Intellectual Warfare
By Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D.

Knowledge is power, and to be able to read or hear it, contradicts every effort western civilization utilizes to contain, distort or omit it. Two prevailing themes are consistently promoted in the mass media to minimize any empowering efforts on the part of Black people: various television programs and articles to embed in the mind that slavery is the only legacy of Black people; and a barrage of programs, articles and false graphics to reverse the fact that Black people created the world's most significant ancient civilization, Kemet (Egypt), the precursor to world civilizations, science, medicine, mathematics and many other human creations.

During the period of slavery in the United States, it was a crime to teach an enslaved Afrikan how to read, to possess or provide any type of literature. The greatest fear was that enslaved Afrikans would discover what freedom meant. For an enslaved person to read Patrick Henry's famous quote, “Give me liberty or give me death,� or Thomas Jefferson's “All men are created equal,� was a potential threat for keeping enslaved individuals on the plantation.

The one event that raised the greatest fear among American slave owners was the successful Haitian Revolution, whereby enslaved Afrikans defeated the powerful French military. An enslaved individual reading about that event would foster encouragement to do the same thing, causing slave-holding states to strengthen and pass harsher slave laws.

Even reading the Bible was forbidden. It was felt the various stories of different groups trying to liberate themselves from enslavement or oppression could serve to encourage slave rebellions. Instead, ministers interpreted biblical passages to sustain and legitimize slavery, “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh.� (Colossians 3:22 King James Version). Literary information was withheld supported by sacred and secular law.

A monumental event occurring during the time of enslavement happened on the other side of the earth, Napoleon Bonaparte of France invasion of Kemet (Egypt) during the 'Battle of the Pyramids,' July 1798. The consequences of this invasion are felt today. Napoleon had the foresight to bring his own archeologists with him. Their study of the Kemetic (Egyptian) antiquities led to the origin of Egyptology, the study of ancient Egypt.

Where their study went wrong was the premise to change history. Observing that massive statues, paintings in temples and tombs and various artifacts clearly showed that Black people created the oldest and most accomplished civilization was not acceptable. France was one of the main participants in illegally transporting and enslaving Kemet's descendents living in West Afrika.

One of the most recognizable structures in the world today, the Sphinx, representative of King Khafre, 4th dynasty (BC 2575-2551), was one of the beginnings of hiding and/or changing history by firing 21 canon shots blowing off the nose and lips to disfigure its Africoid features. Unsuccessful in doing this all over Kemet (Egypt), later European anthropologists decided to change the ethnic identification of Blacks in Kemet by describing them as the “Mediterranean race,� defined as “dark-skinned Caucasians.� Even though they were Black, they were White. Presently, there are various efforts to take Kemet (Egypt) out of Afrika, describing it as part of the so-called Middle East. This was meant to deflect from Blacks that they had created the world's greatest scientific/technological/spiritual civilization, destroying the myth of Black inferiority, while earlier annihilating the argument for Afrikan enslavement.

The exact same thing continues today. With the oncoming American tour of Pharaoh Tutankhamen's (King Tut) artifacts, scientists from America, France and Egypt in 2005, through their research and support from National Geographic, concluded that Tutankhamen was a “North African Caucasian.� In opposition to this, scientists from England and New Zealand in 2002 graphically depicted him as Black.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, the Arab Egyptian head of antiquities in Kemet (Egypt) went so far as to state, in a BBC radio program in England on ancient Kemet (Egypt), and will accompany the Tutankhamen exhibit, that Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, along with Dr. Theophile Obenga, Afrika's greatest scientists on ancient Kemet, were wrong. They provided 11 categories of the most compelling and convincing evidence presented at the UNESCO Egyptologist conference in Cairo, 1974, titled “The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script,� proving that the ancient Kamites (Egyptians) were Black Afrikans. Professor J. Vercoutter of France, a major contributor to the conference concluded, “Egypt was African in its way of writing, in its culture and in its way of thinking.� The entire symposium “rejected the idea that Pharaonic Egyptian was a Semitic language,� concluding that it was Afrikan. (General History of Africa Vol. II, Ancient Civilizations of Africa, Editor: G. Mokhtar. UNESCO 1981) Dr. Hawass ignores the conclusions of the most prestigious conference ever held by the world's most eminent Egyptologists.

In the propaganda war against Black achievements in the world, clear evidence may not always be enough. American mass media seem to practice what Adolph Hitler perfected, “If you say something long enough and loud enough, people are bound to believe it.�

Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn is on the faculty at Loyola Marymount University, and author of On My Journey Now: The Narrative And Works Of Dr. John Henrik Clarke. Website: www.drkwaku.com E-mail: DrKwaku@hotmail.com.