4.   Gentrification, in basic terms, is how the city government allows your neighborhoods and their properties to become devalued by neighborhood crime, lack of upkeep, and lack of support for aging homeowners who purchased the homes during the “white flight” to the suburbs.  This justifies the destruction of broken down public housing, formerly a tool for containing the minority poor in one area, which is torn down and replaced by condos, restaurants and townhomes that welcome the travel-weary suburb dweller back into the city.  The minority poor is displaced, some lured into believing that the suburbs is the best place to go, not realizing what it will ultimately cost them financially or through isolation.  Across the country, in every major city, business professionals and their families are quietly purchasing Uncle John or Auntie Nina’s old house for a fraction of its worth, fixing it up with low interest loans that the city offers from their city revitalization funds and moving back into the city.  Your neighbors, meanwhile, are being lured into believing that moving out into the suburbs will somehow offer you a better life, because that was the truth – fifteen years ago, when it was not an option.  African Americans are often the target victims of housing fraud, including “flipping”, renovation loans, etc.  And who profits?

5.  Intracultural Separatism.  During slavery this was a strength that allowed the slaves to survive emotionally.  “Enslaved African Americans also resisted by forming community within the plantation setting.  This was a tremendous undertaking for people whose lives were ruled by domination and forced labor.  Slaves married, had children, and worked hard to keep their families together.  In their quarters they were able to let down the masks they had to wear for whites.  There, black men, women, and children developed an underground culture through which they affirmed their humanity.  They gathered in the evenings to tell stories, sing, and make secret plans.  House servants would come down from the "big house" and give news of the master and mistress, or keep people laughing with their imitations of the whites.  It was in their quarters that many enslaved people developed and passed down skills which allowed them to supplement their poor diet and inadequate medical care with hunting, fishing, gathering wild food, and herbal medicines.  There, the adults taught their children how to hide their feelings to escape punishment and to be skeptical of anything a white person said.[1]  Today, that strength has become a weakness.  We have allowed ourselves to believe that using our culture to segregate ourselves in an ever-shrinking global community is of benefit.  Further, what we pass on and among ourselves is what is dictated to us as our labels.  Note, for example how in the entertainment industry, when dollars are waved in front of us, we are again the puppets of the masters; we embrace the given perception that we are a group of violent, oversexed people (see music videos).  Women are willing to bump and grind in front of the cameras – doing what most would never consider doing if the stage were instead a topless bar.  Then there are the comedic roles, the only place where we are allowed to be the majority of primary characters, where we again fall into the stereotypical traps that have been defined for us.  Some of us believe that we should embrace our cultural differences by showing that we are “down with the people” but are we really down with the people – ourselves – or with the labels that are provided and we have chosen to embrace?  I remember vividly an experience when I passed a group of men on the street and one of them spoke and I responded.  He became enraged, because my response wasn’t “black enough” for him.  But who made the rule that correct English is “speaking white”?  I really don’t believe that it was us.  Why?  Because I have found that those I deal with in corporations and organizations, who feel compelled to tell me that I am so “articulate,” (their code for “speaking white”) as though it was a rarity among people of color, and at the same time view me as an enemy that had somehow infiltrated the ranks.  I believe we should embrace that within our culture which truly defines us as a race, and learn to discern between what is cultural and what is stereotype by which others wish to define us.  One more thing, when it comes to what is cultural and what is stereotypical: what’s in a name?  A lot.  We have chosen to make up names – especially for our daughters – in the name of what we perceive as culture.  What we have done is create a new stereotype, with which our children are defined.  As one gentleman from Nigeria told me “You Americans make up names that don’t mean anything.  In Africa our names are taken quite seriously.  It is what we pass along from generation to generation.”  While waiting to board a plane when I was on a business trip, three drunken Anglo males came by and made the mistake of commenting on my braids by attempting to fit me into their stereotype, inclusive of giving me a non-meaning name as a defining label of who I was.  Without further detail of subsequent events, my point is that many choose to define and stereotype by name.  When you call your child by a name that means nothing, what does that say about how we define ourselves and others define us?  During the past decade, there has been a continuous battle within the African American community to eliminate internal racism.  It is going to take the power of Almighty God and the consciousness of all of us, together and individually, to change the course of our future into a brighter one, especially for our children.  Let us become conscious of the evil around us in order to make the strides we need.  Let’s understand that we have a better history than what is told of it.  We have a motherland, we are human, and we are God’s children.  These reasons are why it is so important to step outside of racism, totally disregard it, and abolish it from our souls and lives forever.[1]

6.     Intraracism.  The enemy lies within and the enemy is us.  In the days of conscious physical slavery in this country, there were the house slaves and the field slaves – a deliberate psychological class distinction.  House slaves were programmed to believe that their loyalty included the betrayal of any exhibiting the potential of having an original thought or might potentially create a “problem”.  Ask yourself why – even today – Anglos get nervous, even angry when three or more of their minority counterparts are talking together and they don’t know what they are talking about.  They want to know what’s going on.  If you are asked about the conversation and don’t disclose the subject matter, they become offended.  You become the enemy.  We are selfish about our piece of the corporate, social or economic pie, afraid to share because we think that there might not be enough, not realizing that we have the power to bake a whole new pie.  So we “shuffle and grin” at the “massah”, and sell our own down the river in fear that we will somehow be reclaimed and sent back to the plantation.  We ignore the screams of those who realize they have been caught and turn up the volume on Marvin Gaye’s CD.  We allow them to eat our young by allowing them to set the standards for how we are treated, rather than setting the standards for ourselves. We have more African American elected officials now than we’ve ever had, yet none have effectively challenged the quality of public education our children are receiving.  None have gone to battle against the national rate that our children drop out of high school and end up incarcerated.  We are afraid of losing all that we have gained, so we are reluctant to reach back over the wall to help others over.  We sit and wait expectantly for “them” to come and solve our problems, not understanding that we must control our own destiny and need not wait for permission to do so.  We still wait for the forty acres and a mule.  And who profits?

      A paradigm is a system of belief or a way of viewing the world…To become a Free Sovereign Individual and do justice to yourself, you need to find out who you are.  Most of us, including many who yearn for freedom, suffer from what might be called ‘slave mentality.’  Our personal philosophy and psychology, in important respects, may be that of a slave rather than that of a free sovereign.  To get a better understanding of the sovereign individual paradigm, compare the free-wild horse to the broken-domesticated horse.  A horse is born free and wild.  Try and ride a free-wild horse and it will do its utmost to throw you off.  A free-wild horse doesn't like to be broken - enslaved - ridden by a master.  Once the cowboy has broken the free-wild horse, it becomes a broken-domesticated-obedient horse.  Now the cowboy is the master of the horse.  Once a horse has been broken it timidly accepts being saddled and bridled.  The saddle is placed on the horse's back and held in place by a strong strap around the horse's body.  Attached to the saddle are stirrups for the rider's feet.  The rider's boots may have spurs used to inflict pain on the horse in order to make it run faster.  The rider may also use a horsewhip.  Around the head of the horse a bridle is strapped.  Part of the bridle is a metal bit that passes horizontally through the horse's mouth.  The reins are attached to the ends of the bit and are used to steer the horse and make it slow down and stop.  Pain can be inflicted on the horse by yanking the reins or pulling on them with a seesaw motion.  The above paraphernalia are used to make it easy for a rider to control his or her horse - difficult for the horse to disobey its rider.  The horse is the slave of the cowboy.  The cowboy rides the horse.  The horse works for the cowboy.  The cowboy owns the horse.  The horse obeys the cowboy.  Disobedience may be punished.  The horse that fights tooth and hoof to prevent you from putting on bridle and saddle may be sold as horsemeat.  Horses are born free and wild.  Horses are inherently free.  They are naturally free.  But they can be broken, domesticated, enslaved…One Afrikaans word for native Africans is "naturel" ("native"); another is "skepsel" ("creature").  The most derogatory is "kaffer" ("infidel").  These words are no longer acceptable.  My grandfather was a Senator and Chairman of the "Naturelle-Sake Kommissie" ("Native Affairs Commission").  That is the equivalent of the Chairman of a Congressional Committee that oversees the "Bureau of Indian Affairs.”  My grandfather was considered very wise and knew exactly what had to be done about the "Swart Gevaar" ("Black Danger").  My grandmother taught black children the three Rs and religion in her own farm school.  Her mission was to "civilize the savages.”  One day a black maid licked one of my grandmother's spoons.  My grandmother gave the maid a tongue lashing for "contaminating a white spoon" - then gave the spoon to the maid to keep, because it was "no longer fit for white use!”  When I was about seventeen I got engaged in a conversation with a black man.  Suddenly, as if hit by a sledgehammer, I realized that I was talking to a Human Being!  Up to that time I had unconsciously assumed that blacks were "inferior creatures" - kind of sub-human…Steve Biko was the founder of the "Black Consciousness" Movement in South Africa.  Biko recognized that the biggest problem was that blacks in their own consciousness regarded themselves as "inferior creatures."  The culture we grew up in - the language we used - planted the notion in the minds of whites that they were "superior beings," and in the minds of blacks that they were "inferior creatures.”  Practically all whites and blacks were subconsciously enculturated in this manner.  Biko recognized this phenomenon and advocated that blacks had to free their consciousness from the "inferior-creature" shackles.  Biko became world-famous and was visited by people like Bobby Kennedy.  Biko was also the greatest threat to white government in South Africa.  The police effectively murdered him.  The murder was "whitewashed."  A few years before Biko's death I started reading books about freedom, books critical of government, books alleging that inflation was something done by government, books about secret conspiracies that were the real government behind the scene.  One such book was How I Found Freedom in an Unfroze World by Harry Browne. It had a profound effect on my consciousness.  This and other books - particularly The Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane - eventually led me to discover that I was a free and sovereign individual.  Steve Biko was also a major inspiration in the development of my consciousness.  Soon after Biko's murder, I left South Africa.  Since then I have lived as a free sovereign individual in several countries.  In Brussels, Belgium I came across The Cinderella Complex: Women's Fear of Independence by Collette Dowling.  Her theme is that in their consciousness women tend to regard themselves as "inferior slave creatures" (compared to men).  This inferiority is mostly subconscious and culturally imposed.  According to Dowling, men tend to regard themselves as "superior master beings" (compared to women).[1]