One Size Fits All
I was conversing with one of my friends yesterday evening about a prayer march that had taken place in Chicago earlier that day. I don’t have anything against
prayer marches or gatherings because I understand they can be an individual or collective healing experience along with being therapeutic activity for many. They
can help foster peace of mind among the participants and victims. These marches can also raise awareness and broadcast the voices of the community letting it’s
violent transgressors know that their acts of unfocused, misdirected aggression will not be tolerated. Prayer is a viable piece of the puzzle for some.
At the prayer rally, my guy mentioned to me that he saw a sign that read as follows, “Real Men Get On Their Knees”. Yeah, I realize this statement could be taken
a number of ways, but we’ll keep it above board. What the statement suggest to me is that real men pray to gods. As a corollary, it also suggest that men who
don’t, aren’t “real men”. I’ve seen various memes on social networks that suggest the same. It’s generally easy for me to ignore these toxic messages because
what people post is always subject to their own perspectives, experiences, or beliefs. Apparently, a significant number of Black women believe that a Black man
isn’t a “real man” unless he subscribes to the existence of or conversations with gods.
Is this healthy?
Black people are Christians, Muslims, Jews, African Orthodox, Catholic, Rastafarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hindus, Buddhists, Seventh Day Adventists,
Humanists, and any number of other religions we were introduced to as direct or indirect result of forced or unforced cultural diffusion. As mostly natives of West
Africa, we did not subscribe to any of these religions prior to them being gifted to us as part of that Americanization/assimilation welcoming trick bag passed off as
a gift bag. Christianity existed in pockets of East Africa for eons prior to the Middle Passage as the direct result of it being brought to the area by invaders from
across the Red Sea. The same can be said for Islam, as Arabs delivered the religion to Africans from East Africa, through North Africa, and across to West Africa.
According to a 2007 Study:
“Many scholars estimate that 15-30% of Africans imported as slaves were Muslim. The majority of the remaining practiced indigenous forms of worship. All were
converted to Christianity. Most became Baptist although slaves from Louisiana became Catholic because of the French settlers in that area. Today 83% of African
Americans are Christian, and only 1% identify themselves as Muslim.”
So Africans became most of these things AFTER colonization and enslavement. Neither colonization or enslavement are strictly limited to the physical. The
African’s “operating system” had to be erased in order for that strong African man or woman to be suitable for forced labor. A new African had to be created, an
African who saw the White man as no less than the messenger of a god, if not a god himself. That new African needed to be saddled with a healthy amount of fear,
a fear of upsetting the White god and a fear of going to an imaginary place called hell. This new African had to come to believe that his/her forced servitude was
ordained by a god and that their oppression was simply part of a grand plan, the sacrifice of suffering. The sadistic methods of our captors achieved great and
long-lasting success. Today, 83% of Africans in America, as mentioned above, identify themselves as Christians. It took centuries in that oven of oppression to
bake what exists today as the Black man and woman, cooked thoroughly through to the core, no longer identifying with Africa in many cases, more in common with
the actual White racists. Stockholm Syndrome is us.
3