Education Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
African descendants in the United States have experienced great psychological trauma because of the miseducation we have received in this country. In traditional African societies, children received early education from parents, extended family members, and the community as a whole. Manhood and womanhood training was mandatory for young men and women. The kidnapping and separation of African people from our homeland ended the traditional education we received in the motherland. Stripped of our traditional education, Africans in America found ourselves thrown into a cultural and educational abyss. We lost our cultural glue and were deprived of an African cultural consciousness or sense of self. The American slaveholders feared the consequences of an educated African population. Understanding that the whites’ ability to maintain control over the African mind was what guaranteed the perpetuation of the system of enslavement, the slaveholders routinely denied Africans access to reading, writing, and formal education. As a result, a miseducation system was put in the place of an education system. At the core of this system was the belief in the inhumanity of the African and the superiority of the white race, or white supremacy. The goal of the miseducation system was to capture the African mind. It taught the African self-loathing, self-ridicule, and lack of self-worth, causing great psychological trauma. To this day, this system has had devastating effects on our youth and our communities in general. It has led to an educational nadir in the African American community resulting in feelings of low self-esteem and disinterest in academic pursuits. African descendants in America attending public schools in many urban areas today are systematically victimized by inadequate, inappropriate, ill-equipped schools that have become a part of America’s school-to-prison pipeline. Healing from the effects of miseducation will require that we reclaim our African minds. The liberation of the African mind will be the most important challenge we face as we implement: “Education for Wholeness.” This education for a whole people system will require intense work as we seek to heal from the trauma we have suffered and purge our minds of the negative indoctrination received from the American education system. Reparations are needed to accomplish this enormous task of reeducation. (Reference: Jaki Mungai, Instructor, Adjunct Faculty, Community College of Philadelphia)
Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
a) The UN Working Group should support the demands for a comprehensive education system in the U.S. from Pre-K-12, which include and infuse the timeline of civilization for DAEUS by culturally competent professors and teachers.
b)The UN Working Group should support the demand for the creation of neighborhood African-centered Community Education Centers, staffed by culturally competent instructors.
c)The UN Working Group should support Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
d) The UN Working Group should support the demand for reparations with 50% of the negotiated settlement being for educational endeavors.
e) The UN Working Group should support the demand for tuition-free access for DAEUS to all public post-secondary institutions, including trade schools and apprenticeships.
f) The UN Working Group should support the demand for African activists and scholars, to exclusively govern, administrate, operate, research, and be solely responsible for the HR40 Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.
