Our recent two-part series on the influence of Western culture on Blacks in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and even immigrant Blacks from the United States demonstrates the vital message the Honorable Elijah Muhammad first delivered among Blacks brought up through slavery in America: The Black man must know himself.

Africans in the Diaspora are imitating Black culture exported from America. It is sad that Blacks in America are the ones acting out these negative images which ofttimes are crafted by those who exploit our talent and distribute them.

Is it really our idea to denigrate our women in movies and songs; or is it encouraged by the movie and music moguls because "that’s what sells?" Since when did the image of a female with a thigh-high skirt, blonde hair and toting a pistol define Black womanhood, as a huge mural in Paris designed by a Black businessman from the Caribbean there depicts? Why are some young Africans wearing pants that sag below their buttocks and are trying to live a "gangsta life?"

The Black man and woman throughout the world have been crushed under the burden of white supremacy, a theology that has created a condition of inferiority in Blacks. If the Black man in America is defining the image that is being emulated around the world, then it would be wise for our brothers and sisters to understand that this man has been affected more than any other by both mindsets. To bring a Black man to complete submission in the most horrible form of chattel slavery in history, one had to totally give him a new mind and image of himself. As Dr. Carter G. Woodson once wrote, the Black man in America has been trained to go to the back door … and if there isn’t one already there, he’ll make one.

There are many great things that the Black man and woman of America are doing, but those aren’t the images carried around the world. And many great leaders have come to lift us out of our condition. But all of them were attacked, many of them killed and their ideas destroyed.

One man interviewed by The Final Call argued that America doesn’t rule the world with nuclear power and force. She rules it through her movies, culture, music and sports. He described it as a "mental colonization."