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We conclude our Ideopraxis Series with a digitally re-mastered presentation from Dr. John Henrik Clarke titled, The African World Under Siege!!!!
This presentation from Dr. Clarke took place at the Slave Theater in New York circa mid 1990’s. And in this presentation Dr. Clarke discusses the following:
- The essence of power
- The role false national consciousness, inculcated into African people, plays in the global disunity and subordination of African people
- Why “Pan-Capitalism” (a termed coined by Dr. Clarke referring to Africans embracing capitalist ethos), is antagonistic to Pan-Africanism
- The sellout of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC).
(For more on this point see Part 1 and Part 2 of our dialogs with Dr. Julian Kunnie about his book Is Apartheid Really Dead?: Pan-Africanist Working-Class Cultural Critical Perspectives), and much more!
Dr. John Henrik Clarke (January 1, 1915-July 16, 1998) in the late 1960’s through the late 1980’s, was one of the foremost architects of the emerging discipline of Africana Studies/Africalogy as Professor of African World History in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York and as the Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Visiting Professor of African History at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center.
As an academician and intellectual, Dr. Clarke emerged as one of the leading theorists of African liberation and the uses of African history as a foundation and grounding for liberation. Under Dr. Clarke’s formulation liberation was defined not simply as freedom from European domination, but fundamentally as the restoration of African sovereignty. He explored history’s utility in moving an oppressed and subordinated people from a position of subjugation on multiple levels to full status as a self-sustaining, self-defining, self-directed, free, and independent people on a global stage.
Although a leader among European academy-trained African intellectuals who joined the European academy largely beginning in the late 1970’s, Clarke’s education and training were the product of a movement for the indigenization of African academic intellectualism in Harlem of the 1930’s that can be traced back to the early nineteenth century. Books authored by or about Dr. John Henrik Clarke in the Conscientization 101 Library include Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism, Africans at the Crossroads: Notes for an African World Revolution, and John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History: Africalogical Quest for Decolonization and Sovereignty by Ahati N. N. Toure.
Ideopraxis, a term coined by renowned African scholar & author Ayi Kwei Armah, means “the translation of ideas systematically embraced into structured behavior and lifestyle. Ideopraxis is the yardstick that separates revolutionary performers from phonies” (Remembering The Dismembered Continent, pg 75-76). With this term in mind, we created our Ideopraxis Series.
Conscientization 101’s Ideopraxis Series is an extension of the tracks we produced for our FREE GIFT musical commentaries featuring Dr. Marimba Ani, Dr. Amos Wilson, and Dr. John Henrik Clarke. These podcast episodes include lectures we have curated and digitally re-mastered from each of these African scholars in order to preserve these critical insights and analysis.
This episode has featured music from:
- Conscientization 101- Music from our Free Gift Collection, “Dr. John Henrik Clarke on the Threshold of African Liberation” and “Decolonize This? Properly Defining Settlers – Part 1” from our Musical Commentaries collection
- A-Alikes ft. M-1 & Stic.man – “Till We Free” from their album I Eat You Eat
- Big Cakes – “Black Jesus” from his album It’s All Luv
Other books mentioned in this episode in the Conscientization 101 Library were Soledad Brother by George Jackson and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah.
