The BLACK American here in the western world is in an abusive relationship with the United States Of America. No matter how much we love the states it has shown us time and time again that it does not reciprocate the admiration needed to see the humanity of BLACK people. "Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship". When we look at the characteristics of domestic violence we can see its expression within the power dynamics of our two nations, trapped within one geographical location known as 'The Western World".
A polarizing status of access and privilege further solidifies the abuse that the statistical majority of BLACK Americans are faced with while existing on land colonized and occupied by European immigrants.
Like an abusive relationship, one partner is faced with the notion of 'do I have enough power within my own self to actually get out of this abuse relationship'. Unsure of their own chances of survival they stay within the relationship hoping things will change for the better. Adapting their personality and aspirations to the pleasing of the dominating partner within the domestic arrangement which is violence, trauma and pain. BLACK Americans have been in a state of arrested development seeing only the dominant culture as whole and fulfilled within their ability to set goals and follow through to completion. What has been broken within this arrangement is BLACK Americans sense of self, as it relates to operating within the confines of their own self interest. When planning and developing methods for progress the dominant class is always taken into consideration but, this is not the case when we reverse this arrangement and reflect on how the dominant class has positioned its self towards progress through planning. The dominant culture's self centered aspirations are inherently self serving and is ultimately a indication that only those whose serve the interests of the dominant culture are revered as 'seen'.
Laws and policies have been implemented to stunt the possibility of real growth for BLACK Americans. Land has been taken without consideration to put it gently, then reallocated to conservation programs governed by European immigrants. The indigenous land that has been controlled and harmonized by its aboriginal inhabitants have been all but disregarded in the plans for progress by the dominant culture. Specifically, the genocide carried out by Anglo Saxon Protestants here in America. A byproduct that caused much of the fractured consciousness and shattered identity that Black Americans experience inner-generationally. The laws and policies create a unnatural dependency for BLACK Americans, dulling the ability to exhibit creative power without fear of consequence or punishment. This fear or punishment can manifest in the form of imprisonment which, is a higher concentration of confinement for the individual. Or state ordained violence which in James & Stanley Bearden, Emmitt Till, Breana Taylor and Oscar Grant's case can mean execution without trail.
The current system of global control has been put into place to protect the injustices of the ones who occupy land foreign to their origin to the demise of the native and or indigenous people's ability to seek recourse for the atrocities waged against them. What I have noticed is the 13th amendment in the constitution created a class of policies enforced by police, that supported the dominate culture's ability to exploit , govern and traumatize BLACK Americans. Michelle Alexander's book the New Jim Crow opens the casket on the tragedies of the African American's illusion of progress in the United States of America "As the United States celebrates its “triumph over race” with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of black men in major urban areas are under correctional control or saddled with criminal records for life. Jim Crow laws were wiped off the books decades ago, but today an extraordinary percentage of the African American community is warehoused in prisons or trapped in a parallel social universe, denied basic civil and human rights—including the right to vote; the right to serve on juries; and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits".
The social engineering of perpetual captivity is a form of convert violence against Black people in America, an arm of a type of supremacy sanctioned in the Doctrine of discovery . We have been married to an abusive partner who doesn't want us to leave but ultimately has made the choice to ignore our needs, no matter the form. The harm that we have endured is a epigenetic. That is to say, for instance, the trauma of slavery can be passed on transgenerationally. Recent epigenetic studies have shown that stress, socio-economic deprivation, racism and other traumatic experiences of our ancestors can play a part in turning on or off certain genes in our DNA.
How is this abusive relationship influencing the care of the sickle cell community? It does so by America harboring a perpetual racist campaign towards BLACK America. This campaign is expressed in the form of either neglect or exploitation, this is expressed by neglecting the needs of the majority of the BLACK community while exploiting the talents of the rest. The sickle cell community was a part of the neglect until it became valuable within the confines of medical colonialism. BLACK American's pain and suffering did not start with sickle cell but it has evolved into a symbol of it. As a nation within a nation, Black Americans have never experienced a recess from racism so why would we trust that this social poison will not show its ugly head within the treatment of the sickle cell community?
There has been no effort to address the needs of BLACK America from a vantage point that there has been a harm and injustice against them. The consequences of this social arrangement has been stress and despair, both manifest as health disparities when measured in relation to the dominant culture. How can sickle cell be cured or healed within the context of a racist hegemony? It will not, even now we are faced with the idea of a gene therapy that creates sterilization in the Sickle Cell Community in the name of a cure. The cure that racism as a institution provides seems to be in alignment with the principles of eugenics which, in the case of this gene therapy, directed towards the sickle cell community, creates a population of permanent out patients.
The phenomenon of a population of permanent outpatients will only happen through ignorance, not knowledge. When knowledge illuminates the darkness within our own subconsciousness we will once again regain the tools needed to heal ourselves. We are in an information avalanche, coined as the age of information where ignorance is a choice. We must accept the fact that only 'we' can solve our problems, we will have allies but, ultimately this holistic assignment to restore ourselves to wholeness is exclusively our own, there will be no 'white saviors' in this chapter. My message to BLACK people is, be investigative into overly kind acts by forces who have said one thing and done another historically. Proceed with caution! We have nothing to gain and everything to lose by offering up our genetic information , our bodies and the future of our reproductive system, to a experimental at best, western institution.
- Create Society