Opinion

Opinion: Resistance to the Idea of Reparations May be Simply Psychological, Part II

Published

5 years ago

September 12, 2019

Last week, Dr. Nobles proposed that resistance to the idea of reparations for Black people is rooted in a psychological problem among white people that was solidified in the post-Reconstruction era that gave rise to Jim Crow laws and custom.

The active period of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (1894 – 1910) overlapped with the nadir of Black people’s freedom (1890 -1940) and development. While Black people were drawing on our own African cultural moorings to establish schools, hospitals, businesses and wholesome families, white consciousness was being continually fed (infected) with the lie of white superiority and Black inhumanity.

While erecting monuments all over the South, the UDC stated that “the most thoughtful and best educated women” should realize that the greatest monument they could build in the South would be an “educated motherhood.” If 100,000 white women taught their children to teach their children who, in turn, taught their children and if only a third of the white women (33,000) belonging to the UDC actively wrote textbooks and lobbied for a particular educational curriculum that reinforced the idea that Black people were less than human and undeserving of respect and equal access to the resources that sustain life and living, then the intellectual atmosphere and consciousness of all of America (not limited only to the South) would be stamped with the unchallenged belief in Black inferiority. Think about the extent of this memetic infection.

The Mohonk Conference on the Negro Question

In 1890 and 1891, the leading White educators, missionaries, philanthropists and politicians, including former United States President Rutherford B. Hayes, participated in the “Mohonk Conference on the Negro Question.” Starting with the premise of African savagery and that slavery was a “step up” on the ladder of civilization, America’s learned white elite adopted an educational platform or strategy which aimed to complete the Negroes’ so-called ascent to civilization by supplying Black teachers and preachers, who would be anointed as “leaders of the Negro race,” and whose offspring are probably the Black people who are against reparations, to carry forth the White narrative.

The Birth of a Nation

Continuing the self-inflicted infection of their own sense of humanity was the film, “The Birth of a Nation” by D.W. Griffith, which premiered in 1915 to an audience of 3,000 white people. In this film, Griffith portrays white women as pure and pristine and the Ku Klux Klan as honorable and courageous saviors of the southern way of life. Griffith portrays Black people (white actors in black face) as ignorant, lustful for white women, uncouth, disrespectfully drinking liquor and eating fried chicken and watermelon in the sacred halls of Congress.

It is paradoxical that one of the main character’s (the northern congressman) protégé was a vicious psychopathic mulatto named Silas Lynch. The connecting of the word, lynch with mulatto and psychopath was probably not accidental. This was the first film ever shown at the White House and it is reported that President Woodrow Wilson said, “It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”

In every case, from mothers to filmmakers to educators, missionaries, philanthropists and politicians, the white narrative demeans and denigrates Black people and affirms that we have no redeeming value or worth and only deserve disregard, domination, exploitation, direction and control. It seems, therefore, worthy of consideration that the white response, “No to Reparations,” and even the rejection of the idea of Black reparations may be the result of an untreated racial psychopathology that even affects some misguided Black people.

Until white people address the truth about their responsibility for their part in the American story, they will continue to claim that they are not responsible for the past. Because of the Psychopathic Racial Personality Disorder, they may be unable to recognize and comprehend that Black reparations is part of their own psychic repair/reparations and healing balm. The support for reparations for Black people alone may help white people to reclaim their lost humanity.

The Association of Black Psychologists, Bay Area Chapter (ABPsi-Bay Area) is committed to providing the Post Newspaper readership with monthly discussions about critical issues in Black Mental Health. The ABPsi-Bay Area is a healing resource. We can be contacted at (bayareaabpsi@gmail.com) and readers are welcome to join with us at our monthly chapter meeting, every third Saturday at the West Oakland Youth Center from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Dr.Wade W. Nobles, PhD is Co-Founder and Past President, The ABPsi, Professor Emeritus, Africana Studies and Black Psychology, SFSU.

By Wade W. Nobles, PhD

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Activism

LIVE! — TOWN HALL ON RACISM AND ITS IMPACT — THURS. 11.14.24 5PM PST

Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2024

Oakland Post

Discussion Topics:
• Since the pandemic, what battles have the NAACP fought nationally, and how have they impacted us locally?
• What trends are you seeing concerning Racism? Is it more covert or overt?
• What are the top 5 issues resulting from racism in our communities?
• How do racial and other types of discrimination impact local communities?
• What are the most effective ways our community can combat racism and hate?

Your questions and comments will be shared LIVE with the moderators and viewers during the broadcast.

STREAMED LIVE!
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Oakland Post: Week of November 6 – 12, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of November 6 – 12, 2024

Published

6 days ago

November 9, 2024

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday. “Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Published

2 weeks ago

November 2, 2024

Oakland Post

Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

Part One

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price gave an exclusive in-depth interview, speaking with the Oakland Post about the continuing legacy of Jim Crow injustice that she is working to overturn and her major achievements, including:

restoring and expanding services for victims of crime,
finding funding for an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors and
aggressively prosecuting corporations for toxic pollution and consumer violations.

“Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Passed by the State Legislature, this law “is an extremely helpful tool for us to address the racial disparities that continue to exist in our system,” she said.

(The law addresses) “the racial disparities that we find in our juvenile justice system, where 86% of all felony juvenile arrests in the county are Black or Brown children.

“We trained the entire workforce on the Racial Justice Act. We are creating a data system that will allow us to look at the trends and to clearly identify where racism has infected the process. We know that where law enforcement is still engaging in racial profiling and unfair targeting and arresting, we’re trying to make sure we’re catching that.”

Many people do not know much about the magnitude of Alameda County District Attorney’s job. Her office is a sprawling organization with 10 offices serving 1.6 million people living in 14 cities and six unincorporated areas, with a budget this year of about $104 million.

Asked about her major achievements since she took office last year, she is especially proud of the expanded and renewed victims’ services division in the DA’s Office, she said.

“We have expanded and reorganized the entire claims division so that we are now expediting as much as possible the benefits that victims are entitled to. Under my predecessor, they were having to wait anywhere, sometimes as long as a year, to 400 days to get benefits.

“Claims had been denied that should not have been denied. So, we’re helping people file appeals on claims that were denied under her tenure,” D.A. Price said.

“Under my predecessor, (the victims’ service office) was staffed by people who were not trained to provide trauma-informed services to victims, and yet they were the only people that the victims were in contact with. We immediately stopped that practice,” she continued.

“We had to expand the advocate workforce to include people who speak Hmong, the indigenous language of so many people in this county who are victims of crime.”

More African Americans advocates were hired because they represent the largest percentage of crime victims and we hired a transgender advocate and advocates who speak Cantonese and Mandarin. “The predominantly Chinese American community in Oakland was not being served by advocates who speak the language,” said D Price

“We reduced the lag time from the delivery of benefits to victims from 300 to 400 days down to less than 60 days.”

She increased victim advocacy by 38%, providing critical support to over 22,500 victims, a key component of community safety.

Other major achievements:

She recently filed 12 felony charges against a man accused of multiple armed robberies, demonstrating her seriousness about prosecuting violent crimes
In October, a jury delivered a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of former Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams, showing DA Price’s commitment to holding law enforcement accountable.
She recently charged a man and woman in unincorporated San Leandro with murder, felony unlawful firearm activity, and felony carrying a loaded firearm in public.
A. Price’s office was awarded a $6 million grant by the state for its CARES Navigation Center diversion program. In partnership with the UnCuffed Project at a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Oakland, the program provides resources and referrals for services to residents as an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors.

“This is the largest grant investment in the history of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said D.A. Price.

She explained that the program now has a mobile unit. “We have washers and dryers. We have a living room. We have a television. It’s a place where people can decompress, get themselves stabilized,” she said.

The project has “the ability to refer people to housing, to more long-term mental health services, to social services, and to assist them in other ways.”

Her office joined in a $49 million statewide settlement with Kaiser Health Plan and Hospitals, resolving allegations that the healthcare provider unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information. The settlement, which involved the state and a half dozen counties, resulted in Alameda County receiving $7 million for its residents.
DA Price charged a former trucking company employee for embezzling over $4.3 million, showing her commitment to tackling white-collar crime.
For the first time, Alameda County won a criminal grand jury indictment of a major corporation with two corporate officers that have been sources of pollution. “They had a record of settlements and pollution in this community, and they had a fire that constituted a grave danger,” she said.

Attorney Walter Riley contributed to this article.

See Part Two