My daughter is studying to obtain her Doctorate Degree in Public Health. Fortunately for her, she was raised on a strict diet of pro-socialism, pro-Africa/Pan-Africanism, and anti-capitalism, anti-white supremacy, and anti-patriarchy. So, she was probably at least a little better prepared when her instructor group distributed a study earlier this week on health disparities for African and Indigenous women, using the Body Mass Index (BMI) as the basis of the analysis of the study. To my daughter, and the other brown women participating in this discussions dismay, the study placed the blame for the heath disparities on the women and their "unhealthy" diets and lifestyles. Of course, the German scientist created BMI was the evidence that the study used to validate its conclusions.
When my daughter immediately reacted by challenging the legitimacy of the study, the lead tenured professor, a European (white) woman my daughter will need to depend upon to be at least one of the people to sign off on her dissertation, told her that she needed to produce evidence to substantiate her outburst against the study during the discussion. As is our usual process, that's when my daughter called me to process how she should respond.
There are several elements of white supremacy to this scenario. If you have a trained perspective on the subject, those elements should be fairly easy to detect, but if you are like most people in this backward society, you have very little background or training to recognize any of this so we will spell them out for you.
The most obvious contradiction in the format of how things are done in this society is so-called scientific measuring components like BMI, created by and for European people, are used as fact for all of humanity so if you don't automatically fit into these types of European paradigms, then we are all taught that the assumption is there's something amiss with you, not the basis of the analysis. This speaks to Kwame Ture's often quoted (in this blog) statement that the history of Europe is not the history of all of humanity. Although there are certainly some healthy practices that BMI could be used to illustrate for safer living, BMI alone cannot even begin to tell the story of why colonized women suffer health disparities. In another very relevant quote, Kwame Ture spoke often of not being able to properly analyze the conditions of oppressed people without including the enemy in the analysis. In other words, BMI, without encompassing it within the context of a white supremacist system, cannot lead you anywhere on this subject. Economic inequity that results from systemic white supremacy ensures the majority of colonized women will lack the resources to buy or even have access to healthy food on a consistent basis. That reality coupled with the massive levels of stress that come with being an oppressed person does more to contribute to those so-called unhealthy eating habits than 2 million types of BMIs could ever explain.
All of the above should be the obvious aspect of this contradiction. The more subtle element is the exchange that happens during my daughter's discussion group. The fact an African woman raised a question about white supremacy as it relates to the materials posing as legitimate academic research, and the response from the person in authority is to place the burden of proof on the person vocalizing the oppression speaks to the reality that colonized people live with everyday in this white supremacist society. Whether we are talking about Africans and Indigenous people being shot by police or men raping women, this is universally true. The burden of proof is always on the oppressed classes of people to demonstrate to the segment of the population that is more properly represented by the system that the system is unjust. You would have a better chance of convincing a fox that they shouldn't want to devour the chicken.
My daughter's foundation is important. It is because that orientation makes her instantly desire to fight back whereas the majority of us who lack that type of foundation are likely to just absorb the oppression which contributes to the unhealthy practice that makes life for us much more risky on a physical as well as psychological and spiritual level.
None of this is designed to be that typically unfortunate liberal capitalist discussion that argues that the problem is white privilege as if the solution to the problem is European people someday waking up to their leveraged position within this society so that they can decide to stand up and save us from this oppression. This discussion about white supremacy is important to us primarily because we desire to have African and other colonized persons recognize that this system is structured based on our exploitation. Therefore, we will never have our liberation and freedom until we organize and fight for a better more just system. This message we also desire to spread to as many Europeans as possible, but the primary focus is clearly on our self determination. And by fight we mean organize for revolution, plain and simple. Or, if you don't think revolution is the solution, then we welcome you to come forth with your own version of a collective path toward forward human progress.
The main point is the pathway to developing any type of effective movement towards impacting and eliminating white supremacy, patriarchy, etc., is first for people to properly understand what those systems are. What they do. And, how they adversely impact the masses of people oppressed by them in systemic ways. That type of mass education around these topics is completely non-existent presently and as a result, people evaluate these topics based on individualistic "what I saw and/or experienced" subjective analysis. For example, I watched (as long as I could stand it which wasn't long) the Netflix Special by Comedy person Chelsea Handler on white supremacy. In that documentary, she spent a lot of time talking to Europeans trying to convince them that they have white privilege and the best method she could reference to make her point was her personal experiences. So, these discussions centered her personal experiences in comparison to the experiences of other racist Europeans. The obvious weakness of this approach is truth and justice is completely divorced from material reality in this society. As a result, people have license to make up whatever type of reality for themselves that they desire. Even those who sit in the presidency in this country practice that level of dishonesty as policy so of course everyday people are going to emulate that backward model. The danger of this type of subjectivity is that it creates an alternate reality where me as a man has the ability to pretend like my perspective on giving child birth has merit although I will never in life experience it. Under this reality, I don't even have to study it and no one even challenges my sources for my misinformation. All that's required in this bourgeoisie reality is for me to have vocal cords and "my truth is worthy of being voiced." That's utter and complete nonsense. That's why data based on scientific analysis is a much better method of arriving at any logical conclusions on any subject. So, instead of relying on people's individual interpretations, we should look at collective data. If we do that, we see that Europeans convicted for selling and/or possessing a pound of powder cocaine or going to receive much less of a prison sentence than Africans doing the same even if all of the conditions leading up to their arrest are the same. With this example, which is easily provable as something that happens daily in this society, white supremacy is the only factor that explains the disparity. And, none of the white supremacy deniers can offer any type of scientific refute to this argument.
In order to raise the bar on the discussion to the level indicated above two things have to happen initially. Information has to be readily available to everyone on a consistent basis and that information has to be disseminated through mass conversation and discussions. This process will help in raising the cultural bar around white supremacy, patriarchy, etc. So, I advocate that we start by organizing discussions around white supremacy. Since I have books I've written on the subject, I can use those books to anchor discussions around the subject. I can present plausible and scientific historical and social evidence to give the groundwork for how we got to the point we are at today, and how we can effectively move forward. I'm organizing such a discussion for you if you are in the Sacramento, California, area. November 14, 2019 and you can get more details on that event on the events tab of this site. For those of you in other areas, I'm open and interested in coming to your area to help lead these discussions and if you don't want to work this through me there are more than enough grassroots activists/organizers who are doing similar work everywhere. The important thing is the ship will never get turned around until enough of us are courageous, consistent, and dedicated enough to start the process.
When my daughter immediately reacted by challenging the legitimacy of the study, the lead tenured professor, a European (white) woman my daughter will need to depend upon to be at least one of the people to sign off on her dissertation, told her that she needed to produce evidence to substantiate her outburst against the study during the discussion. As is our usual process, that's when my daughter called me to process how she should respond.
There are several elements of white supremacy to this scenario. If you have a trained perspective on the subject, those elements should be fairly easy to detect, but if you are like most people in this backward society, you have very little background or training to recognize any of this so we will spell them out for you.
The most obvious contradiction in the format of how things are done in this society is so-called scientific measuring components like BMI, created by and for European people, are used as fact for all of humanity so if you don't automatically fit into these types of European paradigms, then we are all taught that the assumption is there's something amiss with you, not the basis of the analysis. This speaks to Kwame Ture's often quoted (in this blog) statement that the history of Europe is not the history of all of humanity. Although there are certainly some healthy practices that BMI could be used to illustrate for safer living, BMI alone cannot even begin to tell the story of why colonized women suffer health disparities. In another very relevant quote, Kwame Ture spoke often of not being able to properly analyze the conditions of oppressed people without including the enemy in the analysis. In other words, BMI, without encompassing it within the context of a white supremacist system, cannot lead you anywhere on this subject. Economic inequity that results from systemic white supremacy ensures the majority of colonized women will lack the resources to buy or even have access to healthy food on a consistent basis. That reality coupled with the massive levels of stress that come with being an oppressed person does more to contribute to those so-called unhealthy eating habits than 2 million types of BMIs could ever explain.
All of the above should be the obvious aspect of this contradiction. The more subtle element is the exchange that happens during my daughter's discussion group. The fact an African woman raised a question about white supremacy as it relates to the materials posing as legitimate academic research, and the response from the person in authority is to place the burden of proof on the person vocalizing the oppression speaks to the reality that colonized people live with everyday in this white supremacist society. Whether we are talking about Africans and Indigenous people being shot by police or men raping women, this is universally true. The burden of proof is always on the oppressed classes of people to demonstrate to the segment of the population that is more properly represented by the system that the system is unjust. You would have a better chance of convincing a fox that they shouldn't want to devour the chicken.
My daughter's foundation is important. It is because that orientation makes her instantly desire to fight back whereas the majority of us who lack that type of foundation are likely to just absorb the oppression which contributes to the unhealthy practice that makes life for us much more risky on a physical as well as psychological and spiritual level.
None of this is designed to be that typically unfortunate liberal capitalist discussion that argues that the problem is white privilege as if the solution to the problem is European people someday waking up to their leveraged position within this society so that they can decide to stand up and save us from this oppression. This discussion about white supremacy is important to us primarily because we desire to have African and other colonized persons recognize that this system is structured based on our exploitation. Therefore, we will never have our liberation and freedom until we organize and fight for a better more just system. This message we also desire to spread to as many Europeans as possible, but the primary focus is clearly on our self determination. And by fight we mean organize for revolution, plain and simple. Or, if you don't think revolution is the solution, then we welcome you to come forth with your own version of a collective path toward forward human progress.
The main point is the pathway to developing any type of effective movement towards impacting and eliminating white supremacy, patriarchy, etc., is first for people to properly understand what those systems are. What they do. And, how they adversely impact the masses of people oppressed by them in systemic ways. That type of mass education around these topics is completely non-existent presently and as a result, people evaluate these topics based on individualistic "what I saw and/or experienced" subjective analysis. For example, I watched (as long as I could stand it which wasn't long) the Netflix Special by Comedy person Chelsea Handler on white supremacy. In that documentary, she spent a lot of time talking to Europeans trying to convince them that they have white privilege and the best method she could reference to make her point was her personal experiences. So, these discussions centered her personal experiences in comparison to the experiences of other racist Europeans. The obvious weakness of this approach is truth and justice is completely divorced from material reality in this society. As a result, people have license to make up whatever type of reality for themselves that they desire. Even those who sit in the presidency in this country practice that level of dishonesty as policy so of course everyday people are going to emulate that backward model. The danger of this type of subjectivity is that it creates an alternate reality where me as a man has the ability to pretend like my perspective on giving child birth has merit although I will never in life experience it. Under this reality, I don't even have to study it and no one even challenges my sources for my misinformation. All that's required in this bourgeoisie reality is for me to have vocal cords and "my truth is worthy of being voiced." That's utter and complete nonsense. That's why data based on scientific analysis is a much better method of arriving at any logical conclusions on any subject. So, instead of relying on people's individual interpretations, we should look at collective data. If we do that, we see that Europeans convicted for selling and/or possessing a pound of powder cocaine or going to receive much less of a prison sentence than Africans doing the same even if all of the conditions leading up to their arrest are the same. With this example, which is easily provable as something that happens daily in this society, white supremacy is the only factor that explains the disparity. And, none of the white supremacy deniers can offer any type of scientific refute to this argument.
In order to raise the bar on the discussion to the level indicated above two things have to happen initially. Information has to be readily available to everyone on a consistent basis and that information has to be disseminated through mass conversation and discussions. This process will help in raising the cultural bar around white supremacy, patriarchy, etc. So, I advocate that we start by organizing discussions around white supremacy. Since I have books I've written on the subject, I can use those books to anchor discussions around the subject. I can present plausible and scientific historical and social evidence to give the groundwork for how we got to the point we are at today, and how we can effectively move forward. I'm organizing such a discussion for you if you are in the Sacramento, California, area. November 14, 2019 and you can get more details on that event on the events tab of this site. For those of you in other areas, I'm open and interested in coming to your area to help lead these discussions and if you don't want to work this through me there are more than enough grassroots activists/organizers who are doing similar work everywhere. The important thing is the ship will never get turned around until enough of us are courageous, consistent, and dedicated enough to start the process.
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