My key takeaways from Dr. Kwasi Konadu’s lecture yesterday:

1. African people exist as phobogenic objects, that is as objects of white loathing, fear, and aggression.

2. African people exist in an indeterminant state between negrophilia and negrophobia in the white collective consciousness. The love of Black performance represents negrophilia. The generalized disdain for Black people is negrophobia.

3. African people can never achieve freedom on terms emanating from the white psyche, thus rendering the politics of reform as largely futile.

4. In order to be truly free, African people must define and actualize freedom on the basis of our own cultural paradigm.

5. Three tools which can be used to advance the healing of African people:

-Water as a means to clean the body. He highlighted the value of a three day water fast as a means of resetting the immune system.

-Rituals to cleanse one’s space and to cultivate one’s connection to one’s ancestors

-Learning an African language as a way of reorienting one’s consciousness and fully reclaiming one’s humanity. He said, “If you want to be conceptually and psychologically free learn an African language.”