Abbey Lincoln makes a very profound statement that " We don't know our names. Our names are in our ancestors. We don't know our ancestors. Our ancestors are with our Gods. We are our Gods." She speaks to something that I have spoken on many times and something that I wish to make the focus of my work, that Afro-Americans, Black people in this country do not know their heritage, do not know where they come from and are therefore at the mercy and whim of the white male power structure. All of the confusion that we see today in the Afro-American community(such as it is), everything that sticks out like a sore thumb--from Hurricane Katrina to the total disregard and disrespect paid to the Afro-American community by the powers that be in this country, all result from our collective not knowing from where we have come. As I have said before, with all of the efforts to try and delve back into an African past--these are very fine, but they won't do any good until Afro-Americans deal with the legacy that they have been handed here in this country--that of slavery and horrible crimes against humanity that produced us as a population. We are the bastard children of this white male power structure. We collectively are the Edmund of King Lear, and we must decide what we will do in facing this patriarchal system that oppresses us. Black people deal with this legacy of illegitimacy within this white capitalist patriarchal system(to borrow bell hooks' term) by denying this legacy-- acknowledging only the African part of their past and this is detrimental to any efforts that Blacks will ever make to gain recognition of their humanity in this country. They will either have to confront patriarchy head on or they will continue to live in the squalor of its existence.

This demands that we know our legacy here in this country and that we know where we come from. How many of us know our grandparents, our great grandparents? Where you come from? We must become reconnected to this past in order to bring ourselves forward. I am very glad that I have always been in touch with mine. When you know who you are, there is nothing that can be done to you.