Can I Get A Witness? A Personal Piece On What It Means To Be Black.

«  “It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.”

 – Steven Biko

This is a “personal piece”. It allows me to write from the heart – avoiding some of the tedious rigors of academic writing while maintaining the same commitment to both facts and Truth, as I see it. A few days ago a cousin of mine posted a question to Facebook asking what it means to be Black. While it was certainly a trigger for this “piece”, it is really more like the detonator for a charge that has been building up inside me for quite some time. I distinctly remember my first main “Black Experience”. When I was barely four years old two White teenage brothers from North Carolina tossed me from the top of a ten foot incinerator, just to see a “nigger fly”. I remember how frantically and hopelessly I fought against their grip; how desperately I pleaded for them to stop and let me go as they hoisted me up the back of the building where the roof was a short three feet off the hillside. I remember how, from sheer terror, I suddenly blacked out moments after I was released into midair. Left for dead, I remember how the horror continued unabated when my maternal grandmother finally woke me up some time later. Barely able to move, much less stand, I continued to scream from the excruciating pain in my neck that left me unable to turn my head for weeks. I was barely four years old then and it was certainly a turning point in my life, a Rite of Passage, of sorts. ‘Passage into what?’ you ask. Certainly not into manhood, but then again after that day I was never to be a boy.

Over time I have come to understand just how the desperation, the impotence, and the wanton brutality of that experience embodies so much of Black History itself – all the way back from the Middle Passage to the present day. Sadly, I would have many further opportunities to become intimately acquainted with the dark side of White culture – but I will not write about White culture today. Today I have something else in mind.

Perhaps the next thing I should state, now and in good academic form, is my purpose: A cry for change! But exactly what kind of change? The most difficult kind, and yet often the most necessary kind: cultural change. Why? Because, as I will prove in my upcoming book “Broken Arrow: The Rise of Third World Immigration and the Demise of Western Liberal Democracy” the single greatest predictor of a nation’s (or a community’s) “Golden Trinity” – what I call its combination of economic prosperity, political stability, and social wellbeing – is its culture. What aspect of its culture is particularly most relevant to the Golden Trinity? Its religious worldview.

My first disclaimer is that I am speaking in statistical terms which apply only to populations, and not to individuals, but when we want to know about culture we are not concerned with individual achievements or cases – what we are concerned with are generalities. Example: generally speaking the taller you are the heavier you will be, but this is not always the case. Many basketball players are tall yet thin and lean so they are not as heavy as a member of the general population would be given the same height. That being said, much of what I am going to say is likely to upset many if not most Black readers, statistically speaking of course, particularly members of my own family, most of whom are deeply religious. Frivolously upsetting people is not my goal: getting people to reexamine themselves and their beliefs, however, most certainly is. Unfortunately, it is not possible to accomplish the latter without the former: to score in soccer you have to kick some balls.

Before I start tackling the elephant I just dropped in the room – namely, what does religion have to do with economic prosperity, political stability, and social wellbeing? – It’s time I said something about myself, as well as my academic background and life experience. My birth certificate states both my parents’ Race as Negro. Of course those who have seen a picture of me or actually know me realize that this is evidently not entirely true. My father is indeed “Negro” – but he is also part Native American as well as White. Anyone familiar with US history understands why, under American hypodescent laws (often referred to as the “one-drop rule”) my father, and so many other African Americans of mixed racial heritage, were (and still are) labelled as “Negroes” (or Blacks, if you prefer), no matter the nature of their complexion, the color of their eyes, the texture of their hair, or the features of their face.

My mother, however, is a somewhat different story. She was a white Spanish woman of matrilineal Jewish descent dating back to a group of Jews known as “crypto-Jews” who managed to secretly evade century after century of intense religious persecution by hiding their identity and customs. My mother’s motivation to have herself listed as Negro was simple: she insisted that she would not be registered as belonging to a different race than her child and her husband. Her rationale for claiming to be Negro was simple, and it logically followed the one-drop rule. Parts of Spain were occupied, as well as intensely populated by North Africans for almost eight centuries. Many if not most of these Muslim invaders had a good measure of “Black blood”, and they contributed linguistically, culturally, and racially (genetically) to the land they occupied for many generations. In fact, natives to both southern Spain and southern Italy, where Muslim presence was most pronounced, are known to be far darker in complexion, eye and hair color than their northern counterparts. In acknowledgment of this historic period, for example, we have the popular Hispanic dish known as “moros y cristianos” – Moors and Christians – comprised of black beans cooked in white rice. Hence, claiming descent from those African moros or Moors, my mother rationally justified being “Negro” despite her light-skinned appearance. (Of course, according to the same rationale all human beings are “Negroes” for we all descend from Africans.) All my life, and even shortly before her recent death, while keeping me mindful of my diverse heritage my mother would repeat to me: “Son, never forget that in the end, no matter where you are or who you are with, you are Black.”

So there, I can officially state that I am a Black or African American – despite the fact that racially, and far more importantly, culturally, I have many identities: Black, Hispanic, Jewish, and Native American. Additionally, I can even in all sincerity state that a good deal of my cultural programming has nothing to do with my heritage because it is the result of many years of Far Eastern study and practice –  Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and particularly Japanese martial philosophy, psychology, as well as what some would call “spirituality”. To that effect, over the years I earned black belt or instructor-level certification in a dozen or so martial arts, won the title of Best Coach in judo in Canada three years in a row, and was inducted into the US Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 2006 for the creation of the martial paradigm I called MAMBA – Mastering the Art of Mind-Body in Action. Certainly I have spent more time in martial arts training halls and in meditation than most devotees have in Church or in prayer. As far as where I have been, I have lived throughout the United States, Eastern Canada, Spain, England, Puerto Rico, and Northern Mexico, and have travelled through France, Germany, and Brazil.

My professional and academic background is about as varied as my racial and cultural history. I began working as a programmer/analyst at the age of 18 in the Canadian National Research Council on a project for my father’s company; later, I worked as a programmer/analyst and systems analyst for Hydro Quebec in Montreal and for Honeywell in Toronto; finally, I embarked on a two decade stint in academia which included five universities, various undergraduate as well as graduate programs and degrees, and numerous teaching assistantships and lecturer positions. My academic completion scorecard includes a Bachelor’s of Arts Honors in Spanish and Latin American Culture and Civilization (which includes history, literature, geography, and economy); a Master’s of Arts in Spanish and Latin American Literature – my master’s thesis on shamanism and literature was published in various forms in academic journals and encyclopedias; a Bachelor’s of Science in General Science; a second Master’s degree in Cognitive (Neuroscience) Science leading to a project and an original theory on the neural correlates of mental imagery which was published in the International Journal of Mental Imagery. I am a native bilingual English/Spanish speaker, and although I was once fluent in Italian and (Brazilian) Portuguese, nowadays I only retain an intermediate level of reading comprehension in Portuguese.

During my graduate student years I taught (at the university level) world history, philosophy and culture, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, world religions, and the psychology of religion, a course which I designed myself. As an offshoot of my experimental research in mental imagery and the imagination I also became a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, a profession which I practiced for many years. My groundbreaking article on the relationship between imagination, shamanism, and clinical hypnosis received an international award from the UK Hypnosis Research Society, and was printed in their journal, reprinted in the academic journal Shaman, and later was the basis for an entry article in the encyclopedia “Shamanism”. I served a year as a psychological intern in the Girls Rehabilitation Facility – a juvenile correction center for adolescent girls – in San Diego. There I performed individual, group, and family therapy on gang-bangers, prostitutes, drug-pushers and drug addicts – our socially fallen. Nearly 90% of my patients were either Blacks or Latinas. Unfortunately, a near-death struggle with cancer in 2007-2008 put an end to my final academic pursuit of a PhD in Clinical and Health Psychology – one year short of its completion.

Since then I have mostly dedicated myself to an integrative and productive approach to researching, teaching, and writing, which has resulted in the publication of 15 titles – all of which but one (“Mandated Report”) is in the Spanish language – and has ultimately lead me to a paradigmatic appreciation of the human condition that I call “Biopsychocultural Theory”. From the perspective of Biopsychocultural Theory, culture performs several critical functions; the most relevant of those functions to the present piece is that of communal or group survival. Broadly speaking, biology provides the hardware, while culture provides much of the software – software which in turn comes in the form of the transmission of key patterns of behavior, of thinking, of feeling, and of believing. It is precisely these key patterns that allow us to identify with others who share our culture, distinguish ourselves from those who do not, and finally survive. Worldview, particularly religious worldview, is critical to the nature, the content, and the manner of dissemination of these cultural patterns.

Most cultures around the world attribute to themselves some kind of supernatural genesis – an origin story of divine or mystic proportions. It is their way of feeling like they have a special place and a special purpose in the known universe. Of course, for those outside the culture these origin stories are just that: stories, myths. Nevertheless, one must recognize that these myths (psychologically and socially) serve to propel a People forward and unite them in their quest to overcome the adversities of their shared existence, thus ultimately serving to continue to perpetuate future generations of their kind. Culture is therefore, fundamentally, an adaptation of a group of people to a physical, social, economic, or political environment for the purposes of successfully passing on their genes, memes (kind of like cultural genes), and of course, their identity, to successive generations: nothing more, and nothing less. Of course, religious beliefs and traditions play a key role in this process. To summarize: culture equals place, purpose, identity, distinguishing customs, and patterns (behavioral, intellectual, and emotional) for survival.

So far, so good. Now for the part that will start to sting: whereas one cannot objectively state that one culture is unequivocally superior to another, one can most certainly state that one culture is better or more adaptive than another for any given environment. For example, if I was dumped somewhere in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, I really couldn’t care less for French or Russian or Scandinavian or Mexican culture, for they will all likely be equally useless in my quest for survival; I would need to learn the ways of the Yanomami or the Guarani. Equally, not much about the tribes of the Amazon would help me survive in London, or Madrid, or Sao Paulo, or Toronto, or Los Angeles. Furthermore, when one analyzes the issue of what makes one culture better adaptive, or equivalently more competitive than another, it frequently relies on the nature of its religious worldview, which determines what is sacred, how one relates to the sacred, and how one organizes socially with respect to the sacred. It is in relation to the sacred that people tend to derive answers to the questions: what is the meaning of life, how shall we live, who should we become? Religion pertains essentially to being. However, cultural issues that are fundamentally of an economic and/or political nature pertain primarily to doing – to doing what we perceive – what we believe – is necessary to survive. Both religion and politics/economics are interrelated but are steeped in opposite extremes of the being-doing spectrum. What we do because of religion is primarily due to whom and what we believe is sacred and how we are to relate to it. Change our beliefs, our notions of the sacred, and everything pertaining to religion changes. What we do for politics and economics is primarily due to surviving – and ideally, to thriving. Issues of survival are rooted in our biological needs as a species trying to cope with its environment. Nothing – save the lengthy and tedious process of evolution itself – can change our biological needs. Biology evolves; culture (fashion, diet, music, literature, religion, architecture, society, etc.), science, and technology – all human creations – can revolutionize. Biology cannot. Evolution equipped us with the ultimate survival tool – the human brain. The human brain is by far the most sophisticated complex system in the universe for doing the business of survival: propagating our species. However, the exigencies of this ultimate system came with a tremendous cost: the cost of providing meaning to our doing. While every other species on the planet that ever existed has been simply concerned with the doing of survival, humans are the only ones equally tasked with being – with attributing meaning to our existence.  

Hence, any given culture’s being and doing are obviously interdependent, and in some cases very much so. Indeed, here is where things begin to ruffle feathers and hurt feelings, because some cultures are so committed to their being (relating to their notion of the sacred) that their doing is way too distant of a concern to be able to compete successfully with other cultures. This is where and why some religious worldviews are simply more conducive than others to establishing an optimal Golden Trinity for their nations and communities. One may completely disparage the concept of comparisons between cultures or between religions, but in the increasingly interdependent and competitive international social, political and economic human ecosystem many have called the “Global Village” it is impossible not to do so. Bottom line: as a culture you will either sink or swim – do poorly or do well – according to your set of values, preferences, and beliefs.

Which religious worldviews are more compromising or limiting to the economic prosperity, social well-being, and political stability of their respective cultures? The rule of thumb is that the more heavily invested a given culture (community or nation) is in the concept of a supreme being, in the active belief in supernatural forces, and in the existence of otherworldly dimensions (e.g. Heaven, Hell, or Paradise), then the worse off those communities, groups, or nations of that culture are. You simply can’t compete with a group who spend their time studying advanced mathematics, multivariate statistics, macro and micro economics, civil engineering, medicine, international finance, business administration, etc., when you are enthusiastically retelling the same ancient myths that pretend to guide your life. Furthermore, if you are busy concerning yourself with earning a place in your “afterlife Paradise” while your competitor spends all of her time focusing on how her company will earn a major share of the market, you will eventually go out of business and work for her. I can hear you: “Being rich or successful doesn’t make them a good person!” Well, I have news for you: I have yet to see any statistic that demonstrates that poor people are morally superior to rich people, or that religious people are more law abiding than non-religious people or even atheists. Actually, the contrary has been demonstrated to be true: Bible belt residents have been proven to engage in more “deadly sins”, (such as downloading gay porn off the Internet) than non-Bible belt residents; while atheists are practically non-existent in American prisons. Furthermore, again, statistically speaking, the poorest people on the planet are not only the most intent on (theoretically) doing the will of their Supreme Being, but they are also the most violent, the least educated, and the least politically stable.

Of course, correlation is not causation. Just because the statistics show a strong relationship between being poor, being a criminal, being undereducated, and being religious, does not necessarily mean that being religious causes people to become poor, to become criminals, or to be undereducated. Perhaps it is the opposite. Perhaps being poor, being a criminal, and being undereducated leads people to become religious? Some have argued this very point, pointing out that the belief in an other-worldly religion is to a society or a community riddled with poverty and social and political disarray what a bacterial infection is to a body with a compromised immune system: people, communities, or entire nations overrun with hopelessness in this reality will be far more vulnerable to grasping onto otherworldly hopes, beliefs, and aspirations. Certainly this is why Christianity became so popular amongst the slave and servant classes of ancient Rome. In a classic society of honor and shame, in which the lower classes had little or no hope of rising above their birth station, there is nothing like the Sermon on the Mount – which many interpret as establishing the moral superiority of being socially, economically, and/or politically inferior – to get the underclasses on board. Thus, otherworldly religions which emphasize an afterlife reward for human suffering are bound to be far more popular amongst the poor than the rich. What is the obvious benefit here? Religion offers a coping tool for mentally surviving the horrendous ordeals of their day to day existence.

This was no doubt the purpose that Christianity served the African slave upon arriving to America in chains to a life that made chemotherapy seem like time off at the country club. I have no judgement or criticism to offer here. Just as sometimes you need to do what you need to do to physically survive, sometimes you need to believe what you need to believe, or believe in, in order to mentally, psychologically and spiritually survive. That is not the problem. African American religiosity or spirituality had its place – and that “place” socially and politically expired half a century ago with the Civil Rights Movement.

The problem is that African American religiosity or spirituality – in its traditional, monotheistic or deistic form – has long overstayed its welcome. It needs to concede that “place” to another pivotal worldview or ideology that will lift the vast majority of African Americans out of the depressed social, political, and economic state – statistically speaking – we are in. What once aided the African American in surviving, now equally prevents him from thriving. The bacterial infection of supernatural religious belief is more like the AIDS virus that compromises the immune system itself, therefore impeding any form of recovery. Indoctrination into the Christian religion was the leading tool of both African American enslavement as well as Latin American colonization. I will rephrase it in case you were not paying attention: in the case of both the African slave and the colonized Indian and mestizo (Indian and Spanish racial mix), Christianization was the culturally embedded guarantee to prevent any form of effective social, economic, or political revolution. The colonized man, the enslaved man, can abruptly rise to his own feet for a fleeting moment of violently expressed indignation, but the Christ virus will sabotage his efforts and bring him back to his knees – pun intended – every single time. Forget the Willie Lynch myth – look around you and see the Christ God reality. As Beowulf states to his sidekick Wiglaf: “The time of heroes is dead, Wiglaf – the Christ God has killed it, leaving humankind with nothing but weeping martyrs, fear, and shame.”

The Christ God is the leading cause of both African America’s and Latin America’s economic, social, and political stagnation. Statistically speaking, even in Europe, the most economically, socially, and politically compromised nations tend to be the most religious, while the most prosperous are the most non-religious. In America, the more Christian (regardless of denomination) the community, the poorer, the more violent, the more dangerous, the less educated the community – once again, statistically speaking. The only religious worldview even more maladapted to the exigencies of the modern socioeconomic and political Global Village than Christianity is Islam. (Note, I have a chapter dedicated to a statistical evaluation of the Muslim world in “Broken Arrow”.) 

There are many reasons why African Americans and Hispanics occupy the lower rungs of the social ladder in the United States, just as there are many reasons why African and Latin American countries are also amongst the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, and also why Islamic nations are amongst the poorest in the world. Some of those reasons are external to those nations and communities, beyond their present control; however, what one often finds amongst the highly or devoutly religious nations and communities are justifications for not exerting a measure of self-restraint or control over their own resources: while I can’t control the racist White cop that shoots first and asks questions never, I can however stop killing people of my own kind. Again, statistically speaking, as a Black male my chances of being killed by another African American male are far greater than being killed by a police officer of any color – or even than being killed by an Islamic terrorist for that matter. The point here is that before we expect to even begin to successfully influence factors over which we presently do not have direct control we must exert power over those we do. The problem is that supernatural religions such as Christianity (particularly Black and Latino versions of Christianity) and Islam are highly fatalistic, God or Allah-affirming, and human-denying. Human successes are attributed not to one’s own efforts or to the efforts of other human beings, but to God. How many times does one hear an African American athlete, for example, after an extraordinary performance give thanks to God rather than to his own superb genetics, his superior coaching, or his own extraordinary self-discipline? The God-centeredness of these communities and nations serves only to deny human self-empowerment rather than to foster it. Absent human self-power, equally absent is a sense of personal responsibility. Is White racism really, directly, responsible for our teenage pregnancy rates, or for our communities’ drug addiction and alcoholism problems?

Supernatural religions deny the value of life. As long as your mind is on some illusory afterlife existence, everything in this life is of necessity devalued in comparison. Like the song says: “If you believe in forever, life is just a one-night stand.” This mindset may make some degree of psychological sense when faced with the social, economic, and political conditions of slavery, or of colonialism, or of the Third world in general; mentally escaping an intolerable reality when it is beyond your human possibilities to do otherwise can make living so much more tolerable. However, it equally creates an atmosphere of apathy and indifference that makes changing the conditions in this life, in this world, virtually impossible – even when you are no longer physically or legally a slave. Indeed, the chains and shackles can be physically removed but remain mentally there for generations. As far as I am concerned (as Black History month is once again upon us and we can boast the accomplishments of many distinguished individuals) we should be far more concerned with – and ashamed of – the lack of accomplishment of our community as a whole.

As far as religion is concerned, the entire moral program of Jesus’ teachings can be summarized in two parables: the Parable of Talents and the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It is always curious to me how deeply religious people, individuals whose thoughts and expressions, whose purpose and justifications never stray far from Jesus or God, are nevertheless among the least observant of either one of those two parables. As I was raised to understand it, the Parable of Talents clearly emphasizes the moral obligation one has before God to make the utmost of one’s aptitudes and opportunities. How then can (statistically speaking of course) the African American call him or herself a good Christian and still trail nationally in academic achievements, intellectual distinctions, and family or individual income? The Parable of the Good Samaritan on the other hand, teaches us that the morally superior person is not the one who talks the talk, but the one who actually walks the walk. How then can the African American call him or herself a good Christian and yet be the greatest threat to the security of his own people? Despite the many claims regarding the moral value of religion, the facts remain that religion seldom breeds true, honest self-reflection, but rather more often than not it leads to an indulgent form of self-righteousness and complacency that bespeaks far more of arrogance than of anything resembling real humility.

What was that about the Truth shall set you free? (John 8:32)

Supernatural religions impose a necessary conflict between their religious worldview and the dominant scientific paradigm which empirically refutes the existence of a Supreme Being or of an otherworldly domain: evolution or creationism, one or the other, not both. Therefore, in order to maintain their religious worldview, religious people often (even unconsciously) seek out professions that avoid a scientific one. The problem is that in this day and age, scientific literacy is the key to the economic success of a nation or of a community as a whole: Blacks and Hispanics – the most highly religious groups in the US – are notoriously underrepresented in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) professions. Nationally as well as globally, the result of the massive cultural commitment to a non- or even anti-scientific worldview is an ever increasing community of people worldwide who are trapped in a world they can never fully comprehend, in which they are increasingly relegated in numbers either to menial or poorly paid forms of employment. Even that small minority who manages to chance their way into the highly paid entertainment professions – such as sports, singing, acting, and dancing – have little knowledge, or interest, to change the social, economic, or politically decline of their communities or nations.

Supernatural religion has compromised the intellectual capacities of the highly religious, fundamentalist person to the extent that he or she cannot even stop to ask themselves such basic questions as: If God really helps the poor, the deprived, the downtrodden, why is it that the same nations and the same communities around the world, generation after generation, century after century, have continued to be poor, deprived, and downtrodden? How much has Jesus-worshipping really helped Blacks resolve the issues that are directly related to the vicious social cycles of ultra-high teenage pregnancy rates, low academic standing rates, and sky high juvenile delinquency (gang membership) rates – all of which are intimately tied to poverty? Indeed, how many have asked themselves the following key question: If God really does exist and if He is so all powerful and mighty, then why does He seem to want us locked up, killing each other, poor, disunited, and fatherless? Does God hate religious Black, colored, and poor people? Statistically speaking, the answer is clearly “Yes, yes he does!”

My father was not a particularly religious man when I was growing up; quite to the contrary: he was directly responsible for the largely utilitarian outlook you see before you today – a fact that is perhaps an embarrassment to him today. Nevertheless, despite the many talents I showed growing up, my father insisted that we – Black Americans – didn’t need more singers, dancers, actors, comedians or athletes. What we needed were more philosophers, thinkers, professors, scientists, inventors, and engineers – men and women who could demonstrate to the world that we are more than mere entertainers: that we could hold our own intellectually against any White man. He wasn’t asking either: he was demanding. It was not a debt I owed any god; it was a debt I owed myself; it was a debt I owed him – for the many sacrifices he made so that I could have the opportunities he never had; and it was a debt I owed to my People, the Black People. Paid in full.

He also said that no matter what I became, “Be the best”. He wasn’t asking either. And so I am.

Hence, in response to my cousin, that is what it meant, and that’s what it means, to be Black to me. Regrettably, statistically speaking, I don’t see that meaning shared among very many Black people nowadays.

What is the change that we need? What we need is a lot less God, and a lot more real Black leadership; we need a lot less Heaven and a lot more community; we need a lot less divinity and a lot more humanity; we need a lot less religiosity and a lot more sociology and philosophy; we need a lot less prayer and a lot more useful, productive activity; we need a lot less Bible and a lot more study; we need a lot less complaint and a lot more discipline and self-restraint; a lot less asking of others, and a lot more demanding of ourselves. We most certainly need to remember the accomplishments of our “talented tenth”, but we must also be mindful of the destitute majority they are supposed to inspire and elevate.

There was no God to save me on that roof top, as there is no God to save us now – there never has been, there never will be. And our situation is truly dire! On our own, trapped behind enemy lines, thrust into a war – a veritable form of racial genocide – whose true nature most cannot even begin to comprehend, the only powers we can count on are ourselves and each other. Assurances of “afterlife” or “otherworldly” compensation plans are worse than meaningless. They insidiously rob highly religious nations and communities of the only thing that should really matter to them: the crucial fighting spirit and the will to power they need to successfully compete in the here and now of this world.

            Can I get a witness?

Shodai Sennin James Alexander Overton-Guerra