Book 1: The Primacy Of Diasporic Afrikan Totemic Designation(Afro-)
Diaspora is the spreading of a group of peoples(their cultures & customs) from their indigenous homelands outward, whether voluntary or involuntary. When we of the diaspora embark upon the task of documenting our culture, preserving our culture, and passing our culture on to our progeny, the necessity of totemic language becomes manifest for the purpose of dropping *beacons on the ground, markers, footsteps etc….These totems, beacons, markers, & footsteps trace our path so that our descendants can find their way *home.
A prime example of this path-tracing occured in Cuba among her Congolese population during slavery. Congolese Afrikana brought a percussive instrument known as the “Ngoma drum” to Cuba. Because they did not want their soon-to-be-born children to forget their homeland in the Congo region of Afrika, the Congolese chose to rename the Ngoma drum and began calling it the “Conga drum”. Do you see that?....In one fell swoop, they utilized ‘totemic language’ to lay down a footstep forever tracing a path back to the Congo for their future generations.
That example brings us to the context of another known(but heavily misunderstood) mechanism of totemic language: the prefix, “Afro”, as in; Afro-American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Dominican, Afro-Argentinian, Afro-Colombian, Afro-PuertoRican, etc…
The efficiency of the ‘Afro’ totemic prefix resides in its ability to connect all diasporic Afrikana to the homeland regardless of our forced migration outward. Its necessity is more important today than before because the culmination of socially-engineered self-hatred/cultural-amnesia at the hands of colonizers has created a residual *denial/rejection of Afrikanity among Afro-Americana in specific(though it must be noted that the same self-hatred is manifest in Latin America as well(c)mejorar la raza).
During the buck-breaking process of Afro-Americana in slavery, the afforementioned process was, at essence, the veritable process of “De-Afrikanization”. A process so violent, painful, inhumane and traumatic that it has become a mere automated reflex for the contemporary Afro-American to deny being Afrikan. And thus, we arrive at a place where Afro-Americana are conjuring up imaginary geneaologies to flee from who they are because the colonizer was cunningly smart enough to sweep away all *beacons on the ground, markers, and footsteps with a very savagely violent broom! Your lineage doesn’t begin with slavery/colonization. Who were you before colonization? Who were you before the brutal process of De-Afrikanization?...
Knowledge-of-self is a path ripe with friction and resistance but the 1st step on the path, the 1st gear in your schematic must be the proper utility of Diasporic Afrikan Totemic Language.
