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(Editor’s Note: This is part two of an article calling African American men to seek power not in religion, but relationship with the living God and Creator who reveals Himself to man.)
Black Power Quest
The yearning for power (translated: the ability to make choices and control one’s own destiny without resistance or hindrance from any outside spiritual or human forces) did not begin with the vocal cry of America’s black youth in the 1960’s. It really began in the troubled hearts of West Africans taken captive and brought to the shores of America to be sold as slaves centuries earlier.
These souls understood the experience of being powerless before the invisible forces of darkness. The associated fear caused them to seek means to appease, co-exist with and even wield the power of these forces through serving them. Many had also known the experience of being powerless before men (that surging, turbulent and twisted feeling of outrage and yet utter helplessness under the circumstances, to do anything about being under another man’s absolute control) first, perhaps, as a captive in one of the many inter-tribal wars fought among West African tribes. Now, of course, they knew it as an American slave.
The American slave system sought to make male slaves see themselves as lower than and inferior to even the most reprehensible of white men. They were constantly called derogatory names and violently mistreated. Many were also forced to endure the humiliation of having their mothers, wives and daughters provide sex on demand to their masters and immediately after slavery, rapists who threatened death unless the men backed down. Such threats were credible since the local justice system would be sure to side with the rapist while the terror of a lynch mob awaited those men who would instinctively dare try to protect their women.
Later, segregation driven by racism and discrimination erected a cruel wall of separation no amount of achievement or attainment could overcome. Black men under this system were haunted by the continual refrain, “not good enough” and crushed they could not get the best for their families. Also, on the one hand, they were told as men to work to provide for their families and then were denied opportunities to do so at a real living wage.
After nearly 400 years of slavery, Jim Crow segregation and continuing racism on many fronts, there are few African American men who can say they have never had the experience of being powerless in America. Indeed, powerlessness is a negative mental and emotional legacy of the historic black experience in America especially among black men (including those professing to be Christians).
To downplay the long-term affect powerlessness along with the eleven other negative mental and emotional legacies of slavery and continuing racism we have identified among black men would have, is the height of folly. Is not our nation still treating Vietnam veterans from all backgrounds for mental and emotional issues they have from that less than a 25 year war? How much more then, would many black men be in need who, after nearly 400 years of at times brutal oppression, have found no real healing or help to cope?
Tragically, countless black males down through the years have chosen to deal with powerlessness (as they do with other negative mental and emotional legacies of slavery and continuing racism) in ways that are destructive to themselves, their families and community. While I cannot excuse such destructive conduct as drug and alcohol abuse, criminality, promiscuity, violence (domestic and otherwise), family abandonment and the seeking of power in the gangs, radical groups and religions of human invention, I empathize with the men who do these things.
Truly, I have not escaped the experience of the legacy of powerlessness either. I know well the inner turmoil of being powerless in the face of racism and the resulting self-loathing for failing to act on the impulse to extricate myself and demonstrate my power in violence. I am however, so glad I did not do this! America’s soil is filled with the corpses and Hades the souls of black men who have destroyed themselves forever by lashing out.
To Be Continued Next Issue
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