A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF “WHITE MAGIC” BY CHUKWUDI OKEKE MADUNO

The book reinforces my writing efforts (OUR STORY: African/African American History appearing in newspapers and Winsome Way magazine). I read the book from cover to cover overnight due to this extraordinary phenomenon--almost unbelievable to me. Subsequent readings bring to the fore the validity of the theorem of “White Magic”. I have followed the outline as given to me by Douglass Williams of the Source Book Store.

1. The images and meanings within the book are very startlingly drawn, explained and delineated for the informed individual. How we got to where we are is made quite clear. There is a poetry about the work, throughout, a rhythm, a crescendo built and achieved due to the fashion in which strains of historical events/social doctrine of the European/plasticility of the African cosmological-sociological reality are shown to be interrelated: cause and effect, so to speak. As defined and described, “White Magic” is a reality. One needs to be well read, however, to cope with the content of truths and challenges therein.

2. The author makes clear his arguments through the usage of historical facts and events, which occurred in various parts of the world and had affected Africa so seriously as to cripple, decimate and nearly destroy any vestige of her former self. The art with which the author weaves the historical factors together is really very excellent. There is a challenge to the reader constantly – to review history and thereby find reaffirmation of the theorem of “White Magic”. One who is in the act of ‘overcoming’ is strengthened. One who needs to act, will, I am sure.

3. The outline of the book is straightforward and clear in its development. The detailed format enable the reader to refer to a particular sub-section readily for reference, review or clarification.

MY CONCLUSIONS ON THE BOOK

One who has read extensively of the books footnoted in the text will have no trouble identifying with the author’s arguments of the existence of “White Magic”. The footnotes are very well written, and are amplified where the author felt this was needed, an excellent technique. The bibliography is quite first rate and deserving of the attention of the bibliophile.

Inasmuch as most African Americans are illiterate concerning the true factual history of our ancestral home as well as the factors which brought about the commercial and industrial revolutions, the book is certaintly not for the ‘average’ African American who is under the spell of “White Magic”. It is the task for other writers (like me) to propagate, in easy-to-read and primary-level fashion, the historical facts, beginning with Kemet, wherever and however we can. “White Magic” is a theorem of value and substance for serious thinkers and actors of today and the future.

Edwina Chavers Johnson, EdD (ABD)

February 16, 1995

Atlanta GA