Dear Editor,
Professor James Watson’s statement that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really” is really the irony of the ages and a sign of the darkness of the world in which he lives. For Africans it has never been a question of whether our intelligence equals, is greater than or less than anybody else’s. That kind of mental activity is for those with inferiority complexes. Our question is, how do we rid ourselves of the burden of living under a yoke of oppression which would like to deny our outstanding intelligence?
It was in Africa that Europeans sought and found enlightenment twice, first when the likes of Pythagoras, Socrates and Aristotle went to Egypt to learn their philosophies and secondly when the Moors brought the lamp of Africa to the darkened ‘continent’.
Like the proverbial dog that bites its master’s hand Europe’s gratitude to Africa was conquer and pillage. With greed, envy and lust in their minds and guns in their hand, tons of papyri, scrolls and books on metallurgy, astronomy, astrology, sociology, dentistry, the arts, the sciences, medicine, politics, agriculture, animal husbandry, and “religion” among others were either stolen and shipped to Europe or destroyed. Then the greatest of the learning houses of Africa were ordered closed by European powers.
The removal of tens of millions of mentally and manually skilled Africans to build European capitalism was the icing on the cake. These acts not only effectively reversed the legacy of African achievement and the acknowledgement of African achievement but disturbed the continuum of the march of African intellectual development. They have done nothing to challenge the evidence of African intelligence.
African intelligence stands tall in the modern world; as the foundation of European knowledge; in the stolen obelisks from Egypt which now adorn Central Park, New York the centre of St Peter’s Square in the Vatican compound and other sites in France, Israel, Poland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom; in the great world religions; in the Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx; and in the achievements of Africans who have suffered Europe’s abuse.
Apologies and cancelled engagements are insufficient remedies for this continuing psychological abuse which Africans suffer, we need to set the record straight.
This “Watsonian slip of the tongue” is a reminder to Europe that the time has come for her to return to our Great Mother; Mother Alkebulan or Mother Kemit as we called her, and her children our intellectual property, cultural artefacts and remuneration which they have stolen from us and which they use as the basis of their aggrandizement. It is also a reminder to us that we must re-establish our Afrikan sovereignty so that we may seek our own good. This act of justice will set the record straight and rid us of the oppression of which we would so love to see the end.
Shalom, Hotep, Peace.
Yours faithfully,
Jonathan Adams
