the Advancement of the people in the survival of the people the same is true here then you cannot just have telephones and faxes and this and that and not just have money in your pocket that's not enough you must have a consciousness that transforms those phones and transforms those factors into a communications network that unites a people across regions and places and cities and becomes a basis for a system of distribution a basis for uniting and creating a market from which one urghhh wealth to feed one's family and to stabilize one's social situation but you can have all of these things but if you don't have a sense of nation if you don't have a group consciousness if you do not identify yourself as a nation then these are but so many instruments and becomes as a matter of fact that means back with we destroy ourselves we're looking at the blight our black buying power in America here 1992-95 we got a report here called the Georgia business and economic conditions published here by the SEL extent at the University of Georgia titled black buying power by place of residence 1992 95 the second of a two-part analysis of buying power in specific markets what are we talking about is this published for us know what is published for ik is for white folk and it's telling them how much money like folk got and it's telling them that the fact the money black folk guide is the difference between their success and their failure if reason fire here charges african-american our population thus controls approximately 16 cents of each dollar in spending power that is about one dollar that is about one dollar in six is spent by bright consumers how aware we have the kind of power we have is African people clearly they are a substantial economic force throughout the state but without a nation of consciousness you don't recognize that but they recognize it they're going to say for many of George's businesses the ability to capture black spending can make the difference between success and failure they're putting it right in your face in black spending power if black spending can make the difference between the success and failure of Georgia businesses and we're talking about what white folks businesses that means black folk God what power because power is about what the ability to succeed or to bring about what failure and with somebody else's success or failure depends on your own behavior then you have what power New York State the largest black market in the world the largest black market in the world and the largest black market in this country how much money are we were Earl you [Music] we are not able to place conditions on their entry into our markets by saying if you enter here you are going to pay taxes if you enter here you're going to leave something here if you enter here you're gonna leave money in the institutions you're gonna contribute to our schools you're going to contribute to our recreational centers you're going to contribute to the employment of our people and to the stability of our families if you cannot contribute through these things if you cannot create jobs if you cannot contribute through the education of our people then we cannot permit you to operate within our borders this is the way a nation rise you don't let another people walk in and have their way and walk out and leave you're impoverished there's a people in the name of a free market there's no such thing as a free market yeah that's right folks propaganda free and open market no free market they force people into that market Castro was not free to say I don't want to be a part of it when he said I don't want to be part of it they did what embargo to him and locked them out they charged the Japanese in the early part of the century said we don't want to be a part of your market what did the United States do send Admiral Perry in there and blasted those markets open what free markets do you have there there are no such things as free markets and when you learned that you're going to you're going to be the better for it and we got the markets but we are not taking advantage of it we've gotten ourselves in a situation where we are locked out of other people's markets and we permit them into our own such that we are locked out of our own market and then we wonder why we suffer the way we do it is not because we are poor if we would at core of an impoverished that those people come to us to earn their living and their wealth it means then we must be a wealthy people I was looking over here at a recent report you see we have as a people everything that it needs to make a nation we have telephones fax machines computers highways bridges river ways waterways trucks everything that many nations in the world in fact the vast majority of nations in the world wish that they had available to them what the African American nation has available to it they wish they had the highways they wish they had the trucks they wish they had the trains they wish they had the ships they wish they had the computers the telephones and all of those kinds of things that you can just pick up and dial right away and they don't have to be routed through France or somewhere else the lights don't go off it through a clock every day just flip on and off you got it all here then why then are we not better off than we are because it is not enough as I turn to earlier it is not enough to have gold in your soil or oil in your soil or diamonds in your soil you must have a consciousness it is only with an appropriate consciousness that these things can be transformed and converted into what wealth and power and can be used for the advancement of our people in the survival of the people the same is true here then you cannot just have telephones and faxes and this and that and not just have money in your pocket that's not enough you must have a consciousness that transforms those phones and transforms those factors into a communications network that unites a people across regions and places and cities and becomes a basis for a system of distribution a basis for uniting and creating a market from which one urged wealth to feed one's family and to stabilize one's social situation but you can have all of these things but if you don't have a sense of nation if you don't have a group consciousness if you do not identify yourself as a nation then these are but so many instruments and becomes as a matter of fact that means back with we destroy ourselves we're looking at the blight our black buying power in America here 1992-95 we got a report here called the Georgia business and economic conditions published here by the cell extent at the University of Georgia titled black buying power by place of residence 1992-95 the second of a two-part analysis of buying power in specific markets what are we talking about is this publish for us know what it's published for is for white folk and it's telling them how much money like folk guides and it's telling them that the fact the money black folk guide is the difference between their success and their failure it reads in part here Georgia's african-american our population thus controls approximately 16 cents of each dollar in spending power that is about one dollar that is about one dollar in six is spent by black consumers aware we have the kind of power we have as African people clearly they are a substantial economic force throughout the state but without a nation of consciousness you don't recognize that but they recognize it they're going to say for many of George's businesses the ability to capture black spending can make the difference between success and failure they're putting it right in your face if black spending power if black spending can make the difference between the success and failure of Georgia businesses and we're talking about what white folks business is that means black folk God what power because power is about what the ability to succeed or to bring about what failure and when somebody else's success or failure depends on your own behavior then you have what how where New York State the largest black market in the world the largest black market in the world and the largest black market in this country how much money are we were in New York State black people you know how much money we work 61 billion dollars that is a lot of money this represents well over 10 percent of the buying power in New York State alone I'm speaking of the the area the New York Connecticut tri-state area and what does that mean now but don't look at that absolute figure look at what would happen if we reinvested that sixty billion dollars if we put that 60 billion dollars in flight businesses it like trade if we invested that 60 billion dollars in gaining equity in the major American corporations if we gain that use that 60 billion dollars to gain equity in African countries you know I've just read the piece this week about the fact that black investment bankers a couple of black investment bankers are selling as much as a hundred million dollars of bonds for the the African Development Bank yes another black investment maker you're selling something like five hundred million dollars of securities for African businesses and infrastructural development what does that mean African people that means that if we were knowledgeable of corporate finance if we were knowledgeable of investment beer we could literally finance the development of Africa and by buying securities in the African Development Bank by buying bonds by buying other investment instruments in African corporations even if they're owned by white folk because once we my to shared we become the owners in other words then try using black wealth we can become the vehicle for financing African growth and development and by using our own wealth and financing our own businesses developing our own economic system we would multiply our wealth and we would not only be then worth four hundred billion we'd be worth eight hundred million or more and we would go stronger and the strong that we go grow the more others would depend upon how we spend in order to survive and to that degree we will gain power over them if tomorrow we decided as African people to build co-op supermarkets across this country and we can do it so that we can sell our people grocery and food at below wholesale prices if we decided using our church organizations as a means for sponsoring these co-op food markets across the country so that we can open them literally simultaneously and sendeth in the buying power for all of those co-op centers in a way that then we would have billions of dollars to spend with the suppliers of food we could then manipulate those producers in terms of the firepower that we have we can begin then to place our people on their boards we can begin then to have real and substantial power in America we have it in our hands but you got to think of it as nation it becomes interesting by the way if you study this particular breakdown of black spending in Georgia and I wish we would get these breakdowns across the country you see when you become a state and a nation you develop state a space you see and that's where statistics come from it is the means by which a state and a nation gathers information about itself so that it can use that information to reorganize itself and to set itself up in ways to advance this interest so once you become a nation you become sensitive to the fact that you need a lot of information so that you can use this there's me now when I read about the percentage of black buying power in Georgia by counties something becomes very surprising you know for instance that black buying power is as high as 25 or 26 percent in many of these counties for instance in Liberty County Georgia like buying power there is it is 22% of the total buying power in merit in mert whether 25 percent Peach County 25 percent and you can just go on and on in some of these counties black buying power is as much as 45 percent 35 percent in other words the black consumer has these counties by the balls and they are able if that buying power was to be coordinated and use to have real impact and to transform the power relations of those societies and of those counties they would be able if they are buying half or 25 percent or 30 percent of what is being part in those counties to establish their own businesses and enterprises there and they would be able to defend those businesses enterprises through the use of the farquard weapon so what are we saying here to end this evening ladies and gentlemen that African power is based on an African consciousness based on an African centered culture based on an African centered personality and the degree to which our personalities our culture are based on African values based on African interests based on African goals to that degree we empower ourselves as Africans and to that degree we escape the power of others over us thank you very much for you guys