THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HISTORY AND FREEDOM…
WRITTEN BY DAVID VOLLIN
Racism cannot be managed until it is fully understood! It is like a disease which must be studied
closely until every nuance, every manifestation has been documented. Once the disease has been mapped it is a
simple matter to apply the proper preventative technique or cure. One of the things those oppressed by racism
must beware of is becoming racists themselves…
Because racism has become such a complex organism it is not
enough just to know that a person is a bigot and hates you to the core of your
very being… Ironically you must be able to get into the head of a racist, to
the point where you understand his anger his philosophy and the weaknesses of
his rationale in order to understand how to effectively fight back! Again, the difficult task is coming back home
without being corrupted by the very thing you set out to defeat!
One of the hallmarks of racism has been that it has always
been executed from a highly organized and cohesive centrality. The Civil Rights Movement taught Black
Americans how to effect political change by voting and aspiring to positions of
political and economic power; these are the keys to success challenging
negative cohesiveness with positive solidarity. But there are other dynamics to racism from
which policy cannot protect us… The most historically effective protection
Black Americans have had from racism has been a cohesive community allowing them
to think and act as a collective productive unit.
One of the things which has inhibited the ability of Black
Americans from effectively fighting racism is a disdain for history and a
discomfort with the kind of intellectual climate necessary to become proficient
in the art of scholarly research, intuitive problem solving and reasoning. The higher order problem solving skills sets
required to trouble shoot and defeat organized racism have historically been
looked down upon as bourgeois in lieu of the less refined skills sets commonly
known as street-sense. In other words,
Black Americans have been more apt to fight racism with fist and gun than with
pen, paper and policy… Many who live by the laws of the street never visualize
themselves as ever rising above the finite pavement that limits their aspirations. Street survival is highly selfish and
paranoid it is desperate and ever deficient which is why it can never rise to
the challenges posed by organized racism. Those who depend on street sense for survival
are often stereotyped as thugs, hustlers and outlaws but the mentality of
street subsistence is a far reaching phenomenon encompassing a huge culture of
people. Unfortunately these people are
so preoccupied with day to day, minute to minute and second to second individual
survival they have no time to contemplate the larger picture or to organize
themselves under a unified and intelligently refined system of common goals,
objectives or ideals.
But there is an answer… a solution… Finely tuned skills of reading and writing
are essential in order to gain any proficiency at sorting through the hundreds
of years of racism enshrouding the hundreds of years of glorious Black American
History. There are vast bodies of
historical accounts, artifacts and data that must be researched and then bought
together into a single body of work documenting the continuum of the Black
experience in America. Proficiency and
excellence in reading and writing comprehension are precisely the skills most
lacking in the public school systems that educate Black American children. Reading and writing, especially with respect
to historical or technical subject matter is often not reinforced in the homes of
Black American children. So where and
how will the passion for history and research be ignited, encouraged and
cultivated in Black American youth?
History has proven that a reverence among Black Americans for their
history will not just magically happen… it has to be cultivated and that takes
diligence and time… Fighting racism is a
dually fronted debacle. The first front
is resistance within our own community and the second front is the very resistive
nature of racism itself. Racism is
implemented as a system of carefully applied techniques. The only way to defeat racism is to be able
to recognize and diffuse each technique either singly or in combination. Because racism is so embedded into the fabric
of American culture Black Americans must organize themselves with prolific
think-tanks designed to disarm and demolish the engines of racism
simultaneously rebuilding the Black American community, reclaiming and documenting
its history and revising the history of this country to include the true story
of the struggle and success and contribution of Black Americans.
As I mentioned earlier, racism cannot be identified,
understood and dismantled until it’s pathological techniques are mapped. For instance, one of the most effective and
well known techniques of racists is to isolate those they despise from their
community and then attack them from multiple fronts; an historical example of
this technique is the homicidal crime of lynching. The technique of lynching
was applied by physically overwhelming a single Black man or a small group of
Black men by first isolating them from their community with the assistance of a mob rather than
taking them on in a one on one confrontation.
The psychological effect of a mob and the mysticism evoked by masking
their identity beneath robes and using the combined symbols of the crucifix and
fire, (both of which slaves had been taught to fear and revere), created a paradoxical
mind-fuck co-mingling a toxic cocktail of religion, fear and homicide… Once Black peoples had been brainwashed to
recognize Christianity the use of the cross and even more powerful the use of a
burning cross evoking images of hellfire created a perplexing dichotomy of good
and evil. By accepting Christianity slaves
had betrothed their plight. Christianity
was used against them to brainwash them and scare them into submission to a
vengeful and sadistic god who used racists to burn guilt and shame into them
for being who they were whilst pounding the dogma of divinely preordained racial
inferiority into their minds…
TO BE CONTINUED…
