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.
To do violence to someone is to injure that person. This can happen in two basic ways: we can injure someone by physically abusing that person, or we can injure someone by causing that person's psychological distress.” Black Americans have been under siege for quite some time and have experienced both physical and psychological violence. What, then, is psychological violence? It is a form of violence that often results from the misuse of others through the manipulation of their emotions and feelings.
There are many examples of both physical and psychological violence that have befallen Black Americans with a lineage of chattel slavery. James Loewen writes in his book Sundown Towns, “Comanche County, Texas, embodied the process (of becoming a mob) in the late 1880s. It had 8,600 people, including 79 African Americans. Unfortunately for all of the latter, on July 24, 1886, an African American named Tom McNeal allegedly killed a white farm woman, Sallie Stephens. He was captured the next day and taken to a farm, where he was hanged by a lynch mob the day after. Comanche historian Eulalia Wells described how one man influenced what happened next: While he (McNeal) dangled, a certain man climbed upon a large stump and spoke, ‘Boys, this is the second killing of white people by Negroes, and it’s more than the people will put up with. I propose we give the Negroes a reasonable time to get out of the county—never allow them to return, and never allow one of color to settle here.’”
The story of Tom McNeal, like many others, exemplifies both physical and psychological violence that traumatized the African American population. Throughout history, one fact remains and emphasizes another: psychological violence is one of many weapons that have been used to subjugate Black Americans and force them into positions of submission.
At the foot of hegemony
we find the burdened masses
of souls
who have had to experience
pains the likes of which are untold
and still unfolding,
while the burdened masses sit
at the foot of hegemony.
In a nation of laws, Black Americans have not been given equal access to protection. Nor have we been able to experience the joys of a life unburdened by constant assault, the prospect of liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Rothstein writes, “When the Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that racial clauses in deeds and mutual agreements, if truly private, could not depend on the power of the government to enforce them, the FHA and other federal agencies evaded and subverted the ruling, preserving state-sponsored segregation for at least another decade.” There has never been a widespread effort to fully address the harms that have befallen Black Americans. As Du Bois writes in The Souls of Black Folk, “the nation has not yet made peace with its sins,” and as such, Black Americans have not been made whole from centuries of intentional acts—slavery, plunder, domestic terrorism, and state-sanctioned subjugation. In a nation of laws, we were treated unlawfully, subjected to state-sanctioned violence and a terror-based existence. “Slaves had not even the simplest of human rights. They were chattel, defined as ‘a movable item of personal property,’ and as chattel, slave owners were free to do with them as they pleased” (DeGruy, 2005).
At the base of the lie
lives a truth that is lost.
Consciousness must precede freedom;
our freedom must be preceded
by consciousness.
This is the truth that is lost
at the base of a very tall lie.
How do a people who have been chained to the bottom of a society move beyond their position of forced submission? We must realize that at the base of the lie lives a truth that was lost. Our freedom must be preceded by consciousness.
Loewen, J. (n.d.). Sundown Towns: a hidden dimension of American racism. Touchstone.
DeGruy, J., & Leary, J. D. (2005). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Joy Degruy Publications Incorporated.
Montmarquet, J. A., & Hardy, W. H. (2000). Reflections An Anthology of African American Philosophy. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA65356223
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903a). The souls of Black folk: Essays and Sketches.
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