Al Jazeera broadcast a shocking tale of the people’s troubles in Namibia. The Skulls of My People retells the anguish of families ripped apart by the German’s capacity to look on other humans as mere lab rats for experimentation.
I think that black people have always been seen as sub-human by many white and asian people, and it is difficult living in a world and having to daily fight against these past tales of inhumanity practiced against people, I see as related to me, and against such prejudice and implicit bias in the present day.
As a black man living in a predominantly white society, you have to work to keep your mind free of the bias that is constantly levelled at you, that bias that believes you are inferior, that permeates every aspect of culture, that is institutionalised, that sours justice, that bribes authority, and is even preached from the pulpit. Like an astronaut that has to don a suit to protect himself from a lack of oxygen when he ventures outside of his space ship, so is it with black people who live in a white society. We need this armour to protect us from the lack of empathy, lack of respect, the justice – just out of reach, and the lack of humanity displayed towards us, that wants to draw the very last breath of our spirit and leave us either compliant or dead in the dust.
I’m going to call this phenomenon “Black Monothought”, this encompasses all racial prejudice, implicit bias, institutional racism, racial disadvantage in terms of property, finances, work prospects, schooling, biases systems of law and justice and cultural artefacts that are aimed like primed spears at the black consciousness to dumb us down and keep us “in place”. Black Monothought is a one-dimensional view of black people that sees us as the other, the lesser, unequal, and ultimately as sub-human.
It is my view that black people need to be very aware of Black Monothought, and to work expose it and collectively, critique, debunk, demonize, and correct its every manifestation, document it and preach it, until rings in the perpetrators ears like a deafening cry of warriors of war seizing victory, who with precision of attitude, skill, wit and justice will overthrow the stronghold of Black Monothoght, even that which is genetically programmed into its perpetrators being. Black Monothought is like a weed in your garden, if you let it grow, it will destroy the good plants you cherish.
Black people need to organise and be collective. Like Public Enemy said a long time ago, “you gotta fight the powers that be”, but at the same time, one man cannot overcome a system that is stronger than himself, it takes a collective of people with time, resource and knowledge. if we are going to do this we have to do it right or it will not work at all.