Table of Contents
“Social unrest and racial turmoil has existed in American for many years. Throughout history, institutional oppression and structural racism has been the overarching form of social control used to maintain dominance over the African American community” (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 20). Historically, the African American population has consistently come out at the bottom while certain racial demographics in the United States, usually those of European decent, continue to prevail in areas like economics, education, incarceration, and health while African Americans continue to fall behind.
The bigger question becomes, why? How in a country that is built on equality for all does it only seemingly benefit the few? For the African American citizens of America, this has been the question way before Abraham decided to free the slaves but an even more feverish battle after. This divide is due largely in part to the ethnocentric beliefs and stereotypes continuously upheld in America leaving African Americans to be treated as less-than.
As a group, African Americans are treated as second-class citizens largely in part to the racial tension stemming from the Reconstruction Era and the discrimination they faced during the Jim Crow Era. Today, these injustices and inequalities African Americans were told so passionately no longer exist are coming back to the forefront and being plastered on the news as our society and those that lead it make martyrs of black girls, boys, men and women.
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Though it is nothing new, it shows the structural and institutional oppression of African Americans (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 20) as their lost names become battle cries and their lost lives become testimonies of injustice. The only way to begin to fix the problem is to try to understand why there are more black men in prisons than in schools. As mentioned in the above quote, reform is a necessary effect for the systemic problems caused within the system meant to fix most of our countries problems.
Racial Oppression
The beginning of the racial oppression facing African Americans began in the time of slavery. “Slaveholders held positions of power across the three branches of government at the dawn of our nation” (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 24). It was here that African Americans were officially seen as property and a form of commodity rather than human beings. The Africans brought over were bound together like cattle and treated as such while being physically and emotionally abused while living in substandard conditions (2016,24).
The dehumanization faced by the Africans included this treatment but was not limited to the distorted racial interpretations (2016, 24) that positioned Africans as “other” and sadly lasted that way in the minds of some generations. Other form of racial oppression in the times of slavery included that babies were separated from their mothers so that they could be sold as slaves for other plantations and the inabilities of slaves to be married.
These terrible forms of isolation and dehumanization faced by slaves lasted past their Emancipation largely due to the fact that those oppressing them were the ones that ran the country, much like today. They did not have a say in legal matter nor were they judged by a jury of their peers as exemplified in the novel reflecting on southern life, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.
The south held on to their backwards ideologies about African Americans even after the addition of the 13th, 14, and 15th Amendments that “prohibit slavery, ensure equal protection, and extend the right to vote to African Americans” (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 24). This internalized hatred can be seen with the growth of the Ku Klux Klan and the Jim Crow laws that became the unspoken law of the south. When African Americans tried to speak up about their mistreatment, they were either lynched, bullied, or jailed despite having fought for the country that seemingly never fought for them.
African American Resiliency, Resistance, and Transcendence
As African Americans fought for their voices and their freedom during the Civil War, they paved the way for their successors during the Civil Rights Movement that challenged the inequalities upheld in the United States. With leaders such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., the desire for equality and integration over separate but equal became the first sign of African American resistance to the social injustices faced in their daily lives. The Movement gained momentum and the youth of America took their seats literary and figuratively.
Students of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), established in 1942, held sit-ins and eventually freedom rides with Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SELC) that used nonviolent tactics to fight for equality. These demonstrations often turned violent but also showed the resiliency of the African American community and their supporters as exemplified by the freedom riders there were subjected to brutality and firebombs (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 25). It made the support the movement across the nation stronger though it shifted from nonviolent to violent as “hopelessness and alienation” (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 26) began to seep more into the movement.
Through the words of Malcolm X and the separatist acts of CORE, the African American community began to liberate themselves and accept that there is no equal if those that determine equality cannot seem to understand what it means to be Black in America:
Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white American have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintained it, and white society condones it.
It is in understanding the relationship between African Americans and society that the nonviolent approach became less popular. In the eyes of leaders like Malcolm X, the justice and civil system that makes up America has never been on the side of African Americans nor will it ever be. These viewpoints have come back to the forefront of African American resistance today in relation to police brutality, harsh stereotypes in the media, and racial profiling.
African Americans are defining their existence for themselves and taking back the years of oppression endured by them through movements like kneeling during the Pledge of Allegiance or by being openly and unapologetically Black. Despite how inspiring and trailblazing these actions have been, there is still an imbalance as seen in the battles of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when will black lives truly matter to not only White Americans but Black Americans as well?
Freire’s Framework
During the height of the Civil Rights Movement largely as a residual effect of slavery, came the internalization of the oppressor. As expressed by Malcolm X in one of his famous speeches describing the differences between the “house Negro” and the “field Negro”, only one of them understood that they were not free. In his parable, he then goes to describe how much some African Americans want to be like their oppressor they fail to see the oppression and loss of identity due to their blind reliance and loyalty to them:
“The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master’s second-hand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master’s house…So whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself. When his master said, ‘We have good food, ‘the house Negro would say, ‘Yes, we have plenty of good food.’ When the master said that ‘we have a fine home here,’ the house Negro said, ‘Yes, we have a fine home here.’
When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he’d say, ‘What’s the matter boss, we sick?’ His master’s pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master’s house out than the master himself would.’ (X, “The Race Problem, 1963)”
This form of self-depreciation and fatalism, as expressed by Paulo Freire in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, shows the “duality of the oppressed, who are at the same time themselves and the oppressors whose image they have internalized” (1970, 61). The more they began to internalize the oppressor the more unaware of their situation they became; they could not see that there was a better life out there for them because they were manipulated to believe the masters second-hand treatments were the best that life could offer. This continues beyond slavery and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
For many Black boys and girls growing up, there was what Freire calls a “fear of freedom” (1970, 46) that strikes fear in the hearts of the oppressors. This generation is liberated as they throw away notions of what being Black should be and accept themselves for who they are by being the carefree black girls and black boys of joy society never let them be. Due to stereotypes perpetuated in the media, African American women were reduced to loud nanny-like caricatures and African American men these scary, aggressive, and unapproachable beings.
It was when the oppressed were able to liberate themselves from the confines of the oppressor were they free to be themselves and enjoy being alive in a way that many oppressed before them never could. This liberation was one of the first steps that African Americans took to relinquish themselves from the chains of the past along with past expectations: “Racial profiling perpetuates negative stereotypes of black males as ‘criminals’, ‘aggressive’, or ‘dangerous’ with catch phrases and verbal constructs (i.e., driving while black) or actions of locking your car door or crossing the street when you see a black man approaching” (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 27).
As the “fear of freedom” seeps into the daily life of oppressor, there comes a backlash formed out of violence initiated by oppressors “who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized” (1970, 54). As seen with modern police brutality again unarmed black men, this exploitation and dehumanization once again evident.
Understanding and Examining the Issues
In regards to the oppression framework, the African American population fits almost perfectly into the mold set in place by the oppressor and the oppressed while changing my view of child welfare and incarceration. This population, due to racial profiling and police brutality, is more likely to fall victim to school to prison pipeline that leaves them further behind in life. In regards to child welfare, there are more children growing up in single parent households which ultimately sets many of them up to be further behind in life.
In understanding the issue of incarceration, there are many facets to consider: deadly use of force, longer sentences, and racial profiling that targets the Black male. “Since the death of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, and numerous others, African American communities nationwide have sparked a revolution, a renaissance if you will, that speaks life into the mantra of ‘#BlackLivesMatter’ and ‘#ICan’tBreathe.’”(Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 39).
The loss of these lives created an outcry in the African American communities within the United States as more men and boys were being taken out of their neighborhoods by force or worse fates at the hands of those who should be protecting them. This imbalance in protection in the United States further reiterating that America is not equal for all, rather just some.
In “The Ugly Side of America: Institutional Oppression and Race” by Renita Seabrook and Heather Wyatt-Nichol, they reveal that there were more interracial incidents that exhibited excessive force:
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (2001, 45) compared the race of officers for intra and inter racial comparisons. When officers and suspects were the same race, 84% of excessive use of force incidents involved white officers on white suspects compared to black officers on black suspects (15%). When officers and suspects were of different races, 83% of use-of-force incidents involved white officers on black suspects— only 6% of the incidents represented black officers on white suspects (2016, 27).
This study shows that there is more white officers use deadly force in predominantly black communities while the opposite is not nearly as excessive. To fix this problem, as discussed by Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, it starts in adolescence.
How can we Change this America?
Children do not see race nor do they see differences of human beings other than the overtly obvious like who is faster or a better drawer. Discrimination and hatred are taught beginning the cycle of bias and unfairness to the black boy who will eventually grow up to be a man. For little black girls it is no different. They will be sexualized much earlier in life and automatically been as ghetto or lesser educated or deserving than their white peers.
In the words of Dr. King, “The plantation and the ghetto were created by those who had power both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate the powerlessness” (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 28). By limiting what people believe they can achieve, the more the oppressor can exert his control. This is where education and prison reform meet and where opportunity also becomes its own hindrance.
Often, when African Americans in society succeed in life, there is some jealousy in the heart of the oppressor rather than happiness that another human being overcame their circumstance circling back to Freire’s “fear of freedom” being more detrimental to the oppressor than the oppressed. As the oppressed becomes an equal, the oppressed begins to lose their footing in the world and some cannot handle a world where those that they used to oppress are now, in their own regards, the oppressor. Once again, both of these reactions to success is taught. For the oppressed African America who overcome the “ghetto” and begins to challenge the policy created by their former oppressor, like Dr. King, Malcolm X, or Colin Kaepernick, what they are trying to achieve becomes lost in translation to those who are trying to control the narrative of their stories.
For the nine year old on the eve of their 10th birthday, they do not see how quickly the world around them can change, and it is still unclear how we, as social workers, can work together to protect him and his black boy joy or black girl magic from becoming another martyr lost to the fight for equality and social justice when the want them to live in the post-racial world we so firmly want to believe but know is not true. All in all, “Racism, criminal behavior, and brutality are learned—a reflection of the external environment to which one is exposed. Now is the time to critically reflect on what it means to unlearn” (Seabrook and Wyatt-Nichol, 2016, 39) oppressed and unoppressed alike.
