We have history…
How to ‘Fix a Broken Culture’ — Part 4 of 30
There is this problem of stigmas … but where did they come from?
In most every culture we use history to define and categorize what it means to be a part of a race. We trace sociological patterns and norms as far back as we can, and say ‘okay, this is what this group of people is, this is what the do, this is what they like.’… Its like market research…. but for discrimination instead of advertising.
So when trying to find the source of the stigmas, and whether they are worth one’s attention, you have to trace their origin story.
Why are all of these stigmas so very ingrained into the fabric of Black American culture in particular?
The short answer: Slavery.
The long answer: Generational, pervasive oppression and institutional racism.
No longer ‘essay’ is really needed on this topic either.
Nevertheless,
The current trends in crime, low education, low income, slang, and even music can all be dated back to the all-pervasiveness of American ‘New Age’ slavery.
Never before has slavery been so very… well… racist.
Ancient slavery was done on the basis of economic status, class, war reparations and prisoners, religion, and so and so forth… but yet never truly on the basis of skin color alone.
That came from an ingenious solution to a growing problem.
Though slavery was widely used, by nearly all peoples back in the 1600s (where there were actually more European slaves in Africa then African slaves in Americas), a couple dozen African slaves were introduced to Jamestown and probably other colonies, by the Portuguese. Indentured servitude was far more popular back then in the burgeoning North America; where British folk gave away 7 or so years of their life for a ride to the New World. In fact, indentured servants lived in the same squalid conditions as African slaves. But unlike the Africans, the Europeans could appeal to the government, by law, if they were not later given their freedoms back. It must also be noted that Native American slavery was quite common around this time too.
Nevertheless, indentured servants and slaves worked together, talked together, and even ran away together.
But that all changed after Bacon’s Rebellion.
After the Portuguese brought the first 20 or so documented African slaves to Jamestown, a seed was planted. Indentured servitude was the defacto method of ‘enslavement’ at this time. Meaning not only did new settlers who traded their freedoms for a short time have the ‘right’ to become free, but blacks did too.
Slowly but surely however, it was seen that these newly imported Africans had no government to speak for their servitude, thus they did not actually have the right to demand their freedom.
This realization led to another realization that Africans could thus be made more like commodities. Thus they were more valuable then the indentured servants, whose labour services had to be ‘renewed’ every few years. It was the case of owning your own labor force vs renting someone elses who could pull out of the next deal without warning. So of course this new type of slavery was introduced. Over the years, more rights were stripped from blacks. Nobody cared to chase after indentured servants, but slaves were worth good money (like a car investment today) and so anyone caught helping them escape would be in big trouble, and any slave caught… would become a slave for life.
Forward-thinking entrepreneurs noticed that slaves who mixed in with indentured servants and free blacks got funny ideas. So they were then kept separate.
Then came Bacon’s Rebellion, during which a collective of blacks and whites fought.
After this, more people began to realize the danger of letting their expensive African labor force associate with whites. So laws were made. Blacks were stripped of less and less of their humanity, until Virginia enacted the first law that stated ALL slaves brought from Africa would automatically become slaves for life.
This idea was already 80 years in the making by now, and thus is history.
Even in the rest of the Americas, slavery was not so strongly racist. In South America and the Caribbeans there were far more male slaves than women, there was a lower birthrate, and a higher death rate, thus Africans were brought over (out of necessity) far more often than in the southern states of what was to be the US. Partially due to the Portuguese and Spanish lacking women of their own race, and their familiarity with slavery, they often mated with African women and thus adopted a more ‘robust’ form of racial demographics. There were blacks, mestizos, quadroons, octoroons, etc.. these gradations led a great deal to the overall mixing of races.
Unlike the American south where race was quite literally black and white. You were one of them, or one of us. Inevitably, this lack of diversity would make it extremely hard to overcome the religiosity of racism.
Because of this history, the idea of their being an entire peoples meant to be slaves with a born ‘Slavery Mindset’ took hold like the slow-acting, tenacious cancer it was.
So pretty much all the stigmas we ‘enjoy’ today can be traced back to this New Age slavery.
The ‘New World’ found an innovative way to make slavery a scalable and far more persistent venture.
Blacks in america where historically restricted from any sort of education, or social mobility, or economic foundation, or art… This restriction went on long after Slavery was abolished on into the early 20th century. Even still as laws were made to end discrimination and segregation, these de facto principles were already heavily entrenched into the psyche of American peoples.
There was even a time when blacks got together to create a ‘black Wall Street’ and ‘black Beverly Hills’ but was inexplicably raided and the system systematically restructured for this to never happen again.
In light of these far reaching and heavy handed tactics of racial discrimination, I am sure one would conclude that these stigmas are not based in truth… but were engineered and designed specifically to perpetuate this nigh religious level of racism.
So, no, these stigmas don't hold water. They should not be used as a means of justifying one's victimization or ones (racist) arguments about the failures of the black community.
TLDR: Laying blame is not the game. Put away your assumptions and stigmas and solve the problem.
I honestly do not like this particular piece… it will probably changed later and should be rolled into my much more extensive draft essay on the history of slavery and racism throughout the ages.
This seems to incidentally cast blame, but that was not the intent. Rest assured, the ensuing pieces will put together the jigsaw that is our Solution.