Sunday, 1 December 2013
5 Reasons Young Black Men Resort To Violence
The latest figures from the FBI, Bureau of Justice Statistics and public health agencies show that among black youth, rates of robbery and serious property offenses are the lowest in more than 40 years. Rates of murder and rape are now lower than when nationwide crime statistics first appeared in 1965—and those were far less thorough than today’s.
Assault rates are lower than when this crime statistic was expanded to include domestic violence and new offenses a quarter-century ago.
Violent and other criminal victimization of young African-Americans have also plummeted to record lows, as have a host of other ills including unplanned pregnancy, drug abuse and school dropout rates. Murder and violent crimes remain very rare events among African-Americans, less than two-tenths of 1 percent. Since the early 1990s, homicide deaths and arrests have plunged by 70 percent among black youth in America.
Despite the sharp decrease in crime in America, and other industrialized countries, the mainstream media continues to propagate an image that black males are a growing threat to the safety of the general public.
While the numbers do show that Blacks are over-represented in acts of murder and violent crime in the U.S. and other countries, Dr. Amos Wilson says the reasons they resort to violence and crime is due to their relationship with a system that has excluded and oppressed them for centuries. Personal responsibility is a factor, but understanding how the minds of young black boys have been negatively impacted by racial oppression may provide insight on what solutions will be effective in remedying the problem.
Slavery & Racial Oppression
The treatment of enslaved Black people was generally characterized by degradation, dehumanization, and fatal brutalities. The violent tactics of whippings, rapes and executions was a normal way of life for them.
Men were stripped of any form of pride and self respect by being humiliated in front of his family. Women were often taken from their husbands and raped at their owner’s discretion which further diminished the black man’s sense of self worth as well as the woman’s self esteem (Dubois, The Souls Of Black Folk, 1903).
The brutal treatment of Black people continued well after slavery legally ended, through the days of Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and, to a certain extent today. The trauma caused by this psychological brutality resulted in severe damaged to the mind of the victims, which manifested as an identity crisis, self hate, low self worth, and a distrust of the world at large. This mentality has been passed down through generations.
Today, conditions such as low socioeconomic status, social deprivation, inadequate education, high unemployment, and the criminal industrial complex has reinforced this negative mentality, which has and still affects behavior in the Black community today, including young black boys.
Being Devalued
In her article, “The Inner Voices Behind Violent Behavior,” Dr. Lisa Firestone writes “After years of researching, interviewing, and assessing violent individuals, along with my father Dr. Robert Firestone , I began to recognize certain voices (negative thought processes) that flood the minds of these individuals influencing them to engage in acts of violence.”
One of the negative thought processes she identified were ones that support people feeling victimized and persecuted. These voices promote and support thoughts of being discounted, blamed, or humiliated by other people.
In his book, “Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic,” psychiatrist Dr. James Gilligan asserts that violence is caused by shame and humiliation. When we commit violence, says Gilligan, we’re actually trying to do something that to him is positive—that is, reclaim a part of the self, a part of a depleting sense of self-love, which we feel has somehow been violated. This is why, when you ask most young people today why they became violent, they’ll say it was because they were disrespected, or “dissed.”
In Nathan McCall’s book, “Makes Me Want to Holla,” he discusses the power black youth feel with a gun in their hand. The possessor of the gun derives a level of respect, which has evaded him because of cultural oppression
Self Hate
Feeling devalued in society creates self hate. Denied the love of others, a person’s self-love, or soul, like money in a savings account, slowly but surely begins to wane, says Dr. Gilligan.
One of the other negative thought processes identified by Dr. Firestone was “self-depreciating voices that make violent individuals feel that they are unlovable, and that no one will love or care about them. This may also be identified as self-hate. These thoughts promote isolation and encourage a person to attack other people they see as rejecting.”
Young boys who have learned to hate themselves may develop false sense of pride or an over-inflated ego to compensate. Challenges to this exaggerated self-image cannot be tolerated by the individual who possesses it.
Dr. Firestone writes: ”Self-aggrandizing voices can be a precursor of violence as well because they promote a view that a person is superior to others and deserves to be treated as such. They support an inflated self-image that functions to compensate for deep-seated self-hatred. When the aggrandized sense of self is threatened, for example by slights or perceived disrespect, a person often reacts violently in an effort to regain the aggrandized self-image. Research that links high self-esteem in adolescents to violence actually measured inflated self-esteem or vanity.”
Mistrust
Dr. Firestone also says that voices that contribute to violence include those that encourage social mistrust. “These paranoid, suspicious thoughts encourage people to assume a self-protective and defended posture from a perceived danger. Because the paranoia and misperception makes the threat seem real, people feel justified in acting out violence to protect themselves.”
The paranoia is supported by negative voices about other people being different, strange and bad. It is easier to hurt someone who is perceived as “not like you.” These voices contribute to a person’s suspicion and mistrust of the world at large. An example of these types of voices is: “They are out to get you. Don’t trust them.”
After years suffering under white supremacy, black people have learned to hate and distrust themselves. This distrust is also prevalent among black youth, who sees his black peers through the eyes of his oppressor–someone who is different and not to be trusted.
Violent American society
Black people have been inculcated by a violent experience that includes white mob violence, lynching, slavery, suffering and death. The history of violence against Black people is so horrific as to be almost beyond belief.
Violence begets violence and socio-structural and institutional violence (vertical violence) begets interpersonal and intrapersonal violence (horizontal violence). The violence we see among our Black youth is an emulation of the cultural ways of their oppressor.
When the oppressed are subject to oppression for as long as Africans around the world are. They internalize the oppressor and do to themselves what the oppressor once did to them.
“Thus, the problem of black on black violence is a problem of cultural mis-orientation, self-alienation and self-hatred. What we are seeing manifest as black on black violence is an emulation of the cultural ways of our oppressor. We have internalized his ways. This is called intropression,” according to psychologist Amos Wilson.
6 Ways Slavery Still Negatively Impacts Black People
Names
Just as Kunta Kinte was forced under the lash to change his name in the novel and movie Roots, black people both in the West and Africa were forced to take their slave masters’ names. Today, many black people carry European or Arabic names, which is a direct link to our enslavement.
Food
The diets of many black people who in live in the Diaspora are a direct result of slavery. The slave masters generally consumed the lean and fleshy parts of farm animals, and left the scraps for the slaves. Enslaved Africans were forced to incorporate those leftovers – such as chitterlings, ox tails, tripe, pigs feet, cow foot, and other bad foods – into their daily meals. Those unhealthy foods are still part of the diets of many black people today. They are harmful to the body and are the cause of chronic illnesses that plague our communities including strokes, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.
Economics
Before Arab and Transatlantic slave trade, many African economies flourished and were the foundation of stable, developed societies. Mansa Musa, who was king of the great Mali empire in the 14th century, was the richest man on the planet, worth $400 billion dollars, which is more than any black nation’s annual GDP today.
Post slavery, blacks tend to invest the majority of their income in communities outside their own to the detriment of their daily lives and well-being.
Language
Currently the official language of many people who are African or African descent is either European or Arabic. Whether it was during the 7th century Arab invasion into north Africa or the European colonization and slave trade that began in the 15th century, foreign languages were forced upon black people and have been the legacy for generations.
Self-Hate
The slave masters used Machiavellian systems to mentally break the enslaved Africans. While validating themselves as superior, they used every propaganda tool within their power to teach black people to hate themselves. The results still have major impact on the psyche of black people today.
Family
A weakened black family emerged from slavery. The destruction of the family unit through the slave master’s intrusive sexual exploitation of women and other evil designs, evolved into a volatile moral code for black people.
As a consequence, today over 70 percent of African-American children are born to unmarried women in America.
That number is an astonishing residual effect of slavery. Such large numbers children born to single mothers is clearly the wrong model for a stable, secure future for black people, as there is a direct link between an absent father and an increased chance that a child will drop out of high school and have a criminal record.
Sunday, 24 November 2013
Friday, 22 November 2013
Nick Cannon Says to Hollywood: No More Slave Movies; Show Us as Kings and Queens Too
Could someone call a Black man master for once? Is it possible to spread the royalty in Hollywood, or is that reserved for Whites only?
Nick Cannon is speaking up about the current state of African-Americans in Hollywood. He, along with several other Black actors, are tired of movies like “Django Unchained” and “12 Years a Slave.” Though the common theme seems to be protesting movies like those mentioned here, the views of the protesters vary, as reported by Atlanta Black Star. Some see the movies as a promotion of white guilt and believe them to be responsible for giving African-Americans the opportunity to play the victim. Others see the movies as mere reenactments of slavery to which they see no point.
Orville Lloyd Douglas of U.K.’s The Guardian wrote an article titled, “Why I Hate Being Black” which has gained a wide range of criticism. He offered his opinion on the film “12 Years a Slave,” directed by Steve McQueen.
He wrote, “Frankly, why can’t Black people get over slavery? Or, at least, why doesn’t anyone want to see more contemporary portrayals of Black lives?”
Cannon, though not on the side of contemporary portrayals, does believe there ought to be better representations of black people and he thinks movie studios should dig deeper into black history in order to do so.
He declared on Twitter:
“If I see another d@mn slave movie…AARRRGGHHHH!!!!! I think they keep making them because they want to keep Black folks on edge! They don’t want us to get to comfortable! Yeah we know about Obama…But don’t forget about Toby!”
A little later, Cannon posted a photo of his grandmother with a comment.
“They called this lady a slave, I call her my grandmother’s grandmother. Why don’t they make movies about our African kings & queens? #OurHistory I would love to see a film about Akhenaton and his beautiful wife Queen Nefertiti! Or Cetewayo, a King who was a war hero. Im about to drive to my office RIGHT NOW and start the development! New Hollywood Trend, Black King and Queen films! Starring Black People!! #NoDisrespectToElizabethTaylor.”
This is why the scriptures encourage us to go into the Bible!
Job 8:8 For enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers:
Job 8:9 (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:)
Remember the former things of old
Isa 46:9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
Ecc 3:15 That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.
The Most High said that the past is a requirement, so we have to remember and acknowledge that.
If we do not how can we remember how we fell?
How do we know if we are doing wrong if we do not remember where we fell?
precept
Deu 32:7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.
precept
Eze 20:3 Son of man, speak unto the elders of Israel, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Are ye come to enquire of me? As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will not be enquired of by you.
Eze 20:4 Wilt thou judge them, son of man, wilt thou judge them? cause them to know the abominations of their fathers:
How will people know and realise where they fell and how to get back if you do not tell them.
Isa 58:1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
precept
Mat 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
Mat 15:9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
precept
Isa 29:13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:
In slavery we did not know how to read or write so when all of this was being taught back to us, who was teaching us the laws again?
We went about learning the gospels of the Most High from people that were not of the Most High
precept
Act 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.
precept
Col 2:22 Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?
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