As If nothing changed, the minority culture has been shooting themselves in the foot; and the government has been sticking salt in their wounds…
I’m not talking just about the criminal justice system and the ever so increasing number of unfair plea bargains and mass incarcerations; in which leaves our minority culture to take heed to unfair judgement and lengthy sentences. I’m not talking just about the Procedural Criminal System in which suffers from a lack of enforced authority and protection that should be rightfully bestowed upon the victims of accused crimes. I’m not even going to restrict the conversation to just the Law Enforcement Agencies, in which places quota statistics in focus groups within poverty driven communities.
Nope… the foundation of these stated conflicts revolves around the lack of education and self-worth of the minority culture. What I find really depressing is not the misrepresentation of the minority culture, but the lack of responsibility we place ourselves under; unsettling the structural equilibrium between a races monitored, poverty stricken society and the affluent structures of the corporate elites and government officials. Too many times we have asked ourselves for justice, for freedom, and for happiness under a system in which feeds off of the uneducated and lazy. We pride ourselves too much for the betterment of our un-sustained lives; leading us to believe that success is measured with fabric, currency, and the ability to prove yourself worthy to be amongst the wealthy and famous.
Since when did we concede to government depicting self-worth?
My answer to you is from the moment we allow our sub-conscious to become filled with the consciousness of society; hence the notion of the consensus model.
The consensus model is seen throughout our history, tracing back beyond Greek presets of a shared value system from the likes of philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. However, the constructs of Greek philosophy have defined our modern concepts and established the foundation of our political system or polis, in which governs the people. This system portrayed the complexity of human nature and valued this notion of achieving “the good life” through Areté or excellence and moral virtue. Greek philosophers like Aristotle, perceived happiness and virtue through this implication of the polis. His perception viewed the way of living to be within the confines of the city-state in which allows citizenship and this concept of teleology, in which human beings are political and are adapted to sustain life and happiness. The strong connection of Greek philosophy to our modern political system through obtaining intellectual values in relation to a more broad social acceptance of the community, depicts the pursuit of civic virtue, judicial stability and the “Pursuit of Happiness” that we follow in today’s society.
But the consensus model is not just a depiction of the cooperativeness of the criminal justice system, nor is it shared values within a society; instead it represents a system in which implements non-legislative laws that we follow in our everyday lives. Laws that if obstructed, creates a wave of unacceptance towards a concept or act; and renders it foreign or unbefitting in a “social community”. It is by far more powerful and more dangerous than any federal or state applied statue, and precedes the concept of equality, justice, and multi-culturalism. However, this model is constructed through the presets of the Greek and Anglo-Saxon’s, reinterpreted through our founding fathers, maintained by the corporate elites and political officials, and accepted as well as enforced by the people. Through this system, we constrict ourselves to the broad perceptions of achieving the good life and establishing happiness within a community. Because of this, we impede our sub-consciousness to the damaging structures that promote holistic and visual conceptions. It causes us to redefine reality through mapped out physical characteristics in which implicate simplistic values to determine self-worth.
In other words… we allow structural principles to determine the basis of “normality” and leads us into indirectly feeding into systematic racism, structural discrimination, and social injustice.
But what are we doing to solve this?
The answer is not a damn thing…
It’s a sad concept to accept, but nonetheless it still is a problem that the minority culture has yet to address. Through allowing our systematic acceptance to bind with our societal acceptance, we affect our true consciousness; giving the system the capability to physically and mentally correct our behaviors in attempts to establish a so called “democratic society”. We then become categorized into divisions and sub divisions of race, class, sex, ethnic groups, and criminal stigmas that is reinforced and maintained through the criminal justice system and through various state legislations. I mean how many times the media have shed a blind eye to major corporate money laundering and corrupt political ties from rich businessmen to international services, yet are detailed in promoting minority protests and activism as barbaric behavior. Let’s not forget about our nation having the highest prison population and incarceration rate in the world, with almost half of the 2.3 million incarcerated being African Americans (according to the NAACP). Understand that slavery has never subsided; instead it had increased in intensity, while shadowed in occupational stipulations that are not visible to the naked eye.
Let’s also not forget about the international world in which face discrimination of their religious preference; regardless of the Government refraining itself from the “entanglement of religion and state”. What ever happened to Government may neither “compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold religious views abhorrent to the authorities, nor employ the taxing power to inhibit the dissemination of particular religious views”? I guess that all goes away when executive orders can be passed to restrict access from accused “terrorist countries” and the focus of freedom, can favor Christianity over Muslim preferences. It leads me to believe that the position of the president becomes an overseer of national problems that affects the president himself instead of the United States or the people. It leads me to believe that the party system becomes a platform in support of the candidate instead of the candidate in support of the views and positions of a particular party.
And as for us minorities, we are labeled as “criminals”, fitting of certain crimes that are otherwise aspects that a “white man or women wouldn’t do”. We are forced to accept plea bargains and “snitch deals” even if you didn’t commit a crime, incriminating yourself while the Law Enforcement Agencies feeds you to a system that economically thrives on corporate businesses profiting off our prison structures.
I don’t think you understand… the minority culture are a monitored species. Restricted in freedom, and directed in paths that allow some to prosper in order to hide a bigger picture that underlies racism and occupational bracketing. So when interrelated propositions are made in attempts to explain our economic, social, and racial indifference in relation to the “rest of the world”, we the minority culture call it injustice and inequality.
Others call it… Sociology…
If you’re like me, you want to hear about what you can do to fix the inevitable problems that we continue to face in our society that wouldn’t require us to put in much strenuous work. And that’s the problem. As the minority group, we don’t take things seriously and we almost always look for an easy way out. Truth is, there is no relaxing way to fix the problem. Sitting in silence and fighting in anger makes us the problem, but becoming educated makes us the solution. You know me as Philmore Hughes, my skin complexion is dark and smooth, and I tend to have short dark brown curly hair. From this description, you found out more about me then me being forced into characterizing myself as black. I am educated to know that Black History Month is a mere sentimental attachment to the preservation of black culture inspired by Carter G. Woodson, that was allowed to be manipulated by the corporate rich and political structures and used to promote business, entertainment, and encourage awareness of a culture that will never be taught in a classroom. And were does all the profit go you ask? Into the hands of the corporate businesses that profit off of our name. So why have a Black History Month? Why isn’t there a White History Month? Why isn’t there a Latino History Month? Or Chinese History Month? Don’t we all have some sort of history that we attach our culture to?
The real question we should be asking is… Why feed into a physical manifestation of something we should have already been trying to preserve?
The problem that we face as a minority culture is that we refuse to educate ourselves of our own culture. We instead allow ourselves to become enlightened in school and in our social communities once maybe twice a year of our culture; which of course is monitored by the school system that is then monitored by the state. Knowledge is power and it is also the key to establishing an understanding of our society. In order to help others, you have to help yourself, and nothing says success better than an educated individual. I once met two empowering minority individuals in which were both pursing their doctorate degree. Instead of boasting about how much the doctorate degree means to them, they simply said:
“I do this for the sake of learning and expanding my knowledge”.
That resonated with me because it separated the genuine from the counterfeit, and it helped established a platform of hope that others can step on and bring themselves up to a higher calling; a higher purpose.
Although our people have not seen the vision of change yet, I pray that we break free from opposing forces and become comfortable in the skin that we live in, and the behaviors that make us who we are.
The general consensus may impact our consciousness, but it will never impact our soul…
Stay Strong my brothers and sisters.
