Understanding Black Dysfunction and Self-Destruction

[Tair]

I have to type all of this out since I couldn't find a PDF, so if you see something not making sense, it's my error, not the author.

In light of the forgoing and forthcoming, we must recognize that within limits, alleged Black crime is socioeconomically functional for the White American status quo and is ultimately symptomatic of the societal "needs" of powerful segments of the American class structure and of its dysfunctionality. In this context, we must ask and answer the following questions: Why do White Americans need to criminalize significant segments of the African American population? What is the sociopolitical function of alleged African American criminality and self-destructive behavior in American society? How does alleged Black American criminality sustain the American status quo? How is "criminal motivation" induced into the personalities and social relations of some African Americans and for what reasons? While the scope of this book will not allow us to adequately deal with these questions, they must be answered and the answers pragmatically utilized if the alleged criminality, self-destructiveness, and victimization of African Americans are to be eradicated in the Black American communities.

....

In the eyes of White America, an exaggeratedly large segment of Black America is criminally suspect. This is especially true relative to the Black American male. In the fevered mind of White America he is cosmically guilty. His guilt is existential. For him to be alive is to be suspected, to be stereotypically accused, convicted, and condemned for criminal conspiracy and intent.

Whether as the result of acculturation or of innate biological propensities, when a community perceives itself to be the object of oppression or perceives its vital institutions and members to be at risk such that decisive actions must be taken, the males traditionally undertake leadership of the resistance. Males and the bonding between them in coalition with their female counterparts, form the backbone of a viable society. Significant males are essential to a community's intra-dependence, structure, social coherence, continuity, viability, adaptability, self-defense and liberation from oppression and exploitation. Traditionally, the male component of an exploited community is seen by its exploiters, who themselves are usually males, as by temperament and biological/cultural endowment, the most likely to take up arms both psychosocially and/or materially against its oppressors. Consequently, oppressors typically target the male component of the oppressed community for relatively more intense oppression, containment, imprisonment, humiliation, emasculation, sociopolitical-economic discrimination, personality assassination, and various forms of physical eradication. The neutralization of an oppressed community's males by the destruction of their character, authority and credibility, allows an oppressor to override that society's territorial and institutional imperatives and exposes it to unrestrained, rapacious domination and exploitation.

Consequently, the institutional and organizational integrity of the oppressed community becomes dysfunctional or nonfunctional and the community is there upon destructively exploited by aliens and/or left to self-destruct. Emasculated males under such circumstances may become unwitting allies to, and vehicles of, the genocide and suicide of their community. These eviscerated, uprooted males may inadvertently become instruments of oppression by preying on their own community, thwarting it's viable interests of defending them. This, the psychological disarmament of male resistance results in the destructive exploitation of the community against which that male resistance would ordinarily fight.

Taken from chapter 3: American Society: Crimogenic Society

"Black-on-Black Violence: The Psychodynamics of Black Self-Annihilation In Service of White Domination" by Dr. Amos Wilson

One of the best books I read on this topic.

@Matt504

 

[get these nets]

As I was reading, I couldn't figure if it was Dr Wilson or Dr. Na'im Akbar.

I read their work when I was young. Since that time, have seen many instances of guys taking shortcuts into criminal activity, instead of working. Too many of us from the "lower rings" did NOT enter criminality for me to see such behavior and choices as inevitable.

And interestingly enough, those who entered that world and served time take full accountability for the bad decisions they made earlier in life.

 

[010101]

..........*

 

[MajesticLion]

Beach Ball Theory.

 

[Tair]

As I was reading, I couldn't figure if it was Dr Wilson or Dr. Na'im Akbar.

I read their work when I was young. Since that time, have seen many instances of guys taking shortcuts into criminal activity, instead of working. Too many of us from the "lower rings" did NOT enter criminality for me to see such behavior and choices as inevitable.

And interestingly enough, those who entered that world and served time take full accountability for the bad decisions they made earlier in life.

When there is a concerted effort operating to emasculate (also the subject of Tommy Curry's, "The Man Not"), humiliate, and stop a community from advancing, there are inevitable consequences of that and it usually causes a community to retrograde in its morality and thinking.

It is not inevitable for all of us to become self-destructive, no system can perfectly keep 100% of a people in a dilapidated state. But what is inevitable is a good chunk of the dehumanized population taking up toxic mentalities and behaviors/attitudes.

The path to masculinity is tougher, or if you take Dr. Curry's theory, nonexistent in Black society.

What we constantly see is emasculation. And using modern day rap as an example, specifically drill, Black young boys are targeted into thinking those negative aspects of masculinity - gun toting, violence, robbing, killing - is what manhood is. Be the predator, not the prey; the strong, not the weak. That form of "entertainment" or propaganda is coated with the idea that it is almost "soldier like" when it is just a good exemplification of Black male emasculation.

As you said when talking about the men you met that went to jail and regretting their actions. They are the lucky ones (given that particular situation) - they were able to live and learn from their actions without being subjected to more trauma. My contention, and what I believe Dr. Amos' belief is: what is causing this high number of us to fail and engage in negative behaviors? How do we understand and correct that as a community in an impactful way?

I do believe a sick environment creates many bad elements. Those elements are what causes further instability. So, I don't believe Dr. Amos is saying Black people can abdicate responsibility to do and be better because of white racism, rather he is trying to get us to understand how our condition was created and is exploited by non-Black people to our detriment, and how this keeps us in a cycle of dysfunction and distrust. Once we can understand this we can better stem the tide of Black dysfunction and grow as a community.

That is my takeaway.