Historical education as primary
      Burton, Howard (2010-03-11)


>>HOWARD: My name is Howard Burton. My African name is Adrissa Camari Biko. My English name is Howard Burton. Most of the folks in the community know me as Brother Howard. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as I said earlier in my discussion. I'm a teacher of African history, culture. I'll speak quickly and I'll try to expedite as much as I can in terms of how I reached this point. 

Basically I was always curious about my environment and as I said earlier, what was going on around me I was trying to process the world at a young age like all of us do. But the information that I'm seeing was contradictory. I'm seeing rich and poor and I felt particular frequencies that were confusing at a young age and it was not a lot of people around in the community that would answer questions as it related to "who am I?", "who are we?", "what is it to be black?", what is this African American thing? Or even at the time they used the term negro as the status quo society name, as the words changed throughout the decade. Always meaning the same thing but changing the word. My curiosity led me to great inquiry and study and research at a very young age about my culture and my history as it related to how I looked at reality. So in a sense I was building on a epistemology, the nature of how people think. The nature of knowledge. The nature of the thought. I was trying to build a African based one. It was a self based one that allowed me to actuate myself, allow me to become the person that I am as I still evolve, obviously. It allowed me to be me. It allowed me to be African and understand that I'm African even though I lived in a non-African reality.

So, how do I balance this thing and how do I navigate through this particular paradox? Education and literacy as one of the topics here was certainly a key aspect in that. I started to build upon information to critique the culture and reality in which I lived because it allowed me to understand things at its origin. For instance, if I'm dealing with theology, I wanted to deal with it at its origin. So it took me back and it's still taking me back. Not necessarily looking for definitive answer, but what road were we on. What was the perspective we were on as African people in the beginning? How do other cultures draw from this African well and they illuminate their culture now, in the year 2010, yet African people globally aren't able to attach themselves to their own information as well as others do. How we are duped in a sense.

So all of those things are concerns to me as I worked in a community with different age groups, different genders and so forth. I try to incorporate African history and culture into the cipher. In other words, if I'm dealing with domestic violence, anger management, whatever it may be, there has to be an African dynamic to it. Dealing with African psychology. Dealing with the way we think innately. How we look at the world. How we're dealing with this particular culture now? How is your anger manifested? Is it used productively? Dis-thermodynamic? Is it used in terms of behavior? What's inside of you to make you tick? 

As we go intrinsically inside of our people, we start to see we have a lot of syndromes that we deal with in terms of not addressing particular behaviors. And these behaviors came as we assimilated a culture. And it was really strange because even those that were really successful that are rewarded for their assimilation, vis-a-vis Harvard, whatever it may be at the high end, there is still a feeling of dual realities and disconnecting from the community has become the edict of the day as we start to disconnect from each other. That's why me and you always talk. How do we bridge the gap between academia? In other words, what's happening at the university and what's going on in the community in terms of practicum in the education system involved in that?

And this is a very difficult thing to do because academia needs a community as much as a community needing academia. Because it becomes power and it becomes a political base in which to operate, at the grassroots level. Instead of us dealing with these different mechanisms to keep us at a political stagnation. We have been that. We have to really examine that and be brave enough to look at ourselves in our own way that we organized ourselves and what mode did we organize ourselves. I was in Dayton doing a piece on masonry as it related to the foundations of the fraternal orders in the black communities, and the sororities as well, and the origin of these things. Where do we get the model from? And they were surprised that I went beyond Cornell University, beyond the Skull and Bones, beyond the Harvard-Yale model and told them that these fraternal orders started in African guilds as information was so sacred to us. We had to evolve into the information, in other words you had to be weened to the information, whether you be in the hunters guild or the guild that dealt with herbs and so forth. These secrets and knowledge, they were weened to you as you evolved as a person. You absorbed these informations and they were secret. So, in a sense it's set up, literary or guild, where one had to be in the sense initiated into this information or into the society. So the information wasn't abundant for everyone in the community. You couldn't grab a spear and say I'm a hunter. There was a rights of passage that was involved in the transition. So we were able to always connect things mathematically to our evolution. 

So, this is what I was concerned with in the community. How do we get this process into our communities and shed the political constructs that we have to deal with. And we have to do that together and that's very difficult to deal with because I'm talking about power but I'm talking about power that allows us to love ourselves and do our things and deal the humanism around us as well. But first it must be defined internally. So it's not an artificial process. We deal with such a schism in the African community that sometimes I'll present pieces and I have to be very apologetic in the beginning of my cipher as I disseminate information because I know that the audience deals with a particular cognitive dissonance and they're very afraid of this process. Even dealing with dialogue. They say, Brother Howard, diversity and multiculturalism, then I tell them there's no such thing. How dare you? We paid you for putting on a diversity multiculturalism. As they say down south, I'm fitting to tell you what it is.

These words and political processes that we deal with come from a different culture. Multiculturalism and diversity relates to power. There's nothing diverse when the pie is on the table and I get three crumbs and you get the pie. There's nothing diverse about me being a feather on the wing of the eagle as I simulate the eagle. So there's a relationship between these things in power. And we have to start to understand that and have dialogue on that process. I won't be duped by these things. Diversity is a natural apparatus, it's not a new phenomenon. The world is no diversity since the Africans migrated. All cultures started from this particular background. Diversity and multiculturalisms always been the order of the day and it's always been tough. There's been basic laws put in place that enable people to live. Even slavery, in early times, wasn't the erosion of a complete culture. It became the amalgamation of a culture as opposed to the eradication, vis-a-vis European slavery as it relates. You guys got me on that?

I want you to understand that. These are the things we're trying to incorporate and have formats and forms for this particular dialogue so it can become practical. So we can have 5th grade students reading about things that they relate to them, whether they be African American students, students from Beijing, students from the Dominican. The commonality in it is African history as World History, as European history, as Asian history, as the history of Aborigines, the original man and woman, the species, we start to dissect it from that point. But it's very frightening cause the stakes are very high because, in a sense, and this is me right here, here's where it gets real cloudy. And you got to be very cognitive of the words you use. The stakes are so high because, as we build institutions of thought, understanding that these institutions come from culture we start to understand what is happening in terms of the  erosion of the community. See? It's a direct reflection. 

I used to always talk to you guys about, you know, look at the community now. Feel the frequency in the community. Really learn to communicate. Start to feel the frequencies. Start to feel the vibrational frequencies in which you operate and understand how the human species operates off these frequencies. Now, let's walk down Livingston avenue, let's walk down this avenue in the Hood, or let's walk down Mt. Vernon and those who remember the strawberry patch in long street when it was vital, and we had constructed communities. Even though they had to be at that time because this was before we so-called integrated ourselves into a non-integratable system. You see what I'm saying? You supposed to integrate in the self but we integrated because the dichotomy of inferiority was so deep that we thought we would educate ourselves outside of ourselves. If I was educated next to white folks, this was a better education. It was beyond the materials. They say that the books in black schools weren't ready. It was still the same book. It was still Uncle Tom's Cabin. Whether it be a tattered book or a new one in the white school, it wasn't the book. It was our schism information knowledge and who we are. So we couldn't connect to that. So even intellectualism in academia became someone else's pedagogy. We couldn't follow our pedagogy cause we didn't know it. You know, and pedagogy is how do you teach teachers to teach. Right?

This is what we're dealing with. So, I ask those who run the institutions, who do things in the community to have an open dialogue and set up forms where we can talk to youth, where we can talk to people from different areas and their information would be compiled, like you're doing now. That's why I'm here. Cause when you told me that, I said, cool, if they can use the data. Cause I can go. Cause that's what I do. That's what I'm here for. That's what we're all here for. To contribute to information so we can change. So we can become better human beings. First become better self, then become better. Right now we're at a critical point in history like we always have been. Particularly in African American family in the last 20 years but more destructive than 200 years prior because of the vibration, the technology, and the information that's not processed by our families anymore. So it's eroded our families. We've accepted the definition. We have a lot of things to work on. You guys got any questions?

>>INTERVIEWER: Are there any books that you read that you want to weigh, and really shaped the way you teach it?

>>HOWARD: You know, I first started reading, the first book I can remember was Iceberg Slim. I went from Iceberg Slim. Cause most of us were winged into reading first. And we read things that really can relate to us, and that was the hood. You know what I mean? So Donna was big in terms of us dealing with this literary process. We not necessarily evolved but we go from Donna Goins and we go to Frantz Fanon. You know what I mean? And we go into Du Bois. We go into Garvey, his adversary. We go into this as we start to deal with history. My books came fast and many. I was very prolific in my inquiry. I had to read, I had to find out and these things helped me analyze some of these things I've talked about. This was part of the process of me understanding myself and being classical to me. So Miles Davis was classical to me even though I appreciated Bach. But his mathematics was different than Miles. Miles' mathematics was infinite and I was able to deal with that groove. This was inside of me. Billy Holiday was classical to me. This was part of our classical history. Robertson was classical intellectual to me. Because he was revolutionary scholar and so forth. Tubman was classical to me. These things are classical to me. This is what I'm talking about in terms of us getting ourselves together and getting this information to our young folk so they can love themselves and build upon their energy in the community so we can do this from the inside out. Very difficult to do. I think we have no other choice. Dealing with the present dynamics of the world.

>>INTERVIEWER: You said something earlier about the school and the community. Who's leading who? You kind of made a reference to that.

>>HOWARD: Yeah. I was talking about the school and the community. When I first got here ten years ago, maybe 12, there was a huge referendum and much dialogue about the Afro-centric school. Knowing what I know, the difficulty would be can the Afro-centric school break the umbilical chord of the system. Other words, Columbus city schools. Other words, Afro-centric schools ideally have to be community based. Even though they deserve the tax based dollars that are generated. Ideologically speaking, they entered into very much a danger zone. Why? Because the education of your youth determines your future.

Hey, that's all I say on that. That's all I say on that one. You know what I mean? Cause I've crossed the line again. But, it is incumbent upon us to understand that process as we move forward globally. This allows us to look at symbolism and look at things that happen and be able to critically analyze them. Whether it be Barack coming into office. What does that mean historically to us and what does that mean in the future? You know. In terms of African American people. What was his background. What are they trying to say? Was it part of bringing in the global world in which you see? Is it a neutral, void process that we're dealing with? Considering we're contaminated with a caste system. You see what I'm saying? And so forth. Because black folks have always been skittish about that which you cannot see. We're very cognitive of things that are invisible. In other words we have the government and power structures that black folks would say, who is really behind it?

The slave master did not come into the field in a sense, but he did send his representatives with whips. You know. We were more dealing with that hooves up in the heel. So, we've always been cognitive of that, even when we're dealing with the health care profession. Old black folks don't want to go to the hospital. They say don't take me there, that's a place for me to die. Grandma say go in the back yard and get me those. Get me that leaf here. Grandma's ready to put together a tea. She's an alchemist. She remembered the story. You see. So she's going to detoxify her liver and deal with the body as the healing process. See. She don't want to deal with her culture. She didn't intellectually analyze it but she knew. She didn't want to deal with that paradigm that said, okay, I'm going to attack the body. You see, I'm juxtaposing. This is ideology, this is culture. This is a different frame work to deal with. So the doctors deal with these things. Cancer through chemotherapy, which is more deadly than the cancer itself. Original people knew that your diet was essential, see? And the original people knew that your diet was essential, see? So they were able to put the nutrients in and continually detoxify themselves, through meditation, through other processes that bring their vibration and allow their super computer to work for them. These things are cultivated through culture. We don't know them anymore, Ryan. We can't bring these things to the table. I talk to some of the kids in class, they talk about quiet time or whatever. They say Brother Howard I'm bored. I got ten minutes sitting here, I'm bored. I said, you know, how sacred quiet was in culture before we lost our minds. Now that you're bored. You know. Now that you've become something else, you don't have any sacred time. Time is not sacred anymore, what are you talking about Brother Howard, how can time be sacred, we got all the time in the world. I said, indeed we don't. Time is relative to the consciousness. How conscious are you? You understand what I'm saying?

So this is the serve and volley that goes on. That's why it's imperative for our teachers, after they get their masters degree, don't ego-trip out. Your education just starts then. Now you know the literary components of things, as if you speak the great language. Those who feel with antiquity understand that if I was speaking proper, I'd be speaking to you in Swahili. See? I wanted many, many African language bases. You know how black folks get really disgusted when you words past five letters or two syllables, they say oh god! If was speaking my proper language I would be speaking Swahili man. I'd be speaking one of the West African language variants. That would be proper to me. Our mastery of these things doesn't mean that much to me. We were supposed to master all these things. Why wouldn't we? 90% of recorded history is about that, as it relates to the human family.

So, these are the things we're trying to put in place so we can put our history back in place so it can benefit everybody. So it can benefit how we treat people. Cause this starts at a very young age. Cause they're building on somebody's reality, how you see the world. Whether it be second grade, third grade, now you enter college, now you enter corporate America and so forth and so on. Now you become leadership. But see you don't have the tools to really lead. You see. You know. You thought you were a leader and it was a gift to you. It wasn't something that you evolved into through culture. Because it wasn't a process in there. Everything was based on artificiality. You feel me on that bro? You know.

Those are the things that we wrestle with and what not. 

>>INTERVIEWER: I picked up on something you said earlier about things are really staying the same. We just changed the name.

>>HOWARD: We changed the name. Names are morphed. Language is a moving vibration, as you know. Symbolic as well. Language and power come into play as it relates to culture as well. We would change the language and it would morph from one time to another. Other words. I would use the term "integration" then I'd use the term "multiculturalism". Now I'll use the term "diversity". Integration, multiculturalism, and diversity were all in the same wave. As the social scientists frame words. Cause remember, words become reality. Words become reality. Because in a sense, esoterically speaking, words are incantations. This is how deep it is to deal with the word as a young 17 year old mother in a community says to her child, you're going to be just like your damn father. See, this puts an incantation on him. She didn't know it, she has no consciousness of it, but the vibrational frequency was absorbed by the child but it is now in the air.

So, when we start to understand language and words and vibration, we start to understand physics as it relates to African cosmology. This is essential. So now I'm extrapolating, now I'm pulling down things, as above, so below. I'm starting extrapolate. I'm starting to get to languages beyond what we'd like to talk about at this level. You know. These are the things that we engage upon in terms of words. We have to understand what they mean, the origin of it. That's why me and you were talking months and years ago, we talked about the gangs. And I wanted you to understand the formation of the clan group. What was the premise behind how clans come together. First, I want Crips and Bloods to understand the origin. They said okay, let's go back to California and deal with the origin of the Bloods. I said it didn't start there. As it relates to America, the origin of gangs could have started in 1776 if I'm very critical. Let me go to Ellis Island and the origin of the gang that you speak of as they converge on Ellis Island as the Irish, the Scots, and the different ethnic groups claimed a piece of America. What the WASPs, the White-Anglo-Saxon, as the auspices of their thought, as the head folk, that were here. You see what I'm saying. All the other ethnic groups under them. Jockey for position. These positions are relevant even today, as you go into New York or the cities you'll see a large component of the Irish in a particular field. Trace this back and see the process as it develops. So I wanted them to see the gangs. How it formulated itself. It came from Tamanny Hall and it evolved and morphed itself into something that was usable for us, for our destruction. So, how this uses energy that could be positive and it's good. Clan is good. But everything has a duality. What can create can also destroy. So it's critical for us to deal with subject matters like this.

I had a portion where we spoke about sexuality. Not as a physical process but as a energy. So you can see sexuality and gender through a process that was able to create and destroy. So, in other words, I can make an analysis and make an argument for sexuality being inverse part of the criminality in the community. As a young brother or sister goes through a process of puberty, this dynamic energy of sexuality, if it isn't, not controlled, that's European, balanced, it comes inverse. It can't actuate itself in terms of a harmonic community anymore. It becomes criminality. It becomes bore. It becomes pedophilia. It becomes a feminization. It becomes criminality. It becomes us exposing ourselves and looking to destroy ourselves, anything that looks like us we attack. This is sexuality, there is a huge energy in this. It goes to how we think. See? We got to talk about physics at another level. Make a human physics that understands that in the community.

>>INTERVIEWER: Is there anything in your educational background that helps you shape the way, like what college and stuff you went to, and the degree?

>>HOWARD: Yeah. My formal thing is a beautiful thing. When people ask for my resume and I do a bio, I always have problems with the emphasis on those things, even though they're necessary. Right? They're necessary, but 99.9% of me and what I know, feel, and so forth, has come from me re-educating myself, outside of the framework of what I supposed to do during the curricula. During the curricula where you become a great test taker. Where you absorb information through your left brain and you regurgitate that information and you got a 97 on a test, but you don't know shit about the subject matter, because you didn't connect to it. Because you didn't connect to it. There was no need to know. But you are a great test taker and you'll go farther with your 3.7 GPA.

I was more firmly aware of how do I educate myself in terms of power and being able to deal with these things. Being able to deal with these institutions of thought through a continuum of African history. In other words, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Diop, in 1972, at the Cairo symposium, the greatest Egyptologist in the word, Diop and Obinga was there but they were armed with information. But the question to Diop was almost so rudimentary. The question was were the Africans African. Diop said "oh wow!" Were the Egypts in Africa, were they African. Diop said come on man. But he and Obinga were armed with multidisciplinary information, Obinga being a linguist, Diop himself being a multigingis. You see? Put together the package where these European and other Egyptologists were at a stalemate at best. Because his presentation and his research was meticulous. See, we don't know that. It was essential at the particular time at the symposium, in terms of the intellectual community to gather this information and build from that particular time. Essential for African scholars to come together and get beyond ego-trip so we can have power. So we can have books that are presented to our children that are written by Obinga or Assante or this brother or Ryan Boslee. So we can have books presented, so they can become practical, so our kids are in class and they're getting this information. As essential as Shakespeare is to one culture, our story is essential to us. We can't divorce ourselves from African history. It was a necessary process in that. I've always be weary of that. I got a bachelor's in political science. That put me in the process of understanding nomenclature or language where I'm able to frame it and I'm able to articulate it in a way that folks can understand it. In a way we can understand it at this level or that level so I can change and manipulate my cipher, depending on who I'm speaking and depending where I'm at. You understand what I'm saying? So, that's what my formal education was able to do in a sense. I know it's not me, but I understand the artificiality of it, that determines my choices and so on as I volleyed with other folks for those particular quota positions.

>>INTERVIEWER: It's like redefining what education is.

>>HOWARD: No question.

>>INTERVIEWER: It gives you a whole different perspective.

>>HOWARD: You're so right on that in terms of redefining what education is. That's exactly what we're doing. You know, scholars use the term history as being reshaped or revised. That's what we're doing. And I say history because that entails every subject matter. See, we have individual disciplines. But in reality, they're all history if that makes any sense to you. They're all history, Ryan, whether you're in math class, English literary class, whatever it may be. In a sense they are all history to you, cause you want to know the history of a subject matter as it relates to Ryan. So you become the subject matter, and the subject matter becomes this emphasis or amalgamation. First period and the seventh period have to have a harmonic relationship. Our kids are in schools where they don't have that. See? We're like, they can't compete on a global level, with the Chinese kids, they're so great in mathematics. I'm saying, will somebody please understand culture and understand where we're at in that. Other folks have their culture in tact, their assimilation is different than yours. The erosion of your culture, you didn't have a critiquing mechanism. They have a tradition to go to. Even though we had a tradition, it was what we were able to piece together. It was a soul food tradition. Not only the product soul food, the frequency. You see what I'm saying? It was a tradition we had. A tradition that we have to understand to the point where I'm talking to an African American here and I'm talking to a brother from Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican would say, yah, Brother Howard I'm Puerto Rican, and the African American would say, yes, I'm African American. And I say you two black brothers are from the same place, got off from different ports, and now their history has confused you. It has confused you because you don't have a reference point from history that can nex you together. See, when the Haitian crisis started last week I said to myself now is a good time to present the story of Toussaint Louverture. See? Cut past the mythology. Let the black scholars in the community do an expose of Toussaint Louverture. Let it become a play, let it become music.

How is it relevant to us, an African American? It changed everything. Toussaint's bravery was to such a point Haiti pays the price to this day for the bravery of Toussaint Louverture, as they brung together these Africans under tremendous odds cause they had to deal with colonizers from England, France, and other predators that were in Santo Domingo at the time. Toussaint put these things together and orchestrated a revolution to free his people from these particular things. So Toussaint pays a historical price for these things. I heard a rhetoric from the preacher on CBN, I won't say his name but you know who I'm talking about. He had said that it was a curse. You all remember that? And I said to my students and they laughed at it, they said he's out of his mind, he's crazy, I said no. There's actually some sense of credence and sanity in it. How dare the African people use their own spiritual systems, vis-a-vis Yoruba, or what the Europeans call voodoo, as a catalyst for the political process of building and organizing behind Yoruba, behind voodoo. Because that was the crux of Tupac, see. How dare they do that? The CBN said they made a pact with the devil. I said, I wonder if anybody sees this. Of course they didn't. I had to bring it to my students. I said, Brother Howard, oh man, I feel it now brother. It's right in front of you.

Analyze, see, so the species itself. At another level this is about the species. Hey, it's incumbent upon. I told you we've been here since the beginning of time. All things will be reconciled that way. You know, as long as we understand that. The African mother is the mother of all ethnic groups. He's tied to you. Through his history. As he deals with his history and goes back further and further, past the dynastic periods, which are families, and deals with the pantheon of gods and buddhism and hinduism, he'll see a black presence in his theology. Whether it be Buddha or Krishna. This African presence ties us to all people. They don't want us to deal with those things. This has to become part of our education apparatus. It has to. The stakes are high. To make a long story short.

[Laughs]

>>INTERVIEWER: Give you something to think about.

[Laughs]

>>INTERVIEWER: Got anything else to ask?

>>OTHER INTERVIEWER: I've got enough to think about myself. Information overload.

[Laughs]

>>INTERVIEWER: Thank you Howard.