The True Nature of A Black Man
By Ronald Yates
For many of us and when I say us, I mean Black People, we will never understand our true nature, we are told by society that our behaviors, our thoughts, and actions come as a result of us being descendants of a people with no history, no culture, no contributions to the development of society. In actuality, no one in the U.S. school system would dare say those words. In fact, there are very few words uttered at all as it relates to Black History… it is a conspiracy of silence. For the people with the longest history on the planet, we have the least amount of time devoted to our story, much of that is due to our lack of knowledge.
We don’t know who we are, where we come from, or what we have contributed to the world. We have embraced much of what we learned on the plantation and have adopted it as part of our culture. We have fallen under the delusion that things like being hustlers, pimps and peddling drugs is innate to us as Black People, something that racist historians have tried to find evidence of for centuries. They have tried to create a paradigm that fits the story of Ham, who was cursed to be “A drawer of water and a hewer of wood for his brothers into perpetuity.” That original story was first documented in the Babylonian Talmud. It outlines the transformation of Ham, the physical and cognitive changes that Ham would undergo, as a result of reportedly laughing at his father Noah, while he was naked and intoxicated.
For us, one of the worse things to happen was accepting the Eurocentric version of Christianity. It was not a simple conversion. We didn’t just suddenly accept the European depiction of Christ, it was a violent, torturous process. The slave masters of our ancestors would tell us about the love of Christ, his goodness, and his mercy, while at the same time subjecting us to the worst form of physical, emotional, and mental abuse. When we left the plantation, we took with us the Eurocentric concepts of God. After more than a century of brainwashing and the European image of Christ is prominently featured on the walls, ceilings, and stained glass windows of our churches the indoctrination of the European concept of God had become firmly embedded into the souls of Black people. The process of dehumanization, breaking the will of the African people was a carefully laid out process that would keep the enslaved Africans under the control of Europeans… even after the physical chains were removed. For Black Men, the process known as “Buck Breaking” would lead to Black Men abandoning our families. Psychologically we lost our self-worth, while at the same time taking the worst of what we saw on the plantation and using it against our women and, hence, ourselves.
We became the overseers who forcibly took advantage of women and girls, exposing them to rape and other forms of abuse including sexual, emotional, and physical. We accepted the notion that are sisters are not our equals, that we have a right to control them, to use them as we see fit. For the Black Man, it is time we relearn who we are and what we are capable of achieving. Black Women have lost faith in us, they see us as more of a liability than a partner. We have shown ourselves to be incapable of taking care of ourselves, let alone them and the children we procreate with them.
As Black Men we are descended from a distant memory of when we were Kings like Egyptian King Amenhotep III, grandfather of King Tut; and rarely are we producing 21st Century men like Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Langston Hughes, George Washington-Carver and so many other powerful Black men of the past. Today we are nurturing a generation of emasculated adult boys, who think their mere presence in the home is enough. They have been coddled by women who struggled to raise them alone, who feel they are entitled. In our native lands, we had manhood training schools, that taught us our history, our culture, and our responsibilities as men and leaders.
For conscious Black Men, we need to take the knowledge we have and instill it into the next generation. It is not the responsibility of the government or the U.S. educational system… it is ours and ours alone. Once we begin to relearn who we are, the glorifying of the hustler mentality will die; and we will truly become worthy of our ancestors and the women who love us.
