Confronting My Values

The Maakheru starts by asking us to find out where our values come from? Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of history knows that the values of people in the Diaspora are the values of our slave masters and colonizers. One of the reasons this challenge bothered me so much in the beginning is because I did not think that I had values. Certainly my mother had never explicitly sat me down and taught me any values. I picked them up subliminally from school and church and television but there were no values taught to me in any direct way. And if they were passed down to me it was in secret. My values came from the society that raised me and this society values money and power.