travel writing: Roots Recovered:Excerpt From African Travel Book
Posted on Sunday, June 20 @ 01:43:06 EDT by ugogurl |
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o writes "THE BLACK SELF-CONCEPT IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA by James White, Esq, Author of Roots Recovered
Images & Icons
Images and symbols are very important to people in general and especially for people of the African Diaspora who are the victims of slavery and colonization.
In this western dominated world, the bulk of positive powerful stereotypes are represented as "White," "Good guys wear white," "white magic" (which is supposedly ìgoodî') "Blondes have more fun, "Angel Foodî cake (which is white) and ìDevil's Foodî cake (which is black) and on and on and on. Most positive stereotypes are conveyed as white while conversely, most of the negative stereotypes, especially in America, are represented as "Black." Pimps, a prostitute, welfare queens, dope addicts, rapists, thieves, savages, cannibals and headhunters and black magic conjure up the mental image of Black people.
These negative perceptions and myths are largely formed by the Western media and popular culture, which portrays Africa as savage and backward and Africans as either violent barbarians or simple, childlike people. The entertainment and news media have been the most incessant perpetrators of this negative perception and one of the root causes of the "problem." For example, let us examine the subconscious message sent by one of the most enduring movie heroes, Tarzan.
In the Tarzan story, a plane crashes over the "Dark Continent" and the only survivor is a White male infant. This infant is rescued by apes and is subsequently raised by them. As the infant grows into manhood, being raised solely by apes, he rules over the Africans with a supreme primal yell, which causes them to bow down in submission. The message conveyed by this story and others like it is that Africans are so backwards that mere apes could raise a White male -- and that White male would still be superior to the Africans.
Images found in religions send subliminal messages of inferiority to Black people. Christian icons of the White God image have had a debilitating subconscious effect on the minds of the people of the African Diaspora. The image of God as white nurtures the subconscious belief that the White person is born to be the supreme leader.
Naim Akbar in his book The Chains and Images of Psychological Slavery states:
The person, who looks up and sees his physical characteristics shared by his deity, begins to develop the idea that he is exactly like God, or that God is like him. This is all right if one sees potential for growth in the idea. The confusion of the physical attributes with the very nature of God begins to make the person feel that his particular physical features have endowed him with automatic divinity. Such a person can believe in his own mind, that "I am God, I am Deity, I am Creator.î He begins to believe that the blonde hair and the blue eyes that are on the portrait are the qualifications for divinity. This begins to cultivate an egomaniac. They begin to suffer from ego inflation.
This ego inflation most likely affected the slave masters in North America and the colonial masters in Africa and caused them to relate to the African slaves as mere chattel and subhuman creatures and the Africans under colonial rule in Africa as barbarous and inferior.
The perpetuation of White God images and other symbols and standards that portray "whiteness" as preeminent have a virtually demeaning effect on the subconscious minds of people in the African Diaspora. A chain of subconscious reasoning occurs in the minds of some Blacks who view these images and symbols from infancy to adulthood. The reasoning is that because God and all that is represented as good and beautiful are White and White people share those godly characteristics, then the White characteristics and qualities are preferred and are the best.
The most famous example of the negative Black self-concept was demonstrated in the 1950s by the social psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, who was the best known and most regarded Black social scientist in the United States. Clark's work for the NAACP in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case played a major role in that Supreme Court case.
Clark and his wife developed the famous "Doll Tests," which clearly demonstrated the negative Black self-concept that continues to affect us today. In the Doll Test, Black children in the early school ages were shown four identical dolls, two Black and two white, and were asked to identify them racially and to indicate which doll was best, which was nice, which was bad and which they preferred to play with. This test, administered to Black children across the country, showed that the majority of the children rejected the Black doll and expressed a sincere preference for the White doll. For the Clarks, these tests demonstrated the negative effects of racism on the personality and psychological development of Black children who would one day grow into adults. This negative self-concept in not confined to the United States but penetrates throughout the African Diaspora, even Africa itself.
Skin Bleaching in the Quest for Beauty
I am revealing this information to you now because I do not want you to be shocked like I was, the first time I went to Africa. Skin bleaching is prevalent in Africa. Yes, I said skin bleaching. I was not on the Continent twenty-four hours before I saw it. I saw that Black is not necessarily viewed as beautiful in the Motherland.
The first time I went to Africa, I flew Air Afrique on my way to Benin and I had a 10-hour layover in the Ivory Coast, so the airline put us up in this very small nondescript local motel outside of Abidjan on the oceanfront. We arrived at this hotel at approximately 2:30 AM.
I woke up that next morning to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. I was in Africa; I was back home; I was very happy. I woke up and met my Nigerian friends and one East Indian friend I met on the plane for breakfast. After we ate, we went for a stroll on the beach. There were boys on the beach engaged in what appeared to be soccer practice and there were small fishing boats going out and coming back with loads of fish in their nets -- and then I saw her. She was an average looking woman in her early twenties wearing very causal African attire with a matching headscarf. She was standing in the shade and had this white cream all over her face, arms, legs, hands and feet. I first thought it was suntan lotion but it was on too thick. I asked my friend from Nigeria what she had on and he said that she was trying to get "clair" which in French slang means to become light. I was shocked. "Not in Africa," I thought. However, there she was, standing in front of my face. She was attired in African garb but trying to "de-Africanize" herself. I heard about African-Americans in the 1930s and 1940s doing such things, but I could not believe that this was going on in the present time.
Bleaching is big problem in Africa, with mostly women doing it but the men do it also. Also skin bleaching is very dangerous and many African countries have been trying to ban it, launching public service campaigns about the harmful effects that come from bleaching your skin. For example, The Gambia has strict laws on the import and export of skin bleaching products. If someone is caught bringing such products into The Gambia, they are subject to fines up to $2,000 and/or three years imprisonment.
A horrible example of the dangers of skin bleaching occurred in Ghana in the boxing ring. Ghanaian Boxer Percy Oblitei Commeu lost his belt and lost some of his skin in a national super-featherweight bout. The boxer's opponent opened a cut on his right cheek that his cut man could not close. Additionally, his nostrils and his right ear tore open, leaving him bleeding profusely. His skin was literally peeling off of his face. The reason why his skin fell off his face was skin bleaching.
Another horrible example of people trying to de-Africanize themselves is Michael Jackson. Do not take this as an insult towards Michael because, in actuality, I feel sorry for him because he is a true victim of a negative Black self-concept. Michael Jackson, however, has transgressed all bounds because in addition to his skin bleaching (no, I do not believe that he has a skin disease), he has surgically altered his face numerous times to de-emphasize his African features, namely his nose. I read several articles that said that he has had so many surgeries to thin out his nose that he now must insert plastic supports in his nostrils to keep them open.
If any of you have his "Off the Wall" album from the 1980's, compare his face back then with his face now. Michael Jackson has totally altered himself to the point that he is unrecognizable from the "original Michael Jackson." The very people who he was trying to look like are now ridiculing him in the press. I read the cover of one tabloid that now call him the "King of Pop" and the "King of Weird." Skin bleaching is not confined to African peoples. It is also a big problem with women on the Indian subcontinent who were also colonized people like the Africans. They also feel that lighter is better. Colonialism is the common thread between the Indian and African people which probably helped create their penchant for skin bleaching.
It is amazing how concepts of beauty change because Olaudah Equiano, an ex slave born around 1745, writes in his memoirs about the pre-colonial African perception of skin complexion.
This excerpt is as follows:
Ö [f]or in regard to complexion, ideas of beauty are wholly relative. I remember while in Africa to have seen three Negro children, who were tawny, and another quite white, who were universally regarded as deformed by myself and the natives in general, as far as it related to their complexions.
Colonization and the imposition of the "White is the best and most beautiful" complex into the subconscious minds of the colonized Africans in Africa is most likely the subliminal reason why they bleach their skin. Until all people of African descent understand how this inferiority complex was formed and take steps to eradicate it from their minds, we as a group of people will never again advance on a grand scale because we hate ourselves.
www.rootsrecovered.com
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