Let me help you to talk to me

I once habitually made statements whenever someone moved on me about something. I responded from my frame of reference rather than helping the person say what they were trying to say.

I've learned that such statements cause short circuits.

Now, when I am at my best, I find creative ways to ask these questions of the person moving on me:

What do your words mean?

Why are using those particular words?

What is the idea behind the words?

What is the reason for the words?

When the exchange allows, I play back all that I think I understand and ask my conversation partner if she/he has been understood.

I stay on this path until my partner is satisfied.

A smile is just a frown turned upside down

We must start to smile, honestly smile, smile very deeply from the inside.

Such honest and deep smiles will help us uproot the very hurting stereotypes that we culturally inherited and habitually use -- without thinking -- every day of our lives.

Building blocks for a new character

1. No negatives.

2. Think human.

3. Get the facts first.

4. Learn to value the truth.

5. Beingness is key.

6. Be a pioneer.

7. Eliminate hate.

8. You Can do Greater Works.

9. Slavery is the problem; Esnicity is the answer.

10. Don’t panic; stay in control; breathe.

11. Learn the value of the Declaration of Independence.

12. Know this: There is more to the world than what you see.

13. Learn to suspend judgement.

14. Be of good cheer.

15. Know love; be love.

16. Update your “self” files

17. Take time to reflect, review and study.

GHOSTS OF FEARS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS*

Psychological Blocks to Personal and Ethnic Family Growth

1. Fear of the "WHITE MAN!"
2. Fear of "The White Conspiracy," which will thwart every initiative!
3. Fear of being displaced as THE TOP AND ONLY African American authority on all issues.
4. Fear of being fired from the job if a reasonable and sound position is taken on issues (fear of being tossed into the streets)!
5. Fear of being ridiculed -- called a fool (laughing stock)!
6. Fear of an African American conspiracy to plot one's downfall.
7. Fear of rejection -- lack of affirmation from birth.
8. Fear of the invisible "THEY" (great and invisible negative forces)!
9. Fear of being homeless!
10. Fear of supporting one's own mind and its conclusions.
11. Fear of the "I" -- writing and speaking on issues in the first person!
12. Fear of the "them against me" illusion!
13. Fear of not having an equal voice in matters!
14. Fear of being subordinate to an African American Authority.
15. Fear of not having the prime spot on the stage!
16. Fear of not being heard -- not having a voice in substantial matters (not being accounted for, not being important)!
17. Fear of asking questions -- fear of exposure or being uninformed or ignorant about an issue.
18. Fear of loss or intimate companionship -- jealously, rivalry, illusionary parity!



* Future America Basic Research Institute, March 15, 1995

Thought you should know

"Psychosocial slavery” is the root cause for the condition of America’s troubled communities and people scrambling to survive in them.

“What is psychosocial slavery?”

It is the ongoing effect of slavery days as it shows up in the psychology and social lives of people today. It is embedded in our language.

Undoing slavery means learning how to go into the upper room of your mind to create a concept of yourself that is not restrained, chained or confined by any condition of the environment or old information about history and culture.

The process for undoing slavery is “esnicity” and the new science of raising children with "esnicity" is called Humaculture.

Both the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners have unanimously embraced resolutions supporting the exploration of the creative use of "esnicity" in Greater Memphis.

Can you believe that?

I am 3 in 1!

I am Dr. Karanja A. Ajanaku. Karanja means guide. My middle name is Aidoo. It means one who puts things in place; sets things in order. Ajanaku (as redefined here in Memphis) means free and wealthy people.

So I am the guide who sets things in order for free and wealthy people.

I take my name seriously. I have earned the right to do so. I changed my name on Sept. 26, 1986 from Leroy Williams Jr. to Karanja A. Ajanaku. I paid my approximately $42 to the local court system and went through the 15-minute court process.

Leroy Williams Jr.


The judge - Judge James Swearengen - saw me sitting at the back of the courtroom after all other business was concluded.

He said, "Young man. Do you have business with this court?"

I said, "Yes sir. I do."

I took the witness stand and swore to tell the truth about a self determination that I had made.

Judge Swearengen asked me all the questions he legally had to ask. That includes whether I was changing my name for religious purposes or to evade debt.

I told him it wasn't a religious thing and that although I had plenty of debt, I wasn't trying to weasel out of it through a name change.

I brought with me to the court a petition that my sisters in the Ajanaku African American Research Institute (now the Future America Basic Research Institute ) had helped me draft. It included an order to okay the name change. It only needed the judge's signature.

That order reads, in part:
"It appearing to the court that petitioner has all his life used the name of Leroy Williams Jr., and that petitioner was born in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. It further appearing that the said petitioner for good and sufficient cause desires to change the name of Leroy Williams Jr. to Karanja Aidoo Ajanaku, and it appearing to the court that the change of name should be officially noted on the birth certificate of the petitioner."


I changed my name to reflect a discovery I made about who I am. I learned at age 30 that I was an African. Up to that time, it never occurred to me, even though I had personally done genealogy research and had located a great-great-great grandmother, called Sara Brown, who the U.S. Census said was born in Africa.

It did not occur to me, at the time, a quote "educated black man" unquote - that I must be African, at least a little bit.

It wasn't until years later (when) I heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s former secretary - Washiri Ajanaku - the former Francis Sims Bascom - talk to me about her experiences, that I came to consciousness about Africa being in me; about being African.

Dr. Washiri Ajanaku

I mean, after all, I was American. Today, I know there is no conflict between being American and being African. To my way of understanding, America is a civic - government - situation. As a citizen of the United States of America, I have certain rights and responsibilities.


I have the right to be who I am as a cultural being - an African – and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of being happy.

I am an African culturally, an American civically and human essentially: 3 in 1.

Go With the Flow of Unity

The vital intellectual energy of the nation is dammed up. Cooperation in a great undertaking with a high goal is what we need to dissolve the blockage.

I think the great undertaking should be to penetrate the core of racism and eliminate it at its root - slavery. The result would be a release of creativity that would put the squeeze on poverty and crime, generating wealth in the process.

The lesson I've learned about slavery - my emotions notwithstanding - is that Africans suppressed their own history and culture and ushered in the institution.

This runs counter to what now is believed. Still, the truth is that one person or group can't put another person or group into slavery. One can make the other a prisoner, but the prisoner must decide whether to be a slave and assume the behavior required.

If it were true that Europeans had the unilateral power to create slavery, then the Native Americans would have become slaves. And if it were true that Europeans had the unilateral power to create slavery, then it would mean they are inherently superior.

Now - more than ever - it is necessary to focus on how slavery functioned, how it was/ is passed along and acted out today, and how the crippling cycle can be interrupted.