ARE YOU A MINORITY? - July 5, 2020
If you say, “I am not a minority,” then you are understanding what has and is consistently being done to diminish, devalue, discredit, dehumanize and even demonize people of color and the continent of Africa.
The continent of Africa is not a dark continent, does not have a jungle, and those who originally inhabited the continent were not uncivilized savages. Rather, the continent of Africa is the dawn of creation, the cradle of civilization, the motherland, the place where it all began and the place from where everyone else received.
Many of you have heard me say for years that when Western Civilization is taught in college, they begin by saying that civilization (including science, math, arts, astronomy, engineering, etc.) began in Greece. Rome then came in and conquered Greece, and spread civilization throughout the world through their Roman conquests. What they do not tell you is where the Greeks learned it. They would have you believe that the Greeks discovered it themselves. However, when you read the early writings from the Greeks, they acknowledge that they traveled down to northern Africa, studied and returned to Greece with the knowledge that they received.
Following is information from well-respected scholars regarding the contribution of Africa and people of color on civilization, and more directly, Western Civilization:
Dr. George G. M. James, author of the book, Stolen Legacy, “The authors of Greek philosophy were not the Greeks but the people of North Africa, commonly called the Egyptians; and the praise and honor falsely given to the Greeks for centuries belong to the people of North Africa, and therefore to the African continent.”
Cheikh Anta Diop, a Senegalese historian has argued, “The Pythagorean theory, the concept of Pi, Geometric formulas, and the screw and level are only some of the patrimonies of ancient Egypt and not of Greece as conventional wisdom holds.”
Diodorus Siculus, the Greek writer, in his On Egypt, written in the first century before Christ, says that many who are “celebrated among the Greeks for intelligence and learning, ventured to Egypt in olden times, that they might partake of the customs, and sample the teachings there.”
John Henrik Clarke writes, “The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word ‘Africa.’ According to most records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people now called Africans not only influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the early world before there was a place called Europe.”
Molefi Kete Asante writes, “Why did the Greek philosophers study in Africa? Thales, the first Greek philosopher and the first who is recorded to have studied in Africa, says that he learned philosophy from the Egyptians. They studied in Egypt because it was the educational capital of the ancient world. Pythagoras is known to have spent at least twenty two years in Africa. One could get a fairly good education in twenty two years, perhaps even earn a Ph.D.! The Greeks were seeking the philosophical information that the Africans possessed. When Isocrates wrote of his studies in the book Busirus, he said, ‘I studied philosophy and medicine in Egypt.’ He did not study these subjects in Greece in Europe, but in Egypt in Africa.”
Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician in the Age of Pericles, considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is often referred to as "The Father of Medicine” in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic School of Medicine. Hippocrates in his biography says "I am a child of Imhotep"
According to Herodotus, in Histories, Book II, the Colchians were Egyptians “because like the Egyptians they had black skin and wooly hair.” Aristotle says in Physiognomonica that “the Egyptians and Ethiopians are very black.”
