Dr. Ben Jochannan: Get the Religious Monkey Off Your Back

[00:00:06][applause] [applause] >> I think that I would be speaking for myself and all others when I say my appreciation to our sister who's been honored here tonight by those of us who are saying what we have to about the African people she represents the epitome in my opinion of what we Africans are about.

[00:01:03]African womanhood.

[00:01:08]>> [applause] >> As usual, I'd like to deal with the things I am not to deal with.

[00:01:24]And I'm going to keep the tradition.

[00:01:29]One thing that bother us most of anything in this world which we refuse to challenge because we're afraid to deal with it.

[00:01:46]We have been trained in slavery that a book written by some crackers and some Arabs that those two books have words from a deity.

[00:02:05]And we have started out by condemning ourselves and our women in particular with a nonsense called Adam and Eve.

[00:02:20]>> [applause] >> In that book we have been taught to hate our mother, to discredit our mother's physical development, and the biological facts about her, deny her the rights of production, and even claim it for a man.

[00:02:46]Thus it's necessary to change Adam and Eve to Adam and Steve.

[00:02:56]With all of these things listed here tonight, and I don't give a damn who don't like it.

[00:03:02]With all of what we said tonight about Europe, America, and what not.

[00:03:10]Let's stand up.

[00:03:12]If we are from Haiti, the first place we were brought in slavery by order of the Pope in Rome, our religion is Roman Catholicism.

[00:03:27]If we are from Jamaica, our religion is the Church of England.

[00:03:34]If we in Guadeloupe, it's again Rome.

[00:03:41]If we in the United States Virgin Islands, Denmark Dane it it's Lutheran or Moravian.

[00:03:49]And so on and so on.

[00:03:52]Wherever we were enslaved, we can tell by the slave master's religion.

[00:04:04]If we are at home in the motherland on the East Coast, it's Islam by the Arabs.

[00:04:15]If we are in the northern tip of Africa, it is Islam again.

[00:04:22]If we are the central part of East Africa, it's Islam again.

[00:04:29]If we are West Africa, it is one form of Christianity or the other, Roman Catholicism or Protestantism coming from Martin Luther.

[00:04:42]And so on and so on and so on.

[00:04:47]If we are in the South Pacific, it's one or the other of these monsters.

[00:04:54]Bringing to us a racist god called Jesus Christ.

[00:05:01]Or another racist god called Allah.

[00:05:05]Or the master of racism called Jehovah, who's supposed to curse us because of our thick lips, our broad nose, and said it is the curse and symbol of him.

[00:05:23]But we are scared to deal with it.

[00:05:26]Right now you're shaking your boots.

[00:05:29]And you're scared that the ceiling will fall on your black ass.

[00:05:46]And so it is that we can't challenge the most damaging thing to us.

[00:05:57]Let us go back and look at the facts.

[00:06:03]What do we do?

[00:06:05]What caused Mandela to be the sucker he is?

[00:06:12]Here you got a man with a black face and a black high place.

[00:06:17]In control OF NOTHING.

[00:06:21]ALL OF you jumping up and you going to jump is going to be back here soon.

[00:06:28]And you going to look at Harry Belafonte, no different than O.J.

[00:06:32]Simpson.

[00:06:35]Right now you're crying at the TV. After all, O.J. is a black man. Oh, they're not god damn black man. He stopped being black long ago.

[00:06:45]There's no difference between O.J.

[00:06:47]Simpson and Michael Jackson.

[00:06:50]>> [applause] >> At least Michael had the courage to turn white.

[00:07:05]The prosecutor should have been a black woman.

[00:07:11]And all the jury should have been black women.

[00:07:17]And at least put him under the under the jail or hang him.

[00:07:21]Hang him for having the indecency TO INSULT BLACK WOMANHOOD and married and married a white [ __ ] Let us look back at Rome.

[00:07:48]When Rome along with Isabella and Ferdinand commissioned Cristobal Colon with the concept of the Torito agreement giving the western half of the world to Spain and eastern half of the world to Portugal. Who the hell give that prostitute with a beanie on his head, a [ __ ] in Rome?

[00:08:19]Who gave him the authority to give to the world himself and to divide the world and its people?

[00:08:30]Let's deal with it now.

[00:08:33]Let's come down the pipe.

[00:08:36]Unless you are willing to get the religious monkey off your back you could forget the rest.

[00:08:46]>> [applause] [applause] [cheering] >> When you could sing songs, make me whiter than snow, OH LORD.

[00:09:01]WASH ME IN THE BLOOD, RED BLOOD of the lamb AND YOUR BLACK BEHIND AND THEN YOU GOING TO BE WHITER than snow.

[00:09:15]It's time we either stop coming to these things or do what we got to do.

[00:09:24]There is no way that I am going to read things that insult me.

[00:09:31]Talking about spaceship 1 mile in diameter.

[00:09:37]And the people in the spaceship don't look like me.

[00:09:42]I'm going to carry me away.

[00:09:48]We have to deal with the honesty.

[00:09:51]It was in Haiti that Pope Martin V along with Bartolomé Díaz I mean I'm Las Casas.

[00:10:09]Bartolomé Las Casas decided to destroy the indigenous people for their land.

[00:10:20]It was Haiti that the first 4,000 Africans was sent to be slave, not from the continent of Africa.

[00:10:30]We were already in the southern tip or the southwestern tip of Europe.

[00:10:38]Southern France to there what is called Portugal and Spain.

[00:10:44]Or Española Hispania.

[00:10:48]There in Española which was later called Española little Spain our people were carried 4,000 of them to be enslaved in the name of Jesus.

[00:11:07]Even one of the slave boat was named Jesus the Lubeck.

[00:11:13]We sing the song constantly especially at funerals and say that it has though it was written by a slave master it has the quality of God in it.

[00:11:34]What kind of a God going to have slaves?

[00:11:39]What kind of a God going to say render unto Caesar that which is of Caesar and to unto the Lord that which is of the Lord.

[00:11:53]And I must pray to that God.

[00:11:58]You can't even say to your God in honesty what's on your mouth. You recite things written by Germans, Welshmen, Englishmen.

[00:12:12]And then you get you when you can't quote those bastard, you speak in tongues.

[00:12:21]Tongues that you don't know a damn thing what you're saying.

[00:12:31]You left your concept of the deity which your ancestors so proudly brought paying honor and respect to childbirth.

[00:12:47]You have your God Min and your goddess Nut in the righteousness of childbirth.

[00:12:58]When you took observation of the fact of the mother giving forth her child, her male child, and her female child in honor and respect.

[00:13:13]The concept of childbirth, the concept of the first child, didn't have a damn thing to do with Jehovah.

[00:13:24]At the mammisi of every temple in Egypt.

[00:13:29]And I pointed out one in one of the presentation by by by the noble.

[00:13:38]The story of Khnum making man and woman out of clay and a potter's wheel.

[00:13:46]Preceded Jehovah by thousands of years.

[00:13:51]Some of you went to Egypt and saw it for yourself and come back and still reciting the same damn nonsense.

[00:13:58]Some of you went to Egypt and said the immaculate conception version I said becoming pregnant for Ausaru and giving birth to Heru.

[00:14:12]4,000 YEARS BEFORE MARY TURNED THE SAME TRICK.

[00:14:19]The concept of one and only true God by Akhenaten.

[00:14:24]And there was no Moses yet.

[00:14:27]No way around the world. Akhenaten preached one God long before the birth of Moses and he died long before Moses for Moses to come and then be the first to get it again.

[00:14:45]There wasn't a single Jew.

[00:14:48]Call yourself Hebrew Israelites.

[00:14:52]Call yourself Jews, call yourself whatever you want, Hebrew.

[00:14:55]Let's deal with the reality.

[00:14:58]It's time to stop chucking and jiving and deal with the basic issue.

[00:15:07]How come you go to church with the crackers?

[00:15:11]How come YOU GO TO CHURCH WITH THE ARABS?

[00:15:14]Or the mosque.

[00:15:16]And you tell me all of us are equal in there, but when you come outside what difference does it make if you could sing a song of sixpence in a box with pocket full of gold and you don't come with a damn penny?

[00:15:35]Mandela is singing a song of sixpence and he AND MANY PERSONALLY GOT SOME PENCE.

[00:15:45]BUT HOW MANY ARE the prisoners political prisoners did he release and he was one?

[00:15:55]He carried the people so damn nonsense said they were voting.

[00:16:01]And what did they get?

[00:16:04]Did De Beers go to jail?

[00:16:06]Did any white man that murdered innocent African people in South Africa go to jail?

[00:16:14]Is there any indictment on any of them?

[00:16:17]Does Mandela control the army, the navy, the air force? Does he control mining?

[00:16:22]Does he CONTROL THE TREASURY? WHAT THE HELL DOES HE CONTROL?

[00:16:30]You got a jackass over there called Bishop somebody.

[00:16:34]Tutu.

[00:16:40]Always kneeling down behind the THE POPE'S ASS.

[00:16:45]ALWAYS BACKING ENGLAND. EVERY TIME THE ROYAL family fart in England, he's there to interpret it.

[00:16:59]No, it's about time that we deal with what killing us.

[00:17:04]Foreign concept of religion.

[00:17:08]CONCEPTS THAT COPY FROM US AND DISTORTED WHAT WE WERE SAYING.

[00:17:12]If someone in this audience COULD NAME ME ONE THING, any religion that CAME INTO AFRICA BROUGHT TO AFRICA FOR THE FIRST TIME a concept of principles and dignity for my people, let me know.

[00:17:26]I will relinquish my time for you to tell us.

[00:17:32]No.

[00:17:34]You're not going to deal with it.

[00:17:38]And we're going to be in the same position tomorrow and 10,000 more tomorrow until you're ready to set your own free or suffer your principles, to put back your African woman at the center of your religion.

[00:17:56]>> [applause] >> When you are ready to worship your African woman again, I said again, not the first time.

[00:18:12]When you are ready to look at African childbirth and your woman and pay reverence to her like goddess Nut, when you said that Nut even gave birth to the sun, symbolic of god Ra, when you were saying that, you were ruling yourself.

[00:18:31]And anybody came up against you, we pass.

[00:18:37]But no, you couldn't be happy with that because you like O.J.

[00:18:45]Simpson.

[00:18:47]And you are like O.J. Simpson.

[00:18:52]He had money to buy it, you don't have but you're praying for it.

[00:19:00]And so you are there sorry, wishing that he could get free.

[00:19:06]I don't give a damn what happened to him.

[00:19:12]When he disrespected the African woman, when he disrespected my mother, my daughter, my sister, my aunt, my woman.

[00:19:24]He disrespected all of us if you have enough intelligence to understand it.

[00:19:34]>> [applause] >> What good is it if you can read Brother Scobie's books, Dr. Clark's book, Dr. Jeffries' books, my books, and you can quote me dates and events, but it hasn't make you yet understand that what I am saying is the honor and respect of the African woman.

[00:20:07]I'm speaking to you, brothers.

[00:20:11]And I hope this young man who could bat 500 and add, when he get his first contract, he would remember the black girl he'd been fingering every day.

[00:20:25]That he would remember that she's as a precious as the white [ __ ] he may see in the contract figures.

[00:20:35]Let us be honest with ourselves.

[00:20:39]We are not going to change anything until when we pray, OUR GOD LOOK LIKE OUR MOTHER AND MY DADDY.

[00:20:51]>> [applause] >> The current Pope signed an agreement with the Jews that it was a mistake to say it that they killed Jesus and everything else.

[00:21:10]The current pope went to Zaire and said nothing that it was a mistake and wrote nothing that the church with the Knights of Malta and the Knights of Genoa enslaved African people.

[00:21:32]Yulius Nyerere a prostitute went and kneeled down at the pope and kissed his hand.

[00:21:43]He's a member of the Knights OF MALTA.

[00:21:48]14 DIFFERENT presidents in Africa are members of the church and belong to the Knights of Malta or the Knights of Genoa. The Knights of Malta and Genoa were THE ONES IN CHARGE OF the slave trade.

[00:22:06]HOW ARE YOU GOING TO JOIN an organization THAT WERE IN CHARGE of the slavery of your ancestors?

[00:22:16]So, I could understand when Sekou Touré and Nyerere barred me.

[00:22:22]Nyerere barred me from the six pack and Touré barred me from coming into Guinea. I feel honored by being I've been barred by better people than them.

[00:22:40]>> [applause] >> But, I that didn't stop me from speaking as I speak.

[00:22:48]And as you know, I don't get invitation from black scholars to come to anything.

[00:22:54]I haven't been invited by a black scholar in I don't know when. I guess that brother Jeffries probably isn't a because he have invite me a few times.

[00:23:06]I thought I taught at the school for 18 years.

[00:23:11]The only man to retire from the blacks the African studies department. The only one that people who left some would die.

[00:23:20]The only one retired.

[00:23:23]And in 1987 when I retired, they promised they going to have me back. Good lie.

[00:23:31]I haven't been back yet.

[00:23:34]They had the 20th anniversary of the department.

[00:23:38]And they didn't invite me.

[00:23:41]They gave listen to this.

[00:23:43]They put up a plaque in my honor and a room.

[00:23:49]BUT DIDN'T INVITE ME.

[00:23:51]>> [laughter] >> THEY HAD JOHN CLARK READ my acceptance for me.

[00:23:59]The 25th anniversary just went last year.

[00:24:04]They didn't invite me.

[00:24:06]Somebody called and asked me if I was going. I said going where?

[00:24:11]And so I protested that they don't want me. A sister called me the same night.

[00:24:17]The thing is that the next day and said Dr. Ben we had lost your address.

[00:24:27]I mean you address it Dr. Ben Harlem.

[00:24:32]I get it.

[00:24:39]>> [applause] >> No.

[00:24:44]I got to say this because ladies need to have felt what it is.

[00:24:52]It's okay to come and praise or yes, we need it.

[00:24:59]Jeffries noted knew it.

[00:25:02]I sat down there with his lawyer. I guess he was surprised the night when brother Fleming said to everyone when I was in first entered college, him and his associate a man told me in a class, he said, "You studying law?

[00:25:21]If you think the law is just to to get make some money, you get out the damn thing right now.

[00:25:27]You got to be a lawyer for your people."

[00:25:30]It was his lawyer.

[00:25:33]You see, I was a member of the National Lawyers Guild.

[00:25:41]The Black Lawyers Guild and all kind of Guild.

[00:25:49]And one day I tell Liberace where to go.

[00:25:52]And we couldn't fit back in his mother very easily.

[00:25:57]But I suggested that he go back there for a visit.

[00:26:02]Not from the forward, but go from the back.

[00:26:08]And of course, many people disassociate themselves with me.

[00:26:14]They said my language was profane.

[00:26:20]Well, since I didn't make the English language and haven't I never knew it one way or the other, I don't feel responsible for it.

[00:26:31]Because profane and profane, the profane was those with money, I mean, and the profane was those without money.

[00:26:41]It's just like some of you, you got to change.

[00:26:44]Other day I heard some of you saying, "My uncles, my parents, my family were kings and queens in Africa.

[00:26:54]That's yours.

[00:26:57]My family, poor peons.

[00:27:00]My family was simple country folk. They were not a king, a duke, a earl, a queen in my family. They were the ass whippers. My family were one that whipped the king's ass when the king didn't behave.

[00:27:22]>> [applause] >> And the descendant is doing the same thing.

[00:27:30]My family didn't care about the fineries. I live in a building with Charlie Rangel.

[00:27:37]Just before the election, they were running there and they went to our church right in 132nd Street, the AME Church. I forget the name of that church.

[00:27:50]You better thank you. Bethel.

[00:27:53]And Charlie was in the lobby.

[00:27:56]And he was going to be late.

[00:27:59]He's a big-time congressman.

[00:28:06]When he found that he was going to be late and the affair Charlie run out of that lobby, crossed the lot, OVER THE FENCE, OVER THE FENCE, TO GET THERE TO MEET God Clinton.

[00:28:26]The same Charlie Rangel he doesn't speak much to me, no.

[00:28:31]They live upstairs. I live on the second floor.

[00:28:35]But when Charlie came back, that's Charlie McCarthy came back with Mortimer Snerd.

[00:28:42]That's Dickens.

[00:28:44]I had to say, "Good morning, Mr. Rangleberg.

[00:28:49]And he got rather angry with me.

[00:28:52]And he said, "Ben, why you said that?" I said, "Aren't you back from Israel?

[00:28:58]That you beat this Scud missile?"

[00:29:04]When the election, when they got a party in my building, look at the people who are present at the party.

[00:29:13]98 people, two black.

[00:29:16]Charlie Half of the one of them.

[00:29:24]You know, don't tell me see, I don't have friends. I don't have many friends and it's nothing new.

[00:29:31]Uh if I have friends, I going to feel uncomfortable. I will not feel cuz I'm not accustomed to to have them. My daddy told me a long time ago, "Son, if you expect to be popular, you got to give up the direction you going.

[00:29:48]Because nobody can like you.

[00:29:51]Sometimes not even your wife.

[00:29:55]Cuz your wife going to want to go to the altar.

[00:29:59]And I drive women to church. I I like I believe in all of that.

[00:30:03]I got my own funny ways, you know.

[00:30:07]But you got to understand.

[00:30:10]When that guy from Texas, the multi oil millionaire.

[00:30:17]I think they call him Bush.

[00:30:21]He give you the cue.

[00:30:25]He was designing one world power.

[00:30:32]He called it what?

[00:30:35]The new world order.

[00:30:37]But there's no new world order.

[00:30:40]The Berlin conference is still going on.

[00:30:44]The Brussels conference that superseded it still goes on.

[00:30:50]The League of Nations is still going on, and the United Nations is the same thing that started with the Berlin Conference in 1864.

[00:31:02]The cracker and the Arab, but unfortunately, Arab isn't going to get his.

[00:31:08]Cuz the cracker going to eat up everybody.

[00:31:11]That's his intent.

[00:31:13]What the European is fighting for, and you you make a distinction between a white Jew and a white Christian.

[00:31:25]There is no distinction.

[00:31:30]>> [applause] >> The one only thing a white Jew hasn't become in United States is president and vice president, and he makes them.

[00:31:45]He's not only that, he's president of your mind.

[00:31:49]You still keep the Spingarn Awards dinner.

[00:31:55]Joel and Arthur Spingarn.

[00:32:01]The Ford Foundation tell you, "I'm taking over the end of NAACP now. I'm going to turn it over to Price Waterhouse."

[00:32:09]Which one of you complain?

[00:32:11]And they're going to be a negro, a colored man, a zebra, going to take the job when everybody knows he'll be a little puppet.

[00:32:22]At least at the other time, many of you didn't know that he was a puppet.

[00:32:26]But now there going to be no doubt.

[00:32:31]There will be no doubt.

[00:32:34]But you all don't condemn them. You condemn Roy Innis. Roy is a out and out puppet. He don't deny.

[00:32:41]He doesn't deny being a puppet.

[00:32:45]Roy is A PROUD PUPPET.

[00:32:49]HE'S A PUPPET WITH A capital P.

[00:32:54]BUT YOU GOT PUPPETS EQUALLY.

[00:32:57]YOU GOT A PUPPET at Columbia University named Manning Marable.

[00:33:02]You got a puppet in in uh up there at uh Harvard.

[00:33:08]Skip Gates.

[00:33:11]I could understand poor Skip's problem.

[00:33:14]Anytime you marry a white woman who just divorced a black man, you getting second-hand porridge.

[00:33:24]And you supposed to be angry.

[00:33:30]Supposed to be angry, poor Skip.

[00:33:35]Skip got a battery of ignorance.

[00:33:39]It's a collection of misfits.

[00:33:43]You got Cornell West.

[00:33:45]And these brothers and sisters are telling me, "But the brother is scholarly, man. You shouldn't talk to him in that manner. You should use scholarly terms."

[00:33:57]Have you ever heard a scholarly skunk?

[00:34:02]When a skunk stinks, is there scholarly stink and an unscholarly funk?

[00:34:12]>> [applause] >> Are you saying that a skunk who could read classics is different than a skunk who can read scholarly classics?

[00:34:26]No.

[00:34:28]No.

[00:34:30]You can't say this The memory of Amos Wilson is just now.

[00:34:35]And if you're going to say that I should treat Amos scholarship the same as I should treat Skip Gates.

[00:34:44]Everything Gates wrote is about some white man or some white woman.

[00:34:52]Whereas what Amos wrote was about himself and his people.

[00:34:58]Are you saying that I should call both scholars?

[00:35:05]You mean to tell me I should make a distinction between Amos and Gates?

[00:35:11]I must just said they're both scholars because a white man a white man decided to give him a piece of sheepskin, goatskin or any kind of skin?

[00:35:22]No.

[00:35:24]My father remind me I got to go back to that old man quite often.

[00:35:28]He says son I was arguing with daddy.

[00:35:35]Tell me one time brother.

[00:35:36]I was arguing with daddy.

[00:35:39]Not arguing or debating.

[00:35:42]Not even debating. We had conversation cuz you didn't debate with my daddy cuz my daddy that he let you know in a minute who was paying your food.

[00:35:52]But I I was arguing in engineering term with daddy. I just came out the university of Puerto Rico and felt good big big engineer.

[00:36:00]Cracker gave me a piece of paper saying you're engineer big time engineer.

[00:36:05]But daddy had paid the money.

[00:36:09]And daddy had some natural experience about a bridge.

[00:36:14]And daddy was telling me about how this bridge going fail and I said no it can't fail because and then I said I know I got a degree in this.

[00:36:27]And daddy calmly watched his foolish son.

[00:36:31]And he says, "Son, can I talk to you?"

[00:36:34]I know that was sarcasm because he knew he could talk to me. I had to listen.

[00:36:40]And he says, "Son, I'm going to ask you one little question.

[00:36:44]The man that gave you your degree, and the first man that gave out the first degree, did he have any of his own?"

[00:36:57]And let me repeat because you ain't hear.

[00:37:01]Let me cut down the first part.

[00:37:04]So we don't confuse you.

[00:37:05]Daddy asked me if the man that gave out the first degree had any of his own.

[00:37:12]He couldn't have it. The first degree the man made up what he considered degree.

[00:37:18]Right?

[00:37:20]So the first man never had a degree.

[00:37:23]But he made a degree.

[00:37:25]He made up what he constitute to be a degree.

[00:37:30]How many of us you don't know went out and built buildings?

[00:37:37]Imhotep had a degree, but you didn't hear anybody brag about it like the Empire State Building.

[00:37:46]Imhotep did the engineering, the architecture, the surveying and everything that was necessary.

[00:42:14]>> Mhm.

[00:42:24]>> Mhm.