Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority (622 hits)

“’Black people are not dark-skinned white people,’ says advertising visionary Tom Burrell. In fact, they are much more. They are survivors of the Middle Passage and centuries of humiliation and deprivation, which have excelled against the odds, constantly making a way out of ‘No way!’”

“At this pivotal point in history, the idea of black inferiority should have had a ‘Going-Out-of-Business Sale.’ After all, Barack Obama has reached America’s Promised Land. Yet, as Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority testifies, too many in black America are still wandering in the wilderness.”

In this powerful examination of ‘the greatest propaganda campaign of all time’ -the masterful marketing of black inferiority, aka the BI Complex-Burrell poses ten disturbing questions that will make black people look in the mirror and ask why, nearly 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, so many blacks still think and act like slaves. Burrell’s acute awareness of the power of words and images to shift, shape, and change the collective consciousness has led him to connect the contemporary and historical dots that have brought us to this crossroads.

“’Brainwashed’ is not a reprimand-it is a call to action. It demands that we question our self-defeating attitudes and behaviors. Racism is not the issue; how we respond to media distortions and programmed self-hatred is the issue. It’s time to reverse the BI campaign with a globally based initiative that harnesses the power of new media and the wisdom of intergenerational coalitions. Provocative and powerful, Brainwashed dares to expose the wounds so that we, at last, can heal.”

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"Racism is not the issue; how we respond to media distortions and programmed self-hatred is the issue."

Let me echo this: racism is NOT the issue. Racism is a means to an end. In fact we allow ourselves to get caught up into believing it is the issue, and get lured into spending way too much energy fighting against some fool that called us a name, rather than, putting that energy towards more positive endeavors such as, as Burrell suggests, harnessing "...the power of new media and the wisdom of intergenerational coalitions."

As I have asked many times before, why is it that only in the case of African Americans, are the least of us used to describe all of us? This book discusses why that is. People that do that are exhibiting the worst symptoms of this brainwashing. And in many cases those of us who even mean well are using the same language and imagery that has been used for hundreds of years to justify slavery, Jim Crow and all manner of discriminations. We're too quick to take the language and image of inferiority and use that broad brush of propaganda to paint us all in the most negative light.

Black inferiority was a marketing tool, as the author says, designed to provide a justification for slavery in a nation where "all men are created equal." The black vs. white racial paradigm was designed for economic reasons, first and foremost, and has been latched on by those who don't even realize that they are, to this day, tools in the hands of the elites that ultimately benefit from the racist idiocy the vast majority of us are still ruled by.

The premise of the Spike Lee movie, "Bamboozled," made that crystal clear. Posted By:
Wednesday, February 24th 2010 at 6:33PM
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