Identity Theft, Crisis, and Restoration
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)
The Black community in America has yet to achieve the success that other minorities (Irish, Italian, Asian, etc.) have achieved in considerably less time. The reasons why Blacks are not making more progress compared to other groups has been the subject of ongoing discussions. Many times you are left to draw your own conclusion. Given the depiction and rhetoric about Blacks, your conclusion usually fits the negative narrative by which this country was founded. It boils down to the belief that: Blacks don’t want it; Blacks won’t work hard; Blacks are lazy; and ultimately, Blacks are inferior. This is a common narrative used to justify the inhumane treatment of Black people, which has its origins in our enslavement. Black people have been depicted as less than human and on the level of being an animal. THE THEFT OF BLACK IDENTIY AND CULTURE HAS PRODUCED A MASSIVE IDENTITY CRISIS FOR THE BLACK MAN IN AMERICA. HE IS CHALLENGED IN THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE BECAUSE HE DOES NOT KNOW THAT THE ENEMY IS WITHIN.
Black people are different from any other group, yet we have what all other people have. The main difference between Blacks and other minority groups is that no other group has gone through what the Black community has experienced in this country, which is yet to be reconciled.
Not only has there not been any reconciliation, there has been no therapy. There has been no acknowledgement of our contribution and there have absolutely been no reparations.
You hear it all the time “it’s not about race.” This is an absolute lie. It is absolutely about race and it always has been. It was about race during our enslavement; it was about race when we suffered under a system of legalized racial hostility and terrorism that was unleashed upon Black people for nearly 100 years after emancipation. It has been about race for the majority of whites that have inherited all of the resources and wealth versus the majority of Blacks who have inherited poverty. It is about race when it comes to the on-going crippling of the Black group when we look at the impact of a number of American systems on the Black community (i.e. criminal justice, education, financial, etc.) that continues to suffocate the hope, imagination and future of Black people at scale in this country.
The comparison of Black people to other groups in measuring their social-economic progress is woefully unfair. Because of our struggles for physical freedom, civil and human rights, Black people are most responsible for holding America accountable to its creed from which all other minorities have benefited. While there have been some groups that have come to America with barely the clothes on their backs, this has not been the case for some time. Most immigrants have a tremendous support system upon arrival and no group has been traumatized by slavery or robbed of their history and their culture (fundamental to a group’s independence). Comparing any other minority is just an unfair comparison.
Not having your own culture and identity is absolutely criminal and a requirement for not only independence but also liberation. Your cultural identity ties you to each other and gives you built-in comraderies and togetherness, which helps you to compete with other groups. Without knowledge of self, one begins to compete with each other. They are unable to understand not only who to fight against, but also who they need to be liberated from. Unlike the Black community, other groups, while they are bombarded with the American culture and white supremacy, they are less impacted by it because they have their own culture and identity to balance them.
For the most part, Black people, no matter what they say, believe in white supremacy and Black inferiority (everything is defined and measured from the center of whiteness). Their actions speak volumes. The theft of black culture has been so minimized and dismissed to the point that it is not considered a factor at all when evaluating the state of Black America. In fact, we have been taught to believe that even mentioning our experience is considered using a “crutch.”
It is impossible for the Black man in America to make the type of progress that others have without having a true understanding of the magnitude our problem. This requires that we investigate ad nauseam the American institution of slavery and its impact on its chief victims, the Black community. This becomes even more problematic because all of mainstream America has all but treated slavery as some single event that happened a thousand years ago and everyone, including the victims, has lost sight of the full ugly picture. We are only 3-4 generations removed from emancipation, which, burdened the Black community with mammoth problems and supposedly it has magically disappeared. What all Americans, especially Black Americans, must realize and understand is that the Black community has suffered the most absolute, and most brutal theft that has ever been orchestrated by one group against another. This theft has produced a cultural identity crisis for the entire Black community.
By definition, theft is the “felonious” taking and removing of “personal property” with intent to deprive the rightful owner normally by embezzlement or burglary. The “felonious” taking was done by deliberate, intentional and brutal captivity and enslavement of our ancestors with the explicit goal of destroying their humanity and to convert them into animals and/or subhuman servants. The goal was based and dependent upon the socialization process of being a slave (learned behavior), the coping mechanism used by our ancestors to handle the massive level of trauma that was inflicted upon them on a daily basis (how to maintain your dignity when it’s being taken away), and the physiological tricks used to “make a slave” (i.e. divide and conquer, victim guilt, and internal competition, etc.).
The “personal property” that was stolen represents Black humanity, life, dignity, imagination, hope, belief, language, traditions, customs, confidence and sense of pride and general group swagger. All of this lost “property” ultimately became the foundation for the subtle belief in white supremacy and Black inferiority.
When a group believes a group other than themselves is superior, then that group will consider themselves inferior and will act accordingly. The Black community experienced generation after generation of physical, psychological, and structural family interruptions.
During the enslavement of Black people, the white supremacy doctrine was literally forced down the throat of every Black person and when it wasn’t, it was being inserted within religion, language, comedy, arts, and politics; it was in everything. After emancipation, the method used to promote the white supremacy doctrine became more structured and even more successful because it morphed into the formal education process.
The education institution was a big blow with Blacks being taught to have contempt toward their own people and taught to admire Europeans. There is little-to-no education on the greatness of Africa and the African people. In fact, Blacks have been taught to completely disassociate themselves from Africa. Africa has been described a jungle inhabited by heathens. Today, unlike other groups, most Black Americans have no reference to the continent of Africa in any way at all. Even the concept of race is defined from a position of inferiority and weakness and not as a positive. Everything that we have been taught has been to glorify the European and to minimize and/or neglect Black people and their contributions. I would go as far as to say that American culture teaches Black and whites that being Black is a curse.
Yet, in spite of all of these challenges, Blacks have made tremendous individual progress, but the group as a whole has not moved much socially and economically in this country since emancipation. Yes, we have made individual gains, but this approach has allowed us to take our eyes off the prize and off the real issue, which is “How is the whole Black community, as a group, doing in America?” Since our emancipation, we have had millions of Black people who have been mired at the bottom of the economic ladder with little to no way out because they have inherited poverty, poor schools, unsafe neighborhoods, poor nutrition, overburdened mothers and families, and very low expectations and self-esteem (self-hate).
If we measured the state of Black America as a group by every measurement, Blacks are disproportionately over-subscribed in all of the negative demographics (i.e. poverty, income, unemployment, under-employment, incarceration, etc.) and woefully under-represented in the positive demographics (i.e. wealth, income, position, governance, business ownership, etc.). While the numbers we see are horrific, the statistics do not even come close to showing the real picture of how bad things are for so many Black people. Given that several generations have been born and died within poverty and failure, a culture of self-gratification mixed with self-hate now dominates the culture of young people. Abnormal social behavior has become normal {the new normal) that threatens to trap future generations of Black people in a permanent under- or second-class citizenship.
Where do we start to measure our progress, what should be our starting point and baseline? It can’t be 1492 when we were first brought here as captives. It can’t be any period up through emancipation (1863) when we remained enslaved. It can’t be the period after emancipation for the next 100 years when Blacks had to endure legal terrorism, hostility, and discrimination supposedly up through the 60’s when all of the civil rights legislation was passed. So if we use the 60’s as our starting point and baseline then under no circumstances can we put the past in the past because the playing field for Black people in America just recently got some attention, but so much more is needed.
Why? Because while almost 500 hundred years of the economic clock were ticking. White Americans became extremely wealthy and amassed an insurmountable economic lead while Black Americans were left out of the economic race all together. It has only been around 50 years since civil rights legislation and the use of affirmative action programs (most, if not all of these programs have been abandoned or severely weakened). While America was growing and becoming a world economic leader, the Black group was being robbed of its labor and its culture. Many of the issues and challenges that the Black communities face today are structural, systemic and have their origins in our economic start in this country and the unequal-opportunity race.
Do not let anyone be fooled into thinking that these issues are because Black people are inferior. This is about economic injustice that has never been addressed. What is owed to Black people can’t be measured in dollars and cents because it is a fortune or at least a percentage ownership in the fortune, which is why every effort is being utilized to derail this type of thinking.
The psychic and economic injuries are extensive, multidimensional and long running. This requires that we never stop connecting the dots of our current reality to our start in this country nor can we minimize the crime perpetuated against Black people by racist white Americans. In my next article I will discuss how we restore Black Identity and Black culture?
