To answer the above, it is imperative that you begin by discarding every ethnic slur which captors assigned to enslaved Africans. You are not, nor have you ever been a nigger, or its variants, nigra/nigga/niggah/nigguh; negro, colored, African American, black, coon, baboon, ape, jungle bunny, Sambo, spade, spook, tar baby, pickaninny, mammy, buck or boogie. Those descriptors, and the litany of unnamed others, were based solely on physical attributes and plantation duties. The primary goal of imperialists in assigning those slurs was not to simply denigrate the slaves, but to dehumanize them. Classifying enslaved Africans as non-human soothed the soul, anesthetized the conscience, and defied insomnia in imperialists who needed a means of justifying their own inhumanity.

The arbitrary lynching, mutilating and raping of humans by humans revealed the documented, innate, cold-blooded nature of the oppressors.  The racially motivated slurs that are yet alive do not portray the true character, value and nature of the oppressed. Therefore, all direct descendants of enslaved Africans must immediately join fellow descendants by defining themselves.  You must identify yourself by who you are, not how you look. ddAea embodies a long journey that disconnected us from our homeland and each other but now constrains us to remember what others wish us to forget. Let us identify to unify.

Your arrival to this country was not by air, nor in a personal cuddy aboard a luxury yacht. West Africans were captured or sold to slave traders who forced them onto slave ships. By forced migration, not immigration, your ancestors miraculously survived a six-eight week voyage while chained to fellow Africans in the hold of a ship like sardines in a can without an inch in between.  The ship exponentially surpassed its occupancy limit resulting in disease and the death of many.  You are a direct descendant of the fifteen percent of captured slaves who survived the voyage.

Yes! America welcomed you.  She longed for you.  She needed free labor.  And, unlike the native tribes, you were immune to the diseases introduced by the Europeans and therefore well suited for extended hours of picking cotton. The tobacco and all produce of the field beckoned you. The unplowed fields did thirst after you.  Being sub-human made you well-suited for the task of ensuring the survival of your captors.  Slave holders believed that you were created by God to not feel the loss of a child sold to strangers; that males were impassionate about the massa’s rape of their wives and girls; that Africans had no need to maintain their native tongue; that enslaved females longed to care for the home and offspring of their captors; and, they devastatingly believed that the obliteration of your identity would have no impact upon you or your posterity.  You were welcomed to this country to be anything – except equal or human.  As non-humans, you would never be entitled to any level of civility or rights that your white counterparts received simply by virtue of their birth.

In addition to being the origin of humankind, Africa’s accomplishments attracted the world to you.  There is a reason you were chosen.  Your achievements were the envy of all those who explored your land.  Your skill and intellect far exceeded that of other lands.  Africans were the first to organize fishing expeditions, the first to engage in mining (West African gold mining took place on a vast scale), pioneered basic arithmetic, mummified their dead, carved the world’s first colossal sculpture (great Sphinx), had the first planned city, had toilets and sewerage systems, West Africa had walled towns and cities in the pre-colonial period; and, West Africa had a bling culture (gold, gold, gold) in 1067 AD.  From the earliest cities to books, buildings, monuments and much more, you were envied.  Stealing you also ensured the theft of your intellectual property that would surely bring gain to your masters.  Slave traders would not risk their own lives for weak, stupid and lazy people because plantation owners would not buy them.  Their greatest fear was that you would one day discover what they already knew – You are awesome!

Whether legitimate or counterfeit, the Willie Lynch letter included divisive strategies that ensured the disunion of slaves for a lifetime.  It proffered separating slaves by physical attributes and job assignments.  Slaves assigned to house duties and those of lighter hues were encouraged to view themselves as superior to fellow field workers and those of darker hues. The divide and rule maxim attributed to Philip of Macedonia and used by Caesar and Napoleon, was in full effect.  The concept simply breaks up any existing power by preventing smaller powerful groups from networking by causing rivalries and fueling discord among the people.  The strategy weakens and disarms the powerful through internal discord.   It was effective and is still working to divide ddAeas but the day has come for the direct descendants of Africans enslaved in America to, of their own volition, unify under a sole identifier that distinguishes our experience from that of immigrants who share our hue but not our history.

Change begins one person at a time.  Individuals must, of their own volition, decide to end all that divides us.  We are the survivors who represent the fifteen percent who survived the Middle Passage.  We must take the lead to save our posterity and preserve our history through the power of unification.  Those who despise us do not know us; do not share our history or our pain; have no desire to empower us; and, through systematic engineering, have relegated us to permanent underclass status. We must save ourselves.  The first step toward unification is adopting a mindset of unity by registering as a ddAea.  Step two is to stop promoting the race myth.  There is no need to halt between Black or African American.  Simply use the �?Other’ slot to proudly write-in ddAea.  We are greater than our skin color; greater than our varied patterns of hair; greater than our hips and our lips.  None of the ethnic slurs define who we are in America.  They do not tell, nor can they ever reveal the essence of our being because we are Sui generis and must define ourselves.

As defined by Wikipedia and applied in law, political science, and sociology, Sui generis means that something, or someone has very special characteristics.  They are so special, that the thing cannot really be compared to anything else.  It was invented by philosophers and is used in various contexts.  What they originally wanted to say was that an idea is so specific as to be unique, that it cannot really be part of a broader concept.  We are unique because of a litany of reasons.  To name a few:

• No other group in America has been constitutionally declared to be non-human (Supreme Court Dred Scott decision).
• No other group arrived here by forced migration.
• No other group has been denied the use of their native tongue.
• No other group has been forced to adopt the surname of unrelated slave holders.
• No other group has been legally denied an education.
• No other group has provided free labor in the United States.
• No other group has been denied reparations for the injustices endured at the hand of the United States government, and,
• No other group has been systematically lynched without due process.