Falsification Of Afrikan Consciousness ~ Dr Amos Wilson

And uh, so, uh, without further ado, I'm sure we all know Amos Wilson, the great work he's done in the community, and I don't have to go through a whole lot of announcing. Let's bring the brother one.

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Yes, sir. Thank you very much. It's, uh, beautiful. So, very good. And I feel very honored to have been invited to spend this time with you this evening to talk a bit about, uh, consciousness. Uh, the falsification of African consciousness. Some of you may be familiar with that book, among a number of the publications that we have out there. Of course, when I say "we," I've referred to African World Info Systems, co-founder, Brother Survival Plaza, and our co-partner, Sister Derek Dolores, and, uh, host of friends, Robert Dawson, Joe Gillian, and others who work day in and day out endlessly trying to get out what we perceive as some pertinent information. And, uh, I'm very happy to acknowledge your response to our publications and to also be aware of the fact that some people are expecting our forthcoming publication called "Blueprints with Black Power."

Yes, we, uh, really did about two months too much. We were delayed a bit by a sort of a slight, uh, illness here that I suffered. So, we've thrown back the next couple of months, but we, we have it all together. We're just editing and getting it ready. We've got about five, six hundred pages of reading for you to do, so that takes a bit of time. And it may seem, uh, quite a bit, but I tell people, African people are as complicated as any other people. And if it takes libraries to cover the activities of other people, it takes libraries to cover the activities of African people. We're not a people whose state of mind and history and culture can be covered in ten short pages. There is much, much work to be done. And, of course, we adjust, even in that volume, then really touching on many areas which have to be developed further by people who are already working in the field, and of course, by, uh, our future scholars and future workers, leaders, and just everyday people.

We will soon follow that up, of course, with "Educating Black Children for the 21st Century." Frankly, which we've already written. We, we wrote it before, uh, uh, "Blue Friendship Black Power." That sort of got diverted into the Black Power orientation here because, in a sense, we recognize that to a great extent, many of the things and many of the most important things that we talk about, many of the problems that we complain about, are problems that stem from our relative powerlessness. We may talk about the European being an ice man, talked about him protecting his genes, talk about him in a number of ways. But in the end, as we often say, the European does what he does because he can do it. He can do it and get away with it. And really, it doesn't matter whether he does it in an effort to protect his gene pool, or in an effort to warm his cold-bloodedness, or for any other reason. It really doesn't matter. It's that he does it, and he does it to us. And at the end point, then, if we are to solve this problem, we are to neutralize his ability to do to us when he will. It doesn't matter why, as long as we can stop him when he tries. But to stop him means that we have to gain equal power, or greater power, or the power to end his ability to rule the world and to rule us. That means that we must become students of power.

And I know that strikes some of us estranged because one of the reasons why we are relatively powerless is that someone has made us feel that power is not a gift of black people. The power should not be wielded by black people. That power somehow is naturally associated with, uh, white folk. That power and the pursuit of power is something sinful. However, we must recognize that power is essential to life. Like a battery, without power, we are dead. We are unable to function. We are unable to enhance our lives, or to even protect our lives. So, a people who do not develop power, who cannot exercise power, are a people who are ultimately headed for genocide and death. So, we are going to look at that and look in a practical way as to how we should gain power and what power we already have. Because to a great extent, we are not a powerless people. That's the reason why I use the word "relevant." We are not aware of the power that's in our hands. And to a great extent, in our ignorance, we give power to others. We are like the delights who threw their gold rings and gold of various types into the melting bat to make a golden cast, a golden god, then kneeled down to worship it and deceived it as having power over them. African people, with the wealth of the world at their feet, with minds and bodies second to none, have given that power and that wealth over to another people, made that people powerful, and now are on their knees in front of those people, begging for salvation, begging for jobs, and begging for food, and begging for their very lives. The white man is the god that we have made, and the white man is a god that we must destroy.

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Why and how is it possible for us to be the second largest congregation of people on this earth, to a number, and probably approaching a billion people, only outnumbered, passed by the Chinese, to be ruled over by a fraction of the earth's population? How is it possible that you can starve over land that contains mental wealth and all other kind of wealth? How is it that you can see yourself dependent when other nations, such as Japan and European nations, depend on your wealth, and this nation depended and still depends to a great extent on your labor and your productivity? How is it that this was twisted around so that those who depend are seen as independent, and those who support are seen as dependent? We can only be in this situation because our consciousness has been turned backwards, has been falsified, because our consciousness has been twisted and bent out of shape. Ultimately, we recognize that power and wealth does not come from a people's land. They do not come from your land. If wealth and power came from land, then African people should be the wealthiest, the most powerful people on earth today. That's not the case. As a matter of fact, you haven't, you're backwards. Japan, which has no natural wealth, is one of the most powerful economic nations today. Europe is in a similar position. Ultimately, then, ladies and gentlemen, we must recognize that wealth and power is contained in the human brain. In its wealth and power is contained in consciousness, not in land, not in trees, not in minerals, but in your mind. In fact, I have said somewhat facetiously that perhaps Africa and African people would be better off had we not had gold in our lands and not had minerals in our lands. And why do I say that? Because perhaps we would have been forced more to use our minds and create our consciousness for gaining wealth and power. That's all the Japanese have. My consciousness, because you know, when you've got a mind and you're a bit clever, you can calm the joker out of his land. You can make him give up your gold, you know. Yeah, you can use words. You can take a boat, you know. This is a horrible, you know.

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To use words and to manipulate words and make people take billions of dollars the way you do. African-American people, and they can't wait to get it to wipeouts. That's right.

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Yes. That do not cost any more than about four dollars to manufacture.

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Yes. A pair of sneakers from which Indonesian women are paid $1.35 a day to manufacture. Pairs of sneakers for which the $20 million which was paid Air Jordan could have made the whole Indonesian workforce that made them. Understand what I'm saying? And a fellow will go out and kill to get them, rob and steal, destroy nations and communities. Why? Because of the consciousness that has been created in them by another people. That's why you have to first seek the kingdom of your consciousness before you do anything else.

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Ultimately, the power of man is the power of the mind.

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That's what distinguishes us. The ability to eat, sleep, and do all those other things we share with the rest of him, the rest of nature. But consciousness, human consciousness, is a distinguishing factor. It's very important, then, that we come to understand what this thing called consciousness is about. Now, I'm going to probably be a little bit abstract and conceptual for a while. Stay alive. Don't hang in. Hang with me.

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There are some people out here who want to make us think.

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That to be African is to be non-abstract. You know, to be non-conceptual. That is not to think conceptually, to think abstractly, to think analytically and critically, to think logically, to think sequentially, to think linearly. They tell us that's a European way of thinking. That is pathetic. That is pathetic. It goes against even our whole history and experience. I'm going to come back to why some people take this approach. I think it's a dangerous approach. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Because the chief characteristics of Europeans who rule the world may be that they tend to be objective and analytic and conceptual and abstract and rational. You cannot assume because bad people may use these things that you use these things yourself is bad. You say we have to separate the methodology from the people who use it. We have to recognize, then, that any form of thinking, whether it is linear thought, whether we talked about abstract thinking and conceptual thinking, theoretical thinking, is thinking that belongs to African people. And it is made and Africanized for African people when we use the thought to advance African interests. It is not the style of thought that is African or non-African. It is the use to which the thought is put. The European used abstract thinking and conceptual thinking to capture and control African people. It does not mean that we cannot use abstract thinking and conceptual thinking to remove his control over us.

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See, but this is what they would like for us to think. That the most powerful tools that they used are not truths that are for use of African people. And when we fall for that, we literally then submit to being ruled over. The African brain has two sides to it, where every other people's brain is left side and a right side. And if the right side is the size of spirituality, the side of feeling and sensuality, the intuitive side, the holistic side, and so forth. We also have a left side, though. This is a side that uses languages as key instruments for dealing with the world. The society that objectifies the world, breaks it down into its various parts and functions and relations, is the side that deals with the world in terms of logic, dogs, and mathematics, principles, hypotheses, and other things of this nature. This is just as much African as is the right side. I don't understand how people can talk about Africa's being right-sided as an intrinsic characteristic when we talk about the precision of the pyramids and the mathematics of Egypt and so forth. All of these things which demonstrates clearly left-brain orientations of thought. The other thing, then, that we must recognize, then, is that the race that's going to ultimately come out on top is the race that learns to use both sides of its head. Yes. One that knows how to use them proportionately and interactively as a way of solving problems. I often give the analogy of, uh, Star Trek. Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy, his name, Captain Kirk. And you see almost a brain issue going on here, left side, right side dichotomy, dividing line. Spock, the left-brain man, objective, cold, hard, factual, analytical, logical, unfeeling. We have a little problem with Spock because it doesn't quite seem human yet. He does have a powerful intellect, and he's able to solve a vast number of problems, even given his half-man nature. But we have McCoy also, who probably isn't being too human, too full of feeling, too emotional, too overflowing, too quick to jump to emotional conclusions. But yet, he has his value as well. He's the healer, the one who has empathy, who brings to bear empathy and his healing knowledge to operate. And these two can't quite understand each other. They don't quite get along because they operate from different arenas. But then there's Captain Kirk, who's in the middle there, who is, if he were a brain part, we would call him the corpus callosum. That is that brain part that mediates between the left and the right brain and transmits information back and forth between the two, coordinates information, and permits, then, the holistic brain to interact with the particularistic brain, permits the holistic brain to throw a whole big picture of the world so that the left brain can break it down into its operational parts. And they then both together resolve the problems and issues confronting the thinking human being. And so, you see, Captain Kirk did what? Mediating between these two forces, intuition, feeling, holistic perception, objective thinking, analysis, and confronting a problem that often requires both characteristics, both feelings, and both analysis, both empathy, both spirituality, and logic. You see? And therefore, these three, abandoned, these three consciousnesses interacting together, resolved problems after problem, which has fascinated us year after year after year. Kirk, then, who exhibited his own personality, both sides of this equation. He can think and reason and so forth, but he's also not without feeling, you see, not without intuition. And in a sense, that makes him captain of the ship. We have races and nations on this earth which tend to be one-sided. One is filled with religion and spirit and so forth and so on, and that's right, anyway, but technologically backwards, and often ruled over and abused by those who are technologically advanced, robbed and exploited and degraded, despite their spirituality, despite their sensuality and feeling, despite their music, despite their love, despite all of this. Others use them and abuse them, take their wealth. Then we got some others who are technological with no human soul, no love, no spirit, who ultimately are deadly, and whose continued rule ultimately represents the death of the earth. Yes, death. We are made to think that it is the criminal black male that's the threat to the world. A thousand, ten thousand black mothers and killers that fellas are dope cannot do to this earth, but so-called civilized, thing white men will do.

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For the greatest threat to life on earth itself is the white male. Yes. Yes. Who has dedicated his whole treasury, raised and robbed the earth of its wealth, created starvation, want, deprivation, in order to invest in the creation of death machines, vast armies, advanced chemical and germ warfare systems, so as to destroy people by the millions, and perhaps to destroy life itself. And yet, we have some people who see these people as someone to be emulated, sanity, who see their ultimate goal as sleeping with them and marrying them and being a martial.

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You must recognize that if you here hold your own life dear, and the life of your loved ones, and life on earth dear, you must bring an end to the rulership of this earth by white males. It's in your own self-preserved interest to do so. You must recognize the European society is pathological. Yes. Because negroes have a difficult time seeing white folk is crazy on earth, with the longest criminal record of any people. One day we'll talk about our difficulty in seeing this. I have to have to talk about it tonight. But again, it says something about consciousness, doesn't it? That you can look right at something and not see it, or see it for what it isn't. Yes. You look right at the depth of destruction of Indian nations, the death and destruction of African nations, the death and destruction of Australian people, the death and destruction of every people wherever these people have gone, and yet you see these people and being incredible. It's an amazing situation, isn't it? It's an amazing situation. People who degrade us in every possible way, and yet we see them as not pathological. We want to trick our consciousness. But of course, you know, the statement is often made that in order for us to be in the condition we're in, we have to have been robbed of our common sense. Yeah. Just common sense. In order for us to be in the condition we're in, we must have lost our capacity to see the obvious. It wouldn't be possible for us to be in the shape we're in if we had the power just to see what was right in front of our eyes. We must see it for what it isn't. You know, people often talk about the abused child. And we can go on and talk about, you know, the symptoms of abused children. People who've been abused, sexually abused, and otherwise physically abused. We can talk about how people who've been abused as children, strangely enough, and paradoxically, are more likely to enter into abusive relationships as adults. In other words, women who've been physically abused as children are more likely, and twice the more than twice as likely, to end up in marriages where they will be abused back, be abused by their husbands, to people who are not people who've been abused in children. Sexually, will be more than likely than otherwise to be approached to engage in pornographic activities and make pornographic pictures for being themselves. More likely to be abusive. It presents the abuser somehow is infected, the one abused, with his or her disease. It seems as if people who've been abused seem to be attracted by abuse and attracted through abuse. This is one of the paradoxes we wrestle with in psychology and psychiatry. And we can then talk about how people have been abused, self-alienated, and self-aging. Often, people who've been abused, women, may their life more than likely, many than otherwise, enter into prostitution and enter into other kinds of, uh, addictive behavior. And we often apply this to ourselves as a people. We talk about our self-alienation, our self-hatred, our abuse within our group, our self-abuse and self-destructiveness. But, you know, we often forget that those who abused us are as pathological as we are. You see? In other words, the abuser is pathological to begin with. For if he were normal, he would not have what abused in the first place. And therefore, for people to abuse you, to misuse you, to degrade us, and do the things that we talk about day in and day out for them to do this means that they themselves are pathological, self-alienated, and ultimately self-destructing. But we forget about that. We think after they do all of these things to us, we still somehow perceive them as being psychologically healthy. You have to be sick to think that way. But it's a strange thing. And their reasons for it, of course, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that they're in a position to manipulate our consciousness so that their sickness can be seen as health. You see? And our attempts to gain health can be perceived as sickness. We have a people, then, who have the power to redefine sin when it comes to them, to make it look like goodness. You see? And to make blacks who think when they're being good, they're really sinning. Oh, yes. People.

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Who make their criminality legitimate, and therefore pretend that they're not criminals. So that's what power can do for you. You see? You make the law, then you legitimize your misbehavior, and then you tell people, "Young misbehavior is what's legal." And therefore, the white man's criminality is hidden behind the law. It's hidden behind rules and regulations. Yes. We see it in South Africa today. You go in and you rob and steal the people's land. We see it, of course, in America. You go in and you ride and you kill people and take their land, and then you write a constitution and you set up a bunch of laws that legitimize theory.

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And with those people then seek to get that land back, they are criminalized and called lawbreakers and outlaws. Okay. And now they gotta get their wealth back according to your laws. And so we're faced with that in South Africa today. You gotta go to a South African court by a bunch of run.

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But what amazes me, we're willing to abide by that and go with that because we say it's legal. And therefore, the people who took it and wrote the rules, you know, couldn't be criminals. It's an. So you can't see through the games. So the white criminal acts behind laws and rules. That's why I often say that the major problems that we are confronting out here, these breeds and in our communities as African people, is not the result so much of the misbehavior of a segment of our youth, but as a result of the misbehavior of law-abiding, church-going black folks.

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Yes. For obeying the laws of criminals and the rules of criminals.

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Yes. And following the theology of crooks and things.

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And letting them define what is good and what is bad, as if they would not define the good and the bad in a way that works to their advantage. And as a sin, unthinkingly following the rules and unthinkably being good and bad according to their definition, and wondering why the gooder we are, the more we suffer.

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The more we pray, the poorer we get. Right? The more we sing and moan is down and pick up a [ __ ] the more pain we suffer.

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There must be a problem there somewhere.

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Apparently, you're working according to somebody else's definition of God and Jesus. Yes. Your, yes, trick-or-treating people. Yes. Who think it's a sin to spend their money in a way that benefits their own children. Yes. Who think it's vestulous to be colorblind.

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I don't pay any attention to the race. I don't discriminate according to color, really. Your problem is not related to you're not discriminating according to color. You think that's the source of problems in America? Black people saying, "Cover." Do you think you're not seeing color as black folk is going to transform America? Are you kidding? It's the other people see your color that's the problem.

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So, of course, in typical Negro fashion, you're gonna make the sacrifice nature. You're going to bear the cross of other people's sins. And because they create the sin of degrading us in terms of our color, we're going to carry the cross of not seeing color. Yes. This is the problem. Yes. Church-going people who feel guilty when they discriminate and says, "I'm going to put my dollar here because this is a black merchant." You can't feel like you're doing something wrong. Feel uneasy with that. But you gotta feel that way in order to support the system. I'm telling you. Yeah. You gotta feel that way. You gotta feel righteous and good when you smile at the Korean faces and the faces, though the people, little chills have got to run up your spine when they recognize you by name.

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You know. Yeah. Get somebody's feet to use that. You know, that's your problem. A friend of mine went by a church here the other day. One group of church, one church over here in the Bronx bought a $1.3 million dollar building. You know, they lost like churches, man, because they can just sell them. Everybody big theaters and stuff like that, knowing they're gonna pay that bill, man. Burn that market ahead of time. And my friend told me, the bishop, the, uh, deacon runs out. I'm talking about God and Jesus and everything. And he says, "You know, it's just hard for me to deal with this when I look at this building here that you've bought and see no black people on the construction group whatsoever." Yeah. None whatsoever. I see that's the Koreans and other ethnics coming out. To which the deaconess, "Oh, you're into that stuff, nation? You're into that blacksmith?" Yes. He feels holy. He feels righteous in overlooking the welfare of his own people. The church is in the midst of a black neighborhood, surrounded by black folk, and he forgets the rule, his own rule, that says, "Love thy neighbor as I felt." And he forgets to answer the question in the affirmative, and I, "My brother's keeper?" Yes. He forgets all the Bible, forgets all the rules when it comes to his own people, and feels holier is the voice against them. There was the shepherd who rounded up the sheep, brought them to the fold, and recognized that the bringing them to the fold, that there was one sheep missing, left out in the cold, left out being vulnerable to vicious animals, wolves, and other animals, left out alone, hungry, cold. Surprised. That shepherd then left those sheep that were enclosed and made secure and well-fed back, and went back out into the wilderness to search and find the lost sheep and to bring it back to the fold. Ladies and gentlemen, that charity is best when given to those who need it most. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, often in order that that shepherd go and find that sheep, he had to discriminate. To tell the difference between those that were taken care of and those that were not. By that, I mean then, discrimination is an important ability in human behavior. To be non-discriminative is not being sinless. To be unable to tell differences and respond in terms of differences is not being Christian. To not be able to tell the difference between those who are more in need of your money and support and those who are not is not Christian charity and is not holy. Someone have told you, I would have told you that in these churches, that to be blind to differences, to be unresponsive to differences in need and so forth, is to be holy. It is sinful and it creates sin. And so the shepherd, using his discrimination, ministered to the lamb that was most in need. Why am I saying that? Because they have said anything. I'm preaching to you tonight because you don't read your own Bible. Now, you don't read it. You let the preacher set you up and you read into it. The shepherd worked based on discrimination and was able then to achieve. How does that apply then to our situation? If we look around America today, we will see all America's ethnic groups of children are not equally in need of our administration. There are white children, 10 percent of whom are poor, according to the statistics. White families. Their black children, 50 percent of whom are poor. Well over, between 30 and 40 of the families. Before Koreans in New York, 65 percent of the families own a business or part of the business. And yet, we, in our sanctimoniousness, does not organize the spending of our money and the movement of our wealth so that it feeds black people and black children who are most in need of it. And therefore, we enrich the wealthy and impoverish the poor, who happen to be us and our children. And we wonder why they hate us, and they attack us, and they kill us, and they destroy our families by selling drugs to them, and make our lives miserable, and make us fear and have anxiety when we walk among them. We ask why they do not respect us. We must ask ourselves why we do not respect them. But you see, until you ask, until you start just going into that church kicking and screaming and look at what it means to be good, and then ask, "Good for whom?" and "Good for what?" Not just being good, but being good, but in whose good does this operate? To whose good does it operate? You'll find if you examine the behavior that has been defined for you as being good, you'll find that that behavior is ultimately there for you. Yeah. And good for what? Somebody else. You gotta answer the question. You gotta be analytical, though, to do it. You think, but people don't want you to be that way because then you see, you ask questions, and you begin to see through games, and you can't be manipulated. You see? And the tables begin to what? Turn. And the system begins to be revolutionized. And then you feel the spirit and follow the rules that they are laid down unthinkingly. Does not mean that you are not hardly responsible for the sin and degradation that characterizes the world today. People who are religious must be alive to the world. They must not throw away their minds. There are some preachers who will make you think that you, even you, can do nothing. You know, just.

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Yes. It.

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Whose purpose is to think and reason and know and learn. To say then that it is a sin to do these things, that use this brain is a blasphemy. It's saying that you know better than God what to do. And yet, we've had some people change and twist it like this until they're afraid to think and to reason. They think they're challenging God if they use their mind. Yeah. And so they, like the lambs, rest in the hands of their so-called spiritual leaders who suffer for every nickel and dime they can make. Yeah. Who can only relate to the world through feeling and emotion, but not the reason, the logic about. And therefore, can be manipulated. Who think wearing a bad back sneakers is going to make them soar through the air and dump basketballs. Amazing situation. You have to remove the analytical ability to get people into that state of mind. Yeah. To make them respond to that kind of thing. That's why if you look at those ads, look at how they flash, how quickly the frames change. No time for thinking. Just image, image, mentioned music. It mentioned music. That's all. No time to think. Feel it. Then we get some asking people who say African people are spiritual people. We are. We are. But we are not just spirits, okay? But see, some people use that so they won't have to think.

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The Bible says, "Man does not live by bread alone." But it didn't say he could live without bread. Yes. Some people confuse things, you know. If man should not live without spirit, certainly. But man still must hustle for his bread. For a man is both what? Spirit and body. Understand? And until we die, that's our dilemma. Perhaps after life, we may be all spirit. But while on earth, we are combinations of them. And they both then must be dealt with. But there are those who want to lock us in the closet of spirituality and leave the materials and everything else that God also has created for the use of man to certain men, not themselves. Do not feel entitled to it. And it makes you think that to gain it and to control it and to use it is somehow pursuing sin. Well, that way also where it will be. But then we'll still talk about though consciousness and false consciousness, you see, being created by major institutions.

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Now, when we talk about consciousness, we want to distinguish a little bit from the state of being conscious. Hang in with me here. To state it, because I'm going to run through it. The state of being conscious refers to a level of physiological and psychological arousal or alertness. To be conscious, to be alert, to achieve a certain level of alertness or arousal, to be psychologically alert and physiologically aroused. And we are conscious when this level of arousal and alertness permits us to be aware of, to know, to perceive, to sense, experience, think, remember, recall, both events that go on inside of ourselves and eventually go on outside of ourselves. We are conscious when our level of arousal and alertness permits us to willfully select to attend some things rather than others. We have a choice, and we make choices. We're conscious, then, when we are able to deliberately choose and execute an action in response to an environmental condition or to our personal goals. This is what the state of being conscious is about. It makes certain behavior possible. How the conscious person will behave, for what reason they will behave, and to what end, or for what goal they will behave, has more to do with what we call consciousness, you see. One makes you able to behave, you say, conscious, being conscious. It enables one to pay attention to, uh, perceive, to feel, and so forth. The other one, though, is more about what you're going to do with it. How are you going to use those abilities, and what goals are you going to pursue? This is where we enter into consciousness. Consciousness, then, as a mental state, enables or empowers the conscious person to achieve certain ends. His consciousness is a form of power. It's not just the state of knowledge. So, a lot of people like to talk about consciousness. It is merely a state of knowledge, being aware of something. But consciousness allows you to do certain things, you see. It enables and empowers. Means the ability to do, able to do, to change, to affect, to influence. And therefore, consciousness enables us to achieve certain things, and it then, therefore, is a power. Consciousness is trouble. I want you to keep that in mind because this is the whole point of falsifying it. What type of power, how much power will be exhibited by consciousness depends upon its organization, its level, you see. In other words, certain consciousness, says consciousness has power. We have to recognize this. Consciousness is active and goal-oriented, and it's all-inclusive. So you can be conscious, but consciousness includes being conscious and more. It includes even the influence of the unconscious, because consciousness covers all levels of consciousness, you see. There are many levels of consciousness within the state of consciousness, you see. Sleep is a state of consciousness. Being awake is the state of consciousness. There are many states of consciousness contained within the envelope of consciousness as a whole, you see. And what state of consciousness you're in will determine what you're able to do. Keep that in mind. In other words, different states of consciousness gives you different powers. And if you want to achieve certain types of power, you have to achieve certain levels of consciousness in order to exercise that power. There are certain things that you can't do while you are asleep, even though it is consciousness. It is a level of consciousness. You can dream while you're asleep. You can restore your body while asleep, because it's a part of the function of sleep to restore, to repair, to to build up energy and so forth, to heal. That's a part of that function, just to repair it, to function there, what we call to rest, to consolidate experiences which we, we experience as dreams. But you can't get up and play basketball while you're sleeping. You can't do the kind of work you do when you're awake. But of course, when you're awake, you cannot do the things you do when what you are asleep, you see. So different states of consciousness allow different possibilities. And consequently, then, when you want to control people's possibilities, when you want to control your own possibilities, you have to gain the capacity to control your own state of consciousness. You have to know what state of consciousness is appropriate to getting where you want to go. That's why everybody hanging in with me a little bit. Hang on. We're gonna, we gotta come back to earth in a minute.

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We gotta go do this for a while. We can't be afraid of abstractions and theory. The people who rule us talk theory all the time. Yes. People who rule us know the word and how to use the word. The people who rule us think abstractly, think logically, and grow to change the sequences of doubt. And if we're going to defeat them, if we're going to neutralize them, we must do it on their own terms. And some of you know and have read the developmental psychology of the black child, "Awaken the Natural Genius of Black Children," you will know that we've been given a natural head start in these qualities. That's right. This black skin is just not a color. This black skin signifies a totality of the history and experience of African people. It signifies the firstness of the African race. Yes. It signifies a people who are the first to walk on this earth, and talk on this earth, to organize politically and socially, to discover its mathematics of science and architecture. Those first experiences are represented in the innate behavior of black children, who also walk before other children, also talk before other children talk, who are also able to coordinate their minds and bodies intelligently in an organized and intentional factor and way before other children. The black child is not a colored version of a white child. The history and experience of African people is contained, all of it, in the genes, in our bodies, and in the bodies of our children. The genes that determine how we would behave, to extend the foundations for our behavior, the foundations for our intellect, and so forth, are not just chemical packets. They are capsulized forms of the history and experience of African people. And they are therefore present. And therefore, the whole past experience of African people is present in the body of African people today, and in the bodies of our children, and represents itself in their growth and in their development. And that history and experience of African people is not a duplicate, not a colored version of the history and experience of other people. In order to understand ourselves, we must understand that if we would support the natural head start that we have, we would not need head start in school today.

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So, what are we saying here about it? Consciousness. Consciousness is based on history, knowledge, identity, and perspective. To possess consciousness is to be possessed by consciousness. Consciousness represents itself in our bodies, takes over our body and our behavior, our feelings, and our emotions, and our tastes. In other words, we are a reflection of the consciousness that possesses us, the way the demons possess that little girl in "The Exorcist" and uses our bodies and manipulates our behavior in order to reach its goals and to satisfy itself. What is it made of then? We will just quickly indicate here some of the factors that determine the nature of consciousness and the power of consciousness. Consciousness as contents, perceived factual knowledge. That's a part of consciousness, you know. What we know, what we think we know, beliefs, attitudes, opinions, conditioned, uh, behavioral and emotional attendances, unconscious drives, the way we see ourselves, to see the world. This is, this refers to the contents of consciousness. That's which makes up consciousness. But it takes more than knowledge to be conscious. There are a lot of us who think we are conscious when we pack in a lot of black history into our brain. When we pack into our minds a lot of African history and culture, a lot of esoteric knowledge about African people, we figure we are conscious then. And to a degree, we are. But that's not the end all and be all of consciousness. Because ultimately, it is not only what you have and what you possess in terms of facts and knowledge, but what you do with what you have and what you possess. How you use what you have and what you possess to achieve certain and to solve for problems. How you organize that knowledge, how you organize those facts, how you manipulate the attitudes and the other things. That is important. Not just having them. So we have a lot of people, you see, who have concentrated a lot of time on stacking knowledge and information, but have not spent any time on how to utilize that information for their own advancement and to solve their own problems.

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So consciousness is not complete when it's just stacked with knowledge and information. Consciousness has to use what I call instrumentalities. Instruments, tools, which includes physical skills. You got to move. You got to behave. You see? Not only what got to know, you got to what? You see? You got to move to get things done. You got to work, behave, and act in the world. For knowledge without the capacity to act, to behave, you see, to influence the world, is almost useless. Knowledge is the foundation for action, you see. So you have another set of instruments, you see, that goes along with knowledge. The ability to move and act in the world. Physical skills, social and personal skills to interact with other people, to have self-control, to manipulate one's own consciousness, because consciousness is self-reflecting. Consciousness can look at itself, and looking at itself, can rearrange itself. It can look and say, "I am ignorant of this, and I know I am ignorant of this, therefore I should learn it." You see? Or I can look at itself as, "I know this, and therefore all I got to do is recall it into consciousness so that I may use it." You see? Consciousness, then, can look at itself, you see, and transform itself so that it may be more adequate to achieving its goals. And being adequate and appropriate is what it's about. Basement gentlemen, that's why you see consciousness must be self-observed, must be self-examining, you say, self-knowing. Because in the searching itself, and examining itself, and looking at itself in regards to its problems and issues, it transforms itself to be appropriate to resolving its problems. But people who do not look at themselves and observe themselves and and gain insight into themselves become behaviorally rigid and unable to flexibly deal with problems and issues. What do we mean by being appropriate? I just diverge for a second on that. I have like people talking about equal education. We want equal education. I want my children to have the same education, for the same education. What is the equal education for the same education? And this has confused my whole educational discussion. Why? Because I've told you before that when you look at the position of whites in the world, their educational goals must be conservative. Why? Because they already have the advantages. And therefore, they must be educated to do what? To keep them, to maintain them, okay? Or to widen them. This is not the position of African people. The very position of African people in the world, if we are going to complain about being under the bottom of social, economic, political ladders, wherever we find ourselves, even in our own countries, whether you're talking about the Caribbean or the continental Africa or what have you, even in our own nations, the African is still at the bottom of the ladder. We find East Indians, Arabs, whites, and every other ethnic group on top, even in nations where Africans are supposedly in control of the government.

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Yes. There's no African nation yet. Not yet. This abomination called South Africa is no African nation.

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Power. Power is not contained in elective office.

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Power is contained in ownership of resources, control of institutions, not government. I want you to understand that because you got some old politicians running around here right there telling you to elect him to power. It doesn't matter if Rangel is going to become the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, not free, not for us. It doesn't matter that Ron Brown is the Secretary of Commerce when you have no commerce. You have to be very hard if you do not own businesses and corporations. If the commerce you engage in doesn't even measure on the risk of scale of American economics, there's no way Ron Brown can represent your commercial interest. The only commercial interest right now he can represent are those people who are in charge of the commerce of America, and that's white folks, okay? It's not enough to have a black man in the position. He's got to have a constituency for which he works. He's got to represent black folk. Otherwise, it's no problem. There's no deal. It doesn't matter with Rangel being on the Ways and Means Committee if you don't have a constituency that you lose the power of that committee in ways other than vetting for more welfare. Then what is the point? He will serve the interests of the corporation and those that own the American economic establishment. Just understand that power is there. It's the people that own the corporations, that own the companies, that have a more direct influence on our lives than the government. Because when those people lay you off, what did the government do for you? That's right. These big corporations can make the greatest profits in their history, can be the most prosperous in their history, and at their very point of highest prosperity, decide they will lay off 10 to 20,000 people. And they lay off 10 and 20,000 people who are connected to families. They may destroy the lives of 50, 60,000 people in one fell swoop. And the government does not a damn thing about it. That's right. It is hiring and firing by corporations that governs our lives, not the government. It is the private government that the corporation is. Right. It is a private, non-democratic, authoritarian government that the corporation is, that has the greatest impact on our lives. And with that CEO and that small board of directors says, "You should dress this way, you should walk this way and talk this way, and wake up this time of morning, and be here this time, and do this, and do that." It is not the government that's governing your life. It is the owners of corporate America that's governing. And that is where the power is. But they want to deceive Negroes into thinking that the power lies in electing some old joker whose main reason for being there is to do the.

The bidding of those who own the corporation, right? And those who own and control the institutions. And therefore, if you are going to be in power as a people, you must own and control and be in charge of vital resources and so forth. Otherwise, you're just playing with yourself.

So we have in South Africa, the biggest joke run on the world today, making people think that handling those like African people both represents an advancement in the power of absolutely. Just the same way they running on African Americans, making you think because you vote, you're exercising power. The people who exercise the most power in this country and in this world are people you can't vote for. People you don't vote for, you can't vote them out of office, just as you don't vote them into office. And yet, it will be those people who will rule the world, not governments. Not governments, ladies and gentlemen. Governments will be getting a less and less ruling. Why? Because when you hear talk about the NAFTA agreements, when you hear talks about gas, when you hear other trade blocs, what are you talking about here? You're talking about people who are setting up a set of international rules and [Music] and arbitrating bodies who will make rules that local governments will have to follow. So that the government you're voting for is not the government that's running your life, but the government set up by some kind of ruling committee, some kind of international committee somewhere else. And those rules and those committees have been set up so that an interaction can occur between cooperation and the world can be made safe for a so-called private enterprise. And it's those people who are in control of that enterprise who are going to are in control of the world today. And national governments are less and less involved in the real control of their people. When the World Bank, when the IMF can dictate to African nations how they will spend their money, will dictate to them how their economy should be organized so that they can pay their impossible debt. Then African governments are not governing. It is the IMF and the World Bank that's coming. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we got to face you. You're hanging in with me. All right. [Applause] All right. I'm here to talk about us. So we can just let me. But you know, we don't have to go to Africa. You remember when a theme, some of you remember when they beam, I think it was, was the mayor and Big Mac came in and took over the budgetary responsibilities. At that point, being was just a figurehead. He was no longer there. It was the math committee that was determining how the money was to be spent, who was to be paid, who was not to be paid. You understand? When a man loses control over budget, really, what else is left? They tried to get to their predictions. Was there Julian running like hell to keep out of their crib? Yes. How many people are being laid off in New York City? Thousands. How many services are being cut back? You know what is going on. You know why this is occurring? Because the city is in debt. But indebted to whom? Right. We never ask that question. They borrow money. It borrows money. It borrows money in the form of what we call a bond. And yeah, running too much. Too many black people can't tell the difference between the stock and the bond. I run into black, uh, uh, economics majors and business majors who cannot distinguish between these two things. We just hear, "Dodgeball boxing went up, went down." Oh, yeah, okay. What does that mean? A bond, of course, is a debt. It's a promise by a corporation to pay back a certain amount of debt over a period of time with interest. So when you buy a corporate bond, you're lending the corporation's money, and it's saying it's going to pay you back. So this is the way a city finances itself. It does not gain enough taxes often to carry on its business. So therefore, in order to carry on this business, it borrows money. And it borrows money by selling bonds, promises to pay back those people who buy the bonds with interest. Now, who buys the bonds? There are very rich, very rich people, mostly white folks, banks, right? On banks, insurance companies, right? On insurance companies, pension funds, might run pitchers funds, you know, major institutions. Very sick, usually white home, might control, sometimes even foreign governments. And you know, other people. What does that mean then? That means the city is in debt to those people. And often, it is in debt not to the people who live in it. You see? Not to the people who live in it. Plus, on top of that, they say they're not going to even tax these people for the interest that they earn. You're going to have to take your little money to the bank, and it earns the penalty in interest. The government wants to get its money to the city, and they said, "Look, we're not going to charge you state, federal, or local tax. The, the earning, the interest you earned is free. You got it all for yourself." See how the rates get richer? Okay. Now, when the city gets caught up and defaults, or gets caught up and is unable to meet this debt, which of course, we make sure cities never do. You see, that's why municipal bonds are seen as very safe. And governments got to be very safe because the government is going to beat the people to do what? To pay today. Would call out his armies and repress them and take their bread to pay that debt. Because the rich folks say, "I don't care if you fight 10,000 of them, I want to be paid." And so the government goes out and says, "Sorry, you got to go because I got to use the money that you were using to feed your family to be the rich guy." Yeah, that's what's about. The reason I'll come in and say, "Well, look, we'll take off a fraction of the interest since you were up against a little bit." No, they never do that, do they? Fire them. Get them off. Get them off the payroll. Shut the hospital in back. Sell the hospital to private people. Get rid of this. Get rid of that. Shut down the summer school program. Shut down the jobs trading program. But give us our money. And then they talk about those criminal people in the city. The criminality that they have financed. They created this. This is like in blueprint for blacks. Obviously, I talked about this. So look, man, if you got old people said, "You made my own yourself." The money that's right. That's why you've got to buy the bonds. If they're supposed to be sold, you should sell them because it's your tax money and your loss of jobs that's paying for it. You may as well pay yourself back and not be strangers. But what are we saying then? Those people who hold the city debt, then are the people who are manipulating the city government. You may vote for them, but the fact that they hold those debts is determining how that government is going to operate relative to you. You can vote all you want to. So therefore, it means if you're going to come into real power, black ladies and gentlemen, you must come to understand how it is structured in the nation and get out of this routine nonsense that they run on lib and these other flight stations day in and day out about voting. Voting is a part of it, but that's not all of it. This is what the bourgeois class likes to run on us so that they can be voted into office and become attached to the Democratic Party and get a few crumbs. Yes. And then plant things they call enterprise zones, which is a gentrification program. Yes. Yes. Seven on toes. What can I tell you? So anyway, let's, let's begin. Let's wrap it up here. But anyway, we are saying then, the consciousness includes the content, but it also includes instruments. And those instruments mean thinking ability. Thinking and reasoning is a manipulation of what you know, an organizing of what you know. You see? And organizing of the way you see the world, or reorganizing of that way you see. Organizing the contents of consciousness in a way has to achieve a particular end. So when you think, you think about something. You see? When you raise it, you reason about something. When you analyze, you see the relationship between things, or you make a relationship between things so that you can achieve some kind of end. So then consciousness must use thinking skills, academic skills, occupational skills, and learning skills. But that does not complete consciousness as well. Even though you've got instruments to carry out programs and strategies and so forth, you must have what we call the occupy directional organizational factors. What do we mean there? I'll name the first things such as needs, desires, values, interest, aspirations, ideal sense of purpose, and culture. In other words, consciousness contains in it certain needs, and it is the pursuit of the satisfaction of these needs that lends direction to all of the rest of the mind. It determines what kind of thought faculties will be used, what kind of content will be recalled, what kind of knowledge will be recalled, and how this, this knowledge and content will be organized and executed in order to satisfy the need. If you have certain needs or certain aspirations, those needs and those aspirations will call out certain instrumentalities, certain ways of thinking, and call out certain content in order that those aspirations be achieved. Let me put it like this. One of the major reasons why we are having some problems and achieving the things we want, I've often said, is because we as a people have enemies. Yes. Have no enemies. I was listening today, some people were discussing D-Day, and one gentleman, they were saying, "You know, it's unfortunate, but people of behavior is more organized or consolidated, and solidarity is more easily achieved when people are threatened by their enemies and have an enemy that they're fighting against, then otherwise." It is an unfortunate thing, but you know, like to say, this threat concentrates the mind. You see? It brings things what together. You see? Because you have made love your endpoint. You, you have degraded the life of the intellect. Yes. Yes. Because all you want is good feelings. The other thing is what doesn't matter, as long as we love one another. But we will feel good with one another, then, uh, that's it. All to be, all we need is love, love, love. Get it all day. You know, you need more than that. You see? But when you've been emotionally scarred and degraded, you become obsessed by it. It's obsessed with such a degree of pursuing good feelings and pursuing gratification that you forget to develop the other aspects of your personality and of your mind. And therefore, when you're confronted with problems that require the use of other aspects of your mind, you come up short. And you come up against it. And when you run against people who use their mind and use their intellect, use their reason and logic, and use their knowledge, the only thing you can try to get them to do is love you and be nice to you. Be. But when you see those people, that your enemies, when you see those people and people to be overcome and their power to be neutralized, as I said earlier, then you begin to realize you need to develop other kinds of skills. You ask yourself then, what kinds of skills must I develop in order to achieve this point? And if they gain power over us because they outthink us, then we must enhance our thinking skills to do what? To think. Then yes, this is the way the game goes. But if you don't make your purpose overcoming, then that, that purpose will not organize and pull on the mind and motivate it to grow and develop itself and increase its power and ability to achieve the goal. The only thing you can do is pray. That's all. In other words, then, it's desires and values and interests that really organize the mind and that really focus the mind and give purpose, true content and purpose to thinking and uses those things to achieve. In fact, is used to decide what problems need to be solved, what goals are to be pursued. These factors have to select and organize the relevant contents of consciousness, and the instrumentality is used for methods of processing these conscious and ways source to achieve particular end, is to solve particular problems. So we have three units here: contents, instruments, and organizational factors such as values. Values are key. We'll end it here then, I think. How then is black consciousness falsified? There's also a group consciousness as well. We won't have time to talk about that tonight, but recognize one thing, that group consciousness is like individual consciousness. It organizes behavior. It is a power. Group consciousness and culture are conspiracies. Okay. So we look at conspiracy. It's a bad word, you see. But when people coordinate their behavior, when people organize their behavior relative one to the other to achieve particular points that benefit them both as individuals and as a group, they're acting in conspiracy. And therefore, the best way to get people to act in unison, to get people to act in an organized fashion, to get people to act in a coordinated fashion to achieve the same end that's beneficial both to them as individuals and as a group, is for those people to share the same values, to share the same or similar aspirations, to share the same history, to be socialized by the same institutions, to see themselves as belonging to the same group, to see themselves as sharing the same faith. So that even though they may not know each other personally, they will behave in concert with one another to achieve him. Yes, give me one more minute. So consciousness and culture is a conspiracy. And remember, consciousness is a what? Power. Okay. Organization is what? Power. And when a people's state of mind is such that it organizes their behavior and coordinates their behavior and gives them a sense of solidarity and unity, that is a people who are expressing what power and the capacity to change the world and to change themselves and to change their relationship to other people. That is why then those who wish to have power over us, wish to have power over our consciousness so that we cannot act in conspiracy against them. Right. [Applause] Ideas of what is good and what is bad and what is worth pursuing, what is worth desiring in our de-culturated minds and bodies, those values and those desires and those goods being compatible with their own interests. And to have us identify with these artificial values, these artificial goods and so forth, and see them as being us, and fight you to death to defend these artificial implantations in ourselves as if we were defending our very lives. And in defending ourselves, defend the ones who rule over us and empower the ones who will develop earth as a people. This is what this is about. There's a whole need to re-examine what we call black culture in America. Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yeah. Because a lot of it is reactionary. Yeah. It was shaped within the womb of white racism, and it still bears, you know, that experience. You may call it black, but a good portion, a lot of hidden under there is white games. Oh yeah. Gotta understand this. Deal with it. Yeah. You just can't jump on it because it's black. Looks like you can't jump on a bed because it's Africa. You've got to face it. You've got to confront the question. The chance the Williams confronted, what was missing? What was it about African values and orientations that permitted the overrunning of Africans by foreign people? Okay? You just can't say, "Well, it's African, it's traditional," therefore, you got to see how it worked or how it didn't work. Because cultures are evolving things. They're not just stuck in time. You see? Cultures also must be examined and re-examined and readjusted because culture is an adaptational tool, the means by which a people gains control over themselves and gain control over their behavior so that they can deal with their environment. And when the culture no longer functions to solve their problems, then they must revise the culture in a way to solve their problems. So you just can't get stuck on it. [Applause] So therefore, we have to examine Africanness too. Yeah. Now, consciousness income. How is? So therefore, consciousness is falsified to disempower African people. That's the only way. As I said earlier, that Europeans can rob us and take our wealth. Here we are, one of the richest nations on earth, right here in America. Right here in America, African people earning 300 billion dollars a year. You know, the largest African economy on the continent has a gross national product probably of only 32 billion dollars. In other words, African people spend 10 times more than the whole of the product of the African country. Why is it we are not investing in these nations? Why is it we are not a part of financing their development and so forth? Because we don't have a consciousness of what we are and what we are the people. You see? Why aren't we making those sneakers that our kids crave so much? Why are we designing them? Why isn't the African world in America the marketing arm of the global Pan-African economic system, designing and marketing products manufactured in the African diaspora so that we can create jobs for the continent as well as create jobs here? We can do it. It's within our power. I'm going to a worldwide store the other last week. I bought a steam iron. A simple steam iron. Easy. And whatever it was called, solenoid. Made where? In China. Sold for 12 bucks. I look at this iron and I said, "You mean to tell me that an African-American engineer could not have designed this simple product and could not have contracted with the Caribbean, Central and South America with black folk or the African continent to do to do what? Manufacture this product and then come to America and market this product and say, 'Woolworth, you're not going to sit on 125th Street and not sell this iron, huh? You're not going to be sitting over in the Bronx and not selling iron manufactured by African people? You're not going to sit in one African-American community after the next and not sell African-American design and marketing products or African manufacturing products, or we will bring our consumers to bear.' And we are not going to put a nickel in here until we see an iron that says 'Made in Nigeria,' 'Made in Uganda,' 'Made this place or that place,' and market is by African people in America." That's right. And we can market and manufacture one product after another. Every product that you see manufactured in Taiwan, manufactured in China, manufactured in Indonesia, can be imagined by African people, right? And every one of them, you put your dollar down to buy. You can put it down to buy being manufactured by absolute people. And every time it is advertised, it can be advertised by an African advertising agency. And every time there's a salesman walking out selling the product, it can be an African-American salesperson. And every time there's a wholesale company and a distributor, it can be an African-American distributor. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, if you had the consciousness of a nation and had the group consciousness of being a nation, you could create hundreds and thousands of jobs for African-Americans, not only in this country but across the world. Right. But why else you're doing? You're earning three billion dollars a year. 300 million dollars a year. You know what that means? That means you are producing well over a trillion dollars per year of work because you can pay only a fraction of what you produce. You understand what I'm saying? It means, as I said before, that is a Mike Tyson earns 20 million for a fight. That fights accelerated 200 million dollars. And you got to ask the question, who gets the other 180 million? If some basketball player gets paid five million dollars a year, he must be worth what? 50 million dollars. Who gets the other 45 million? It's like music is America's second largest, a third largest export, worth billions of dollars, ahead of many other, uh, products that America sells in the world. Why aren't we rich and in control of the entertainment industry in the world? America is one of America's largest industries because we're not asking even the questions. Are we? We're not even bothered about it because it didn't occur to us. It's not in our consciousness to do so. Why? Because you go to business schools and you go to other schools, and they're not training you to be in control of yourself. As I tell college students, this college is organized, and this school and these schools are organized on one major principle that has not changed. And that's on the principle that you're being trained to serve white folk. You're operating on the basic principle that has been here since slavery, that everything you do that's right is made to do what? To serve white folks. You pursue your courses, that you pursue your knowledge so that you can get a job. And that job, we assume unconsciously, is going to be given to us by whom? Right folks. The very lifeblood of our families, the very bread that feeds our children, is in the hands of what? White folks. And another people. And our whole lives and our education is organized on that assumption. How different would African student education be? How different would education be from top to bottom if we went to school to create our own jobs, to become our own employers, huh? To be in control of our own bread, at the feeding of our own families, and motivated to removing our dependencies upon other people? You would see you had to reorganize the whole thing. You have to reorganize them in talent. If ask your people, you see, that's what African-centered education is about. This is what the deal is. We have it within our power right here in having the people to feed ourselves, to create jobs for ourselves, to motivate and build a Pan-African economic and political system that rivals any economic block the world now has created. It's within us. We can do it. But we need the consciousness. And what is it about the consciousness that has not permitted us to do that? If consciousness is determined to a good extent by its contents, by the kind of knowledge we have, what we have done is permit another people to define what is knowledge. And therefore, they have given us false knowledge. If consciousness acts on the basis of knowledge, remember we said it uses knowledge and what organizes knowledge, right? To propel behavior and act in the world, then if that knowledge is false, then the behavior is going to be false and misdirected. And consequently, when you depend on another people to give you your fundamental knowledge, the knowledge that you're going to use to behave, the knowledge that you're going to use to guide your behavior, then they're going to falsify your consciousness and misdirect your behavior. This is what it's about. Why they write the history the way they do? Because we said consciousness is history. The major importance of history has to do with this influence on consciousness. In other words, your attitude is towards yourself, your attitudes towards the world, your relationship to the world is to a great extent determined by your sense of your own history and experience, and by the history and experience of the people you're dealing with. And therefore, those people who want to manipulate their countries, your consciousness, and death by manipulate your behavior, manipulate your own sense of history, your own sense of your own history, and manipulate their history. Because the first consciousness that is falsified is not blank consciousness, but white consciousness. Yes. They falsify their own consciousness because even white folks believe those historical lies. Yes. But those lies are written in such a way that in believing those lies, they believe themselves to be superior. They aspire to rule the world. They aspire to control other people and think other people are their natural servants. You see? So it's not that it's just a lie. It's how the lie expresses itself in the world. So therefore, while the lies of white history disempowers white public, it disempowers black folk because black folk indeed believe in those lies and operating on that false information operate against our own interests. And therefore, the knowledge is falsified. The knowledge of which we operate is falsified. But even if that knowledge were factually true, it's the instruments that we use. We are weak. The inability to think, to reason, to conceptualize, to organize, to relate cause and effect, to abstract, to generalize, to discriminate, you say, to symbolize and manipulate symbols. If those things are impaired, even with the knowledge, you're not going to be able to change situations. So you'll find then that the white educational institution and white education in general, which is beyond schooling, operates to falsify black knowledge, the knowledge about which black people operate, or to provide you with irrelevant knowledge, even though it may be true. So a lot of people think education is gaining knowledge, but you gotta ask, what knowledge for what? To what end? You see? So that somebody feels full of irrelevant knowledge. It's not relevant to solving your problem. So they pump you with that knowledge. Then they pump you with, even if they give you so-called factual knowledge, then they impair the capacity for thinking, capacity for reasoning. And so many of us don't want to think. So many of us don't want to read them. So many of us don't want to want to read. So many of us don't want to know words and vocabulary. First, there was the word, and the word was God. And the word was with God, and God creates the world through the use of what? The word. And simple. So does man create his world through words and symbols. There is not a culture or a group anywhere that does not use language. And that means then language is of key importance to human survival and the quality of human life. That means that it is a power. And consequently, then people who have weak knowledge of words, people who have weak vocabulary, people who do not know how to manipulate people are going to be weak people in the world. And they're going to be ruled over by people who know it. And who you. And yet, we have so many of our young men and so many of our young men have been made to think that to read a book is to be effeminate, to know how to manipulate language is to be unmanly, to know how to manipulate mathematics and symbols is being white and non-black. And we got some sophisticated Africans want to play this game too. Okay? And yes, you can see it's the ones who know the man. It's the ones who know how to read, is to want to manipulate the symbols upon whom your life depends. Then you'll want somebody to run a game on you and make you feel ashamed as a young man, happen to be going to the library, happen to have a book in your hand. When you deal with tears who have that kind of attitude, these deers are allies to your enemies, and they are there for your enemy, and they are part of the things you destroy. Anytime your peers really cue your drive toward mastery, and mastery is the essence of manhood, to match the knowledge, to match the skills, to master the symbol, and to be able to use them in your interest, in the interest of your people, is the center of manhood. And what hurts in the world, but the people have ruled over you and who rule over you because they have mastered these things, what the convictions that you've met with these things is none black. And you want to go along with them and play right into their hands. [Music] How can you say that the word is not yours when you invented it? When it is the legacy of African people and the gift of African people to the world itself? How can you say learning mathematics and science and studying and reasoning is is not black when it is out of the blackness of our culture that these things derive? Yes, this is how it's falsified. The last way it's falsified, that is to give false content, to give false, uh, to give false instruments, to impair your thinking ability, to make you think that thinking is not African, non-black. And all this thing, the ultimate way of falsifying consciousness is to falsify your values. Remember we said values give direction to health, the whole rest of consciousness. Sense of purpose gives direction, organizes contents, organizing the instruments that are to be used to achieve. When you let another people give you values, they're going to organize the rest of your behavior. And what do we say? Money follows values. Yes. Where your values are, so is your money. So is your money. That's why whites want to do what? Always create what values? Create your goals. Your goal is to work for white folk, to look for a job happening to you by fighting whatever they were right. Foreign. They're really at that point now. That's why so many black men are in jail. Okay? They don't have enough jobs for their own people. You will be great if you wear Nike sneakers. Value them. And then of course, if you value them, that's where you're going to do well, spend your money. You see? If you look at yourself carefully, then you will see that basically everything you value is possessed or sold by other people. Nothing you own or possess is worth anything to you. It only gets worth something when somebody else happened. Even when it belongs to you first, you didn't value it until what? They got it. And then once you start valuing it, you start doing what? Buying it. And as you buy it, you enrich them. And as you enrich them, you empower them. And they use their richness and power to control and manipulate us. This is what the game is about. This is what the deal is about. People used to wonder why Elijah Muhammad had people eating bean pies, why he was controlling those meals, why he demonized the white man. All, all white people ain't bad. That wasn't the point. Behave as if they are. Why your money is where your values are. Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, knew that as long as black people continue to value everything white, everything manufactured by whites, everything sold by white, everything possessed by white, all of their wealth and power would be given to lights. And whites would use it against us. As long as you want to drink that white wine and white liquor, smoke those white cigarettes, eat those white potato chips, drink that white soda, all the junk. And we spend at people between two and three thousand dollars individually eating jobs. This is how other people make their money in the black community, not even selling real food, just how they jump, Twinkies, potato chips, sodas, and junk and garbage. And they make a living, and they live outside in the suburbs, they send their children to private schools, they keep them out of crime, selling black people junk and garbage. You know what I'm saying? And therefore, when you devalue them and you devalue what they're about, you stop buying their junk and garbage. You then have that money where? In your pocket. Then you can use that money to finance your own business. You can use that money to finance your own schools. You can use that money to build your own houses. You can use that money to create your own jobs, to hold your own families together, to bring the father back home to the mother and do their job. That's what you can use it for. But as long as you're flying in debt, and that's discriminating, and the only thing you know is your shocking after night, then you will entire the other people over here and destroy your own people and ultimately destroy yourself, including your health and everybody else's terms. And therefore, what we talked about here then, and that means people have a power over you. They have power over you through your addiction. You become addicted to Twinkies. You become addicted to Pepsi. You become addicted to container chips. You become addicted to junk. And they manipulate your behavior in order to achieve those things to the point where some of us are foolish enough, that I said earlier, to rob and kill and mug to get those things. And therefore, they make us do harm to ourselves.