12 minutes VIDEO
VOICE OFF
There are some people who maintain that the destiny of the Black race is to be found written in the Bible. They are referring to the terrible myth of Cham.
VOICE OFF
Cham, the second of Noah's three sons, was said to have been condemned, because of irreverence towards his father, to be the slave of his brothers. According to this legend, the Black people are the descendants of this cursed son.
VOICE OFF
And this belief has, throughout the centuries, been used to legitimize a number of anti-Black theories, systems, and movements throughout the world; indeed, some anti-Black theories have arisen directly from the Biblical myth.
As far back into human history as one can reach, in the history of the Black people one finds only slavery, poverty, misery, calamities and, the most serious of all evils, resignation. Nevertheless, to point out the indifference of the human community -- or even, to identify the perpetrators of the grievous harm done to the Black race -- is certainly not the goal of this documentary.
VOICE OFF
However, it would be neither possible nor desirable to undertake any research regarding this race without revisiting its past and the major events that have left their mark on its history. Only by doing so can we explain and justify the condition of Blacks on the threshold of the 21st century.
VOICE OFF
The course of Black history could have been very different.
VOICE OFF
Before Europeans first landed on African shores, the relationship between Arabs and Blacks could have been one of friendship, or at least the mutual tolerance of good neighbours. And after the arrival of the Europeans, there might have been a meeting point for these three different cultures, in spite of the grievous and tumultuous history of Europeans at war with Arabs. The pacifism of the Black race, their long tradition of welcoming strangers, could have been a major factor. Africa would have become the land where many cultures met in friendship.
But the history of the human race has never been written according to the precepts of brotherly love taught by religions. Human history is not marked by brotherly love, or even by kindness.
VOICE OFF
Hordes of mounted Arab warriors, invading and conquering, stretched in an immense band from east to west across the African continent, stripping the country of whatever gold they found, and setting into motion a Negro slave trade that drove thousands of Black slaves towards Asia.
VOICE OFF
This was not, in fact, the first instance of the Black slave trade. That had already been practised under the Pharaohs. But it did mark the beginning of the dehumanization on a massive scale of the Black race. This occurred well before 1000 A.D. And since that era, the tribulations of this race have inexorably increased.
Starting in the 15th century, an enormous traffic in slaves took place between Africa and America. More than 20 million Africans were torn from the land of their birth, in conditions of indescribable horror. Large numbers never arrived at their destination, dying in the holds of the slave ships, thrown overboard as offal for the sharks.
Four centuries. This stage of human commerce lasted four centuries, and left the African continent bled dry.
But during this time, Western society was evolving. A movement towards decency and discretion finally overwhelmed the atavistic pro-slavery doctrines, clearing the way for colonization, in effect a new type of slavery that was perhaps less brutal than the old, somewhat like giving a dog a longer leash.
The 20th century arrived and, in its turn, transformed the Black societies of Africa into so-called "independent" states...
....finally, officially, giving to Blacks themselves part of the responsibility for their future. But what part? Perhaps history will one day decide this question.
We have surveyed briefly -- too briefly, no doubt -- a subject which could constitute the theme of a whole literary genre, a vast discipline that could be philosophical, psychological, sociological, certainly historical. And this is a very serious subject. It seems especially so when, closing our eyes for a moment, we study the five continents of our planet Earth, and try to solve this terrible riddle. "What race of people, considering all countries together, turns out to be the poorest in the world, the most miserable, with the most forboding future?"
The Black race within humanity, in the year 2000.
Whatever the colour of our skin, whatever our social class or our standard of living, can we remain indifferent in the face of the possible extinction of one of the most peace-loving peoples on earth?
It is of the utmost urgency that, if we cannot help the Black people redefine their future, at least we can understand that they possess their own unique characteristics, their own heritage, they have the necessary tools to control their own destiny.
PROJECTS CONCERNING THE BLACK RACE
Centres must be established for the Black race, centres for long-term study of the Black people's life. These centres, which will foster Black skills in every area of human endeavour, which will include all fields of study, must be established on solid foundations. They will of course need to function, at least at the beginning, entirely removed from regional, tribal, or ethnic conflicts...
...And, even more importantly, for these centres to be brought into existence, people of all races will have to welcome them, and help lay the foundations for their work.
The history of the Dark Continent is nothing but a continuum of misery and tragedy.
And God knows that misery of the body begets misery of the soul. How could any people emerge unscathed from so many centuries of slavery?
We must attack these problems where they begin. With concrete actions. With workers who are not only committed, but seriously trained to confront the tasks that await them. These people must be able to direct their energies towards making careers for themselves in professional structures both precise and clearly oriented towards constructing a solid base for the development of the Black world.
Such structures, which would provide career opportunities to the pioneers of a new world both hard-working and fraternal, would be most clearly realized within the framework of an INSTITUTE FOR BLACK STUDIES.
INSTITUTE
FOR BLACK STUDIES
The goal of this documentary is more to introduce this project -- which will involve the co-operation of a considerable number of willing workers -- than to retrace the long, doleful history of a people supposedly cursed from the beginning.
It will be possible, with an Institute such as we propose, to prove the truth of this maxim: "With equal education and equal work, all parts of the human race will attain the same levels of development and of independence".
PLANS FOR THE INSTITUTE
WHAT ARE ITS OBJECTIVES ?
Acquisition of a property that can be subdivided to house a number of research units dedicated to various themes concerning the development of the Black world, considering all continents and countries together. We propose that every aspect of human life will be studied.
Researchers, as well as various professionals working for the Institute, will work in the centre (or centres) provided by the Institute, full-time, and they will be remunerated as in any other enterprise. Moreover, their task will be to produce results which, in turn, constitute the very raison d'etre of the Institute. All employees ofthe Institute must, from the very beginning of their employment, prove that they subscribe to the goals of the organization.
The Institute for Black Studies may have activities and research centres in many cities, countries, and continents.
HOW WILL IT OPERATE ?
The INSTITUTE FOR BLACK STUDIES is an organization which, in the long term, must be able to operate on the internal resources generated by enterprises which it has created, and which are managed by its members and employees.
WHO ARE THE PARTICIPANTS ?
Participants will include not only members of the Institute, but also the employees and researchers who work in its internal structures, or in the enterprises that finance its activities.
TARGETS
All the Black communities, regardless of their country of origin, without any political or religious preference, who bear the burden of problems that have their origin, in one way or another, in the fact of being Black.
PROGRAMS
Programs directed towards the needs of Blacks throughout the world will be progressively put into place by working groups of researchers, specialists, professionals. Their subjects will be concrete and practical ones that demand precise answers.
HEADQUARTERS
The urban community of Angers is obviously a prime location by virtue of its exceptional dynamism, as well as its advantageous location at the centre of a large number of population centres such as Nantes, Rennes, Le Mans, Tours, and of course Paris, which is only an hour and half away on the TGV.
IMMEDIATE REQUIREMENTS
With substantial help from international institutions, sympathizers and benefactors, the immediate acquisition of an appropriate property will effectively launch the INSTITUTE FOR BLACK STUDIES.
PRESENTER
We have done no more than touch very briefly on an undertaking which must be one of the most arduous of our era: to liberate the human race from an interior prison, a prison all too solidly built by the centuries of servitude.
A difficult task, but one that is, as we have said, absolutely essential.
To bring this mission to a successful conclusion, many new careers will have to be constructed, many sacrifices will be necessary, along with a great deal of discipline and, no doubt, at least several generations of devoted workers.
But we must begin! Every day that we lose further postpones that age when all the children of the world will be freed from that invidious instinct of competition which opposes rich and poor, the poor both in goods and in knowledge -- postpones that age when the human race will finally have discovered a far more harmonious equilibrium among all its constituent peoples.
And now, in conclusion, let us listen to the views of several leading personalities on the Black world, a world whose multiple problems hinder international development.
From the book
Slavery : 150 years after
by Victor BOUADJIO, novelist
edited by Black World Instiute
Chapter one
From yesterday to nowadays
The lecture was a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. The speaker, a historian, declared that the slave trade - which was responsible for the death of several dozen million African victims - must not be judged like a genocide and even less as a crime against humanity. Because, he added, the criteria used to define genocide and crimes against humanity were clearly defined for ever at Nuremberg, at the end of World war II.
The historian cast a chill among the audience…
The conference was taking place in… Nantes on january 21st 1998.
But something was going on. An African was sitting in the front row, facing the lecturer. He said that the slave trade belonged to the past and that the Africans, nowadays free, were quietly building their future.
Even the lecturer gasped when he heard this. He emphatically disagred and replied that noone could reasonably state that by the end of this century the Africans were really free from foreign power.
The historian and the African could not guess that their attitude would compel another African to write this book.
The slave trade was not a genocide. Africa is free at last 150 years after the abolition of slavery. The two statements make more people feel ill at ease today than twenty years ago, especially in the western world where the media show and comment on the new tragedies that plague Africa. And for Black Africa there is no wondering. The memory of its past, of its years of slavery is in a coma and I choose my words carefully.
Nothing but its breackdown of memory can explain the lack of judgement of one of its sons.
A hundred and fifty years can be a very long time for the history of a people. Of course, these, generation after generation, must have devoted all their energies and the genius of the best of them to one action, one basic project. You may need far less time to fully rebuild a decimated population. It all depends on their aims and their commitment.
And mostly on the freedom they are given to reach their goal.
The hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the abolition of slavery is an important landmark. Of course, the abolition put an end to the noria of slave traders who were emptying Africa of its best human resources. But what then ? Then slavery has shown a thousand and one faces and as we are entering the twenty-first century, this new slavery has bled the continent dry.
Some readers may wonder what I’m writing about. The answer is : colonialism. And everything stemming from it. Mostly the imagery of the Black man created during the slave period and later by the cinema and the advertising industries in the western world. What ever we may say they still affect the relationship between the Black man and the rest of the world. We must state it now : This imagery is the one of the Black man who has been and will always remain a slave, unable to do anything as well as the other men, to the relative exception of sport or music. The imagery of the Black man is the main handicap to share the world with the other inhabitants of the planet Earth.
And it will take him dozens of years, even centuries, to oversome this handicap. As long as the African cannot acknowledge this truth, he will delay the time of his emancipation.
History. 1848 : the abolition of slavery… in the french territories. It was on the 27th of april. The parliamentay Undersecretary of State, Victor Schoelcher, a convinced abolitionist, signed the abolition of slavery in the colonies. We must remember that fifty years before, another nation had, for the first time of the history of mankind, declared slavery illegal. It was Denmark, in 1792. Raising the consciousness of people was a very slow process. And so is the progress of Black Africa towards more freedom and more dignity. Until nowadays, the continent is languishing under the rule of short term western economic interests without any humanitarian consideration. According to the same logic which has enrolled the slave traders and their followers to resist for centuries the moral, philosophical and religious principles on which they had built their own social systems.
Now civil wars, famine and epidemics have thrown the African continent into a slow agony but few people are concerned except - like during the slave trade - some intellectuals who at time write articles in newspapers or raise the alarm which is met with a faint response. The history of the Black throughout the ages has always been the one of men defined by centuries of slave trade. Whoever these men were : vagrants or statemen, farmers or civil servants… It all depends on the circumstances in which he is considered. Of course there are individual values in any human community.
But we are confronted to a global vision of a community which cannot be reduced to the individual.
When the first Portuguese sailors anchored on the African coasts in the fifteenth century, everything could have been different. It was the first time. Everything was possible. As well as fraternity and harmony between people. Unfortunately the needs of fast growing industrial cities were to be met and they led violence and cruelty against a huge continent which had nothing but shouts and cries to answer to the foreign guns.
This unique episode in the history of mankind has led to the trade for which, of all times, man has shown the greatest genius. The greatest profits ever were made, the bigest fortunes were accumulated : the triangular trade. Hence the determination of the slave traders to defend this empire : their interests were huge.
Such are huge the western interests in Black Africa and such will they remain maybe for a long time.
What clashes with ethics - if we can use this word for nations - is not that the great powers covet the wealth of the African continent. It is rather that the Africans have been maintained to the level of second rate men by so many tricks throughout the ages.
Is this bad language ? There we are ! Because the constant aim of this book is to show that the abolition of slavery - even if it was a significant event in 1848 - can no longer be praised so much nowadays. Because all the promises made in 1848 were empty. Yes, the Africans are still slaves today, modern slaves, and refusing to state this so as not to offense them or by lack of judgement will only go against their interests.
Abolition was an important landmark for the Africans. It was a remedy, a drastic one against slavery, at least in the abolitionist projects but eventually the remedy proved itself not so efficient. Such as some illnesses that resist different remedies, black slavery has learnt a thousand new ways to escape the pressure of public opinion for 150 years. Our consciousness is no longer hurt by convoys led slave traders on the Atlantic Ocean, nor by chained men.
In Africa there are hundred of million people, uprooted, impoverished by social and economical systems laid down brutally by rich foreign nations which not only exploit their natural resources, but indirectly keep them in ignorance.
There are more than twenty million descendants of slaves in America who have been fighting since the civil war to gain a place for themselves in their society. Theoretically they are their fellow countrymen’s equals but in fact they remain outcasts in a country built with their ancestors’ blood and sweat.
In western Europe they are communities in far suburbs, in overpopulated and dubious districts. They are poor people, all of them poor people who seem to be living in a planet several light years from their base. They are paralel social classes, people who are a problem. Nobody knows what to do with them, they are a constant national bore of contention. Some are deported, other seek refuge in churches. They are subordinates, or unemployed and their dignity cannot withstand their traditional image sculpted first by the slave trade and then by colonianism.
We have glanced at this man to whom the event in 1848 was to ensure a bright future. But it appears that, for someone who was potentially free to learn and undertake, his situation after a hundred and fifty years of freedom could hardly be worse.
Following chapters
Chapter 2 : Biography of a drama
Chapter 3 : Prejudice and racism
Chapter 4 : Christian churches and slave trade
Chapter 5 : The Middle ages in the 20th century
Chapter 6 : Communication in Africa
Chapter 7 : A different voice
Chapter 8 : Looking for pioneers
Chapter 9 : Diagnosis reserved
