1979: Philadelphia Conquers the World

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The next year, Americans voted to elect a President who would assiduously work to undermine every principle expressed in these songs. The first song (“Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” by McFadden and Whitehead) became such a transcendent theme that it was labeled the unofficial “national anthem” of New York’s leading Black-owned radio station, WBLS. The latter song (“We Are Family” by Sister Sledge) is as popular today as ever. It was immediately embraced by the eventual World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates. Those Pirates featured a unique blend of star power: Dave Parker, Willie Stargell, Kent Tekulve, John Candelaria (“The Candy Man”) and many others. The song remains a staple in some baseball stadiums around the nation.

1979 was the year that two groups from Philadelphia issued a call to all of us to be one and to be great.

The Birth of a Nazi

The history of Africans in Germany is long and nuanced. For many people, it is presumed to be non-existent. This is not true. The birth of the Nazi Party has been summarized and reviewed by scholars for decades. Few, though, have given much thought or attention to the connection between German colonies in Africa and the refinement of extermination techniques used generations later in Germany. It was in German SouthWest Africa (now known as Namibia) where the fathers of the founders of the Nazi honed their skills as executioners. It’s where their first concentration camps were built.

Blacks Under the Swastika

Hannah Arendt, a well-known chronicler and a victim of Nazi persecution, states that the seed of totalitarian terror (fascism) were contained within the policies pursued by Europeans in Africa. Her hypothesis became controversial among other historians who believed she had no proof while others either partially or fully concurred offering evidence to support their arguments. Helmut Bley, a well-known historian of SouthWest Africa and a supporter of a prototype-Nazi policy toward people of African descent, argued that pervasive racism animated the German colonial settlers to expropriate the property of some of the African tribes, exploited and enslaved black laborers, legalized a state of lawlessness and pressured the government to sanction genocide against blacks who resisted.(2) Historians like Bley have written about anti-black racism during the Imperial and Weimar periods and a few have touched upon the Nazi period, but no one has attempted to show a tradition of anti-black racism in Germany which extended from 1885 to 1945 and possibly beyond.

The Story of T. Wonja Michael:

T. Wonja Michael was born in Berlin. In early 1943, Michael was marched with other Afro-Germans into a forced labor camp near Berlin. Theo survived the Nazi terror and is still alive…He was there until the camp was liberated by Russian soldiers in June 1945. His three siblings fled to France after “Negroids” were declared “undesirable” in 1936, but Michael chose to remain apparently out of sheer stubborness.

Please click the link to this story. It’s an amazing, in-depth tale worth reading.

He was also an aspiring actor and eventually found work. The Nazis cast him in a tiny but very visible role in Germany’s first color film released in 1943–”Muenchhausen”–which showed him cooling dignitaries with a feathered fan. Later he learned that the movie had been commissioned by propaganda minister Josef Goebbels and would be used against blacks. “They trained me–and it is, of course, extremely ironic that it was the Nazis who gave me my big break!”

Michael says, his laugh nervous and unconvincing. He was 18 when he was sent to the labor camps. Michael had actually been conscripted, but when officials saw him he was immediately rejected. In early 1943, Michael was marched with other Afro-Germans into a forced-labor camp near Berlin, where he was effectively enslaved,working 72 hours a week at a munitions factory. He was there until the camp was liberated by Russian soldiers in June 1945. In 1998, he told a German Life magazine: “One must remember that the Damocles’ sword of sterilization always dangled above us blacks in those years. It’s why I was so afraid of going to the hospital. “Escape was not possible, certainly not if you looked like me.

Anton Wilhelm Amo:

Amo was a Nzema (an Akan people). He was born in Awukena in the Axim region of Ghana, but at the age of about four he was taken to Amsterdam by the Dutch East India Company. Some accounts say that he was taken as a slave, others that he was sent to Amsterdam by a preacher working in Ghana. Whatever the truth of the matter, once he arrived, he was given as a present to Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, to whose palace in Wolfenbüttel he was taken.

Amo was baptised (and later confirmed) in the palace’s chapel. He was treated as a member of the Duke’s family, and was educated at the Wolfenbüttel Ritter-Akademie (1717–1721) and at the University of Helmstedt (1721–1727). It is also believed that he would have met Gottfried Leibniz, who was a frequent visitor to the palace.

He then went on to the University of Halle, whose Law School he entered in 1727. He finished his preliminary studies within two years, his dissertation being: “The Rights of Moors in Europe”. For his further studies Amo moved to the University of Wittenberg, studying logic, metaphysics, physiology, astronomy, history, law, theology, politics, and medicine, and mastered six languages (English, French, Dutch, Latin, Greek, and German). His medical education in particular was to play a central role in much of his later philosophical thought.

He gained his doctorate in philosophy at Wittenberg in 1734; his thesis (published as On the Absence of Sensation in the Human Mind and its Presence in our Organic and Living Body) argued against Cartesian dualism in favour of a broadly materialist account of the person.

St. Maurice:

Saint Maurice became a patron saint of the Holy Roman Emperors. In 926, Henry I (919–936), even ceded the present Swiss canton of Aargau to the abbey, in return for Maurice’s lance, sword and spurs. The sword and spurs of Saint Maurice was part of the regalia used at coronations of the Austro-Hungarian Emperors until 1916, and among the most important insignia of the imperial throne. In addition, some of the emperors were anointed before the Altar of Saint Maurice at St. Peter’s Basilica. ^[2] In 929 Henry I the Fowler held a royal court gathering (Reichsversammlung) at Magdeburg. At the same time the Mauritius Kloster in honor of Maurice was founded. In 961, Otto I was building and enriching the cathedral at Magdeburg, which he intended for his own tomb. To that end,

in the year 961 of the Incarnation and in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, in the presence of all of the nobility, on the vigil of Christmas, the body of St. Maurice was conveyed to him at Regensburg along with the bodies of some of the saint’s companions and portions of other saints. Having been sent to Magdeburg, these relics were received with great honour by a gathering of the entire populace of the city and of their fellow countrymen. They are still venerated there, to the salvation of the homeland. ^[4]

Temple3 Banned

Bad Behavior and Interpersonal Weakness

I am pleased to say that some theories are easier to prove than others. I have always maintained that within the context of the US, the fiercest advocates of “white supremacy,” are seeking to mask a profound inability to COMPETE. History reveals that this was the case in the American South in the aftermath of African enslavement. It was the same during the Jim Crow Era of American Segregation. The exclusion of Blacks from counties, towns, professions and commerce often followed demonstrable Black success. Ida B. Wells was drawn into a life of political activism after lynchings in Tennessee led to the deaths of prosperous Black store owners. Professional sports leagues banned Black participation for years while hiding behind the ruse of “physical superiority.” Things have not changed all that much.

“Guy White” (a white guy?) operates a blog where he professes to “make sense” out of the morass which has become dialogue on race and racism. In fact, guy is a shameless and unrepentant purveyor of myth. Moreover, he is wholly incapable of defending his pseudo-intellectual positions. The narratives of “white supremacy” are contingent on misinformation. His web site, from which I have been banned, is a font of misinformation. For my part, I was aware from my first few interactions that the author was a bit of “cut and paste” blogger, rather than a creator of substantive original content. I recognized that critical details would never be provided because the author did not have the background information to provide them. Nonetheless, the volume, scope and vulgarity of those pronouncements warrant an occasional refutation. I began our dialogue in a genial manner (I was even acknowledge for the quality of my posts.), but this was not to last. The tone necessarily headed south because of two factors: 1) continued racist framing of issues; 2) an almost Cobbian willingness to skirt those same issues. Both practices are unacceptable.

If you’ve read my work before, you know I’ll only place nicely in the sandbox for so long.

A Question of Substance

Decades after the revelation that Africans had numerous pre-Columbian contacts in the Americas, this site suggests no such thing has happened. It is precisely this type of revisionism that deluded “white” supremacists into believing they were physically superior in the ring, the gridiron, the diamond and on the court. Of course, the myth extended beyond the realm of the body – but the evidence of such claims has always wanted for support. “Guy” actually posted pictures of Greek-era Egyptian coins as “proof” the Egyptians of antiquity were “white.” For historians and archaeologists, this is the height of absurdity. The ethnicity of the Ptolemaic Dynasty is neither under question or relevant. In this environment, facts are simply beside the point. The knowledge base for meaningful discourse is simply too one-sided. When Cheikh Anta Diop overwhelmed his colleagues at UNESCO in the 70’s, they had the decency to concede the point. Those scholars “knew what they didn’t know.” With Guy, it’s different. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. He has no clue – so, like many of his fellow blind men, he makes proclamations about things which have not only been soundly refuted, but were actually predicated on the political agenda of long-deceased men with an axe to grind. The history of “white supremacy” is chock full of scholarly myths. From “Piltdown Man” to the recent faux-discovery of “whites” at Qustul, there is no end to the grand deception. And why not? The cost of the truth is too high.

Competition is supposed to be the principle which reflects the heart and soul of this nation and the entire Western enterprise. Blogs are a place of competitive ideas. Banning is little more than a grandiose concession speech.