BLACK WOMEN AND THE REDEFINITION OF POWER

A blog guest read my post, "Black Women and the Power We Possess"and sent a note to me to share some feedback. When I opened my email and started crafting a reply, I realized I should address this topic on my blog and open a discussion. I was asked a question:

"How is power defined by black women and how does that definition differ from how power is defined by black men? How does that definition differ from how power is defined by society?"

I will share my observations and then allow all of the wise women who visit this blog to share their own observations. I have written about my upbringing in several posts on this blog. I believe that my upbringing has fostered a definition in my mind about the acquisition of power. I don't think that there is one definition of power that all black women have accepted.

Black women often assume that we have similar ideologies - until we tour the black blogosphere and begin to engage with other black women who have been taught very differently than we have.

We have been taught about the acquisition of power and the transfer of power and the manipulation of power from our engagement with society. We have been taught to define power by interpreting how our parents operated within the racial, social and political infrastructure. We learned from our parents how to engage with systems of power, and our earliest experiences with power have significantly shaped what we have become.

My father showed me that engagement with systems of power required that we become subversive and confrontational. While I grew up with a large dose of white culture within the town we lived in, my father was good friends with many people who were at the forefront of the black power movement. My father modeled insider activism. Having absorbed that consistent example, I became keenly aware of the mechanisms that must be developed in order to become successful with insider activism.

I also learned at a young age that power was directly tied to the acquisition of educational and economic advantage. Seeing a white maid who lived in a different socioeconomic segment of America and who did not have the level of education of my parents taught me that white skin alone did not guarantee societal advancement. Many black people still have not digested this truth. Many black people are deluded into believing that white privilege confers more advantage than it actually does. Drive by a few white mobile home neighborhoods (also called trailer parks) and then tell me how empowered those white folks seem to you!

At a young age, I learned that leveraging the influence of other people was directly tied to power. My parents cultivated relationships with people who had broad influence in many segments of society. I understood while I was still in elementary school that the white maid was scrubbing the bathroom floor on her knees to make a living because she had no network of influence to capitalize upon. Without a network of influence, she had no access to structures of influence that could elevate her. Black women have deluded themselves into believing that white women are highly prized in the social hierarchy of America. That assumption is only partially true. In reality, white women are viewed as a commodity within the white supremacist structure. Just take a look at the advertising that white corporations produce and how white advertising firms consistently depict white women as ornaments and props.

I was taught that power was defined by:

1 - Educational AND economic advantage (notice I did not say attainment)

2 - Leverage of influence and position

3 - Self-directed access to those who dominated influence in particular segments of society

4 - Manufactured dependency

5 - Rewriting the rules of engagement

Many black people think that simply attaining a comparable educational status to those with perceived power will grant them a measure of power. They are very wrong. When they don't find that they have received the same measure of power as white people with the same level of education, they cry racism or sexism. Often, they are only partially right about that accusation. Educational attainment is not sufficient; the education must be used as an advantage over others in a manner that produces dependency upon your education. Only when it is used as an advantage can you wield authentic power from the acquisition of the commodity of education.

Many black people think that merely attaining a certain position will give them influence in their sphere. It is only partially true. When they find that they don't have the level of influence that they perceived would be theirs, they cry racism and sexism. Often, they are only partially right about that accusation. Attaining a position is not sufficient; the position must be used to channel the transfers of power to oneself from those who are power brokers. White people do not hand over reigns of power and they don't readily share their influence. They never will do this, because they understand that it would be counter-productive to the reinforcement of white supremacist structures.

Witness how white America has made it clear to Barack Obama that he only has their support as long as he represents what they choose he can represent and as long as he does what they want a "good black" to do. A "good black", as we have seen, quickly denounces black truth-bearers and quickly separates from anyone who threatens white America with ideologies that force them to confront the wretchedness that their own race has wrought in this country and in the world.

Author of White Like Me: Reflection On Race From A Privileged Son, Tim Wise recently observed that: "White presidential candidates are not asked to transcend race and the underlying message is that being black is something to graduate from."

Oh how naive it is to assume that a title given by someone with influence will automatically bring influence for the title holder! Many black clergy women believed that a piece of paper would confer influence within their denomination. We now find that we are paper-holders with second-class status in the priesthood. How bitter is the truth serum we must swallow in accepting that a title is not directly connected to the attainment of influence. Manufactured authority is not directly connected to the attainment of influence either. How were we deluded into believing it would be?

In our parents' generation, there were many public demonstrations of black solidarity in marching. I believe that this method of impacting social change has lost its impact. Black people must begin to consistently wield influence within segments of society that produce dependency within the masses. Every segment of society has a sphere where influence is parceled out and where influence is choreographed. Black people need to have access to that segment - and to infiltrate that segment by their own design. Self-directed access is very different than permitted access. If you have access to power brokers or influence holders because you were granted permission to be included, then you really don't have authentic influence within that sphere at all.

Black people who assume that access to power structures should be our ultimate goal have not fully understood the landscape of societal influence in its entirety.

White supremacist structures are fortified by fostering manufactured dependency. The reason why I used the term "manufactured" dependency is because the establishment of power is rooted in the "illusion" of dependency which produces the self-actualization of persistent subjugation. There are people who believe that they are dependent on me, therefore I can wield a level of power and influence within their sphere. I know that they are not dependent upon me to the extent that they believe that they are. As long as they believe in the extent of their dependency then it is their belief that engenders my level of control and influence.

Black people are still attempting to understand the rules of engagement within a white supremacist structure. Minister Louis Farrakhan is a threat to white America - not because he is a demagogue - but because they know how closely he has studied the rules of engagement in white supremacist structures. White America fears him because they do not know how he will utilize the counter-intelligence he has acquired. What many black people know - that many white people fail to see - is that Minister Farrakhan is inflammatory in public speeches in order to cause the media to focus on his words rather than his organization's subversive methods of dismantling the white supremacist structure. Minister Farrakhan uses the tactic of a pyromaniac - he sets a fire and is gone by the time the firemen show up to address the blaze. They spend their time at the blaze while he is off to execute the next fire. It is all intended to produce a distraction from the primary objective that has already been unfolding. Farrakhan puts the national spotlight on his speeches and uses the media fallout that results as a political decoy. In their underestimation of the level of sophistication that Minister Farrakhan has employed, White America has failed to understand how frequently he sets media traps. It's quite amusing to watch. I am not praising Minister Farrakhan. I am making a key observation about the tactics that he uses to launch attacks on the white supremacist structure that he despises with deep passion.

For decades, the Nation of Islam has had an extensive recruitment system established within the corrections system. Using the institutions within the corrections system for the training and indoctrination of disenfranchised black men works well for the Nation of Islam. They have millions of black men available to listen to ideologies that cause the disenfranchised to feel empowered. These black men are usually angry at "the system" and therefore, more easily indoctrinated into new patterns of thinking and reasoning that validate (and reward) their anger. We watched the indoctrination of a black criminal into a black nationalist in Spike Lee's film "X".

You don't see the members of the Nation of Islam recruiting men in the ghettos because the prison system is now their recruitment headquarters and training center. I also believe that there are N.O.I. members who deliberately place themselves into the corrections system in order to serve as recruiters among the inmate population. The government has housed millions of prospective soldiers for the Nation of Islam. All the Nation of Islam has to do is to begin their indoctrination in-house, and then activate the sleeper cells when these men are released from prison.

For hundreds of years, we have witnessed that the banishment and annihilation of black men has been a societal goal in diminishing the collective advancement of black America. White America has already understood what black women fail to grasp - they can not carry the black race on their backs without becoming broken.

There are more black men in captivity now than there were in slavery. There is a huge increase in the grant funding of black fetus destruction (called abortion by some) in nonprofit "unplanned pregnancy resolution centers" (called fetus slaughterhouses by some). In the past 35 years, there have been twice as many voluntary fetus destruction procedures than there have been live births by black women and there are 1,452 fetuses of black women voluntarily destroyed every day. Planned Parenthood was highly criticized in the media for accepting donations from whites who called their offices to ask that their donations be directed to abortion clinics that serviced the black community. (Do a Google search and see for yourself.)

As much as we discuss the prevalence of out-of-wedlock births within the black community, black women are still choosing to destroy more black fetuses than they are choosing to keep. I don't mention this to speak condemnation to my sistas. I mention this in order to make an observation about how the banishment of black men and the increased availability of funding of black fetus destruction is part of the objective of white supremacist structures to reduce our human capital (and therefore intellectual capital and therefore economic capital).

This is why I am so flabbergasted when black women focus on hair texture as a statement of social mobility. I am irate when black women focus on the degree of brown in each other's skin tone as a status marker within the black social hierarchy. (Note that I intentionally said "within the black social hierarchy".) In the schemata of white supremacist implementation, hair texture and hue measurements are at the furthest edges of the perimeter, if they exist at all in the paradigm of the modern machine of white supremacy.

The question I began with was this:
"How is power defined by black women and how does that definition differ from how power is defined by black men? How does that definition differ from how power is defined by society?"

Most black women tend to define power by social acceptance and validation by black men and other black people. This is why they place such an extreme focus on social dynamics and less focus on strategic relationships. Most black women believe that social acceptance is a key factor in gaining influence. This assumption is only partially true.

Most black men define power in terms of acquiring substitutes and imitations of whatever they perceive those in power have attained. Black men also define power in terms of physical dominance, material gain and sexual identity. White people are aware of all of the ways that black men define power and therefore, they have implemented systems to remove all of the segments that black men cling to for power.

a. They have incarcerated them to turn their desire for sexual identity into a predatory animalistic identity that is necessary for survival.
b. They have erected barriers to capital that foster a crime culture which feeds into the systematic exile of the black man from society.
c. The physical dominance that black men believe is tied to their power is also removed by placing them in cages and removing them from healthy social intercourse that fosters productive human development.

The resulting impact of the proliferation of government-financed cages for the black male population (from the age of 13) is that black women begin to view black men as irrelevant in the progress of the black community and no longer believe that their time and energies can be invested in them.

This belief underscores the manifestation of the success of white power. Oh how wrong we were to assume that subjugation of the black man in order to reduce the black community to anarchy was the ultimate goal! The measure of success of white supremacist structures was not the complete subjugation of the black man!

The measure of success of white power was to produce far-reaching black-complicity in embracing the irrelevancy of the black man within a patriarchal society. The evidence of acquiescence of the black woman in being mentally-seduced by white supremacist ideology is in her full cooperation of perpetuating the irrelevance of the black man and thereby assisting white America in his systematic extinction.

I blow my trumpet today to tell my sistas that unless we adopt a new definition of black power, we will be engulfed by the ambiguity of our inconsistent solidarity.