The last few weeks have exposed the rampant anti-black sentiments from disappointing sources. There was the amusement park character who blatantly refused to greet little black girls during a parade. There was Candice Owens and Kayne West sporting “White Lives Matter” sweatshirts. There was Senator Tommy Tuberville literally labeling African Americans as criminals undeserving of reparations for slavery. In Los Angeles, there was a city council president caught on tape calling the black toddler son of a white council member a monkey in need of a beat down. Even the K-pop world is struggling with accusations of Korean R&B artist, Crush, refusing to high-five black fans in the audience at a music festival.
It’s all too much, but not at all new. Notions of “cultural” superiority among humans has always been a horrible problem with deadly consequences. Humans are tribal and greedy by nature. It is a combination that ensures that the tribe with the best weapons and the greatest propensity towards violence always wins. Today, the aggressor is Putin. In our past, Columbus and European settlers after him annihilated the Indians across the Americas for their land. Throughout human history, all across the world, the spoils of war included the exploitation of labor by forced slavery of the conquered. However, no one mischaracterized the humanity of the conquered and enslaved peoples until white slave owners in the United States realized the economic necessity of perpetual enslavement of an entire race of people.
This country was built on the slave labor of black people and enforced by unheard of legalized brutality. But in order to overcome the inevitable guilt that perpetual exploitation by violence causes the human psyche because we are also empathic by nature, white people had to create a narrative that relieved their guilt and silenced the need for empathy. White Christians decided that blacks were the cursed descendants of Noah’s son Canaan. In the Bible story Noah says of his son, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.” (Genesis 9:25). They convinced themselves that enslaving millions of Africans wasn’t wrong because they were introducing these heathens to a salvation that would save their souls. But their actions ruined the lives of African slaves and perverted their mindset into thinking they were superior in every way to these Africans. Their might literally made right until a mightier North (with the help of the enslaved) beat them in a bloody Civil War.
But the warped thinking persisted. It didn’t take long for white supremacists to use violence and threats of violence to oppress black people. And then came eugenics, a debunked pseudo-science that ranked all humanity by race. Eugenics placed white people at the top and black people squarely at the bottom to justify legal discrimination and oppression. Hitler used this pseudo-science to claim a superior race and justify his murderous actions. The entire world was infected by these debunked beliefs. To this day, white supremacy has led people across the world to bleach their skin and straighten their hair. Many Asians get eye surgery to look more European. However, the stigma attached to blackness cannot be resolved by any amount of bleach, surgery, and hair products to straighten curly hair.
These are the false notions about black people that have inflected the minds of people around the entire world: 1) they are inherently less intelligent; 2) they are less rational; 3) they are overly emotional and sexual; 4) they are prone to violence; 5) they are stronger and more athletic; 6) they are musically inclined; 7) they experience less physical pain; 8) they lack morality; and 9) they are less attractive.
Every man, woman and child living on this planet today has been subjected to images, behaviors, and rhetoric that reinforce these falsehoods. When I was a child, my mother who was light skinned constantly kept me from playing out in the sun. She would say, “You’ll get dark” as though that was a bad thing. In her experience, it was. So, as a loving mother who only wanted the best for her child in a world where the reality was summed up in the saying, “If you’re white, you’re alright. If you’re brown, stick around. If you’re black, get back.” I know first-hand that anti-black sentiments reside in everyone, including within us as black people. However, it can be rooted out with intentionality when we understand how it gets into our heads.
The feelings of inferiority creep into our psyche without our even realizing it through subtle actions, inferences, and images. For example, I’m reminded of the time when as a child, I heard my grandfather prove a point by saying that a white person had agreed with him. That ended the discussion because the legitimacy of a white voice outranked our own. I watched how my mother had to present “state identified gifted” papers to school officials at an all-white school to convince them that I was capable of taking honors college preparatory classes.
For so long, the only positive images of black people presented to the world were athletes, ministers, and entertainers. The depiction of blackness in movies, with very few exceptions, were of thugs, drug addicts, unwed mothers, or imbeciles. Our many contributions to the intellectual fabric of this country were hidden from view as much as possible. Sometimes, entire families and communities of prosperous blacks were destroyed by violent white people. Even that history has been hidden until recently. I’m beyond thankful for the movie makers who are finally telling our stories for the world to see.
Keeping the false narrative alive is a way to preserve a crumbling sense of white self-esteem that was built on debunked science. I know that in my professional life, my contributions were often hidden from public view. I recall feeling frustrated over numerous missed opportunities to inspire black college students and younger black colleagues with my contributions had white people in charge not allowed for these “oversights” to occur. Some would call these “oversights” a form of microaggression. But I think there was an unconscious inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the accomplishments of a black person. The instinct of fragile whiteness is to hide the outstanding deeds of black people and to highlight the misdeeds as an unconscientious means to reinforce their pre-established mindset.
So, it should not surprise anyone that the bias born of these stereotypes plays out on a daily basis in police brutality, inadequate classroom teaching and discipline, overly harsh judicial decisions, substandard medical care, and public policy decisions that harm black people. The public rhetoric of leaders and news media coverage are huge factors in how we see ourselves and how others see us. The fact that black and white children continue to view white dolls as good and black dolls as dumb, ugly and morally bad some 80 years after those first experiments tells us that we still have a lot of work to do to dismantle anti-blackness.
It starts with acknowledging that we have a problem. And the entire world has a problem, including us as black people. And as the Doll Test demonstrates we have a big problem with ourselves. We don’t like ourselves. I know we don’t like ourselves because too many of our black sons don’t value our lives and callously murder each other. I know we don’t like ourselves because too many of our daughters are over-compensating for their need to be attractive by exposing more of their beautiful bodies than is decent. I know we don’t like ourselves because we are too easily offended by each other and sever relationships too quickly. I know we don’t like ourselves because we silently endorse a system of tokenism. I know we don’t like ourselves because we let poverty problems become character problems. I know we don’t like ourselves when we side with white supremacists who want to roll back our rights and we vote for them anyway.
It is time for us to look in the mirror and to see ourselves for the beautiful and worthy creation we are. We are no less intelligent, moral, beautiful, or sexual than any other human beings. However, because we have had to fight so hard for our right to exist, we may have gained a few heightened survival attributes like determination, tenacity, creativity, flexibility, assertiveness, and sensitivity. Let’s bring these qualities into our work, our art, and our childrearing. Let’s ensure excellent educations for our children while boosting their self-esteem and self-image with the new positive images we can access. And let’s create more! Let’s launch our own public relations campaign to reclaim our identity and our history as fully capable, fully worthy, and fully human people deserving of dignity and respect. Let’s demand lawmakers and school boards who respect us and act in our best interest. Am I in favor of reparations? Hell yes, because damage has been done and we are in desperate need of repair.
When we fully value ourselves, others will value us, too, and our children and grandchildren will finally have the opportunity to live up to their full potential with their self-esteem in tack.