The African Diaspora and History of Rhetoric: Learning to Learn

When studying the history of rhetoric, many groups were excluded from participating in power and were used, abused, and written off as inferior. Even today African nations have not recovered from being exploited by European powers.

Historically, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and Portugal divided the continent up amongst themselves. France and Great Britain owned most of the African land. We still do not study African history fully and examine its richness. It wasn't until the 1960s, that many African nations won their independence.

We can learn much about alternative approaches to rhetoric. Much of Greek philosophy and rhetoric was influenced by African thinkers.

African Americans like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. pushed the limits of rhetoric and asked that their voices be heard. What we don't realize is how potent and how powerful such voices have become to people of color around the world. Such historic speakers continue to have a global impact.

Indeed, Malcolm X examined the impact of capitalism:

"It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely."

During recessions and depressions such words start to resonate with truth. However, as soon as we return to a stronger economy, we denounce such rhetoric.

When thinking about knowledge, Malcolm X said, "Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today."

With the election of the first African American president, it becomes vital to examine the rhetoric of the African Diaspora and its impact on Americans.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Decolonizing the Mind

In Kenya in 1952, English became the language of formal education. When we examine literature of Africa, most ofngugi_wa_thiongo.jpg the readings are written in European languages because most of the award winning African writers were trained or worked in European settings.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's work, "Decolonizing the Mind" explores the effects of forcing a nation to learn English. The author contends that language is a form of colonization. Indeed he wrote: "Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world."

Besides learning English, European culture was taught which has a profound effect on students. Furthermore, he states, "The alienation became reinforced in the teaching of history, geography, music, where bourgeois Europe was always the centre of the universe."

Again he claims that real power is about mind control:

"The real aim of colonialism was to control the people's wealth: what they produced, how the[y] produced it, and how it was distributed; to control, in other words, the entire realm of the language of real life. . . . But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world."

The native language of a country must gain acceptance! The very language you speak has a rhetorical and cultural control over how you think.

Thank you for reading . . . I am part African Caribbean

. . . and growing up "The Autobiography of Malcolm X " changed my life, for I grew up in Los Angeles and the Rodney King beating of 1991 awakened my political eyes. . .

It starts with love. . . a Love of the history of rhetoric. . .