Is There A Black Future?

Largely because of media accounts, they are widely viewed as lazy, irresponsible, thuggish, violent criminals who wear their pants sagged, play loud music filled with demeaning lyrics about “niggas,” “bitches” and “hoes,” and often pepper their speech with profanities. Granted, this stereotype contains a grain of truth as some in the nation's Black communities do fit the profile. But, as the late Haiti-born culture bearer Chief Yagbe Awolowo Onilu has reminded us: “Beware of half-truths; you might get ahold of the wrong half.”

Indeed, I’d venture to say that for every Black person who “fits the profile,” there are two who do not. Further, as some have suggested, the “half-truths” disseminated about Blacks just might be part of an orchestrated psyops campaign designed to shift attention away from the misdeeds of those who are guilty of perpetrating some of history’s most horrific crimes: The displacement and genocide of Native Americans, the centuries-long enslavement of Africans, the murderous attacks on Chinese immigrants during and after the Gold Rush in California and other Western states, the mass internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent, and, later, the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What we have to bear in mind here is that Blacks have been under assault physically and psychically from the moment they set foot on these shores – assaults that peaked during the Jim Crow period (1896-1954) and that have continued to this day. Frequent occurrences were the lynchings, which typically saw Blacks being hanged for being “uppity,” for “reckless eyeballing” White women, and for having been accused, usually falsely, of rape. Afterward, as if torturing and hanging their victims wasn’t enough, participants in these “lynching bees” sometimes cut off body parts as souvenirs and took pictures that were made into postcards.

The period beginning in the late 1900s saw White mobs launch violent attacks on Black communities across the country: Washington, D.C., Kansas City, Kansas, Omaha, Nebraska, Longview, Texas, Knoxville, Tennessee, Wilmington, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, and Rosewood, Florida. Perhaps the most devastating of these attacks came in 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma the violence was driven by jealousy of the prosperity of the Black area called Greenwood (popularly known as the “Negro Wall Street”) and a false report that a Black male had assaulted a White female. The mob’s attack on Greenwood, from the ground and the air, resulted in the loss of countless Black lives and left the area devastated.

Since those days, many more African-American males and females have died – usually at the hands of the police. The list includes Amadou Diallo, shot 19 times by New York City police in 1999; Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old shot by self-appointed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in 2012; Eric Garner, an unarmed African-American man who was choked to death in 2014 by New York police officers; Philando Castile, who was executed by a police officer while sitting in his car with his girlfriend and her daughter in a Saint Paul, Minnesota, suburb in 2016; and the highly publicized 2020 case of George Floyd, who died as a result of his neck being pinned under an officer’s knee for almost nine minutes despite his numerous pleas of “I can’t breathe.”

As Dr. Joy DeGruy points out in her 2017 book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, it is precisely because of the abuses that Blacks have been subjected to during slavery and during the later Jim Crow era that some exhibit negative behaviors. Essentially, her thesis is that the traumas resulting from the psychic and physical assaults on previous generations of African Americans have been passed along genetically to their descendants. And this, she says, accounts for the low self-esteem, self-hatred, and penchant for violence. Oftentimes, this violence is inward-directed, as exemplified by the so-called “Black on Black Crime” that plagues many of the nation’s urban areas. At other times, it is outwardly directed, especially when a person feels disrespected. Respect is such a sensitive area that a person might feel disrespected even if no disrespect is intended. Black males, in particular, are hypersensitive about their manhood, and any perceived threats to the same can cause some to go into full-out attack mode.

In a real sense, the extreme form of servitude and subsequent degradation that Africans brought to the United States have been subjected to has resulted in their becoming an aberration. Here, a useful analogy is the monster created by Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic horror novel Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein created the monster (who remained nameless throughout the book) from body parts stolen from various human corpses but soon came to hate his creation, whom he saw as filthy and hideous. Ultimately, because of being rejected and alienated, the monster becomes a murderer. Similarly, the African captives transported to the United States came from various ethnic groups, spoke different languages, and were lumped together in a dehumanized hodgepodge that eventually morphed into the despised creation called the “Negro.” Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, this African-turned captive-turned Negro adopted negative behaviors that threaten himself as well as others.

The widespread anti-Black sentiment that previously had been semi-concealed reemerged full-blown following Barack Obama’s election to the presidency on November 4, 2008. Some saw the event as ushering in a “post-racial America.” For others, however, the sight of a Black family in the White House was unbearable. It soon triggered a backlash that resulted in the rise of the Tea Party and other right-wing factions of the Republican Party, whose members launched a relentless campaign to delegitimize his presidency and to repeal Obamacare, his signature medical program. Although they failed in their attempt to repeal Obamacare, as well as in their effort to thwart the removal of Confederate monuments in many parts of the South, the right-wingers have succeeded in defanging or striking down certain long-standing legal protections for Blacks and other minorities.

The widespread anti-Black sentiment that previously had been semi-concealed reemerged full-blown following Barack Obama’s election to the presidency on November 4, 2008. Some saw the event as ushering in a “post-racial America.” For others, however, the sight of a Black family in the White House was unbearable. It soon triggered a backlash that resulted in the rise of the Tea Party and other right-wing factions of the Republican Party, whose members launched a relentless campaign to delegitimize his presidency and to repeal Obamacare, his signature medical program. Although they failed in their attempt to repeal Obamacare, as well as in their effort to thwart the removal of Confederate monuments in many parts of the South, the right-wingers have succeeded in defanging or striking down certain long-standing legal protections for Blacks and other minorities.

Another right-wing success is in their war on “Wokeness.” As used by African Americans, the phrase “Stay woke!” is an exhortation to remain vigilant in the face of the daily microaggressions and other manifestations of systematic racism. However, in an instance of blatant semantic hijacking, right-wing Republicans, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, co-opted the phrase, twisted its actual meaning, and incorporated it into SB 266, which, on July 1, 2023, became a law that forbids the teaching of anything related to systematic racism in the state’s classrooms. Since that time, some 18 other states have passed laws that function as educational “gag orders,” effectively stifling discussion of race-related history. We saw something similar take place in Namibia (formerly known as German South West Africa) in the early 1900s; in Nazi-era Germany; during the early 1900s in Turkey; and in Rwanda in 1994. In those places, authorities first flipped the narratives about their undesirable populations, and then they set about systematically exterminating them.

The takeaway: If you’re Black, you’d better stay woke, and stay prepared, because the future appears bleak in the United States. Even now, while some of you are deep in blissful, oblivious slumber, certain of those on the other side of the fence are gearing up for the time when the stuff hits the proverbial fan. One way to avoid what appears to be a coming Armageddon might be to decamp for safer parts. That’s what happened in the mid-1800s, when tens of thousands of Blacks emigrated to Liberia, Haiti, and Canada. During that same period, groups of Black Seminoles and their ethnic Seminole allies left the United States – some departing from Florida for Andros, in The Bahamas; others striking out from Texas for the northern Mexican state of Coahuila.

Today the descendants of those Black Seminoles who left the U.S. live mainly in two communities: Nacimiento de los Negros Mascogos and nearby Morelos. Although they face certain material challenges – among them few jobs, and inadequate educational facilities – they are well-integrated into Mexican society and have no regrets about their ancestors having left the U.S. Here’s Corina Torralba Harrington, founder of La Casa de La Cultura: “We enjoy harmonious relations with members of the larger society, but the most important thing about life here is that, because we’re all related one way or another, our intragroup relations are great, and most here wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else. Of course, we have occasional problems, such as petty personal squabbles, but none of the violence such as in the United States. Our community is self-governing, so when problems arise, we try to deal with them ourselves rather than call on the Mexican authorities.”

Which certainly is more than can be said about the state of Black life in the United States.

Even so, as was the case during previous exoduses, a majority of Blacks likely would not depart this land in the face of deteriorating sociopolitical conditions but would choose to take their chances and remain in place. However, for those who remain, a collective behavioral reset will be needed. That is, they’ll need to cease the negative behaviors – not so much to change how others see and relate to them but rather to change how they see and relate to themselves. As Dr. DeGruy has warned, failure to do so will result in their demise.