ALL HAIL wrote:Also, to answer that last question, I think it's ambitious to suggest that Black people should be cured after fifty years, especially when you consider the psychological damage that was done to the entire race.
I see it less as being ambitious and more as not being fatalistic. I'm pretty sure psychological damage does not get passed through genes. I don't see black people as a single pathological entity. Those are things I associate with racist thinking. Or, antiracist thinking.
To enslave and terrorize a people for 500 years, think about that for a minute, 500 years, eight generations, then expect those people get their acts together in less than one generation is unrealistic. If you disagree, then I can't help but think you don't understand the atrocities of slavery and their still lingering effects.
50 years represents more than one generation. Multiple waves of newborn human beings growing up in a completely different world. So, yes, I don't understand how the damage of 50-500 years ago automatically winds up in the psyche of new people. Who's giving it to them, how?
As King Ken pointed out through his MLK video, reparations were never given, nothing was ever given, not even a damn apology, after being enslaved for eight goddamn generations.
Shameful, agreed.
Even after being cast aside, Black people were still able to conquer the demons of the past by learning to work together for the betterment of the whole. We established Black Wall Street, we created powerful organizations that created systems to sustain ourselves. Unfortunately, after every dramatic uptick on the part of Black people, our efforts were thwarted by white oppressors.
They literally dropped bombs on Black Wall Street. They infiltrated and caused the destruction of the Black Panthers. The American government murdered Martin Luther King when he began to speak out and do too much. The depressing and debilitating list goes on and on and on and on.
Black people MUST learn how to rely on ourselves, but seemingly every time we begin to learn this principle, a literal and/or metaphorical bomb is dropped.
I think
most black people
do rely on themselves, no?
The Panthers were just a
wee bit self-destructive, and were way more about anticapitalist revolt than racial uplift.
MLK was murdered right before he was going to lead the Poor People's Campaign. (Which was utterly abandoned by his peers and successors. Why?)
Can you imagine that extreme level of psycological terror? Can you really? Seemingly every time we attempt to heal, bad things happen.
You know how I feel. I wish ALL of my people understood what I understand, that we must heal and learn to truly value one another.
Unfortunately, today, I'm the exception, I've done the psychoanalysis on me, the people closest to me, and the entire race of Black folks. Many are incapable of this without deep psychological assistance. Has America even offered that? Can we get some free counseling at least? We damn sure need it.
Our mangled minds and spirits will not heal themselves without deep, concentrated psychological work and assistance.
Everyone could use therapy. But I do not think black people as a whole have especially mangled minds and spirits.
It's so much easier for white people to change after 550 years than it is for Black people.
Black people need real help--post-traumatic psychological help, spiritual help (you know y'all took our God too), financial help, educational help, family help, help with trust, and general help with image and self-love.
White people just need to be nicer.
Most black people don't
need to change. True or false?
You can't gloss over this. If you do then you're doing exactly what Bill Bradley spoke of when he said that white people's responses here are standard and ignorant.
Don't be that. Don't be typical.
I might be wrong, but I'm not ignorant or "standard" or typical.
Think about the other side. Listen and imagine the world through a Black lense.
I always have, do, and am. This is not my first conversation with a black person, believe it or not.
Sorry for the short thrift. Not as much time today as in recent days. Will gladly dive deeper later.