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Tag: black

  • On Top of Our Charred Bones: Many Black People Suffer From Generational Stockholm Syndrome

    On Top of Our Charred Bones: Many Black People Suffer From Generational Stockholm Syndrome

    A Critical Response Essay of W.E.B. DuBois’ “The Souls of Black Folks”

    In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois, a prominent civil rights activist, published his essay, “The
    Souls of Black Folk” where he analyzes his life as a Black man in the United States. In the
    essay, he calls out the hypocrisy of white Americans because it had been nearly 40 years
    since Emancipation, but they continued to violate the Constitution by manipulating,
    reneging on agreements, and resorting to terrorism, and murder to prevent Black
    Americans from utilizing their fairly won rights to evolve out of servitude. In turn, DuBois
    said this was robbing the country from receiving the great contributions that Black people
    could bring. This narcissistic and animalistic behavior of white Americans, drove a rift
    between the two races which DuBois describes one side of the rift as “the veil” with
    constant references to shadows and darkness, and the other side beyond it as where white
    people dwell with its “dazzling opportunities” as just “the other world”. But he did not
    desire to live in the other world’s opportunities and sought to live above it, repeatedly
    referring to that region as “blue” or “blue sky. DuBois claimed that Black people were gifted
    with a “double consciousness” which caused them to look at themselves through the eyes of
    white people and measure their self-worth based on how they perceived them, but the
    Black soul also wrangled with being both a Negro and American, not willing to sacrifice one
    for the other. Despite this spiritual turmoil, he believes it is the desire of Black people to
    create and give to the world that is the strivings of the souls of Black folk.

    However, DuBois’ magical thinking is naïve because he severely underestimates the
    hatred white society had for Black people. Malcolm X always saw it and Martin Luther King
    saw it too late that the white man hates the Black man more than he loves freedom.
    DuBois romanticizes about “fostering and developing the traits and talents of the
    Negro … in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic” in the hopes
    that Blacks and whites “may give each to each those characteristics both so badly lack”. He
    has this idea that Black people will somehow gain the favor whites, if they were allowed to
    show their skills. While I respect him as an elder, I do not agree with his ideology. History
    has shown us several times, that no matter how much Black people contribute, even to the
    point of building a nation from the ground up, Western society will always exploit Black
    people because they are concerned about their own image. This has made people apathetic
    and comfortable to exploiting Blacks, stealing their innovations and then writing them out
    of history as if they contributed nothing.


    History is taught to not repeat it, so as dystopian as it may sound, it makes more
    logical sense for Black people to ignore white society and keep their innovations to
    themselves to advance their own communities. DuBois even makes this point, when he
    says, “A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather
    allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems”, but I also feel this is
    him struggling to be true to his Negro side, while also appeasing his American one. It is
    bewildering to me, why he toils so much to appease white society after hundreds of years
    of bastardy against Negro women and other acts of terror. Any sane person would want to
    separate as far as possible from their captor, so this was likely from trauma.


    I believe that DuBois, like many Blacks back then and now, suffered from Stockholm
    Syndrome, which was then carried down through the generations. The “syndrome” was
    coined by criminologist Nils Bejerot which he described the following traits in victims: The
    person would experience something terrifying that just comes suddenly and they are
    certain death was a possibility. They experience where they are treated like a child and
    must ask for permission. Their captor performs small acts of kindness that prompt a
    “primitive gratitude for the gift of life” and they are in denial that their captor has put them
    in this situation; in their mind they think the person is going to allow them to live. But
    Bejerot additionally noted that Stockholm Syndrome also affects the captor in that they
    believe their victim enjoys their captivity (Westcott, By Kathryn. “What Is Stockholm
    Syndrome?” BBC News, 21 Aug. 2013, www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22447726). White
    society too thought Black people enjoyed slavery and those who tried to escape were
    diagnosed with drapetomania. I think we can say these are all experiences that Black
    people in DuBois’ time endured, living under the terrorism of white people for over 200
    years and has continued today in some aspects of modern Black society.


    In conclusion, I disagree with DuBois’ “double-consciousness” because it is not a gift,
    but the symptom of one experiencing something so traumatic that they lose themselves in
    its void. Racism is a construct that defies all human logic, so Blacks should not adjust their
    lives to coddle it and everything they do should unapologetically be for the upliftment of
    the Black community no matter what anyone thinks. No amount of pandering will ever be
    enough for white society to accept Blacks because they would rather scorch the earth and
    rebuild the world on top of our charred bones with our innovations, than to give us any
    kind of credit for any of it. 🦉

  • War of the Worlds: Black and White Feminists Aren’t On the Same Side

    War of the Worlds: Black and White Feminists Aren’t On the Same Side

    A Critical Response Essay of Audre Lorde’s “I Am Your Sister”

    In Audre Lorde’s essay, “I Am Your Sister”, she talks about many aspects of recognizing our differences and not ignoring them, but she also describes the dichotomy between the plight of Black and white feminists. While both fight for women’s rights, it is not a unified front. She explains that issues that are uniquely experienced by Black women are omitted from the conversation of women’s rights because white feminists do not share the space with others outside of their race nor do they feel any comradery with them. Lorde even goes as far as saying, that white women don’t see Black women and other women as color as women at all. Black women are fighting for injustices such as lower wages, poorer healthcare, and other inequalities unique to them to be abolished. However, whether white feminists realize it or not, they use their privilege of race, class, age, and sex, to fight for a seat of power within the patriarchy of white supremacy, rather than truly fighting against it. In many ways, white feminists have made themselves just another face of white supremacy. This is unfortunate because instead of being one entity pushing forward for women’s rights, the selfishness of the white feminist movement pushes the entire movement for all women several steps back. This is largely due to that white women consistently keep in place the systematic problems that affect Black women and their families.

    Classism directly affects the difference between white and Black women’s rights because in a capitalistic world, where people can purchase their audience, whoever has the deeper pockets, and not the more humanitarian intent, can afford the larger platform to amplify their cause. In Lorde’s essay, she uses a relatable example of poetry written on pen and paper being the medium of choice by poorer communities because it’s cheap, portable, and easily accessible as opposed to an expensive typewriter that wouldn’t be as easily available to those without the financial means. In this day and age, we can still see this same equivalence in the media, where poorer Black activists, artists, etc. have to rely on gaining a slow and steady following for their movements through social media or grassroots events, while people with deeper pockets can just buy a speaker spot at an event, or pay to be on Joe Rogan or even pay an influencer to spread their cause faster and wider. Or if they’re white, blonde, blue-eyed, and pretty enough, they can get a spot on Good Morning America with no higher education than high school. We saw this grossly played out on a worldwide stage with Elon Musk’s purchasing of Twitter, turning it into his personal megaphone and Mark Zuckerburg also axing Black activists’ Facebook pages for “hate speech”.

    I agree with Lorde’s notion of ageism that if the younger generation finds the older generation in contempt, then they are destined to repeat the same mistakes because they don’t reach out to the old for guidance. We see this today with millennials and other generations having disdain for the boomer generation for buying up real estate for pennies and then reselling it to everyone at exorbitant prices. All while this same boomer generation, also owns the cooperations and hasn’t raised wages to keep up with inflation since the 70s, but telling everybody to stop being lazy and work in the same breath. Unfortunately, this is really a white issue in the sense that Black people didn’t own any homes, businesses or real estate to begin with, but the fallout from white peoples’ problems, once again overflowed into the Black community and now we have Black youths not listening to the older generation, just because it’s what’s popular and loud among the white population.

    Womens Rights March 2017

    Race greatly increases the divide between Black and white feminists, because there are factors in the Black community that white women ignore since they don’t affect them. They don’t see the Black woman’s angst of protecting their children from street violence, the education system, or law enforcement as their problems, so those conversations are never heard of when addressing women’s rights, and Black women are often left fighting for those on their own. As a result, this puts white women as a problem for Black women because they will continue to do things such as voting for more law enforcement and politicians that are against Black people’s interests and puts the Black family at further risk; 53% of white women voted for Trump! When Black activist Angela Peoples was interviewed about her viral sign at the Women’s March in 2017 among the sea of pink vagina hats worn by the white women at the event, she responded “I don’t think it’s a matter of White women becoming interested in our issues; I need them to recognize they are implicit or complicit benefactors of systems like White supremacy and patriarchy—and that’s a problem,” Moseley, By Mariya. “Woman Behind Viral ‘White Women Voted for Trump’ Sign Speaks on Why More People Need to Trust Black Women.” Essence, 26 Oct. 2020, www.essence.com/holidays/black-history-month/woman-viral-womens-march-photo-why-need-listen-black-women.

    In closing, Lorde’s essay still holds true for all the issues going on today in the United States when it comes to race. We are not changing because no one is listening. Her food for thought is that we must seek out the roots of our distortions and look for ways to combine all the issues between white, Black, and all people of color’s problems into one movement, and not ignore one over the other simply because one group has dominance. White women must make a radical change in including non-white people or else they’re just another form of white supremacy with a female face. 🦉