- Damaur Quanda
This website is designed for Women of Color who need to understand where they have come from in herstory. It is also intended to be a tool, to help women understand the important role we are to play in the transformation we seek in the world, for our children and our families.
Although We Are One is an important mantra for the ideology of this website–we are one race, we are one people, we are one in partnership for Change. It is important to me that we first educate ourselves as women, especially Women of Color, getting us out from behind other people or out from under our traditional burdens to understand our greatness, our gifts, our strengths and capabilities.
Before we can help others, we have to strengthen our own reserve, by remember who we are and prepare ourselves through self knowledge. An ancient African belief is that “Self Knowledge will Transform the World.” Unless we know who we are, we cannot help ourselves or anyone else–to the best of our ability. We have struggled, been severely crippled throughout our sojourn in the western world. We’ve always came last–or have been completely invisible, for the last 2000 years. Women of Color always figure in somewhere after our men–and we have always supported them–when it was hard for them to support us. This served the patriarchate consciousness.
It is time for us to know the richness of our heritage and that of our people. This website is designed to do so. If we had only known the wealth we have given to the world, the contributions we bestowed out of love and then had stolen from us without acknowledgment of our genius –we would be furious. No doubt certain knowledge learned here will infuriate you, but it should also make you wiser. For after the fury, it should also make you stronger. The entire misinformed, hidden and stolen history of the African people will be discussed on WomanistAffairs.com, and most definitely the contribution women made to our ancient African culture; spiritually, religiously, scientifically, through the arts, philosophically and through government. Little have we ever been told about the highly successful women’s organizations that fought European imperialism for many years. Few of us know about the Amazons that fought courageously after the men were all killed.
The scholars and spiritual female leaders (Sibyls) who taught in the Mystery Schools and universities, educated the Greek students who petitioned to came study at the knees of the great world teachers of Africa. There were high priestess astronomers and astrologers who studied the skies 52,000 years (identified the stars, planets, and created the first calendar–identified the Ages) before Greek Philosophers claimed to have been the first star gazers. Among the first surgeons were African women–prior to the rise of Egyptian culture in Black Africa. Through the mastering of agriculture, the sacred (scientific) sciences and technology (mining and engineering), social/behavioral sciences, the arts, the so called pseudo-sciences of astrology and numerology were founded along with writing, herbal healing and many other remarkable studies originated in Black Africa–
Women were central to the culture. Chiekh Anta Diop, claims that all of Africa was once matriarchal I believe we have to reclaim. Within this culture was an egalitarian partnership with men, which is the ultimate goal of the transformational effort supported by this website. However, one has to strengthen the women, get us to understand who we are, how to work together, trust each other and support each other’s efforts, before we can be viable to the transformation effort. We have much to give–and with that, we can be highly destructive without education and the information about self. To know yourself, is to love yourself so that you may love and lead others. Ignorance of who we have been, has robbed us of our self-knowledge.
These and many other wonderous hidden elements missing from our western education will be featured in articles on this website. Women are a valuable asset to any culture. Once we know it, understand it and except that if we perish or stand still in the midst of required change, so does the race–there is no other choice but to act.