Black Psychology 101: "Exploring the Anti-Black Mindset"
Mba Mbulu, Instructor
Copyright 1998, 1999, 2016, 2020 ASET, M. Mbulu All rights to everything on this web site are reserved.

Class 6

Read the information that follows. In order to benefit the most from this course, you must constantly keep the following points in mind and refer to them frequently: (1) 50 years after the writing of Black Skin, White Masks, Black People in the United States still perceive of their potential and capabilities within an unnaturally or abnormally limited context. (2) The psychological molding of Black People predisposes the best educated among Us to be anti-Black: anti-Black nationalism, anti-Black centric, anti-Black whatever. (3) In addition to being victims of racism, Black People in the United States demonstrate all of the qualities of a people who have been victimized by colonialism.

This class will concentrate on excerpts from Chapter 6 of Black Skin, White Masks. In this chapter, Fanon investigates how Blacks take on white values and the extent to which the investigations of Freud and Adler [white men] apply to the man of color. It questions the legitimacy of any white person's analyses and theories in regards to Black People. Think about the following issues as you study and learn.
(1) Does the trivialization of the Black world make it easier for Black individuals to try to identify with whiteness?
(2) Can a Black person who is "white on the inside" be a model of spiritual and psychological health?
(3) Since the process of making Black individuals prefer whiteness is mostly subconscious, what can be done to combat it? In other words, what do Black People need to do to keep an invisible enemy from invading their minds, hearts and souls?

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Lesson 6: The Negro and Psychopathology (Mental Illness) [Audio Version]

p. 147 The young Negro subjectively adopts a white man's attitude
p. 191 He reads white books and little by little he takes into himself the prejudices, the myths, the folklore of the white world.
The process of growing up Black in a country dominated by typical white people and typical white institutions is a process of internalizing whiteness and becoming anti-Black. Blacks and whites are different in vital regards, but institutions that champion Blackness do not exist, there are no institutionalized social values that champion Blackness, no books that champion Blackness are popularly received and objectively discussed by the powers that be, Black art is trivialized and second rated, Blackness is trivialized by the accepted education process, Blackness is trivialized by the accepted political process and Blackness is trivialized by the accepted economic process. The Black world is trivialized, and Black People are ignored; and the Black child is engulfed in whiteness. The Black child who grows up in the United States becomes absorbed in a world that is anti-Black, anti-him/her. The Black child who grows up in the United States devalues and hates him/herself without consciously recognizing it. Recognition of the self hatred and devaluation takes place on the subconscious level, however, and it is there that a mental illness takes root that troubles Black children as they grow up and continues throughout their adult lives.
p. 191 The Negro partakes of the same collective unconscious as white people. Therefore, it is normal for the Negro to be anti-Negro. For he, the Negro, is a white person. Unconsciously, he distrusts what is Black in him
Every nation of people has a set of subconscious values, inclinations, likes and dislikes, preferences and prejudices that predispose those people to think and act within a limited zone of parameters. Black People, by growing up in a country that is dominated by white people and white values, and by growing up in a country that does not recognize the validity of anything Black, take on the same subconscious set of values/prejudices as white people take on. Thus, without knowing it, Black individuals who are not vigilant take on and act out the same prejudices about Black People that white people take on and act out.
P. 175 Their [white people's] very essence makes an accurate investigation nearly impossible.
Black individuals who turn to white experts to assess their state of mind, state of social consciousness or whatever are making a serious mistake. White investigators are incapable of accurately assessing a Black person's state of mind because whites judge everything from a white perspective. Therefore, they approach Black People as if We were dark skinned white people. But Black People are not dark skinned white people, and only an investigator who recognizes that and is able to incorporate it into his/her analysis can be capable of accurately diagnosing a Black person.
At the end of the first session of a Psychology 101 class a number of years ago, a young Black woman came to my desk. She explained that she had been going to counselors and other professionals for over a year, trying to understand what was "wrong" with her. She then said she had learned more about what was bothering her after just one hour in my class than she had learned in the entire time she was spending her money on counselors and psychologists. The same is true for other Blacks who gain enough strength to step beyond the cloak of whiteness that surrounds them. [Top]

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