has been distorted so badly. It’s a human travesty that a population of this earth has been denied its total history and value. So it’s my passion to find out where those hidden pieces are and to mend those pieces together.
That takes you into politics …
No, in my perception it’s about being human. It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with a people whose sovereign unity identifies them as a group. To make it simple, Africa and people of African decent and their culture are not outside humanity. We’re a part of humanity. We’re not like in a zoo. We belong here too. This earth is ours too.
It sounds like a calling to you.
It’s very invigorating to me because I get to fulfill the desires of my ancestors who went through a whole lot of pain and death and destruction so that I can seek these truths in my own life. That’s pretty heavy to me. I’m standing on the shoulders of almost a billion dead, abused Africans and given the opportunity to share their truth with the rest of the world. In fact, I was quizzing my son on King Tutankhamen — and I always make him say King Tutankhamen, the whole name, because no one in Europe nicknames its kings. You never heard of Queen Victoria called Queen Vickie. You never hear King Henry IV referred to as Old Henny. It’s those subtle ways that they’ve de-powered African classical history that I instill in my kids. So I get to show this generation how the European scholars, in conjunction with the colonization of Africa, have displaced our history.