In one of Joy DeGruy’s most famous publications on post-traumatic slave syndrome, she debunks the myth of race. The prominent psychologist argues that humans are fundamentally identical in their genetic/biological makeup, and the differences in cultural expression and physical appearance are merely examples of what makes people diverse. DeGruy educates that race remains scientifically baseless but socially relevant in the most despicable manner: as a basis for racism. She proceeds to argue that not everyone can afford to be racists. It is a vice reserved for a person who believes that specific biological and genetic differences make their group superior over another and has the power to affect the perceived inferior adversely. Besides the illusion of race, DeGruy indicts America and Americans of pathological denial of racism and its attending atrocities, hence the relevance of an essay analyzing why black lives do matter.
Black people are, by many measures, the backbone of America’s wealth and prosperity. The United States is considered one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It once rose to the pinnacle, ranking as the world’s superpower for the most of the last century. This success goes back to the age of chattel slavery, the 1800s, when slaves were America’s most significant financial asset. The dehumanizing conditions these people worked in while producing cotton, for instance, generated profits that ranked the U.S. as one of the most prosperous economies globally.
Meanwhile, slaves forfeited, by today’s standards, trillions of dollars in wages in unfairly compensated labor. In short, as the legacy of trauma endures, so does the cumulative wealth America reaped from the unappreciated black lives. Black lives matter, thus, as the founding ‘economic fathers’ of America’s vast wealth, but the country only seems determined to obliterate this vital fact.
As hinted in the introduction, the discussion on the value of black lives remains relevant in the 21st century because society has failed to acknowledge the same. It can be confidently argued that chattel slavery endured for far too long the American society became addicted, forgetting how to function humanely without subjugating one of its members. Although many people today do not appreciate the full extent to which, for example, the Jim Crow system, America’s most valorized version of apartheid, it remains undisputable that heinous crimes against humanity characterized it. Slaves were commoditized, tortured, separated from their children, executed, and their carcasses disparaged to serve as a lesson (DeGruy, 2017). These practices were meant to instill fear and make slaves internalize their inferior positions and perpetuate white supremacy and satisfy their wanton greed for wealth. Put differently, America’s brutal capitalist system symptomizes chronic dysfunction that feeds on the continued subjugation of blacks.
The most unsettling part of America’s crave for slavery is that it manipulates science and spreads myths to justify its continued denial of racism and the atrocities meted on black people. An interaction with many scientific publications would almost certainly leave one convinced that blacks are a despicable lot. They flood statistics on crimes, poverty, mortality, morbidity, dysfunctional parenting, memory, and accidents. Without saying so directly, many studies show how black dominate the criminal justice system, as convicts or suspects collectively echo that black people are generally felons. Conversely, all levels of society brim with distrust for blacks; employers distrust black applicants’ academic qualifications and moral standards without necessarily having any evidence to that effect.
The epitome of systematic onslaught is readily recognized in the criminal justice system. One can strongly believe that they are superior in their group relative to another, but this belief does not translate into racism until some power is employed to harm the inferior. White supremacy, though fallacious, has been affirmed using unflinching brutality. An efficient tool explicitly developed to abet the spreading of this myth is the policing system.
Police brutality would easily be dismissed as a cliché, except it remains widespread and disproportionately affects blacks. For many blacks, the single most terrifying threat is the police. Historically, America has witnessed the police shoot and kill unarmed black suspects. The police force, predominantly comprises whites, sometimes sinks so low as to suspend its quest for justice to appeal to ingrained racial bias.
One of the most nauseating examples of racial decadence is the recent George Floyd’s case in Minnesota. When a convenient store attendant notified the police that Floyd paid using counterfeit money, the police took just a few minutes to respond and even fewer to neutralize him. An officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for over 10 minutes and did not relent even after he showed no signs of consciousness, effectively killing him. The brutality of police arrests recorded today are reminiscent of the dark days when blacks suspected of committing a crime against a white person were kidnapped from police cells, executed, and their bodies discarded. This pattern confirms that the law enforcement agency is here to police black people and ensure that they live according to the white constructed boundaries of a second-class citizen.
Black lives also matter because the entire law enforcement system is rigged to treat them as inferior humans. Studies have been concocted to show that black people are generally violent and resist arrest. Consequently, the public became sympathetic of their noble heroes – the police – who take so much risk to keep the society safe. This deranged thinking portrayed blacks as a threat to society and sanctioned targeted policing. In America’s mythical war against drugs, law enforcement officers frequently conduct unlawful search on blacks everywhere: railway stations, airports, highways, and even schools. The police do not need to have a reasonable cause of suspicion to stop and frisk a black person, confirming the presumption that a black person cannot be lawful and is guilty by default. Put differently, unlike their white counterparts, the blacks are still under the strict surveillance of an imaginary slave master.
Pathological denial of racism has enabled America to revive the Jim Crow system. American society’s determination to relegate blacks to a permanent position of second class citizen is epitomized in the difficulty suspects face to prove their innocence upon arrest. In Alexander Michelle’s “The New Jim Crow,” she offers a trifling analysis of how mass incarceration festers under the mask of colorblindness, revealing the predatory nature of the legal system. Blacks are arrested in hordes, systemically denied a chance to a full-blown fair hearing, and inevitably branded as felons. Bearers of this title, who are also disproportionately black, are officially ushered into a parallel universe where they subjected to discrimination, and stigma.
By birth, many blacks are citizens, an inalienable right, but cannot exercise their democratic right to vote. America is so determined to remind blacks that they are not equal citizens that it increasingly brands them as felon and uses it as an excuse to deny them a chance to have a meaningful say in the governing of the country. This tactic succeeds in keeping blacks subjugated because their grievances hardly ever get addressed in the legislative level of governance.
Some critics have argued that ‘black lives matter’ is racist. To these people, this slogan perpetuates the fallacy that other minority social distinctions are not battling with their fair share of racism. Additionally, they believe that life is generally sanctified, whether the individual in question is white, Indian, or African American. While this position is powerful, it trivializes the scourge’s extent and deflects attention from it. For over 400 years, blacks have borne the brunt of slavery in every imaginable way. Until today, they continue to endure detrimental legacies of chattel slavery as the society has failed to grant them full equal rights. Worse yet, contemporary society continues to delude itself in insignificant concepts of colorblindness without actually taking responsibility for the dark past into which its success is rooted.
America has an uncanny way of blaming blacks for its problems when, in retrospect, it leads the population to a carefully laid trap. DeGruy (2017) confirms that people internalize trauma as an adaptive measure. Years of denigration and subjugation compelled blacks to develop survival tactics such as deep distrust for authorities and the belief that they are inferior. Additionally, years of economic segregation have subjected them to poverty. Years of deferred dreams, as Langston Hughes accurately predicted in his famous poem, have exploded in ways that the imperialist system now interprets as chronic social dysfunction curable only through a tight prison system.
Black lives matter also because it should be lived for the betterment of the self, not for the enrichment of others. The prison system dominated by black inmates has recently faced fierce criticism for running a modern version of slavery. Convicts locked for a ridiculously long term, sometimes wrongly, spend decades proving free labor for corporations. They are paid pittance, yet they make goods and provide services sold to the global market. In other words, blacks live their lives serving others as their own families despair in desolate living conditions. These circumstances can easily motivate one to believe that blacks are animals with underdeveloped cognitive capabilities. In many ways, blacks are comparable to a domesticated animal. The owner may consider it worthy only to the extent that it creates value by his desired standards. Meanwhile, the animal has no say regarding the conditions in which it works, and the master is free to construct one-sided theories justifying the way he treats it, including its brutal slaughter.
In conclusion, “black lives matter” is not merely a slogan; it is a protest against the dehumanizing conditions American society perpetuates against its black populace merely because of their difference in skin color. Despite contributing vast private and public wealth to the U.S. economy, blacks are still blamed for everything that is wrong with the society. They are thus denied access to quality education, healthcare services, jobs, and voting rights. At its extreme, this segregation leads to actual loss of lives through police brutality and indirect systemized killers like poverty, diseases, and frustrations that leave suicide as the only solution. Black lives matter; it must be lived in liberty and with access to essential social services and human work conditions that help blacks realize their full potential, rather than being the ladder others climb to their twisted capitalistic dreams.
Reference
DeGruy-Leary, J. (2017). Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s legacy of enduring injury. Portland, OR: Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.