“If you don’t understand white supremacy/racism, everything that you do understand will only confuse you..” ~ Neely Fuller Jr.
You see, most people confuse racism with bigotry — leading them to believe that acceptance by the dominant group will alleviate the pressure. However, bigotry and hatred have an emotional center that can be practiced and experienced across racial, cultural, and social boundaries. On the other hand, racism is a caste system, with the keyword being system. It is not dependent upon emotions to execute its purpose.
One thing that history has proven over the course of Millenniums is integrating into a system that is designed to destroy and oppress you believing that your invitation in or acceptance within said system will alleviate your suffering is foolish. The system is bureaucratic in nature — meaning that it is designed to self-protect the interests of those who designed it. The system is literally designed to convert Trojan Horses into willing minions.
The only way to free yourself of an oppressive system is to destroy it — burn it to the ground. When Dr. King discovered this truth, it cost him his life — killed by the very government that invited him in. If you are invited into this system as an outsider, those within the system have already identified your weaknesses and they know how to control you. If they find they cannot control you, they will kill you — period.
One of our greatest problems as a race is that we fail to acknowledge patterns. When you can read and understand patterns, you will be able to predict outcomes. Whites have washed and repeated incessantly when it comes to us because we have never forced them to play a different hand. We refuse to build outside the scope of their power and control. Becoming autonomous has not been at the center of our loosely defined agendas over the years.
While the Civil Rights movement is highly romanticized by so many, the truth is that mindset behind the movement facilitates the greatest transfer of wealth over any 15-year period in the history of the Americas. Blacks were willing to sell their movie theaters, cab companies, restaurants, grocery stores, but companies, and more for a chance to be accepted by Whites.
In essence, we relinquished the very mechanisms that would allow us to circulate our dollar and build generational wealth while literally begging Whites to take our money so that we could feel like we belong.
Let me give you just one instance of how Whites wash and repeat the same strategy. We are so convinced that being invited in and accepted is the way to liberation and empowerment that we send our best and brightest in to sit at the table to only have them be convinced to serve us up on a platter in order to keep their seat. We continue to do this today despite the clear pattern that reveals a non-efficacious outcome for us. ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.