Extract from “Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery” by Na’im Akbar Slavery was ‘legally’ ended in excess of 100 years ago, but over 300 years experienced in its brutality and unnaturalness constituted a severe psychological and social shock in the minds of African-Americans. This shock was so destructive to natural life processes that the current generation of African-Americans, although we are five to six generations removed from the actual experience of slavery, still carry the scars of this experience in both our social and mental lives. Psychologists are sociologists have failed to attend to the persistence of problems in our mental and social lives which clearly have roots in slavery. Only the historian has given proper attention to the shattering realities of slavery, and he has dealt with it only as descriptive of past events. Clark (1972) observes that most social scientist would object to a discussion of slavery a ‘cause’ of contemporary behaviour because it happened ‘too long ago.’ Clark identifies the origin of this objection in the nineteenth century conceptions of science articulated by the British philosopher Locke and Hume and practiced by the scientific giant, Isaac Newton. Clark(1972) observes: In the Newtonian scheme of things, ‘a body at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by some external force.’ The behaviour (movement) of things was thought to be the consequence of some antecedent and external event. …Newtonian conceptions of absolute time and space have so conditioned many of us that it is impossible for us to conceive of events that have occurred “ long in the past” (e.g. slavery) as having as much effect in determining present behaviour as those events of relatively ‘recent’ occurrence. Clark, in this monumental piece, argues that slavery, more than any other single event, shaped the mentality of the present African-American. In order to fully grasp the magnitude of our current problems, we must reopen the books on the events of slavery. Our objective should not be to cry stale tears for the past nor to rekindle old hatreds for past injustices. Instead, we should seek to enlighten our path of today by better understanding where and how the lights were turned out yesterday. We should also understand that slavery should be viewed as a starting point for understanding African American psyche, and not as an end point. Therefore, the study of African American psyche should include psycho-history, but it should not be exclusively concerned with events in the past. The list of attitudes and reactions which we have inherited from slavery is probably quite extensive. We want to identify here only some of the more blatant and currently destructive attitudes which rather clearly show their origins in the slavery situation. Hopefully, a look at this tarnished legacy will serve as a stimulus for us to rid ourselves of these slavery ideas, both individually and collectively. Work: https://plus.google/101696543142088804076/posts/DfBF71KLSan Property: https://plus.google/101696543142088804076/posts/KAk7h4cXqFz Leadership: https://plus.google/101696543142088804076/posts/GU2MEucdwik The Clown: https://plus.google/101696543142088804076/posts/5bToQCNCQPh Personal Inferiority: https://plus.google/101696543142088804076/posts/cr4h9m5FEj1 Community Division: https://plus.google/101696543142088804076/posts/Nev7rcSuBFi The family: https://plus.google/101696543142088804076/posts/eR5ZXb72Eg8 Color Discrimination: https://plus.google/101696543142088804076/posts/iodH4xFHmxv Endnotes 1) Clark, C. Black Studies or the Study of Black People in R. Jones, Black Psychology (1st edition.) 2) Stampp K. The peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. p.79 3) Douglass, F My bBondage and Freedom. p81 4) Stampp pp35-36 5) Douglass p79 6) Stampp p289 7) Douglass p 8)Woodson, Carter G. The Miseducation of the Negro The Crisis. August 1931, page 266 9)Lynch W. The slave consultant narratives. 10) Stampp p151 11) Stampp p339 12) Douglass p39 13)Goodell, W. The African slave codes. American and foreign anti-slavery society 1835 page 105 14)Goodell, p107 15) Goodell, p84 16) Goodell, p86 17)Elkins, S. M. Slavery (2nd edition) p83
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 00:18:55 +0000