
Necessity of black Population discuss By Black women from Minas Gerais

Note from BW of Brazil: When people sometimes ask me what inspired me to call this blog Black Women of Brazil, I thought of the type of women featured in today’s piece. Groups of black women organizing to address issues that specifically affect them but also consider the overall well-being of Brazil’s black community. It is clearly true, as the oft-repeated phrase goes, that there ‘s still a lloonngg ways to go to overcome the deep levels of inequality along lines of race, color and gender in Brazilian society, but after nearly two decades of clear advances under the administrations of former president Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, many in the black community are concerned about possibly regressive policies by the Jair Bolsonaro administration that could possibly reverse the gains made up to this point in the 21st century. And black women’s groups, some of which were responsible for the historic 1st national March of Black Women in 2015 continue to mobilize around their issues as well as new challeges that could emerge in the near future. On February 23rd, a group of black women in the state of Minas Geraos got together to address some of these challenges.
In plenary, Necessity of black Population discuss By Black women from Minas Gerais
Religious racism was one of the points addressed, a subject that will be on the agenda in the Supreme Court in March
By Iris Pacheco
First organizational activity in 2019 of the Rede de Mulheres Negras de Minas Gerais (Black Women Network of Minas Gerais) happened on Saturday (23)
On Saturday, February 23, women who are part of the Rede de Mulheres Negras de Minas Gerais (Black Women Network of Minas Gerais), held the first organizational meeting of 2019.
The activity resumes a process started in 2014, when dozens of women from Minas Gerais organized to participate in the Black Women’s March in Brasília. Four years later, in 2018, it was time to organize for the construction of the Encontro Nacional das Mulheres Negra (National Meeting of Black Women), held in Goiânia, in December of that year.

According to Andreia Roseno, of the Rede de Mulheres Negras de Minas, it’s necessary to change the logic about which history is told and to understand how the colonial system acted to divide us. She emphasizes that it is fundamental to understand the role of black women in the perspective of building unity and resistance against the oppressor.
“Access to knowledge to challenge this bourgeois world was the emphasis in the first national meeting of black women. 30 years later, what is the strategy? Go back to bourgeois knowledge or do we already have the basis to implant an African ancestral worldview?”, Roseno asks.
Resistance is one of the major challenges of our time, which operates to deepen the oppression and genocide of the black population, she points out. For Roseno, “we need to build coping mechanisms, resistance, for survival collectively.” She emphasizes that it is fundamental to dialogue with our black community references. “We must break with the basis of Eurocentric thinking, with the silencing and invisibility of our existence.”
The federal deputy, Áurea Carolina, highlighted the process of environmental flexibility and secular mining in our country, whose black bodies are exposed to these explorations. Aurea comments on how African ancestral knowledge was usurped to build this violent model.

In addition, Carolina emphasized the need to construct the good life, which allows a turn in the political culture and other forms of economic, political and social coexistence, including thinking about consolidating a network of protection and care of the black community with those who are in this fight against oppression daily. “We who are in these spaces have the heavy task of integrating agendas that are placed as fragmented, distinct, but are not”.
Meanwhile, in the same debate, the former Secretary of State for Education, Macaé Evaristo, highlights the dismantling of education in this conjuncture. For her this is a theme where historically there is an intense action of institutional racism, denying the right of the black population to education, hence the attack on the policy of quotas.
“The education of the black people has always been very scary for the Brazilian elite. We, the black population, for the white elite of this country should not have been educated” he says.
According to Macaé, the dismantling of the Secretariat for Continuing Education, Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion (SECADI/MEC), which was transversal to the other units of the Ministry of Education (MEC), is one of the main setbacks when we speak of guaranteeing a quality public education. It was this department that guaranteed the right to education in the indigenous, quilombola fields.
Macaé points out that at that moment public education is scrapped, and a broad privatization of education is being tested. With the possibility of returning to home teaching and along with this a recharge on the lives of women. “It’s more of a mechanism for controlling women’s bodies.” Therefore, the debate that must be had, “is not a corporate debate on education, it is a debate about the right to public education.”
There are many impacts of the ongoing process in the country and the black population is at the center of the attacks, privatizations and dismantling. Given this scenario, the meeting put as a perspective of resistance to action in territory, with territorial and local actions, but that guarantee unity and dialogue in a network.
The proposals constructed seek to fight for religious freedom, whose next struggle will be on trial in the STF (Supreme Court), in March, on the legality of animal sacrifices in religious rites. The carnival of the resistance in Belo Horizonte was also highlighted in the resistance actions. The Escola de Samba Raio de Sol honored Diva Moreira, a black woman, political scientist and with a life trajectory dedicated to transformation and the struggle for social equality.
Editing: Elis Almeida
Source: Brasil de Fato
The Azibo Nosology II:
Epexegesis and 25th Anniversary Update:
55 Culture-focused Mental Disorders
Suffered by African Descent People
by
Daudi Ajani ya Azibo, Ph.D.
azibod@yahoo.com
Independent Scholar
St. Louis, Missouri
United States of America
Asante sana (thank you very much) to Maggie Jackson, Tequila Keith, and Colita Nichols
Fairfax, Ph.D for various assistance over the years.
Dedication
This work is dedicated to Mother Jean Wilkens Dember, M.H.S. She is a founder of Afrikans
United for Sanity Now!, which under her direction has for the last 24 years organized annual
grass roots mental health conferences in Houston and New York City. She also has engaged the
Roman Papacy to intervene in police shootings of African-U.S. in New York City by Catholic
police officers. A Queen Mother for true.
Special Dedication
To the memory of Lorraine Marie Allen-Miller, my mother
To the memory of Frank K. Miller, my father
To Muthy Fatama, my wife of 31 years,
how blessed I have been to have had you all in my life
32
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014Abstract
Containing 55 disorders derived from the centered African framework and drawing on the works
of 22 mental health scholars spanning over 60 years, the Azibo Nosology II replaces the original
Azibo Nosology published in the Journal of Black Psychology 25 years ago as of Spring 1989
with 18 culture-focused disorders. African deep thinking on the nature of the original human
being’s nature (African personality construct) is the platform for juxtaposing normalcy or
appropriate thinking and behaving with disordered psychological functioning. Mental health is
defined Africentrically as that psychological and behavioral functioning that is in accord with
the basic nature of the original human nature and its attendant cosmology (cultural deep thought)
and survival thrust. Exegetical definitions and discussion as well as considerations for each
disorder are provided. Additionally, DSM and ICD nosologies are structurally integrated into
the Azibo Nosology II with qualifications.
Keywords: African personality construct, Azibo Nosology, DSM, ICD, mentacide, mental
disorder, mental health, nosology, and psychological misorientation.
[T]he license to name the world, to categorize, classify, or otherwise demarcate
the world and behavior on the part of Whites, must be revoked. Afrikans must
assert their right and power of self-definition—of categorizing and classifying the
world and the nature of their being in it … in ways which make their minds and
bodies humanitarian instruments of Afrikan power and liberation.
Amos Wilson (1993, 119, original emphasis)
To outline this work, it begins with a proem that covers the approaches to psychological
inquiry employed in developing the nosology. The nosology itself is led into with discussion of
multicultural competence, the Africentric definition of mental health and its grounding in the
African asili or deep structure of culture, and mental health at the level of psycho-behavioral
modalities. Real life examples of mentally healthy functioning are provided to vivify the
Africentric mental health idea contained in the African personality construct and referred to as
correct orientation (Azibo, 1989). A templet for correct orientation/mentally healthy functioning
is presented next followed by practical working criteria for primary and secondary mental
disorder (defined below). Then, how DSM and ICD conditions are handled by the Azibo
Nosology II is explained and contrasted with the asinine position of Kambon (2003) which
dismisses out of hand the relevance of Western mental illness concepts. After this the 55
specific disorders are presented followed by concluding remarks and an afterword.
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The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014Proemial Remarks
Wilson’s is a most apropos epigraph to start with as the original Azibo Nosology (Atwell
& Azibo, 1991; Azibo, 1989) 25 years ago epitomized kujichagulia (self-determination, self-
definition) in conceptualizing mental well-being and disorder in African descent people (ADP).
That nosology took its own African-centered culture-focused lead and in doing so it revoked
proactively the license of the Eurasian conceptual systems of mental health and personality
disorder reflected in the DSM and ICD nosologies to prevail. This legacy is maintained in the
Azibo Nosology II. My overall gestalt of the Azibo Nosology II likens it to the spear in the
African proverb “If you have enemies then travel with your spear” (Baruti, 2003, 329). It is the
spear for the African descent mental health worker and it is the platform from which s/he should
enter the discourse on and praxis regarding (multi)cultural competence and diversity in mental
health instead of perennial, encapsulated debate and adjustment regarding the latest DSMs and
ICDs. I assert the fundamental place in the world of the Azibo Nosology II is its destined
counterpoise to Eurasian domination in defining mental health in general and for ADP in
particular.
A Brief Word on the Role of Construction, Reconstruction, and
Deconstruction
The original 1989 Azibo Nosology was grounded in the long view of centered African
psychology meaning the psychology originating among ADP of the ancient nilotic civilization
located in today’s Arab-centered Egypt, but called Kemet by the African indigenes (Azibo,
1996a) before Eurasian conquering. Thus, its articulation of concepts and perspective was
derived using African utamawazo which means culturally structured thought (Ani, 1994). This
unfolding of African-centered psychological knowledge is properly called the construction
approach to psychological inquiry as psychological knowledge is created and articulated—
literally constructed—using the irrefragable African-centered framework outlined in Azibo
(1992). The construction approach, interestingly enough, is the original way psychological
knowledge was brought into the world. Using the construction approach in developing the
Azibo Nosology II represents my serious endeavor to (re)articulate as accurately as possible the
mental health platform of indigenous, culturally matured, classical African civilization.
Therefore, constructing knowledge about mental health and mental dysfunction with the Azibo
Nosology II is manifest Sankofa as against mouthing Sankofa.
The 1989 Azibo Nosology was also open to the reconstruction and deconstruction
approaches which were reactions to manifest Eurasian domination. The former means recasting
Eurasian psychological concepts or ideas in African-centered premises.
As Eurasian
formulations of mental functioning frequently are not companion to centered African ones and
often are laden with anti-Africanism, deconstruction or dismantling completely the Eurasian idea
along with data advanced to support it has been warranted frequently in modern-day mental
health.
34
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014Centered African psychology benefits when deconstruction and reconstruction bridge to
construction, a task attempted throughout this article. All three approaches are discussed in
Azibo (1996a) and have been used in developing the Azibo Nosology II. They are springboards
to appreciating the necessity for multicultural competence in mental health work.
The Azibo Nosology II
Multicultural Competence
Calls from within Western-dominated psychology for multicultural competence
(American Psychological, 2011; Schultz, 2003), celebrating the non-Caucasian other (Sampson,
1993), the advancement of culturally sensitive techniques (e.g., Arnault & Shimabukuro, 2012)
as well as admonishments that anti-racism efforts in mental health could be better (e.g., Corneau
& Stergiopoulos, 2012), critiques of the handling of culture-bound syndromes (Bhugra, &
Munro, 1997; Hughes, 1998) and the presentation of disorders related to culture (Kleinman,
1997; Tseng, 2006) have arisen. Dana (1998, 13) succinctly nails the point central to
multicultural competence in mental health services that “each multicultural group must provide
the idiosyncratic perspective and cultural/racial idiom in which all providers become fluent.”
Toldson and Toldson (2001, 417) impressively make the point too: “Psychological health care
must begin to …. mak[e] accommodations for the expression of belief patterns, thoughts, and
sociocultural customs indicative of the presence of an African identity in the behavior of African
people.” The Azibo Nosology II answers these calls for ADP. In 1989, the original Azibo
Nosology contained 18 culture-focused disorders. Scholarship responding to it without my
involvement (Anderson & Stewart, 2007; Belgrave & Allison, 2006; Harrell, 1999) and with me
involved in some way (Anderson, 2003; Atwell & Azibo, 1991; Azibo, 2013c; Azibo Nosology,
1998; Schultz, 2003) has been mostly favorable. As far as I know, Eurasian writers except for
Schultz did not acknowledge its existence. As the nosologist of record—creator, definer, and
nomenclator of the original—it is my honor to advance the Azibo Nosology II containing 55
disorders drawing on the works of 22 scholars and mental health workers spanning over 60
years. Most of the work is not inchoate, but established. This advancing is an act of freedom or
interpreting the world in ways contiguous with that of authentic African ancestral worldview and
literacy or applying said freedom in the here and now of ADP’s lives (definitions paraphrased
from Harris, 1992). All mental health workers of African descent are invited to participate. The
invitation, however, comes with the stipulation for thinking from the African-center in
conducting mental health work for ADP (Azibo, 1990b). This is growth as we begin building
our discourse on the point Gyekye chose to conclude his, namely the imperative for centering in
African deep thinking: “It is never too late in human history to start from where one should start
(or should have started)” (Gyekye, 1995, 212). Eurasian mental health workers of good will
should find using the Azibo Nosology II enhances their multicultural competence.
35
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014Mental Health Defined
In appraising the society-wide intra-racial mental maladies which prevent ADP from
orienteering in their own best interests, Baruti (2010) likened it to a war-torn frontline where
ADP are far from home. Marcus Garvey responded to this reality in his time by observing “the
time has come when we have … to sort ourselves” (Blaisdell, 2004, 158). In those times,
psychology had little to offer our honorable ancestor in the way of assistance. Decades later
nascent “Black psychology” remained ill-equipped to help with such mass mental maladies, but
at least recognized “obviously, a new definition of normalcy is required” (Wilson, 1979, 51).
Around this time at the height of the Black Arts Movement in 1976 playwright Joseph Walker
opined “as an oppressed people I think we ought to subject ourselves to scrutiny more often than
we do” (104).
Scrutinizing ADP with the Azibo Nosology II unveils diagnoses of many of these en
masse mental sufferings and ipso facto the fundamental psychological sorting can begin. To
start, there are two basic categories—the mentally healthy and the mentally disordered. Sorting
ADP into these two categories will better enable reinforcing and reinvigorating the former and
medicamentous, meliorative transformation of the latter. Sorting with the Azibo Nosology II is
righteous, completely devoid of elitist or Blacker-than-thou sentiments, as it is prerequisite to
group progress and unity, to wit:
Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks (Carmichael &
Hamilton, 1967, italics original), and [to close ranks] it is necessary first to divide and
then unite; otherwise you can never remove the obstacles that stand in the way of unity
in the first place. (Hare & Hare, 1984, 108)
Therefore we sort as “it is a privilege to be Afrikan, but Afrikans must unite” (Jones,
1992, 3). Azibo, Robinson-Kyles, and Johnson (2013) evaluate models for transformation and
rehabilitation of the mentally disordered. But support for the mentally sane among ADP may be
as critical at this juncture as help for the disordered. The observation is serious that “without
Black sanity, there will be no resurrection of Black life” (Cheatwood, 1992, 8).
Azibo (1996c) defined mental health Africentrically as that psychological and behavioral
functioning that is in accord with the basic nature of the original human nature and its attendant
cosmology (cultural deep thought) and survival thrust. This implies that the limiting form of
what mental health is is parameterized by the cultural dictates codified in the deep thought of
earliest African high civilization. In particular, continent-wide African mythos about the
creation of humanity took the position that the One God (henceforth the Divine) brought forth
the African woman and man simultaneously and both were constituted from the same primeval
stuff—namely, the Divine’s own spiritual essence—from which they emerged as a unit with
offspring (Azibo, 2011d; Barashango, 1991; Carruthers, 1980; Harper-Bolton, 1982).
36
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014Upon codification as a deep thought statement of what the nature of original human nature (i.e.,
the nature of the African) or human personality is, the mythos is informing allegorically that the
sexes are complementary parts that complete the other, consubstantially equal or the same in
Divine essence, and lifelong obligated to the procreant function and the protective function as
parents have to protect young offspring who, in turn, may have to protect aging parents.
Moreover, the mythos is straightforwardly interpreted as implying that thinking and
behaving in ways that reflect gender complementarity and equality in the context of an aspiring
morality—that is preeminent to the appetitive urges—all within the overarching context of
producing progeny and securing their hereafter (here on the planet after the parents are
gone/deceased) is the only (presumably “God-given”) way to protect human life ultimately and
perennially. Falling short of thinking and behaving of this sort is always a psychological
functioning beneath and undermining of the basic nature of the original human nature. By
aspiring morality is meant a desire for that which is excellent, good and right in oneself first and
then in human relations (Williams, 1993, 86), said morality itself emanating from the platform
African human nature/African personality receives from ensoul with the Divine’s essence.
Therefore, it can be seen why when codifying the mythos at the level of psycho-
behavioral modalities, traditional African deep thinking embedded the protective function. It
took note that in natural contexts all life forms tend to preserve themselves. For an original
human being, in order for this self-preserving propensity to operate within the bounds of
normalcy, mental health, or appropriate functioning, his or her orientation to living must be to
prioritize protection, development, and maintenance of the self. As an organism, the self is
considered to be extended—not just figuratively, but literally via consubstantiation in the
Divine’s Ka or spiritual essence (Azibo, 1996c, 2011d)—as per the creation mythos from the
Divine to ancestors to the living on in perpetuity to the yet-to-be-born progeny. That is why
early on “there was no confusion [in] African societies …. both group and individual were
responsive to and responsible for the other” (Evans, 2006, 131). In part a cultural holdover now
eroding, it was routine among African-U.S. to be “mentored by parents, neighbors, extended
relatives, teachers, church members … demonstrate[ing] a communal culture” (Rouse, 2007, 69).
The upshot, then, is that at the level of psycho-behavioral modalities thinking and
behaving incorporative of the sustentation of selves of biogenetic commonality relative to
nonhuman organisms and human organisms of lesser biogenetic commonality that oppose
African life individually and culturally is the final arbiter of mental health. In today’s racialized
world founded on full blown anti-Africanism (Ani, 1994; Williams, 1976), this translates into
own-race maintenance as the final arbiter of mental health or appropriate psychological
functioning for ADP (Azibo, 1989, 1991). Thus, Garvey’s race first social theory (Daniels,
2005; Maglangbayan, 1979; Martin, 1976) is vindicated. Social theory throughout this article
refers to the principles and concepts that are used in negotiating reality or the social world
thereby determining how a people relate to one another, to people who are not of their collective,
and to nature (Azibo, 1999).
37
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014How about gender first? It is impossible to derive a gender-superseding-race position from this
arbiter of mental health (Azibo, 1994b, 2012a). Gender focusing—male or female—as well as
child focusing are derivable from the creation mythos but each comes to us at once from jump
street or get go delimited to or parameterized within the context of sustentation of the extended-
self.
At this point, primary mental health can be distinguished as an inhered propensity or
potentiality occurring in own-race maintenance thinking and behaving that is delimited to a
positive bias towards the biogenetically common and not an anti-bias toward the more
biogenetically dissimilar (Azibo, 1991). (Secondary mental health is explained below in
juxtaposition to primary.)
The Azibo Nosology II rests upon this mental health
conceptualization which combines the psychological and absolute models. The psychological
model refers to a theory of personality that specifies mental illness or disorder as something in
the personality process gone haywire. For the present nosology, that would be any misfiring in
own-race maintenance functioning (Azibo, 1991). The absolute model refers to an a priori
standard that is culturally determined and nonarbitrary for what mental disorder is. In the present
case, that would be failure or falling short in realizing the inhered self-extension propensity or
potentiality presumed to underlie African human nature. The absolute model is preeminent to
the psychological because any theory that can be infixed within the bounds of the articulated
cultural absolutism can be interchanged for another that does the same as pleases the mental
health worker. The medical model (all mental illness is biological) and statistical model (if
enough people do it, then the behavior cannot be abnormal or a mental illness) are rejected.
These four models are discussed in Azibo (1996c) and Calhoun (1977).
Abbreviated Examples of Primary Mental Health: Three Correctly Oriented
Persons or African Personality Manifest
Remember, our most serious battle is to resurrect our sanity
… allow[ing] us to purge our consciousness and culture of
the cancerous white[Eurasian] supremacist induced self-hatred[s]
Del Jones (1993, 79)
A unique feature of the Azibo Nosology II carried over from the original is its explicit
yoking of disorders to the African personality construct of normalcy. This construct can be
defined as a mentality that uses African-centered cultural definitions in negotiating reality. It is
tantamount to what Jones (2002) identified as the common Africanity existing beneath Africana
peoples’ diversity. This part of “cultural unity is far more significant than is superficial [read
ethnic, national, surface] diversity” (Hilliard, 1995, 90).
38
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014Cogitating on this suggests that for African descent persons to be mentally incapable of, neutral
or opposed to, or oblivious to identification and orienteering with the cultural dictates of
ancestral Africanity as a result of forced living under the rule of a Eurasian dominated
civilization or in reaction to same is less psychological minutiae, not at all an assimilation or
diversity issue but more quintessential mental disorder in the African personality that afflicts an
otherwise normal population (Azibo, 1989, 1996c; Azibo, Robinson, & Scott-Jones, 2011).
Because the African personality construct derives from the cultural substrata of African deep
thinking about African humanity, it is applicable as a normalcy statement for all ADP. It follows
that the 55 conditions of disorder that will be yoked to it below are also globally applicable with
local adaptations where necessary.
The juxtaposition of normalcy with disorder forces the consideration of disordered
behavior as a function of a theory about ordered behaving. That would be the African
personality construct in this case. Ordered human conduct is conceived as an inhered propensity
according to the irrefragable African worldview or reality structure or asili or deep structure of
culture (Azibo, 1992). Contrariwise, the DSMs and ICDs carry on about disorder without
offering a corollary theory of a priori order in the nature of human nature. This makes cultural
sense given Eurasian origins of civilization in the northern cradle and African origins in the
southern cradle (Diop, 1978b; Wobogo, 1976) where chaos and cooperativeness ruled
respectively. It also makes sense from the perspective of Western psychology/psychiatry as an
agent for government oppression in which diagnosing mental disorder is inextricably tied to
social control (e.g., Abdullah, 2003; Bulhan, 1993; Citizen’s Commision, 1995; Kilty, 2008).
Vivification of the own-race maintenance idea as manifested in the African personality
construct might be helpful. For that, snippets of three persons whose behavior in this regard has
been exemplary are offered. First, Marcus Mosiah Garvey implemented perhaps the greatest
racial uplift program on behalf of ADP since the enthronement of Eurasian supremacy
domination. His efforts were lifelong and global. They included institution building in the
political, economic, health, and cultural arenas (Maglangbayan, 1979; Martin, 1986). Garvey
provided philosophy and down-to-earth social theory to guide ADP’s behavior to be effective in
our own interests under Eurasian domination (Garvey, 1986). Garvey insisted repeatedly that for
ADP he was glad to suffer, sacrifice, and even die. There has never been a truer statement than
Garvey’s “All I have I have given to you [ADP].” His orientation to work for improving the life
chances of ADP is summed up in his statement “Would I not lose the whole world and eternity
for you?” (All African, 1983; Blaisdell, 2004). Mr. Garvey is a hero for true (Martin, 1983). His
2nd wife, the veiled Amy Jacques Garvey, should be remembered as she struggled alongside him
(Taylor, 2002).
39
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014Second, Kwame Ture is another life-long struggler for ADP’s betterment. He dropped
his English language/slave birth name (Stokely Carmichael) for the African one. Continually he
pushed pride in African heritage and advocated and demonstrated organizational development
for effective action. He served as Chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
known as SNCC, Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party, an Ambassador for Guinea, worked
to establish the United States Black United Front and the All-African People’s Revolutionary
Party. Ture instilled a palpable fear into the enemies of ADP likely to last forever and
reminiscent of the chilling effect the phrase “Hannibal at the Gates!” had on the Romans, and
Italians still, when in 1966 he uttered “Black Power” (see Carmichael & Thelwell, 1998; Harris,
1990). Ture took the position that if an African person did not work to overturn oppression of
ADP, an own-race maintenance activity, “then by your very act of inactivity you are against your
people” (All African, 1983). It follows that not participating in own-race maintenance for ADP
is outside the bounds of mental health defined Africentrically.
Third, Jean Wilkins Dember, M.H.S. shows that exemplars of own-race maintenance
need not be deceased, a man, or nationally known. For 24 years and counting she has been a
main organizer of annual mental health conferences in Houston and New York City under the
auspices of Afrikans United for Sanity Now!, an organization she helped to found. Under her
direction the organization actively advocates for culturally sensitive mental health work with
ADP and training for providers. Mother Dember staunchly opposed drug and electroshock
therapies on ADP and carried that fight to Harlem Hospital where it has been reinstituted. Many
psychological workers have become aware of deleterious mental health practices and alternatives
for them through her work. She was awarded the Community Service Award by the National
Association of Black Psychologists. Her efforts have been courageous as she singlehandedly
(for the most part) engaged the Roman Papacy over sexual abuse, palpable racism directed at
priests of African descent within the church and, moreover, the frequent murdering of African-
U.S. (descendents of Africans enslaved in the United States) in New York by Catholic police.
Additionally, she is a mainstay, activist supporter of the New Black Panther Party and the local
and national Black United Front. She carries the fight for increasing African-U.S. life chances
almost daily be it political, health or otherwise to civic leadership. Mrs. Dember’s behavior
epitomizes a Queen Mother and is in the tradition of Harriet Tubman (Bradford, 1886/2004),
Sojurner Truth, Queen Mother Audley Moore, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune,
Annie Malone, Assata Shakur (1987), and the many others of great rectitude and capability.
Finally, her spousal union of over 60 years with Clarence Dember (R.I.P.) and parenting
epitomizes the point of the creation mythos. Mother Dember lectures/teaches youth and adults
of both genders on male-female-familial relationships rooted in African-centered principles
drawing on her own life’s example.
40
The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.7, no.5, November 2014The foregoing snapshots show persons whose orientation to living prioritizes the defense,
development and maintenance of the life and culture of ADP all within the casing of their
individual idiosyncratically organized personality (see individualism versus individuality
contrast below). The term proffered by Azibo (2006a) for prioritizing of this sort is
psychological Africanity. No behaving and thinking could be greater manifestations of normalcy
or appropriateness than psychological Africanity geared to purposefully ensure that ADP remain
on the planet in perpetuity as Africans. This is what the African personality is designed to do
naturally. Thus, the behaving of Garvey, Ture, and Dember warrant the label “correct
orientation” defined by Azibo (1989) in short as a genetically black person who possesses
psychological Blackness/psychological Africanity. In research, African-U.S. persons classifiable
as correctly oriented report having greater psychological Africanity scores and are deemed to
provide better psychological profiles for social engineering than persons classified as having
diffused or incorrect orientations (Azibo, Robinson-Kyles, & Johnson, 2013) where diffused
refers to an orientation admixed with both pro-African and pro-Eurasian sentimentality with the
Eurasian highlighted and incorrect refers to an orientation dominated by pro-Eurasian attitude.
The Azibo Nosology II promotes producing correctly oriented ADP through child rearing
(Azibo, 2013a) and therapeutically-directed transformation. As the examples of Garvey, Ture,
and Dember reveal, correct orientation represents the authentic African personality, to wit
The authentic struggler sees value in …. [and] is dedicated to his or her [individual]
African self and by extension to all African persons …. not allowing the oppressor to
manipulate him or her to maintain the oppression of [ADP] …. lives in accordance
with African-centered attitudes …. is a person of [African-centered] culture ….
informed by our collective history and common concern …. has fallen in love with the
race and consistently sacrifices for our uplift [as] …. a situation of oppression can
never be adjusted to …. existing as a sovereign people [is preferred as] our only stake
in the present order of things would be to change it …. [thus] seek justice, but strive for
the liberation of productive forces [resources] …. possessing a true and lucid
consciousness of the Manichean world’s design …. accept[ing] of the risks and
responsibilities associated …. [as his or her] will to freedom … exceeds any …
psychological and physical fears …. resolved never to yield … to rebuild … and to
fight.
(Sutherland, 1989, 1997, 58-60)
Marcia Sutherland has in effect provided the templet for transforming ADP and
diagnosing correct orientation or normality/appropriate behavior. Her description can be used as
if it were a scale or ledger on which successive approximations of attitudes and behaviors to a
correct orientation are recorded. This templet is dictated by the African personality construct
idea of correct orientation which is the normalcy reference point of the Azibo Nosologies I and
Keep the black population going strong in Brazil, America or everywhere for that matter.