Universally Speaking
The State of Black America
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)
Rahim Islam
There are very few actual and/or factual representations of the American institution of slavery and all of its consequences. Specifically, the damage that it has caused to the Black family. There are hardly any studies regarding the impact that slavery has had on the descendants of the enslaved which I call the “legacy of slavery.” How much damage was done to Black people – or are we expected to believe that there was no damage done at all? How did the first generation of “freed” Blacks think, behave, feel, and believe about themselves? How was this connected to conditions of slavery? What did they teach their children? In addition, what was the society like and how did the overall society function?
You have to agree that the American society as a whole was extremely oppressive to the Black group because it had previously sanctioned and encouraged the proliferation and expansion of the American institution of slavery. It was one of the most brutal and barbaric systems ever introduced to humanity. The question for us is how were these values supported for so long? Are people born racist? Are people born feeling superior or inferior? How do we become who we are?
The social scientist may tell us that all human beings are born without any culture and no one is born racist. Racism is embedded within one’s culture and is then taught to future generations. Their parents, teachers, and others must transform them into cultural and socially adept animals. Everything we become is what we learn. This is the process of socialization. During socialization, we learn the language of the culture we are born into, as well as the roles we are to play in life.
Institutional racism, a byproduct of slavery, has produced a generally accepted culture that in which white people learns that they are in control. In turn, Blacks learn that they are inferior and dependent upon white people.
The socialization process teaches each of us the basics. It teaches girls how to be daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers and boys how to be sons, brothers, husbands and fathers. In addition to the group norms and cultures, society has norms and cultures that are inter-changeable. Our outlook on life is totally shaped by this process. This includes the religion that we subscribe to and the belief in all of its rituals. We also learn and usually adopt our culture’s norms through the socialization process. Norms are the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior that are held by most members of the society. Socialization is so important because it actually forms the “individual” personality.
Unfortunately, for reasons that are just inexplicable, America had become a culture of HATE against the Black family. With generation after generation perfecting this phenomenon, it escalated to heights of racism that the world had never seen.
Are we so naïve or ignorant to believe that this dangerous mind has all of a sudden disappeared with the emancipation of Black people? The facts show a different story with a more heightened and vigorous terroristic attack against Black people post-emancipation. With nearly 150 years passing, we must continue to ask the same questions, why and how?
KNOWING WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE SOCIALIZATION PROCESS, HOW CAN IT BE THAT THE AMERICAN INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY AND BLACK HATE HASN’T INFLUENCED EVERY ASPECT OF AMERICAN CULTURE AND AMERICAN LIFE?
Socialization is a learning process that begins shortly after birth. Early childhood is the period of the most intense and the most crucial socialization. It is then that we acquire language and learn the fundamentals of our culture. It is also when much of our personality takes shape. However, we continue to be socialized throughout our lives. As we age, we enter new statuses and need to learn the appropriate roles for them. We also have experiences that teach us lessons and potentially lead us to alter our expectations, beliefs, and personality (trauma). For instance, the experience of being raped is likely to cause a woman to be distrustful of others. If this is the case, the trauma like experiences of Black people in America has never ended and continues to impact the Black community and Black family.
There are some who either do not believe in the power of the socialization process or they just do not understand what is happening.
Slavery was so damaging to the Black family because it was hijacked and slavery redefined a deadly and dysfunctional socialization process for Black people. There is no getting around it. There are just too many anti-social behaviors evident today that are related directly to the behaviors sustained during slavery. The culture and socialization processes in place for Blacks today that have been passed down from our ancestors have conditioned Black people to accept poverty as a way of life and inferiority as a mandate. The socialization process produces trauma on a daily basis. It is a predictor of addictions conduct disorders and criminal behaviors. Wrapped in the current Black culture is a whole host of acts of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that we perpetuate against each other – all which contribute to one’s negative self-image.
Let us look at a few examples of the socialization process in real life. There are thousands of cultures in existence today representing nearly 6.5 billion people and no one can say that their culture is better or greater than another.
What we must understand is that we are operating from a framework that defines our lives that is based on how we were raised and who taught us (those that came before us). Everyone is a product of a culture. Each of us has grown up within a specific cultural group where he has to learn to view events and define the realities of his life in terms of his culture’s perceptions, meanings, and values.
Historically, every culture as a form of protection and continuation and has looked at other cultures with suspicion. We are taught that the food we eat is superior to the food that other groups might eat. In America, the dog is “man’s best friend” whereas in Asia, a dog is a delicacy. The difference is only how you are raised and taught. How we view the spiritual realm is dictated by one’s culture. America, primarily Christians, declare that anyone that doesn’t accept Jesus Christ and the principles of Christianity is a heathen or can’t get into heaven. The rituals, books and writings, holidays, places of worship are all scripted.
When we see other cultures portraying God as the image of an animal we tend to look at them as “lower” than ourselves. We have a number of names that we call them (i.e. pagans, lowlife, barbaric, etc.).
This is a type of cultural protection. This is mainly used to keep the masses uninformed to continue to promote one’s own “learned” culture. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world and the one you adopt and follow is by far the one that your parents practiced. Most of the religions have the basic principles – such as the premise that “I’m right” and “you’re wrong” because you practice a different religion than I do. Is this especially true when the majority of the time these beliefs are inherited and taught by our parents? But as much sense as that makes, many of us believe and acquire a high degree of disdain and belief that they are doomed to hell after death.
The socialization process teaches us how to relate to the Creator or whether to believe in a Creator. It taught us what was good, bad, and what was morally accepted and what wasn’t. How did the slavery get past the smell test for the religion of Christianity? How did the Church condone this behavior? There could only be one answer. My basic premise is that every aspect of America was implicit in the enslavement of Black people and the racist mind that allowed slavery to survive for so long was basic and clear. The religion of Christianity and its infrastructure contained a completely racist culture, which at the core, is the portrayal of God as a white man. Even if you’re not a Christian, if you live in America you are influenced by Christianity and its culture.
The socialization process teaches us what beauty is and what ugliness is. American culture fully described white woman and their characteristics as the definition of beauty. There are millions of examples of how American culture defined Black people as apes, animals, demons, and in the ugliest forms.
In the upcoming parts, I will try to extend the language of culture and the socialization process and how it has produce the outcomes we see today – the State of Black
