“Moral theories have long been resorted to by us, as a means of effecting the redemption of our brethren in bonds, and the elevation of the free colored people in this country.

History has not been kind to people on the margins of society who have been forced to fend for themselves without adequate support. Wars have been waged to subjugate people deemed less than human, despite their inherent humanity, and oppressive systems have been developed and sustained by depraved people and inhumane ideologies. Long before educational institutions in America earned their prestigious titles, they were ordinary schools established to support the intellectual advancement of those considered eligible to participate in the body politic. In America, this excluded Black Americans, who were enslaved, women, and Indigenous people—the people we now call Native Americans.

Bedfollowed hopes,

As the world is torn asunder...

In Antonio Moore’s the Decadent Veil, he “undertook the daunting task task of clarifying the new veil of economics that has covered the struggles of a generation,” where the Black celebrity became a mechanism of propaganda that allowed representation and recognition to serve as a psychological salve for centuries of domestic terrorism and injustice. 

Lynchings were part carnival, part torture chamber, and attracted thousands of onlookers, who collectively became accomplices to public sadism.

The first question we must ask is: what is psychological violence? McGary posits that “violence, for many theorists, is evil and is only justified as a means to achieve some extremely important end.

“First, the vocabulary in which one learns to give expression to one’s self-conception—and even the concepts that initially shape that self-conception—are products of the linguistic conventions of a given community. These conventions embody that community’s normative expectations about emotion, thought, and action; and as these expectations change or become more complex, so too will the self-conceptions of the members of that community.” — Michele M. Moody-Adams

Society has not been kind to the Black being. Centuries of pain have created a caste system in which African Americans are pushed to the bottom with very little recourse for recompense. Black lives are often viewed as important only in relation to death—death that reinforces the value of the lives of those who are not Black, those who do not share a lineage shaped by pain and suffering.

While media narratives focus on spectacle and political theater, the quiet suffering of families like the Stingleys and Porters reveals the enduring reality of Dr. King’s “Other America.”

Claims that young people—particularly students of color—do not need higher education ignore persistent inequalities in the American school system and ultimately reinforce economic and social disparities rather than alleviate them.

Here we tackle this question not as a discursive thought experiment, but as a practical exposition meant to give context to an already evolving question.