The Coalition

The Coalition for Permanent & Meaningful Change on Race

What is this about?

It’s about restoration and arrival:

 

Restoration of our collective identity, dignity, respect, self-respect and self-esteem, prosperity of the mind, body and spirit and community cohesion that goes with that.

 

Arrival finally and truly at the table of equality that all other races enjoy by being referred to by their continental ancestral heritage.

 

Various names have been applied to us by Europeans, not for four centuries but six. Those names have gone from ‘black’ in various European languages to, in the case of English-speakers, ‘negro’, to ‘coloured’ back to ‘black’ again. We are about to take one major step of evolution that will almost certainly put us in the history books, but more importantly will be life-changing for us in the most positive way imaginable. We will, at long last achieve what we have been craving for centuries - to arrive at the table of true equality, human dignity, respect, self-respect and collective prosperity... not just financial, but prosperity of the mind, body and spirit.

 

‘Black’ is the biggest act of identity theft and humanity theft in human history.

The why: Where we are now

A living and chronic anomaly; marked out as a special case: defined falsely, crudely and inaccurately by racist notions of our skin complexion and routinely as the opposite of Europeans. This makes no reference whatsoever to our land, our collective and continental ancestry, our languages, or anything else about our rich cultures or pre-colonial history.


It is not uncommon to hear men and women of African heritage be referred to or refer to themselves as ‘black males’ and ‘black females’ respectively, as though they are animals, the sort of thing you would expect to hear on a David Attenborough wildlife show. As a result we suffer a unique form of racism.


For the past 50 years we have tried to embrace it in this country, basically copying the Americans on the basis of the Black Power movement of the 1960s which fizzled out in the early 1970s and they moved on from. But we are still disrespected: ‘black’ is coupled with other words to insult us; ‘black’ is a word nearly always used, in English especially, but also in other languages to convey the negative, the ugly and the undesirable.


No surprise then that as a result there are self-esteem problems, an inferiority complex, a chronic sense of victimhood, we are divided and have had difficulty bonding; our men have difficulty respecting our women; forced single parenthood for mums and often very young; domestic violence mainly toward our women and witnessed by our children; our boys having difficulty loving and respecting each other as peers, resulting in knife crime and murder; under-achievement in school, overrepresentation in prisons and psychiatric hospitals.


We are in a toxic environment, a war in fact, of racism and ignorance, including amongst ourselves.

The 4Cs

The need to restore a sense of identity and dignity to people of African heritage the world over is not only just as pressing as the current Covid-19 pandemic, but it will outlast it and is existential. Our children need to be vaccinated against heritage denial, rootlessness and ignorance just as much as the world needs a Covid-19 vaccine.

Change is necessary

Change is overdue

Change is coming

We will make that Change

Our destination 

1) That 'of African heritage' is used in all references to ourselves, anyone with our African ancestry here or abroad, anywhere in the world, and in all written documentation, formal or informal.


2) That anything of African heritage, e.g. businesses, all our huge repertoire of musical genres, our huge repertoire of dance genres, our huge repertoire of books and literature, theatre, arts and crafts, our huge repertoire of food, and our history and geography, is referred to at all times as ‘Afroic’ or ‘African’.


For: Dignity, self-esteem, self-respect, collective self-respect, pride in self and others, cohesion, collaboration, collective prosperity, true equality with the rest of humanity, respect from others

The how: Mission Statement

With what you do we will bring this into the mainstream, into public consciousness and use.

Replace ‘black’ in the vernacular.


We will awaken the public consciousness.


We will do it by being:

  • Single minded
  • Focused
  • Determined
  • United - use the same language and the same mantra at all times.
  • Strategic and meticulous - do that in our conversations, our writing,
    our text messages, our voicemails, our social media posts, our media interviews.

If people try to play the game of division, splitting us up, stand firm. In the context of what we have been through in history, we have every right to refer to ourselves collectively as one, as people of African heritage, as 'our people' because:


1) Our entire continent and its peoples there and its dispersed peoples i.e. diaspora, have been under assault and still are


2) We have been the victims of divide and rule, often without realising.


Remember this too:

America has churned out terms like 'people of colour' and 'Black Entertainment Television'. Those are the product of their particularly violent and racist history, just like what are now South Africa and Zimbabwe.


We are not America and we can stop copying them.

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