Reply to a classmate’s post from Saturday’s assignment in Discussion Board. The assignment that the entire had to write about was based on the article attached. We were supposed to answer:What is culture?What impact would you say African culture has had on society and knowledge production globally? Why or why not? What aspect of the cultural paradigm as outlined by Dr.Karengainterests you most? Why?.
I've already answered these questions. I'm suppose to respond to another classmates who responded to the assignment above. I've attached their response as well.
African Culture and the Ongoing Quest for Excellence Dialog, Principles, Practice by Maulana Karenga, Ph.D. The nearing of the next millennium unavoidably evokes concerns and calls for a critical assessment of where we are and to what tasks we should direct our attention and efforts in our ongoing quest for a free and empowered community, a just and good society and a better world. In our assessment we are of necessity directed toward the continuing struggle to free ourselves both socially and culturally. In fact, the two struggles are unbreakably linked. For to free ourselves socially, we must build a consciousness, cohesion and sense of specialness in community only culture can give. But to bring forth the best of our culture, we must struggle to clear social space for its recovery, reception and development. It is in this context that our organization Us (Us, African people) argued in the Sixties and continues to argue that the key challenge in Black life is the cultural challenge. And this challenge is essential to break beyond the boundaries of the culture of the established order, recover, discover and bring forth the best of our own culture, and effectively address the fundamental questions of our world and our times. The task, as Us perceived it then and contends now, is to forge and embrace a culture that both prepares the people for the struggle and sustains them in the process of the struggle for a world of human freedom and human flourishing. This meant then and continues to mean selecting and stressing elements of Black culture that represent the best of African and human values, values which protect and promote human life, human freedom and maximum human development. It means also recreating liberation-supportive values, views and practices which were lost, damaged or transformed in the midst of oppression and creating new ways of seeing and approaching the world that reinforce and raise up the people, support and sustain the struggle, and point toward the new world we struggle to bring into being. Key to this process of cultural construction and reconstruction is the ongoing dialog with African culture. Kawaida, the philosophy of Us organization, defines this dialog as the constant practice of asking questions and seeking answers from African culture to the fundamental and enduring concerns of the African and human community. At the heart of this project is the continuing quest to free ourselves, live full and meaningful lives and become the best of what it means to be both African and human in the fullest sense of the words. Moreover, it involves an ongoing search for models of excellence and possibilities within our culture by which we speak our own special cultural truth to the world and make our own unique contribution to the forward flow of human history. To truly dialog with African culture means, first of all, using it as a resource rather than as a mere reference. This is the meaning of posing questions and seeking answers within African culture concerning central issues of life and the world. To simply use African culture as a reference is to name things considered important, but never to use it to answer questions, solve problems, or extract and shape paradigms of excellence and possibility in thought and practice. To dialog with African culture, then, is to constantly engage its texts, i.e., its oral, written, and living-practice texts, its paradigms, its worldview and values, its understanding of itself and the world, in an ongoing search for ever better answers to the fundamental questions and challenges of our time. We must always recognize and respect the fact that our culture comes with its own special way of being human in the world and that this particular African way of being human in the world provides a pathway to the universal. For it represents African peoples' way of engaging the fundamental concerns of humankind. Furthermore, our culture has evolved in the longest of histories and thus has amassed a rich and varied array of ancient and modern knowledge, understanding, and wisdom concerning the world. Ours is a history of struggle, creativity, achievement, and constant concern for the right, the just, and the good. It is a history of ancient wonder and achievement in the Nile Valley, awesome tragedy and destruction in the Holocaust of Enslavement, and impressive triumph in our constant struggle against overwhelming societal odds against us in modern times. And ours is a history of an ongoing commitment to raise up the good even in the midst of the most horrific evil and to pursue the possible in spite of the catechism of impossibilities repeatedly offered us. Seven Core Areas Of Culture It is within the context of this rich and most ancient of histories and cultures that we must constantly search for and bring forth the best of what it means to be African and pose new paradigms of human excellence and possibility. This ongoing search for solutions and models of human excellence and possibilities must occur, Kawaida contends, in every area of human life but especially in the seven core areas of culture: history; religion (spirituality and ethics); social organization; economic organization; political organization; creative production (art, music, literature, dance, etc.) and ethos, the collective self-consciousness achieved as a result of activity in the other six areas. History In the area of history, Us maintains, we must study history to learn its lessons, absorb its spirit of possibility, extract and emulate its models of excellence and possibility and honor the moral obligation to remember. We must measure ourselves in the mirror of the best of our history and constantly ask ourselves how can we use the past as a foundation to inform, expand and enrich our present and future. We must always be conscious of our identity as the fathers and mothers of humanity and human civilization in the Nile Valley, the sons and daughters of the Holocaust of Enslavement and the authors and heirs of the Reaffirmation of our Africanness and social justice tradition in the Sixties. Surely this is a challenge for intellectual, social and moral excellence, active opposition to all forms of enslavement, and an enduring commitment to cultural rootedness, justice, and good in the world. Religion (Spirituality and Ethics) In the area of religion (spirituality and ethics), our culture has the most ancient of ethical traditions, the oldest ethical, spiritual and social justice texts. We introduced the concept of human dignity and the divine image of the human person as early as 2140 BCE (before the common era) in the Sacred Husia, in the Book of Kheti. We are the ones who spoke to the world in the earliest of times saying, "speak truth, do justice, care for the vulnerable, give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked and a boat to those without one, care for the ill, be a staff of support for those of old age, a father to the orphan, a mother to the timid, a raft for the drowning and a ladder for those trapped in the pit of despair, honor the elders and ancestors, cherish and challenge the children, maintain a right relation with the environment and always raise up the good and pursue the possible." This is a tradition we must neither ignore nor abandon. Social Organization Our social organization must be constantly concerned with values and practice that affirm and strengthen family, community, and culture. Certainly, the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles of Kawaida, which undergird Kwanzaa, independent schools and rights of passage, family maintenance, school retention and numerous other community development and action programs are key to this. They are: Umoja (Unity); Kujichagulia (Self-Determination); Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility); Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics); Nia (Purpose); Kuumba (Creativity); and Imani (Faith). It is within this framework of communitarian values that we build a peaceful and harmonious togetherness; respect our special way of being human in the world; build together in responsibility the relationships, family, community, society and world we want to live in; share work and wealth; accept the collective vocation of struggle for freedom, justice, peace and human flourishing in the world; constantly repair and restore the world, making it ever more beautiful and beneficial and maintain our faith in the right and the good by working and struggling to define, defend, and develop them in the world. Economic Organization In the area of economics, our culture teaches us the principle of Ujamaa which in its most expansive sense means shared work and wealth rooted in a profound sense of kinship with other humans and the environment. It teaches us to be constantly concerned in our economic practice with the dignity of the human person, with the well-being of family and community, the integrity of the environment, and especially with the vulnerable among us: the poor, the ill, the aged, the captive, the disabled, the refugee and the stranger. For ours is a consciousness born not only of ancient ethical teaching but also of the historical experience of the vulnerability of the "motherless child, a long ways from home" as expressed in our sacred songs. Political Organization Our culture teaches us to view politics as a collective vocation to create a just and good society and advance human good in the world. It calls us to honor our most ancient social justice tradition that, as I noted in the Million Man March/Day of Absence Mission Statement, "requires respect for the dignity and rights of the human person, economic justice, meaningful political participation, shared power, cultural integrity, mutual respect for all peoples, and an uncompromising resistance to social forces and structures which deny or limit these." Creative Production The best of African culture insists that our creative production or art not only be technically sound but also socially purposeful and responsible. It is at its best functional, collective and committing. To be functional is to self-consciously have and urge social purpose, to inform, instruct and inspire the people and be an aesthetic translation of our will and struggle for liberation and ever higher levels of life. It also means searching for and creating new forms and styles to speak our truth and possibilities. To be collective, Black art must be done for all, drawn and synthesized from all, and rooted in a life-based language and imagery rich in everyday relevance. It must be understandable without being vulgarly simplistic, i.e., so pedestrian and impoverished that it damages art as a discipline and the social message it attempts to advance. And it must celebrate not only the transcendent and awesome but also the ordinary, teaching the beauty and sacredness of everyday people and their struggles to live full, decent, and meaningful lives. Finally, Black art must be committing, i.e.,