The following is based on “The Psychopathic Racial Personality and Other Essays” (1984) by the late Dr Bobby E. Wright, an American clinical psychiatrist who was based in Chicago:
The psychopathic racial personality is a psychological disorder common to most white people. Not just White Americans but Europeans and Arabs too. We can tell because they act in a psychopathic way towards blacks:
- self-centered
- disregard for the rights of others
- violent
- unfeeling
- almost complete absence of ethical and moral development
- make commitments they do not intend to keep
- get angry when their integrity is called into question
- unable to accept blame or learn from experience
- lack of discipline or respect for authority
- take advantage of blacks without any guilt, anxiety or threat to their self-esteem
- unable to love deeply leading to sexual inadequacy – leading to rape, castration and hypersexualization of blacks.
White behaviour towards blacks goes far beyond anything that can be accounted for in any other way.
Wright:
The sustained sexual atrocities committed against the Black race by the White race has no parallel in history and there is no scientific explanation except under the rubric of psychopathology.
The trouble with psychopaths is that most of them seem like nice people, at least at first. Unlike psychotics and neurotics, most can function in society, therefore few get sent to prisons or mental hospitals. And yet because they lack much of a conscience, they are capable of great evil and violence.
They are beyond the help of religion and science, which they just twist or overlook.
This disorder is what drives racism: “the oppression and exploitation of people because of their race.”
It even leads to black-on-black violence:
Historically, the European system has encouraged the killing of Blacks. Because Blacks have been led to believe that they are part of the psychopath’s system, they simply follow the practice.
Psychiatrists, both black and white, are taught to apply the medical model to their black patients. As Dr Samuel Cartwright did when he said runaway slaves suffered from a disease called drapetomania. He was not some nut – he was one of America’s leading experts on black disease in the 1800s. But because he assumed white society was healthy he saw blacks as screwed up.
What this means:
- Whites have no moral feelings that you can appeal to. They know the difference between right and wrong but just do not care.
- There is no known cure for psychopaths. The only successful treatments are imprisonment, radical psycho-surgery or death.
Therefore the only thing that will work for blacks is violence and revolution.
Wright:
… Chaka in the 1700s, Dessalines in the 1800s, Martin R. Delany in 1852, Henry Turner in 1880, Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, Malcolm X and H. Rap Brown in the 1960s, and Chancellor Williams in the 1970s. The answer to Blacks’ problems can be found in the works and lives of these Black heroes.
Thanks to Truthbetold for suggesting this.
See also:
- James Holmes
- The hearts of white people: the science
- How to become white – Thandeka’s take
- Why do whites hate, demonize, fear and look down on blacks? – my take
- narcissistic personality disorder
- black love – blacks do not get off clean
- drapetomania
- Fanon
Hmm…very interesting. Does anyone think ,that blacks and other people of colour, will revolt against the white man to free themselves, from his oppression?
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R.I.P Bobby Wright. He was a very intelligent brother. He always spoke the truth. No matter who it offended. You have to admire that.
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I have that book. Every black person should read it. Bobby Wright was a very brave brother. We need more brave brothers like him to speak out. He never bit his tongue.
________________________________
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I believe that should be a clinical psychologist (PhD), not a psychiatrist (MD). All the better IMHO, but then I’m married to one.
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“What this means:
Whites have no moral feelings that you can appeal to. They know the difference between right and wrong but just do not care.
There is no known cure for psychopaths. The only successful treatments are imprisonment, radical psycho-surgery or death.
Therefore the only thing that will work for blacks is violence and revolution.”
And you felt compelled to post that why exactly? Coming from someone such as Truth I can understand but you yourself posting such tripe?
Utterly disgusting.
I think I’ll head over to Chimpout to live out a hateful fantasy that Truth seems to be so involved in, while you coattailing it without calling it out as what it is, racism and a very dangerous viewpoint aswell.
“Hmm…very interesting. Does anyone think ,that blacks and other people of colour, will revolt against the white man to free themselves, from his oppression?”
Remove people of colour and only add in blacks, no one else seems to be so devoid of serious thought that they feel that “violence and revolt” is the only way to achieve something in the West.
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I think more research needs to be done on this because we can’t confirm this. Nobody knows the complete history of humans going back 100,000 years. I suspect sexual atrocities by one group of humans to another group goes back to the days of early humans.
However, it is not likely that it has the geographical spread or numbers that this one has, but then I am still not sure (what about the Mongol conquest of Eurasia?)
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Interesting but also a bit dated. The problem with the idea of violently overthrow the racist system became apparent in the 60’s: that system is ready for that, because it is violent. It knows how to play that game. And also: this violent overthrow would require the united front from the black “race” which has never happened and unfortunately never will, because there is no black “race” as such, that is: outside the racist ideology.
BUT there is an alternative: just look how the people of USSR did their revolution in 1990’s. They just said: forget it. and went on. The opressors sent in the tanks, special forces, cops, all the had, but people just looked on and said: forget about it. Sure, there were some clashes but the dreaded civil war never materialised because people refused to get it on. The opressors were ready, they wanted it, they provocated and killed, drove their tanks all over the place, but people just looked and said: forget about it.
In the end, the opressors could not do anything because nobody played their game anymore. They lost because their game of violence was no more. People just walked away from it and moved on.
As for the very idea of races, I think it is very very outdated and should be done with. As long as anyone hangs on it, one is playing the game of the opressor. It is the whole point. It is the Key. As long as you believe in race, in white race or black race, you uphold the racist system by agreeing its basic notion. You, by aknowledgin races, up hold the very system.
As long as one believes in races, one is part of the system and accepts its ideology. As long as people, no matter who and where, talk about races, they are repeating the message of racism. They are enforcing it, sometimes without even knowing it. They are giving it the value, the weight, they make it real. BUT once people will say: no more, it starts to unravel. Perhaps not in our lifetime, but eventually it will.
We should remember that as compelling and entertaining these pyschologisations are, and they are very american indeed, the racism is an ideology which was created to enforce the opression of the majority for the benefit of the few. It is an economical ideology, a political ideology, not psychology.
It is very american to say: “you have a problem, take some prozac” when the whole society is sick. It is very american to say “racism is psychological disorder” instead of seeing it as it is: political ideology. A belief system fed by those who benefit from it to the masses. And the masses live and breath it and if it is pyschologucal disorder, well, then there is nothing we can do about other than medicate. And that can be a good business too! We have anti-depressants, perhaps one day there will be anti-racistants which cost 2,50 a pop? How handy!
No, the truth is that the racism is an ideology, a system, man made and uphold by men. It is not some weird malfunction of brains. It is a belief system. And as long as people do not say Enough, No More, it will be here. No matter how much psychology anybody brings in to the discussion.
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^ That is definitely also another rational way of looking at it.
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“The psychopathic racial personality is a psychological disorder common to MOST WHITES.” (my emphasis on ‘most whites’) “Whites have no moral feelings that you can appeal to.” Do those statements seem fair and accurate to you? Isn’t that the same form of stereotyping which many whites are guilty of in their attitudes toward black people? I don’t think either stereotype is true.
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Well, the violence thing was tried back then and ended up pitifully in a Nyak New York shootout ,after a bank robbery with radicle SDS coupled with radicle black revolutionaries, which was kind of the death knoll for violent revolution in the USA after a series of bizzare violent incidents that included the Patty Hearst encounter….And, it fortified the concervative right to be able to crack down even harder on any ground gained in the years before by the Civil Rights movement….you dont remember Nixon and Spiro Agnew?
It seems violence would actualy have the opisite result than the one desired
I mean really, sometimes its just an absurd alternative
There can be other solutions that dont include violence, there can be other types of revolutions
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“Do those statements seem fair and accurate to you? Isn’t that the same form of stereotyping which many whites are guilty of in their attitudes toward black people?”
–Delwin
White racism is a stereotype??
You might as well say that Racism/White Supremacy is simply a figment of one’s imagination and has no basis in truth and reality!
If the psychopathic racial personality is NOT a psychological disorder common to MOST whites, then how do you account for 300 plus years of persistent systemic racism/white supremacy (slavery, Black Codes, Jim Crow, etc…) and the *White Racial Frame* as described by professor of sociology, Joe Feagin?
Racism in America, as it IS today, and as it was in the past, could not have existed (and STILL exist) if it weren’t for the implicit cooperation/agreement of most white people.
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Matari, Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You are quite correct that racism still exists in The U.S., and to a shameful degree. Stereotypical thinking is an aspect of racism in the sense that it leads one to assume things about a particular person simply because of that person’s race, and not based on any actual knowledge about that person. I don’t think racism/white supremacy is a figment of the imagination or that it has no basis in truth and reality. I know that it is real and present. If it’s alright with you, I will write again and address the other issues you raised. But, my computer is updating and I’m going to have to restart momentarily. I appreciate hearing from you and am interested in learning more about your feelings and beliefs. Delwin
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@matari:
“If the psychopathic racial personality is NOT a psychological disorder common to MOST whites, then how do you account for 300 plus years of persistent systemic racism/white supremacy (slavery, Black Codes, Jim Crow, etc…) and the *White Racial Frame* as described by professor of sociology, Joe Feagin?”
I think this pyschologisation is just one american way of diverting the racism from real and functional political ideology into some kind of mushy psychological mist which then leads into a whole guagmire of whole pyschological debate, brain biology, molecule biology etc. That is, to no where, since it is basically biological and that is excately what racism claims it is (the differences between races are biological, remember?).
BUT if racism is, as I believe, an ideology, we are fighting a political and ideological struggle which also CAN BE WON. And I, for one, belive it is just an oppressive ideology which was created in certain historical context in order to justify all kinds of atrocities, crimes and robberies across the world. From a very vague first ideas it developed into the “science” of the 1800’s which was also used by germans in Namibia, belgians in Congo etc.
No, racism is political ideology created by men. Its theories are made up by men. It is almost an religion to some, just like communism once was. It is nothing super natural, not even natural. Just one ideology in human history. If we think about islam, that ideology has been around only 1400 years, christianity some what longer, and racism some 300 plus years, we can see that it is still fairly young, There fore it can be destroyed. It can be done with. Just like every other ideology among humanbeings.
Instead of diving in its symbol system, accepting its parameters and discourses, we should refuse. We can do it personally at least and if you change one individual, the world has changed that much. I for one try to do so every day. In every way I can. I just refuse to participate. I refuse to give any value to it. I try to be outside of it. Not easy, but it can be done. Just because it is an ideology, not biology, which psychology eventually basically is.
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@ Yawn
I do not cosign everything Wright says. For one thing I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist. BUT it is close enough to my own position to be interesting, to be worth thinking and talking about and finding out more.
Because of my Marxist and Catholic background I tend to favour arguments rooted in history, politics and morals, not psychology. On the other hand, there is stuff white people do that seems to go beyond the “racism is ideology to excuse historical crimes” school of thought that I generally belong to. The two big ones are genocide and the hypersexualization of blacks. Both point to a sick frame of mind. So do the strange parallels between racism and domestic violence.
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@Abagond,
Brilliant post. Such a philosophy as Wright’s serves as a rorschach blot to encourage people expose their own racism.
sam:
What a naive and dangerously marxist idea. Let’s “win” the “struggle” against violence too while we’re at it. Sadly, I don’t think people like you really understand what it’s like to be human.
That’s not to suggest that I’m saying racism or violence are good, or that they shouldn’t be reduced. Rather, the difference between them being “controlled” vs. “won” is a huge and critical distinction with completely different implications for societies.
sam:
Go read the Old Testament and you’ll see that it’s been present in a similar form for thousands of years.
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@abagond–
Both point to a sick frame of mind. So do the strange parallels between racism and domestic violence.
This reads like you’re bringing up certain parallels between racism and sexism. I often wonder why some Black men can argue vehemently against the evils of racism, but will then rant against feminism and think of sexism as just something that women complain about but is mostly a figment of women’s imaginations. It’s because Black men are privileged from sexism. That’s why. It’s the same as Whites who turn a blind eye to racism. Both are getting privileges and don’t want to give them up.
If you can get men in aggregate to give up their privileges from sexism, you might have hit upon what it will take to get Whites in aggregate to give up their privileges from racism.
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@ Thanks a lot Aba.
Interesting book, no? I’ve always suspected of the sort but couldn’t verbalize it. Funny how a little book such as this causes such deep reflexes on here from the paler persuasion.
This book, for me anyway, was my confirmation that this needs further research, exploration and consideration. Hundreds of books have been written about how blacks are genetically and mentally deficient. Whites had no problem with those it seems. But one little book that turns the table on them is causing an uproar.
SMH.
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As black people our fight shouldn’t primarily be against the racism of white people. The only reason white racism has such an effect on us is because we’ve internalized it and use it against ourselves. We should focus on eliminating those mentalities among ourselves and building our own community. I’m tired of worrying about white people and trying to better white people. I don’t see how that empowers black folks. We know the system is against us so why not create our own system. I mean it’s 2012. We’ve been trying to get white people to accept us for centuries. It’s not going to happen. And why do we care if it happens? That’s just another sign of black self hatred. I don’t care about white people. I’m tired of talking about white people.
.
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The thing is, the oppressors always know more than one card trick, even if the people never played the violence game,things still never changed.
People always want to be comfortable and avoid pain, any change to the laws of the land just conveys the “Myth” of enforced change.
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If we personified the groups that came into contact over the last 500 years there is no doubt that the white person would be a psychopath. He would have been responsible for the death and torture of countless others while being completely deceptive or remorseless about it. Given this cultural personality, if one feels compelled to glorify it unconditionally because they identifiy as white then one becomes an individual manifestation of it. The stereotypical white supremacist (neo-)Nazi *is* the white group personified (at least as far as inter-relationships are concerned). They completely reflect its unmitigated abhorrence and disregard for other groups. They want them gone as has been the historical practice in North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean and Australia/New Zealand/Tasmania etc.
I’d agree that racism is an ideology as Christianity and Social Darwinism are. But is there something fundamental to a cultural spirit that consistently generates or adopts the necessary idelogies that SPLIT into white/black, believer/heathen, rich/poor while valuating them as good/bad, saved/doomed or fit to survive/unfit to survive? Human societies are not universally dominated by ‘splitting’ ideologies. Many other societes historically value concepts of harmony, unification or merging, “Ubuntu”. Not to say that these ideals were consistently achieved but identification and destruction of a “lesser part” is not always a consuming goal.
Racism seems to be one ideology that serves an underlying megalomaniacal drive. It provides the culturally accepted thought patterns which justify the intended aggressive actions or normalize the oppressive status quo. The resulting behavior appears psychopathic to anyone who isn’t drinking the kool-aid. Hitler was just this kind of thinking uniquely played out in the middle of Europe rather than in some colony abroad. You’ll get collective agreement among whites to drop racism when they no longer desire white supremacy. However, it is very self-defeating for groups that are not considered white to unilaterally drop awareness of a racist reality.
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“Not just White Americans but Europeans and Arabs too.”
Nice to see you recognize the hairy Edomite.
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@randy:
Well, I understand that you are a bit at loss when it comes to politics but it is ok. Most americans like you are pretty pathetic when it comes to political understanding, not to mention knowing history. Your suggestion of reading bible as some kind of valid piece of information, a fantasy book written by few religious zelots, is a pretty good example of that.
If you imagine that I have no knowledge about the realities of this world or what violence can be, you are sadly mistaken.
@jared:
Partly true, but look at eastern Europe and compare it with the reality of 1980¨s. People really did win over there with minimum of violence. Did it result in Paradise? No, but even this beats the old communist system. And if any system of opression was violent it was the one of old communist regimes: they were born out of violence. BUT still people did them away, just like I said. That is a fact. It can be done for racism as well. But as long as people believe in it and hold it up, it will remain with us.
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“sam
People really did win over there with minimum of violence. Did it result in Paradise? No, but even this beats the old communist system.”
Linda says,
True but from what I hear from my central European friends (Slovak, Czech, Hungarian), they still are complaining because since joining the EU, their governments were forced to privatize big factories and industries and German companies bought many of these businesses. They complain that they feel as though the Germans are continuing Hitlers dreams of domination–no escape!
so in a sense, they switched from one regime to another and people mumble that it was better under communist! (some people are just never happy)
I get what you’re saying though, that change must start from within in order for it to lead to systemic changes but With racism being so ingrained in American society, it’s too easy to say, ‘just overthrow it and all will be fine”…ideology and beliefs both kills and cures, and they also evolve, so like you say, anythings possible.
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“solesearch
The only reason white racism has such an effect on us is because we’ve internalized it and use it against ourselves. We should focus on eliminating those mentalities among ourselves and building our own community. I’m tired of worrying about white people and trying to better white people. I don’t see how that empowers black folks.”
Linda says,
I agree 100%.
Coming from a country that is primarily black/brown, white people are seen as walking $ signs. We are nice to the white tourists so that we can over-charge them for souvenirs and local tours, while they walk away feeling like they got a bargain and that they are not prejudice because they hung out all day with black people, win-win for everyone!
But then again, we also over-charge black Americans and black/brown foreigners too, so it’s equal opportunity over-charging. 🙂
Once race is no longer a factor, it comes down to the finances and enriching/ empowering your own community.
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sam:
Are you suggesting that the discriminatory and genocidal tribalisms as described in the Bible have zero historical validity? That such things never happened? That such beliefs by one group regarding another group never presented?
What Wright appears to suggest is a particular psychopathic pathology of European peoples seems not uncommon throughout history, though obviously each manifestation has its unique properties.
Also, ad-hominem attacks are not a valid substitute for a defensible argument.
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Very interesting post. I, having had to deal with someone (who was dark-skinned so-called “black”, from the West Indies) with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, called “Perversion Narcissique” in French (perversion referring to the constant inversion of values -lies, accusations, etc…-) who have the particularity of manipulating others into believing that they are the ones who “have a problem” (the famous “black problem”), and in particular of what they themselves, are guilty of (projection), I realized that this could apply to many so-called “whites”, in the frame of racism/white supremacy.
The description of the personality disorder that is quoted above is a perfect copy of the description of “Perversion Narcissique”, or “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”
So this is interesting, except that it is valid only in the frame of racism/white supremacy, that is, an ideology that states, one, the existence of races (first tool), two, their essential differences, three, their intrinsic hierarchy.
So, it is a belief, like a religion. A truth. One reason why it is so difficult to get rid of it, since even its victims are manipulated into believing in it until they “wake up”. And realize how deep the hatred is.
One has to be careful to take into account that the US is probably the most racist society (in reference to European racism) on earth considering that the dichotomy between “black” and “white” has been considered as almost total. See “Racially Mixed Children in America” for a reference to how “mixing” was defined as monstruous. If you read French, see, “La Couleur comme Maléfice, p 128, byJean-Luc Bonniol, an anthropologist at the University of Aix-Marseilles, whose book analyzes the resilience of “race” in (former) colonial settings (Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, the US, Brazi, Spanish speaking islands and country in Central and South America) and compares them, and tries to understand how “color” (the symbolic use of reductive colors) as a basis to define “race” has been and still is so powerful (maléfice = curse).
What is unfortunate, is that it is transferred from generation to generation UNLESS one of the links is missing (racism is not taught, it is un-taught). Not all the children of NPDs (people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder) have the disorder, but some do. The problem is that the competitive-minded, capitalistic societies we live in encourage troubled narcissistic personalities, and of course capitalism was the main engine of racism/slavery. So these people “reproduces” as they are needed in those societies than despise love, solidarity, togetherness…
So those of you who might think it’s ALL “white” people, that is, ALL light-skinned people who suffer from it… “White-mindedness” requires this types of psychopathy, or rather, it creates it. As long as people are taught about “race” being a reality, the disease will perpetuate itself. Not being exposed to “race” at an early age maybe a cure, since those pathologies build in infancy.
This is the reason why (some may have noticed 😉 ), I insist on keeping in mind that “race”, “racism/white supremacy” is LEARNT, it is not “natural”. It can be reversed (since it was learnt) if new generations are taught about how wrong (morally) it is before they integrate it. (But those who control education and psychiatry are white-minded, it’s a vicious circle, true)
Responding to psychopaths with violence can have the exact reverse effect of creating a new group of psychopaths, because they feed out of violence.
Many Africans seem to have now found a way: ignore them. Ignore the racist talk, the “you are guilty of something otherwise you wouldn’t be in this state” talk. Racists hate it. Deny them their “truth” (whiteness), they hate it. They need to find themselves facing their own void.
I think this illustrates it quite well. There are aware light-skinned people who can act by doing this: http://vimeo.com/21501057
As I said in another post, they need to have the carpet swept from under their feet. The pedestal removed. One way to do it is to ignore them. But of course they organized this society in such a way that they nailed down the carpet and glued the pedestal.
Light-skinned people who are not white-minded must act. They will be attacked, crushed, but that’s probably one of the only ways. People like John Brown did it. Sacrificed himself to tell other “whites” that the system is wrong. There are others who have acted, but they are unknown. Have you ever noticed how anti-racist “white” activists are so seldom mentioned. Of course they wouldn’t. They expose the truth. Recently I researched “white civil rights activists”, hoping to come across docs about the “whites” who fought along “blacks” during the Civil Rights fights in the US. Guess what came up ? David Duke’s site. Do it, search, you’ll find almost only racist/white-supremacist sites and/or articles relating to them. As if they needed protection and civil rights in order to free themselves. And that’s exactly what NPDs do ! They will make you believe THEY are the victims (like Zimmermann who murdered Travon Martin).
The whole system (in the US in particular, elsewhere is different ways that allow more interconnection and working together) is locked so that we won’t unite to fight white-supremacists. If we united against them, it would be it. If only “blacks” fight them ? I doubt they’ll get very far.
One reason why MLK relied on non-violence and Malcolm X called for it only in self-defense is because these people will always turn the violence around. They live in an upside-down world. Every a sane person consider normal, they despise it, laugh at it and use it against their victims (religion is one isntance). Both MLK and Malcom understood the system very well, and tried different but not so different ways to attack it. Ways that are difficult to accuse of violence. The fight had to be clear and righteous. Un-twistable, un-reachable for those specialists in twisting reality and getting at you through guilt.
Thanks for the reference, I will definitely read that book.
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Check this out and see how close it is from Wright’s proposition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
I commented on this in my Trayvon Martin post on my blog… a few months ago.
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@ Randy
I think Wright would count Jews as white since he counts Arabs as such. Even worse, European religion comes from Jews. So your Bible example only strengthens his point.
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Solesearch illustrated one of the ways to fight white supremacists : ignore them.
Our ancestors (I am European) screwed up things, now we are paying for it. When will light-skinned people realize they have to give up the BS of whiteness and everything it implies ?
The evilness of racism is such that in totally racist settings (and I maintain that the US is probably the worst), the victim HAS TO separate itself from the manipulator simply to live, and in such a setting, the manipulator “may be” ANY light-skinned person. The victim cannot spend his/her time wondering, oh, is this person racist or not ? There is no time or space for that.
So, the system works to a point that is so twisted that even light-skinned people who are not white-minded/not racist can only act independently, because they can always be seen as a threat by the victim. And by the manipulator of course, his biggest threat.
It is kinda desperating and brings a feeling of solitude when one realizes this, which is also what racists hope for ! The victims and the helpers must feel helpless, so the system goes on.The psychopathy feeds on desperation.
That is why some Afro-descendents call for “black” unity. But by doing so they also feed the racist machine (reference to “blackness”), whichever way you take it, you feed it.
And if the victim (“blacks”) managed to separate totally from “whites”, it would be a victory for whites ! But even so, they would still come after them for existing somewhere and not giving them what they want (their lives).
These personalities do not exist by themselves, they need others to feed on. That is why I said in another post that if you take away whiteness from white-minded people, they die. It may make you laugh, but it is what happens. Their body is still there, but their mind is void. This is a reason why they get so hateful when attacked on their racism. They know they need it to live.
With time, “whites” will disappear anyway and “whiteness” with it, because light-skinned people will integrate darker skinned generations as most humans are dark-skinned, they shouldn’t care about what white-minded people think of them.
And non-racist non-white-minded light-skinned people don’t care if their children and grand-children are light or dark-skinned, since they are not racist-minded. Their children will be little humans, period.
There will be pockets of “white resistance”, which will die out.
And there might be pockets of neo-colonial “mulatto” mindsets too, but I leave to others to think about.
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Interesting. While I do think all of the points you outlined have strength individually (although there is always a continuum, and there are always exceptions), I certainly think that classifying a whole group of people as psychopaths is just wrong. What I do think is that racism can teach us so much – because a lot of what you’re talking about actually happens. The psychopathic behavior goes on, and it is perpetrated by people who by and large are not psychopaths, and that is fascinating in itself.
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Only if you believe that “black unity” is code for outward aggression
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I dont think people know the real world about “black” “white” “light” “dark”, if they think America is the worst..the most racist
America has a very violent confrontational racism, the struggle has been a very hard one, the diologue is more hightened and out in the open
But, you all should know Brazil, the kind of stealth racism that is here.
A country with more Afro descendants than any country except Nigeria…
And the division of power and class, is just jaw dropping if you compare it to the USA….where are the phenotype black people in the media, the airports, the congress, the universities…even with quotas now….where are they in the luxury hotels, etc etc? You can find the prisons filled with phenotype black people…the amount of people killed by the police i filled with black people
The truth is, if you really want to be on the front line of where the top elite have a unified psychological mind set about class broken down by color, the discrimination is so deep and imbedded , the colorism on the media rampant, the oportunities are extremly limited..you all come down here to Brazil ( which also happens to be one of the most beatuful and exiting and mixed countries on the planet also, and they are working on their problems)
Just visiting the United States, the blatent numbers of black Americans in all walks of life and of all stratas of economic prosperity and business , is extremlyh noticable compared to Brazil……Im wondering how that stacks up in places like Jamaica, since there are some posters who live there and originaly from there…I dont know there, so Im wondering if they have the “white elite” type of situation
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The thing about America is that, its act of ending slavery was against the backdrop of one of the bloodiest civil wars anywhere
Where we all know now that the government wasnt as interested in ending slavery than in the Union staying together , many white men from the north went to a bloody death thinking they were fighting to end slavery among other things…even if that wanst their main objective.
And the violence from the civil war carried over in many ways, including helping foster the Klan,the south and its Jim Crow laws after the North imposed certain treatments on them . No excuse for that but just one of the things that contributed to the hostility and racism….the North of course has its own brutal kind of racism that plays out in white flight and job competition
I think all the violence brings a lot of wounds all around that contribute to the intensity and violence of the racism there
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Abagond:
The truth will always slap us in the face. Black people can bend over backwards as much as they want, “The System” is not gonna change. Most sane black women and men know this to be true. Trying to understand the insanity of whiteness is futile. There are only 2 options at our disposal…we get swallowed up by it, or, we defeat it at every turn…Bottomline!
Tyrone
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Agreed.
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“I’m tired of talking about white people.”
– – –
Is that you are tired of talking about white people? Or are you tired of the blog owner “talking about white people”?
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I GOT to get my hands on this book some day.
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Linda says,
BR, it’s sounds like what you are discussing about Brazil is what I call “inverse racism” and “Colourism”–this is not the same as the racism that is in the US but it’s just as divisive and hurtful to the poorer, darker lower class that is being negatively impacted.
As for Jamaica, of course we have a “mixed-race, white elite” situation, who do think owns all the big businesses, banks, and hotels…but keep in mind, what we call “white” in Jamaica, would not be viewed as “white” in America but our version of “white” is accepted and viewed as white in Caribbean, Central, and South America.
But I must say, unlike Brazil, even though our brown/white class are the ones running things economically, the darker population are the faces that are seen in the hotels, banks, media, government, etc. –that’s why now a days, people don’t realize we have “white” people in Jamaica.
But it never used to be this way, things changed after the 1980’s—before that, the brown/white faces were the ones you saw on TV, in the banks, airport, etc.
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Here is a example how a small nation took on the mighty Red army and communist party of USSR and the whole state system of USSR with songs and WON. A fine example of how non violent struggle against totally violent opressive ideology and system geared up for violent confrontation can be won by the people.
(http://www.singingrevolution.com/cgi-local/content.cgi)
@linda:
Yes, but who are those big business guys who stole the opportunity of those countries and why? Well thats right: the same guys in IMF and big investment banks, in big international companies who also run the show in USA too and who, at this very moment, try to steal the wealth fo Europe using the debt as a leverage and try to turn the world into plutocracy (evidence provided from a confidental e mail sent by the bosses of investment bank Meryll Lynch to their biggest customers in 2008 where the bank said they were sorry that there still was democracy in the west but they predicted that in the next 10-15 yrs these societies will have changed into plutocracies).
Yes, those same guys in the same elite which benefits from the systematic racism too.
@randy:
All I am saying that if you present the bible as an evidence about history, you make yourself ridicilous. Has there been slaughter and horrible wars etc. in the past? yes, I have said so many times. But likewise the whole concept of races as we know did not exist back then. Read your history and do not try to use the patent answers of racists (tribalism etc.).
Even the royal houses were using term “race” when they talked about their families, their own kin as race. The romans, like I said, talked about non romans as separate races BUT if you got the citizenship you became a roman, so there was no race in their thinkin like you or I understand it. There was even an emperor known as Philip the Arab in 3rd century.
Anyone who has read the history of racism knows for sure that the racism we know born right after the conquests and colonizations by the europeans. There was a need for it since those guys who killed off the native population of the Caribean etc. had to come up with an excuse for that. In late 1400’s and early 1500’s some church men were greatly disturbed what they saw in the new colonies because they saw their fellow country men killing masses of other people. Thus they created an explanation for this behavior, an excuse, and that was the birth of racism.
That was the moment when the real racism was born. “Those guys are not really humanbeigns and therefore it is ok for us to kill them. Actually they are not children of God but devil. They are not humanbeings but animals and so we can use them like we use animals, as work force and commodity” etc. Once that path was chosen, racism got its theorists and developers, racist intellectuals and “scientists” whose only job was to prove the claims the first conquistadores and criminals made almost off hand.
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Linda says,
BR, You have to keep in mind that slavery in USA was different in certain ways than slavery in the Caribbean and South America. From my understanding, Brazil and Jamaica had similar histories regarding white fathers opening/publicly accepting and recognizing their mixed-race children.
Because there were not enough white women in these countries, the white men would have long-term relationships with African or mixed-race women and would acknowledge their mixed children, educate them, and leave them property and an inheritance (and they sometimes inherited the slave plantation).
Depending on phenotype, sometimes these children would be seen and accepted as “white” by society—this is the main reason why countries like Jamaica and Brazil had such a large “brown/white” elite class once Colonialism ended.
Since South America had a big immigration boom of Europeans back in the early 1900’s, this whitened up the “brown/white” elite; whereas, Jamaican “brown/whites” looked to Britain to keep things on the light, white side.
These children were taught to ignore (and despise) their African blood and were raised as “white”, so it shouldn’t surprise you that today, the “white” Brazilians carry the ignorance and racism of their forefathers, who told them they were better because they carried European blood.
Classism is a powerful thing and this is what ails the Caribbean and from what you say, much of South America; where I guess, racism along with the blatant denial and downplaying of African/Native heritage keeps European heritage and ideals on top.
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Why the pale ones got a problem with this? When they ate The Bell Curve up like candy.
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But are they free ? Lying there between Europe and Russia,have you not forgotten when Russia went into Georgia a couple of years ago ,slapped them around a bit then left.
Sorry, but not one of the nations you talked about have truly “won” anything, they are still well controlled, all that has happen was a change from communism .
The communist party members are all capitalist now and rich, they just needed to facilitate a way to change from communism to western style capitalism ,hence the illusion that non violent struggle won the day.
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sam:
Again the tautological conceit.
Perhaps what existed wasn’t European racism in the lab coats and calipers sense, but you still had dehumanization, disenfranchisement, slavery, ethnic cleansing, and genocide between groups.That’s somehow not bad enough?
You somehow have to claim that the extra bit of uniqueness that the European flavor of racism added is what makes it so much worse. That’s a formidable hill to climb.
sam:
Sorry, but that mode of belief had already been in existence for millenia by the time of the conquistadors.
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@ Randy
Please list the race-based genocides committed before 1492 by people who do not fall under Wright’s list of psychopaths (whites and Arabs).
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You can’t beat the white man at his own game of violence. He’s far too natural and practiced at it.
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See Abagond, how exactly does discriminating on the basis of one constructed identity differ from another though? Race is no less imagined than ethnic identity, which has been the basis of many atrocities in the past. I’m really not trying to defend white people here, I’ll be honest, I don’t care for them, but you really are being silly here.
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Dear All,
one thing I know for sure is that the Wicked White Westerners will never ever bother to aknowledge all the evil they have perpetrated on other races; neither shall they bother to inform the general public about the archeological artefacts proving the achievements of ancient black civilizations. That shall be forced upon them; whether through our struggle, or through God’s intervention. But for the heavenly hosts to intervene, we as Black People should first do our best. White folks do hate us, and it shall be so until the end of times. But if we are to establish a paradise(Truth, Justice and Peace) on this earth, rest assured that it won’t be under white dominion. Satan is prince of this world, and the Wicked White Westerners are his generals.
PS: Wicked White Westerners = France, England, Germany, Italy, Netherland, USA, Australia, Spain, Portugal, Belgium.
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Doesn’t work; Psychopath’s don’t feel any morality or human empathy at all.
They wouldn’t need to make up a reason like racism to kill, lie or steal from another group.
If all of white society was psychopathic, it would simply be a matter of “hey guys, see that weaker group over there, lets go take its shit”.
I remember hearing about this test being done on goats by military, may have actually been from this blog, where before hand none of the people doing testing had any known biases against goats but it wasn’t too long that the majority of them started having various bad opinions and disliking Goats.
Then factor in the mention of why The Church created racism, and it would seem to imply that racism exists for societies to do something that they know is wrong.
But with a psychopath “wrong” doesn’t really exist.
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@jared:
Well, that happened in many countries BUT they are no more free than people of USA today. In USA it is litterally few thousand people who controll the vast majority of the wealth, who control the politicians and hence, the illusion of the land of the free in USA, just like in those eastern european countries.
Also western capital investments into those countries created the “New elite” in which some of the old communists got into.
But compared to the life under the old communist system, life is much more free today. Believe me, I know, I live in a country right next to Russia and Estonia and not single estonian wishes return to the old days of communism.
But you are right, estonians won their freedom, as it is, but did not became free totally. They joined NATO and EU and thus gave away some of the independence they just had gained.
But as far as conflicts go, not one, repeat NOT ONE person was killed in Estonian freedom struggle. Think about that. Red army, KGB, USSR, everything they got in means to put the people down, and 250 000 singing people against all that armory, planning, systems etc. And the people won and all those weapons and soldiers and policemen, prison camp guards etc. lost, without 1 single casuality. Now that is real power of the people.
The thing is, they won because they believed in it and knew it and won. You do not believe in it and there fore can never win.
As for Georgian conflict, things were not that simple as they seem.
There is an ethnic enclave of Ossetia in Georgia, which is actually divided by border between Russia and Georgia in two half North Ossetia and South Ossetia. The ossetians had been supporters of communists back in the day. When Georgia became independent, ossetians became the new quislings in nationalistic atmosphere. They appealed to Russia which was more than happy to give them “security assurances”. The same happened in Abkhasia in the western part of Georgia.
See, the georgians were happy to claim a right to leave Soviet Union and be independent BUT they did not want give that right to abkhasians or ossetians, which lead into a civil war. Peace was somehow patched up and russian troops were stationed in Abkhasia. This, naturally, became a sore point to the georgians. Then US started to flex its muscles in the area, which irritated Russia.
USA gave military aid (I think we all know what that means) to Georgia etc. because they planned to draw a new oil pipe from the Caspian oil region via Georgia (the old one goes trough Russian territory) to the Black Sea. Problem was that Armenia and Azerbaidzan were almost at war (they actually had fought a war over a eclave called Karabah). But the plan went ahead anyways.
The new nationalistic president of Georgia then got a brilliant idea how to create a direct confrontation between USA and Russia, to force them into a negotiation table, by invading southern Ossetia. Those troops were america trained and equipped, there was US naval presence in Georgia at the time, roughly 1000 US military personel advising georgians and off they went. The undecalred attack began by artillery barrage into the civilian villages of ossetians, attack on civilians targets (there were nor russian or any other troops in Ossetia at that time) and so on. But unfortunately Putin, former KGB officer, did not flinch. He sent a batallion in from Tshetshenia.
Now these american equipped and trained georgian forces were soundly beaten by a batallion of russian conscripts lead by a drunken general (he was shown on tv pretty much drunk during the mini invasion) and the US forces did not want anything to do with this mini war of the georgian president because USA saw the situation for what it was: an attempt by the president to draw in the US troops in to direct confrontation with the russians. So the georgian special forces were soundly beaten by russian conscripts and a drunken general because their president did not understand that USA looks after their own interests, not of those of some other guys, no matter what has been said.
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@randy:
No it is not. It is called history. This racism which we fight against now was the one born in 1400-1500’s. It spread across the globe via the colonisation. It was taught in those colonies, in colonial powers, it became a truly global ideology, perhaps one of the first truly global ideologies. That is The Racism.
Like I said before, not even Attila the Hunn, not very nice fella, was a racist. Not even Tsingis Khan, who, just like Attila before him absorbed conquered lands and people into his empire. Mongols did not wipe out russians even though they controlled most of it. They just took the money, sort of speaking.
Even the turks during their conquest of Balkans etc. gave freedom of religion etc. to the people they conquered. Of course this varied because the sultan called the shots and if he did not like you, off you went.
Even the romans, like I said, who were undoubtedly the most racist and vicious empire of the known past, called romans anyone who had gained roman citizenship somehow. There fore they were not racists like you. They did not care of your skin color at all. Yes, they were suspicious of the jews and egyptians, but once an egyptian or a jew became a roman citizen, he/she was a roman. Period.
Even the aztecs, with their brutal regime and human sacrifices, absorbed conquered nations into their empires and were happy to collect the dues and taxes from those. They did not try to destroy the conquered, they just wanted to suck the blood out.
Even the Hammer of Scotts, Edward I, who burned villages and fields, did not want to wipe out the scotts and their religion. He just wanted them to bow to him.
Even the vikings were not racists. They robbed you if they could, they tried to loot your town if they could, but they tried to trade with you if those things were not possible. But they did not see others as non humans. They made deals with them. Joined them from Belfast to York.
Even the french did not see the vikings as another race like you might have seen them. They gave them area as a vasallidge, so that danish viking chief Rolf (Rollo) became a vassal of the king of France. The area? Normandy (from north men, normannen).
And on and on this goes on. Horrible, yes. Terrible, yes. Murdering and raping, absolutely. But racists? Really, Randy, you are just offering the same old same old excuses all the racists try to offer in effort to make it appear that racism is natural and old.
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Is it white people in general, Or is it the people at the top of the food chain that happen to be white?
Abagond seems to be hell bent on putting all people of Caucasian ancestry in one box. He tries to prove his point by constantly saying an individual white person tries to hide behind some false individuality.
Blacks in this country have fought for centuries to be looked at as individuals, but when we try to do the same to downplay the most evil of our race it has to be smoke and mirrors. As if we are hiding some evil that we ALL have within us. No matter what white person. Now we should all (according to him) hang our heads low after the Colorado shooting because we are seriously f-ed up in the heads…………MOST of us.
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“Now we should all (according to him) hang our heads low after the Colorado shooting because we are seriously f-ed up in the heads…………MOST of us.”
******
Dave —
Now you’re getting just a *little bit* of a taste of what BLACK PEOPLE have been feeling for centuries!
{{{{{{ INTERNALIZED RACISM }}}}}}
Doesn’t taste good at all, does it???
Now that you tasted it, what are YOU going to do about it???
… for your children’s sake?
And for the sake of ALL CHILDREN???
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@Dave: Most of you are fed up actually because most of you fear to have to face the fact that, just as they enjoyed for centuries the benefits deriving from the murders and thefts of their ancestors, they will also have to face the hard consequences attached to it. You are not suppposed to hang your heads low: you are only supposed to aknowledge the simple truth that the most horrible tragedies in recorded history were carried out by caucasians. To aknowledge doesnt only mean to write about it in history books, but to keep permanently in mind that what we term today western civilization was built on streams of blood and tears. But you and I know that westerners will never give up on their pride unless forced to. Lucifer fooled you. He is still doing. But your fantasy world is about to be broken down. May be then shall you understand the evil of your past and present behaviours.
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Indeed, the Vikings weren’t racist. Suppose, the Vikings raid York. They kill the English men, and abduct the English women. Then they attack Rouan. They kill the French men, and enslave the French women. Finally, they attack El Hoceima. If we are to believe Stormfront and the like, suddenly not only the men, but the women too, would be killed, for being non-human. Yeah, really.
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Sam said”
Co-sign.
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@ Dave
I am not against people who look white. I am against people who think and act white.
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@ Abagond
This is amazing. A study on the ills of white behavior leads to much anxiety and denial but they have no problem talking about our ills and giving reasons why we’re so messed up.
You know what?
Ever since I gave up on white folks and began to distance myself from them totally, I finally see them as the true mentally-weakened race. They know intrinsically that what they’ve acquired is false so it creates a lowered sense of esteem within them. That would explain why they’re never happy no matter how much they have accomplished.
I find it funny how whites will lump us into the same category whether we are AmeriKlans, islanders, Europeans or Africans but they wish to separate themselves by nationality to deflect their collective racist beliefs. Remember the shooting in Oslo by Brevik? AmeriKlans ever so gently removed themselves from the equation by stating that he’s a “Euro-nutcase.” But take credit for inventions by all whites regarding of country of origin.
This is why I truly believe that something inside them is amiss. I’m studying the pineal gland and how it relates to morality and spirituality. Most whites have a calcified pineal gland and I wonder if that is the culprit. As soon as I find out I’ll let you know.
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@ Aba
Sorry to be off topic…One more thing…Another book recommendation for you that you will surely enjoy. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion by Sergei Nilus. I must say at first when I heard of it during the 9/11 attacks, I was so distraught, I never paid much attention…after all NYC was my home.
Then I actually read it.
WOW!
I honestly don’t know what to think…but…one cannot deny that what’s happening in today’s world and what was written in the “meeting” are so coincidental….well…read it and judge for yourself. Sorry to be off topic again.
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lol , well said.
i think that most of us have figured out that something is not quite right in the head with them.
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TruthBeTold writes:
“I find it funny how whites will lump us into the same category whether we are AmeriKlans, islanders, Europeans or Africans but they wish to separate themselves by nationality to deflect their collective racist beliefs.”
– – –
The only thing I disagree with here, as a Black American, is being described as an “AmeriKlan”. LOL It does not compute!
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@truthbetold:
“Another book recommendation for you that you will surely enjoy. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion by Sergei Nilus. I must say at first when I heard of it during the 9/11 attacks, I was so distraught, I never paid much attention…after all NYC was my home.
Then I actually read it.
WOW!
I honestly don’t know what to think…but…one cannot deny that what’s happening in today’s world and what was written in the “meeting” are so coincidental….well…read it and judge for yourself.”
WOW indeed. You serious?? If you are perhaps you should change the name TRUITHbetold into Believeanything or Whitepowerfreak.
If you do not know, find out about the book and what it is all about. Hitler loved it, so did Breivik of Utöya massacre, also neonazis and racists love it all over the world. You still think it is a great book? If you do: Wow indeed.
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@ Sam
I don’t wish to derail so I left you a comment in open thread.
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Abagond:
That’s a fair challenge to make based on my claims. However, I think the term “racism” needs to be defined for this context.
If we’re talking about the circular-reasoning definition that many commenters propose (“racism is a European invention, so therefore all non-European racism isn’t really racism”) then it’s a fruitless exercise.
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Fiamma,
I’m tired of black people talking about white people.
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^^ I am tired of white racism…
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Mein Kamph with new wrapping paper
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“Solesearch illustrated one of the ways to fight white supremacists : ignore them.”
That’s really not what I meant. For the most part black people have fully bought into this idea of integrating our way into white society as our way to success. If that’s the approach we continue to take of course we have to actively fight white racism.
And for that reason, I’m against it. I think it would be more effective to focus on building our own communities, corporations, and schools. Institutions that are meant to benefit us instead of trying to infiltrate institutions that were setup to benefit whites at our expense. How can black people not internalize racism if we spend most of our time trying to prove to white people we are worthy.
Integration means white people are the gatekeepers at every path an African American could hope to take. It keeps the focus on whites and black people powerless. So if that’s the path we choose, of course, we can’t ignore white supremacy. We always have to be worried about the thoughts of white folks.
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SoleSearch, I think that I said what you’re saying. You can’t ignore white supremacy in what you call “integration”, but you can choose to ignore it if you choose another path, like focusing on “your own”. Isn’t that what you’re implying ? Ignoring someone means minding one’s own business and not caring about what that person thinks about what you are doing… I think !
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Nana, isn’t racism white ? Hum, unless “blacks” have any kind of real power, as far as racism goes, it is white. They wanted it, it’s theirs.
And on the comment you were commenting, it is so interesting that white supremacists/racists would actually come to such a blog and comment. Why do they have to waste their precious little time on earth bothering themselves with commenting on a blog which they find tiresome, on a topic that they say they don’t like ?
Typical.
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Randy, you’re a funny guy, you know. See how the theory of races suits you when it suits your idea and allows to avoid responding… You’re all the same, all the same. You will say anything about anything, as long as it suits you.
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TruthBeTold. I have heard and read many African Americans claiming that too: “I find it funny how whites will lump us into the same category whether we are AmeriKlans, islanders, Europeans or Africans” and reclaiming it when faced with someone explaining that it is part of racism/racial thinking.
“but they wish to separate themselves by nationality to deflect their collective racist beliefs”.
The racist beliefs of Europeans and their descendents over the planets are not exactly the same all over the planet… The worst imho is in the US. It is where the ultimate dichotomy took place.
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Co-sign too. “Sam said” “And on and on this goes on. Horrible, yes. Terrible, yes. Murdering and raping, absolutely. But racists? Really, Randy, you are just offering the same old same old excuses all the racists try to offer in effort to make it appear that racism is natural and old.” Co-sign.”
How do you guys QUOTE others’ posts ? (with the big brackets)
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Dave, I ask that question iin my blog. Who are your Caucasian ancestors ? Tell me ? Have you found any in your genealogical tree… or.. they are just mythical ancestors ?
Do you (and I address everyone on this blog) realize that most Europeans (French people for sure) have NO IDEA what this “Caucasian” reference is about ? I am personally a little tiny bit sick and tired or being referred to as a “Caucasian”, so I say it loud and clear: “I am NOT a Caucasian”. If the idiotic, a-scientific-romantic-minded racists of the 18th century were stupid enough to create a category called “Caucasian” to refer to light-skinned people, why the heck are we, today, continuing to use these ridiculous classifications ?
Anyway, rant of day. Salute to your Caucasian ancestry. Great horsemen and warriors by the way. Unfortunetaly for them, these days they are the victims of racism in Russia, not for being “white” !!!!!
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SD, just to be sure. You are talking about white-minded, not light-skinned humans here, right ?
“Wicked White Westerners will never ever bother to aknowledge all the evil they have perpetrated on other races”
Because as a light-skinned human, I do acknowledge what my ancestors have done and try to do my part in reducing the harm done today.
This is why I also call to being really clear, because using racial vocabulary (the vocabulary of the would-be oppressor) is like acknowledging their victory. So I don’t use it, except when I have to, otherwise I content myself with purely descriptive, not-racially loaded terms, which are part of the manipulative arsenal.
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mary burrell, not “the pale ones”, the white ones… Let’s be clear. Racism is about race. All else is description. Not ideology.
“Why the pale ones got a problem with this?”
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Hi B R.
When I said the worst racism was in the US, I meant in the way “race” is viewed in this country. Not in its consequences. In the US, “race” is “black” and “white”. And the rest is side-topics. There is no middle ground, like so many things in the US. That is, imho, probably an effect of racism, as a matter of fact. Nothing is ever middle-ground here.
And you described well what it is like in Brazil, very different from the US, with other consequences. Maybe harder to fight because it’s not so dichotomic. Paradoxically, it seems like human relationships in Brazil are easier, more “natural”, but I may be mistaken. In the US, the pressure to “not mix” is palpable. It is visible and expected, it seems. Very unpleasant feeling when you have been used to relating to people on open-minded not racially-minded bases… Very annoying sometimes. I am living here because I have to, not because I want to. I’ll be glad to return to a saner environment some day.
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Hi Jared. I don’t think that you got what I meant.
I said: “That is why some Afro-descendents call for “black” unity. But by doing so they also feed the racist machine (reference to “blackness”), whichever way you take it, you feed it.”
You said: “Only if you believe that “black unity” is code for outward aggression”
I was referring to the fact that using the term “black” locks the fight inside the frame of “race”, which is exactly what racists hope for. That’s all.
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@ Sam (and everyone else). I couldn’t agree more with most of your first reply. I actually feel really good to be able to read someone who “gets it”. It is not so often…
Except this:
I would say, UNFORTUNATELY, racism is an ideology, BUT I think it is also based on the psychological disorder that consists in thinking oneself superior and therefore allowing oneself anything against darker-skinned people, including “naming” them, defining them (black, red, yellow, etc -the varied categories of colonial plantation racism). Which came first, I don’t know. This, I guess, still has to be studied and researched.
But it is *probably* the reason why racism is so difficult to uproot, together with the vicious use of “color” as a definer of what people are. It just makes things so “obvious”…
I agree TOTALLY with you (see my blog) that there is NO reason why we should continue to accept to speak their language. That will kill racism, the ideology and cut the hand they have over people who are manipulated by the language.
What looks paradoxical in the frame of racism (that the victims of the ideology would claim the words for themselves, especially the darkest people, who have claimed their “black pride”) is just an effect of the manipulation at work in the psychiatric aspect of it. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is characterized with the fact these personalities can lead their victims to believe exactly what will keep them under control…
Hence the reason why we should renounce speaking their language, because they subjugate with words, like gurus or dictators, who are all the same type of psycho-pathological personalities.
Maybe light-skinned people who are aware of that necessity, as we are, should really become much more loud on this, as darker-skinned people will not trust yet another attempt at what they will think is yet another trick.
That’s another fact of racism, and a result of that disorder: you lose people’s trust because racists constantly lie and change the rules of the game according to what will suit them… And the paradox of race pride makes it so that those who could be your allies are deemed enemies.
So those of us who are deemed “insiders” or “traitors” in the racists’ minds must act to brake the system open. We are the most dangerous elements in it because we are like DNA braking through the fake cell’s walls. We are the proof that it is fake. We must start with teaching the youth, our children, about it.
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Cornlia, lets get it straight here about the origins of how “black” became used as a self description that people of color dediced to ust to self identify
Did you live in the USA anytime in the 50’s or 60’s? The terms white racists used were “colored”, “negro”, “nigra” and the word of choice to do more damage the “n” word. “Black” was not the word of choice by white racists.
In the bloody Civil Rights Movement, some of the intellectuals chose to apropriate the word “black” as the term they wanted to self identify as. Later words like “Afro American” were introduced…all these terms came and come as we see here under scrutiny.
Its funny these notions that we are using the words of the opressor, they arnt really….and what is more funny,”dark hue”, “light hue”, “light ones”, can all be used and manipulated by the racists, it wont change anything, just makes us get hung up on quantum semantics..
As far as Brazil versus the USA, ask any black person here whether they want cordial relations or upward mobility ? I dont know the answer each individual would make but that is what is at stake…
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Mamzer HqKodesh, I appreciate your comment above.
I would also add that psychology is an occupation that one learns and we should be careful not to institute ourselves psychologists without the credentials, but just based on a few sentences in a dated book. True, we do find similarities with what we observe and feel, experience or note. But as you said, racism is about englobing a whole group of diverse people into one fixed category with fixed characteristics, and we should be careful not to follow that lead.
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B R, hey, hey hey. Wait a minute now. ‘let’s get it straight here”… Is this how you debate ? You are referring to one instance of the use of a word, I’m referring to another. The use of the word “black” (or “white”) didn’t start in the 60s. It was endorsed in the 60s by Nationalist movements on a racial basis, because it is a racial epithet.
The word “black” is definitely older than the 60s and definitely linked to the theory of races.
I am referring to the Theory of Races because racists still do too.
It does change a thing when the oppressor uses those words. It does.
“He” purposely avoids using racially-connoted words to avoid being accused of racism. Like my former president and his ministers, when they referred to “unequal civilizations” not to be accused of “fomenting racial hatred” as the law in France punishes the use of racial references.
I am actually very interested in the term African-American, because it reaches a level of neutrality, racially speaking, that is the proof that many in the African diaspora had thought about the psychological process of using “black”. It put every body on the same level, by referring to geographical origin rather than “race”. It is similar to Asian-American and other terms that also use nationality as a prefix, like Italian-American. That is why I refer to “whites” as European-American, because they are not more American than anyone else.
Some people actually understand that you can’t fight racists if you stay inside their frame of reference.
They will always try to run after you in your own frame, but their references will always pop up at one time or another. They can’t help it.
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Cornlia “getting it straight” about how the word “black” was used in the 50’s and 60’s is exactly what I meant, since that has been kind of sluffed off (you did slightly ackowledge it but downplay that the racists didnt really use “black” as their derogatory word of choice” in this acuasation of what “black” is suposed to mean…
The vast majority of racists didnt really use “black” on any regular basis…where, way over the majority of people of color, who use “black” on this blog, are using it in a positive self identity way..
In the 50’s, one of the few things I remember , reffering to “the blacks” was the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroghs…it just wasnt that common…it wasnt on the signs in the Jim Crow laws
I find so much mis- information being passed about stuff like this and like America is the only country who breaks down races when Brazil just passed its national quota laws and “black” in Portuguese is used frequently in varios negative and positve connotations
I know your heart is in the right place but I find your information isnt always correct
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I think my information is correct, simply it is not always the same as yours (which is normal, since we were brought up and lived in environments where “race” was handled differently). That doesn’t make it incorrect, does it ?
What about “Le Code Noir” under Louis XIV in France ? Isn’t the word “black” (noir) at the center of it ? It is THE word they used in the title and inside the Code, to definitely and infinitely define Africans as objects of the law, as pieces of furniture, as goods, as slaves for life and for generations. They didn’t choose “brown”, they chose “black”. They knew why. Saying that “black is good”, or “black is beautiful” isn’t going to change the fact that “black” was chosen for the very reason that it had a negative content. Same for “white”.
Rejecting those definitions/labels (white, black) means saying that you don’t agree with the classifications imposed on us and more, you ignore them as irrelevant. What is a racist going to do in the face of that ? Get angry. Say you’re stupid. Let him talk. I let them talk. They don’t have any argument against this because it is a fact.
I am reading a book by a French anthropologist on exactly that topic. “Le Maléfice de La Couleur” by Jean-Luc Bonniol. (I already mentioned it). I can tell you “black”/ “noir” were indeed very much used to define Africans in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They were really at the center of it.
I’m not trying to be nice to anyone here, and I say that racial references are racial references. Whether people want it or not, that is what they were coined for.
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Your misinformation , or maybe a better word is misconception would be asuming racist America in the 50’s and 60’s would be using black as their main racist way to describe people of color, that would be a misconeption…and. the truth is, it was thinkers like Malcom X who put out the notion that people of color should use “black” instead of “negro ” or “colored”…
was black used as a racist word before? yes, but, those trends changed so by the time Malcolm X came around , he could see that there was a need for a new way for people of color to describe themselves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro
What I object to is the superimposition that it is just plain wrong to use black because of the opressor and only American or America is the worst as far as racism goes, America isnt as bad as Brazil as far as oportunity for black people (and you know, any discusion we have here about where America stands in the world as far as racism shouldnt go on with out mentioning Brazil, because it has an even larger black population than America, so , comparison should be automatic if you want a true discusion on racism in the world) …I get your logic and the others who have pushed this, but, it is just quantum semantics , and any new terms will be just used by the racists…so, I just dont agree about this point, and, actualy hangs up discusions like the “AFrica 13,000 years”, we couldnt even get to a decent discusion because people got hung up on that it is only an American concept to self identify as black, which was proven wrong..
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Good point about “African -insert word” ..for me , I think its a great way to describe, but, you got people who object to that also
In Brazil, its the white nationalists who object to it, saying “we are all just Brazilian…”, which only muddies over the real Afro Brazilian culture and the fact there is prejudice against black Brazilians and that slavery and its problems affects their society right down into today..
Never mind that it is a great way to describe cultures like “Afro Cuban”, “African American”, “Afro Brazilian”, and , the artists who really know definitly break down their culture in Brazil as “Afro Brazilian”…
But, for some reason, it gets held up to scrutiny also
Look, I understand where you are coming from, I just dont agree that using the term “black” in a positive context is wrong or gives power to the opressor…as I have always said, its intent that is what is important
Like “gringo”…I can be called that in a good natured way or as a foreigner, but, screamed ouf of a passing car along with “get out of my land…” is a negative context and intent
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Abagond, please let us know if we are off topic here, I somewhat feel discussing this relates to how we can disuss this thread subject at all, at least we have to agree on semantics to go ahead at all …but, I get another feeling its off topic….and I dont want to participate in derailing
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….by the way, race is the word that should be in question…you can tack it after any word to use it in racism :
“black race”
“negro race”
“colored race”
“dark hued race”
“white race”
“lighter race”
“black” in itself doesnt conotate race
I use black in the manner Malcolm X pointed out why he uses it…if it worked for him, that sais a lot
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@ B.R.
I will allow it for now – it is not often that I get a French and Brazilian angle on these things.
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I understand what you are saying, B.R. but I don’t agree. I will need much more proof that these simple words are not at the basis of the subjugation at work in racism/white supremacy before I am convinced that using *their* words is not the core of the problem… 😉
Just a remark, your list includes the word “race”. But if you remove “race” for some of the expressions, the racial content disappears, not with ‘black”, “white”, they *contain* the racial reference in them. That is what I mean when I say we should think of refraining from using them to eject ourselves from the racist frame of reference.
“colored” in itself means “which has more color”, but is very tainted racially (if I may say), in particular because of South Africa’s apartheid, and other places where colonial rule and prejudice were strong.
“dark hued” and “lighter” are descriptive epithets when taken without “race”… They lose their racial impact when used independently.
I actually hope I can do research on that, as the “founding words” of the theory of races are also the words that were used to describe basic colors in European Middle Ages as opposed to the new and scientifically based chromatic range. “red”, black”, “yellow” and “white” all had specific and profound meanings at the end of the Middles Ages and it is probably no surprise that they ended up defining (and not “describing”) people. I hope I can do that research work.
I also wrote this in diaryofanegress’s blog, which can explain where I’m coming from as far as “racial thought”: let me paste it here.
When I first came to the US (actually I hadn’t come yet, it was by mail), I realized when filling out my registration papers to be an exchanged student in SC that there was a box called “race”. I looked it up in the dictionary because I couldn’t *believe* that at the end of the 20th century, someone, let alone an administration, would actually ask someone for his or her race.
That is how I discovered that the US is still deep into “race thinking”. In France it is forbidden.
I had never defined myself as white, nobody around me did, so I used my knowledge of history (I was 18 then, I didn’t know as much as I do now) and used a pencil (not a pen because I was still not sure that it was what I was supposed to write) to write ‘white” and put a question mark next to it. Since then I have never complied with the “race” question.
Every other French person and most Europeans can not believe it (because it belong to the realm of beliefs) that “race” is actually still so very much part of institutions in the US. Witness the way Hispanics are asked to enter racist America by separating into “Black” Hispanics and “White” Hispanics in census forms and other forms.
I think it is totally relevant with the topic, as it shows that there can be different levels and layers of racist contamination of the mind… and that reaching the level of psychopathy is not “available” everywhere, hopefully.
The fact that American society is so violent (and Brazilian too, and French in other proportion, much more subtle -psychological violence in job search and in the work place or at school for instance) is not by accident. When you allow a destructive ideology to submit most of your citizens to its effects, you get the consequences.
Peace and thank you for the exchange. Abagond, thanks for letting it grow !
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Yes, Cornlia, thanks for the dialougue..
I apreciete it , Abagond, I wont abuse the allowance here
I can relate having to fill out a birth certificate for my son for the States, and, he is mixed American and Brazilian…they actualy had “black hispanic” and “other” on the catagory…I should have said “other”, his mom is Afro Brazilian so I checked, with great hesitancy “black hispanic”, which I regret now
I will agree with you and others here about the catagories on these documents…they just dont work
The violence in Brazil gets played out in class…there arnt lynchings, but, police kill many people who are dark skinned and the jails are filled with dark skinned people and the conditions are un-real
Because of the stealth racism, there is a sub world, a sub economy, of how people survive and it plays out very violently in drug gangs, that are mostly dark skinned people….the violence is more but doesnt play out as the ku klux klan violence…but murder rates in a state like Para, over land rights and elite wealthy, mostly light skinned people against dark skinned people , are very high
Brazil is actualy more violent than the USA, but, it doesnt play out in Klan violence, there are no Jim Crow color lines, but there is an invisible one for elite society, dark skinned people are really in the serious minority in elite society
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My theory on racism is this:
1. White racism is a manifestation of white supremacy complex–the belief among whites that they are NATURALLY superior to non-whites. This leads whites to think that they have CONTROL over the destinies of non-whites (see Ann Coulter using the verbal distinctions, “our blacks” v. “their blacks”)–the assumption is they (whites) control blacks.
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The thing about the “black ” issue is, it seems like the objection by a lot of people that speak against it is, “its from America”, and that is what is wrong with it…
It doesnt seem to matter that the concepts that people like Malcolm X came to, like using “black”, were forged against an unbeleivably violent struggle against a viscious racism that was relentless in its never ending discrimination and force…that is why these concepts are powerful, they wernt drummed up in a dorm room or college debating seminar, they were forged in blood and struggle…
And it worked for black people in America…certainly better than for black people in Brazil who dont use those concepts…these concepts and expresions made it easiar to communicate directly what the problems were…maybe the white man made up racism and aplied those terms, but, black Americans took those terms and threw them back in the white man’s face to straighten him out…even the white racists , in America, know they better be careful about using racial epiphets with those minorities nearby or they risk getting cold cocked
And that people of color all over the world picked up on the concepts of this struggle and found it valuable to use the concepts and expresions also. Of course there are a lot of people of color who dont want to pick up on those concepts and expresions…and no one should demand that they do
but there actualy seem to be some people that are just uptight because it came out of America
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Yes, those concepts , like using “black” to self identify, were forged by people like Malcolm X to go exactly against the white man’s psychopathic racial personality….( I knew I could tie this in with the thread)
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Abagond: “Please list the race-based genocides committed before 1492 by people who do not fall under Wright’s list of psychopaths (whites and Arabs).”
You can’t make such a list if you don’t even have a written history to work with.
In any case,race-based genocide was not always done out of mental derangement,it was also done out of common hate and anger at proven enemies,or out of obedience to God,as when the Hebrews killed off pagan races that practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism.
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If the “white race” were truly psychopathic, then it wouldn’t stop at subtle racism and would only end at outright extermination. There really wasn’t anything preventing this for most of US history, yet it didn’t happen. Why is that? Could it be that the truth is something other than the nonsense presented here?
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@ Joshua
White people have “outright exterminated” many peoples since they got the
techonology to do so. The thing is, the white race have 3 modes of operation
with the people they have met historically:
1 – Deceive
2 – Enslave/Exploit
3- (If #1 and #2 both fail, Exterminate)
This is what they’ve done historically, and if you look at current events,
it’s what they do now. The so-called Third World has all the material
wealth, but are at the mercy of White Supremacy for those resources.
Check out how Hawaii was stolen, and is not actually a state, for such
and example…
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/HAWAII/hawaii.php
There are more native Hawaiians living in California, than on the homeland,
due to white usurpers. The same happened to The Gullah people of
the Carolina Sea Islands. It’s the same program, everywhere the white
man has been. He knows to watch his step now, by using subtlety, because
his population is still only a tiny fraction of the World Population. There isn’t
a people on the planet who hasn’t been negatively affected by White
Supremacy Doctrine. The last thing he wants, is for the Non-White
Nations of the world to sit down and compare notes. That would be
his a$$, and he knows it.
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Joshua,
maybe it’s not psychopathy, but narcissistic personality disorder (as I said earlier, the description of symptoms given by Wright could apply to that to), in which the mentally ill always tries to present a good image of him/herself (and very often succeeds). And rarely acts openly. Always provokes his victim(s) in a way that the victims is accused of being the one who is aggressive and unstable.
Now that’s sounds more like what racists do…
Neo-nazis, KKK members and others are the next step, and reach psychopathic levels.
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Hi Spokesman,
what happened to the Gullah people ? I saw a doc about them back around 1990, didn’t know they had been removed from their islands. Is that what happened ?
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@ Cornlia
They are being removed, but it’s being done using legality and not
direct violence. For decades, the people avoided selling their lands
to white people. Once a few people did, White people come in and
through property tax increases, slowly gentrify the area. That is
what is happening to the Gullah right now. They used similar
tactics in Hawaii, as well.
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Spokesman, this is totally disgusting. Are there groups acting in favor of the Gullah people that I could write to to support their efforts ? And others who I could write to to express my astonishment. Thank you.
I remember how that doc was so moving, when it showed how they had kept so much of their African culture, and showed a whole group of them traveling to Sierra Leone where they basically met with their cousins. They spoke a type of creole that was almost the same on both sides of the Atlantic. They undestood each other.
i imagine that apart from the gentrification aspect, there is an underlying “you are not going to keep your savage traditions” aspect and “this place is too nice for you”.
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Hello abagond, great post! Oh yeah…have you by chance ever heard of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome? or Dr. Joy Degruy? (you probabaly have! 🙂 )
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WallFlower,
I have, and it is a very good read.
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Honestly I do think White people are psychopaths. Most of the mass murderers and serial killers I have heard of were White people. Whites lack empathy, emotion and heart to feel sorry for their actions. That is why they are the world’s biggest criminals.
It is sad that I have to live among them. I get scared when I see a White man in the dark.
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@ Ziani Lawless: Comment deleted for using Mock Ebonics.
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…..Jesus christ. I thought your stuff about the arab-muslim slave trade was bad. You not only take this neurotic garbage seriously, but you even have “truthbetold” posting, who’s claimed to have received visions from god about George Zimmerman’s dad. It’s always illuminating how when delve into far left black political thought, you’re never too far off from nationalist/afrocentrist ramblings that border on schizoid, and at times are, like “The Isis Papers”, which I imagine you think has some kind of merit.
You’re nuts.
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“Most of the mass murderers and serial killers I have heard of were White people.”
That’s because most of the ones that gain attention are white, nothing more. Please google “black serial killers” and learn something, unless you want to find a way to blame white people for their actions.
No one’s stopping you from living among black people. Maybe you can move to Detroit or East St. Louis to get away from those evil psychopathic white people and live among more noble, docile Afrikans. Then you might notice these places are violent, crime ridden hellholes despite being almost all black, but I’m sure you’ll find a way to be more fearful of white people or blame them despite the whole thing with black on black crime being vastly more common than white on black crime, especially since schizoid traits are more common among blacks.
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@ weqweaddas: Comment deleted for using a racial slur.
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I will not paint all white people with the same dirty paint brush and say they are psychopaths, but there is no denying that George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn exhibit these traits. These murderers have shown no remorse whatsoever for their actions.
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@ weqweaddas
Like what King just said on another thread about Baltimore, I can say from my own experience of metropolitan New York: some Black neighbourhoods are extremely violent, while others are quiet and safe.
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Its not just that George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn exhibit these traits ,its the general “white” population who support them – the white police officers that refuse to arrest Zimmerman,the selection and allowing of a all white female jury,etc,etc
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I thing not mentioned but implied by this article is that the lack of epidermal skin pigmentation and a specific geographic region lead to pathologies within our species.
If the early sapiens had not migrated out of africa and settled in certain northern regions then the adaption to those environments which resulted in partial albinism “whiteness” would not have occurred.
This appears to me to make such a pathology (if it is pathology) inevitable.
I say if it is pathology because when I look at biological life (as apposed to just our species) aggression and predation seem a integral and essential part of life.
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Very interesting…and sadly, the idea that being black entails inadequacy etc was not limited to Blacks. Other races were often described in terms of inadequacy and pathology…and women too (hysteria…Freud who was so convinced that we envy men their genitals, which I guess shows the same slant towards judgemental sexuality as in the hypersexualisatin also mentioned above.)
@ Mary Burrell: agreed, not all whites are the same. But there seems to be a constant in society: the people with strong, negative opinions which are likely to hurt others seem to have a knack for acquiring and using influence. It is probably because they are psychopaths, and therefore able to advance their own cause with more focus and drive, because they never question themselves.
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abagond “some Black neighbourhoods are extremely violent, while others are quiet and safe.
“
What we really need to do is find a way to integrate blacks from these extremely violent neighborhoods with the ones from black neighborhoods that are quiet and safe. So things can be equal. Don’t you think?
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@Da Jokah
You are so right…the key is education (and not just white education, education about who they are, pride in having survived genocidal slavery) and employment. Easy to say, very difficult to implement. I think there are a lot of vested interests against achieving this: first, to some extent the white like this. Blacks kill each other, it “removes the problem”. Then, there are commercial interests: crime cartels, loan sharks, whoever gets rich on the back of the ghetto. The people behind these vested interests do not care that it makes the whole nation weaker and less happy, and that these individual lives are beyond sad. They can even pretend to care by deploring the state of things, and then blaming it on these hapless ghetto inhabitants, most of them being non-white, and therefore making generalisations about non-white easy.
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annef1
The kind of “education” you’re talking about is merely nursing a sense of grievance which, in my opinion, is partly responsible for the crime in the first place. It creates a false belief that the deck is stacked and therefore, criminality is justified. Exaggerating discrimination has played a major role in promoting crime.
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@ annef1
I like your statement, but I also think that it must be more than only education. Educate a corrupt student and you only succeed in creating a clever devil. Look at all those people on Wall Street who were robbing people blind, without any compunction at all about it. The educated thieves from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, are 100 tomes more dangerous that the uneducated ones who rob liquor stores in the hood. And they cost the taxpayer 1000 times more money too.
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And “education” hasn’t gotten in the way of Putin and his thugs.
I deplore violence, don’t you?
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@ King: I like that statement educate a corrupt student,succeed in creating a clever devil. Food for thought.
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@ mary burrell
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@Da Jokah & Mary Burrell.
Yes, education just gives ammo to the wrong people, but there is no alternative. That’s why it is so important to educate: if everybody gets it, we can unite against the clever devils. At the moment, the clever devils feel special, especially as inequality is growing, so a larger proportion of the people getting an education come from privileged backgrounds and education juss t re-inforces their impression that they are entitled etc etc…So we need more ducated people who can stand up to them because they know and understand what these devils are up to, and we need to include compassion and moral fiber into education.
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@King: Maddoff: Is a clever devil indeed, who made off with all that money.
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OOOps sorry for the typos, but it is really late in my neck of the woods.
@Da Jokah, I do not think that the type of education I envisage is based on grievance etc, and I think that by remarking that, in fact, some people have vested interests in keeping the ghetto as it, I was merely exposing how hard it is to change things and educate.
Some of my students, for instance never want to discuss an issue. Whenever possible, they will apply this method: “A real man will settle things in a fair man to man fight”…without noticing that they are merely damaging each other, and not addressing the real issue, which could boil down to a common enemy they could fight together. They are also entangled in fake notions of “real manhood”, which causes them to spend so much time posturing or fighting, that they have no time left to move their own cause forward.
And then, there is the pack mentality: they never question whatever the group does, without noticing that some group members are very good at making the group do what they want. I am the first to advocate unity and team efforts but without delegating the thinking to others!!! So by education I mean, interests (even hobbies) that will enable them to develop, skills that will get them jobs, and compassion/empathy etc etc
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Abagond, why did you shorten or edit this? It was longer….What is going on?
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@talknflim
I did not knowingly shorten it. It is possible that part of it got deleted by accident. I just reread it. It all seems to still be there. What is missing?
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