Many young Blacks in America between the ages of 14 and 25 are caught up in a Euro/American gangster mentality. One that influences them to disrespect and to abuse Black women, Black elders, Black children and themselves. The energy of these potential Black warriors is thus deflected from areas or pursuits that could do the most good in the struggle for Black emancipation, and used to destroy the very people that should be its beneficiaries.

And instead of our young (our most vital and powerful human resource) being a force for progression, enlightenment and strength, they become a tool facilitated and used by our oppressors and our enemies for our curtailment and our destruction. Psychologist, Amos N Wilson writes:

"Black on Black crime, with Black males acting as erstwhile suicidal, fratricidal Manchurian candidates who unwittingly have been recruited to execute the continuing White American hegemonic assaults on the African American community, necessarily requires that their personalities be psychologically conditioned and transformed to play their "assigned" roles by the Eurocentric establishment. Moreover, it requires that these personalities be made unconsciously responsive to, and malleably combatable with White American imperialistic needs.

These robotized rangers must be extrinsically motivated by White American manufactured desires and commodities. All in all, in order that the African American community appear to be intrinsically incompetent, incoherent, threatening, dangerously criminal dependent and prone to self-destruction, a sizeable segment of its population must be criminally "alienated," that is, made host to White American introjectively structured behavioral tendencies, which are combatable with White American hegemonic interests." [6]

In fact, the narrow focus of the Black criminal blots out all social, historical, community, national and international concerns. He lives his life from moment to moment in an adolescent haze. He sees only that which is put before him by the White rulers, and oppressors of whom he seeks to emulate, and he greedily covets the trinkets, flashy consumer commodities and overpriced baubles that the White manufacturing conglomerates have tactfully languished value upon through sycophantic advertisement and media outlets.

The unwritten rule is that everything that Whites produce shall be projected in a favorable light and made to appear valuable and necessary, and everything that Whites do not manufacture or control are belittled, ridiculed, ignored, or depicted as foolish or dangerous in an effort to prevent it from being a source of competition for themselves and independence for others.

Furthermore, the Black criminal is (at best) not interested in the plight of Black people and he consciously hates them and despises them at his worst. In fact, he hates everything African or associated with Africa. Although sometimes he will try to disguise his hatred through humor, but invariably the brunt of his jokes will always be aimed at Blackness and Africa and never will he laugh at or ridicule White or European culture or standards.

He is conditioned by Whites to hate Africa, and in turn, to hate himself because one cannot hate the roots of the tree without also despising the tree itself. So he copies the White projected image of the gangster made popular in Hollywood movies and in American popular culture.

He apes the antics and character flaws of such reprobates as Al Capone, Frank Nitti, John Gotti, or even copies the make believe personas of fake hoodlums like 'Scarface' or the Coleones, and even in this he is a failure; for he only qualifies as a pathetic caricature of these White gangsters who he looks up to as demi-gods. And failing miserably to acquire their wealth, their property, their businesses and their relative influence and power, he mimics them in the only way he believes is available to him; he copies their violent attitudes and actions. Sociologist Khari Enahro explains:

"Black people do not have real gangs that control real territory. The so-called areas that these gangs call their territory are the neighborhoods where injustice, crime, drugs and mayhem are allowed to exist. The dare not cross over the border and bring into the White suburban communities open-air drug markets, loud music and drive-by shootings.

They know that they would be crushed immediately. These so-called Black gangs are desperate groups of Black males engaging in ineffective responses to racism by playing dangerous games of life and death that are centered around self-destructive activities. They are involved in distributing quantities of destructive drugs in their own communities to their own people while shooting, maiming, and killing each other with guns they do not manufacture.

They prey on helpless and defenseless people. They do not fight armed and well-organized people. They are engaged in insane activities that help to destroy the lives of their own people, many of whom are their mothers, sisters and brothers." [7]

There is a basic human need to feel worthy, recognized, respected and acknowledged. If recognition is not forthcoming. If a person believes that (s)he is a faceless gnome stewing in a gray mist of anonymity and neglect or existing in an underground vault surrounding by treasures that are not his own, (s)he will very often resort to violence and use it as a currency for legitimacy and power.

The use of violence as a leverage bar is discernable in the volatile institutions of prisons and jails. In this cramped, fish bowl environment violence is an accepted consequence in situations where the respect and the honor of an inmate is infringed upon or believed to be impugned.

In fact, in the stark and brutal reality of prison life, acts of extreme violence are expected. And the inmate that does not display a readiness to inflict vicious physical harm upon those that have offended him is looked upon with contempt and branded as weak and cowardly- or in prison parlance- as a "bitch" or a "punk."

For in the foreboding and dismal sub-culture of prison existence, with the cataclysmic and volcanic fallout of hopelessness and anger and where access to the traditional adornments and symbols of status are severely limited or non-existent; he has no readily available currency of prestige-except the one that is assured through the power of violence.

The same is true within the Black urban colonies of America's ghettos. Here, as in the morally and economically impoverished islands of the penitentiaries and jails, the people are crowded into tight, crumbling fortresses called housing projects, or sandwiched in dilapidated areas between freeways and the smoldering stacks of factories, giant smelter ovens and water-sewage plants.

In these "Black" sections, the air, the ground and water are usually tainted or polluted. Most of the economic and educational resources have been impeded, curtailed or eliminated altogether. And here, just as in the concrete and steel crucibles of so-called correctional facilities, violence is regarded as a bargaining tool and a means with which to shock others into compliance and to demand respect.

This perception of defensiveness, of being disparaged and slighted, is not limited to Blacks in America's prisons and economically impoverished areas, for even those that have attained what they believe is acceptance in White society are also attacked and intellectually ostracized once they exhibit the rationality and the courage to act outside their assigned role or if they display any behavior other than what Whites consider accommodating and non-threatening. Richard Wright explains:

"The steep cliffs of the island are manifest, on the whole, in the conduct of Whites toward us hour by hour, a conduct which tells us that we have no rights commanding respect, that we have no claim to pursue happiness in our own fashion, that our progress toward civilization constitute an insult, that our behavior must be kept firmly within an orbit branded as inferior, that we must be compelled to labor on the behest of others, that as a group we are owned by Whites, and that manliness on our part warrants instant reprisal.

Three hundred years are a long time for millions of folk like us to be held in such subjection, so long a time that perhaps scores of years will have to pass before we shall be able to express what this slavery has done to us, for our personalities are still numb from its long shocks; and as the numbness leaves our souls, we shall yet have to feel and give utterance to the full pain we shall inherit." [8]

Today, although the iron chains of chattel slavery are remnants of a terrible past, and although the whips, auction blocks, thumbscrews and other fiendish devices are (for many of us) fossils of an ignored or forgotten era; we still carry the scars and the burdens of them. Burdens that we so naively and jubilantly thought were no more, are still with us. They still shadow our every step as they manifest into even more ghastly and insidious forms.

Yesterday we cringed as our cruel enslavers ravished our women, broke the backs of our men and treated our beloved children as worthless creatures fit only to work like donkeys in the endless sun scorched fields. But today in virtually every metropolis, every town or hamlet in America, there are Black men who are the rapists of Black women, the assaulters and murderers of Black men and, yes, even the molesters and killers of Black children.

There is much that we can blame on White people and a deviant and oppressive system. Yet, there is also much that we cannot or should not. For even in the bleakest and deepest depths of our enslavement, even as we screamed under the lash, and stumbled with weakness and desperation from starvation diets of fat back and corn cakes, and even during the centuries of the Black holocaust when we were so destitute that we owned nothing, not even ourselves, did we resort to selling poison to one another, to turning our backs on our spouses, or to murdering our children in a thousand different ways.

Brother Malcolm used to say that we are involved in a war in a life or death struggle for justice and equality. Minister Farrakhan has said that war is not just a physical fight but involves a struggle to align ourselves with God. In addition, Dr. Claude Anderson has warned that we must respect ourselves, learn to aggregate our wealth and resources and move as a group. Perhaps we can all agree that our struggle is one that must be realized within ourselves; within our hearts and our minds, before it can be brought to bear in the external world around us.

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Notes and References:

[1] "Understanding Violence Among African American Males" by Anthony King, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 28 No. 1, (September 1997) p.p. 79-96
[2] "Malcolm x, The Final Speeches," Pathfinder Press (1992) p. 15
[3] Dmesh D’ Souza, "Is Racism a Western Idea?" The Free Press, p. 724
[4] Wayne B Chandler, "Ancient Future," Black Classic Press (1999) p.p. 167,168
[5] Joe R. Feagin & Herman Vera, "White Racism," Routledge Press, New York, NY (1995) p. 163
[6] Amos N. Wilson, "Black on Black Violence," Afrikan World InfoSystems (1994) p. 49
[7] Khari Enaharo, "Race Code War" African American Image, Chicago Ill. (2003) p. 276
[8] Richard Wright, "12 Million Black Voices," Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, NY (1941) p. 31

© 2005 By Afromerica

Brother Steven Malik Shelton will be keeping the Black community updated on the most current Black experiences effecting our lives. Visit regularly for new information that could help you overcome and make the best of your everyday experiences.

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