Seeking mental emancipation

I’m no psychologist, but it seems like many black people continue to suffer from some sort of intergenerational mental trauma from slavery – a Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, if you will. It is a fact that if African slavery was only physical, African people everywhere would have been able to overcome the socio-economic disparity as soon as the chains came off, but that evidently was not the outcome. The systemic dehumanisation of African slaves caused the initial trauma, and the descendants are bearing the mental scars and struggling to cope with the systematic dismantling of our psyche.

Mental slavery is far more sinister than physical slavery because the chains are invisible with mental slavery, so many people are unable to recognise and accept that it exists.

There are some black folks with Stockholm Syndrome who like to blame their own people for being, as they call it, “lazy” and “good-fornothing,” but I see things differently, and that does not mean that I’m making excuses. The legacy of slavery has promoted and fostered the direct association between being of African heritage and being inferior to others; being of African heritage and being unequal, incapable and less worthy. Most importantly, it promotes a mentality that continues to impede our growth and development.

Mental slavery has caused many of us to remain contained, and ignorance, greed and selfishness are the key elements of this sad state of affairs. Undeniably, ignorance is the primary weapon of our containment.

Someone once said that “the best way to hide something from black people is to put it in a book” and no statement could be more accurate. During the days of slavery, slave literacy was largely discouraged, and in some cases illegal, and the effects of that are still being felt as illiteracy amongst black people are higher than any other race everywhere in the world. We have gained the right to be educated like everyone else, yet despite living in the Information Age, few of us read consistently, and many not at all.

Mental slavery also makes us vain, greedy and selfish. We collectively earn the lowest mean income, yet we are amongst the biggest spenders. Many people seem to forget that unlike indentured labourers, the freedom of slaves came with only the clothes on their backs; slaves had to start from nothing and in many parts of the world, descendants of slaves still have nothing. It really is not because we cannot have more than nothing, but it is because those who are enslaved believe that a life of nothing is their destiny. Despite this, vanity combined with greed sees us spend without thought; Michael Jordan sneakers for children and expensive jewellery and designer clothing for ourselves, whilst bills remain secondary expenses.

The experience of being black and poor in a materialistic society is a difficult one because we are forever bombarded with rhetoric that says if you have nothing, you are nothing. As I mentioned in a recent article, we tend to spend our money on gold to drape around our necks like shackles, whilst everyone else invests in property, businesses and education. Our enslaved mentality is to show-off to each other whilst others build solid communities with the profits from their many businesses marketed to us.

Many black people have internalised a sense of shame about just not being “good enough.” When a person walks around with that sense of shame and self-hatred, they are likely to function poorly in society, no matter who they are (there are always exceptions). Add the extra layer of racist socialisation, of being devalued, or being socially segregated and we groom generations of the same mentally trapped slaves.

Black mental slavery has to be defeated, but I know that it will be several more generations before that happens, if at all. I look at my brothers on the block and I feel sorry for them because I know that they are mentally enslaved and there is very little that can be done to reverse or change that. Marcus Garvey said it and Bob Marley put it into song: “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.” Frankly, until we achieve a state of mental emanci - pation of our people, there really is n o t h i n g to celebrate.

J a - mille85@ msn.com