CHAPTER 3
UNSHACKLE YOUR MIND
THE DEGRADATION OF THE AFRIKAN PEOPLE:
by John R. Moore
If you plant weed in a vegetable garden, a poor harvest will result. The same thing happens with people. Various types of weed have been planted in the minds of Black people, but unlike the farmer, the larger society has been looking forward to a bountiful harvest. The larger society seems to have suffered a convenient memory loss, but to understand how things appear in the present; the not too distant past must be explored.
When Black people did not perform in the way whites expected them to or when they were unavailable, white people would paint themselves Black to continue playing those negative Black roles.
This poster is an actual page taken from the Johnson Catalogue which was circulated all over the country showing Nigger make up.
White people could buy Nigger make up or burnt cork to paint their faces Black and then go out to either portray their distorted images of Black people, or to play roles in movies about Black people of which they knew nothing about.
It is a peculiar, pervasive, twisted kind of connection, the projection of certain kinds of qualities that are inside the person who is doing this to another race of people.
For example, observe what is taking place in this photo. A white actor on the left is dressed up in burnt cork to look Black, but notice that the role he is playing is the same role which the Black actors were playing.
This white actor is also portraying a weak Black male juxtaposed to the strong white male image.
Later Al Jolson from Al Jolson and the Jazz singers made lots of money with his burnt cork Black face routine shown here, while using many Black actors as background substitutes.
He took this idea to different level by doing comedy routines that were based on these distorted Black images, as he was now in a position where he could project an image of who Black people are.
Black people could not do anything about this state of affairs which eventually developed into something called minstrelry. This became the most popular form of entertainment in America for 50 years. You hardly get soap operas lasting that long, so why was there this fascination for 50 years with the distortion of the Black image as the most popular form of entertainment? Again note the exaggerated caricature of the Black person portrayed by Al Jolson.
From the movies the radio comes into focus, where for 32 years the most popular programme was the Amos 'n' Andy characters, created by two white actors named Freeman Gosden and Charles Corell.
After the programme became popular on the radio for 32 years, it was later converted to a TV series.
It meant that they now had to find Black actors to play the parts of these Black characters that were invented by white people, and this leads back to the question related to the creation of the Negro mentioned at the beginning of this study.
This Stephen Fetchit character did not exist anywhere on the Afrikan continent. In fact, no one there acts like Amos 'n' Andy, so the kinds of things projected were not typical of any Afrikans, but were the fabrications of the white mind at the time.
Later, Black actors began to get roles, but look at the Black actor on the right and what he has to do in order to get his part.
He now has to do what the white actors were doing - a caricature of a caricature. In other words you have the minstrel imitating the minstrel in order to get work.
The images of Black females were also distorted in a similar way. Usually the Black female had to be fat, loud and bossy, an image that has been present for a long time now.
This is one of the Shirley Temple movies.
Initially these acts were calculated, but over a period of time, they no longer had to be calculated, because if you are being fed these distorted images while growing up and then later become a TV producer, then these are the only images that you have to work with. In other words, you are only drawing on memory. Therefore, you have the results of the calculation where you no longer have to sit down and decide to continue twisting the image, because the twisted image has now become the real picture for you. For this reason there was a hunger in the minds of many white Americans for the images that they grew up with, such as Stephen Fetchit, Beulah, Vashti and those types of early characters for example.
So you may ask, "What was wrong with the real Black image that made white Americans want to avoid it?" It was and still is too powerful to handle for those people who are insecure. When you look at the NBA and the NFL you see a preponderance of power images among the Black males, therefore it may not be by accident that you would find tiny Black males associated with the most popular TV programmes as in Different Strokes. Although this may not be an accurate explanation, it is hard not to draw the association between those two elements. When you get into the history of Black people, it is so powerful that it definitely could not be handled by a population that had been trained to believe other things.
So what is it about the Afrikan-American, the Black man, woman and child that makes white people everywhere want to control their development? There are about 33 million Black people in the United States of America making them the largest visible "minority group" in the country, so with unity and power, this could create competition. If the continent of Afrika is added, there will be another few hundred million people with wealth and resources that when awakened would be a formidable opponent in everything that takes place globally. Naturally, people fear competition, especially those who are familiar with the history of the role that Black people as a whole have played on the world stage. They have every right to respect the economical and power capacity of Black people to perform on the world stage.
Yet during the time of slavery there was a situation where the Black Man was considered inferior and laws were instituted forbidding him to read, so what then was so inferior about the Afrikan? These measures were again calculated as can be recognized by referring to the psycho-dynamics mentioned earlier; the suppression of memory and identity.
To illustrate what is meant by the suppression of memory, take the computer as a comparison, where if you could empty the contents of the Afrikan mind, (which cannot be done once people have data saved there), so that the natural memories disappear either through segregation, being forcibly removed, or patiently waiting for the generation to die out in order that the children can easily receive and accept without question, a new programme devoid of even knowing about the old memories.
As a result of the new programme, the children will behave inappropriately as is the case with many of our children today, because as a group, the initiative was not taken to determine the nature of these supplied programmes before ensuring that our children have access to them, or to even question the nature of the programme sufficiently. As a result the chance to rescue ourselves has been lost (temporarily).
There is some kind of concern about what Black children are being taught. Most Black parents have only one goal in mind which is, "I want my child to get a good education", without knowing what good is.
Ron McNair, the astronaut who blew up on the Challenger launch pad, received what can be termed a good education. He got a technical education which made him one of the most brilliant laser physicists in the world.
This explains what he was trying to accomplish up there in the capsule which was a physics experiment, but he never once forgot who he was or where he came from. For example, one of his hobbies was Jazz music, - Black music which he enjoyed, and he even played in a Jazz band.
He was also a fourth degree Black belt karate expert, and was also active in community service because he felt a sense of responsibility and obligation to his people. This represents someone who has a good education.
A person like that who took his learning and knowledge of physics and used it for Black people would be showing a sense of social responsibility, as every group of sane people would do for itself.
On the other hand there may be someone else who becomes a laser physicist but does not have the sense of social responsibility to his community, who even rejects his cultural forms and decides that to be a physicist means that he has to adopt western European culture and values. This would be a mis-educated Black person, and there are many of this calibre around.
Here are some products that were popular back in the day.
Nigger Hair Tobacco.
Nigger Hair Tobacco was an actual product which you could go into the store and buy.
Again to show this pervasive, manipulation of the images of Black people, take a look at the ring in the nose. This time it is attacking the image of the Black woman.
Nigger Head Tees.
Imagine you are getting ready to go and play golf so you stop at the pro shop and pick up some tees.
Again look at the Sambo image of the Black male on the golf tee box.
Nigger Blues.
In the music store you pick up a piece of sheet music. Again notice the distortion of the image of the Black person.
Darkie Toothpaste.
Darkie Toothpaste is being sold by Colgate Palmolive Company in Asia. Look at the article published in the Atlanta Constitution on February 17th 1986 which talks about the sale of Darkie Toothpaste in the Far East.
They made it clear that this product would continue to be sold since they do not have Black people in the Far East to object to it, neither does it have the same meaning to the people there. So here again even during 1986, the projection of these same darkie images were prevalent.
Here are some postcards that used to be sent through the United States mail. Imagine a group of people who are at the bottom and need strength, turning turn to their culture for positive messages only to find these types of messages.
In this left image is a card entitled "A coon tree is a possum."
They used to call Black people coons, (short for racoon). On the right image is a card entitled "In Dixie land", which is making fun of Black Nappy Hair.
On the right is a little girl teaching her grandfather to read, but the way this artist drew the postcard, it gets projected to us as a negative instead of treating it as a positive.
In the upper right hand corner it says "grandpa's embarrassment".
You can even see the play on the stereotypical sexuality of the Black female which you see projected on this card with the quote, "Love they say is wicked, bad and bum... but gee I wish I could find me some!"
If you put this in context with the stereotype of the Black female as just lusting after males, then it will justify her rape and the attacks on her person. Over time you will come to realize that these were not just innocent matters.
On the other hand everyone knows that it was the white slave owners who were the perpetrators of lust; since it certainly was not the Blacks. So here again you have this twisting, denial of reality, perceptual distortion, delusions of greatness and projection of blame. In other words, this represents a whole set of syndromes that can only be regarded as a mental illness syndrome which is characteristic of racist behaviour.
Here are other sample COON images that attacked the Black population.
Ten Little Niggers was a text book that was used in schools in 1896. These images were and still are pervasive and no group of people in history has ever had this happen to them.
Never in the history of humankind can you document another period of time where one group was targeted with so many of these different kinds of assaults on the self image.
Here on the left, little Black boys are taught what they are supposed to do when they grow up; that is, to shine little white boys' shoes.
On the left is a beautiful movie actress, Josephine Bailey, and this is what she actually looked like.
On the right is what she had to do in order to get work. She has to dress up like a minstrel and then play those parts that were created and fabricated for Black people. People do not understand the kind of damage that can be done through these images, so they just shrug their shoulders and ask, "what harm is that going to do?"
But you do not see other people doing this to their children because it is going to cause a lot of harm. If there are these comedy shows in the white community, they have other topics to balance them off. In the Black community there was almost nothing of a positive nature that you could turn to on the television until The Cosby Show came along. Those negative images do have an effect especially on the children, because they get imbedded in their minds.
You do not see Jews running around making fun of the holocaust or encouraging everybody to wear the prison uniforms that they used to wear just for the fun of it. There is nothing funny about that, so why should the pain of Black people be funny to us especially, or to others.
Here is an article taken from a magazine that asked the question, "Does TV have a secret formula for Blacks?" Look at who they are referring to here, Jefferson and his wife, which was perhaps not one of the best shows on TV in terms of Black image.
This was an assault on the Black image of the middle class, because here is a man who is supposed to be at the top, and is given a little dinky apartment in New York along with a couple cleaning establishments, but he is a total clown.
This is the Black middle class image in the eyes of the secret formula people. But how do you even get several cleaning establishments if you are acting like a clown? It takes a very bright person to accomplish that, yet the writers never projected any image of him as a bright person.
*Prime time writers for Black people*
The secret formula question hits at something that is very important in television. The people who write the stories and create the shows on most prime time TV for Black people were usually not Black people.
It has only been recently that Black people had a measure of control over the Black images on TV with shows like The Cosby Show where Rafael Toussaint and Bill Cosby had a good degree of editorial control over the show.
But these are the types of images those writers think are funny when they see The Jeffersons. Our Black needs are not being met through their portrayals; but, their needs were being met as they repeated those images of degraded Black folk.
So until the The Cosby Show came along, the only effective father for a Black child on TV was a white father, as for example in the popular show Different Strokes.
Here little Arnold, who was adopted, has a white father, and this was the type of image that was supposed to be the positive male image for the Black child.
Look at the subliminal message that was constantly being sent out to the whole Black community at the time.
Here is Flip Wilson which became very popular and only lasted as long as he would dress up as Geraldine and become bizarre. These are the kinds of images that the white writers delighted in.
Left to right: Flip Wilson: Globe Trotters as a comedy:
Sanford and Son: J.J. Walker - Good Times
Notice how happy they appeared. Now recall Stephen Fetchit and try to identify any differences from among these images of the 70's and 80s that were still being presented to us.
The point being made is that these images were not innocent, because if you go back in history you will realize that if you allow people to twist the images of any group or population, it then becomes easy to manipulate dominant populations to do negative things as was the case during the height of the Ku Klux Klan era.
It can be seen clearly from these pictures that these images were very serious issues indeed by simply judging from the burnings and lynching that became rampant.
The question may then be asked about television. "What are our children doing?" They are learning while they are laughing. But what are the lessons that they are learning.
Well here is an example, Celebrity Dolls. Look at the dolls that our children were picking up as a result. Remember those TV shows just mentioned? Notice the Fred Sanford and J.J dolls. In other words, children take these images from TV and turn them into their real life images.
There are some people who spend their time doing academic analysis of media and messages like Dan Shore, who gives a WARNING in this article on the left that even in the news, the messages may be conflicting so we must be careful. This applies to everybody and not just to Blacks.
People have written books on this subject, especially the TV medium. Subliminal Seduction would be a case in point where on the cover of that book for example, the word SEX is written in the ice cubes on the glass appearing as shadows, but it is not received directly, but subliminally. They must have known how people could easily be influenced to lean in the direction of certain information by flashing subliminal images on the TV screen fast enough to be picked up by the brain but not with the eyes about 20 years or more ago, so that you get the message without realizing where it had come from or even that it was received. So the subliminal message may be more powerful at times than the actual message, because people are not aware that it is being fed into their brains.
This means that a whole generation must be educated about this possibility, especially if someone has the capacity to manipulate images consciously and also has the history of having done so intentionally. It then becomes crucial that the people who are being victimised by this the most become critical viewers, but you can only become a critical viewer by being aware of it. Remember that your mind cannot be programmed if you are aware that someone is trying to programme your mind.
Now look at some of the contrasting images for white males and try to imagine anything by way of comparison for the Black male. See Gary Cooper and Marlon Brandon, Black people do not have a Black Gary Cooper or Marlon Brandon that is popular.
There is even a white female Tarzan named Sheena, so now with women's liberation, white women can now go over and do to Afrikans what Tarzan used to do.
But this type of 'liberation' should raise some serious questions about what true liberation is to which a strong commitment could be made, but we should not be mislead by those who have a commitment only to what is really a pseudo liberation.
Here again is the summation of this whole section in this one picture, Are Black Children Using Only Half a Brain? Notice the gaze at this superman image. This is what is being projected for other populations, while the degraded image of Black people is being projected.
A young Black child who has not been in the old world does not have anything to feed on to nourish and programme the mind, so the danger and the reason it becomes necessary to have volumes like this available to share with you becomes obvious, as it attempts to show the corrected version of the history of Afrika, Afrikan-American people and Black people in general.
The degradation of the sacred word N-G-R.
One of the Ten Commandments is "Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." However, the racist term Nigger, which is a derivative of the original name for God, N-G-R (pronounced Net-ger), has been used continuously as a racist, corrupt term to insult, degrade and provoke Black people. Nigger comes from the Egyptian word Net-yer or Net-ger for God, having its origins in the sacred, divine title for God. Words like nature and nurture come from this very root, so the idea of God being nature or nature being God and other expressions that describe the various characteristics of the Godhead, stem from the Black Afrikan and Egyptian concept of what God is.
The ancient Egyptians also called their Pharaohs N-G-R (Net-ger), because the original Egyptian Pharaohs who were pure Black Afrikans, not only saw Black skin as sacred but also as a direct blessing from the sun God Aten. They saw themselves as representatives of the sun and the Sun God, so Blackness and Black skin were associated with God and the sun. The recognition of Pharaoh as a living embodiment of God and the Black skin as a blessing, quickly spread around the world to other cultures, and Net-ger became the Ethiopian Negus (Emperor,) or Negashi (King.).
So how did this word for God, N-G-R (Net-ger) become Nigger, Negro and Niger? Well the Roman invaders of Egypt, who would have heard the term used to describe the leaders of Egypt or Nubia, were the first people to corrupt the term N-G-R. The Latin term Niger, which means Black or Negro, was then used to refer to any Black or Negroid person that the Romans saw in Afrika or anywhere else. Before the time of Shakespeare, the term used for Black people in England was Moor or Black-a-Moor.
The Romans then colonized and spread the Latin language to Europe, and because of this linguistic influence, the Latin term Niger became Negre in French and Negro in Spanish. The English colonialists and slave owners later borrowed the term Negro from the Spanish, and then proceeded to degrade and defile the entire name first by enslaving Negroes and then by converting the original term Ned-ger or God into the racist term Nigger. So while oppressing God's original created people of the earth, they have been insulting God's sacred name as well, a phobia that is due to their sense of inferiority. This is the origin of the N word, so always remember that the word Nigger came from the Khemite or Egyptian term N-G-R or NET-GER for God.
In the Black languages of India, which are part of the Cushite branch of the Afrikan languages, the term Naga signifies original or first, so in ancient India the people with the Blackest skins were respected and held in high esteem until the racist, colonialist, alien concept of varna, the caste colour racism of the Aryan barbarians, placed the Sudroids, Negro Tribals, Black-Australoids, Indo-Negroids, Dalits, and other Negroids at the extreme bottom of Indian society, a cause against which the Buddha fought .
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