Divine Consciousness

By Kamal A.M. Al Mansour

The quest for freedom and equality has been a much broader and longer journey than most people realize, given it is still not achieved after 495 years!

Divine Consciousness: From a Dystopian Diaspora to Afrofuturism, takes readers on a journey, from a point in time when the African Diaspora was just beginning

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kamal Al Mansour
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735613901

Book preview

Divine Consciousness

From a Dystopian Diaspora to Afrofuturism

KAMAL A.M. AL MANSOUR

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2020 by Kamal A.M. Al Mansour

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to artGriot at the email below.

First Edition

Published by artGriot Publishing September 2020

San Jose, California

artgriot.com/publishing

ISBN: 978-1-7356139-0-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020917090

Cover art and design: Kamal Al Mansour

DEDICATION

This book is for all whose light shines bright, whose path is deliberate and defined, awaken to new reality with higher consciousness, and committed to the relevance and permanence of our culture, now and in the future.

CONTENTS

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

PART ONE THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

1 FROM ENSLAVEMENT TO THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

PART TWO A DYSTOPIAN STATE

2 WHAT IS A DYSTOPIAN STATE?

3 THE DEHUMANIZATION OF BLACK PEOPLE AND BLACK BODIES

4 TOTALITARIANISM v. IMPERIALISM

5 RUTHLESS MEGACORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD

6 A DYSTOPIAN STATE

PART THREE THE JOURNEY TO AFROFUTURISM

7 WHEN IS THE FUTURE?

8 B(L)ACK TO THE FUTURE

9 AFROCENTRISM: REMIXED AND REIMAGINED

10 THE JOURNEY TO AFROFUTURISM

EPILOGUE: DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS

ENDNOTES

IMAGES BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

Let me introduce this book with several disclaimers. This book is a treatise and analysis that will be uncomfortable, fa dem an’ fa we. It is unavoidable, as it deeply and critically matters to our present-sense awareness and our future-state. In addition, this book is not an attempt to over-analyze the obvious. It’s not clear, actually, what is obvious, however. We have all seen enough scary movies to know that when the music changes and a darkish hue comes over the screen, there is an entity, darkness, or some spirit that is about to do something evil. I am going to talk about the darkness, the entity, the state we are in, in the Diaspora. But also, on the continent as a result of [re]colonization and the seemingly worldwide comprehensive effort to repress, contain and control us, our culture, our future. This is what this book is about.  

It can’t be just coincidence that the Blaxploitation I experienced as a teenager has recycled at least twice in the last 40 years. Or, what in the 1980s onward, became synonymous with Johnny Cochran’s first major case against the City of Los Angeles—the LAPD chokehold, which has also circled back. Thirty years later—multiple bullets (Breonna Taylor) instead of chokeholds, except for George Floyd and Eric Garner, where for George; it was a knee on the neck. I also do not believe it is a coincidence that the knee on the neck took the form of kneeling. Colin Kaepernick’s NFL kneeling protest against social injustice, inequality, and police brutality suffered by Black people in the U.S. There should be no misinterpretation that kneeling is not about the flag and the military. The concept is taking a knee versus standing in deference to the words initially written in 1814 when we were not considered human, then later becoming the national anthem in 1931 during Jim Crow. So it makes sense to take a knee in protest of the continual dehumanization of Black people and Black bodies in the U.S. and elsewhere. The kneeling protest has had an impact and caused many to rethink.

There are times when my mind seamlessly connects recent disparate memories and experiences that, taken as one, creates a singular cohesive stream of consciousness. In other words, consider traveling abroad and staying at a nice resort. Of the hundreds of white folks from different parts of the states and Canada and Europe at the resort, I also encountered twenty or so Black folk; however, not one spoke. Well, let me be fair, one actually chatted briefly, his wife spoke, one other nodded, twelve actually deliberately turned away when passing by, and five were just there. My wife and two sons noticed too. A similar syndrome exists in corporate America, especially here in Silicon Valley (northern California). There are easily no more than one-and-a-half percent (give or take) of Black workers on average per company in Silicon Valley. It is quite common to attend a company-sponsored event with two-hundred to three-hundred people, many of whom are from the sponsoring company, but a hundred from other large Silicon Valley companies. And we are talking one of the majors in the Valley who happens to have approximately 140,000 employees. Out of the three-hundred people mentioned attending an event, there would typically be between twenty and thirty Indian (more if it is more tech-centric than business), up to twenty Asian (again, the focus determines the number), two to five Black, maybe (I have been the only one many times), and the rest white. Ten years ago, the numbers would have ticked up slightly for Black people. Unfortunately, from ten years ago to present, few if any Black people I would pass or attempt to engage on the corporate campus became invisible, but only to me. The white folk could see them just fine. It could be the geographic location of Silicon Valley versus Atlanta or RTP (Research Triangle Park), for example, and could also be tech versus other corporate sectors. It could be. There is no excuse.

Connecting these vacation and corporate experiences is very similar to when I was a student at UCLA in the late 1970s, early 1980s, but different. Around 1,000 to 1,500 Black students out of 37,000 students, and of course, the 1,500 students mostly athletes. But here, compared to corporate, where measurement and valuation are different (also, student versus employee), you had many if not most Blacks in the 1980s at UCLA that definitely spoke and connected. Has the passage of time and environment had an impact on the coalescence of Black people or, is it that fewer of us make it into corporate and tech, and we still harbor the mentality of fear because of the perception that commingling signifies something other than complete assimilation?

If we are walking around in this state of mind—not acknowledging each other, particularly in environments that demand it; in a social milieu that also has Black folk being gunned down and choked out by the cops in broad daylight without consequence; living in blight and despair but calling it your block; leading the number of incarcerated and disproportionately suffering from dis-ease; rapping about nothing for millions; seeing Caesar from the film Django come back to life and work in the White House and the Supreme Court, state and city governments, and major corporations—we are in a dystopian state. But wait, with the election of America’s first Black president, Barrack Obama, we supposedly entered post-racial America. I never understood this, despite many Black folks claiming allegiance to the term as though the universe had shifted. As an artist, I recall calls for submission and major exhibitions with themes centered on post-Black. In fact, prominent Black curators and museum directors denounced Black-themed or Afrocentric work as irrelevant, passé, and even threatening, to this new utopia or world where everyone considered shit post-Black except white folk. Most reasonable minds would conclude that in this dystopian state, we are light-years from anything resembling post-Black, and if you truly believed that America somehow became post-Black, you were certifiably dystopian particularly, looking at where we are now.

Speaking of now, it is officially the middle of the year; July 2020, the third year I’ve been working on this book. I just heard on the news that there were seventy-five shootings in the Chi over the 4th of July weekend. Of the more than one-hundred and fifty shot, over twenty were killed, and of those killed, six were children, ages six years old to 14 years old. In Chicago, Illinois alone, of the seventy-five people shot, thirteen of those were killed in a single weekend. In New York, sixty-three people were involved in shootings, and in Cleveland, Ohio, twenty people were shot, and three killed from gun violence. Many, if not most of these shootings involved Black folks. I thought Black lives matter. I disagree with the concept of Black-on-Black violence as an anomaly compared to other violence in the U.S. I am concerned most about us, so it hurts that just a couple of weekends earlier, we celebrated Juneteenth (more than I’ve seen over the last 50 years, which was cool) and, then on, their independence celebration, we bust caps and kill each other. Black Lives Matter¹ has to mean something to us, too, not just an assertion to an external audience. We are only 13 percent of the U.S. population, or approximately 43 million. We are disproportionately impacted by the Prison-Industrial Complex, dis-ease, educational output, income and wealth, and other categories. We are in the belly of the beast in this systemic institutionalized race construct managed and operated by white supremacy, so we have enough working against us that we should treat each other better and be better to ourselves.

A few weeks later, just chillin’ in the morning sipping on my matcha green tea with turmeric and almond milk, while watching GMA (Good Morning America), I heard an intro for the next segment, What is Colorism? This certainly caught my attention, and I looked up, and it was Deborah Roberts doing a segment on the impact of colorism, produced by the late Daisha Riley. The focus of the piece, bias based on skin color, with the preference for light skin, if not white skin, over darker skin. People of color, primarily Black people, were discussing how having darker skin has made their life so difficult, and both physically and mentally traumatic. Roberts provided statistics that highlighted how employers hire people with lighter skin, while those already employed get promotions and higher pay based on having lighter skin. Some interviewed spoke about darker skin having a negative connotation of not working as hard as someone with lighter skin, and having light skin, allowed them to gain more favor with white people. Others spoke about feeling inferior and inadequate because of having not just darker skin but being Black with dark skin. Most of those interviewed for the segment stated that having white skin means having a better life, success, beauty, etc. Roberts provided a few statistics such as having lighter skin paid a higher hourly wage than having darker skin (e.g., $11.72/ hour versus $14.72/hour), and that darker skin drivers are three times more likely to be stopped by the police or even arrested. In addition, white employers consider lighter skin employees as more intelligent than darker skin employees, even though they have the same level of education. Some of the experts speaking in the piece suggested that anti-blackness started with the concept of darker means less human. As a result of this concept of colorism, many Black people have elected to bleach their skin and use other harmful chemicals and products to lighten their skin. I turned to my wife and simply said, dystopian.

Can you imagine, looking through your beautiful brown eyes, out of your sun-drenched black skin—sweat and tears flowing down and glistening off of your black skin like metallic streams highlighted by the bright hot sun, during that momentary glimpse upward before the crack of the whip, while picking cotton for the tenth hour that day—into the white face of your enslaver. The enslaver and many like him, taking that cotton and building a nation over the next 340 years! The same nation, the U.S., that built white institutions that, for hundreds of years, were for white skin only. And, 155 years later, the successors and direct beneficiaries of those institutions, with their white skin, continue to profit from the black-skinned human labor of our ancestors. These institutions are the foundation of the systemic racist institutions of white supremacy and imperialism that deny you equality, administer injustice, pay you lower wages (if hired), miseducate you, oppress you, colonize you, brutalize you, incarcerate you, and more, all done looking out of their white skin at your black skin. Having spent nearly 500 years demeaning you, stereotyping you, minimizing you, and negating you, how do you continue to see white skin as better, more beautiful, the object of your affection, and the standard of beauty? White supremacy is the standard of oppression, not the standard of beauty.

They can use plastic surgery and Botox all day every day to emulate what they clearly know is the true standard of beauty. All of the tanning will never add melanin to their skin, and neither will the silicone implants last. Sisters have been naturally beautiful for thousands and thousands of years. The most beautiful woman in the history of the world was Nefertiti, from Kemet—nowhere close to Hollywood, or Beverly Hills, or Sweden, or France, but Africa. Sistas are the standard of beauty that God created. Self-realization and appreciation of the inherent and innate beauty of the black skin you are in, the persona you have that others attempt to replicate. The Black culture you enhance and evoke is a state of consciousness that is divine.

My intent here is not to incite hate or indict white skin; however, I do fully intend to evoke ancestral memories that inform and inspire self-love, and the radiance and essence of being Black now and into the future.

This book is not intended to contribute to the rhetorical, okay, I get it, so now what?! Because after I fully describe where we are as Black people in the Diaspora, in terms and references that inform us and equip us with a descriptive framework and present conscious awareness of our situation, we can then begin to transform from this dystopian state to a future state, or Afrofuturism. However, before leaping to the future, we need to first understand what the Diaspora is, and how many of us are in it. Further, I will provide a thorough and clear analysis and understanding of what I mean by dystopian, which is vital.

I will provide more detail in terms of certain films and literature that highlight dystopia, with analysis of the same that hopefully provides context and perspective of what I consider a dystopian state in which the Diaspora finds itself. Equally, I will do the same in Part III of the book with regard to Afrofuturism.

Without going into a full synopsis of one of my favorite movies, The Matrix (1999), I will presume that many readers have a basis if not full understanding and appreciation for this film (at least the first of the trilogy). In The Matrix, after Neo returned from seeing the Oracle, Morpheus, Trinity, Switch, Apoc, Neo, and Cypher were going upstairs in the old Brownstone when Neo saw a Black cat pass by, then another Black cat passed by that looked exactly the same. Neo uttered "déjà vu." This set off a panic as Trinity identified déjà vu as a glitch in the matrix, or when they [the Agents] changed something; a program. Here, however, I have experienced déjà vu over and over and over in more than 50 years, but the program in this matrix, or what I call the Construct, this systemic institutionalized race construct of white supremacy, is the same. Is it us, or is it them, or is it something else?

About ten years ago, I began thinking deeper about the future. Mostly regarding my artwork and potential concepts and ideas for work that would remain true to my genre and aesthetic, but also work that I could leverage with my technique of mixing and seamlessly merging traditional art forms with digital. Hence, in direct response to the challenge broadcast by Kevin Sipp (former curator at the Hammonds House Museum² in Atlanta, Georgia) to all Black visual artists, I created a diptych in 2010 entitled Black2DFuture (Figure 9), and Flash Black2DFuture (Figure 10). I don’t recall the publication, but in the written interview, a question was posed to Sipp about what he wanted to see from Black artists. He responded that he was waiting to see Black artists create work about Black people in the future. I recall him saying, and I paraphrase, . . . I know we can create work about slavery, but what about us in the future. Although it would be ten years since I revisited Afrofuturism in my art, with my newest series, AI (Gen 1) (Figures 13 and 14), I started thinking about three or four years ago, before Wakanda, how will Africa look in 2050, 2100 and beyond. I have never wavered from the position of total Black liberation globally, and a complete reversal of Africa’s natural resources flowing through our hands, and development for our interests, notwithstanding the past, but because of the past.

This book considers the past in confronting the present while preparing for our future. Our past and present have been subjugated, in part, by a decidedly human threat from those in control. Dystopian societies are marked by mass suffering and great injustice but are not just relegated to stories of fiction. We have been and continue to be in a dystopian state throughout the Diaspora. However, we don’t have to remain trapped in this state, nor consider that our ability to finally overcome could only exist in a distant future. We must choose to define and control our present to ensure the future we want. And, an Afrofuture is not just a thing of science-fiction or imagination, but something truly attainable.

Afrofuturism is not just another ism, nor is it just science-fiction, or Sun Ra, or the Mothership Connection, or Supa Dupa Fly, or Black Panther, as though these are the only defining examples of Afrofuturism. As I will discuss later in the book, Afrofuturism is not non-Western mythologies, mysticism, or Black magical realism, nor is it an imaginary trip to Wakanda. Further, there is no yellow brick road to get to it, nor is it a far off utopia or alternative outer-worldly destination like Saturn for Black folks to chill. It is real and attainable and necessary for all of us in the face of an indifferent and inimical world, not just regarding Black lives to matter and equality, but Black exceptionalism and free choice. Pursuant to the subtitle of this treatise, From a Dystopian Diaspora to Afrofuturism, I don’t define how we get from and to. I don’t refer to it as a transition or shift or even pivot, but a journey. James Baldwin said this about the meaning of a journey:

"A journey is called such because you cannot know what you will discover on the journey. What you will do, what you find, or what you find will do to you."

The journey to Afrofuturism is just that, a journey. We will be traveling from one place, a dystopia, to another, our future as Black people. And this journey to Afrofuturism requires a divine consciousness, as it is our destiny if we choose.

PART ONE

THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

1

FROM ENSLAVEMENT TO THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

di·as·po·ra

/dīˈaspərə/

noun: diaspora

1. people settled far from their ancestral homeland; members of the African Diaspora

2. the place where these people live

3. the movement, migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland

The genesis of the African Diaspora, which is specific to this