Removing the Slave Mentality and Oppression Through Violence

Removing the Slave Mentality and Oppression through Violence

Freedom is defined as the custom of being free from restraints; Liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression, political independence, and the possession of civil rights (dictionary.com). Freedom and equality are connected to each other so much that you can not have freedom without having true equality and vice versa. When looking at the twentieth century many people all over the world were not born with freedom or born with equal rights. In most cases, people were oppressed by various forms of state sponsored racism, discrimination, and terror by other social groups. These same people have also been victims of the social hierarchy, which affects all other aspects of their life. Due to this racism, discrimination, social hierarchy, and terror in order to receive the freedom necessary to survive and the equality required to live a happy, successful, and productive life, all oppressed people must take action in some form.

Just as across the world here in America, the myth that "all men are equal" has created false hopes for African Americans, who continually seek opportunities to excel, which just aren't there. We have been led to believe that intelligence and ambition are key contributors to one's success, but this is not true. We do not live in a meritocracy; we live in a society where it is "not what you know it is who you know". Even if an African American possesses ambition and intelligence, the dominant majority of the white population oppresses them in the form of discrimination. This type of oppression and racism has existed since the Emancipation Proclamation which gave enslaved African Americans their freedom. This action taken up by the oppressed can be anything from a non- violent sit in, to a violent revolt, and even to act of terrorism. This resistance has taken many different forms across the world.

The old views of resistance in this country have come in the form of active non-violence, such as sit-ins, law suits, and peaceful marches. The old methods of resistance have left African Americans with the feelings that things in this country are getting better when in actuality nothing has changed. The only thing that most of the disadvantaged people have is symbols. The changes that they give us are symbols that won't cost them much, and that will pacify the masses of people, as a baby is pacified with a bottle in their mouth. Symbols such as MLK day as a national holiday, black history month as an important teaching perspective, traditionally disadvantaged people to the Supreme Court and congress, the bill of rights, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment to the constitution, are all just symbols and have changed little. Schools are still segregated, many do not know the actual message of love and respect that King taught, and African American's still can not achieve the American dream in corporate America in large masses that other races have achieved. This unsuccessful resistance points out that new a method of resistance is needed, such as employed by Franz Fanon and Malcolm X opposing the views of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. In this paper I will explain why a violent revolution was and is needed in America so that African Americans regain their humanity, pride, and remove the slave mentality that was and that is still upon them. The slave mentality is illustrated by a lack of pride in our community, a misunderstanding of our history and roots as powerful kings and queens, where we take the whip and beat our own, and we become instruments of our own destruction.

I now ask you this question, Why should a people that have been victimized during there entire history within a society and culture want to be a part of a new community where the people that once slapped there hand in hate want to hold their hand in an illusion of peace? For example, why would African Americans want to be a part of a country that for over three hundred years told them that they were subhuman and could be sold as cattle, lynched in city streets, kidnapped, hated, stereotyped as immoral and evil, and been put at the bottom of the totem societal pole? African American's should not have rejoined American society under an illusion of freedom, equality, and peace. Satre says, in the preface of Fanon's Wretched of the earth, "This new man begins his life as a man at the end of it [Ð'...] he has seen so many dying men that he prefers victory to survival" (23). Redemptive violence is the only way or answer for a people that have been put through so much. African American's have been beaten and told that we are worthless and currently we are being lied to by politicians and told that what we say and how we feel matters, when it actually does not matter. Fanon says, "The native has always known that he need expect nothing from the other side" (93). The problem is that African Americans have not learned this very important lesson. We still feel that if we continually fight for our rights through a system that is structured to keep us at the bottom we will eventually achieve true freedom and equality, but this is not true. Even Martin Luther King did not understand this. As it goes in Tupac Shakur's song, Running "Why am I fighting to live if I am just living to fight". I say stop fighting the system through structured means and fight the good fight through retributive violence. This is the logical next step for many people including Malcolm X. In Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet" he speaks about the "political oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation" that many blacks have experienced "at the hands of the white man." He believes that in order to obtain freedom and equality