THE MOST EXCITING BREAKTHROUGHS OF THE 21ST CENTURY WILL OCCUR NOT BECAUSE OF TECHNOLOGY BUT BECAUSE OF AN EXPANDING CONCEPT OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN. JOHN NAISBITT
CONNECTIONS ___________________________________________ A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and foundation for inner security. ~ Albert Einstein~
“Truthfulness is the foundation of all the virtues of the world of humanity. . .” Bahá'í Faith
6,692,030,277 - 2008 59– 62% 13.75% 12,1% 8.5%
Asian African 920 million Europe 802 million Latin Americans 569 million
Who Are We? Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.
Gandhi
THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE IN SAFE GUARDING THE SELF Let me begin with the common empirical observations that people feel incomparably more alarmed by a threat to the psyche or the soul or the self than they are by a threat to the body. The death of the self is of far greater concern than the death of the body. People will willingly sacrifice their bodies if they perceive it as the only way to avoid “losing their souls,” “losing their minds,” or “losing face.” In addition, a person only develops a stable, integrated, and differentiated sense of selfhood or identity through the process of interacting with other humans in the community, or culture. The psyche is as dependent upon being nurtured by those modes of relationships and community, of childrearing and education, which we call culture, as the body is being nourished by food. One consequence of that fact is that a perceived threat to the integrity and survival of a person’s culture is perceived as a threat to the integrity and survival of the individuals personality or character, and to the viability of one’s ethical value system . . .Those are among the reasons why the death of one’s culture is tantamount to the death of one’s self. . .The loss of self-esteem is experienced subjectively as the death of the self. People will sacrifice anything to prevent the death and disintegration of their individual or group identity. James Gilligan, MD. (1997)
Defining Racism
Racism is: A System of Advantage Based on Race
European African/Latino Asian Native
Member – Object Member – Member Member – Group Member – Great Spirit
Dr. Edwin J. Nichols and Associates © 1967, 1987
The United States Constitution: The First Contradiction and Resulting Cognitive Dissonance Genocide of Natives, African Slavery & “Freedom and Democracy” How America Resolved the Cognitive Dissonance: • Anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, •1. Justify Behavior •2. Re-label People to Fit the Behavior •Defined blacks in a way that made ‘Chattel Slavery’ reasonable and justified to the country. ©JDP
Historical Stereotypes: Their Role in Framing Contemporary Beliefs and Perceptions about People of Color
The Role of Institutions in our Education and Socialization:
•Science •Politics •Religion •Education •Medicine •Media •Law ©JDP
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Statue of Liberty Holding Broken Chains in Her Left Hand
Chains Now at the feet of the Statue of Liberty
12 Inch Souvenir Replica of the Statue of Liberty
THE ONLY PART OF THE CHAINS VISIBLE TO VISITORS
The Trail of Tears During October and November of 1838 on an 800 mile route through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas Cherokee People arrived in what is now Eastern Oklahoma during January, February and March, 1839. Disease, exposure and starvation may have claimed as many as 4,000 Cherokee lives during the course of capture, imprisonment and removal.
Ottawa Canada’s Apology to First Nations Natives "Attitudes of racial and cultural superiority led to a suppression of aboriginal culture and values," she said. "As a country, we are burdened by past actions that resulted in weakening the identity of aboriginal peoples, suppressing their languages and cultures, and outlawing spiritual practices. She added: "the time has come to state formally that the days of paternalism and disrespect are behind us and we are committed to changing the nature of the relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in Canada." For Phil Fontaine, leader the Assembly of First Nations, a coalition of nationwide Native groups, the apology paves the way for lasting peace between them and the Canadian government. With the apology, came a $250 million fund to redress the problems caused by the residential school policy. From the 1870's until the 1960's, the government took children from native homes and placed them in church-run boarding schools where many were physically abused by priests, nuns and ministers. The money will be spent on therapy and job skills training.
Historical Beginning The Door of no Return Elmina Slave Castle Ghana
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Cape Coast Slave Castle
Male Slave Dungeon Cape Coast
The only source of light and ventilation in the slave dungeons
Death Cell for African Men.
Symbols carved in near total darkness into the stone floor of the male ‘Death Cell’ symbols call out to the ancestors to deliver them from their suffering
Cell Where White Soldiers Were Held for 24 Hrs.
Stairs leading from the Governors bedroom to Female Slave Dungeon
Steel ball enslaved African women were chained to when they resisted being raped
Death Cell For African Women
UNESCO discovered 2 feet of human waste mistaken as ground
* United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Church in the Center of Elmina Slave Castle
U.S. APOLOGY FOR SLAVERY On July 29, 2008 and 2009 the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate passed nonbinding resolutions apologizing for slavery. Nonbinding meaning that the resolution carries no legal weight. With this resolution the federal government acknowledged the: "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow." The resolution states that "the vestiges of Jim Crow continue to this day." "AfricanAmericans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow -- long after both systems were formally abolished -- through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity," the resolution states. The House also committed itself to stopping "the occurrence of human rights violations in the future." The resolution did not however, address in any way the issue of reparations nor did the resolution offer any suggestions about how to repair the damage done to Africans and their descendants. It was‌just an apology.
DEHUMANIZATION VS OBJECTIFICATION When the Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen, or subhumans, they didn't mean it metaphorically, says Smith. "They didn't mean they were like subhumans. They meant they were literally subhuman.“ Then, within the human category, there has historically been a hierarchy. In the 18th century, white Europeans — the architects of the theory — "modestly placed themselves at the very pinnacle." The lower edges of the category merged with the apes, according to their thinking. So "sub-Saharan Africans and Native Americans were denizens of the bottom of the human category," when they were even granted human status. Mostly, they were seen as "soulless animals." And that dramatic dehumanization made it possible for great atrocities to take place.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY A term used by, within and so defined by the International Criminal Court Treaty and including any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: •Murder; •Extermination; •Enslavement; •Deportation or forcible transfer of a population; •Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; • Torture •Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; •Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural,, religious, gender, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law; •Enforced disappearance of persons; •The crime of apartheid; •Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.
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Carl Von Linnaeus (1707 –1778) Linnaeus properly began the science of anthropology He describes‌ Homo Americanus as reddish, choleric, obstinate, contented, and regulated by customs; Homo Europaeus as white, fickle, sanguine, blue-eyed, gentle and governed by laws; Homo Asiaticus as sallow, grave dignified, avaricious, and ruled by opinion; and Homo Afer as black, phlegmatic, cunning, lazy, lustful, careless, and governed by caprice.
The Formal Education of - The great Swedish Scientist Linnaeus, the inventor of the Western system of taxonomy, Linnaeus, after one week received his Ph.D. for a thirteen-page dissertation from the Dutch University of Harderwijk, which one historian of science designated as a “mail-order” institution.The university of Harderwijk was know for selling degrees. “A saying in the Netherlands for a person whose scientific knowledge is questionable is “he’s from the University of Harderwijk” Nell Irvin Painter “The History of White People” 2010
Johann Fredrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) “For,
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in the first place, the stock displays, as we have seen, the most beautiful form of the skull, from which, as a mean and primeval type, the others diverge by most easy gradations on both sides to the two ultimate extremes (that is, on the one side the Mongolian, on the other the Ethiopian). Besides, it is white in color, which we may fairly assume to have been the primitive color of mankind . . .�
The Formal Education of – Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Blumenbach received his Medical degree from the University at Gottingen after submitting his fifteen page long dissertation, the result of one year’s study with an older professor who owned an extraordinarily large and disordered natural history collection. Blumenbach, along with “scientific racists’ of Britain and the United States began to rank facial characteristics and skin color hierarchically beginning, not surprisingly with white as superior and most “beautiful.” Thus, identifying beauty as a scientific category. Nell Irvin Painter “The History of White People” 2010
Were there “white” people in antiquity? . . .People with light skin certainly existed well before our own times. But did anyone think they were White or that their character related to their color? No, for neither the idea of race nor the idea of “white” people had been invented, and people’s skin color did not carry useful meaning. . . Not until the eighteenth century did an obsession with whiteness flourish, with the German invention of the notion of Caucasian beauty. This theory made northern Europeans into “Saxons” “Anglo-Saxons,” and “Teutons,” envisioned as uniquely handsome natural rulers. Also conspicuously missing from current libraries is the long history of white slavery dating back to the early medieval period where Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse literature depicts the Welsh person, a slave as drunken, and sexually aggressive, and the notion that the Welsh and Celts generally were dark – had hair and skin darkened by exposure to the sun—circulated as the typical coloring of slaves,. . .slaves appear as dirty, sun-tanned people with ugly, quarrelsome, lazy, gossipy and smarmy children. History’s most famous British slave was Patrick , Ireland’s patron saint.
. . . Twentieth century sociologist Max Weber says it well While the nobility believe their superiority grows out of their own “underived, ultimate, and qualitatively distinctive being” no one in favored circumstances wants to admit the chanciness of privilege. “The fortunate man,” is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that ‘he deserves’ it, and above all, deserves it in comparison with others. . . Good fortune thus wants to be ‘legitimate’ fortune. Innate qualities are needed to prove the justice--the naturalness and inalterability – of the status quo. In the United States, in Samuel George Morton’s Philadelphia, where the buying and selling of laborers extended into the 19th century, that often turned into a justification for African Slavery. . .Thus, the 19th century rage for races turned languages into peoples, and the word arya, meaning “noble” or “spiritual” in Sanskrit, came to be applied to an imagined, superior race of Aryans.
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What was eugenics? The English mathematician Sir Francis Galton first coined the term in 1883. He wrote, "Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that seek to improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." What Galton saw as a new branch of scientific inquiry became a dogmatic prescription in the ranking and ordering of human worth. His ideas found their most receptive audience at the turn of the century in the United States.
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1. Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (London: Macmillan, 1883), frontispiece.
Mainline eugenicists (those eugenicists who were explicitly preoccupied with issues of race), believed that some individuals and entire groups of people (such as Southern Europeans, Jews, Africans, and Latinos) were more predisposed to the "defective genes." Charles Davenport, a leader in American eugenics, argued for laws to control the spread of "inferior blood" into the general population. He told an international gathering of scholars "that the biological basis for such laws is doubtless an appreciation of the fact that negroes and other races carry traits that do not go well with our social organization.“
2 Steven Selden, "Conservative Ideology and Curriculum," Educational Theory 3 (Summer 1977), p. 218.
Franz Boaz
1858-1942
Father of American Anthropology
Although serious work was being done in anthropology at the time, the field was heavily peopled with untrained adventurers and armchair philosophers. Racial bias and bigotry was rampant, and the gathering of information was sometimes haphazard and riddled with an assortment of bias. It was common practice to use small scraps of information, or preconceived pet theories, to further prognosticate on the "nature of man.“ Because he was so grounded in the natural sciences, Boas was aware that what differentiated the study of humankind from geography or zoology was the study of "culture." But culture to Boas was not simply another synonym for "civilization" (i.e. art, technology, and lofty ideas). And unlike many of his predecessors he did not see culture as predestined to some kind of linear progression, onward and upward, until it resulted in the equivalent of civilized European society. He also rejected the corollary prejudice that those who hadn't "arrived", or whose society differed from civilized European society, were simply inferior members of the human species.
“Race is a concept of society that insists there is a genetic significance behind human variations in skin color that transcends outward appearance. However, race has no scientific merit outside of sociological classifications. There are no significant genetic variations within the human species to justify the division of “races.�
The Role of The Politics
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Fear of Annihilation Samuel Thurston was a delegate to the United States Congress from the Oregon Territory. Speaking before Congress in 1850 in defense of his Territory’s Exclusionary Acts he argued the following: . . .The negroes associate with the Indians and intermarry, and, if their free ingress is encouraged or allowed, there would a relationship spring up between them and the different tribes, and mixed race would ensue inimical to the whites; and the Indians being led by the Negro who is better acquainted with the customs, language, and manners of the whites, than the Indian, these savages would become much more formidable than they otherwise would, and long and bloody wars would be the fruits of the commingling of the races. It is the principle of self preservation that justifies the action of the Oregon legislature. *According to a mid 1800’s census six-hundred thousand mixed race children were born even though miscegenation laws were in effect. ©JDP
James Madison
(1751-1836)
Blacks are inhabitants, but as debased by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants; which regards the slave as divested of twofifths of the man.
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)
Blacks smelled bad and were physically unattractive, required less sleep, were dumb, cowardly and incapable of feeling grief. . . . advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.
Most people don’t associate slavery with New York or the north. The truth is all 13 Colonies had slavery. . With estimates of 10,000 to 20,000 people buried in this seven-acre burial ground, it’s considered the largest known site of its kind in the U.S. Blakey’s analysis of human skeletal remains revealed that these men and women. . .were literally worked to death.(they suffered from enthesopathies a condition resulting in the muscle detaching itself from the bone as a result of people being worked beyond human capacity). Enslaved Africans faced brutal working conditions, premature rates of mortality, and excessive workloads, while nutritional deficiencies were common among young children.
Michael Blakey, scientific director for the African Burial Ground project and now a professor of anthropology at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
A valuable negro woman, accustomed to all kinds of house work. Is a good plain cook and an excellent dairy maid. Washes and irons. She has four children, one a girl about 13 years of age, another 7, a boy about 5, and an infant 11 months old. 2 of the children will be sold with the mother, the others separately if it best suits the purchaser‌ Conditions: ½ cash, balance by bond, bearing interest from date of sale. Payable in one to two years to be secured by a mortgage of the Negroes, and appraised personal securities. Auctioneer will pay for the papers.
The Role of Religion
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Church in the Center of Elmina Slave Castle
Richard Oswald 1705 - 1784
The son of a Presbyterian minister. International Trader of Enslaved Africans Majority shareholder in Bance Island Dominant Figure in Grant, Oswald & Co. Amassed a fortune from the profits of the slave trade in the late 1700’s worth $68 million today
Reverend John Newton 1725 – 1807
“Slaves, are lesser creatures without Christian souls and thus are not destined for the next world.” “When the women and girls are taken on board a ship, naked, trembling, terrified. . they are often exposed to the wanton rudeness of white savages. . .The prey is divided, upon the spot. .Resistance or refusal would be utterly in vain.” “I sinned with a high hand.” (Author of Amazing Grace)
The Role of Education
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The Role of Philosophy: Aristotle's Theory of Slavery
Aristotle raises the question of whether slavery is natural or conventional. He asserts that the former is the case. So, Aristotle's theory of slavery holds that some people are naturally slaves and others are naturally masters. Thus he says: But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature? There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule. This suggests that anyone who is ruled must be a slave, which does not seem at all right. Still, given that this is so he must state what characteristics a natural slave must have -- so that he or she can be recognized as such a being. Who is marked out for subjugation, and who for rule? This is where the concept of "barbarian" shows up in Aristotle's account. Aristotle says: So men rule naturally over women, and Greeks over barbarians!
The Burden of Civilizing Sociology and Modern Social Problems Charles A. Ellwood, Ph.D. 1913
“The problem of the Negro and of the Indian, and of all the uncivilized races, is essentially the same. The problem is, how a relatively large mass of people, inferior in culture and perhaps also inferior in nature, can be adjusted relatively to the civilization of a people much their superior in culture, how the industrially inefficient nature man can be made over into the industrially efficient civilized Man.�
ENVIRONMENT
John Muir Have you ever visited Mt. Rainier, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, or Yosemite? These places are all national parks today in part because of the work of one man – John Muir. In the 1800’s, millions of people began living in parts of the United States where no one had ever lived before. To make their livings, people chopped down forests to have lumber for building and to clear land for farming. People built dams across rivers. They built roads, bridges, and railroads, and they dug mines (1980) Beaverton, Oregon Social Studies text book
In 1906, the Bronx Zoo put Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy, on display in a cage in its Monkey House. He was 22 years old, a member of the Batwa people, pygmies who lived in what was then the Belgian Congo.
In defense of the depiction of Benga as a lesser human, an editorial in The New York Times suggested: We do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter ... It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies ... are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in a school instead of a cage ignores the high probability that school would be a place ... from which he could draw no advantage whatever. The idea that men are all much alike except as they have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date.
H.R. Hopps’s topless-white woman-clutching, club-dragging, bloodypawed, drooling ape, from his 1917 poster, and the April 2008 VOGUE Magazine Cover.
Lynching as A Social Event Note that the participants are in white indicating that it was Sunday and they had attended church
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Ordinary Citizens
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One Hundred Years of Lynching (R. Ginsburg, 1988) Before the torch was applied to the pyre, the negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on, but stood the ordeal of fire with surprising fortitude. Before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones were crushed into small bits, and even the tree upon which the wretch met his fate was torn up and disposed of as “souvenirs.� The negro’s heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver. Those unable to obtain the ghastly relics direct paid their more fortunate possessors extravagant sums for them. Small pieces of bones went for 25 cents, and a bit of the liver crisply cooked sold for 10 cents. As soon as the negro was seen to be dead there was a tremendous struggle among the crowd to secure the souvenirs . . .
Black Sharecroppers Quarters “Slavery By Another Name”
The Constitution of the State of Oregon (Exclusionary Act) : Article 1 Section 35 No free negro, or Mulatto, not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws, for the removal, by public officers, of all such negroes, and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ, or harbor them. (Repealed November 3, 1926) Section 6 That if any free negro or mulatto shall fail to quit the country as required by this act. . . if guilty upon trial . . . shall receive upon his or her back not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes. . . *Restrictions included Chinese and Indians ŠJDP
The Role of Law
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Whipping Scars An escaped slave named "Peter," whose back bears evidence of terrible beatings, told the person who took his picture (in Baton Rouge, April 2, 1863): "Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping.
THE CASUAL KILLING ACT: VIRGINIA STATUTE XXXIV. 1705
• And if any slave resist his master, or owner, or other person, by his or her order, correcting such slave, and shall happened to be killed in such correction, it shall not be counted felony; but the master, owner and every other person so giving correction, shall be acquit of all punishment and accusation for the same, as if such accident had never happened.
Convicts Leased to Harvest Timber in Florida Convict leasing was so successful that by 1898 nearly three quarters of Alabama’s total state revenue came directly from this institution.
Separate But Equal
NORM STAMPER 2005: Breaking Rank 34 year police veteran and retired Chief of Police for the cities of San Diego and Seattle. I’ve heard some police officers refer to prostitute slayings (or to the slayings of blacks) as “misdemeanor murders,” employing an unofficial code for them: NHI, no human involved. San Diego cops confessed to myriad other acts of discrimination, including additional dehumanizing references to blacks, . . . on a radio call “just an 11-13—nigger (11-13 being code for an injured animal, followed by a descriptor:”dog,” “cat,” “skunk.” It was a pernicious form of discrimination, injected with a large dose of misogyny, that led to the labeling of the lone female officer in my academy class as a “split tail” . . . speculated it had something to do with a woman’s vagina.
Norm Stamper: Police - Sexual Predators . . . In 1986, on-duty California Highway Patrol officer Craig Peyer strangled a
San Diego State University student named Cara Knott and threw her body off a seventy-foot bridge. Motive? She’d resisted his sexual advances. My cautious guess is that 5 percent of America’s cops are on the prowl for women. In a department the size of Seattle's that’s sixty-three police officers. In San Diego, 145. In New York City, 2,000. The average patrol cop makes anywhere from ten to twenty unsupervised contacts a shift. If he’s on the make, chances are a predatory cop will find you. Or your wife, your partner, your daughter, your sister, your mother, your friend. . . . It is not hard to understand why people of color, the poor, and younger Americans Did not, and do not, look upon the police as “theirs”. . . Compare and contrast: Are the police, as an institution, known for their protection of “the innocent against deception” or do they deceive the innocent? Do the police protect “the weak against oppression or intimidation” or do they oppress and intimidate the very people they’ve sworn to protect?
Norm Stamper: Criminal justice Race and Class discrimination are all too real in every phase of the criminal justice system, from arrest to sentencing. Impoverished black defendants are far more likely to wind up on death row than rich or middle-class whites. Of the 3,700 inmates now awaiting execution nationwide, 43 percent are African-American. Black defendants are not accorded the same due process rights as whites, their cases are not given the same scrutiny and consideration afforded white defendants. Not now, not ever, not in this country
Emmet Till 1955
The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander, 2010 In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
The Racial Dimension of Mass Incarceration Michelle Alexander, 2010 In some states black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates fifty times greater than those of white men. And in major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and out of mainstream society. These stark racial disparities cannot be explained by rates of drug crime. Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color.
Miseducation: What impact has history had on African Americans?
• The same educational process which inspires and stimulate the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worth while, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The Negro thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race. The difficulty is that the “educated Negro” is compelled to live and move among his own people whom he has been taught to despise. As a rule therefore, the “educated Negro” prefers to buy his food from a white grocer because he has been taught that the Negro is not clean. It does not matter how often a Negro washes his hands, then, he cannot clean them, and no matter how often a white man uses his hands he cannot soil them. Carter G. Woodson
ARIZONA’S 2010 IMMIGRATION LAW Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer’s immigration law is said to be the “broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. “ Additionally, a new law has been signed in Tucson to eliminate ethnic studies from the Tucson unified school District which offers specialized courses in African American, Mexican American, and Native American studies.“State Schools Chief Tom Horne, said he believes the Mexican American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people.”
Learned Helplessness Perceived self-inefficacy = The inability to influence events and social conditions that significantly affect one's own life can give rise to feelings of futility and despondency as well as anxiety. Learned helplessness occurs when an individual perceives independence between performance and/or reinforcement outcome. Under this condition, whether an individual responds or not, the probability of a particular outcome is the same. In this situation, the individual perceives that his behavior cannot control the outcome or events; one cannot terminate or reduce the probability of an adverse event nor produce or increase the probability of a positively reinforcing event.
The Role of Media
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2005 Hurricane Katrina Victims on a roof top in Louisiana
Pups, on an airplane, being rescued from the Gulf Region. ~Picture from the Baltimore Sun
Hurricane Katrina – Removing the Dissonance “A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30th 2005…”
“Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store…”
2010 Earthquake Victims in Haiti
2010 Haitian Earthquake: “The Result of God’s Punishment of Haitians” Famous American televangelist Pat Robertson “The deadly Haitian earthquake that killed thousands of people is God's vengeance for a "pact" Haitians swore to the Devil. Robertson said Haitians have been cursed because they made a "deal" with the Devil to free themselves from the French.”
2004 Tsunami Victims in Indonesia
INDONESIA’S CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AND TRAFFICING An initial moderate estimate of the prevalence of child prostitution in Indonesia is that around 30% of the total sex workers in the country are aged under 18 years. This constitutes around 40,000 to over 150,000 based on different estimates of the number of sex workers. UNICEF Indonesia, Mohammad Farid, “Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Indonesia,” Child Workers I Asia, January-March 2000
NGO's estimate that there are as many as 1.3 million prostitutes in the country, 30% of which may be under 16 years of age. (US Dept. of State, Country Reports on human Rights Practices-2000 February, 2001
The Role of Medicine
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James Marion Sims
(1813-1883)
J. Marion Sims was a physician in the mid1800’s who was credited with the creation of the first vaginal speculum which was made from a pewter spoon. Sims built a makeshift hospital in his back yard where he conducted surgical experiments on countless un-anesthetized enslaved African women. Sims reasoned that slave women were able to bear great pain because their ‘race’ made them more durable, and thus they were well suited for painful medical experimentation.
So, where did Sims get all those slave women on whom to run his experiments? Many of the women came from slave owners who complained to Sims that these slave women were ‘not fit for duty.’ They were said to suffer from a particular disorder called a ‘fistula.’ An obstetric fistula is the breakdown of tissue in the vaginal wall, frequently as the result of childbirth, and which affects the bladder and or the rectum. The disorder causes leakage of urine and feces, which made for a smelly and humiliating existence for the women.
Medical Dehumanization of African Women Their first pathological symptom was their primary racial characteristic: their skin color. In a medical world that categorized life as either normal or pathological, people of the African Diaspora were continually condemned to the category of pathological, their ‘abnormal’ skin color serving as a foil for ‘normal’ white skin. Pathological causes for this condition were concocted in order to explain its prevalence. Sander Gilman explains, “Medical tradition has a long history of perceiving this skin color as the result of some pathology. The favorite theory, which reappears with some frequency in the early nineteenth century, is that the skin color and attendant physiognomy of the black are the result of congenital leprosy.” Such medical arguments, in collusion with racist and stereotypic scientific and cultural explanations and excuses, provided the grounds for differential ‘treatment.’ 22
Black females were perceived to be irreligious, lustful, and immoderate. Their protruding buttocks and genitals were offered as physical evidence of their pathology. This was in stark contrast to white females who, while still thought of as pathological, were perceived as fragile and frigid. Terri Kasalis “Public Privates� (1997)
“No white could ever rape a slave woman “The regulations of Law, as to the white race, on the subject of sexual intercourse do not and cannot, for obvious reasons, apply to slaves, their intercourse is promiscuous.”
Shoemaker’s Awl Black infants suffered from what he termed “trimus nascentium,” now commonly referred to as neonatal tetanus. Sims attributed the condition to the indecency and intellectual flaws of black slaves, together with skull malformations at birth. Sims attempted to treat this malady by trying to pry the bones in the skulls of the tiny infants into alignment with the use of a shoemakers awl
Statue of Sims in Central Park
Sims’ Duckbill Speculum on display at Ellis Island
Indian Women as Sex Objects Shadows of the Indian: Stereotypes in American Culture (Stedman, 1982)
One element Stedman doesn't address is La Belle Sauvage's sexual overtones. Western men have always thought of "foreign" or "exotic" women as delectable forbidden fruit. Whether it was nubile black slaves, fiery Latina peasants, or demure Asian geishas, they presumed the servile facade hid a siren of smoldering sexuality. . .Other examples reinforce the point. Malinche, the slave girl who translated the Aztec language for CortĂŠs, became his mistress and bore him a son. In Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner makes a beeline for the comely Indian maiden, who turns out to be a captured white woman. People (including Disney's filmmakers) want to believe Pocahontas had blissful romances with John Smith and John Rolfe.
If you can't have one, be one What about non-Indians who claim to be descended from Indian princesses? In an excerpt from Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, Vine Deloria Jr. explains the phenomenon: During my three years as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians it was a rare day when some white didn't visit my office and proudly proclaim that he or she was of Indian descent. Cherokee was the most popular tribe of their choice and many people placed the Cherokees anywhere from Maine to Washington State. Mohawk, Sioux, and Chippewa were next in popularity. Occasionally, I would be told about some mythical tribe from lower Pennsylvania, Virginia, or Massachusetts which had spawned the white standing before me. At times I became quite defensive about being a Sioux when these white people had a pedigree that was so much more respectable than mine. But eventually I came to understand their need to identify as partially Indian and did not resent them. I would confirm their wildest stories about their Indian ancestry and would add a few tales of my own hoping that they would be able to accept themselves someday and leave us alone.
Whites claiming Indian blood generally tend to reinforce mythical beliefs about Indians. All but one person I met who claimed Indian blood claimed it on their grandmother's side. I once did a projection backward and discovered that evidently most tribes were entirely female for the first three hundred years of white occupation. No one, it seemed, wanted to claim a male Indian as a forebear. It doesn't take much insight into racial attitudes to understand the real meaning of the Indian grandmother complex that plagues certain whites. A male ancestor has too much of the aura of the savage warrior, the unknown primitive, the instinctive animal, to make him a respectable member of the family tree. But a young Indian princess? Ah, there was royalty for the taking. Somehow the white was linked with a noble house of gentility and culture if his grandmother was an Indian princess who ran away with an intrepid pioneer. And royalty has always been an unconscious but all-consuming goal of the European immigrant. The early colonists, accustomed to life under benevolent despots, projected their understanding of the European political structure onto the Indian tribe in trying to explain its political and social structure. European royal houses were closed to ex-convicts and indentured servants, so the colonists made all Indian maidens princesses, then proceeded to climb a social ladder of their own creation. Within the next generation, if the trend continues, a large portion of the American population will eventually be related to Powhattan. While a real Indian grandmother is probably the nicest thing that could happen to a child, why is a remote Indian princess grandmother so necessary for many whites? Is it because they are afraid of being classed as foreigners? Do they need some blood tie with the frontier and its dangers in order to experience what it means to be an American? Or is it an attempt to avoid facing the guilt they bear for the treatment of the Indian?
In the early years of the nineteenth century, a physician named Samuel A. Cartwright argued that two particular forms of mental illness, caused by nerve disorders, were prevalent among slaves. One was drapetomania, which was diagnosable by a single symptom: the uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery.
The other disorder dysathesia aethiopica, revealed many symptoms: destroying property, being disobedient, talking back, fighting with their masters and refusing to work.
Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis proposed in 1851 by physician Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, of the Louisiana Medical Association, to explain the tendency of black slaves to flee captivity. The Mismeasure of Woman, Carol Tarvis, 1992
IATROPHOBIA (Greek: Iatros= healer, phobia= fear ) Fear of Medicine
Harriet Washington: Medical Apartheid “The much bewailed racial health gap is not a gap, but a chasm wider and deeper than a mass grave. This gulf has riven our nation so dramatically that it appears as if we were considering the health profiles of people in two different countries –a medical apartheid. Researchers have proffered a cornucopia of theories for this medical divide, many of which focus upon putative biological dimorphisms, especially genetic differences. But in dissecting this shameful medical apartheid, an important cause is usually neglected: the history of ethically flawed medical experimentation with African Americans. Such research has played a pivotal role in forging the fear of medicine that helps perpetuate our nation’s racial health gulf.”
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) • • • • • •
Victims of Rape War Veterans Heart Attack Victims Victims of Natural Disaster Victims of severe Accidents •
• • • • • • • • • • •
IDENTIFIED GROUPS:
DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA:
Intense Psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the event. Physiological Reactivity. . . Marked diminished interest or participation in significant activities Feeling of estrangement from others Restricted range of affect Sense of foreshortened future Difficulty falling or staying asleep Irritability or outburst of anger Difficulty concentrating Hyper vigilance Exaggerated startle response
PTSD DIAGNOSTIC FEATURES MOST COMMOM TRAUMA INVOLVED: • A serious Threat to or harm to ones life or physical integrity • Threat or harm to ones children, spouse or close relatives • Sudden destruction of ones home or community • Seeing another person: injured, killed as a result of accident or physical violence • Learning about a serious threat to: a close friend a relative kidnapped, tortured or killed STRESSOR IS EXPERIENCED WITH: • Intense fear, terror, and helplessness DISORDER IS CONSIDERED TO BE MORE SERIOUS AND WILL LAST LONGER WHEN THE STRESSOR IS OF HUMAN DESIGN
Good Hair . . .?
My Granddaughter at 2 years old (2008)
I LOVE MY HAIR
Ghana Children
Ghana Youth
Ghana High School Age Girls
MEETING WITH THE CHIEF OF A VILLAGE NEAR KUMASI IN GHANA
RESIDENTS OF VILLAGE NEAR KUMASI IN GHANA
UJIMA (00-GEE-MA) COLLECTIVE WORK AND RESPONSIBILITY
A particular intervention designed for a particular cultural group can be said to be ‘culturally specific’ if it is also informed by an anthropological familiarity with the pertinent behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, habits, beliefs, customs, and so forth that are peculiar to that group" It is therefore important for those working in positions of social service to consider the various cultural lenses through which individuals see or perceive their respective worlds. It is not enough to merely espouse “cultural sensitivity” with regard to serving ethnically diverse populations, but rather to develop a profundity of information pertinent to sustaining the holistic well being of individuals and communities of color.
The State of Children of Color in America According to: Data from the 2010 Kellogg Foundation Survey
Minority children have fewer opportunities than their white peers in the following areas: Quality health care Quality education Safe neighborhoods Adequate community support •Disparities between whites and minorities are more evident to those in jobs engaging children as is evidence of racism: communities with unequal systems of income and services.
What are the most salient features of effective: Culture Specific Evidence Based Programs? Here is what the data tells us about the elements of programs that have been successful in working with African Americans:
Building strong relationships Culturally relevant curriculum materials Positive racial/ethnic identity development Starting work when they are young Parental/family involvement Commitment and support of administrators and leaders Community involvement Program Consistency and longevity Providing achievement opportunities or wins for participants Follow up and on-going evaluation PSU School of Social Work Review of literature and programs, 2010
“If you wish to go fast go alone but if you wish to go far go together� African Proverb
He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone. Seneca
Accra Ghana
Ahwiaa Wood Carvers Village Ghana
TlingĂt Master Carver
Nathan Jackson, Tlingit Totem Carver
(SAMPLE) Village Chart PROFILE PARENT MENTOR COUNSELOR CAREERCOACH SPIRITUAL ADVISOR HEALTH ADVISOR CONFIDANT MOTIVATOR DEFENDER ADVOCATE
LIST OF NAMES
Steps To Healing • • • • • • • • • •
Tell the Truth: It is the Foundation for Health Know Yourself: Our History & Your Personal Legacy Tell Your Story: Preserve Memories for Those to Come Look Beyond Healing: Seek to be Healthy Build Esteem: Healthy and Accurate Control Your Inner World: Manage Stress & Conflict Racial Socialization: Cultural Preparation for the Future Build Upon Strengths: Past & Current Model Health: Be the Healing that you Seek Look in the Mirror: Growth & Change are Continuous
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