The successful implementation of Race into the “American” psyche.
Hack:
To gain access to a computer illegally[1]
When Malcolm X said in Detroit in 1963,
“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it’s wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it’s wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”[2]
In essence, Malcolm was telling the crowd you have been hacked by a government that expects you to respect her, but show you no respect in return. When Martin Luther King Jr. said in Washington D.C. in 1963,
“Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree is a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.”[3]
In essence, Martin Luther king Jr. was telling the crowd you have been hacked. Hacked into believing that this nation stood for equality, freedom, and justice. You have been programed to believe that separate could be equal.
The argument here is not that we have been hacked, but that the effect of mental hacking is so embedded in the “American” psyche that no matter the speaker, no matter the situation the “New American” has been so thoroughly hacked that un-programming or reprogramming the “New American” psyche is an impossibility unless “America” changes the system from the inside out.
If we take this definition of hacked and replace computer with the human brain then we can understand how we have been hacked. Our cerebral cortex has been hacked by a system that has brought us to believe that there is a difference between us as people. The hacking of the “American” psyche is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the psyche of the “New American” has been being hacked since the first rebellion of servants.
“When in 1640 three servants tried to run away, the two whites were punished with a lengthening of their service. But, as the court put it, "the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural life.”[4]
Even prior to this the “New American” psyche was being hacked, as blacks in the new world was already being considered as not equal to his white counterpart. The above mentioned case of rebellion is what would force the colonies to separate blacks and whites. Whites could remain as indentured, but now it was feasible to trap a black man in shackles and make him work for life without pay.
White settlers had a problem here too. When at first it was said that a Christian could not be enslaved, blacks began to get saved, but alas that rule would be changed to say a white Christian could not be enslaved further alienating blacks and whites. While blacks were being subjected to the brutal treatment of slavery whites were being hacked in different ways. As slavery expanded (through state law) whites had to wonder where the jobs and education was for his prosperity. Work would remain elusive for whites during and after slavery, but especially during. Why would a wealthy landlord hire and pay regular laborers when he had slaves who worked for free?
“The Planter has Tradesmen of all kinds in his Gang of Slaves, and ‘tis a Rule with them, never to pay Money for what can be made upon their Estates, not a Lock, a Hing [sic] or a Nail if they can avoid it.” In other words, planters expected enslaved people to perform a wide range of jobs that included carpenter, cooper, boatman, cook, seamstress, and blacksmith, to mention only a few of the skilled functions required around plantations.”[5]
Clearly plantation owners would not need to pay for white laborers, but in a hacked society whites poor and illiterate still felt as though they were better than any black person free or slave.
Nothing conveyed the successfulness of hacking the “New American” more than the Civil War (1861-1865). North and South divided over the issue of states’ rights (the expansion of slavery) but the wealthy of the North nor the South would be directly involved in the fighting. In fact, President Abraham Lincoln wanted blacks excluded from military service, and for a time he had his way. The Southern troops who were the most inflicted by slavery would fight to maintain a system that if preserved would keep them at the lowest rungs of society; but yet they fought and died by the hundreds of thousands. Not because slavery helped them any, but because slaves were black, and if freed, they were told, that nigger will get to vote, he will be your equal. The hacking of his (the southern soldier) psyche allowed him to give his life for a cause that would never (if won) benefit his wellbeing.
After the Civil War societal hacking went into over drive. Laws (black codes) were enacted that would relegate blacks to a life that could only be considered as third or even fourth classman ship.
“Under the lenient Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson, white southerners reestablished civil authority in the former Confederate states in 1865 and 1866. They enacted a series of restrictive laws known as "black codes," which were designed to restrict freed blacks' activity and ensure their availability as a labor force now that slavery had been abolished. For instance, many states required blacks to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested as vagrants and fined or forced into unpaid labor.”[6]
Although, these codes would officially last but one year they (black codes) would set the tone for what would become a uniform set of laws known as Jim Crow laws, which oppression, rape, and murdered would keep blacks virtually in a second class status that has effected this country till this day. Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws were such good mental programs that they have shaped society in a way that arguably no other laws have. These hacking programs remain even though the laws that created the programs has ceased to exist.
Twentieth Century “New Americans” were so thoroughly hacked from centuries of programing and reprograming that they could not see a change was coming to the “New America”. Lynching’s, murders, and the rape of not only black womanhood, but black manhood would give way to a black nationalism that “America” was not prepared for. These movements would come in many different forms, but their aims were the same. To un-hack a society that was already programmed. Groups like the NOI (Nation of Islam). The SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference). And the BPP (Black Panther Party) would be the vanguard of this movement.
The year was 1955 when an obscure southern minister would give a national speech exclaiming the righteousness of the Birmingham Bus Boycott. That minister was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King’s strategy was non-violence. He thought non-violence was the way to gain worldwide attention to the plight of blacks in “America”. He went about this with a zeal that can only be described as zealotry. Dr. King’s SCLC would clash with other civil rights groups including his own, because other organizations believed in self-defense at the very least while other’s call for outright revolution. Widely respected and hated by whites as well as blacks Dr. King would preside over the only organization that could reach the president’s ear. But when Dr. King decided to voice his convictions about the Vietnam War he would make more enemies, as he believed that “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” (A time to break silence pg. 231). At a time when even his allies felt he should stay focused on Civil Rights, he could not understand how black people here could gain civil rights if 1) they were dying in overwhelming numbers and 2) if we were morally bankrupt killing colored poor people all over the globe. As he so eloquently said in his A Time to Break Silence speech
“There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”[7]
This led many to the conclusion that Dr. King was overstepping his boundaries as a civil rights leader into the realm of politics where he had no business, but when the United States is using resources to conquer nations who are fighting for their self-determination at the expense of the cause he has fought for the war, if not politics become his business. Dr. King goes on to say, “They must see Americans as strange liberators. Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.”[8] Dr. King himself did not believe the Vietnamese were not ready, he was stating the position of the Western world, and pointing out their hypocrisy at forced independence when “America” could not even promise independence to their own citizens. Because the “New American” was programed to believe that “America” was the land of moral authority, because the “New American” was so thoroughly programmed to believe that communist were the anti-Christ the “New American” could never bring themselves to believe what DR. King was saying even though the Vietnamese looked to “America” for help in seeking self-determination.
Dr. King knew he was already being watched by the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), but by seemingly speaking on behalf of the Vietnamese he would be labeled as a communist and shunned by those who once supported his cause, but he would gain an unlikely ally in Malcolm X. This is not to suggest that either of these men changed their tactics, this is to say that Malcolm slightly changed his views. When Malcolm took the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia he learned the true meaning of Islam. He learned the he himself had not been hacked once (as a youth), but twice as a Black Muslim in “America”. The masses of people from all over the world speaking different languages, but all Muslims had a bearing on his decision, but it was Dr. Azzam’s hospitality that made him rethink the role of the white man in the world. After Dr. Azzam gave Malcolm his suit Malcolm says “That morning was when I first began to reappraise the “white man””.[9]
After this journey Malcolm returned to the United States with a slightly different view. Not of America, nor of his belief in separation instead of integration, but a different view of the white man’s role in the world. Malcolm had said long ago that the Nation of Islam would work with any group that would work with them, but he had been hacked into believing that white had no part in the growth of blacks in “America”. Upon his return his opinions had changed, but he still believed that blacks must help themselves. Malcolm changed his tone and opened up to other leaders including those whom he had previously called Uncle Tom Negros. During his travels he also learned of black struggles around the world and the charter of the United Nations, but as he was being un-programmed Malcolm understood the that the hacking job that had been going on since this nation had been founded was so embedded in the psyche of the “New American” that going to the United Nations would not resonate with the masses of “New Americans”, thus “New Americans” and especially Negros would remained hacked by the “American” program.
As mentioned above, the argument here is not that we have been hacked, but that the effect of mental hacking is so embedded in the “American” psyche that un-hacking that psyche is virtually impossible. The programming of the “New American” has outlasted the laws that put these programs in place. Even today we reside in a country where the hacking programs of the 1600’s continue to infect the psyche of the “New American”.
Bibliography
Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Ballantine Books. 1964, 1965, 1999,
Malcolm X, Message to the Grass Roots, Detroit Michigan, 1963.
Martin Luther King Jr., A time to break silence. 1967
www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf
http://libcom.org/history/1619-1741-slavery-slave-rebellion-us
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1609-1865/essays/slavelabor.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/black-codes
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hack
[1] www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hack.
[2] X Malcolm. Message to the Grass Roots, Detroit Michigan, 1963.
[3] www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf
[4] http://libcom.org/history/1619-1741-slavery-slave-rebellion-us.
[5]http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1609-1865/essays/slavelabor.htm.
[6] http://www.history.com/topics/black-codes.
[7] Jr. King Martin L. A time to break silence. 1967 pg. 233.
[8] Jr. King Martin L. A time to break silence. 1967 pg. 235.
[9] Haley Alex The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Ballantine Books. 1964, 1965, 1999, pg. 340