Denial
is quite simply the evasion of reality. Denial can be personal or
communal, for sometimes an entire nation can be in denial about its
abominations, for they are too painful to make adjustments in the
collective psyche and the personal reality, for to do so would
incriminate the mythology and ritual of said society, and thus the
normal daily round would be disrupted and dysfunctional, for painful
adjustments would be in order, and as long as we can avoid the painful
the better, after all, the status quo can be maintained.
America has
lived in grand denial. In the words of Baldwin white supremacy has
caused this nation to believe in rationalizations so fantastic it
approaches the pathological. She has lived among slaves and masters and
the descendants of slaves and masters far too long without any
meaningful degree of reconciliation or compensation, even apology is
long overdue. Other colonial societies such as the French and Australia
recently apologized for colonialism, but not America , the chief
colonizer of the modern world. She is mainly guilty of domestic
colonialism, having enslaved the Native Americans, and then kidnapped
millions of Africans who were brought to these shores for eternal
servitude. After emancipation, America promised the freed Africans a few
acres and a mule, but never delivered. She promised freedom after her
slaves provided 200,000 troops who were decisive in the Civil War, but
disarmed them and returned them to virtual slavery called
Reconstruction, which was short-lived and essentially put the freed
slaves in neo-servitude, at the whim of terrorists known as Klu Klux
Klan.
White
America benefited from four centuries of slavery and neo-slavery. The
neo slaves fought in her imperial wars against fascism abroad but were
subjected to fascism upon returning home. A few slaves benefited from
slavery, even having slaves themselves, yet in the end found themselves
facing the glass ceiling, especially when they refused to be running
dogs for imperialism now called globalism. General Colin Powell is the
most recent example. America duped him and made a fool of him before the
world when he gave his fabricated United Nation’s speech to justify the
invasion of Iraq . He was replaced with a more pliant Negress in the
person of Condi Rice. We are urged to recognize racial progress in her
shameful role as Secretary of State. We have achieved equality, for have
we not placed ourselves (African Americans) in the position to be
charged with war crimes, having justified the slaughter of a million
Iraqi men, women and children in the unprovoked occupation and
destruction of the jewel of Arabic culture and civilization?
But
in our grand denial, blacks as well as whites will attempt to convince
the world this point of view is left wing poppycock, the thoughts of a
disgruntled segment of the black Americans who have failed to enjoy the
benefits of capitalism, now globalism--no matter the disparities in
birth and death, education, wage parity, housing, health care, homicide
and suicide, in every aspect of Americana.
To
mention race is to open a can of worms best left unopened because it
makes Americans nervous, uneasy, and disturbed mentally if not
physically. White Americans are made to feel guilty, thus etiquette
demands no mention of race in civil discourse or casual conversation
because we are all too sensitive and the endgame might be violence of
the worse kind. And so we are mostly silent on the subject until this
ugly monster of our body politic raises its head as it inevitably does
from time to time, then after the most brief discussion, all sides are
urged to sweep it under the carpet until the next round. Thus this
racial drama continues ad infinitum without any real resolution and
certainly no reconciliation.
We
may have a plethora of interracial marriages with the resultant
biracial children, yet nothing has been solved except for a kind of
don’t ask don’t talk racial harmony, along with the children growing up
in racial confusion called the tragic mulatto syndrome, whereby they try
as best they can to choose sides in this racial drama without end.
Clearly, Barak Obama is caught between the racism of his preacher and
white grandmother. His endgame will be of great interest to the world at
large, and even if he doesn’t become president of the US , he will have
a role to play in racial politics globally
.Obviously,
his persona is bigger than America , having an African father and a
Muslim middle name (Hussein) that has endeared him to the Islamic world,
no matter the outcome of the presidential election. With his now
classic speech on race, putting himself in league with Booker T.
Washington’s Atlanta Compromise and Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream,
Obama, much to his dismay, has now become a Race Man, in the classic
sense of that term whose definition escapes all but those of historical
consciousness, which is most of us, black and white—except that we must
now realize there is only the human race, except for those in league
with me who claim membership in the Divine Race.
America’s
Grand Denial can only be overcome by recovery from our racist white
supremacy heritage, beginning by accepting the scientific definition of
the human race (or Divine, if you agree with my spiritual notion), then
entering a program of detoxification, recovery and discovery.
Detoxification includes deprogramming our white supremacy values of
domination and exploitation, including patriarchal authority and
capitalist greed that has led us to the present recession/depression
worldwide. The free market economy is nothing more than pimping by
gunboat diplomacy. You sell me your labor and natural resources at the
cheapest price or I will take them at gunpoint, under the guise of
bringing you democracy—an advance from the naked colonial era of
spreading Christianity.
Recovery
is discarding the Grand Denial that there is a problem or that the
problem has been remedied, therefore stop making whites the villain and
blacks the victim, in fact, forget the entire matter—although blacks
already suffer acute amnesia to the degree that they are a danger to
themselves and others. And
who would tell a Jew to forget the Holocaust? And does not the Jew
remind the world at every turn what the Germans did to them? We have a
thousand times more right to tell the world what happened to us than any
Jew, for our suffering lasted four centuries, not four or five years. For
their four or five years (1939-1945) the Jews were given a state while
we have not acquired one acre for four centuries (1619-2008) of slave
labor and government sanctioned terror that even Hitler emulated with his destruction of the Jews.
In
order to recover from the addiction to white supremacy, America must
make a searching and fearless moral inventory; she must admit to God the
exact nature of her wrongs; be ready to have God remove her defects of
character (being saved by the grace of Jesus Christ has not and will not solve America’s white supremacy addiction—the
white Christian mythology allowed us to be burned on the cross or
lynching tree—yes, strangely similar to Jesus). Rev. James Cone suggests
America can only recover from the addiction to white supremacy by
coming to an understanding of the relationship of the cross and the
lynching tree. Listen to Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit and ponder the
life of Jesus Christ. You have had Jesus in your midst for over four hundred years and crucified him on a daily basis, even unto this present hour.
America must examine her census, her graveyards in the south and north,
the bills of sale, the insurance policies, her jail and prison inmates,
the mental hospital patients gone mad as a result of white supremacy
addiction—then make a list of all the Africans harmed, the Native
Americans, the poor whites treated worse than you treated niggers—then
make amends to such people, including reparations in the form of land
and sovereignty.
Discovery
for America in general will be when she accepts the radicalization of
her culture to bring it in harmony with the global village, which
involves the dismantling of institutions that perpetuate domination and
exploitation of her citizens and other peace loving peoples throughout
the world. If America persists in her Grand Denial, then she must
prepare for her self destruction, for it shall come at the hands of the
man in the mirror, not from any external forces.
Dr.
M is the author of How to Recover from the Addiction to White
Supremacy, A Pan African 13 Step Model, Black Bird Press, Berkeley CA. mxjackmon@yahoo.com
