Superstition in Africa - a short video

"When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer...Superstition ain't the way." - Stevie Wonder

Dear friends,

The short video on the link below seems very disturbing, in this day and age. Yet, if we look at the behavior of African peoples in the Americas, we can truly understand that "Culture hides more than it reveals". And interestingly enough, what it conceals best, it does so most effectively from its own participants.

In explaining that concept, I always point to the practice of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, when they placed bombs in soda cans that they then would place on their roadsides, knowing that young, urban Americans of the pre- “Don’t litter” era often played a street game called"Kick the can". As a result, a lot of American soldiers lost their feet and other parts of their lower limbs. The Viet Cong fully understood the quote mentioned above.

At any rate, while this video by the New York Times, a story about an Albino population in an African territory, tries to put a racial slant on the topic, wih it's use of the terms "black" and "white", the real problem is: an unwillingness for African peoples to let go of so many superstitions that we've carried on for far too long.

We must learn to confront our fears, inadequacies, and insecurities, so that we can relate to each other and all that is around us, in a more thoughtful way, as opposed to surrendering to our aforementioned fears, inadequacies, and unexplainable “feelings”, in order to enhance the conditions of our lives. That was exactly what our ancestors had to, literally, fight to do, in order to gain freedom from chattel slavery (i.e., those of our ancestors who weren't slavemasters themselves in the antebellum South).

G. Djata Bumpus
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/06/06/world/1194817478108/albino-killings-in-tanzania.html