Who are we? What do we want?

INTRODUCTION

This statement was delivered at a public education forum organized in response to a comment made Dr. Rinaldo Walcott who was one of the panelists at the event.

Rinaldo Walcott is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. His areas of specialization are cultural studies and cultural theory; queer and gender theory, and transnational and diaspora studies. He is the author of Black like Who?: Writing Black Canada and the editor of Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism. (See )

THE STATEMENT

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS) called this public education event because we believe that identity matters. As Afrikan people, our individual and collective identities are consequences of our history.

We cannot speak of Afrikan history without speaking of the ways in which the Western/colonial world has tried to interrupt it. For this reason, topics of enslavement and ongoing colonial violence remain heated discussions. Tonight, we encourage fruitful discussions on these things in relation to how we understand ourselves as Afrikan people. We also want to share NPAS’ vision of Afrikan identity and struggle.

We believe that as Afrikan people, our identities matter because they are shaped by rich naming practices, creation stories, ethics, relation to the land and traditions of liberatory struggle, resistance and celebration and revolution.

Our identities matter because they reach across the oceans and borders that separate us to find a global oneness. Our identities matter because out of diversities in sexuality, gender, gender identities, ethnicity, age, producer class status and ability. We remain a single people.

Our identities matter because they continue to survive and facilitate the lives and experiences, as well as organizations and liberatory strategies and tactics, which we build in opposition to and that imagine and move beyond the violence inflicted by enslavement, genocide, global colonialism or imperialism and capitalism.

Our identities matter because our history expresses a tendency towards and necessitates anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-heterosexist politics.

Lastly, our identities matter because, being shaped by the present world and the foundation of the past, they have equipped us with the insight, courage, inspiration and imagination necessary to create the liberated and just future.

NPAS asserts that our identity as Afrikan people informs our histories of liberatory struggle, resistance, survival and achievement. In the present stage of the struggle, we view the parallel institutions of enslavement and colonial genocide as running counter to our transformative conceptions of the world. These institutions have attempted to divide our people; to sever us from our Indigenous homelands and values; to make us ashamed of our Afrikaness ; and to instigate internal violence and rivalries.

But these institutions of domination have also offered us instructive lessons. From enslavement and genocide we’ve learned that a world shaped by white supremacy, labour theft and exploitation, sexual violence, environmental warfare, and state violence is one that seeks to destroy us and the broader humanity. Therefore, we stand in permanent opposition to this world. We continue to survive in spite of the forces that oppress us. We strive to recognize and resist all forms of oppression, including those in which we remain complicit.

We endeavour to root our identities within the legacy of revolutionary ancestors, histories, people, and ideologies. The preceding approach to liberation will ensure our active, careful[3], and successful resistance to and healing from colonialism, capitalism, white supremacist doctrine, and all forces of oppression that disconnect us from our personhood.

In short, if who we are is Afrikan people, then what we want is the full and complete emancipation of our people - a liberation that necessitates and entails the liberation of all peoples. This orientation is the foundation for both the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity and the approach to Pan-Afrikanism through which we continue to organize, resist, and reaffirm our value as Afrikan people.

END NOTES

[1] Delivered at the “Who am I? What am I doing?: Identity, Pan-Afrikanism and White Domination” public forum at the University of Toronto (Canada) on January 19, 2013.

[2] Members of the working-class and peasantry and the revolutionary petty bourgeois who have committed Cabralian class suicide and become one with the people.

[3] Not simply in the sense of 'cautious/prudent', but also in the sense of 'with care' - it is absolutely indispensable that we strive to learn to care deeply enough about liberation to live for it, whether or not we're ready yet to talk about those things and people we're willing to die for. we'll die someday anyway, and until then there's work to do.