Submitted by Terence Blackett
In a jaw-dropping research study carried out by psychologists at Stanford University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many white Americans still subconsciously associate Black folks with apes based on a centuries old malevolent concept of Darwinian indoctrination.
For those who would have you believe that after two centuries of slavery; a century of Jim Crow Laws; oppressive apartheid; 4 million dead in the Middle passage; one million dead under the genocidal regime of Leopold in the Congo (based on conservative estimates)- with the ongoing blight of racial, economic and spiritual oppression and exploitation of Blacks in Africa; subjugation and relegation of the Aborigines of Australia and peoples of color anywhere on this forsaken planet – if anyone assumes that the Black man has walked away unscathed is a liar of the tallest order, a stranger to the truth and a demon from the lowest regions of Hell.
It is undeniable that the most damnable blight on the history of the white race has been slavery, where men and women were reduced by a stroke of Protestant moral abnegation to the lowliest common form of subhuman creating an aberration in time and space which has not been rectified or healed in 400 years. This shameful act of Biblical proportions continue to reverberate as a transgenerational phenomenon creating anger, resentment and hatred in Black folks which still has not been properly addressed – as we continue to sweep these issues under the carpet.
Black American scholar Michael Eric Dyson argues that ‘the effect of slavery continues to exert its brutal influence in the untold sufferings of millions of everyday folks.’ He believes that slavery is responsible for the high levels of Black residential separation from whites today – where a form of modern day apartheid exists in our major cities, town and villages. We co-exist but we do interact or we certainly don’t know each other.
In Stephen Steinberg book, ‘The Ethnic Myth’ he argues that inner-city ‘ghettos are nothing less than the shameful residue of slavery’ – from the slums of Lagos to Nairobi to the wards of New Orleans to the squalor of the shanties of Rio de Janeiro. Wherever there has been a seismic rupture in the social anthropology of Black folks – you will find what serious academic scholars call the pathologies in the Black community such as homelessness, single-parent households, drug abuse, lawlessness and youth violence to name a few. But there are even more radical claims to the effect that says – ‘Slavery is a constant reminder of what whites in America might do’, if given half a chance. Many are of the belief that slavery basically stole their African culture imprisoning them in a psychic world of mixed norms, values and sub-human influences – a parody of timeless evils which is almost impossible to escape.
The Black man – the strongest human link on the evolutionary chain of creation was seen as nothing more than ‘chattel labor’; a commodification tool to be used to prop up and advance a historical capitalist concept of globalization created by Europeans as a means of wealth acquiescence and domination.
Four hundred on, the white man has created wealth off the backs of African slavery and mass genocide which has built a 21st century world completely owned, ruled and dominated by their elites. When asked by the purveyors for reparations to redress the historical imbalances caused to Black folks – there is a chorus of white policymakers and the said elites who charge that to repair the breach is nothing short of reverse racism borne out of a culture of victimhood used by Black folks to coerce monies out of the establishment.
Today in the Caribbean – lands predominately occupied by Blacks (who are in the majority) is still ruled and controlled by an age-old decadent European system whose roots are buried deep in the historical legacy of the Slave trade and the subhuman treatment of Black people.
Africa – a continent of three quarters of a billion people is still being largely raped and pillaged by Anglo-Saxon capitalists pirates skimming off every conceivable resource in order to prop up Western imperialism at any cost while the majority of Black Africans eek out a paltry existence and are forced to wait at the gates of charitable organizations for a morsel of meal and an ounce of pity.
In 1st world countries where the intergenerational effects of slavery, migration and an illusory search for prosperity has resulted in Blacks having to make the most of the opportunities they have (given that some of us have made it) we need to fight even harder for a fair deal with an accurate understanding of the present and the history that has led us to this place.
A partial list of our sordid history includes two and a half centuries of slavery; another century of legal discrimination; continued employment discrimination; widespread exclusion from labor unions during the period that these unions helped to create the modern middle class; exclusion from buying suburban homes – due to urban, social apartheid; a form of discrimination based on skin color, not just poverty – just as the home became the primary way in which the middle class was able to hold on to some form of wealth.
It is argued today that if the African American community (with all its wealth) were a nation – it would have been the 9th richest nation in the world out of 194 nations yet the disproportionality of poverty amongst Blacks is stark although they have made significant gains in education and income during the past decades, but white men still make the most money, controlling the lever of economic might and prowess.
The stats reveal that on average, a white man with a college diploma earned about $65,000 in 2001 and at today’s current rates earn in excess $80K while Blacks with college degrees earn 30% less. Differences in income between white men and other ethnic groups were slightly lower on other educational levels. Black men with high school diplomas earned about 25% less than similarly educated whites, and Black men with Master’s degrees earned 20% less than their white counterparts.
Similar stats bear out across the UK, Europe and Canada which are also considered 1st world countries where there is a high proportion of Blacks who were either domiciled through the intergenerational effects of slavery or through economic patterns of migration in search of a better life for them and their families.
But the question many are asking is – ‘how do we destroy the structural barriers and forces which affect poverty and marginalization and are so endemic amongst the Black race?’ And can we ever truly change the power dynamics?
Conservative economist Thomas Sowell argued a long time ago that most Blacks had already pulled themselves way above the poverty line before the advent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and before the Affirmative Action era of the early 1970’s.
And while the voices on the Right have been crying for more equitable wealth distribution, reparations and life chances through a more level playing field – racists like David Horowitz blatantly suggest that ‘there is no single group clearly responsible for the crime of slavery.’ He argues that ‘there is no one group that benefited exclusively from its fruits,’ and that ‘only a tiny minority of white Americans ever owned slaves, and others gave their lives to free them.’ He further asserts that ‘America today is a multi-ethnic nation and most Americans have no connection (direct or indirect) to slavery.’ He believes that ‘the historical precedents used to justify the reparations claim do not apply, and the claim itself is based on race not injury.’ His sole contention is that ‘the reparations argument is based on the unfounded claim that all African-American descendants of slaves suffer from the economic consequences of slavery and discrimination’ and that ‘the reparations claim is one more attempt to turn African-Americans into victims which sends a damaging message to the African-American community.’ He argues at best ‘reparations to African Americans have already been paid and what about the debt Blacks owe to America?’ He concludes that ‘the reparations claim is a separatist idea that sets African-Americans against the nation that gave them freedom.’
If you imbibe this grotesque logic of some whites you would feel that a debt of gratitude was owed for what has been done to and for Black folks.
Today Blacks are still not good enough. According to research by Derek Neal of the University of Chicago and William Johnson of the University of Virginia, Black to white wage differentials are largely explained by differences in skill levels which are already detectable at an early age which can be explained by those skill differentials – pointing either to training or heredity factors predisposed from one family to another.
The conclusion is clear – Black inferiority is still being posited by those whose sole purpose is the propagation of the status quo. James Watson, 79-year-old geneticist – Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unraveling of DNA code who now runs one of America’s leading scientific research institutions says ‘all our social policies are based on the fact that “their” intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.’ ‘Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.’ This reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which Watson said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that Black people were as clever as their white counterparts when “testing” suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade or so.
This is the mirror still being used by the white establishment to reflect an age-old mythology which is responsible for white controlled wealth at the expense of Black financial discrimination and exploitation. This historical legacy of intergenerational economic subversiveness and dehumanizing racists stereotyping seeks to keep the divisions of master and slave in place while promulgating a form of history which makes the Black man oblivious to his own rich historical roots.
It’s time for us to rediscover who we are and do something about it!
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