Rodney's Rambling's

  The Africans and the Making of the Americas   Africans have been central to the shaping and the making of the Americas. From the beginning to the present day, our Nation has been consumed with the idea and the reality of race.   This chapter will explore this shaping and making or, more formally, the racial triangulation that has attempted to keep the Africans in their places. Racial triangulation, the intended outcomes of racial imperialism, has been associated with centuries of forced servitude, followed by the Civil War and Jim Crow laws, forced segregation, racial intimidation, and terror,  redlining, differential access to education and training, and finally, the cradle to prison pipeline. The Africans have repeatedly and consistently fought against each of these attempts to contain, restrain, and pervert their very being.  It would be inaccurate to reduce the various responses of the Africans as mere reactions to racial imperialism. In this chapter, I will demonstrate how t

  Kappa Alpha Psi is the second oldest existing collegiate historically Black Greek letter organization and the first intercollegiate fraternity incorporated as a national body. The Founders were God-fearing and serious-minded young men with the vision, imagination, ambition, courage, and determination to defy custom in pursuit of a college education and career. These men of vision decided the Fraternity would be more than another social organization. Reliance would be placed upon high ideals and the purpose of ACHIEVEMENT.    Our fraternity has a long history of advocating for civil rights and has been at the forefront of many social movements. The Cincinnati Alumni Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi was chartered approximately twelve years after Kappa Alpha Psi was incorporated as a National Greek Letter College Fraternity in Indiana. It was chartered by District 3 Director George F. David II, who was accompanied by Ennis Warrick, Arnold H. Maloney, and Amos J. White, all of the Delta ch

Chapter 4: Black Agency, Racial Imperialism, and the Creation of a Racial State -- the Case of Haiti     Credit: AP US Customs and Border Protection mounted officers attempt to contain migrants crossing the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, into Del Rio, Texas, Sunday, September 19, 2021. Thousands of Haitian migrants have been arriving in Del Rio, Texas, as authorities attempt to close the border to stop the flow of migrants. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez) Source:    In a scene reminiscent of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, Haitian migrants were run down by the US. Border guards for just trying to seek asylum. But this tragedy did not start here, nor is it confined to the Haitians. This particularly militarized zone along our southern border and these Black people have long been part of our tortured racial story.   It's a story that begins with European Imperialism and runs through slavocracy; it matures during deliberate and strategic periods of disinvestm

  The African Fight for Liberation: Resistance to Slavery and colonialism -acts of agency and self-determination   Military confrontations, acts of sabotage, and other forms of resistance characterized the African resistance to European colonialism. While hundreds of examples can be identified, I shall explore a small handful as they demonstrate the African people's determination and ingenuity.  Africa, before 1500, was already exhibiting major empires in West Africa, Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. Their economic surpluses provided the gold necessary for Europe to develop in the 13 th  and 14th centuries. (Adi 2021) As early as the 11 th , long before France, England, or Portugal were prominent nations, there was the Ille-Ife (Ife) Empire. From this empire, the Yoruba homeland, consisting of present-day southwest Nigeria, Benin Republic, and Togo in West Africa, came into existence. These people and their rich culture, philosophy, arts, and histories demonstrate the precolonial