Geo-Africanism: Reclaiming a Birthright
By Gerald A. Montgomery, founder of the Geo-African Movement (G.A.M.)

Geo-Africanism is an ideology which reclaims the ethnicity of the African American. For white Americans, for example, “American” is their nationality and German, Irish, Italian etc is their ethnicity. And no apologies are made for having both a nationality and an ethnicity. But for the African American his nationality and ethnicity are treated as one in the same. As if his entire history began here, with American Slavery. Geo-Africanism says that his nationality is American and his ethnicity is African, without apology.

Geo-Africanism is a view of Black people globally, as opposed to seeing them from the summit of Kilimanjaro, or rather a continental viewpoint. Not as Diaspora, but as Africans of nations outside the continent. Africa, then, is seen as the place we came from and continue to have ties to, not as the place to which we must return for Pan-African consideration. This means the Akata (as in, the ignorant) are no less African for not speaking a traditional African dialect than an African-born person who has forgotten how. To the contrary, our native dialect of English, from a Geo-African point of view, is an African dialect simply because we speak it. Just as there are Africans in the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire who speak fluent French yet claim it as an African dialect. This means the Akata (as in, children of cotton-picking slaves) are no less African for having subjugated ancestors than the children of continental Africans exploited through Colonialism.

The “N-word” and “Akata” have exactly the same connotation and distain, but are down-played in the exact same manner; for the same reasons. As African-Americans (or as I now refer to my group, American Africans) we can no longer deny the "un-divorceable" stigma associated with this oppressive [N] word. We cannot continue to use it as a darkened torch and claim that it gives light, or as a token of affection for our fellow black Americans; the same word we hurl at our enemies! Akata is just as disrespectful and the Africans who use it must begin to acknowledge it as such. The N-word is not ok. Akata is not ok!

Riddle me this: If a Nigerian is an African and a Liberian is an African, than a Nigerian is a Liberian, right? Wrong, a Nigerian is not a Liberian! Yet they are both African, neither less African than the other. And yet they are only two of many types of Africans. One is a Nigerian African. The other is a Liberian African. Likewise I am an “American African”. Through Geo-Africanism I claim the same birthright the African-born extend to their [own] American-born children and grandchildren.