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Black
Experience of Religion
Continuities
and
Discontinuities in the Religious Experience
of
Peoples of
African
Descent
By
Chief Fela
Sowande, Howard University, March 1970*
SEGMENT
ONE
Introductory
Note
 irtually
no
aspect of the Way of Life of Peoples of African Descent
domiciled
in or outside Africa can be profitably discussed, or even cursorily
examined,
without attempting first to clear the air of the smelly smog of long
established
misconceptions, which have led in some instances to the weirdest
emotional
attitudes imaginable, and have consistently prejudiced intelligent and
dispassionate communication on these matters. These misconceptions have
also, in my view, contributed effectively if indirectly to the curious
idea now currently held in so many quarters, that Africa proper is
covered
by what is termed these days: Sub-Saharan Africa; an idea as tenable
and
as logical as would be the idea that America proper is
sub-Mason-Dixon-line,
using the Civil War and subsequent political events in evidence. What
is
more, however, it seems to me sometimes less and less remote that in
the
by no means distant future, sub-Saharan Africa may be replaced by
Equatorial
Africa as representing Africa proper.
In
the meantime, as the
study conducted
by Project Africa in the Fall of 1967 documents, to American Secondary
School students, sub-Saharan Africa is "a hot, primitive land, where
wild
beasts prowl the steaming jungles stalking and being stalked by black
savages
armed only with spears and poison darts," that is, when the "natives,
who
live in villages (and) are not sitting "in front of their huts beating
on drums."
At the
level of American grown-ups, I
think we would
discover that a similar study would reveal that an abnormally high
percentage
of adults possess a philosophy quite close to that of the Illinois
minister
who was preaching about the Brotherhood of Man one Sunday in 1943, and
declared that the "Our" in the Lord's Prayer: Our Father which art in
Heaven,
refers to that family of God which included the citizens of the
United States, the peoples of Great Britain, the heathen
of China, the cannibals of India, the headhunters of
New
Guinea, and the savages of Africa.
It is
clear that there is not much
sense in talking
about the religious experience of the peoples of African descent, while
whatever one says is likely to be related to a jungle Africa
sub-Sahara,
occupied by illiterate, poor, dirty, half-naked, diseased, savage,
black
Africans. But this virus of informed ignorance is no longer a local
disease
but an epidemic, which has become so wide-spread that it has affected
blacks
as well as whites. We all know those blacks domiciled in Africa who
think
that they are the salt of the earth, far superior to their black
African
brothers and sisters on the same continent, and much more so to blacks
outside Africa. Then there are those blacks domiciled outside Africa,
and
they thank God that they are not like other blacks, that they do not
carry
an African passport, and that if they are not yet in the mainstream of
the civilized world of the whiteman they soon will be.
But this
type of blackman, whether or
not he is domiciled
in Africa, is the true Niginji. What is a Niginji"? I first heard the
term
used by my black American professional colleagues in London around
1936;
completely mystified as to what on earth the term could mean, I asked
them;
my ignorance amused them greatly, and between bursts of uncontrollable
belly-laughs they explained that a Niginji was their term for . . .
quote
— an educated nigger! — unquote. They added, for my edification: you
can
take the hick out of the country, but you can't take the country out of
the hick. An educated Niginji is more of a liability to the race than
an
un-educated one, which — I thought to myself at the time — was just as
valid an observation for Africa as apparently it was for America, and
possibly
for other countries where you have sizable groups of blacks.
It is
therefore essential to attempt
at least to
show that the popular fallacies which pass for facts about the Blackman
have no foundations whatever in truth, not so much on account of our
white
as of our black brothers and sisters; obviously we must consider those
young ones who are in danger of being turned into Niginjis by a
so-called
educational system that could not be further removed from real
education;
and we must consider the not-so-young, who have so far managed to
escape
having their black souls raped by the propagandist anthropological
sciences
of our times, and who are still seeking meaningful answers to the many
important basic and relevant questions that have been occupying their
minds,
seemingly for generations.
Unfortunately,
clearing the air of
misconceptions
cannot be done in one or two short paragraphs. But it is imperative
that
at least it should be attempted, even though it means encroaching on
the
space that would otherwise have been devoted to the main theme, and
raises
the additional problem of keeping this Paper within reasonable length.
These are
some of the thoughts that
have determined
to an appreciable extent, not so much the content as the form
and the length of this Paper. I can but hope that the results will
stimulate
deep and sustained thought, among my white as well as by black brothers
and sisters.
What we
humans call "a second" is but
a unit of Time
which drops briefly into the lap of the measurable contemporary Now,
from
the inexhaustible store of the limitless immeasurable Future; it stops
briefly in the Now as it makes its way towards its final destination in
that unfathomable Eternity of Yesterdays, where it becomes one of the
priceless
jewels of experience in the inexhaustible treasure house of the
Creative
Forces of Evolution.
The times
we live in today are such
that, to my mind,
for reasons far too involved to permit outlining here, every such "unit
of Time" underscores the fact that it is suicidal to permit ourselves
not
to see beyond the color of the skin which happens to cover that
physical
house we occupy temporarily, and which we shed when we pass on, as one
day we must. According to Mutwa, the Zulu traditional priest author,
Bantu
philosophy believes that every soul gains experience over one thousand
years, of which only seventy short years are spent in human form.
Seventy
out of one thousand still leaves quite a tidy number.
Therefore,
Black Experience of
Religion must be examined
in terms of Human Experience of Religion, and not as something existing
outside human experience, that of the Human Race within which, whether
we like it or not, the Black Race is totally contained. . . .
Note Well: HieroGraphics
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of "Chief Fela Sowande's Philosophy and Opinions." Currently we
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There will be
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