In the recent controversy on Black You Tube, it was discovered that Black Male You Tuber Phil from the Advise show has a non-black wife. Niggas have come out of the woodwork to cast aspersions against his credibility for talking “pro-black” while marrying, or more honestly, sleeping white. Even though his wife is not white, it has not stopped the litany of naysayer and critics from attempting to malign his work and his platform. This latest round of nigga voyeurism is centered on the assumption that one cannot be for empowerment of the Black Community, while marrying outside of the race. In other words, can you sleep white and talk black? If history is any indication, the answer is a resounding YES!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VJRCFzw_Y4

Martinique Revolutionary Frantz Fanon blazed a trail into history. He was the embodiment of anti-colonial struggles and the patron saint of African Nationalist Ideology. He was a gifted intellectual, psychiatrist, and revolutionary theorist. He publish his first book, Black Skins, White Masks, as an analysis of the effects of colonization on black people. He could have lived a life of luxury by giving psychiatric care to french troops who were the torturers of Algerian (African) prisoners. Instead, he resigned his position and joined the Algerian Liberation Front. He pinned his classic, Wretched of the Earth, in 1961 shortly before his death. His writings served as a motivating influence on Steven Biko, Malcolm X, & The Black Panther Party. With his vast contributions to National Liberation Movements of colonized people, nobody objected to his revolutionary bona fides because he slept with the enemy. Dr. Fanon had met, married, and father a child with a french white woman. He would later die under an assumed name in an Army Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland alone and poor.

Dr. Cheik Anta Diop had been an African Nationalist in the African Democractic Assembly in France. He went onto become an African historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician. Such an accomplished intellectual could have easily been a tenured professor at Europe’s most affluent colleges and universities. Instead, he sought the most arduous road a scholar could travel. He studied the human origins of man in Africa. In a society where the prevailing paradigm was black primitivity, the idea that black people could originate anything other than animalistic rituals was sheer absurdity. Diop not only proposed such theories, he debated them extensively with white scholars.

Dr. Diop culminated his research with a book called African Origins of Civilization, Myth or Reality, where he argued that Africans enjoyed an advanced civilization while European societies were still relatively ignorant and primitive. At the height of his notoriety, he and his protege’ Prof. Emeritus Theophile Obenga, executed the infamous 1974 UNESCO Massacre. Dr(s). Diop and Obenga met the leading white scholars of the day and challenged their findings on not only European origins of North Africa, but also of a European genesis of humanity. When the smoke cleared, only Dr. Diop and Dr. Obenga were left standing.

As a result, he was maligned in mainstream academia. The western world closed their doors to the works of Diop. But not before they stole his method of identifying the racial identity of badly burned victims and labeling him with the condescending perjorative of Afrocentric. Dr. Diop would later die under mysterious circumstance in 1986. He lab was burglarized and ransacked by persons unknown. In the backdrop of his remarkable career, few cared or even noticed that he was married to a french white woman.

Henry Sylvester Williams was a trinidadian lawyer, counselor and writer. He furthered his education in America and Britain. He is widely recognized as the voice of 20th century Pan-Africanism. He formed his first organization in 1897. 3-yrs later he organized the first Pan African Conference in London at Westminster Town Hall. He went on to become the first black man to practice law in South Africa. But was boycotted by the white Cape Colony Bar Association for allegedly preaching sedition to Black South Africans against White South African society. His interest and devotion to Africa was unquestionable.

Williams’ remarkable career was a watershed moment for 20th century Pan Africanism. It was his call in London in 1900 that introduced the world to a young intellect by the name of W.E.B. Dubois. And it was his writings that would influence a Jamaican immigrant to the United States by the name of Marcus Garvey. His legacy is monumental. His name is sacred among all serious students of Pan African Ideology. Williams was named 16th of 100 on a list of Great Black Britons. This list made no mention of the fact that he married a white secretary from an influential family in the Church of England Temperance Society. The only one who opposed the union was her conservative father, Captain Francis Powell of Kent.

The list of black men that supported the liberation and empowerment of Black People while married to non-black women is extensive. Kwame Nkrumah, Ivan Sertima, Frederick Douglas, Harry Belafonte, Jomo Kenyatta, Amiri Baraka, I could go on but you get my point. Pan Africanist Scholar, and would be school director, Dr. Umar Johnson has gone on record in opposition to interracial marriage on the grounds that marrying outside the race demonstrates a neglect of the best interests of the black community as it: contradicts the virtuous principle of racial survival; and leads to a lack of aggregated wealth in black families, which then passes on to other racial groups.

While these sentiments have some merit, they lack the benefit of context and real word application. Those wealthy black men or women that have married outside of their race, have in many instances, already disassociated themselves from the collective fate of the black community. There can be no fictive racial kinship from people who have chosen self imposed exile, regardless of threatened future consequences. In contrast, men like Diop and Fanon, could have lived lives of ease, but abandoned their spoils for the uncertain future of an African redemption. They had no wealth to pass to anyone. They had only revolutionary theories that ensured a hand to mouth existence; and a legacy of service that has not been properly respected to this very day by critics like Dr. Johnson.

Phil, like the men in this articles has devoted himself to the empowerment of the Black Community in general, and black men in particular. His channel boasts over a quarter of a million subscribers with thousands of views per day. He uses his platform to call for a fair deal for the whole black community; man, woman, and child. His shows frequently wrestle with issues of race and politics. They lift the dialogue on black prosperity to lofty heights. His politics, in application, whether you agree or not, is as black as Yaphet Koto. His commitment to his ideas and principles should not be reduced to who is in his home or his bedroom. ME THINKS NIGGAS ACT TOO LITTLE, BUT PROTEST TOO MUCH!

TONY MACEO is a senior blogger at the Negromanosphere and the Chief Blogger at Power & Strategy.com. Like, share and subscribe to the website. Or become a Patron on Patreon at Powerofstrategies. TILL NEXT TIME, I’LL HOLLA!