“Us too” is a viable and extremely necessary concept that this organization is embracing, uplifting and working towards putting into practice. In this extremely dangerous time in American history where “Go back to where you came from” is a growing sentiment among the majority population of the dominate society we live in; it is essential that Black Americans work towards regaining their identity and lost social cohesion.
The “Us too” concept is based on the exclusive exceptional of Black Americans and their contributions to the development of this nation. We will work to apply the concept into the infrastructure and design of every solution or program that we’re developing to uplift and prolong the survival of Black life in this nation. It is extremely vital and essential that at the junction in American history, Black Americans began to operate, think and function in terms of protecting and preserving their very survival. To start thinking in terms that they are not just unwanted guest to this land but instead the rightful or part owners of this land based on their unpaid labor, contributions and untold suffering. A suffering and exclusion that is ongoing till this very day.
Make no mistake, from the “Send her back” chant to the white supremacists to the radical Religious Right to the White House itself, White Nationalist extremism is on the rise. Not only has the tone from the highest office put elected officials lives in imminent danger it has put even larger targets on the backs of Black Americans.
Those who have always been the target of Hate since the inception of America. Thus, we see that the dominate society has effectively marginalized Black America and closed its “internal” borders to their absorption into its society and culture generations ago. In fact, from the very begging. Black human being exclusion was written into the constitution.
Even to this very day Black representation and effective participation in its political affairs are minuscule and paternalistic-ally indulged. Black American ownership and control of its wealth-producing resources are small to the point of invisibility. Blacks are essentially excluded from all participation in America’s economic system.
The ability of the ruling White classes to maintain and successfully exploit the class-race status quo, requires that the material and social conditions which generate and under-gird that status quo function so as to foster their own race and class loyalties and cohesion while simultaneously permitting them to structure the material conditions and socialization experiences of Blacks and the poor in ways which destabilize and destroy their race and class consciousness, loyalties, and cohesion.
When incorporating the “us too” concept one must recognize that racism is not an attitude. It is not a feeling of hatred toward another people. You must understand that racism and white supremacy is in the very fabric, structures and values of the institutions of the American society itself. And until Black Americans evolve, change those structures, attitudes and values they will always be under the bottom of American society. No one or another group is coming to rescue them.
Unfortunately, the values that most Black Americans pursue are slave values and the values of servants. The social relations that we create and interact with were built and developed during the period of slavery. Black Americans have not escaped or overcome that mentality. But now, more than at any other point in American history, the time has come for us to change the slave consciousness.
This consciousness of servitude that is still too much with us today. And ultimately, we must ask the question that is closest to home for a lot of people. When we claim that we have escaped slavery and that slavery was something in the past, which has nothing to do with us today, then we must ask the question, “What kind of God do you worship?”
What’s its name? Who taught you to praise it? Was this the God your forefathers were praying to before they were brought to these shores? Is the religion you embrace the same as the one they had before they were brought to these shores? Can you name one African God?
How can you then define yourself, the very essence of your mind, and the very essence of your soul and organize the very nature of your life here on earth based on a God handed to you by a slave masters and claim that you have no slave consciousness and are not related to slavery? In other words, Black Americans are not Africans anymore. We have let another people’s culture take possession of our bodies, thoughts and possession of our minds.
When Incorporating “us too” one must come to the terms with the fact that Black Americans have never really escaped slavery. We still share the slave consciousness of our great-great-great grandparents. We are of the same mind and thinking to a great extent that they were. We have not advanced beyond them. What makes me come to this conclusion?
Many Black Americans say that slavery has nothing to do with them and that slavery was in the past. They say that they are free. Then one must ask, what language do you speak? When did you learn that language? Was that the language African people were speaking when we were taken into slavery in America?
In other words, the language we speak at this moment is a slave language. The language that our slave ancestors were forced to learn. That language, with its words defined by history and by experience, is the language we use today to guide our behavior. It’s the language we use today to talk to ourselves. It’s the language we use today to learn about ourselves and to learn about the world. It’s the language we use to try to understand ourselves. Is there no wonder then that we are still confused?
The bodies that we occupy are bodies that have been created by the European experience and are not our natural bodies as African people. Just as the surface of our bodies reflect the influence of another people, the very internal nature and the physiology of our bodies and thoughts reflect those people as well. That’s why when working towards regaining your identity, you’re going to have a natural cleansing and healing experience. And your whole body and mind will change.
It’s essential that the Black community recognizes that not one Black woman or man will rescue or save the community. But instead they can rally around the fact that in the “us too” concept the savior mentality can be replaced with a “Black first” approach. The same way the current administrates uses the term “America first”.
Other groups, who weren’t forced into the country through slavery, already embrace this concept naturally. Other groups were not hoodwinked into integration, they were not bamboozled into allowing their brightest to go off, abandoning the community, to make money for someone else other than themselves and they committed to taking care of their own. Other groups were not internally indoctrinated like Black Americans were.
One of the byproducts of integration was Black individuals left behind their own “Exclusive Superior” communities to seek acceptance in someone else community to the detriment of their own community economic base. During the first Reconstruction Era, Black labor was still needed to grow the country and enrich the dominate society as it transitioned from agriculture towards an industrial age, but now our labor, lack of education and exclusion in the information sector will soon render us obsolete if nothing isn’t done to address the dire situation.
In the “Us too” way of operating and thinking Black Americans will understand that they can no longer support political structures, institutions or individuals who what to embrace and stay in structures that are infested by racism and structural violence when they can start the processes of building their own for the future. One of the basic solutions to neutralize institutionalized and systematic racism is to get out of them and develop your own. There is no other way.
After Black Americans were led into integration and many of their enclaves were burned to the ground Black owned Homes, hospitals, schools, movie theaters and other fabrics of Black economic thresholds were defunded and disbanded. As time moved forward, the battle between the two identity groups continued to battle each other. Dubois and Garvey were replaced by Dr. King and Malcolm X.
Now decades later the communities left at the lower income strata have abandoned their realities to live, within their own minds, in the perceived reality of those in the higher brackets. There are obvious parallels between the situation of those detained in ICE detention centers and the millions of Black Americans incarcerated in this country’s prison system and nothing will change unless Black Americans turn their attention towards solving their own problems.
Now as the call for reparations intensifies there is also growing amounts of evidence that support the fact that at the cellular level, powerful stressful environmental conditions and trauma can leave an imprint or “mark” on the epigenome (cellular genetic material) that can be carried into future generations with devastating consequences.
The history of Black structural violence lives on in us. There’s that memory, that physical memory that some many have talked about. It lives on at a cellular level – a cellular memory. By Embracing and encouraging the “us too” concept it is our hope that we can help to advance the case for Reparations, help provide the essential community healing along with individual and family healing that are necessary to thoroughly address historical unresolved grief and its present manifestations in the form of many social and physical disorders.
The process is not quick nor will it be easy. However, without such a commitment to healing the past, we will not be able to address the resultant trauma nor prevent the continuation of such atrocities in the present toxic climate that we’re witnessing.
Today, through fully embracing our stories and our pasts, we can choose to end the cycles of grief and trauma in order to offer a better life for the next generation. We can let go of the bad patterns, let the cycles of abuse and addiction die and then we can began to move forwards. This can be done without “lumping” in with other groups or enlisting other groups to fight our battles. Everything in our current social, education and economic structure trains and tell Black Americans to become dependent on and too an Authority. Those days must come to an end.
The situation and narrative that Black Americans are dealing with, not as a victim, but as a people who has been oppressed and who is reacting to oppression cannot allow their voices or story to be cooped or carried on by any one organization, non-Black individual or any other group. The Black American survival story and history in America is unique and unlike any other in human history.
Other groups are enabled by the dominate society to move forward their specific agendas. And they are enabled to do so to make sure that we, with the righteous and original word are not herd and Silenced. They only focus on the reaction part. It’s now time to ACT on our own behalf. The fight must now be taken directly to the power structure that is perpetuating the oppression.
In the “us too” concept one must understand and know that there are forces within the dominate structure that are out there working on the extinction of ¾ of the population. They are only focused on their own survival and dominance over the greater society at large. They will continue to do what ever they can to keep Black Americans dependent and distracted. We, in fact are the technology that they are distracting us from getting to know and understand. It is critical to the dominate society that Black Americans never regain control of their consciousness and minds, which they were robbed of generations ago.
Mind is all and meditation is to come to the knowing that your thoughts aren’t you. They’re simply what you inserted there as recall. Thought is nothing more than memory of the past. Learning to regain control of you mind and thought in the here and now is an essential element of the “Us too” concept. Thought traps you in time. It keeps many living in the past.
Thought is of the past and the past only. Thought is memory of the past. Stillness and meditation are how we interact with the intelligence and higher awareness within ourselves. One must not continue to dwell in the past which triggers all the genetic trauma and mental pain from the past.
Every human being should be able to live in safety and peace and have their human rights respected. Your gift today will support the Braddock Inclusion Projects core work to support Black American human rights, the development of inclusive Black communities, just and humane policies, and building peace with Justice!
Thank you for supporting work that affirms our shared humanity to create positive, lasting change in these dangerous and unprecedented times.
