I guess after being told how sorry you are over and over again by multiple sources, you start to think something is seriously wrong with you. That’s natural and to be expected. However, in these United States of America, a nation where the promise that “all men are created equal” only applies to white men, there has been a never-ending campaign to make sure nonwhite races feel as close to shit as possible. Black folks, in particular, are the target of this campaign, and it’s not going to put on the breaks anytime soon.
We’ve been told that we’re uneducated, shiftless, ignorant, violent, hypersexual, etc. etc. all because of our black skin and Afrikan features. But those qualities found in every human group out there, are never seen as “all bad” when it comes to white people. Yet, there’s something wrong with us culturally. We’re making babies at a high rate without a father. We’re hate and beat our women for no reason. We reject learning for material possessions. We fight each other, put each other down and even kill each other. We do this, that and the other and are closely examined as if we have some built-in glitch in our programming because of our blackness. Our black skin has become a pathology.
And when you’ve been bludgeoned with the black pathology myth so many times, after a while, you will have black people believing it themselves. Whenever there’s a subject which is a negative social issue but is discussed in the confines of the black community, there is (at least) someone who says or believes that no other race does that subject. For instance, there are those who think that no other people beat women like we do, kill themselves like we do or disrespect women like we do. “No other race treats their women badly”, or “We’re the only ones who do or don’t do whatever” is what we hear. We’ve convinced ourselves that social problems are exclusively bad in the black community or that we’re the only ones with the problem.
While you’ve been made to believe in black pathology, at the same time, you are made to believe in the greatness and splendidness of whiteness. You are told how great white people are, especially by the media, the same media that dishes out the black pathology myth daily. You hardly hear about the problems of murder, out-of-wedlock births, robbery, misogyny, and all other kinds of bullshit when it comes to white people in the context of whiteness as a culture. But if you do, there are individualized and sympathized as victims of social problems. Black folks, on the other hand, are made out to be social problems.
And some of us believe that.
However, we don’t own the rights and patents on any of society’s problems. We are NOT the only people who disrespect our women. We are NOT the only ones robbing and killing each other. We are NOT a race of ignoramuses. We are NOT a goddamn pathology!
Now, let’s be straight with this, this is NOT to excuse our own problems. We need to deal with social issues that are a part of the black community and find ways to do better. But we’re not the only ones who should be doing do. White people, Asians, Latinos, Hispanics, Chicanos, Native American/First Nation, everyone must confront these issues and do what it takes to remedy them. Yes, black people, we got some work to do. But all the rest of the people out there, you got work to do as well.