Don’t Fret My Sons And Daughters
When You See Troubled Waters
We’ve Learned To Swim And Those Who Can’t Can Tread
For Fear Alone Disarms Us
And Water Can Only Harm Us
If Left To Rise Above Our Bowed Down Head ~ Verline Gee (My Mom)
No Stockholm Syndrome Here!
Stockholm syndrome is a condition which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity. (Wikipedia)
Stolen descendants of Africa remembered who they were.
Some European immigrants would exchange their birthright for whiteness.
Although they weren’t stolen, they allowed their identity to be sold.
For nearly 300+ years descendants of Africa were denied citizenship. (Chattel property can’t be “citizenized”, right?)
When you don’t know your father, you’re a called a bastard, right? But America thought we didn’t know our Mother…but we did! As we were stolen from her, we locked down on her DNA within us and it echoed in our genes and souls for nearly a half-millennia!
They told us…
“You have no Mother. You have no family”
Africa was our mother and we invented foster families!
“Your Mother doesn’t care for you. She didn’t even try to find you!”
That’s a lie! Although Mother’s physical reach and lack of fleets of ships limited her search for us…she wailed so loudly and so deeply and so often…that she kept us in her thoughts and dreams until we could commandeer ships and aircrafts back to her shores…and arms.
It wasn’t enough to own our bodies, our privates, our children and our labor. They wanted us to like it and smile, and dance, and sing and do a little jig. So they created salt and pepper shakers and aprons and picture books and movies that depicted us a smiling, happy, satisfied and useful.
They thought that just because we were chained that we were desperate.
They thought that just because we were limited we weren’t limitless.
They thought that just because we were beaten we were defeated.
And they wanted us to make them think that we thought that they loved us.
Black people are many things, however, we were not some part of some sick Stockholm Syndrome.
…These alliances result from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time together, but they are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims. (Wikipedia)
Refusing to hate because of what it does to the hater’s own soul should not be confused with loving our captors and excusing their actions. We refused to be eaten alive with hatred the way it had ravaged the souls of white slaveowners.
We were too good for hate. Love…for ourselves…and our people, kept us alive.
Believing we were happy helped evil slaveowners sleep at night and to take communion on the bloodthirsty altars of their theologically bankrupt churches.
We weren’t friends.
We weren’t family (Well…in some sick circumstances we were.)
We weren’t seen as equals.
We were only tethered by hatred, rape, dominance, manipulation, coercion, violence, fear and free forced labor.
Slaveowners believed that our great-great-grand mothers loved them just because they couldn’t get enough of her dark sumptuous curves. Consequently, he set up distance between his white wife and Black slave, a tension that still presents itself today between Black and white women.
Ha! Our compliance was a means of defiance.
How could we love someone who denied our humanity?
The fact they demeaned and denied our humanity made them unlovable…to us.
And the fact that they treated us inhumanely made them inhumane, and they wanted us to “love” them in order to redeem their wretched souls, which, had become enslaved by the same greed that had enslaved our beautiful Black bodies.
We knew how to resist slavery of the body. Sadly, ironically, they didn’t know how to resist the slavery of their own souls. We fought in civil war battles and freed ourselves. They fought in wars and took spoils and further enslaved themselves.
We were never “attached” to those who held us in bondage as the Stockholm Syndrome would suggest.
However, I believe that slaveowners’ infatuation with us, our bodies, our strength, our faith, our beauty, our resilience and our Blackness, was somewhat “Stockholmish” in that our compliance would somehow make them feel somewhat humane.
Hmmmm
Stockholm syndrome is a condition which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity.
Perhaps the smart white people who write up diagnoses like this should consider a friendly corrective amendment such as:
*JamestownStockholm Syndrome is a condition which causes *slave traders, owners and rapistshostages to develop a psychological alliance with their *slavescaptors during captivity.
Hmmmm
My family did not have Stockholm Syndrome, but I am certain that my family’s slave traders and owners suffered from Jamestown Syndrome.
Sorry. I can’t do a jig for you, white people. Mother Africa is calling me to join her on the dance floor.
I am not your savior. I am not your lover. I am not your consoler. But, I can be your brother if you are truly woke enough and willing enough to free yourself.
Your brutality and limited view of us was not…is not…strong enough to break us. Mother Africa gave us identity and stamped it into our souls…and our skin…and in our resilience!
We loved ourselves too much to love your treatment and assessment of us!
Educate yourselves! Learn real history! This wasn’t love! This wasn’t personal…for you…it was business. And it was survival for us.
Slavery is over. We don’t have to take care of your anymore. Help yourselves…and each other.
There’s no Stockholm Syndrome here! Tether yourselves to something … and someone…else!