How did we African Americans become living contradictions of our former selves?

How have unity, racial pride, and educational aspiration, once hallmarks of Black identity so dramatically declined?  How did we African Americans become living contradictions of our former selves?  Do we continue to accept the easy and convenient answer that they all merely disintegrated when integration and other subsequent opportunities became available?

Moreover, can the core of our problems still somehow be connected to White racism?  Many Americans today believe that Dr. King’s dream has been, for the most part, fully realized in America and that therefore consequently, Blacks failure to achieve is now perceived as totally the fault of Blacks alone.  But has Dr. King’s dream been fully realized in America, or are we all the victims of an elaborate illusion that equality now exists for all Americans?

Today the illusion of opportunity and change has been so firmly established upon the national consciousness that to suggest that the current problems among Black America are now the results of White racism has become almost laughable.

Presently, it is conceivable that if anyone were to now blame the many disparities among Black America on White racism that they would be immediately accused of playing the inevitable race card.  There might also be charges of peddling victim hood in order to enjoy the moral advantage that victim-hood lends to emphasize this position, toward absolving Blacks from all responsibility. 

 Certainly, there are some Blacks who have wrongly peddled victim-hood and blame of Whites; however, today this scenario of the Black victim-hood peddler is deliberately over stated and perpetuated in America.  The effect is utter disdain for these Black accusers – even from fellow Blacks.  This is deliberately done to prevent Blacks from realizing that there is actually a modern, deliberate system of racism implemented by America’s White governmental elites with the underlying objective of maintaining White dominance. Due to the prevalence of White dominance in America, the prevailing perception has become that race is no longer significant in American society and that therefore racism can no longer be claimed a factor in the unhealthy state of Black America.  However to find the true answers to the persistent despairing problems among America’s  Black communities Blacks must not be deterred , but instead be willing to persevere beyond White indifference, ridicule, disapproval, and/or accusations of victim-hood peddling for they are now deliberately employed as tools of deterrence to keep Black America from discovering the truth.  

 The truth is although today most African Americans do not experience racism the way their parents experienced it, they do, however, still experience White racism.  White America’s practices of economically exploiting and suppressing its Black population were never actually abandoned, but instead sophisticatedly reincarnated.  White racism in the U.S. persists as a current and devastating problem that is now deployed more sophisticatedly, covertly, and more proficiently than ever before.  White America’s methods of institutional racism has been secretly modified into a more contemporary and stealthy design that provides a more socially acceptable means to covertly control and suppress the advancement of its African American population. 

The decline of the blatant, overt racism used in the United States to suppress African Americans through the 1960’s coincided with the introduction of a well-camouflaged, more proficient, sophisticated, and covert method of White racism better suited for the times.  This modern covert system is directly attributed to the intensification of internalized self hatred, profound disunity, and present confused outlook now prevalent in Black America. Though African Americans today are measurably more successful than their predecessors in every field, this current system of deploying white racism ensures that African Americans remains the most racially devalued most deliberately exploited and suppressed group in America.

 

For the most part the manner in which we African Americans approach and/or confront White racism is extremely outdated. Today, unfortunately, whenever the topic of racism is discussed among African Americans, this implies (for most) the images of police brutality, racial profiling, driving while Black, and, of course, the Ku Klux Klan and similar White, anti-Black organizations.  While these are all serious elements of racism that does deserve our attention, they are neither the most prevalent nor do they represent the most detrimental form of racism faced by African Americans today. 

Because the past, blatant methods of insuring White dominance caused momentum for resistance because they were so obviously immoral and unjust, the U.S. government secretly implemented a far more sophisticated methods of maintaining its white dominance.  Today’s system is far more sophisticated, elaborate and proficient than any system of racism previously faced by African Americans – even slavery.                                                                          

The present despairing state of Black America is a deliberate occurrence carefully contrived by America’s ruthless white ruling elites.  Although the formal covert Counterintelligence Program [COINTELPRO] deployed by the FBI directed against African Americans during the period of 1956-1971 was discontinued. However, in truth today there is a far more sophisticated and massive governmental scheme being implemented against the entire African American population as a means of ensuring that white dominance and control is maintained. This present system uses the methods of propaganda techniques based upon the works of renowned psychologist Dr. Edward Bernays.

 Dr. Edward Bernays was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and one of the most skillful experts in mass manipulation.  He invented the modern day Madison Avenue advertising Agencies by using his Uncle Sigmund’s knowledge of the human psyche to make people feel they needed whatever product was being advertised. Edward Bernays also invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud’s ideas to manipulate the masses. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn’t need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.  

His most notorious feat was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. Bernays was convinced that this mass method of manipulation was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. For him it was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle, Sigmund Freud, had identified, people could be made happy, docile, angry, self hating or even confused.

 

During World War I, Bernays and journalist Walter Lippman were hired by then United States President, Woodrow Wilson, to participate in the Creel Commission, the mission of which was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war, on the side of Britain. The war propaganda campaign of Bernays and Lippman produced such an intense anti-German hysteria as to permanently impress America’s governmental elites with the potential of large-scale propaganda to control public opinion. Edward Bernays advised US presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Eisenhower and served numerous corporations and business associations. This was the start of the mass media and governmental psychological manipulation programs which has come to covertly dominate today’s world. One of Bernays biggest fans was Hitler’s propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, a fact about which Bernays bragged proudly.  A common pattern used repeatedly by Bernays was to turn a harmless entity into a fearsome enemy through lies and manufactured news items. Then use the “threat” to justify attacking the entity.

Edward Bernays coined the terms “group mind” and “engineering consent”, important concepts in practical propaganda work. Bernays said in his 1928 book Propaganda, that; “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He further states that; “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.” The current public relations industry is a direct outgrowth of Bernays’ work and his method of mass psychological manipulation is also still currently used by the United States government.

 

Today, in carrying out many of its social-engineering agendas, the United States Government has acquired a long history of conducting extensive campaigns of strategic psychological operations [based upon the works of Benays] through the national media to influence the perception and climate of the nation towards its governmental objectives. Because
the nineteen sixties were a period of massive black rebellion and unrest that eroded the American global image, increasingly placed the nation’s peace and stability in dire jeopardy, caused the U.S. Government to fear the uprising of a violent Black revolution, and perhaps most particularly because the nations top sociologist and psychologist knew that those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. This quite logically necessitated, as a means of restoring its stability, that the U.S. Government instate these same proven methods of mass psychological manipulation against its entire Black population.                                                The U.S. Government now secretly deliberately disseminates false deplorably racially devaluing statistics and propaganda about its Black population that are deliberately designed to adversely manipulate and shape the minds and collective consciousness of its African American population– corrupting African Americans sense of unity, cohesion, and reason — and facilitates a consensual national environment  of where in which its Black population is more easily divided, exploited and ultimately suppressed.  When most people hear the term of psychological manipulation they usually think in terms of the classic “conspiracy theory” that refers to overt mind control such as mind altering drugs with carefully hypnotic programming. However, the real and true dangers are Bernays well proven methods of affecting the unconscious mind by using deception, and psychological manipulation. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles.  The constant relentless bombardment with deplorably negative images of themselves that of which African Americans are so inundated with, through a white controlled media, is a very carefully and deliberately designed psychological conditioning program. Its unrelenting daily assault on the Black psyche is designed to corrupt African Americans’ sense of racial unity and cohesion, mold the character of self-hatred, engender self-doubt, self-loathing, and distrust among their group while insinuating that Blacks admire, respect, and trust only Whites.                                                                                                                This method of psychological manipulation works by affecting the unconscious mind through deception. It uses the psychology of deceit to adversely affect the recipient group in terms of their behavior. Here is a simplified example of how this is being implemented against African Americans.  Let us, for example, imagine that a crew of people was aboard their own massive ship and that this ship was being shadowed by another neighboring ship that was constantly broadcasting derogatory messages to the first group. Such messages as that their ship was lesser, smaller, not seaworthy, perhaps slowly sinking or that their crew was incompetent and was planning a mutiny.  With time, the group receiving the negative messages, being unable to refute or to confirm these derogatory messages and deficiencies will grow weary and paranoid of the negative messages and will eventually comes to accept these negative assessments of themselves. The perception created by the taunting now unconsciously influences how the taunted group perceives themselves, subsequently causing them to become distrustful of themselves, doubting themselves, hating themselves and, eventually, fighting among themselves. The taunted group may even become so besieged by deep feelings of inadequacy that they may even jump into the sea and attempt to swim towards the taunting ship now believing it to be superior to their own ship even if their own ship was in fact better. The basis of this concept of mind manipulation is that the human being’s most critical aspect is the mind and it works by affecting the mind through deception. It uses the psychology of deceit to adversely affect the recipient group in terms of their behavior.                                                 Within a real life setting this mortifying psychosocial treatment is precisely what is being deliberately done to African Americans. Where of which they are constantly bombarded and inundated by deplorably negative imagery’s of themselves through a totally white controlled media outlets that intentionally subjected them to seeing only the fraudulently worst in themselves.             This is done through an immense campaign of false derogatory misinformation and false negative media reports and statistics that are created by U.S. governmental agencies and then leaked to its collaborators in the news media, which either knowingly or unknowingly carry the stories as their own. These false information about African Americans are then disseminated unrelentingly everywhere; it is deliberately perpetuated through news releases in magazine articles, radio, television, press releases, documentaries, and false census reports perpetuating and framing the myth of Whites’ racial, moral, and ethical superiority over its Black population. However, the weapon is not in how the message is carried, but is instead within the messages that it carries and how these messages detrimentally affects the Black population at large.                                                                                                                     The over representation of Black crimes and grossly exaggerated statistics of Black on Black violence within this psychosocial program are intentionally designed to create fear, hatred, and distrust thus molding the character of disunity and self-hatred among the Black community.  [Black’s own personal negative experiences and interactions with their fellow Blacks then merely confirm the program’s perpetuated message that it is they that are their own worst enemies]. The ultimate goal of this governmental psychosocial treatment of African Americans is to destroy the Black unity and cohesion that was historically the cornerstone of civil rights gains and that was a crucial factor of the survival of African Americans through more than four hundred years of racial oppression. [Logic dictates that given that unity and cohesion among African Americans was responsible for the demise of White America’s past system of blatant, institutionalized racism, then destroying this unity would be an essential objective of this psychological manipulation program.]                                                                                         All African Americans have experienced the burden of this system of applied psychological conditioning, some more severely than others have.  It is experienced every time we [Blacks] read a newspaper, watch the evening news, listen to a radio report, enter a classroom and read its racially biased textbooks.  To the detriment of many African Americans, it has been an extremely effective. It has successfully conditioned many African Americans to accept the dominance of Whites and white institutions over their lives by misleading them to believe that they are, themselves, their own worst enemies, therefore engendering an aberration of internalized self contempt that pulverizes Black unity and halts Black upward mobility. It is at the root of both the profound division and self hatred now afflicting so many Black Americans and is at the heart of internalized feelings of superiority that many whites possess.

And while many African Americans have successfully navigated through this psychologically mortifying mine field and have gone on to lead successful, productive lives, for far too many this immense devaluation can seem inescapable and tragically, over time, many begin to accept subconsciously and painfully the negative portrayals of themselves. Many also become discouraged by the acceptance that their society is also preconditioned to see the worst in them and that, therefore, if they were ever to gain acceptance, if it is to be won at all, that success would be hard won. This in turn manifests negative internalized psychological pain and distress within many African Americans that can take many forms. In fact, this governmental mortifying psychosocial treatment of African Americans may be the most aggravating, if not core, factor of the national phenomenon of self hatred; loss of educational aspirations; loss of unity, cohesion and racial pride; and fragile psyches of many African Americans today. It is in fact so fundamentally detrimental to the Black human condition and psyche that it may even affect the extent to which many African Americans realize their full human potential. This type of psychological manipulation program has also been proven very effective in rapidly destroying a group’s ethical and moral values and engendering negative cultural norms with regard to violence, brutality, and even murder. All people, to some degree, are products of cultural conditions and their worldviews operate outside of their level of consciousness. Therefore, no group can be preconditioned to see only the worst in themselves and not exhibit some degree of negative psychological impact.

Not only does this massive governmental psychological manipulation campaign negatively impacts Blacks self perceptions,  it also ensures that the masses of African Americans remains the most racially devalued and most economical exploited and suppressed group in America.  The media’s constantly depicted deplorable imagery of Black Americans is designed also to create a shift of victimization that changes the root problem of racism in America to be due to Black’s behavior rather than White’s proclivity for racism. Therefore insinuates that America would be a better society as a whole if African Americans were gone, thus engendering increasingly prejudiced distorted perceptions and acrimonious beliefs about African Americans that are designed to makes the nation and the entire world insensitive to their plight, tranquilizes efforts on their behalf, lessens pressure for social change on their behalf, and makes any serious criticism of White racism almost impossible today. Therefore fostering a national setting of where in which Blacks are more easily exploited and ultimately consensually suppressed. Moreover, some studies have shown that this shift of victimization now reflects increasingly acrimonious beliefs and prejudiced perceptions about and against African Americans that are arguably stronger today than they were after emancipation. This governmental psychological conditioning program is what stripped African Americans of the national and international support that was acquired during the 1960’s civil rights struggles.

 This campaign also creates a false justification for the legal system’s mistreatment of African Americans wherein they are disproportionately incarcerated, given stiffer sentences, and are more likely than other racial groups to be treated brutally, beaten, and fired upon by police officers while they are unarmed. These injustices now goes ignored because the perception has subconsciously become that it’s all now justified.  When contempt of Blacks is made to appear to be justifiable, it is the fiercest and most effective type of racism because its witnesses, bystanders, and even world audiences will sit by idly allowing African Americans to be brutally mistreated under the belief that it is justified.  This is what Dr. Edward Bernays referred to as “engineering consent”.

Its effects are also manifested in ideas, education, governmental policies, economic stratification, social segregation, housing markets, hiring and promotion practices, psychological issues, and minority access to a variety of social services and opportunity. This societal engineering also today affects attitudes that when enacted through governmental policies, laws, and other legislation actions, serve to ensure that African Americans will not advance.  Through the usage of mass psychological manipulation White America’s methods of institutionalized racism has been secretly modified into a more sophisticated and stealthy design. Unfortunately to the detriment of many African Americans this modern system of deploying white racism has been very proficient.

 

The notion that the U.S government has reincarnated its method of suppressing its Black population is patently very plausible and historically accurate. Because the practices of reinventing methods of suppressing sub-groups is not at all uncommon.  The records of history show that the reincarnating of suppressive methods into forms more acceptable to the changing times is a common practice.  In examining the record of history, we often find that, among those mighty empires which were ruthless, greedy, and racist, those behaviors did not decay quickly even after the fall of the empire.  These patterns of racism were often reincarnated into forms more acceptable to the changing times. History acknowledges that this has been a common practice of the United States government. As seen after the abolishment of slavery wherein its methods of using racist, oppressive treatment of its Black population was reincarnated into Jim Crow inequalities maintained by regional authorities and condoned by the U.S. Government.   A Governmental condoning that facilitated a national environment of where in which African Americans were brutally mistreated, lynched and were made victims of many devious strategies and methods that prevented them from becoming registered voters.  And let us not forget the horrific Tuskegee experiments or of the CIA’s involvement in flooding the Black communities of Los Angeles with drugs and high powered weaponry. A quick review of history easily affirms the reality that white America does have a tradition of resistant against the advancement of its Black population. It also reminds us that the White race’s innate proclivity for racism, control, and dominance is much too deeply ingrained for them to just merely give up their practices of implementing suppressive methods over its African American population. 

 

 This concept of the U.S government using psychological warfare through the national media as a weapon to influence and control its Black population is not at all ridiculous.  Psychological Warfare is a real, well-proven and commonly used method of warfare that exceeds the territorial limits of conventional warfare to penetrate the proposed target. Today, the U.S. government, like many other developed nations, conducts planned campaigns of extensive, strategic psychological manipulation operations through the national media to influence the perception and climate of the nation towards the attainment of its governmental objectives.  These psychological manipulating programs began in a military setting, but governmental and societal elites eventually realized that it could be useful for totally controlling society.  Therefore, it evolved from military application against foreign enemies to the domestic control of society. 

 These systems of mass psychological manipulation were first perfected by members of the U.S. military and then advances in these studies resulted in it then being turned over to the intelligence sectors for other applications. The intelligence sector, in turn, deliberately and successfully undertook to have these same manipulative conditioning programs applied to influence the climate of the nation in favor of its governmental objectives. Participating federal agencies may include the National Security Council, the Office of Strategic Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.  When these manipulative programs are deployed against foreign entities they are referred to by governmental and military officials as “psychological warfare” when they’re executed domestically to influence the climate of the nation they are then referred to as Psychological operations (PSYOPs) rather than as a “Warfare”. The U.S. Government has an extensive history of using the national media to psychologically manipulate and influence public opinion. It is indeed a very common governmental practice.

What is more, this contention that the U.S government is using a mass psychological manipulation program to influence and control its Black population is totally consistent with White America’s past tradition of resistant against Black advancement.  Moreover, it was the next logical choice because this method covertly provides the U.S. government a stealthier, socially acceptable means to both control and influence the national climate and engender personal psychological feelings among its Black population that meet its objectives of maintaining its white dominance.  

This isn’t to say that all things on TV are geared towards psychological manipulation. They’re not. But we cannot ignore the fact the present immense campaigns of deplorably negative media portrayal of African Americans that causes feelings of self loathing among many Blacks, lessens pressure for social change on their behalf and facilitates a national consensual environment of where in which Blacks mistreatment  appears justified, is totally consistent with Dr. Edward Bernays commonly used methods of turning a harmless group into a fearsome enemy through lies and manufactured news items then using the false created image to justify mistreating and attacking the group. It is essential that we Black people all do our parts to disseminate this information and implement plans to counter this real life Black Matrix.

 

 THE BLACK MATRIX: The Modern Mental & Social Suppression of African Americans Under National Interest (c) 2006, 2008 By Franklin Jones aka Thanubian. For more info visit www.divineblacktruth.org

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Published by African Press International – API