African-centered psychologist, Wade Nobles, in his work entitled African Psychology: Toward its Reclamation, Re-ascension and Revitalization, introduces the reader to the concept of scientific colonialism. He asserts that scientific colonialism is a three-pronged process by which politically manipulative entities distort the African origins of information and ideas and intellectually usurp those thoughts in an effort to appear intellectually superior. That act only not only renders the true authors of said information the unwitting victims of theft but also of a diseased perpetuation of deception that creates the false perception of their intellectual inferiority. People of European descent have incorporated this ontological distortion for millennia thus destroying and distorting volumes of knowledge and wreaking havoc upon the legacy of greatness that belongs to people of African descent.
It is in the epistemological translation of information that the greatest wealth of African knowledge has been lost. Europeans’ quantifying and calculating minds could not conceive of the spiritual, symbolic, and metaphysical elements of the pilfered ancient Kemetic materials so they simply discarded or kept hidden those elements that did not resonate with their linear consciousness. Transpersonal keys to transcendence, axiological truths of the universe, intangible secrets of the body, mind and soul became waste products in the process of integrated modificationism whereby Europeans commandeered and re-authored African wisdom. The belief that only that which can be measured and seen is real stems from the perpetuation of European distortions. Even in the recent reclamation of a more metaphysical reality, Caucasian people now assert themselves as the keeper of the “New Age” keys. It seems that even now, they want to dictate that they alone possess the knowledge of spirit with their workshops and expo’s on other realms. For Europeans to maintain their position of power, they must continue to perpetuate their lies and falsehoods.
It is entirely plausible that some of the ancient truths of Kemet escaped westward and were maintained in remote villages through the spiritual practices of the indigenous Black peoples of West Africa. Europeans, in the form of colonizers and slave merchants encountering these practices thousands of years after their original theft, and fully indoctrinated to believe that only that which originates from white skin could hold any validation, dismissed the rituals and practices of the Africans and labeled them barbaric. The psychological enslavement of Black people created a paradigmatic shift in consciousness that rendered them susceptible to the notion of these traditions and practices were to be considered heathen, uncivilized, and “of the devil.” Today, even the most Afrocentric scholar must speak of “beingness,” the soul, even of masculine and feminine energies as essentially foreign concepts that have a vague ring of familiarity that resonates from within. The eastern-bound dissemination of Kemetic information mirrors itself in the shamanic temples and practices of the Far East. The brown peoples of Asia now stake claim to knowledge that is inherently African in its origin and hold dear its secret tenets. They too have been convinced that African peoples are inferior, not even acknowledging the origin of their own melanated skin as coming from the base of the Nile.
The far-reaching and deleterious effects of scientific colonialism created a conceptual incarceration, or a mental imprisonment, for both the descendants of Europeans and Africans, as well as world citizens that have been subjected to the imperial domination of the oppressive colonizers. Collectively, our minds have been grafted to think that Europeans are superior and Africans are inferior. The ancient Kemetic adage, “As a man thinketh, so is he,”[1] speaks well to the fact that Europeans now believe themselves to be so superior that they feel that they can dominate the world from their own megalomaniacal pedestal of power. Africans, and their Diasporic descendants, now conceptually embrace their status of inferiority and navigate through the universe as victims of this diabolic manipulation of truths.
It is quite one thing to steal information from someone to appear to be as intelligent as they are. It is quite another monumental task altogether to steal that information and then to depict the original authors as being infantile and moronic. To even conceive of such a reality one must be steeped in a sense of inferiority that is so overwhelming that it perpetuates the diabolical and systematic oppression of other human beings. It is that diseased perception that has ruled and controlled the wisdom of the ages for centuries. It is also that very perception that people of African descent must vehemently deny to reclaim our spiritual heritage, to re-ascend to our position of intellectual power, and to revitalize our current state of consciousness, as the title of Nobles’ work implies.
Copyright 2004 Scottie Lowe
[1] This is a prime example of integrated modification in that the verbiage and content of ancient African thought has been distorted to appear that the material originated from some sort of Shakespearean sage.
