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Manhood in the Slaves (Part II) |
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The benefits given to the "winner" slave male for siring the most children was a clear indication of the extent of the sickness White males had created within themselves and the fashioning of "free sex" within susceptible and accepting Negroes' enslaved minds. Slave owners encouraged slave "studs" to have no sense of guilt or tension by completely relieving the slaves of financial or "father" responsibilities.
This was a price gladly paid by the slave owner because he became richer with each slave baby. Note carefully what is happening. The master on every plantation directed great energy and effort toward creating the image of the slave male as subhuman, inferior, strong, emotional, dumb, very sexual and potent regarding impregnating slave females. But the ideal manhood image also dictated the slave male be weak-minded and mentally incompetent. For slave males who embraced doing the most menial of tasks--characterized by extremely hard work but with only a minimal exercise of mental faculties, Cleaver (Soul on Ice) employed the term the "Super-masculine menial."
He observes: "The chip on the Supermasculine Menial's shoulder is the fact that he has been robbed of his mind. In an uncannily effective manner, the society in which he lives has assumed in its very structure that he, minus a mind, is the embodiment of Brute Power. . . The struggle of his life is for the emancipation of his mind, to receive recognition for the products of his mind, and official recognition of the fact that he has a mind."
In short, society at large still sees the Black male only as a mindless body. Their approach today is to supply him with a ball (e.g. a basketball, a football) for purposes of keeping him away from academically using his mind to think. In this way they maintain control over him. If the Black athlete can reach the professional ranks (and only a tiny number ever do) and meanwhile avoid a career-ending injury in the process, the master and guest will throw him some "coins" for a good performance. Such replacing of the use of his mind with a ball on game day is the same scenario seen in slavery whereby slaves entertained guest of the master and his family and were tossed pennies and nickels for a pleasing performance.
To this day some Black males still allow White men to define them (e.g. TV), control them, and throw some "coins" of drugs and guns at the "good Niggers" in order for them to create Black-on-Black feud type friction and killings. Meanwhile, there is a shocking number of Black males dropping out of high school as well as Black athletes failing to graduate from college. Neither group has an academically prepared career to fall back on. Many work for minimum wage and some are forced into crime. This is simply a dumb way to approach lifeâ€"a life made terribly more hard by racism.
Nevertheless, the sense of powerlessness fashioned in the slave male was enormously destructive to his concept of manhood. As a result, they and their ex-slave descendents erected a number of defense and coping mechanisms. Instead of striving against the odds of failing, a major defense mechanism was to not try at all -- i.e. to do nothingâ€"and its partner was to become a "rolling stone". This was about impregnating their women and leaving them to rear their children alone.
Furthermore, they took, back then and now, the drugs given to them by the captors as a means of escaping mental exhaustion. Whiskey was (and is) made freely available in order for addicts to see how degraded they allow themselves to become. Many slave males and their today's descendents have imitated the cruelties Whites have applied to them--things like bullying scapegoats (e.g. wives, children) and cursing each other. To deal with their fragmented ethos, they remain attracted to others of a like-kindâ€" none of whom were or are going anywhere near a wholesome destination!
website: jablifeskills.com
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.
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