.png)
Look at the picture below.
(Please note: If you think this picture is a coherent image, then you are part of the problem.)
Frankly, I am tired of seeing these kinds of things online (and on people as clothes or accessories).
I am tired of the manipulative, and often predatory ways the rhetoric in them works.
Let us decide!
Let us be very clear about WHO WE ARE and WHO WE AREN'T.
Let us also be as clear about what symbols represent us and what symbols don't.
Let us cease and desist with the creation of such smorgasbord pictures like the one above, where:
1) the Queen Mother Mask from West Africa (Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria)
is sitting beside:
2) North American Thanksgiving vegetables (representing "the harvest" I assume?)
and:
3) the Kwanzaa candles from East Africa (several countries, mainly in Kiswahili-speaking regions like Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania)
AS IF all of them go together.
And, dare I say it?
I do:
The symbol in the "Kwanza 2020 circle" (towards the upper right of the collage) looks suspiciously like a altered Ghanaian Adinkra symbol, specifically the Akoma Ntoso, or "linked hearts" (shown left).
Do you see it?
Rotate the symbol a bit and add the red and green semi-circles in the middle.
Let us STOP--both explicitly and implicitly--supporting the racist homogenization of Africans, African culture and the African diaspora.
Oh yeah:
And let's choose to use the appropriate symbols to represent the appropriate people (i.e. Black American symbols for Black American agendas and prerogatives). Black American people have many symbols that they have generated for themselves. So Black Americans (including the Black American Pan-Africanists that detest dIvIsIvE concepts such as ethnicity/tribe and nationality) should pick from among those to represent themselves, instead of facilitating cultural erasure by using the symbols of other groups of people.