THE PAN AFRICAN MOTILITY IN HIP HOP’S CREED Pt. 1

 

Due to the industrial bastardization of Hip Hop music many people now believe that its cultural elements such as Afrocentrism, Nubian-ism, Pan African-ism, the Nation of Gods and Earths and the Universal Zulu Nation are old fads from the 1970s through 1980s. They have wrongly mistaken that by the late 1990s through to this point in time any such opinions are nothing more than an old School mentality from guys who are stuck in the past. Even more to this misconception is the taint that Pan African trailblazers who stood up to white supremacy and colonialism or the imperial takeover of Africa such as Marcus Garvey, Sekou Toure, Muammar Gaddafi [yes I said Gaddafi], Malcolm X and Kwame Nkruma were controversial figures who sort to disrupt the tranquility of westernization.

How did Muammar Gaddafi pioneer Pan African-ism?

To realize how Gaddafi helped pioneer Pan African-ism one must first open their mind to interpret what Pan African-ism is about and the fact that men like Gaddafi were bastardized by the west through well executed media propaganda and a precise western intelligence take down. This is because Gaddafi ended up committing his share of atrocities. In the end he was responsible for many wars in Africa. Today we know Muammar Gaddafi as the Libyan president who supported terrorism and committed crimes against humanity.

What you would not want to accept is that the same war crimes Benito Mussolini [former Italian prime minister] committed against Ethiopia for example, are the same crimes Saddam Hussein committed against Kuwait that made him internationally reprehensible. Only, Mussolini was exonerated from his crimes against humanity just as President Bush got away with invading Iraq. It is important to know that Hip Hop CREED is one that does not exonerate anyone from war crimes or atrocities against humanity regardless of the “good guy/bad guy” illusion. These are sociological facts.

Once you understand that, you will care to know that long before Gaddafi became known as a brutal dictator who committed crimes against humanity, he was a stern pioneer of the removal of western influence in Africa. In fact, it was his effort to remove western colonization of Africa that earned him his iconic bastardization in western media. One of his beliefs was for African nations to unite under one government, reject western colonial or imperial culture, stop the exploitation of African material and intellectual properties and price African resources at a competitive rate to bring wealth and establish Africa as a world economic power. This was his dream.

Gaddafi respected Halie Selassie I and was offended by the Italian invasion that crippled and sank Ethiopia into penury. He was upset that the international community did nothing to punish Mussolini for doing this nor restore the Ethiopian dynasty in time. Fearing that this could be repeated in other parts of Africa he called on African leaders to unite against this. In as much as Hip Hop CREED is not anti-American or anti-European it does have this Pan African reckoning that motions to uplift the people of Africa by teaching African heritage to embrace Pan African objectives in accumulating the ancestral, intellectual, artistic, preserving the legacy of African royalty and a call against unwanted tribulations of slavery, colonialism and the amalgamation of western culture in African societies.

How did Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois pioneer Pan African-ism?

The construct of restoring African resplendency to where it was before it was tarnished by Europe and America dates back to the slave abolition era when pathfinders such as Prince Hall and others sought to return freed blacks to Africa. The West African nation of Liberia was created with this precise idea in mind. As centuries went on when racism, segregation and civil injustice against blacks succeed slavery, trailblazers like Dr. Du Bois came to be one of the earliest Pan Africanists. He hailed from the states side of the spectrum.

His endeavors include co-founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] and writing a slue of social studies including one called, “The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study” which sited discrimination against blacks and advocated for racial equality. Unlike Gaddafi who used brutality, Dr. Du Bois used activism and reasoning. The History of Hip Hop culture does not only stem from civil right activism its end game is to facilitate an Afrocentric and Pan African outcome. This outcome can be achieved from teaching the appreciation of African heritage.

Dr. Du Bois was one of the earliest social activists to write and protest not only for the repatriation of freed black men/women to Africa but also for the equal rights of those who remained in the west. This meant equal access to quality education, residential areas, healthcare and employment opportunities. Even back in those very difficult early years of the 1900s he stood against discrimination. In doing so he supported Pan African Congressional movements that took place in London England, Paris France, New York USA and Kampala Uganda in Africa. His reach was international.

These movements helped pressure the US Government and the international community to repeal the Jim Crow laws of legal racial segregation in the South. First through the 1917 Buchanan vs. Warley case to overturn racial segregation in residential areas, 1946 Irene Morgan vs. the State of Virginia case to overturn segregation in interstate transportation and the Brown vs. Board of Education case of 1954 that led to the overturn of Plessy vs. Ferguson mandate which allowed racial segregation in public schools. Hip Hop’s CREED is deeply imbedded in Dr. Du Bois’s legacy and accomplishments.