An Open Letter To Henry “Skip The Facts” Gates

If you attacked any other ethnic group in the manner that you attacked African people in your recently aired television broadcast, “Wonders Of The African World,” you would in all likelihood be drummed out of Harvard. The lack of knowledge, academic integrity, scholarship, respect for Africa and its institutions that you demonstrated during these broadcasts was shameful and offensive. For these reasons, CEMOTAP, The Committee To Eliminate Media Offensive To African People has visited you today at your ivory tower plantation quarters to register our anger and disgust, not only to you, but to the people who control you and send you out into the world like a sheep dog to attack your own. This latest BBC funded assault aired on Public Television is the worst betrayal since your attack in The New York Times on the esteemed ancestor Professor John Henrik Clarke a few years ago.

By What Authority ?

What gives you the right to plunder, blunder or wonder with authority about Africa? You are not a historian. You are not an anthropologist. You are a confused man with a degree in English Literature. Did you not even wonder why the accolades and honors of people of European ancestry as well as totally undeserved access to the airwaves and other media outlets accrue to you so much more than the actual scholars of African History? Do you even wonder why a man as poorly versed in history as yourself, would be paid to tell an audience that Nubian (Black) kings ruled over Egypt for almost 100 years? By your inference these Black kings only ruled during the 25th dynasty. Have you ever heard of King Narma of the first dynasty or the war between the southern and northern kingdoms of Egypt that Narma of the south won? Any serious student of African History or even a serious reader of the New York Times could have informed you of the southern origin of the kingship of Egypt and the symbols of that kingship. Various accounts of the length of time the pharaohs ruled extend from 3 to 6 thousand years. You saw fit to tell viewers about “almost” 100 years.

Double Standard Ethics

You also saw fit during this broadcast to extract apologies from the descendants of African collaborators in the slave trade. Yet you are the evidence, that collaborators in our oppression have existed through the ages. Will your descendants be required to apologize for you? A better question is do you have the courage to extract apologies from every ethnic, religious and national group that had a role as large or larger than the relatively few African collaborators who with varying degrees of coercion, inducement and knowledge participated in the slave trade. We know that you will neither extract apologies nor reparations from anyone who shares common heritage with those who pay you to attack our people.

Self Love Is Demonstrated By Respect Of Your Elders

An apparent lack of self-love was revealed as you smirked throughout your interviews of African dignitaries. Your bohemian attire was inappropriate for your audience with the Patriarch of The Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Your smirks and jocularity about the Ark of the Covenant were equally out of place. You were downright disrespectful in your conversation with the Queen Mother of Ashanti. You compared her to Hillary Clinton and Queen Elizabeth, but did you dress for her or speak to her with the slavish deference you would undoubtedly show if you found yourself in one of their humble presences? You really do in some ways compare to a sheepdog, which is bred to fight members of its own genus to protect an animal that would ordinarily become its food. However, you do not even have the misdirected bravery of a sheepdog who will die fighting its own in the interests of its master. You bully and pontificate in an arena devoid of real African scholars. In your written response to one of your critics you have spoken of your intent to invite Maulana Karenga, and Dr. Josef Ben Jochannan on camera as you clear up the “question of the color of ancient Egyptians”

You Can’t Teach What You Don’t Know. You Can’t Lead Where You Won’t Go.

Firstly, who are you to have these great men on camera as you clear up something? These men have known for decades what you admit to still having a question about. W. E. B. Dubois, the man whose name has been appropriated for the center you currently dishonor was the first African person to whom Harvard awarded a PhD. in the subject of History (something you do not have). He had no question about the color of the ancient Egyptians. A trip to the Boston Fine Arts Museum, which is close enough to Harvard for you to easily visit might clear up your question. Look for Queen Tiy, the mother of Tutunkhamen, if skin as light as your own causes you confusion. Lastly you have not responded to any of the calls of grassroots African’s such as ourselves who would love to provide the arena for you to learn from genuine scholars in the presence of and under circumstances controlled by African people. As Professor John Henrik Clarke once said, “A debate is between equals.” You are not ready for a debate. You could never face scholars such as Asa Hilliard, Marimba Ani, and Molefi Asante unless you could be assured a eurocentric moderator or a BBC camera crew to edit out your frequent blunders and to save you from the well deserved intellectual caning that any true scholar would give you in any debate about Africa.

See Gates’ Head Nigger in Charge page

CEMOTAP

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