The Essence of Freedom

What is a mother?

People often assume that a mother is a woman who gives birth.  As if the ability to carry a child and give birth is all it takes.

A vagina.  A uterus.  Simple physical instruments that we did not request.   Many women don’t have the personality for motherhood.

For many others, a mother is a place.  A homeland, a home country.  An Englishman may call that patriarchal, tyrant of an island his motherland, in the same way, a blue-eyed Norseman would call the icy Alps home. Whether we are referring to a physical being giving birth or a landmass of gravels, sands, and clay held by gravity, there is one fact that rings true: an entire race of the human species was inextricably wretched from its mother’ teat, the African.

I almost began to say African-American since I myself am an African-American and, can identify with this familiar plight.  However, that term would not fully encompass the wealth of longing across continents; all of us longing for a relationship with our mother.  Africa, momma, the Dark Continent, the motherland, the mother ship, the birthplace of all humanity.  A place held in such high regard by people who are so often told to abandon their dreams of returning to their mother breast.  Even though some sort of warped, deformed Black-American culture has evolved from the remnants of a tortuous slave culture, we still reach out for the lost continent.

Other countries, those famed paradises of the Caribbean, west indies, and the densely dark populations of Amerique du Sud.  Other countries were able to firmly grasp those reins of African culture, creating a distinction between their new slave selves from their former African selves.  It’s in our music; the reggae of Jamaica, Kompa of Haiti, the go-go of D.C and, the Jim Crow blues of the south that brilliantly weaved tales of displaced people.

Our connections, vibrancy, energies interact all the time.

Even when black people, Africans, niggers hate and kill one another, the frequencies have been too great to ignore.

It’s in our hair.  The dreads on Him and Her.  The braids on She and Them.  The fros, the locs, and rastas. It has sent many of us descendants into a frenzy and many people of this nation too; wondering if there’s some sort of black revival. But even more than that.

It is just in us.

Recently I went to a small-scale reggae tribute to Bob Marley at our local African-American History museum.  You know one of those local bands, renowned in your area, they happen to be really decent musicians, but they never made it.  I digress.  The vibes at this hour long event were unprecedented.  A group of people: black, white, mulatto or other, all together.  And in that room, at that moment, I saw all of us Black folk connected by an inner energy mandated by our melanin.

An older woman dancing, full of grace and rhythm, adorned with adinkra symbols and tattoos.  Small in stature, but not missing a beat. Her wolf-gray locs hanging down to her waist.  A slender woman, with a salt and pepper TWA, who may have been a punk rocker back in her day, applauded with traditional African handshakes instead of physically clapping.

Everyone beaming with pride.

But what is this longing?

And why do we reach for our mother still?

We have often been advised to turn our hopes from ever being reconnected with our prodigal mother.  In a lot of ways, we have been shunned by her.  Though Pan-Africanism (a theory popularized, though not invented, by Marcus Garvey) was a dream for many from the 1930’s-1960’s. In many ways, it never caught hold.  This was mostly due to a lack of unity amongst Black Americans, and a lack of want by Africans.  Pan-Africanism was also theorized by leaders of the anti-apartheid movement including Steve Biko in the 1960’s.  Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka, Malcolm X and others also dabbled in the idea of unity amongst African and communist countries.

Even now there is a resurging amongst my generation.  A longing and a seemingly thorough comprehension of our relationship with Africa. An acceptance of our features like never before, conversations about blackness via our social media (shea butter twitter) and our Instagram’s.  Further than that, a surge in Black businesswomen, Veganism, black authors, poets, and bloggers.  In spite of the growing shade of racism, black people are flourishing and they aren’t hiding behind the Veil.

Maybe we are still impoverished, many of us.  And perhaps the celebrities that are offered as role models from our community are some of the most disgraceful yet, but to say that we are not waking up in the slightest will be false.

Who knows?

Maybe one day we will be fully reunited with our lost mother and suckle from the breast that has nourished others for so long.

No more motherless children.

We will be true Ghanaians, Adinkra,  Igbo, Bushmen. True Africans.  Once we realize all we need is each other, all black peoples’ under the shadow of our mother