Dr. Van Sertima discusses African contributions to ancient Greek and Egyptian civilizations, challenging Eurocentric views of history.
Transcript
Look here, we're living in the global village. We cannot afford these. They're supposed to have polarity and that we are not here to try and show that the Europeans did nothing. Everybody knows he did a lot. That's all we hear about. What we hear to show is that we don't have to beg you to think that we'll be recon. We have proof that we'll equal. And we just want you to look again at your history. Take off your blindfold and you will see equal people walking upon the earth. That therefore is where the whole thing is. We're not getting into Egypt because we want to dwell on fantasies. We're getting into Egypt because we want to be turned to the true reality of the world. It is on balance. It is sick because we are the victims of a grave fantasy, a gross test fantasy. When the black woman is raised, no big press conference, the white woman is raised. Everybody alarm to them, to them. The reason for that is because we have a deep thing that has become part of our consciousness that the white matter. His civilization, his values, his skin, his people, matter, we don't matter. It's like in that book on Huckleberry skin, when somebody ran up the hard of great commotion, what happened? Nothing just to make us got killed. Because nothing has happened. And make a go at the rate. That's not important. So that we have got the fight test because after the root of prejudice is the vision of the world. The vision that we have come to accept these are the giveaways. Therefore it's not a little academic issue. It is a matter of life and death. What we were fighting in Dallas is not about any little exhibition. We were fighting again something that is deep in the psyche of our world, something that is thick, something that is made as victims, something that is driven some of us so crazy that we want to make out of people's victims like ourselves. Something that has made us victims of our own grists, something that has made us victims of so many things. That is why this history is important. I am not going to talk about it in the passionless voice of an academic because it's no academic issue to me. It's too real. APPLAUSE Bernanerat has written a book called Black Athena. Bernanerat is a very extraordinary man. He was a Donald Kimberdata. For this, you could go in the Western world in terms of academia. He's also a master of Chinese. He's written a book called Black Athena, and which he shows that one of the heroes, one of the Black heroes, Fungan, a teen, a film, the Majesty's City in Greece. All the Greeks came into Egypt even after the day out of my shattered wall. I had to go to Europe to study to miss learn about my heritage. And then later, using what I had to learn all over again by myself, I am my own university. APPLAUSE He'd even in the reverse way, with the Greeks go into Africa. Tiles of militar, and I love to make it sound like a song, because some people have made songs of their suffering. And songs of their achievements and have made them the universal songs of the world. Some people have even made statements that there are the chosen ones, and that what happens to them matters more than anything else in the world. We do not want to be part of that, but we want to sing our history because it must become intimate to us. Rather than to sing the kind of empty songs, many of us sing today, let us sing of the things that are still native to us, so that we could feel it deep in our cups. So when I call the names of the Greeks who came to study on the rust, it's like a song in my head, Tiles of militaristic democracies by Stagros, you say, so not as the manor and as the meaning of the rock that rust. These are the people who came and stole and brought it back into Greece. But they were not the great seeds, because many of them admitted it. It is less than when you upset overlord by this, humbled by this, they have to go back and say, no, no, no, no, it's not true. These people that only reach a certain level in mathematics, they're going to empirical level, trial and error, they were not, they had not achieved mathematical genius. When you go on study each, a financial tick met several lifetimes, because it's the only civilization that is so well preserved. No, people on earth have been able to preserve their bodies as the Africans have done. If we have a chance to slow slides tonight, I will show you a princess, and she's only one of many princess annuhtawi who died more than 4,000 years ago. You can see the texture of her skin. You can see her hair, her African hair. You can see her mouth. You can see her eyelids 4,000 years ago. In 1964 in the youth, University of Oklahoma, they opened the skin of an African princess who died thousands of years ago, princess meaning. And they said she was so very preserved that the cells within her hands could be put in a solution and transplanted. We are not dealing with the kind of media, or critique that we have come become accustomed to take for granted in ourselves, in the world where we have been in theory of rise, because that is really the key to it. We are not in theory of we have been in theory of rise. And anyway, we can move away from that feeling of inferiority and that kind of performance. That is mediocre and inferior is becoming aware of what can correct this, because that is really very universal. Don't tell me because it is too late. It's never too late. Man has just begun his journey. There's nothing that is too late. This is the unique part. This is never late. This is timeless. This is consciousness. Non-fanyanian nonsense about how it's been a killer study year 2000. That is nonsense. It is a joke compared to what struck Europe. The black death gives 50% of Europeans. It will never give 50% to the world's people. By the time it reaches that point, they will find the solution to it. In Europe, the way they would go to collect garbage in the morning, they would go to collect corpses. That was how terrible the black death was. Once the needs, there was not a single family that did not lose half of its people during the time of the black death. And they didn't have our technology. They were going to be, they didn't make a decision. The law of the final plot germ started this. What system is this hitting? Rare to hit this back and things like that, which is what we are doing in our struggle to deal with it. So it's giving me these gloomy stories. But people have reached into the darkness so deeply. Only once a year is darkness. You can't grow out of darkness. You have to become aware of your honor because it brings an honor which can charge you and change you. But do not let it overbell me. You have to balance that terror with hope. Hope springs from the past. Hope has to be brought into the present by a genuine conscious effort. If all you have is darkness. If all you have is the memory and knowledge of gloom. If you never struggle to move out of that gloom, you will be crushed because it is darkness that kills. Not AIDS. It is hopelessness that destroys the race. You have to know that there is something happening in the world that is unusually hopeful. It is not an accident that it is in this very time that that is happening. We have found so many things that start lost. Look at the Japanese. Everybody thinks that the Asia-Tic now is finding the Asia-Tic has the finest race. The Japanese is very sophisticated. He is superior. The Japanese were hopeful a few years ago. The Japanese went to Egypt all the countries and tried to build a war.