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“You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth…Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.” – Morpheus, The Matrix
When most think of slavery they imagine Black hands with rusted cuffs around wrists. Bent over laborers whose backs are criss-crossed with wounds from a slave driver whip. Bare feet and bloody fingers picking bundles of cotton in endless fields.
This is not the kind of slavery that we see when we look around us, so we may be deceived into thinking that we are free. We are not.
We Are Mentally Enslaved Through Media And Public Schooling
Mental slavery begins with white controlled public school systems.
The teaching is done exclusively to benefit the miseducator, and is designed to produce a trained individual that understands who he is, how he came to be, the world around him, and his place in the world according to the miseducator. In all 9 areas of life, the African is taught the superiority of other cutures and the inferiority of the African.
In western education, students are taught about the glories of European achievements. Works attributed to Pythagoras a white Greek, are studied as the foundation of geometry. Hippocrates is given a position of honor as the father of modern medicine, and names like Caesar, Einstein, and Edison are well known across the African Diaspora. The architectural wonders of Greece, Rome, and Europe are held up as the highest examples of mankind’s ability to build, while virtually all works of literature considered worthy enough to be taught in primary schools are those of white authors like Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Fitzgerald.
But when it comes to mathematics, medicine, political science, physics, architecture, and literature, Black contributions are ignored to such an extent that students subconsciously come to believe that Africans have not contributed anything of significance to humanity, and that Blacks as a whole remained “uncivilized” until the arrival of the white man. The lack of any emphasis on Black contribution to the arts, sciences, and mathematics, coupled with the subtle psychological impact of our missing history form the basis of miseducation.
As a result, “The educated negroes have an attitude of contempt towards their own people because in their own as well as in their mixed schools, negroes are taught to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin, the Teuton, and to despise the African. The thought of the inferiority of the negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies. To handicap a student by teaching him that his Black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.”
Media is another powerful and effective means of mental slavery. Instagram, TikTok, television, and other forms of mass media have one purpose: manufacturing consent.
In his book by the same name Noam Chomsky writes:
The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.
In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.
In other words, systems of mass media exist to tell you what to think and how to behave. They influence your political decisions, your buying habits, and your social behavior.
Mass media bypasses your critical thinking by disguising itself as harmless entertainment. While you are not paying attention you are being subconsciously fed messages that force you to behave in ways that you otherwise would not.
We Are Wage Slaves
In nations where dictators and autocrats hold power, its easier to see slavery for what it is. These autocrats steal labor from the people for their benefit. We can look to King Leopold of Belgium, who forced the people of the Congo to harvest their natural resources and hand them over to the Belgians. And Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has been accused of using forced labor in the form of ‘national service’.
But in nations with broad coalitions, excessive taxes are an indirect form of slavery. The war that gave birth to the United States was a direct result of taxation. Britain was in a recession after a war, so it created taxes for the colonists in America. The British Parliament put taxes on sugar and molasses and enforced tax collection that led to a colonial revolt.
They understood that taxation becomes slavery when the people no longer consent to taxes, are unaware of taxes, or are not compensated for the amount they pay in taxes. Black residents of cities pay as much in taxes as other groups, yet local governments fail to provide the same quality of service or infrastructure to Black neighborhoods as they provide for other groups.
This is how we ended up with poisonous water in Flint, Michigan.
And even if services were equally provided to all, giving someone compensation for something you stole – compensation that the people have unilaterally decided upon – is neither fair nor just. When crime organizations use intimidation and force to obtain valuable contracts, they could similarly say that they are not doing anything wrong because they are providing value. Consent is essential to economic transactions. If it is theft for crime organizations, it is theft for government.
If tax talk makes your head swim, lets make this real for you – If you depend on a white employer to feed yourself, to pay your rent, and to meet your financial needs then they hold power over you. Your white employer can command you to cut your dreadlocks and you must comply or risk losing your job.
That is exactly what happened to A Black Alabama woman who lost a job offer because she refused to cut her dreadlocks. Chastity Jones was refused employment at a call center – where she would not be seen by clients – because of her authentically Black hairstyle.
What applies to individuals can also apply to nations. A Black country that calls itself free but relies on other nations financially is enslaved. That is the nature of neocolonialism.
Black nations in Africa and across the Diaspora celebrate their independence days each year despite the fact that these nations are still controlled by white masters.
According to a 2017 government audit, 72 percent of South Africa’s private farmland is owned by white people, who make up 9 percent of the population. 65.5% of top management positions were still occupied by white people, followed by black African people, who took up 15% of management positions. And in agriculture, white people took up 77.5% of senior positions. (Sources)
And to this day, more than 20 African nations are forced to pay France a ‘colonial tax’ of around $500 billion each year. These nations will never be economically free as long as France enriches itself using their wealth.
This is slavery on a macroeconomic level.
Mental Liberation Must Come Before Political or Economic Liberation
Dr. Carter G. Woodson wrote that “When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his “proper place” and will stay in it.”
Before anyone can do anything about their enslavement, they must be aware of the fact that they are enslaved. To prevent this level of awareness – and to protect their wealth and power – the elites work diligently to keep the masses asleep.
Media, education, and economic systems are all used to convince you that you are that your decisions are your own and that you are exercising your free will. You have been convinced that you should be proud of your $60,000 student debt, your job title, your ability to speak the Queen’s English or flawless French.
You believe that voting for the National Democratic Congress (Ghana) candidate instead of the New Patriotic Party (Ghana) candidate makes a difference. In reality, the decision is made by a small coalition of influentials. In the United States it is the same – the influentials are known as Delegates and Superdelegates.
If you want to work to wake your people up, the bad news is that you must do battle with the aforementioned and all-powerful institutions mentioned above. The good news is that it is possible to escape the ‘matrix’ that those institutions have created. The fact that you read this is proof.
Now share this article and maybe you and I can bring others out of their social media induced slumber.
