16. Black supremacy.
In the skewed thinking of some, African equality is equal black superiority. That having to compete on a leveled playing field is somehow unfair to the mediocre people who previously benefited from white supremacy. STAND AFRICA rejects that spurious thinking.
17. Retaliation for past wrong doing.
There is no time for revenge or retaliation. As the white supremacist power structure has proven itself to be the scourge of the earth by mismanaging the worlds resources, abusing the environment and mistreatment, abuse, and exploitation of much of the worlds population, the world is in a sad state of affairs. The time going forward needs to be spent righting the wrongs of the greedy, trying to heal the planet and to restore the strength and dignity to those who have been weakened by parasites.
18. Reparations.
Reparations will never happen in any true and meaningful way. The United States will never pay reparations to African Americans who are descendants of slaves. There will be inadequate, empty gestures in an effort to make African Americans be quiet, but the U.S. and other western countries would go bankrupt if they paid what they truly owe. If the United States paid reparations to African Americans for slavery, it would open the door to the possibility of being liable for the Jim Crow period, the fallacy of separate but equal, and all the other government sponsored evils thrusted upon black America throughout the history of that nation. The destroyed fortunes of African Americans caused by white rioting in cities like Tulsa Oklahoma and Charleston North Carolina would set a precedent for millions to base their claims on. Families of the murdered, wrongly imprisoned, and exiled Black Panthers would have basis to file claims. Every African American person who was denied a home loan because of government sponsored red lining could file a grievance. It would allow anyone who received an unfair prison sentence as a result of the government passing sentencing laws that helped prison corporations make billions of dollars to file claims. And the list goes on. The United States could never pay enough to repair what it has done, and is still doing to the African American community. Once opened, real reparations is a door that can never be closed.
If the floodgates of American reparations are ever opened, France, Belgium and the European countries that participated in the horrors of slavery, colonization of African countries, and exploitation of Africa for its natural and human resources would go bankrupt if they ever had to pay monetarily for their crimes. They would not only be liable for what happened during the period of colonization, but also for the western sponsored murder, genocide, and political interference designed to keep African nations poor, politically unstable and dependent upon the west.
This is not just about the past sins of the western world. It is about what is still happening today. Reparations will never be paid to Africans in any meaningful way. White supremacist western powers are happy to return statues, mask and other artifacts to African museums while ignoring the trillions of dollars that are regularly being extracted from the continent.
While western countries have returned stolen art that was taken from Africa, they have not, and will not offer to return the trillions of dollars being sucked out of Africa every year.
Seeking reparations in a true and meaning way is an exercise in futility. It’s only value is its ability to expose and continue to shine a critical spotlight on the genocidal atrocities that Africans around the world have suffered for centuries.
19. Does not promote one economic system or form of government over another.
A young man, with what sounded like a French accent, asked the president of Ghana to comment on the president of another African country and his style of governance. The young man referred to this other president as a “benevolent dictator”. The president of Ghana, after speaking about democracy in his own country, declined to comment on what was happening in other African countries. The long protracted question posed by the young man was based on the wrong assumptions that democracy in itself is good and dictatorship in itself is bad. No system of governance is good or bad in itself. Good governance is the key. In other words, how the government is administered is what makes it a good or a bad system. Thinking of dictatorship as bad, and democracy as good focuses on the potential abuses that dictatorship can bring and ignores the same abuses when thinking about democracy. To say without reservation that dictatorship or any other system of government is bad in itself is to assume that the associated potential abuses are necessarily going to happen. Likewise, to say that democracy or any other form of government is good in itself is to assume the potential abuses will never happen.
There are two factors that can be considered in evaluating whether the form of government being practiced in a particular country is good or not. The first is if the vast majority of the people of that country are happy and have their needs met and are benefitting from that countries governance. In other words, is the government serving its citizens well? Is the government delivering on its promise to provide for the basic safety and welfare of its citizens? Maslow’s original “Hierarchy of needs” outlines five categories or levels of human needs. The base lower level of needs are physiological, such as food, shelter and clothing. The second level is safety and security, which include social and financial security, medical care, employment, and law and order. Friendship, intimacy, trust and acceptance make up the third level which are the social needs for love and belonging. The need for self-respect, dignity and the respect of others are part of the fourth level of esteem needs. The fourth level also includes prestige, independence, achievement and the feeling of accomplishment. And finally, self-actualization completes the five levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Self -actualization consist of needs such as realization of personal fulfillment, potential, growth and accomplishment. In other words “To be all that one can be”. If the governing body of a country creates the environment in which the vast majority of people within that society are having their needs met and are happy, it does not matter what ideological form that government takes.
The second factor to be considered is the governments treatment of others. Is the government a good citizen of the world? Is the government contributing to the wellbeing of its neighbors and the world at large? Or, at the very least, is the government not causing harm? Conversely, is the government providing happiness to its people at the expense of other people and nations, i.e. slavery, colonialism, exploitation of foreign countries and their resources? If a democratic nation domestically and globally promotes democracy, fairness, equality and freedom, but acts in an aggressive and abusive manner towards other nations and people outside its own borders, then democracy as it is practiced in that country is not good. While promoting the facade of freedom and equality, western countries raped, pillaged, and exploited the people and natural resources of the rest of the world, especially the African continent. Any country that promotes its own form of government as good while orchestrating political and financial destabilization and exploiting other nations natural and human resources in order to enrich itself makes that country nothing more than a parasite.
With no consideration of the economic system or the form of government, STAND AFRICA supports any government that meets the afore mentioned criteria through good governance.