The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors

The Isis Papers
Black or other non-white child- who could be a genius based upon genetic
endowment- can be turned into a criminal who must spend his productive
years locked behind the bars of a prison cell. Inferiorization deliberately
turns a Black child, who could become a brilliant, universal statesman, a
strong supporting father and a loving, canng protector for his wife, into a
drug addict. It turns a Black female child, who could become a physician,
scientist and excellent mother, into a prostitute. It turns Black parents,
who could be mature, supporting, loving and kind to their offspring, into
immature child-batterers and sexual abusers of their own children. It turns
some Black teachers, who could love and educate Black children, into
teachers who hate and cannot educate. It structures the total social
experience of Black young people so that they believe it is "cool" and
more important to smoke marijuana, use foul language and learn to dance
than to learn to read and become expert mathematicians. It turns Black
people into "clowns," rather than into true nation-builders. It shapes many
Blacks, who could give maximwn service to Black people, into persons
whose major concern is the accwnulation of money and material possessions.
It makes men care more about wearing "Superfly" clothes than
about learning to be excellent fathers and guides to their offspring,
especially their sons. It makes Black people see themselves as sex
machines rather than builders of a higher humanity.
This social process of destructive distortion is achieved through the
imposition, from birth todeath,ofastressful, negative and non-supportive
social/environmental experience upon the people who are to be interiorized.
The negative and stressful social experience, which is structured
to affect every aspect of life activity, leads to the development of a
negative self-concept, a loss of self-respect and the development of selfand
group-destructive behavioral patterns. Some of these negative behavioral
patterns rampant among Black people today include showing off.
material possessions, gossiping about one-another, name-calling, cursing,
squabbling, snitching and being discourteous and disrespectful to one .
another. When these behaviors are directed toward people who are a
reflection of self (i.e., Black people towards other Black people), they
indicate self -dislike and self -dissatisfaction. The high rates of Black male .
Black Children
homicide and suicide are extreme, but all-too-common examples of this
phenomenon. Black people using drugs and selling them to one another
is another example of the same homicide and suicide pattern.
All of these patterns of self- and group-negating behavior, in addition
to many others, become the invisible chains and shackles around the necks
and ankles of the Black oppressed, holding all of us in a continuously
destructive enslavement. With full justification, we can call all of these
behaviors mental illness since they imply self- and group-destruction.
These behaviors prevent group unity and efficient group effort. When
parents, teachers and other adults practice these behaviors towards one
another, they teach children how to practice them also. Black children
learn that Black people do not respect each other, which also means Black
people do not and should not respect themselves. The children, in turn,
will teach those of following generations how to disrespect themselves
and each other - thus, how to remain oppressed.
Inferiorization is essential to the process of oppression. It ensures that
the oppressors need not be troubled to hold the oppressed constant! y under
gun and key to keep them in the oppressed state; it keeps the oppressed
from effectively challenging the oppressive process and system. In this
way, the oppressors mold the oppressed to share fully in the process of
their own oppression. In the final analysis, the process of inferiorization
is designed specifically to prevent the maximal development of the
genetic potential of the non-white oppressed. Black people must learn
that no system of oppression ever maximally develops those whom the
system is specifically structured to dominate. Such a system only permits
the oppressed to survive so that they can continue being oppressed. No
system of oppression is structured consciously to destroy itself. The
maximal development of all Black people would prove false the ideology
of white superiority. Thus, if Black children and Black people as a whole
are ever to be developed fully, Black people themselves will have to enact
that development. Sufficient data and evidence are in: after 127 years of
so-called emancipation, the white collective has demonstrated that it does
not intend to develop Black children maximally. Still, whites are talking
about Black children and Black people as being genetically inferior to
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