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Chapter 27
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No whites can fully comprehend the enormous psychological
pressure of constantly being told that you are worth less than us. The
consequences of systematically banishing the black family to a
permanent existence in the shadow of white society are
inexpressible.
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The worst damage we inflict is when our victims begin to believe
and internalize our low expectations of them. Everywhere in the world effective oppression will make the
oppressed collude with their oppressor, but nowhere have I seen it so crushing
as in the US.
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Cruel invalidations such as "You ain't shit, nigger" I
constantly hear reverberate in underclass families. They instill in each other our deep racist feelings for them and
the gloomy prospects of being banished to a permanent existence in the shadow of
white society.
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The hope, I found among blacks in the 70's, has everywhere today
been replaced by self-blame. Wilma, with whom I often discuss such issues all night in her
little shack between my campus lectures, expresses in black words what my white
audiences today think, but dare not say:
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- They are holding me down, I know that. My own kind are holding
me back. I am afraid of them. My life is endangered by my own people.
- Have you lost faith in black people?
- Yes, I have, because of the way they have treated my family,
yes I have.
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- Have whites never caused you any harm?
- Never, In Alabama and New York, I have never had trouble from
the whites. Allways my own kind of people..
- Do you blame them for this, hold it against them?
- Yes I do.
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- But I told you before you must never forget the real...
- Yes, you call it internalized oppression, right? But I don't
see it that way. I think its just the nature of them to be that way..
- No, no, no!
- I don't think it is internalized oppression.
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- But you must never lose faith in human beings.
- I have lost faith in them, yes i have.
- But it comes from up here, it comes from racism. When people
are so hurt, and you know that black people are hurt, they take it out on each
other.
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- Yes, but what you are talking about happened back in the
eighteen hundreds, it a 100 years ago, I know what you are saying and what you
are saying is true, but we have come a long way since then, doors have opened
for us since then.
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But we are holding one another back with hatred, selfishness and
what not. It is not the whites holding us back now, we are holding each other
back. The whites are not holding us back now, maybe they did hundred years ago.
So many doors have been opened.
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- Wilma, you are talking the crap of the whites now, that is
what they are saying, who are the employers in this country, they are white, and
whom do they not give work?
- I know, I know, but I can only speak of what I am going
through, they are holding me down, my own kind are holding me back.
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- That's how all blacks feel these days, and that's why they end
up causing each other more harm. When people hate themselves they take out all
this stuff on each other...
- I know, all I just want to is get away from them.
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- Where will you go?
- I don't know yet, but I am working on it... |
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In the hope and optimism of the 70's, I would never have
believed that racism could worsen so much that I would one day sit and defend
the victims against themselves. |
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People can survive oppression if they are able to clearly
identify their oppressor and thus avoid self-blame. This understanding let blacks see light at the end of the tunnel
in the past. |
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A hundred years ago we lived in close physical integration with
blacks. But today we have become so isolated from each other that blacks
- whom we now ruthlessly bombard with Bill Cosby fantasies about how they are
free - for the first time in history have difficulties identifying their
oppressor and therefore without hesitation look for the cause of their growing
pain within themselves. |
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And once we succeed in convincing oppressed people that they are
their own worst oppressors, everything falls apart. |
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Neither their earnings nor sense of self worth are great enough
to recreate the nuclear family we constantly hold up as the only model, and the
sense of hopelessness and failure drives families apart. |
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Even where
love has been killed poor white couples must often stay together because the
woman alone can seldom earn enough to support her children. But for blacks this
dependency pattern of keeping the greatest earning ability in the hands of men
is broken by the white desire to keep blacks out of good jobs. |
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So, while black
women might still find work, mainly in the old non-threatening service roles
where they earn far less than employed black men, "men's work" is scarce, and
often seasonal at low pay. |
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Therefore the black man's earnings may never be
great enough to recreate the type of dependent family constantly
held up as the only respectable model. |
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A sense of hopelessness and failure is then added to the force of
pure economic desperation to drive families apart. |
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