Cultural Workers...in the world the slavers made.

Cultural workers intent on laying the groundwork for an African future need only start by stating the historical truth: the history we have shared with Europe has been a tale of pillage, massacres, dehumanization.  That Europeans want to interpret it as a civilizing mission and an aid expedition to rescue us from barbarism is natural.  What is unnatural is that we should want to repeat their take on our history.  There was a time when African intellectuals who knew our history were too beaten down to speak up, and when those trained to speak in the world the slavers made knew only how to repeat their teachers' words.
   Now some of us have finished our mimetic training, made contact with the silenced voices uttering our history, and are ready to tell our story on the basis of our historical truth.  A politician speaking truth in the present dispensation will quickly be helped to a premature rendezvous with our ancestors.  Europeans will plan the murder, and since we are poor and do not know how to make money from creative work, they will find many of us willing to execute it for a few thousand dollars, francs, marks or pounds.  Cultural workers do not pose a clear and present danger to our oppressors.  If our work is any good, we will suffer only the milder kinds of murder: character assassination, financial destruction.  It's a price cultural workers throughout history have paid for real work.  If we wish to do the necessary work, we would be foolish to want to avoid the consequence.  The best we might do is to create networks guaranteeing improved chances of our survival.  That is what all living beings do.
   What, with this focus on historical truth, might cultural workers contribute to the construction of an African identity?  Our contribution to the future might begin with a hard-eyed look at the shaping structures we inhabit.  It is possible to date these structures.  It is necessary that they be acknowledged as dated.  Beyond that, we need to think of the nature of human movement on this continent before it was divided up into the slave pens Europeans called colonies then, and unimaginative Africans are urged to call nations now, to our constant detriment.
~p240, The Eloquence of the Scribes, Ayi Kwei Armah