Gyasi A. Foluke

The Real-holocaust: a Wholistic Analysis of the African American Experience, 1441-1994 Gyasi A. Foluke

In The Real-Holocaust-a title adapted from the well-known phrase "the real McCoy"-the basic premise of the author is that Americans have underestimated the damage inflicted upon the nation, especially African people, since the beginning with the European-Arab slave trade in 1441, and continuing to the present era. Simultaneously, we have underestimated the level of commitment required, in both financial and human resources, to solve our perennial, often ugly "race" problem that has created "a great racial divide" in America. Accordingly, the author documents a "guesstimated" 300 million deaths of African people during this nearly 500-year period of history, a figure that may be contrasted to the well known and much better publicized holocaust of World War II, the latter a major tragic event, involving deaths of a "guesstimated" six million Jews. In essence, the author argues that the chronic race problem dividing America will never be resolved until most Americans realize, and successfully confront, this unprecedented ethnic damage-physical, mental and emotional-that oppression has imposed upon African people and their progeny in America. He argues further that oppression, under three distinct "s" stages in America-slavery, segregation and "sedimentation"--has created a fundamental schism between Black and White Americans. And this schism reflects a denial of genuine nationhood to Africans in America who constitute, psycho-spiritually, "a population without a country"-a challenge to the Two Nations (1993) concept of Professor Andrew Hacker. Indeed, the author's arguments are based upon over 50 years of experience in the Black liberation struggle, painstaking research and spiritually profound intuition. Accordingly, he recommends wholism-specific measures to make us "whole"-through the promotion of spirit, mind and body, for all American citizens, including "contingency reparations" for African Americans, on both