Bermudians of African descent need to pursue their own self development armed with the true knowledge of the continent's contributions to the world, an American professor said yesterday.

And while self-knowledge is critical, Black Bermudians must also re-socialise themselves to the realities of living within a white-dominated world because their own sanity and survival require it.

Dr. Leonard Jeffries, the controverisal Professor of African Studies at the City College of New York shared these thoughts in an exclusive interview with The Royal Gazette .

He said the pervasive Anglo Saxon bias in the current educational system is unhealthy.

Dr. Jeffries, whose scholastic exploits have taken him to Switzerland, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Brazil and throughout the Caribbean, is a guest of The People for Universal Consciousness.

He said the perpetuation of a Eurocentric world view through generations has contributed to blacks and whites having a narrow understanding of world history.

"Most of the knowledge that we have comes from misinformation and a lack of information,'' he explained. "For most people their first teacher was their mother.

"But one cannot teach what one does not know. Since our mothers were not taught and her mother before her was not taught, the result is that we started with a negative.'' As a consequence of this inadequate beginning, a child then enters the school system where his teachers compound the cycle of false truths that are all predicated on a British model of world history and development, he said.

By the time that child reaches the tertiary phase of his or her education, Dr.

Jeffries continued, that student is unreceptive to any other image of Africa than that portrayed in Tarzan movies.

"How can any person talk about Africa as a centre for human development, philosophy and writing when students have the Tarzan image burned into their psyche?'' he asked rhetorically.

"They believe that it was the Greeks who originated everything which is the view still taught to this day.'' For black Bermudians, Dr. Jeffries said the issue will be how they relate to the dominant British culture they find themselves in given their connections to the Caribbean and Africa.

And he added that similar mental struggles were being waged in Britain by blacks there who are second or third generation born.

"This is a dynamic that I have been dealing with for some time,'' he said.

"It becomes how does one maintain ones own integrity and purpose while at the same time profiting from the experience that one has inherited? That is the issue.'' Meanwhile, Dr. Jeffries said multiculturalism was an important strategy for harmonising the various strands of the human family.

"I think we have to relate all the various experiences in a meaningful way to develop a global consciousness.

"Multiculturalism is absolutely necessary,'' he said adding, "The African is multicultural, but what we have not been allowed to do is to appreciate the experience of the African which itself is multicultural, pluralistic and multidimensional.'' Dr. Jeffries will give lectures on Monday and Tuesday at St. Paul Centennial Hall starting at 7.30 p.m. each night.

On December 1, his topic will be "The Importance of an African Centred Curriculum and Teaching African History''. On December 2, his topic is "How and Why Europe Underdeveloped Africa''. Each lecture will be two hours long.

EDUCATION ED