Yes, but that was the point. I teach so people present to me, often, misinformed opinions and ideas, particularly about themselves, race, people down the block, the intentionality of people.
The intention of the design of race was that you and I believe in and perpetuate the idea of racialization of people so that it could be used to affect and effect economic concerns. It’s not personal but it personally affects and effects people who are colored and is designed favor those not as colored by melanin.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
Current statistics—-Black people in America, 93% of them believe in Blackness—-that they are Black.
Blackness was an original segregating design from White people. To essentially union bust when folk were indentured servants. All God’s chillun were indentured servants in the late 1400 to 1500s and had done their damndest to get here, to America under contracts, to the land owning gentry—-to work farms. But then them indentured servants, all ethnicities, from all over the world, started to see the imbalance in their station—-usually a 10 year contract and the land ownership. So the gentry, in control of setting laws, created a legal system that allowed several things:
- You could kill people, who were not White in complexion, and not be charged with murder…because…
- People who were not White in complexion and ethnic origin, were considered non-White or Black, or a degree of Black.
- People designated Black had no rights—-to own property, to hold sizeable money, to harm or steal from those designated “White”. Their rights were stripped by first equating them to not being human and then because they wer eobviously homo sapiens, designating that they were 3/5s of human. Which seems ludicrous but you have to allow for the limited education of the populace. While there may have been initially thousands and then millions of people, to the 1900s only 25% were educated to what we would consider Middle School/reading level—-which worldwide is why religion took such hold. Priests or here, social architects—-politicians were educated and therefore “translated” for the common populace.
- Only White people could own land and companies, and as non-White people were not considered people by the law, but closer to animals, people of color could not own property but could be owned as property.
What the above did was do two important things—-it immediately segregated indentured folk—-who were essentially starting what we would call a union AND it advanced the White wealth building/land ownership, a pathway out of being an indentured servant, for White people. You had a future of land ownership, if you were White, and didn’t have to worry about the competition of anyone who wasn’t.
And # 5—-it then by default, legalized and sanctioned the Transatlantic Slave Trade as a capitalistic business practice to obtain people and bring them, as salable property, to Europe, the Caribbean, and North and South America.
And it worked. That’s what most people forget—-it WORKED. Well, it didn’t work out, not for everyone…but the people it didn’t work for, weren’t even legally people…so it worked for those who the law designated as people—-and by counting a colored person as 3/5s of a person then the gentry… eventually metastasizing into the rich and including politicians, could have sway over the congregate US Government by citizenry count.
That meant from the 1400s to the 1500s until the first direct slaves arrived in the early 1600s, the system of Blackness was being designed. (Which is where we get that throwaway calculation of 400 years of slavery from. It took time to set up the entirety of the system, even in a new, smaller populated America.)
But what this did through those years, through the civil War and through Jim Crow-segregation and then into the shift of the Civil Rights Amendments——was it inculcated the concept of Blackness…to Black people.
I illustrate it to my students very, very graphically.
By law, Bible (a form of ersatz education AND deified moral superiority), and gun, White people—-their designed System, designated people of color as Black (when they were being kind instead of colored or nigger)—-when they were trying to have polite legal and social language. You can compare this to one majority group, designating a minority group as the “Cunt People”. For hundreds of years in social circles, in newspapers, books, the court system on and on and on and on—-The Cunt People. And then in the 1960s/1970s, achieving legal changes—-those people of color said we refute this system of marginalization: “And hereby designate ourselves—-The Cunt People! We’re cunt and we’re proud!”
There has been much debate and shifting from nigger to Negro to Colored to Afro American to African American to even Africanist—-but through those shifts has existed a blanket descriptor Black—-even adopted by the people it was first stamped upon.
The issue with that is it is very hard to use as your team name a designation that was your slur name. In many ways, Black (ened) people identify with a slurring of their identity. There is no Black country, nor Black cities, no Black language—-there are adoptions and approximations and even casual lingua but not official state sanctioned as Black. There are places and bits and pieces and cultural points that we recognize with the labelling of Black but it is a holdover designation, a flattening. Ironically, just as White is (as “White” flattens and denies Irish, Italian, Polish, etc.—-the one exception being Jewish—-but those are ethnicities and cultures, Jewish being a culture and a religion. Yes, all these designation—-higher or lower, sub or not, confusing, because the social constructing of race, confused ethnicity and culture—-muted them in many ways, for the designations.)
So 93% in 2022 accept the designation of Black and the hodge podge that is. And that hodge podging colors perception because it colors reception—-receptivity of the person themselves. They are similar/fit the designations attributes so the person, without ability to refute, is so designated. And more directly because they are so designated before correction or negotiation, in order to live, survive, thrive, move through the world with its’ lawful applications with boxes to be checked off that are linked to employment, money, political power—-one must re-enforce-accept said designation.
One becomes Blackened because the society around one blackens you and therefore, at least 93% of Black folk, clutch to Black for that reason and the cultural history.
Blackness & Boxes
I was having a discussion with a coworker and we were talking about another conversation I had with a group/class about their push for the ancient Egyptians, I’m talking about pharaohs—-to their being “Black”.
It’s a big thing online—-the attachment, attribution of now to then——40000 to 6000 years ago. The pictures of Egyptians are lightened or darkened and their knowledge of science and math and engineering and architecture is bandied about and connected, across those thousands of years to the Blacks of today, in the 21st century.
My refuting point, was not the accomplishment and history of the Egyptians, but that several contextualizations did not fit and therefore were ultimately undermining to the intent of the attempted connection.
- Most of the slaves transported form the Transatlantic Slave Trade did not come from Egypt.
You can clearly see that the people who were enslaved came from Western Africa. And more importantly during the centuries of the Transatlantic Slave Trade—-Egypt was going through its own deep drama—-first with plagues then several famines—-decimating more than half of the population and then struggles with occupation and control by the Ottoman Empire—-which is why there is a shuffle/drama to the control-idea of whether Egypt is an African country or Middle Eastern one. During the TAST—-Egypt was engaged in struggles with non-European powers though it did trade with European powers. And essentially from an enslaver point of view, one doesn’t go and capture, to sell humans, who are carriers of very obvious disease/death and embroiled in a conflict with another/several world powers-empires.
We, American descendants of Africans—-yes, but not Egyptians.
Deeper, to identify with the past Egyptians, all the way back to the pharaohs is dangerous to legal and social liberation in the 21st century.
The pyramids were built, not by unions, nor well paid and cared for employees—-but by slaves, enslaved people. They were used as labor to create pyramids (the equivalency of modern day skyscrapers) for that times uber-rich folk. For a few of them to occupy, be buried in and keep their wealth in.
The pharaohs were some of the first, deeply organized enslavers.
This in no way takes away from their architectural skill, engineering skill, organizational skill or wealth. But if we attach Blackness to them it’s deeply problematic.
Blackness is a construct of not science, as race is not a matter of science—-it is a social construct—-them gentry laying it down to divide and conquer the indentured servitude and create a controllable economic source in specific people. But this was done thousands of years after the reign of the pharaohs. To connect, deeply, deeply misinformed in thought then to modern day, present Blacks, is to perhaps open—-in this insane connection—-that Blacks are the original enslavers—-because the Egyptians were your ancestors, right? “So it’s only fair play/karma and even Biblical retribution, that you people, their descendants, ended up slaves too—-after what you did to each other.”
We want nothing of that conflated rhetoric.
Now, we have separate, substantial cases of two separate peoples, thousands of years apart, experiencing one of the most common human experiences—-slavery/enslavement. But we, descendants of slaves are from Angolan, Biafran, Benin, etc. origin………and there’s nothing wrong with that. These places have rich, deep histories and offerings to the world stage.
But the flattening of people in the Americas to Black, by racialization, has taught Black people to flatten not just Whites but other peoples—-so African, Africans are flattened to AFRICA as one big country—-and Egypt as the chosen one, the brightest one——liked claiming in a thousand years we’re all descended from Beyoncé—-to get celebrated credit——- to have originated from.
Why the Black folks doing this, Kyle?
What racialization has done for Black people in America is given us an identity when all of our identity was stripped away.
- It is problematic to be American because America substantiated, profited and encouraged racialized discrimination.
- Human was originally written out so that has been a 400 year struggle to change the legal definition of within the American legal system.
- Science has just arrived at the capability to detail the origin of Black people in America to African countries on the West Coast of Africa genetically. But of approximate 50 million people only a fraction have done genetic background work mainly from disinterest and cost.
- 93% default to the concept of Blackness. Which I would allude to as a form of brainwashing-propaganda-PTSD with a healthy dose of Stockholm Syndrome. We have embraced the Patty Hearst of Blackness to survive. If someone holding a gun on you, figuratively and literally says you’re duck—-quack. But if for 12 to 15 generations guns have been held on your family, every single day, in every single way—-you probably quack out of habit. We co-conspire out of first necessity and now habit to assume the nominations by the dominant culture.
To answer the question of whether or not we, as a mass group, see reality through the perception of race, specifically, racialization—-yeah, but about 7% of us don’t.
#KylePhoenix
#ThekylePhoenixShow
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