Abolishing Slave Names
“Sometimes I think as African people whether we’re in America, Africa, the Caribbean or throughout the diaspora, sometimes we focus too much on superficialities as opposed to substantive change. So in other words, every African in the diaspora could drop our European names and take an African name and we should, but is that the priority? No.”
“Freedom, justice and liberation is the priority. The honourable Marcus Garvey never changed his name, but his contribution to African liberation is almost unparalleled”
“John Henrik Clarke, Amos Wilson, alot of our grandmaster teachers never changed their name but they changed the condition of the people.”
“So I’m a big supporter of changing your name but I’m an even bigger supporter of changing the condition. Do the work first and the name will follow.”
I believe the important thing to take away from this is that the change begins in your mind. Once you make that decision to on the team fighting for freedom, justice and liberation of African then the process of abolishing slave name begins. Even if you never get to do it officially, once you are taking actions towards changing the condition of African people on this planet, that’s what really matters.
This clip was taken from an interview on The Penuel Show