So yesterday we covered The War on Drugs which basically is the part where black men exit stage left.  But It’s time for the final War of the series so lets get into it.

5.      The War on Black Culture and consciousness

This is an unofficial war that is actually the umbrella that all the other wars fall under, but also includes several added measures and several other could be wars that aren’t discussed here.  You see this war was the first, the war launched when Europeans first made their way back into Africa with ill intent.  Whether you believe in Jim Crow or not the letters do spell out a very real psychological fact that plagues the Black America. 

When you begin to look at Black America today you see people that crave an identity, to be their own people, they crave it so much that they begin to reject their own institutions because they look to European.  One such tradition that has been staunchly rejected lately as European is the concept of marriage, which has a very African Origin.  Maybe not the concept of a Christian Marriage but the concept of a man and woman coming together to form one is an African Concept native to your people.  That is why all the way up until the 1950’s you have blacks with a higher marriage rate than whites, it wasn’t mastering there system, it was living within ours.  That is also why all the way up until the 1950’s you have black children being raised in two parent households at a comparable level to whites.  You see every culture has always realized that a balance was needed to properly raise a child, in the case of the black family separated from its roots, it becomes easy to forget and thus easy to engineer a counter productive culture.  The problem comes from the fact that there is a huge generation gap in Black America.  As parents and grandparents stopped relaying the wisdom they hold, and children stopped seeking it out, all kinds of things became normal and several institutions and causes that shouldn’t have been accepted were rejected.  Basically we lost respect for our elders and our elders gave up on us.  While this can’t be proven through any real research, I have spoken to several elders and several younger people and this is the conclusion I have come to.

Another point to culture that I want to bring up is a report done in 1967 called the Kerner Commission Report which was put together by President Lyndon B Johnson to figure out why there was a race riot that year.  The report itself is fascinating and should definitely be looked up but some of the more interesting points related to this particular war on culture is the fact that it was noted that high school dropouts were a large portion of the rioters.  To go even deeper those high school dropouts had a higher political IQ or political orientation then those that did not drop out, another principle cause was that there was a high degree of racial pride.  So you had people with little “education,” high racial pride, and a high political orientation creating problems and holding the black community together.  What drove these things is exactly the point I’m getting at, the music was politically and culturally informative.  The music has always and will always play a critical role in the creation, defining, and reinforcing of any culture. 

To tie that in this report, which was ignored by the government resulting in another riot, and 2 follow-up reports were paid attention to by someone.  Because the music began to shift in the 1980’s and was an integral part of the crack head and drug dealer image creation.  In the 90’s they music shifted to an even darker place and became the favorite weapon of choice for destroying the image of the black woman and now in the 2000’s and beyond that music has helped to shape a culture of single parent female lead households while the men are either locked up, getting locked up (Surviving off illegal activities), getting strung out, unemployed, or married to someone that isn’t black.  Just about every song on the radio glorifies it, and every image we see in the media advertises it; frequency and imagery (also frequency of imagery).  This isn’t just in music though as culture includes all art forms, pay attention to the next blacksploitation movie you see from the 70’s and let me know how many times you see a single man or woman running through the gauntlet alone.  How many times do you see a pimp or drug dealer or combo?  How many times do you see a hoe or a prostitute, or a woman using her cookie for something other than love?  Television Programming and Musical Instructions are very powerful, Black America is a proven case study of that.

Conclusion

A short summary would go as such:  In the 1930’s the unofficial start of the war on poverty forced black people out of the workplace.  In the 1960’s food stamps and other government programs replaced the male in the house hold.  In the 1970’s black feminism turned the black woman against the black man and created tension and animosity (on a psychological level, especially when paired with him being out of work and not being the provider).  In the 1980’s drugs hit the streets to remove the black man from the black community altogether and thus destroying the black community.  In the 1980’s and 90’s the black man turns on the black woman publicly and begins to attack and degrade her. 

The issues go so much deeper than this though, this is just a skim over the top of some of the key points.  But this is why I say slavery had Very LITTLE to do with the destruction of the black family.  Some of you might not agree and that’s fine, please ask for clarification and voice your opinions on the matter.  And tune in tomorrow for the Finale on how we can get back to unity.