Universally Speaking
By Rahim Islam
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)
America, we cannot let you forget what was done to the Black man in America. It’s fundamental to the future and success of the core ideas, concepts, and principles of the American way and creed.
This position shouldn’t be viewed as a crutch for Black people (this isn’t a position held by all Black people) nor is it intended to be a weapon against the white people (many white people are extremely fearful of this discussion).
This position is about is the TRUTH of America and American history.
We must not, nor can we, forget how we got here. Doing so only increases the racial divide that currently exists in America and will place an even greater burden on future generations.
How America became the super power it is today and how 45 million Black people suffer some of the worst disparities of any group in America must be put back in a public forum.
The Black community is too big to ignore and, unless this population can be physically removed from America and/or be reduced to an even greater degree of ineptitude and dependency, these conversations must continue. While one is highly unlikely, the other is extremely costly (i.e. incarceration, education, health, etc.), either, left unchecked, could lead to future generations experiencing the full collapse and breakdown of racial relations between Black and white people.
I know you think I’m a broken record when all of my conversations revert back to our history in this country, but I will continue to be a broken record if that’s what it will take to wake up America (Black and white).
For the record, I’m not just writing or talking about our problem – I’m doing something about it (I will describe in later articles).
The current carnage that you see in the Black community has its roots in the legacy of slavery where the brainwashing was cemented.
Bad habits were formed out of conditions that were subhuman, degrading, self-demoralizing, and self-destructive, and involved the supplanting of a great and powerful Black culture into one of captivity and survival.
The cultural destruction has to be the deadliest ramifications of the legacy of slavery.
Oh, I know what many white people and even some “inferiority drunk” Black people are saying: “Look at those Black people, they are this; they are that.”
Always failing to recognize that the millions of Blacks that were emancipated in 1865 were emancipated into absolute and total poverty and chaos, into a hostile and unfamiliar environment, while being predominantly illiterate.
This was at the same time that the White population owned everything and was in complete control of their destiny of becoming a world economic power.
Unfortunately, white America remains in a deep, deep, state of denial about its role and responsibility to African American people.
Unlike every other group in America, except the Native Americans, Black people didn’t asked to be here; they were forcibly captured and brought here as chattel property owned by white people.
As the great James Baldwin said: “My genealogy ends with a Bill of Sale.” This is some major stuff and should not be treated lightly.
White America also denies the privilege that they currently enjoy as the result of the enslavement of Black people.
For Black people this has been and remains a constant bewildering dilemma.
All of the individual gains by Black people have been achieved in the context of this knowledge.
This is why our parents would tell us that we had to work 10 times harder and be 10 times better if we are to succeed in this country. This is just as true today as it was 50 years ago.
If we examine the excellent achievements of all those Black individuals who excelled under the most difficult of times and were able to integrate into many of America’s institutions (become the first Black this or the first Black that) we would see the high level of hard work and struggle demanded of Black people to succeed in a racially biased America.
Denial takes on many forms and one aspect of this characteristic is to just deny that it’s not true or relevant.
I hear it all of the time: “Slavery happened years ago and the Black man needs to get over it; we didn’t enslave anyone so why should this be an issue for us.”
This is immature thinking because nothing could be further from the truth. In my last article, I discussed the concept of theft and those in receipt of stolen property (both are crimes).
What was stolen from the Black people was a system that extracted labor for nearly 300 years without any compensation and a system that for the past 150 years has structurally locked out many Black people from effectively competing and the spoils (stolen property) are now in possession of white people today.
Sigmund Freud refers to this type of behavior as “denial”, which describes when a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept, he rejects, insisting it is not true despite the overwhelming evidence of its truth.
Does this sound right? Webster describes three types of denial: (1) Simple denial – denying the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether; (2) Minimization – admitting the fact but denying its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization); and (3) Projection – admitting both the fact and seriousness but denying responsibility by blaming somebody or something else and all three are embraced by White America.
I liken the denial by white people of the benefits of white privilege similar to a person with a serious drug addiction in which the denial is associated with a mental mechanism of an immature mind because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality.
I fundamentally believe that America has grown from being an immature baby doing hateful things to Black and brown people without suffering consequences to today where open racism isn’t accepted.
However, America hasn’t fully grown up and been able to stand as a mature adult because the fact remains that every gain achieved by Black people in America has been vigorously opposed and hard-won.
Given our contributions to this country, you would think that equal rights, equitable education, fair housing would be a “gimme” – but no, these and other gains were achieved with a heavy price paid by Black Americans.
Further, given the limited, yet progressive growth of America, you would think that recognition of the legacy of slavery would be an obvious issue, but it has been removed from every reliable medium including public opinion (i.e. church, media, universities, courts, etc.).
To downplay or outright deny the concept of inheritance is very suspect and convenient.
I know a lot of Black people and spent most of my life with Black people and I don’t know one Black person who inherited anything of value.
Why? Because our parents and their parents and their parents (slaves) didn’t have anything to leave behind.
Even the most hard-nosed, conservative White person has to acknowledge that it is fair to say that all White people born before 1964 were placed above all Black people economically, socially and politically.
This formal system of racial preference has a very long history and had been perfected over time.
I used 1964 because the passing of the historic civil rights legislation, at least theoretically established equality in housing, voting and employment.
Was this legislation supposed to cure what nearly 400 years of oppression did to Black people? It absolutely didn’t because the powers that fought against even implementing this legislation had the ability to adapt in the creation of other challenges that curtailed and/ or derailed any perceived gains that this legislation intended.
Collectively, Blacks are in a worst condition now than in 1964 with every negative demographic being dominated by Black people (i.e. nearly 1.5 million Black men in prison compared to 250,000 in 1964).
The American mass media continues to fuel and divide America.
Under the guise of “free press,” the media has continued to turn the worse crime perpetuated by America against Black people – as an insignificant event that happened 150 years ago – as if it was a sports game or concert or single date in history.
During the American institution of slavery, unlike anything else the world has ever seen, there were clearly winners and losers.
The Black community and generations of Black people have lost as a result of this institution. While I laud the historic efforts of the civil rights movement the final destination has to be and will always be economic parity. This needle hasn’t moved since the emancipation of Black people.
At that time the small percentage of free Blacks owned less than one-half of one percent of the nation’s wealth and today with 100 percent of “so-called” freedom, Blacks still own less than one half of one percent of the nation’s wealth.
Why is this? Without capital in America and with many Blacks at or near poverty, Blacks or any other group will not be able to chart its own self-determination.
The economic conditions and “structural” poverty (slavery was structural poverty) for too many Black people threatens every aspect of life that will continue for untold Black generations.
I contend that, like wealth, poverty is inherited and where one starts in life is extremely important and Black people have never had the opportunity to not only inherit wealth but to create wealth because they were enslaved and their labor was never compensated.
Black Americans have entered the new millennium the same way they entered the previous four centuries – impoverished. Blacks still bear nearly ten times their proportional share of poverty and all of its nasty derivatives (i.e. broken homes, drug abuse, incarceration, unemployment, etc.). When discussing the conditions of the Black man in America, America suffers from a pathological type of denial – its entrenched in the white psyche and is also a legacy of slavery.
It’s time for the white community to stop denying that this even happened and to recognize who were the oppressors and who were the oppressed. It’s time that the white community acknowledges the benefit and privilege this afforded them.
Malcolm X once said that the American mass media is the most powerful institution in the world because it can make the right wrong and wrong right and it can make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent.
Blacks and their descendants have been made to appear guilty and whites and their descendants have been made to appear innocent.
It is not enough that the American institution of slavery has been downplayed and marginalized, as part of the trick, the media has portrayed the Black man in a negative light for nearly 400 years.
This trick has impacted whites as well as blacks. Whites enjoy the benefits of white supremacy and privilege while Blacks suffer the highest levels of inferiority and deep hopelessness.
I contend that the media sharply plays against our differences and shapes what we think about ourselves.
The legacy of slavery is real and absolutely alive and continues to perpetuate stereotypes about Black people that attempt to justify their previous enslavement and torture, and today’s general denial about its affects.
Black people have been portrayed in such a negative light for hundreds of years: Chattel slavery (1500 – 1860) where Black people are portrayed as subhuman beasts, uncivilized and whites are superior beings with God and the Church supporting this position; Civil War/Reconstruction (1865-1900) where Blacks were portrayed as inferior to whites and they will seek revenge, rape our white women and kill us and they really don’t want anything better (lazy, illiterate); Jim Crow/KKK period and Civil Rights (1900 – 1970) where Blacks are angry, dangerous, unemployable and addicted to handouts and welfare, and Black power will result in a race war and whites owned their position through hard work, discipline, high morals, and family values; and post-Civil Rights (1970 – Present) where Blacks are responsible for their current conditions, bring down property values and are prone to drugs, violence and crime, credit risks; they need to be incarcerated.
What is the general public’s opinion regarding the state of Black America?
Most people believe that Black people are inept and haven’t worked hard enough to achieve the American dream so, therefore, are not deserving of the success that America offers.
This public opinion reflects a belief that Blacks and whites have had the same starting place and advantage and is completely ignorant of “white privilege” and the unbelievable struggle our people has had since being here.
America, while it has participated in making economic reparations to a number of different efforts over the years for wrongs committed against other groups, people, or countries, has never even considered addressing economic reparations for Black America to begin to mend some of the historical inequities.
In fact, after a hard fight in Congress, Congress allowed some type of “apology” language for slavery to be issued. Black people don’t need an apology; Black people need to be repaid for what has been done to them.
If you add the constant media depictions of Black people, Black people’s general inferior belief of itself (many Black people have drank the Kool-Aid of Black inferiority); lack of Black ownership of the American economy and certainly not enough (critical mass) to effect change; white people’s feelings about themselves being supreme; a structure and system in which white people are in control of nearly all of the resources and institutions in America (i.e. wealth, government, education, health, legal, etc.), you have the makings of structural and systemic racism that feeds “structural” poverty (apartheid).
Let’s not get it twisted – America is about competition – there is a fierce competition that exists between white people (i.e. Coke and Pepsi) and even white people against other groups.
But when it comes down to Black people competing in America, which is controlled by White people, given our historical disadvantage and the massive media depictions of Black people coupled with a structured reality – this is in no way a fair fight.
There has been a lot of attention given to income over the past 10 – 15 years as a measurement of economic growth.
Blacks, while they still lag significantly behind whites in every category, recently exceeded one trillion dollars in annual income but still near zero in wealth. Unfortunately this trillion dollar number is skewed and doesn’t reflect what is really needed.
Restated, if you consider that nearly two thirds of Black Americans live at or near the poverty levels, I contend that the trillion dollars is not enough.
Also, when you take into consideration that Blacks are the last hired and the first fired, they are more underemployed and unemployed, the trillion dollars is definitely not enough.
It sounds like a big number but it’s not when we’re talking about 45 million people living in America.
While America is recovering with job growth not seen in the past 10 years and unemployment levels at pre-2007 recession rates, in too many American cities Blacks have double-digit unemployment and the economic prosperity hasn’t “lifted” our economic boats. Why?
Many white people want to forget or try to downplay the importance and significance of Black people in America, during slavery and thereafter.
White people have secured and amassed trillions of dollars in wealth and an economic system that is the second to none in the world and will ensure prosperity for its owners for generations to come. Whites control nearly 100 percent of American wealth (est. $9 Trillion), its values and a system that supports the protection and growth of their wealth.
This doesn’t change the fact that white people have problems of all types including a large population living at or near poverty as well.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Address at the conclusion of the Selma march, stated that the way America chose to account for its treatment of its own, white poor was by telling them that “no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the Black man.”
This lie and falsehood has created a race divide against poor white people and all Black people as a comfort to their own economic position.
Even white people are generally dissatisfied with the distribution of wealth amongst themselves.
If you examine the mood of the people when there is a discussion regarding repairing what happened to the Black man, the outcry from rich conservatives and poor white people is aligned with complete and utter disdain.
This is probably the only time when both of these groups are on the same page.
In my next article I will go further into the white privilege and many of its structural advantages.
