'We are all African'

[Rootsie]

I just have a couple of things to say about the way whites use this statement to claim privileges in black-based movements like Rastafari.

Well first off, it's true. Africa is the motherland of every human being on Earth. I suppose it's progress that whites admit it.

But two thousand years of history cannot be wiped away so easily. Too many whites use this 'we are all African' bit as an excuse for failing to engage any history that took place after 100,000 years ago.

An excuse for failing to engage on-line real-time issues of white supremacy and white privilege.

The deep assumptions of white privilege make it very hard for whites to see the depth and difficulty of the work they have to do to come into moral and spiritual alignment. It is hard for whites to see how material privilege in this world dictates spiritual UNDERprivilege. This is because balance is universal law. Unjust privilege in one realm means underprivilege in another. There is a divine order, and it is always just.

The egotism and arrogance that go along with privilege make it next to impossible for whites to conceive of a realm in which they are not superior, and the idea that they need the help of those considered 'inferior' to restore their full humanity to them may be too much to bear.

There is a thing the Bible says which is right: the sins of the fathers are visited on the generations. We did not ask to be born white any more than blacks asked to be born black. The only way to stop the unfolding of this ugly history is to look at the history and acknowledge that as a result of it, whites are morally and spiritually impoverished. And further to understand that the only ones to help them out of the quagmire are the victims.

This dictates a role for whites in liberation movements that is very foreign and maybe even terrifying. Whites cannot lead liberation movements. In every case the best they can do is to support informed blacks, and help behind the scenes in the effort to educate their own. Period.