Yesterday was a good day because with the world seeming to be falling apart at the seams with the hardest hit being nations & cities with majority Black populations, we can all use some positivity in our global African image. America has a president who touts education as a mainstay in his platform & who happens to be Black, but our education system seems to be getting worse & failing Black children more than any one else.

On Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day that fell on the birthday of Muhammad Ali & First Lady Michelle Obama as well as the 50th anniversary of the assassination of one of our greatest Black leaders , Patrice Lumumba, the NAACP took on to marching because North Carolina schools wanted to make up missed school days instead of observing the national holiday which gives school children a day off. I mean really NAACP-where are your priorities? Wouldn’t these kids have been better served by negotiating & compromising on a curriculum for the day that focused on teaching these children about who Dr. King was & how important he was in fighting for equality in education? What purpose is served by keeping our children home to observe the holiday just for them to play video games & do everything but learn about Dr. King? Having a day off in observance does not equate to learning about or paying homage to Dr. King, so we really need to get our priorities straight & figure out what battles need to be fought.

Our children are not learning & instead of focusing on figuring out a better way/means of teaching , we want to march to have them stay out of school. No matter how you slice it, it makes no sense to me because I think even Dr. King would be more honored if these children went to school & got their education in honor of him, but rather we pick a fight in protest instead of coming up with solutions for compromise in the best interest of our children & then we wonder why we are experiencing a slow burn in the lack of respect for education in our communities. We can’t tell our youth that education is their passport to the future & become the antithesis of that.

“Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world….Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today….Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you – how do you think I feel to have to tell you, ‘We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights – and you’ve got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight. What did we do, who preceded you ? I’ll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don’t you make the same mistake we made….”MALCOLM X

Global African children in Africa, Haiti etc. are begging to go to school while the NAACP is marching & protesting to keep kids out of school-huh? I know I may be simplifying the situation, but it is very simplistic & elementary when we would rather prove some point of not being disrespected by not honoring a day off instead of finding the best solution & compromise for the education of our children. Our children are being failed because they are not being taught their history or being given the right consideration, funding & tools to learn about who they are & where they come from by utilizing today’s resources & technology. Our nations are in dire straits with schools being shut down & deteriorating left & right while the whole idea of quality of life has been thrown out the window with layoffs of police forces as crime rises & jobs being lost left & right in sectors of life that serve our everyday needs while we pay more for less.

Our governments worldwide have shown us that they are not dependable in doing the work of & for the people & we surely can not count on them to teach & raise our children. Children learn best by examples, so it is time for us all to step up & to lead by example. We can no longer keep waiting for superman because these times call for us all to find superman within ourselves!

Enter Adamu Waziri, Lebron James & Reginald Hudlin with new animated series which will hopefully not only teach & shed a new light on our global Blackness, but will hopefully create jobs & encourage global Africans to resurrect new era griots & visionaries to pass on our history & to cultivate our future. We need to develop thinkers who will take global Africans forward & what better way to start by teaching them from young. I remember waking up on weekends to watch “Fat Albert”  & subsequently continued to grow & develop in the great relative & realistic possibilities of being Black in America that was brought to us by visionary thinkers who taught & led by example like,Bill Cosby, who showed the nation & the world a different side of Black life in America & a different world.  Bill Cosby set the stage for a time when one man brought Black creatives & thinkers together not only to entertain but to teach. We really need to focus on how we are educating & developing our children for the future because the hard times are here & they need to be able to be innovative with a sense of self awareness, accountability & pride to move forward.

“An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education.Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn’t determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin…”READ MORE

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Young people of today are the internet, technology & animation generation & Adamu Waziri, Lebron James & Reginald Hudlin are coming to help educate & develop them on their territory with three new animation series reminicent of “Fat Albert” & our much forgotten Blackimation (Black Animation) creativity of the past. “Bino & Fino“ by Nigerian Adamu Waziri,”The Lebrons“-a colloboration between Lebron James & Nike & “Black Panther“ by Reginald Hudlin are the breath of fresh air that we need in the chaos of controlling our image while having it be an entertaining teaching resource for our children. Kenyan born Wanuri Kahiu made history this past year by creating Kenya’s first Sci-Fi film & winning Best Short Film at the Cannes Independent Film Festival for her Sci-Fi film Pumzi, showcasing that African film making goes beyond Nollywood & that you do not need huge hollywood budgets to create greatness because where there is opportunity global Africans will always excel!

“Animation history is a relatively short history in comparison with many of the visual arts and when mentioned often brings to mind the works of Walt Disney and other great American animators. What is not thought of concerns the history of Animation in other non-western, non-European countries such as Japan, India, China, and even Africa. These countries have Animation histories that have been inspired by western animation techniques and innovations, yet each one strives to find its own national style. Egypt appears to have led the way; following the Frenkel brothers was the Egyptian animator, Ali Muhib, who started the Film Animation Department as part of the national television station and directed the film The White Line in 1962. The White Line incorporated animation and live action. Muhib spent 8 years at the department, after which he went into advertising and was able to create the first Arab animation film series, Mishgias Sawah in 1979. Animation continued to thrive in Cairo while elsewhere on the continent in Niger, Moustapha Alassane creates La mort du Gandji in 1963. Many consider Moustapha the father of African animation, his works are viewed in a high art context, he is self-taught and his style is stop-motion using simple animated puppets and directly drawing on the film. His films include: Bon voyage sim-1966, Samba le grand-1977, and more recently Kokoa 2-2000…” READ MORE

“According to the makers – Bino and Fino is a cartoon series about a brother and sister named “Bino”  and “Fino”  who live with their grandparents ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ in a modern day city in Africa. Bino and Fino have many adventures where, with the help of their friend Ladidi the fairy, they discover and learn things about the world…”READ MORE

“LeBron James is taking his talents to the Internet in a new Web-based animated series that will revisit some of his best-known off-the-court performances while featuring socially conscious messages. The cartoon series, called “The LeBrons” and planned for a spring debut on its own YouTube channel and Mr. James’s Web site, lebronjames.com, will revive the characters from a popular series of Nike commercials in which Mr. James played four versions of himself: the youthful and wide-eyed Kid LeBron; the physically adept Athlete LeBron; the smooth and savvy Business LeBron; and an ornery elder statesman called Wise LeBron…”READ MORE

“Certain comic book characters remain popular on the page but seem to defy adaptation to the big screen — Entertainment Weekly recently asked whether or not we’d ever see a Wonder Woman movie. But for filmmaker and former Black Entertainment Television president Reginald Hudlin, writing first a comic book and then an animated series of Black Panther (out today from Shout! Factory) was a way to visualize a cinematic adventure for a character that Hudlin calls the African equivalent of Captain America. A quick Black Panther recap for anyone who’s not a comics reader: He’s not just a superhero, he’s T’Challa, the king of Wakanda, a technologically-advanced African nation that has closed itself off from a world that is not yet ready for its futuristic devices. The country stays ahead of the game thanks to its supply of vibranium, and the mantle of Black Panther is passed along royal family lines…”READ MORE

“Moustapha Alassane is an African filmmaker, born in Niger, 1942.Born in 1942 in N’Dougou (Niger), Moustapha Alassane graduated in mechanics. However, in the Rouch IRSH in Niamey he learns the cinematographic technique and becomes one of its main researchers. Jean Rouch allows Alassane’s education and accommodation in Canada, where he meets the famous Norman McLaren, who teaches him the secrets of animation. Moustapha Alassane is one of the first filmmakers in Africa, making Niger one of the African nations of more importance in cinema, close to Senegal. He was the author of the first animated films of the sub-Saharan Africa, directing also documentaries and fiction films. He was Head of Cinema Department at the Niamey University for 15 years. Moustapha Alassane directed, in 1962, two shorts inspired in traditional tales: “Aoure” and “La Bague du roi Koda”. Representing the African culture (“Deela ou el Barka le conteur”, 1969; “Shaki”, 1973), Alassane uses also moral satire (“F.V.V.A., femme, villa, voiture, argent”, 1972), denouncing the thirst of power form the “new wealth” in Africa. Criticism and black humour are, after all, in almost all of his films. The frog is his favourite animal and protagonist of most of his animated films, because Alassane believes it is funnier to animate frogs rather than humans. Directed around thirty animation, documentary and fiction films…” READ MORE