I'm only going to address a part of what you said. It's true; many of us are multi-racial. I have been working on my own family tree and have discovered this. But, as Peter Tosh said: "No matta where you come from, as long as you're a Black Mon, You're an African!!!"

Not necessarily. Contrary to popular beliefs in this room, A-As are really the hardest nuts to crack. it only takes 2 or 3 generations for Italian, Irish, Chinese, Japanese-Americans to totally assimulate into the larger mainstream society. Italians in the US shy away from the traditional names and give there children American names. In fact, I remember a study of Mexican Americans that saids that by the 3rd generation, many of them have married outside of their ethnic group (mostly to whites) and no longer consider themselves to be Mexican Americans, but just Americans.

I think we don't give A-As enough credit. Even some of the most underprivelged Black youths will prefer to call themselves African over American anyday. ( I know because I work with them) Even the ones who cannot identify a sinlge African country would rather call Africa their "home" than the US.
The above example has far-reaching implications, but my basic point is that A-As are extremely resilient and resistant to change and especially assimilation.
We are the least resilient to marriage across racial lines, also.

But of course, with education, we can teach ALL Blacks to be proud of their heritage and optimistic about the future of the African continent.

I agree with we need to our history although
in my family that would mean a little bit of
everything. We need to start my knowing our
surrounding family. My mother was saying something about a cousin and I said who is that. The point, I don't even know my own cousins that live ten miles away. I am going to work on having better relations with my folk.

I need to study more, but I aspire to be like WEB DuBois, Kwame Toure and Notake Shange and especially Dr. Marimba Ani in their pursuit of their Pan Afrikan heritage...

If you want to put it bluntly, the Pan Afrikanist would call themselves, "Afrikans stuck in amerikkklan".

Read Dr. Marimba Ani's "Yurugu", it's a very powerful book. She breaks down our whole misunderstanding and misuse of our heritage and self-inflicted self hatred and mental slavery to the point where the neo-nazi's and the klan don't even have to do their job in our extinction...

The point is, the most indiscriminate and intricate parts our AfAm culture is all attributible an unchanging Afrika. We only discover this aspect of our "cultural asili" once the hatred barrier is broken down between African Americans and continental Africans. Once this barrier is broken, the immediate connection we make to them explains all the discrepancies of "our" doings that we may take completely for granted. We often wind up saying, "Oh, that's why we do that"... It's as if the Africans have found us--their lost children ripped and kidnapped from their land so long ago.

I warn you, once you start on this path of self-discovery thru an Afrikan-centered perspective, it will be very painful. There will be beliefs, actions and ideals that you will not be able to reconcile between your old self and your Afrikan centered self... Personally, I have not completed my process because I still have to gain something from the "kidnappers" and have to stay repressed for awhile longer. But once release, I will be able to pursue my dreams...

Once we free our self-imposed white supremacist attitude, we can break the chains of our Yurugu heritage and reach our 3rd eye of our unchanging cultural asili. (Just read "Yurugu", then you'll get what I'm saying).

So folx, we may think we are runing away from our Afrikan encoded DNA, but if we remain "true" to ourselves, we'll eventually come back to our Afrikan selves--centered.

I highly recommend seeing the movie, "Sankofa". It's on video. It's rather difficult to get so you may have to goto black websites to get a hold of it. However, if you're not crying at the end, you have completely missed the point of the story...

Just a little drop of our utamawazo...

thanks AKA_MONET!!!
Its good not only to talk about the problem but to provide solutions and areas of research.
I will definitely try to get a hold of Dr. Marimba Ani's "Yurugu". I was wondering if it was available through local bookstores, or should I try an online search first?

Thanks for the tip!

I highly suggest going to the African American bookstores and supporting them first. If you can't get the book there, then try the other bookstores.

Thank you AKA_Monet for the beneficial information. http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif