In the spirit of the Afrocentric perspective, what I am highlighting is the potency, functions, and purpose of values. By viewing the relationships and experiences of the natural world, including natural (unimpeded by negative influences) expressions of humanity, including the Maafa (the periods of enslavement and global colonialism), what can be gleaned through humbling interpretation is the use and usefulness of values. But first, let us define values in a manner that speaks to the reality of rooting consciousness in optimal ingredients for the survival and advancement of African people worldwide.
Soul values show the myriad ways enslaved people fought for their lives and how they valued themselves by recognizing that they could be enslaved in body yet free in their souls.
(Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, Historian)
In general, values are fundamental beliefs that shape, direct, and control behavior. They derive from how people view themselves, understand the world and their environment, and design the viable means to survive, thrive, and flourish. Values are transmitted through enculturation (learning of culture from within) and acculturation (adopting the culture of the predominant group). Various modalities are implemented that center the values necessary for the optimal development of community and society, such as oratory, music and dance, initiations and rites of passages, religion and education, science, and creative arts.
Key methods that articulate, preserve, and transmit values for community growth include storytelling, symbols, written communications, pedagogy, socialization, and spirituality.
Let us go a bit deeper into the construct of values. Cultural values are the germinating force that supplies energy and action to the cultivation, maintenance, and sustainment of coherent, fully integrative, and cooperative communities and societies. It coexists with virtues and principles, forming a value system. A virtue reflects the highest standards of human conduct and relationships, whereas a principle is the mobilizer of a fundamental idea or belief into an actualized reality.
Building on this perspective, according to the African cultural worldview, values aim to achieve three aims:
life-generating
life-enhancing
life-enriching
Thus, the imperative to promote optimal, positive values lies within a communal, cultural system that centers on holistic care, responsibility, development, and the growth of its people.
This raises an important question: What happens if the communal, cultural system is no longer as functional, useful, or effective as it once was?
Among the many possibilities, it can be surmised that the people within this cultural structure will be marked by contradictions, conflicts, and dissonance. If there are no consistent ways or means of inculcating the value system into the minds of group members, if there are inconsistent models that demonstrate a sense of hypocrisy in terms of value orientation, or possess a lackluster accountability structure, this could form the development of blind compliance, confusion, and/or seeking external belongingness. On the contrary, under extreme conditions of dehumanization, the illustrious historian Dr. Daina Ramey Berry extracts the concept of soul values from the experiences, oratory, and primary historical sources of African American enslaved people.
Consequently, values become inverted.
Values are disabling rather than enabling and empowering.
Dominant power structures impose values; in this circumstance, life-sustaining priorities and interests are disturbed and distorted.
Deeply embedded cultural values can manifest through group-communal struggle for the freedom and liberation from systems of oppression, i.e., soul values.
To transform values from an instrument of social control to an instrument of socio-communal power requires a total appraisal of contemporary values, virtues (high standards of behavior), and principles (core beliefs guiding action), and their connection to 1) life-enhancement, 2) life-generation, and 3) life-enrichment.
We must also dig deep into the wells of African world history, the heritage of African and African American intellectual and creative prowess, and utilize liberation-centric perspectives to excavate lost values embodied and exercised by our forebearers, which can be understood and repurposed for contemporary problem-solving and future world-building, in the context of concrete realities.
To support this journey of realignment and reclamation, below you will find self-knowledge-enriching resources to initiate the process of returning to the source of our historical past, origins, intellectual heritage, and indigenous culture:
1) Video on "What are Values?" by Amos N. Wilson
2) Video on "Rediscovering Lost Values," a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr.
3) An Essay from Audre Lorde, recited by an unidentified person, on "There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions."
Ever loving.
Ever faithful.
Ever sure.
I am because we are,
Brotha KD