Olorun

Sesa Woruban: Question 1: Why do you say you are African centered? What does that mean to you?
Olorun: I say I am African centered because I try to put my African self at the center of all that I say and do. I try to make all my judgments based on what it has historically meant to be African, what it means to be African now, and what it will hopefully mean to be African tomorrow. Now by no means do I mean to portray myself as a beacon of African manhood. I am an African, twisted daily by the matrix of white supremacy, who is trying to see his way to a more African conscious existence. We must all realize that what we say or do doesn’t just effect us but it reflects and effects the whole of us. Sadly American born Africans do not seem to notice the poison we are spreading to the world. Surely living in the belly oft he beast has made us filthy the question is will we listen like Jonah to the voice of god and be spit out on the shores to speak the truth to these devils, or will we come out the other end and just be more excrement on the bottom of the sea? Consciousness is not some abstract thought. It is the principle that guides your daily walk in life. To say you’re an African is to state an abstraction with consciousness. It means all differences are irrelevant when placed against the over riding factor of ones African being. When I say I am African centered I am saying I am of an African conscious that is guided towards black power (i.e. all of us working collectively for the betterment of Africans).

Sesa Woruban: Question 2: Is African consciousness a religion?
Olorun: People within the so called African conscious movement make the mistake of thinking African consciousness is their religion, whatever that maybe. Its not! You are no more African conscious if your Yoruba, than you are if you Christian. Pastor Nat Turner killed his enslaver and a few dozen others because Jesus told his African centered mind to do so. Elijah Muhammad built his nation of Islam based on the black man because Allah told his African centered mind to do so. The rebels of Haiti fought and won their freedom because the gods of Voudun told their African centered minds to do so. Its not your god that’s the problem its your mind. Having said that, your god maybe an indication that your mind has a long way to go but that can only be told thru conversation with you. You can't judge a book by its cover. I’ve met some of the most eurocentric Ausar Auset brothers and some true African centered muslims.

Sesa Woruban: Question 3: Why do you sometime say “we are not our problem we are our solution.”
Olorun: We have to learn how to talk to each other better and in victorious manors. Racism white supremacy has us tearing each other down when we should be looking to lift one another. Black folk to this, black folk to that, WE ARE NOT OUR PROBLEM WE ARE OUR SOLUTION. It takes more energy to rethink our negative thoughts about ourselves and reprogram our minds to be uplifting but we have to do it. We have got to get out of these schools that teach us to degrade one another and begin to teach ourselves how to be uplifting using African centered approaches. Let me give you an example of what I mean. It has become common for some of us to say we need to be more like the Arabs because they have back bones, they fight and are ready to die for what they believe. This is silly king died, Malcolm died the Haitians fought, enslaved Africans fought for their freedom, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom and came back for others and then became a spy for the north. Why would we ever look to another group of people and wish we were like them. No man on this earth has a more glorious story to tell and we had better be about the business of learning it and telling it fast. Amos Wilson points out to us that to a great extent the white man can’t be who he is if we just stop being who we have become. It is our own lust and desires that sustain a large part of his control over us. He teaches us that we waist time trying to transform them when if we transform us, they are automatically transformed. You see they can't have what they have unless we are who we are. We must believe that the power to change the world is in us and that we aren’t destined to be servants. God would not have blessed the black man with the African home land if he meant for us to be servants of others. For Africans to be starving and in debt means something must be wrong with our consciousness. He says thru our refusal to discriminate in our spending we subsidize the suffering of our own people. African color blindness in a white supremacist world is tantamount to self genocide.

Sesa Woruban: Question 4: In your opinion what is will?
Olorun: For me will is simply a figment of our imagination. Our “will”, will only react according to how we educate ourselves and therefore it is limited or broaden by our knowledge . I believe most of the talk of a” will” is simply mental masturbation. Really just someone trying to say I’m better than you because I have this great will and you succumbed to whatever . There’s a saying “when you know better you do better” this truism is what we vainly call will. If as a community we grasp this concept we will stop allowing those who have historically been our enemy train our children to do their work for them. If will is a subconscious reaction to given stimuli based upon prior knowledge then if we are given all our prior knowledge of self from our historical enemy then it is predictable that our actions will manifest themselves in the manor in which they do.

Sesa Woruban: Question 5: Why do you think we must regain the feminine god principle?
Olorun: Amos Wilson once said that man is a nurturer. The African male, due to his conditioning in a white supremacist objectifying world, has lost his nurturer side. It is the destruction of the African female goddess principle that has allowed this to happen. When you view man as a reflection of god and the woman as a reflection of man then you have set for yourself a hierarchy that ultimately leads to the devaluing of the woman. This is a double destructive process when we include that the African has already been devalued in the culture by the larger culture. Then we as African men add to our sisters woes. We must regain the wisdom of the ancestors and see God in both male and female forms that demands respect for both the feminine and the masculine aspects of self. No man hits his god. He adores his god. The African woman needs the return of her feminine god principle also. No goddess allows her man to beat her or degrade her. She is not less then a man she is next to her man. God with God, equal yet different and to be respected for her differences because her differences are just as godly as his differences are. When we refuse to respect the feminine god principles we belittle her spirit and expect her to soar. We tie her wings down then tell her to fly. She was there on the slave ship, she took the same beatings for the same reason we took them “our skin”. She was raped by the devil and still found love in her for us how dare we turn around and treat her like he treats his. Sista if he wont praise you, then praise your damn self, for you are worthy to be praised.

Sesa Woruban: Question 6: What is your opinion on passing correct knowledge onto future generations?
Olorun: This is the call of the ancestors, this is the only viable way to an enduring future for our children. If not us then who. Who can we trust to love us more than us? Who will see us as more than we been portrayed to be if we don’t make the stand to portray us as more? We have no future if we don’t explore our past in our present. I know that many Africans argue that we can't live in our past and that is true in some sense but, we also can't survive as a people much longer if we don’t understand how we got here and what we must do to get further. Our children deserve a correct view of their story and not his story. No African child deserves to be taught that George Washington was his great forefather when georgie was a racist white supremacist slave owner. How is that a great education for the African child. It benefits the white child to distort his past and make god like figures of his ancestors so we should expect them to ever change that approach to their past. The question then become what shall we do? Passing on correct knowledge isn’t a choice.

Sesa Woruban: Question 7: Remember those carefree days as a child? Will you tell us about 1 day in your life as a child that is particularly distant from the situation you were really in? (a day that felt really good where the cares of the world seemed so distant).
Olorun: Any day with my grandmother was a carefree day. There was never a moment in my life that I didn’t know in my heart or doubt in my mind that that woman loved me. Till this day the most beautiful thing in this world is the face of an African female elder. All praise be to the creator and her most beautiful creation which is herself in you, the black woman.

Sesa Woruban: Question 8: What does it mean to be an Afrikan man in america?
Olorun: For me it means that we are called to bring down Babylon from within. We are called to “help” free Africans from a European tyranny that ironically was made possible by the riches made off the blood of our African American forefathers. I am not blaming our forefathers for the actions of white folk, but I am stating that the situation we find ourselves in “is what it is” so we must do, what we must do to“destroy it”. We are going to change the world but we must decide for ourselves whether that change will be good or bad. If we continue allowing these people to lead us it will clearly be for the bad. Being eurocentrically conditioned has caused Africans in America to act in ways unproductive to our own mental and physical liberation. We are a colonized people believing in a eurocentric framework that doesn’t fit our African reality. FYI when I say Babylon I don’t mean any nation in particular I mean the system of racism white supremacy that overrides all nations upon the earth. We must end this system and we must stop anyone who thinks they will start another system based on them and have us under their foot also be he arab asian or whatever.

Sesa Woruban: Question 9: If there were an antidote to cure WHATEVER, a pill of many ingredients that you could give Afrikans in the states, what would 3 of the ingredients be
(metaphorically speaking)?
Olorun: We are at war. And the mind is the battle ground so my three pills are

1. correct Knowledge
2. godly wisdom and
3. African centered understanding.

Without these anything else we would get would only help our enemy. Money would only go to their hands, guns would only go into use against us and land would only go to feed them. But with correct knowledge wisdom and understanding there is nothing you cant get. Nothing we cant achieve.

Sesa Woruban: Question 10: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Olorun: Femi Kuti recently asked in an interview.. “When colonial masters divided Africa in 1884, they knew what they were doing. Do you think it was for Africa they were playing this game? It was for them…” when Africans in america separate ourselves over issues such as religion, income, national origin, or various other issues it only supports the white power structure. If the African centered community is ever going to present its argument to his large brother and sister community it is going to have to learn to look past what side issues we disagree with and toward what should be our unifying purpose the eradication of white supremacy. As Malcolm pointed out we are not persecuted because we’re Muslim, Christian, HebrewI sraelite, Yoruba, or clappin our booty round somepole but because were black. If you and another African cant agree that racism white supremacy exist and needs to be ended your conversation should be limited to giving the other African the correct framework upon which to govern his or her thought process. Not on giving them a new god, a new political party, or any other new way to be just like you. a new way to think for their African self should suffice. And if they get that then you can talk politics because you have now a consciousness then tells you this is no matter what your brother or sister who must be respected. Hotep and respect may Ra shine on you and Ma’at embrace you.