Necessity of black Population discuss By Black women from Minas Gerais

Necessity of black Population discuss By Black women from Minas Gerais

Necessity of black Population discuss By Black women from Minas Gerais
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.

Necessity of black Population discuss By Black women from Minas Gerais
Necessity of black Population discuss By Black women from Minas Gerais

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.

Necessity of black Population discuss By Black women from Minas Gerais
Black women met in Minas Gerais top discuss the construction of coping mechanisms, resistance, and collective survival.

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

About Marques Travae 3747 Articles
Marques Travae. For more on the creator and editor of BLACK WOMEN OF BRAZIL, see the interview here.

2 Comments

  1. 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.
    33
    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

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