No. of Recommendations: 8
... where you're going, you should know where you come fromThis is a great article from a newsletter I pay for.
contrabandcamp.com - Sankofa how the history of blackThe focus of the article is on the erasure of black people from the Trump approved history of the US. It seems to me that it equally applies to women, other POC, LGBTQ+, non-Christians, disabled people, basically anyone not white, straight, and Christian-Nationalist.
Sankofa is a term packed with a lot of meaning, and it means a great deal for Black people today as these MAGA folks are working in earnest to erase us — from history, society, politics, civic life, the economy and all aspects of America. But we have been here before. A Twi word from the Akan people of Ghana, Sankofa means “go back and get it,” or as my Gullah-Geechee folks would say, “Go bak and fetch it.” Aterall, like the proverb says, if oonuh ent kno weh oonuh dah gwine, oonuh should kno weh oonuh come f'um. Translated, this means: “If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you come from.
If we want to understand where we are going, we must know where we've been. The past liberation struggles of Black people provide lessons in how to free ourselves from the latest iteration of MAGA white supremacy, fascism, apartheid, and Jim Crow tech broligarchy.
Some would suggest that America in the era of Trump and MAGA is turning into 1930s Nazi Germany. Making this comparison ignores the reality that Nazi Germany drew its inspiration from the legal regime of Jim Crow. White people in this country want to take it all back to their past, and we as people of a darker hue must draw inspiration from our own past — a history of resistance, struggle, empowerment and movement building. While history does not necessarily repeat itself, it most certainly rhymes. And when we embrace Sankofa and study the blueprints already laid out for Black people to empower ourselves and fight against racial oppression and economic injustice, there is no telling what we can accomplish.
