As Marcus Garvey said, without CONFIDENCE the black child/adult is twice defeated in the race of life. It is a political act raising confident black children, and in so doing, counteracting Internalised Racism, the kind brought to attention in the infamous “black doll white doll” experiment. The black doll white doll experiment, first carried out in 1940’s, still yields similar results today. See the YouTube video at the end of this blog.
By the time both black and white children reach age 3, racism-especially in the cementation of the black child/adult self-hatred and the white child/ adult white superiority complex- have settled into un/consciousness for the night, but does not have to be so for life/times.
In my book, Back to love, released early this year, as part of my psychological healing, I write about how I suffiently undone my own systematic internalised racism, and in so doing, afforded myself a more real, true and complete recovery, one that blew me way out of “statistic” into the land of sweet milk & honey. I got back in the race and am running it pretty well with lots of Self-Confidence today!
Ain’t no stopping me now! Which reminds me of that McFadden & Whitehead tune: Ain’t No Stopping Us Now. Love it (smiles).
There is still that little 3-year-old and 11-year-old girl inside me who swallowed wholesale what the world told her she was and the inferior place she should occupy in the world. But I continue to nurture & nourish her Well, feeding her thoughts of How Great Thou Are…Thou Art… The same Nourishment I fed my sons and I feed all my relations, and counselling clients.
Like already mentioned- and to me, obviously, white children are also impacted by internalised racism, which psychologically hurts them as well, as most human beings, in their right minds knows, no race is superior to others. Fact. The perpetrated miseducation of white supremacy can be relatively dismantled, especially in education, and most definitely in the home, where it first takes Impressionable Hold. The human being’s first society is The Family/Home…remember, in the experiment these children were only 3 years old..
To well-meaning white folks, do not dwell in guilt for long, especially if you are not actively and consciously doing wrong. Guilt is there to change behaviour and keep us Morally Well. Our Consciences-our Internal High Court House, pushes through feelings of guilt to keep human beings in check. Though human beings, even as children, have a natural conscience, when it comes to the indoctrination of internalised racism, conscience is thrown out of balance, and working order.
As babies we arrive into a broken world & its systems. On the macroscopic scale the system- a friend of mines calls the shitstem, is still in desperate need of healing & recovery itself. Let yourself Face & Feel the guilt of the good feelings derived from feeling/being privileged…you did not first make that a thing, but you can release that now and come back down on more equal footing & ground, and in so doing, keep Progress and Personal & Collective Growth Moving…You can’t have one foot in and the other out, depending on circumstance; depending on when push comes to shove.
The Pandemic is here to Wake Up…don’t fall back into an ignorance that is only bliss in the land of privilege. Also, please allow black folks to talk as long as they need to feel heard & have the ongoing pain & present day hurt acknowledged : that’s how trauma is healed. Being Pro-black does not mean being anti-white. I’m tired of feeling I have to state this matter of fact.
WE ARE OUR BROTHER & SISTERS KEEPERS. We cannot Progress without LIVING THIS HUMANE ACT… Neither can Planet Earth…simple mathematics…not rocket science.
The Totally Unsubstantiated White Supremacy Myth- which some have argued, and I agree, to be a malignant addiction, is a fallacy. White supremacy is a malignant addiction to a false high: to a self-esteem fix, a fix that tries to assuage the racist’s largely unconscious & deep-seated feelings of Inferiority. It is therapy that the racist belief system needs, not the blood sweat and tears of black folks. Building self-esteem off scapegoated black folks to feel good about themselves and gain some meaning & purpose in their confused & twisted unhappy inner world, I believe, is on its last legs. The Racist’s blatant inhumanity to hueman stands in the way of said Progress. Life moves forwards, not backwards.
I believe racism is 100 Percent a Personality Disorder & one day it- and all deviant acts arising out of the delusion that it is- will be classified on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Racism, to my mind, is a derisive and divisive dis-Order of mind and just like an out of control aggressive cancer, rips and tears a-part: turns the human organism upon and against itself. In the Western World, that cancer, that is racism, has been infecting societal institutions for long enough. It is time to cut it out: and it is time to cut out pretending that you/we don’t see it. Time to rock that boat! The time is undeniable Now.
Life, in its true essence & by its very nature, is benevolent, not malignant; is Unifying, not dividing. It does not have hatred in its body & make-up. And we have been made in that Imagine & Likeness, should we humans work daily to keep Real-Eyes–In. As Rumi puts it beautifully:
You Are Not A Drop In The Ocean. You Are The Entire Ocean In A Drop..
OUT OF ONE, MANY.
May we stop selling ourselves short..
Peace & Love,
Light..
fromtheheArtsoul 