Racism has not been eradicated. It has been repackaged and sold at a higher price, with very few people able to afford the cost without incurring a moral debt with insurmountable interest.
As we peel back the layers of pain to reach the root cause of the problem, we begin to identify the pathology of depravity that has been fostered in the hearts and minds of the collective.
Peeking from behind the sheets
Are eyes burning with a hatred that runs deep,
Encouraged by a rage
That holds the mind hostage,
Unable to find peace from
Its sins.
Unable to walk in the light,
To see beyond
The pain it has caused,
Remaining hidden—
Peeking from behind the sheets.
Racism has not been eradicated; it still lives in the hearts and minds of the collective. To consider the dimensions of American racism, one must go beyond the veil and exist in a world that, to some, does not seem real—a world where racism and its progeny are the material facts of everyday life. It manifests in the prejudicial ideas people hold about the nature and treatment of the Black being. The fruit of this history is borne in the threat of nihilism that has become characteristic of Black life. We have not made peace with the sins of our past, which is why we continue to pay the high price of this repackaged racism, now sold at an even higher cost.
There was a time when I blamed previous generations for the predicament we find ourselves in. While this may be partially true for the general population, a deeper understanding is required when speaking of past generations of Black Americans—especially Black men. The history of the American plantation has not been kind to Black men and women. It has demonized, caricatured, and dehumanized the Black American population into a state of fear and nihilistic loathing. The Black man has been America’s boogeyman since its conception, and with that perception came the cultivation of pathologies used to justify mistreatment.
“The nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the negro people—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.” Dubois, 1904
The truth is uncomfortable, and that discomfort persists because we have not yet accepted the truth in its fullness. Today we enjoy freedoms unavailable to past generations, but our communities were bombed and burned. Our men were lynched with impunity, and the terror that hung in the air was thick enough to cut with a dull butter knife, yet soft enough to become misshapen when we attempted to hold it in our hands. America, at any moment, was a tinderbox waiting to be ignited by those who cared nothing about the life of a Black person—which was nearly everyone.
“We all know that the Negro has been a slave… He stands before us today physically a maimed and mutilated man.”
The gold of her promise
Has never been mined.
Her borders of justice
Not clearly defined.
Her cross of abundance—
The fruit and the grain—
Have not fed the hungry
Nor eased that deep pain.
Her proud declarations
Are leaves on the wind.
Her southern exposure
Black death did befriend.
Discover this country,
Dead countries cry.
Erect noble tablets
Where none can decry.
She kills her bright future,
And rapes for a sou,
Then entraps her children
With legends untrue.
I beg you,
Discover this country.
America, Maya Angelou
“His mother was lashed to agony before the birth of her babe… His lack of symmetry, caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which cannot be overestimated.” -Frederick Douglass
The name of the game became survival, and with that survival came certain psychological costs. The torture of living in a hostile environment—where the naked, charred bodies of one’s brothers, sisters, or loved ones could be found hanging from trees—destroyed the sensibilities of a people who wanted nothing more than freedom. And when freedom came, they held fast to the hope that they would one day feel safe enough to experience it without fearing that existence itself would warrant their murder.
The infamous Willie Lynch instructions spelled out a system of terror designed to break the Black mind and body. Whether apocryphal or not, they capture the essence of America’s historical methodology:
“…put the fear of God in him, for he can be useful for future breeding.”
I write this poem through tears.
I feel deeply
The sorrow of my people.
Their pain haunts me,
Overwhelms my sensibilities,
Overtakes my mind
With the psychology of the oppressed—
A mind seeking validation
Through a philosophy of freedom,
Spoken in the language of the unheard.
I write this poem through tears.
It would be easy to blame the Black men who came before us for the failings of our community, but to do so would be to ignore the most important part of their experience on the American plantation: they were victims. Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr.—all martyred for the truths they spoke. The Black Panthers were infiltrated and dismantled. Some leaders fled into exile. There was a concerted effort to destroy the uprising of the Black man with the same intensity once used to silence the revolt of the chattel slave, with J. Edgar Hoover playing the role of a modern-day Willie Lynch. Psychological warfare broke the mind and debilitated the body. The Black man’s fear was not weakness—it was warranted.
Racism has not been eradicated. It has been repackaged and sold at a higher price, with very few people able to afford the cost without incurring a moral debt with insurmountable interest. As we peel back the layers of pain to reach the root cause of the problem, we begin to identify the pathology of depravity that has been fostered in the hearts and minds of the collective.
Photo credits to Corey Barksdale
https://www.coreybarksdale.com/african_american_art_gallery_artist.html
Montmarquet, J. A., & Hardy, W. H. (2000). Reflections An Anthology of African American Philosophy. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA65356223
Angelou, M. (1986). Poems: Maya Angelou. Bantam.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903a). The souls of Black folk: Essays and Sketches.
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