Yepete: Its Meaning and Significance in Africentricty
The first question most people will ask if they have not read the "Our Story" section of this website is "What does the word Yepete mean?" Yepete is a West African term which means specifically the African Diaspora. The diaspora being those people of indigenous origins forcibly removed and enslaved from their Motherland and also those who voluntarily migrated to different parts of the earth be it through expansion of empires, trade or exploration. The Great White Elder (my personal description of the Merriam-Webster dictionary) defines the term in the following:
a :the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland
•the black diaspora to northern cities (insert~ this is a misleading statement being the fact that all of Africa was civilized by Africans prior to the Eurasian invaders misnomered Arabs. Adofo A. Kwesi)
b :people settled far from their ancestral homelands
•members of the African diaspora
c :the place where these people live
In most common cases, the term "diaspora" is synonymous with the Jewish migrations out of their "promised land". It was a time when the ancient Jewish or Hebrew people were either captured and enslaved by foreign invaders or those who fled to evade capture and in many cases trade with other races along the Mediterranean Sea. Our African ancestors endured a far worse calamity or more appropriately a terroristic genocide lasting for thousands of years more properly referred to as the Maafa . Maafa is a Kiswahili word introduced to us by Nana Dr. Marimba Ani under her conceptual interpretation meaning the African Holocaust. In many ways, the Maafa still has not come to an end and can unfortunately be experienced by many of our people around the world this very day! A great documentary titled Maafa 21: Black Genocide can be viewed at www.maafa21.com. I highly recommend it!
Concerning the Yepete (African diaspora), it is of major importance for us to reconnect and maintain those connections with our African family on the continent; its rich cultures, spiritual systems, resources and land. Given our “unique” social-political and economic status in our respective nations following formal enslavement and later colonialism and neo-colonialism, it is imperative that we educate ourselves and families as thoroughly as possible as well as to build strong familial and business relations amongst the Yepete and the continental Africans. For these very reasons, adopting Africentricity is of key importance. Before I define Africentricity, I must define a more readily acceptable term...Afrocentricity. As defined by Nana Dr. Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity is a paradigm based on the idea that African people should re-assert a sense of agency in order to achieve sanity. This means we the Yepete should create our own institutions free from westernized thought, but rather from an African-centered perspective and to ensure our problem solving modality be also from an African-centered perspective. In essence Afrocentricity is a description of the re-Africanization of the Yepete. If Afrocentricity is a description, Africentricity is a state of being an African. Africenticity is a term created by my Jenga (Elder, teacher or mentor) in the early 1980’s as a Psychological reprogramming method used to heal the minds and spirits of descendants of enslaved Africans in order for us to lead fruitful healthy lives according to our ancestral way minus any of the negative aspects of ancestral society. It brings the people of the Yepete back into the essence of “African-communion” even though we belong to many different nationalities outside of Mother Africa. Africentricity is a psychological approach and an African-centered methodology which can be used as a form of scientific thought. Africentricity is completely independent of outside influence (European/Eurasian/Asian) and is 100% self-sufficient/self-sustaining in its truest form. Ultimately then, we the Africans of the Yepete have to unlearn Eurocentric cultural behaviors and ideologies, then reclaim or reprogram our minds with African culture, ideologies, names and spiritual systems. We must with no western influence nor cautions, embrace our ancestral oneness in order to reestablish our once glorious status as the parents and teachers of mankind.
In conclusion, Africa as we all know is struggling to keep its identity. It is up to the global African family to unlearn/deprogram our minds from the western indoctrination that prevents us from uniting and building ourselves up as a race. We have the people and the resources to build and maintain strong institutions amongst ourselves. We have many different cultures that could be a benefit in one form or another to our brothers and sister in Africa, which in return will allow Africa to stretch out her arms and gather her children at her bosom once more. It is my hope and belief that we will amalgamate, promulgate and perpetuate a new African consciousness by re-institutionalizing "Africentrically" ourselves, families, communities, nations and without question Mother Africa returning her back to her former glory again and beyond to even greater heights! Ase’
Abibifahodie~ African Liberation
Adofo Anan Kwesi
Bibliography
Ani, Marimba (1980, 1997). Let The Circle be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora; New York: Publications
Asante, Molefi. http://www.asante.net/articles/1/afrocentricity/
Ashanti, Kwabena F., Psycotechnology of Brainwashing: Crucifying Willie Lynch; Durham, NC: Tone Books, 2000.