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Manhood Resocialization in African Slaves |
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In "Roots," Alex Haley's chronicling of the life of Kunta Kinte in Gambia, West Africa clearly illustrates the practices used by Europeans to break the proud and healthy spirit of many Africans destined for slavery.
In 1750 Kunta fought wildly and courageously against his fellow African captors but was overwhelmed by their clubs and strength in numbers. After awakening from being knocked into unconsciousness, he realized he was naked, chained, and shackled. Another method (Darkwah, The Africans Who Wrote The Bible p. 160), was when the mid-15th century Portuguese moved inland off the West African coast and showed off European goods to the natives -- most of whom had never seen anything so attractive.
"The Portuguese offered to give the goods to the families of people that volunteered to go to work in their gold mines on the coast. Numerous able-bodied people volunteered and parents believing that their children were going to work on the coast to bring back home wealth in the form of European goods also volunteered their able-bodied children."
The family members acquired by the Portuguese for work were led to the coast where they were offered shelter in the dungeons of a castle. These dungeons opened out at the other end into the sea. At night, the deceived Africans were bound, gagged, and quietly sent into waiting boats behind the castle where they began lives as slaves. Re-socialization began by slaves being forced to fight each other over tiny bits of food. Then they acquired the values, meanings, and customs Europeans designed for making Ideal slaves.
To be an Ideal Slave required being dehumanized and reduced to a level of animal-like docility -- mindless, thoughtless, and completely subject to the will of the master or overseer in every aspect of life (Holland, Black Opportunity p. 11). The objective was for re-socialization to be so complete and automatic that the slave would forever be a programmed ideal robot, even when Whites were not around.
The great Portuguese trickery continued for a longtime because Africans had never known of such deceptions and because coastal Africans knew little about the fellow Africans brought from inland. Meanwhile, the families believed their members would come back home with European goods -- but they never saw them or any goods again. By Europeans showering trusting African families with trinkets and deception in exchange for family members heralded the European "divide and conquer" measure.
When trickery no longer worked, the Portuguese brought enough soldiers to their post on the Gold Coast to support the slave trade. They used these soldiers and their friendly African guides to ransack villages; then to capture men, women, and children in the night; and then blame both on other villagers so as to institute a vicious cycle of distrust and skirmishes among the Africans themselves.
Next, they stirred up trouble and supported one village against the other -- gave guns to the villagers they supported -- sent those villagers to attack others -- and finally bought the prisoners. The prisoners, now called slaves, were of two types -- Bosales (slaves coming directly from Africa to the Americas) and Ladinos (Christianized African slaves coming to the Americas from Europe).
All were brainwashed by shutting down their languages, vocabulary, education, ambition, and the ability to think; by destroying their sense of community and replacing it with envy, suspicions, and disrespect; and by forcing them to adopt a new set of values. Black males -- removed from their honorific attachment to fatherhood, to husbandhood, and to manhood -- were given the liquor and cocaine they needed to release their rage on each other and to work themselves to death. Many of these evil teachings were learned so well that "programmed slave robots" can still be found in today's society.
website: jablifeskills.com
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.
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