After Slavery, Deep in Oppression...

How can the identification of historical representations be used to extend the idea of humanity to those who have been denied its right?

How can we see the beam in our own eye to better understand that it resembles the beams in the eyes of others? 

The comparison of suffering is a dynamic way to misinterpret and misrepresent the harm that one experiences. It takes it out the subjective concept of suffering and generalizes it to better represent the suffering of entire groups; suffering out of the context it in which it is experienced. The comparative analysis does, however, support the realization of a need for self-reflection and consideration of how susceptible the human being is to outwardly manifesting the aspects of the lower self… in any state, in any nation, at any point in time. 

The American ideology is full of half truths, and whole repudiations. The narrative told does not tell the whole story of the American experience because it lessens the part that the Black being has played in its construction. It lessens the Black being, to lessen the need to articulate the horrors it has forced upon its existence. This like the rest of the story, is a part of the American narrative.

• America would not exist without slavery and slaves. Its laws would not be so robust without the “other” it needed to demonize and fear. Feminist and Patriarchal theories of maternalist and paternalist ideologies would not have been able to form the racial hegemony we now find ourselves colonized by. On the contemporary colonialism. The resurgent need for transplantation. The violent mental uprooting of the indoctrinated mind. 

• How would one describe the experience of the Black being at the conception of the American plantation? A genocide? A Holocaust, Maafa?

• How would you characterize their existence under the suffocating embrace of the Jim Crow era? Domestic Terrorism? Fascism?

How does one begin to identify or characterize this experience with words that truly underscore the insidiousness of the practice and how it has morphed into the behemoth of an elephant in the room that has not been easy to ignore since the end of Black Reconstruction.

• Fully halted by… what would you call it? Supremacy? Racism? Sadism? A collective psychosis triggered by the elevation of the Black being?

How does one begin to articulate an experience when the language needed does not exist within the confines of a limiting lexicon? How does a being express themselves with words used to suppress its expression? 

After Slavery, deep inside of oppression…

“In the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century, a profound change occurred in the southern interpretation of slavery. This shift in thought coincided with a rising conviction among southerners that they could not, would not, exist in a society without slavery”(Williamson, 1965)

The comparative analysis turned inward uses the past and present condition as reference points. This also offers the opportunity to examine the causes for both the past and present condition. As with the diminished quality of life for the Black American, there is a through-line from the genesis of the plantation to the present circumstance of his existence. Not just the centuries of inhumane colonization but also its morphology. It demonstrates how the conditions change to fit the iteration of slavery that society permits; and the pathologies that exist to maintain the negative dynamic. 

• What does a nation look like when it has matured enough to reach back into its past to understand its present condition; without needing to see it through rose colored lenses? 

…done without the romantic nostalgia that creates the false narrative that allow for these conditions to persist? Without the influence of those who benefit from the continuation of this travesty of pervasive depravity? 

How better would it be if this wasn’t so hard for more people to see; especially for Black Americans who have been forced to ignore the heights of their own possibilities?

-Yogabrofessor

Williamson, J. (1965). After slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861-1877. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press.