It's Your Thinking Stupid! Change it and Change the World.

This picture is of the justices of the modern day Ghanaian Supreme Court. No your eyes are not deceiving you. The learned justices of the highest court of Ghana, an independent African nation, still choose to wear the traditional horsehair wig and scarlet robes of their former British colonizers. This is disturbing but not uncharacteristic of the mindset that continues to allow our minds to be colonized and illustrates the single greatest obstacle to Total Black Empowerment - our thinking!

Lets be clear on what this blog is not about. I did not write it or intend it to be critical of Ghana or her chosen form of government. If it is true, however, that a picture is worth a thousand words then the above picture speaks volumes. I use it as an illustration of a larger and I believe a far more important point.

Ghana is a sovereign nation having gained its independence from the British in 1957. Sixty years after independence the trappings of British rule still abound. The legal system is British in form and based on the British common law - hence the horsehair wig.

Before the arrival of the wily, gold seeking European there was the Ashanti Empire. This massive confederation of African states had a functioning system of governance which included a legal system in many ways superior to that of the European.

So the question is why continue the trappings of the oppressor after independence has been achieved? Some might argue that the system of the colonizer is the only game in town. But is it? Do we really mean to say that in six decades we could not develop a system better suited to our needs than that of the European? Better yet could we not at least have gotten rid of the horsehair wig? Why have we not tried? What worked for us before our unfortunate encounter with the European?

The answer is that we, in some way, even if only subconsciously, still believe in the superiority of European culture. That's right I said it. We believe in the superiority of European culture. But not because it is actually superior but because we have been taught to believe it is. We appear to believe this despite the fact that in less than five hundred years this culture has given the world prisons, machine guns, atomic bombs, climate change, polluted rivers and streams, the near decimation of the rain forests, nuclear waste, the extinction of thousands of species of animals, chattel slavery, scientific racism, white supremacy, eugenics, space debris and wholesale environmental contamination. Clearly the claim that European culture is superior is both undeserved and premature.

Once again it boils down to our thinking. Having been deprived of the knowledge and importance of our own Authentic Ancestral Culture we have adopted and now applaud and emulate the culture that is diametrically opposed to that of our ancestors.

In America we don't wear the horsehair wig we just proclaim at every opportunity that this is our country and our Constitution when in fact this is the Native American's country and the Constitution only recognized us as slaves (without using the word) worth 2/3 of a white man.

It's Your Thinking Stupid! Change it and Change the World.

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Johnnie Cordero holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Doctorate in Jurisprudence. He is the author of Total Black Empowerment: A Guide to Critical Thinking in the Age of Trump. His new book Theodicy and The Power of the African Will is sheduled for release in October 2017.