Rahim Islam
Rahim Islam is a National Speaker and Writer, Convener of Philadelphia Community of Leaders, and President/CEO of Universal Companies, a community development and education management company headquartered in Philadelphia, PA. Follow Rahim Islam on FaceBook(Rahim Islam) & Twitter (@RahimIslamUC)
In America ”white people and especially Black people “ can not let the American institution of slavery and the crimes committed against Black people ever be forgotten, for only in remembrance can America fulfill its great promise to humanity.
Let’s be real and tell the truth; yes, Black Americans are a sick people!
However, Black people are not inherently or genetically sick, Black Americans were made sick by an even sicker people, the ancestors of today’s white people (i.e. white slave masters and a silent white populace).
Not only was Hitler and the Nazi regime guilty of the Jewish Holocaust, but so were many German people because of their silence.
For what white people did to Black people during a period of nearly 350 years makes the Jewish Holocaust look like child’s play, and all of white America bears some level of responsibility.
Today white America enjoys an extreme level of advantage and privilege procured by the enslavement and subhuman treatment of Black people WITHOUT ANY COMPENSATION.
Remember, our Black ancestors were not guilty of any crime; they were not casualties of war; nor was there an exit from slavery, yet unspeakable acts were committed by so-called Christians which were condoned by the Christian church (I will discuss this religious hypocrisy in another article).
Millions of our Black ancestors were forced and/or born into slavery with no way out (millions of Black people died in slavery).
The brutality, barbaric conditions, and “organized” torturing of our ancestors represents some of the sickest and darkest imaginations of the mind.
Stephen King, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz nor a thousand other horror writers could not have written the horrific story of slavery that was imposed upon and endured by Black people during this period and for nearly 75 years thereafter.
What was done to Black people by white people on a daily basis was extremely damaging, the impact and effects of which exist even today day.
Slavery in America was by far the worst and most prolonged barbaric treatment of human beings in modern history.
Did this happen without casualties?
It’s a preposterous and most ridiculous concept to even entertain.
When a mass shooting takes place in one of our cities, America responds with a whole host of psychological support and treatment for the survivors, while acknowledging that the damage caused by this single event could/would have a traumatizing impact on the family and community of the victims for years to come.
Using this reasoning, how do you handle the psychological damage that impacted tens of millions of Black people over a period of 300 years.
Black people have been severely damaged (lest we forget).
Slavery wasn’t bad enough for millions of Black people, but today in 2015, Blacks continue to be traumatized by white supremacy and black inferiority at every level (i.e. media, historical, physical environment, religion, imprisonment, health, etc.) and unless diagnosed and treated, many of the ills of Black people will continue or get worse.
The diagnoses is the psychological effects of slavery (legacy of slavery) and the treatment is comprehensive deprogramming of Black people.
Not knowing what’s happening to them (our compassionate nature sometimes doesn’t allow us to comprehend this type of threat), Black people who are being traumatized dailyoften resort to self-medicating. However, whites still abuse drugs at a higher rate than Blacks, although the Black community is charged at a greater rate (10 times greater) for drug related offenses, according to the National Survey on Drug Use.. These circumstances illustrate the trauma that Blacks are experiencing daily.
Even the most liberated Black man and woman has deep-seated fears and insecurities and carries a heavy dose of white supremacy and black inferiority.
How else can you explain our “collective” paralysis?
In spite of the individual accomplishments by Black people, collectively, we are at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder and without purposeful and real conversations that define what the “core” problems are, Blacks will become a permanent underclass in America.
In the early 1970s, the Temptations sang a song called “Ball of Confusion.” One of the lines was: “People moving out, people moving in; why because of the color of their skin.”
Over the past 60 years, since the formal removal of segregation, even though Blacks are more segregated now than ever before, we have watched Black people move into all white neighborhoods and within a few years, all of the white people move out.
This phenomenon has been an economic boom for the real estate community, not only creating new suburbs around many urban cities, but now we have the resurgence and influx of white people coming back into the very cities and neighborhoods that they left nearly 60 years previous (gentrification).
As a child, I remember moving on to a block where I would later learn that our family was the third Black family to live on this block (I remember having white friends that I played with).
This once all-white neighborhood became all Black in only three years (this represents a ton of moving in and moving out).
This happened all over the country where Black people would move into white neighborhoods and the only exception is where Blacks move in very high priced neighborhoods (at a certain economic level, race doesn’t matter).
Many of these desired neighborhoods, over the next 20 – 30 years, would not only become all Black, but would experience severe levels of decline, blight and massive disinvestment. In spite of the removal of “legal” segregation, what really triggered this massive relocation. I believe it to be white supremacy and black inferiority.
Generally speaking (there is a ton of evidence to support this) there are many white people who don’t want to live with Black people and the acceptance of physical integration was an illusion, the real integration was the integrating of the Black economy.
For those white readers, I can tell you that many Black people that are 50 years and older romanticize about pre-integration when Black people owned their own stores and there was a general sense that Black people had more control of their own destiny, especially when it came to doing for self.
During segregation, many Black neighborhoods reflected real diversity. Blacks owned a good portion of its business community (i.e. Black owned hotels, insurance companies, banks, grocery stores, clothing stores, furniture stores, etc.).
During this same period, segregated Black schools with Black teachers and administrators produced a better product than today’s public schools.
While I’m not advocating having laws, systems, and institutions that discriminate against Black people (these fights were justified); I, however, like many other Black people, feel the same way that many whites feel – I want to live with my own people.
If most Blacks also feel this way, then we need to understand what happened and why we fled our own neighborhoods to live in places where we weren’t even wanted.
The legacy of slavery involves a heavy dose of white supremacy and black inferiority which was embedded in Black people during the enslavement process (making a slave – this was the only way that slavery would’ve worked for so long).
One of the characteristics of this disease is that you love others more than you love yourself and this accounts for why Black people would flee their own neighborhoods to go live in neighborhoods where it made clear that they were not wanted.
Blacks were made to love white people and some, especially those who were more economically mobile, were severely bitten by white supremacy and black inferiority.
Those that were most economically mobile were our so-called educated (elite) and therefore have fallen for the illusion of integration more than most Blacks and because they were our leaders they made integration the mantra for the Black community.
They, in many cases, define white neighborhoods as good and Black neighborhoods as inferior.
Sure our communities were/are not perfect, not by a long shot.
I ask you how Black communities would ever improve if the most economically mobile move out leaving the community poorer and without economic and human resources.
Today too many of our communities are extremely poor and Blacks who have achieved some level of wealth now live in white communities.
As Malcolm X once said about Black people who believe that those that oppressed our ancestors would magically now come to love us “you’ve been bamboozled, you’ve been hoodwinked.”
I know the educated Black person is saying “I’m educated and I have two doctorate degrees from Harvard, Princeton, and/or Yale. I’m doing my own thing.
I know what I like and what I don’t like and no one controls my mind.” I ask you, what have these universities really taught you?
Did they restore the knowledge that was taken from you? Did they teach you of the horrors perpetuated on your ancestors by them? Did they teach you about the tricks and lies of racism? Did they breakdown the structural racism, discrimination, and bias and how to abolish it? NO!
Your great American universities taught you how to assimilate (be like them) and to get out of the “ghetto” (Black inferiority); how to run from your people; how to get ahead (of other Blacks) but never whites; how to uphold and emulate the systems that wreak havoc on the Black man on a daily basis, and how to love white people and hate yourself.
For the most part, these schools taught Blacks how not to use the power on loan to help your own people especially to advance Black self-determination.
If given a chance, we know that Black people can compete and win (our problem is that it hasn’t been a fair playing field).
You can compete because you come from greatness (something you know nothing about because you were never taught).
For the most part, you’re at these universities that help to perpetuate the illusion of the “American dream” for everyone and believe that we live in a post racial society and you, unlike millions of your Black people who are just lazy and looking for a handout, you choose to work hard and the benefit for working hard is that you get to be with White people (we will let you in).
If you’re honest, Mr. Black elite and tell the world what your real experiences are and how you are really treated, both in school and out, you are reminded daily that you are Black and how vicious and stinging racism is or maybe you’re just too dumb to even notice it.
The great Carter G. Woodson stated that the Black man in America hasn’t been truly educated and/or empowered; he has been miseducated to love White people and to deplore his own Black people.
Today, at 57, I must diligently and constantly be on guard against acting on my own “learned” black inferiorities.
This is why I‘ve personally abolished the “N” word. The “N” word was created during our enslavement (I try not to use the word slavery or slaves) by the slave owners (I try not to use the word slave master).
The word was used to demean and dehumanize our Blacks and it is associated with the “created” perception that Blacks were inferior, lazy, ugly, and subhuman.
When I hear how people use the word as a term of endearment, it’s very clear to me that they have bought in entirely to Black inferiority.
To combat a lifetime of learned inferiority, I need a strong and positive “Black” filter that I’m able to funnel my thoughts through.
It is hard for many white people to understand how pervasive white supremacy and black inferiority is and it is communicated throughout every known medium (you’ll just have to believe me).
It’s extremely suffocating, its everywhere and most importantly, it is thoroughly engrained within Black culture.
THE BLACK FILTER CAN ONLY GROW THROUGH KNOWLEDGE OF SELF, SO IF YOURE NOT STUDYING FROM OUR GREAT BLACK LEADERS, TEACHERS, AND RESISTORS, YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO BUILD THE FILTER NEEDED TO INTERNALLY FIGHT THE MASSIVE PROPOGANDA OF BLACK INFERIORITY AND WHITE SUPREMACY.
What is your belief Black Man? Can we challenge the conditions facing Black people in America? If you answered “no” you’ve been poisoned by black inferiority and white supremacy and trust me, it’s not your fault (you just have work to do, you must get on a path of deprogramming).
If you answered “yes” but you can’t point to any tangible proof that you are doing anything about it (you’re not engaged in the struggle), you too have been poisoned by black inferiority and white supremacy.
You have just as much work to do as those who believe that we can’t challenge the conditions facing Black people in America.
In fact you might have more work to do because you acknowledge the poison but your response is still not to do anything about it.
Many of you talk about Black power but don’t have a Black conscious and therefore, you do nothing about it. What are you waiting for?
For the truly conscious Black man knows that no one will do for the Black man but the Black man.
The question still remains who is oppressing the Black man today?
From 1500 through nearly 1970, it was clearly the white slave owners; a white government; and a number of white controlled institutions.
In addition to the structural and systems that discriminate against Black people, poverty and all of its derivatives is the oppressor of Black people.
Access to capital and quality education are key factors to combating poverty, but securing this for poor people is extremely difficult and almost impossible given the structural nature of both (where you start matters).
Capital resources (wealth) and access to quality education are key factors that predestined the Black community to becoming a permanent underclass trapped in poverty unless Blacks break this cycle.
Black people are still discussing reform goals that Brown vs Board of Education has yet to resolve 60 years later, lest we forget.
In part one of this article “Lest we Forget,” I tried to zero in on what Malcom X once said “the oppressor will never feel the pain of the oppressed.”
Will the children of the oppressor ever feel the pain of the children of the oppressed?
Also, today who are the oppressors? The Black man in America is most definitely being oppressed, and while there is no chattel enslavement and its barbaric treatment of Black people nor no Jim Crow laws and the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, we now have institutions that are oppressive to Black people.
These institutions are color blind and exist to perpetuate themselves, they don’t have the capacity to distinguish those that are unable to meet the threshold of criteria mandated by them which will allow them to participate.
This is why in the, 60s during the civil rights era, in an effort to address the overwhelming disparities that these institutions help to create; many affirmative actions were given to Black people (i.e. university enrollments, job applications, bank loans, housing purchases, etc.).
It was generally understood that slavery put Black people behind the proverbial eight ball and made them unable to compete with white people.
The guidelines were too high to achieve for many Black people and unless something like affirmative action was enacted, these systems would continue to “structurally” lock out Black people, Lest we forget.
In my next article we will describe additional legacies of slavery, specifically the role that the media has and continues to play in defining Black people.
