Did You Hear What They Said?

On October 16, 1995, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan called for a million black men to march on Washington D.C. in and around the National Park. A sonorous call for brothers around America to unite and discuss a plan of action to address the squalid conditions of African Americans through an attack on the black males. Addressing the historical experience of being terrorized by white private citizens while simultaneously being terrorized by racist mercenaries known as police who serve as the phalanx protecting the interests of ill-gotten assets and capital of wealthy white settler colonist. Likened to a protracted kristallnacht in Germany against the people identified as Jews in the late 1930's that experienced pogroms at the hands of the Sturmabteilung - paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.

Minister Farrakhan also peered into the African American history of extenuated neighborhoods due to white despoilment, being dispossessed, and communities economically penurious for over a century around the country. These attacks were most often afflicted upon and felt by the bodies of the black males. Cogitate for a second on the immensity of that moment and herculean effort put forth by the Minister Farrakhan; then try and reconcile this: an overwhelming response by 1 in every 10 black males over the age of 15 making the pilgrimage to D.C. to bring world attention to our crisis and it still didn't yield a single policy explicitly for black men! It's anesthetizing how brined America is in its recalcitrant attitude and imperialistic antipathy towards black males.

The intertemporal choices to overlook and disinvest in African American men made by the Federal Government for over a century as a protuberance of the racist and anti-black misandric culture of white settler colonialism has this rancidity. Encoded through a particular intergenerational structuring with humming notes creating a familiar legato effect. Abdications with consequences that have ranged from flagrant to imperceptible. Outcomes that have lingered and conditions that mutated since the Federal Government welched on the deal cut between the emancipated "Freedmen" in 1865 under Sherman's Field Order 15. A germane feature of my writings seek to chisel out the shape of our degradation and help black males understand how to respond to the environment that has intensified its attack on a certain sector of black people through the black male.

In early June of 1890, a conference was held at Lake Mohonk Ulster County New York. The topic was dubbed 'The Negro Question.’ It was the first of a few conferences that were hosted by wealthy Quaker, Albert K. Smiley, with a motley of 50 plus individuals consisting of other wealthy Quakers, business speculators, and a few rich whites with prurient interests gathered to discuss the "improvements" of the Negros. A recrudescence of this was with John D. Rockefeller and his interest in the educational system under the guise of philanthropy towards blacks. Smiley prevailed upon these individuals that the Negro woman should be the focal point in receiving education because they would be the the managers of this particular subordinate group. The conceptualization of educating the Negro women so they could handle bill of particulars (bills), perform household administrative duties, as well as educate the Negro children was the conferences primary impulse. He adjured the attendees that the need to educate the Negro males beyond a primary-school education was nugatory because they would be funneled into more rigorous forms of labor was the conferences concomitant compulsion. Blatantly put, an exemplar of sordid social engineering.

It was never conceived that the Negro males would ever do well as an out-group academically. The primary import here is higher levels of academic achievement lends itself to independence. Ergo, the Negro males would never attain independence. A multivalent strategy that was prescribed to the Native Americans in a subsequent conference at Lake Mohonk. The same cartilage connection of 'Social Dominance Theory' that was noted in my article 'Ain't No Such Thing As Superman.’ So, it isn't indolence or a type of genetic predisposition that the math and reading levels of black boys has plummeted to a nadir across the nation in predominantly black schools or black cities like Baltimore where 9 out of 10 public high school boys aren't reading at grade level as foxbaltimore.com reported in their piece called 'Leaked documents show Baltimore high schoolers perform math, reading at grade school level,’ but in fact it is by design.

Budgets and public investments tell an interesting story about this country. In an assessment called I-Ready used to track students' math and reading levels, it was discovered that black boys were not only ruefully behind in reading and math, performing below grade level, but the teachers were aware and contributed to this by passing numerous groups of black boys along for years. This failure to offer corrective measures to educate the black male students is an austere example of anti-black male misandric attacks in the spheres of education and whittles this American institution's foremost aim down to its purpose - which is the underdevelopment of black males. Indeed a type of aggression through neglect that is akin to a form of violence. Educational androcide of black boys which repercussions have rendered dastardly polyvalent effects.

America's abiding dedication to the 1890 Mohonk Conference's proposition of a perpetual proletariat class of black males; generationally bruited by a coterie of wealthy whites in maintaining a particular race/gender base class structure, has remained steadfast. This has surely become a self-licking lollipop that has bled over into a bias of black boys as early as age four. In September of 2016, the Washington Post published a Yale University Child Study Center report entitled 'Yale Study Suggests Racial Bias Among Preschool Teachers.’

Yale researchers monitored more than 130 preschool teachers, predominantly white women, who were told to watch for indicia of "challenging behavior” amongst the students. In reality however, they watched scripted video clips of child actors that had no "challenging behavior" to sift out. The net result beyond black children being monitored the most of course, was that black boys, three and four years of age, were not only surveilled more keenly but had more anticipation of being troublemakers. The prejudiced conclusions included a few black female teachers who carried the same sentiments towards the black boys. Furthermore, it was noted that given the children’s stereotypical black vs. white names brought forth "deeply rooted biases".

The lead researcher and Yale child psychology professor Walter S. Gilliam when referring to the multiple fatal shootings of black men by police that have given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement and a national debate about law enforcement’s treatment of people of color, stated

“Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police. They begin with black preschoolers and their teachers, if not earlier. Implicit bias is like the wind: You can’t see it, but you can sure see its effects.”

Furthermore, given the genealogy of the academic foiling of black males in America; it's not a byzantine maze of capricious nuances in ascertaining just why the enrollment rate of black males in colleges around America and in particular Historical Black Colleges and Universities - HBCUs like Howard University - are flatlining. Datausa.io reported in 2021, regarding enrollment statistics "Students enrolled at Howard University in full-time Undergraduate programs are most commonly Black or African American Female (49.6%), followed by

Black or African American Male (17.7%) and Hispanic or Latino Female (4.99%).” And when we factor in faculty members; there are roughly 28% of black males at an HBCU geared towards the recruitment of black students. It's apoplectic to think that Howard University has less than 1/5th in undergrad and less than 1/3rd in total black male students, grad students, counselors, professors, etc.

If I had a crystal ball and began to scry into the future this surely augurs an erasure of black men from an institution fought for by black men. An imperative part of a tranche of promises through the negotiating efforts of Frederick Douglas and the black men who served in the Union Army, Freedmen who fought against confederates to end the vile institution of slavery, with interlocutors President Abraham Lincoln and William Tecumseh Sherman.

The primary desideratum of this piece is to add color to each unapparent scene that emanated from the 1890 Mohonk conference. For color added to a photograph collapses the distance between time and space, thus allowing us to bring past things into the present more appreciably.

One of the features of the 'moral psychology' of white settler colonialism exercised by white supremacists in America over the out-group black male population is the decision making process. My research of this and how dominant society - in this case, white males - wield this power, led me to the University of Texas library to research 'Ethics Unwrapped.’ Following the threads of the program’s practical application of behavioral ethics led me to another idea termed 'Psychological Essentialism’ found in journals.sagepub.com (2007), defined as "the hypothesis that humans represent some categories as having an underlying essence that unifies members of a category and is causally responsible for their typical attributes and behaviors.” It also states the "potential effect of this belief is increased prejudice toward members of stigmatized groups, driven by a tendency to essentialize their negatively perceived qualities.” This, of course, continues to be one of the leading frameworks in how and why black people suffer bias and injustices not only in America, but around the globe. The impacts of this negative perception, however, is heaped even more heavily upon black males, which is evident in how white society continues to license the horrific, debilitating and dehumanizing treatment of black males. While conversely, black women are being buoyed to a higher buffer class and further underscore false perceptions and narratives with grievances such as “why can’t black men keep up" educationally and or professionally in terms of career progression? My response, as stated in my previous pieces, is the same.

“The twig was bent early and it kept its shape throughout" - Randall Robinson.

The subhuman view of black males in America have congealed for generations in the minds of private, white wealthy settler colonists such as the Rockefeller’s, Smiley’s, and even more recently, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott. As well as the Federal Government, Confederates, white feminist, and certain black feminist, while also infecting a sprawling immigrant population. To combat this conglomerate of enemies, the choice is a challenging but simple one. At its core racism is intrinsically an anti-male misandric aggression universally. Black males must separate politically from all other groups to push our own interests because we face a unique problem that is only hastening and becoming more sophisticated and ossified. Black males must recognize the environment of hostility in which we reside, and build cooperatives. In 2015 Dr. Umar Johnson was chided for the idea of a black boys only school using empirical evidence of how salutary certain methods, especially black boys being taught by black men, have been. Yet, he and the idea were met with guerrilla voracity by a bourgeoisie class of black elites like Lauren Victoria Burke, Eugene Craig, and a barrage of second-wave feminist, including Professor Benita Roth.

Evincing the gestalt of how all other groups within America respond to even an inkling of self-determination by black males is transcribed in Braille. Occasioned by white settler colonists hundreds of years ago, racism at its core is anti-black male misandry permanently embroidered into the fabric of American society. Black men must grapple with what is and subside the class differences that exist among us to support movements and programs like 'Black Male Studies' and the 'African Male Initiative (AAMI).’ We can ill afford to simply gather and talk, we must galvanize and depend upon each other as our last bastion of hope. Based on the view from the historical bridge, we know that there are no reserves or help on the horizon, so as Noble Drew Ali once stated

"accept your own and be yourself.”