(Born 19 December 1875, New Canton, Va, United States)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
Historian, journalist, versatile educator and inaugurator of the “African World History Month”, now a very important fixture in the annual calendar in several regions of the African World, outside Africa, and who, whilst researching the nature of the education of African Americans in the 1930s, concludes on the following consequences on someone, anyone, being controlled and defined by an agency outside their own centre of being, an observation as salient as ever, 80 years on (Woodson, Mis-Education, 2010: 48):
Historian, journalist, versatile educator and inaugurator of the “African World History Month”, now a very important fixture in the annual calendar in several regions of the African World, outside Africa, and who, whilst researching the nature of the education of African Americans in the 1930s, concludes on the following consequences on someone, anyone, being controlled and defined by an agency outside their own centre of being, an observation as salient as ever, 80 years on (Woodson, Mis-Education, 2010: 48):
IF YOU can control a [person’s] thinking, you don’t have to worry about [their] action. If you can determine what a [person] thinks you do not have to worry about what [they] will do. If you can make a [person] believe that [they are] inferior, you don’t have to compel [them] to seek an inferior status [for they] will do so without being told and if you can make a [person] believe that [they are] justly an outcast, you don’t have to order [them] to the back door. [They] will go to the back door on [their] own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the [person] will demand that you build one [for them]. (added emphasis)
(Charles Mingus Quartet, “All the things you could be by now if Sigmund Freud’s wife is your mother” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Ted Curson, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: Nola Penthouse Sound Studios, New York, US, 20 October 1960])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
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