Salvation is the Issue: Restorative Healing in the Tradition, the essential pieces towards Black Liberation
By:
Chidinma Osuagwu
Thesis Committee:
Professor Greg Thomas, Chair
Professor Jennifer Allen
Professor Linda Sprague-Martinez
A Senior Honors Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the degree of
Bachelors of Arts
in the
School of Arts and Science
of
Tufts University
Spring 2016
Acknowledgements
My sincerest appreciation goes to my Committee Chair reader, Professor Greg Thomas for his stimulating and awakening courses. I have finally begun finding the words. Through his teachings I have been able to learn about myself through the history not often looked upon. I am deeply thankful for receiving such rich texts to ignite the fire once dormant.
Through the guidance and advisement of Professor Linda Martinez, I have been fortunate enough to visualize the application of my passions in both Africana Studies and Community Health. She has also inspired me by having so much faith in me, which I am deeply grateful for.
And a great many thanks to Professor Jennifer Allen for supporting me in the field of Community Health when I had nowhere to turn to. Her support has been instrumental to the continuance of this thesis.
I give thanks to my Father and my Mother’s continuous sacrifices for their children.
To the authors who made this paper possible and continue in the tradition of passing it on.
To our revolutionaries for their unwavering and inspiring commitment to the struggle.
& finally to the Black masses, the dead, the living, and the unborn my family who I love faithfully with everything in me
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements I. An Introduction to Healing...…….………………………………………...…………1 Chapter One: Constructions of Health………….…………..……………………..1 Chapter Two: Healing is no Trifling Matter……………..………………………..5
II. Colonial or Western Medicine as systematic perpetuators of terror, violence, and colonization……………………………………………………………………...……....13 Introduction…………………………………………………………...……....….13 Chapter One: Terror in Hopes of Healing…...…………………………..………16 Chapter Two: Healthcare’s Colonialist Dues: The Adverse Effects of Colonial Health structures…………..……………………..………………………………23 1: The Colonial Doctor and Capitalism………………...……....………..23 2: Hospitals and the displacement of people of color …………………...25 3: Colonial Cover Up in the name of Health: Non Profits, Humanitarianism, and Aid………………...……....………………...…...27 4: Medical Experimentation: the Tools of Colonialism………………….33 5: Medical Accomplishments from the Blood of the Ancestors…………36 6: Research Today and Black Souls………………..………………..…...41 Chapter Three: Colonial Medicine furthers Colonial Conquest…………………44 1: The Physician and the Colonial Agent: Two Faces of the Same Coin..44 2: Political Prisoners under the Knife………………..…………………..48
III. An expansion of the concepts of Life & Death……...…………………....……....55 Introduction……………………………………………………………....……....55 Chapter One: Multiple forms of Death and Dying: Breeders of Violence………56 Chapter Two: Cultural Violence: The Destruction and Trivialization of Traditional Healing……………………………………………………....……....57 Chapter Three: War waged on the Mind: Mental Violence…………...... ……....60
IV. Black Radical Tradition: Unraveling oppression to bring Liberation.....……....67 Introduction……...…………………....……....……...…………………...... …...67 Chapter One: Sight of Our Origins……...…………………....……....……...…..68 1: Revolutionary Endeavor as a Stimulus to Life…....……....…………..71 2: Diasporic Literacy’s Continuance of Black Radical Tradition…....…..74 V. Conclusion…....……....……....……....……....……....……....……....……....……...78 Bibliography
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Section I: An Introduction to Healing
Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well? Just so you’re sure sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well. -Bambara, The Salt Eaters
1: Constructions of Health
Health, as defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary, states that it is “the condition of being well or free from disease”; however in academic discourse a “standard” definition of health does not exist, for it is seen as an abstract and fluid concept. The definition of health is more likely to reflect people’s subjective, ideological, and cultural influences. Although the concept of health can be seen as dynamic and continuous, many health models have been erected on dominant influenced connotations. The “Medical
Model” (also known as the Biological, Biomedical, Western-Scientific model), “draws from scientific, individualistic, mechanical, and reductionist understandings of what health is and views health in terms of pathology, disease, treatment, and diagnosis”
(Aboagye 2015). The Medical model forms the basis of healthcare delivery, yet there are many problems that emerge from its use. This model sees health as being located within the individual body, thereby firstly individualizing health and what constitutes being “of good health” or “healthy”. The causes of ill health in this template are viewed as biological/physiological in origin requiring expert intervention (Aboagye 2015). The idea that illness is this one-dimensional and requires (Western conceptions of) expertise will be highly contested here. The process of health care delivery will be questioned and critically accessed. Through this particular lens health is represented as being the absence of disease and infirmity; thus in the absence of disease health is thought to exist. The
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Western established model of health puts all accountability on an individual for becoming ill, and therefore does not account for the many other factors that go into wellness. At face value and without much analysis the Western-Scientific model is difficult to agree with. The model’s ideology is narrow in perspective, yet it receives an excessive amount of attention, priority, and action, which is a clear testimony to the medical models’ dominance and acceptance around the world. This model revolves around the common
Western trait of individualism and neglects environmental, societal, and other influences on health.
As health models began to develop further with Euro-American influence, the
World Health Organization created a new model in 1948 that “sees health as a state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely as the absence of disease and infirmity”. This change in definition attempts to widen the scope of health. This model tries to move the scope beyond defining health as the absence of disease; however, disquieting issues persist. The definition at its crux is an unrealistic way to view health, for it remains idealistic and utopian, particularly for an institution like a “world health organization” to use as a basis to their work. There is no way to readily measure or define wellbeing with this model definition, for it does not factor in emotional, spiritual, or sexual health, which are often seen as “too subjective” and demonized in dominate discourse. Most importantly, this utopian definition does not factor in the colonial paradigm that Black people live in. There are many other models and paradigms that have been created in order to encompass other health indicators that are often neglected in conventional health discourse; however they are devoid for good reason by the establishment (those in power). Race-less definitions that do not incorporate the
2 differences in health of the settler and the health of the exploited are pivotal to the continuance of white supremacism and imperialism. These models continue to uphold the representation of a color-blind society and maintain the hypocrisy of the U.S. global slogan of democracy: the land of the free. America is the manifestation of colonialism meaning that there is no actual desire to aid Black people or incorporate their health needs in its design and structure. The resolution of Black people’s health issues or more realistically health crisis would require a resolution to colonial domination; a resolution that the United States would never acquiesce without a fight; a resolution of Black liberation.
What does Black liberation look like? Liberation requires and brings Black empowerment, self-determination, resources, power, and land: the antithesis to white supremacy and the antithesis of the foundation and culture of America. Instead of looking at the basis of Black oppression, there has been the creation (especially with the rapid amalgamation of preventative medicine and public health) of temporary Band-Aid solutions to address “the African-American problem” of poor health. The National
Institute of Health defines “health disparities” as “differences in the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions that exist among specific population groups in the United States.” In an attempt to concentrate on “specific population groups” the definition remains abstract and creates only insubstantial resolutions to poor health. The word “disparities” only implies that there are differences in the health outcomes of certain groups of people. The term “Health disparities” does not accurately analyze or attempt to address why widening gaps of health quality plague certain communities. The definition was created to pertain to
3 numerous groups in the U.S. with an apparent “emphasis” on race/ethnicity, yet most government agencies sanction the definition with more ambiguity. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) defines health disparities as, “differences in the presence of disease, health outcomes, or access to health care” and the CDC, “…by social, demographic, environmental, and geographic attributes” (Laveist 2013 16). These approaches can be viewed as an aspect of the colonial cover up intended to mask colonial violence and make America seem as if they put “effort” into addressing the ill health of
Black people. As a result there is not one substantial federal or state initiative looking to combat the crux of Black oppression, for it is overall best for these powers to absolve national accountability, erase past violence, and renew new forms of this violence for the interests of white nationalism. These smaller, liberal, and advantageous efforts in support of improving Black health are deemed menial in comparison to the continuous wave of racist institutional forces inflicting hell on Black people. These efforts do not get to account for much when the remaining forces of exploitation, gentrification, and violence affect health and remain purposefully ignored by liberal forces. These temporary solutions begin as “groundbreaking” discourse, because they are finally discussed in establishment deemed important spaces, thereby making America seem willing to engage with issues by creating new terminology; thus new studies/projects/programs are created to help the African-Americans with their “health problems”.
When discussing healing what do the Black masses envision? Instead of simply asking the “experts”, the questions should be asked and answered by the people. The connotation of health continues in its dynamic mold as un-static and forever changing.
Health models are multifaceted systems that in theory promote and advocate for
4 healthiness, yet when put into practice enforces colonization’s characteristics of compartmentalization and racism. There has been a resilient failure to connect (the magnitude of) various health issues to its origin. The ideological forces behind healthcare and medicine remain dominated and controlled by Western colonial institutions. These institutions reinforce and continue the bastardization of other modes of healing that are imperative to the specific, special, and particular healing and liberation of the Black
Diaspora. The project of Black healing remains interrupted as colonization and oppression permeate into every aspect of Black livelihood. How do we think about Black struggle towards wellness? What are the ingredients of Black prosperity? What does it mean to be sick or ill? What does it mean to be well? The discussion and promotion of healing must move beyond highly privileged (highly white) modes of discourse as well as move past the temporary resolutions used to keep oppressed peoples from fighting for their liberation.
2: Healing is No Trifling Matter The introductory and opening quote of this thesis comes from THE SALT
EATERS by Toni Cade Bambara. The speaker is Minnie Ransom, a “fabled healer of the district” who indulges in the spiritual arts. In the quote, before the healing process begins, she asks Velma, a woman who has lost her way, if she actually wants to be well. For it is not a “trifling matter” to take on the journey towards wellness. Minnie in this one quote burns any walls that construct the meaning of health by making the essence of wellness something ongoing, continuous, and reflective of a spiritual undertaking one must be prepared for. She does not restrict Velma’s health to the physical, mental, and/or social, but instead gestures toward a state of wholeness that comes with an intimate internal and
5 communal process. The pages of Bambara’s work reflect how much more is involved in the healing of the Black diaspora; there are required modes of consciousness, self- determination, and resistance which ultimately bring the Black masses toward liberation from the forces against them that keep the unwell and struggling.
The Salt Eaters and the author, or spirit medium, Toni Cade Bambara, provide remedies of healing that are most significant for and to Black people. This text ignited the undertaking of this thesis paper, because of its devotion to Black healing. With
Bambara’s work, the fight for holistic health involves so much more than often imagined.
The Salt Eaters and the work of Bambara will be the basis of this thesis, a guide to centering Blackness and the well being of Black people. The paper will seek outlooks on health that are drastically different in discourse for their revolutionary elements of resistance, such as Black Radical tradition and Pan Africanism. Bambara in her essay,
“Salvation is the Issue” within Black Women Writers, stresses the idea of making Black people the subject and not the object to be manipulated or contoured by external forces.
In her essay she says that she writes stories “in which we are the subjects. We, the hero of the tales. Our lives preserved. How it was, how it be… That is what I work to do: to produce stories that save our lives” (1984 42). Her stories on Black people being used as,
“an object” instead of being the subject or “the hero of the tales” reflects the difference between blackness (an object used in whiteness) to Blackness: the subject, the people’s grounding, knowledge base, and empowerment.
This thesis will have two main objectives in hopes of revealing a path to healing within the Black body. Firstly this paper intends to root out the causes of perpetual and generational destruction of physical, mental, and spiritual health within Black people in
6 order to expand what mental and physical soundness of a colonized people would be.
Next, this paper will re-conceptualize “life” and “death” to encompass forms of colonization and resistance that make the ideas of living and dying much more expansive and multi-faceted. When re-politicized and re-historicized, all the terms of health, life, death, and violence are observed in the design of the colonial project and it’s impact on
Black people. Lastly, revolutionary action will be analyzed as components or ingredients to Black wellbeing and fortuity.
Each section and chapter is preceded by an introduction to guide as well as emphasize the connection to previous segments and the paper in its entirety. Together the text purposefully moves and seams between temporal and (geo)-political spaces while simultaneously sticking to the theme and concepts provided. It must be understood that
Black people in America will be examined as a colony within America meaning that they are a community under occupation. This framing of the historical and current situation of
Black people in America is uncommon, but profoundly accurate, for its acceptance of the constructions of segregation and the realistic nature of their occupation. With the current colonial situation surveyed, the poisonous gas of colonialism that blinds Black people will be washed away. The apparent links between Black people in America and other
African colonies/countries/states that have been or still are (economically or otherwise) under colonial occupation is connected, particularly in this context of healthcare and health treatment. This paper by no means can remain domestic, for the Black diaspora is boundless and facing similar facets of violent oppression originating from colonialism; this is why removing the mist of Black people as ordinary citizens in this country is essential. Black people in the Americas are under occupation. The core disease of
7 colonialism impacting Black people is global; therefore, international examples and perspectives are essential to discussing what rapidly deteriorates the health of a colonized people.
This paper does not intend to analyze the promises, expectations, and theory of
Western medicine and its practices of healing, but rather focuses on the actual historical and current day praxis and direction of such a system. This is a reactive indictment of the system and its affect on Black communities. It’s important to take note of the difference as well as the connection between racism and colonization before proceeding. Racism is usually defined as systemic anti-black policies and institutions that leave Black people in
America disadvantaged and powerless. All institutions, in American contemporary social justice discourse, are racist; racism here involves not only discrimination and bias, but reflects the power holders (of resources and rule making): white people and other upholders of white supremacism. The colonial project, or colonialism, is what perpetuates and reinforces racism. Colonialism subsists to oppress groups of people in order to conquer, exploit, and subjugate violently. In order to execute the most heinous atrocities in history against Black people racism needed to be institutionalized and legalized to dehumanize and distort humanity to only relate to a small group of people. This relationship will be revisited and is important to break down now in order to continue.
Racism is what allows colonialism to continue its violent expansion and colonialism breeds racism; each concept requires the other to exist. Colonialism is the problem, and therefore, liberation the answer. The distinction between colonialism and racism is important in order to move past inhibitors of true progress. There are social justice oriented solutions (used in Public Health and other fields) that are not only temporary but
8 remain subversive and trapped within the colonial paradigm. Ideas of health disparity clinics, trainings, workshops, programs and “fully funded institutes” will be further looked into, for their supposed good intentions and their actual hypocritical relationship with Black people. In this paper there will be an attempt to create a more revolutionary endeavor into Black wellness.
When discussing “Blackness”, again there will be an attempt to move away from main discourses that have become saturated in social justice ground-working. The answer to the problems exhibited in health involves revolution and not reformism (not a “social”
“justice”). Social justice works like “civil rights” in its purposeful limited linguistic capacities. A social justice acts as if colonialism and oppression is rational, and as if we live in a “society” that has a few issues to work out. In reality America is groupings of societies that are placed within a hierarchy; there will be no justice when the world lived in is inaccurately diagnosed and not judged for all of its conduct. These distinctions are important to make before continuing. With the many issues of social justice the one that pertains the most to this thesis is its evaluation of people and identity, which individualizes communities and reduces the struggle to a domestic capacity. With social justice, “blackness is lower case [because] it does not refer to the epistemological mode of [Black] people any longer, rather it represents seeing black people, blackhood, as an object in the schemes and interpretations of whiteness” (Osuagwu 2015 3) The distinction between Blackness and blackness is the difference between revolutionary and reformist methods and ideology of health; one represents an entirely different system of being and healing, the other the struggle to fit better within the confinement of occupation.
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The discussion of blackness in popular social justice discourse usually fears the de-emphasis of other forms of oppression like gender, sexuality, and class; however these forms of oppression can all be unraveled with the liberation of Black people, for the liberation of Black people requires creating humanity and systems anew. Liberation, as will be discussed later in the paper, also requires an individual and collective decolonization and transformation. There is always a “fear” of a lack of intersectionality in all critical writing, but this is in many ways is uncritical or dismissive of Blackness; why can’t Black people stand alone in an argument? Blackness encompasses an ontological outlook often ignored, scared to embark toward, and purposefully constricted to keep the discussion contained and one-dimensional. Black people in majority make up the underclass as well as other levels of poverty economically and otherwise. Middle and upper class black people (those within the petit pseudo bourgeois caste) still face the oppression of the Black masses and face their own forms of illness via colonialism, which will later be elaborated on further in section IV. Therefore, there are nuances in the interpretation of class here. The construction of gender and sexuality is based off of a
Western framework that ignores African fluid and dual sex systems and structures prior to colonialism; and therefore, again when viewing Blackness as epistemological with its own knowledge systems and beliefs there can be new outlooks on humanity. Black women are rarely considered “women” at all due to racism’s bestial labeling. During official slavery Black women and men were violently subjugated in the same modes and methods, using their different biological organs for simply different forms of oppression.
Sylvia Wynter, a prominent scholar and theorist, in an interview, reveals the conceptions of humanity has been staged and constructed by the powers of the West. She states:
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“So now we see these categories emerging that had never existed before – whites who see themselves as “true” men, “true” women, while their Others, the “untrue” men/women, were now labeled as indios/indias (Indians) and as negros/negras. For what we must also note here, is that at the beginning of the modern world, the only women were white and Western… So then you had true women on one side, the women of the settler population…” She suggests, “that from the very origin of the modern world, of the Western World System, there were never simply “men” and “Women”. Rather there was, on the other hand, Man, as invented in the sixteenth century of Europe… and then, on the other hand, Man’s human others, as also invented by Europeans at the same time” (Wynter 174).
Sylvia Wynter, with such precision, demonstrates the necessity to rethink the origins of the categorical placements erected by the hierarchal social system of colonialism. Like the divisions of class, the discussion of gender and sexuality can simply be composed within the composition of Blackness. Blackness as an epistemological mode of thinking undoes the reactive origins of whiteness. When the West created whiteness and Man,
Black people were seen as means of manipulation and exploitation; that was all. The intention now is to move past hegemonic Western modes of gender and sexuality, which will facilitate needed transformation to rid the world of its afflictions.
Simply put, Black liberation is in hopes of a new system and mode of life, a revival of self-determination, and a process of human transformation. Acknowledging
Blackness as the foundation will establish a basis for what is needed for Black healing.
Bambara’s work is always grounded in Blackness, which in return re-collects what is missed. Toni Cade Bambara’s, “Salvation is the Issue” ends with giving the reader the reasons behind her work, which are ultimately the reasons behind this thesis. She says,
“One, we are at war. Two, the natural response to oppression, ignorance, evil, and mystification is wide-awake resistance. Three, the natural response to stress and crisis is not breakdown and capitulation, but transformation and renewal to…the issue is salvation. I work to produce stories that save our lives” (Bambara 1984).
It is the re-centering of Black people that will show the way to true healing. Bambara’s work continuously sees the health crises of the Black world as embedded with more
11 issues than just “poverty” or “socioeconomic status”. In her reasons and therefore the reasons of this paper, there must be an analysis of the war dealt, the natural response, and the modes of renewal and transformation in the tradition.
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Section II: Colonial or Western Medicine as systematic perpetuators of terror, violence, and colonization
That human violence, that structural violence, that behavioral violence, this sexual violence, this official and unofficial violence, this police violence, this clergy violence, this family violence, this economic violence, this global violence, this psychological violence, this gang violence and rape the purest form of violence... The Birth of violence is the violence of Birth… don’t tell anybody don’t tell anybody! It’s that direct indirect productive reproductive amateur anonymous insidious political pent up legitimate invisible judicial collective imperialist atomic drunk static viral capitalist atomic cult kind of violence. That violence will sink your soul will sink your soul. -Jayne Cortez, Dialogue on Violence
Introduction
In order for the colonial project to be discussed there must be an unveiling of its methodology involving, but not limited to: exploitation, various forms of violence, manipulation, psychological subjugation, and pathological lying. These are not only essential pieces to the beginning and continuing of colonialism, but they are part of the culture of early-European societies. Throughout history “non-European societies sought harmony with nature and with other people, [yet] Euro-America strove to master nature and control people” (Bulhan 1985 65). Euro-America’s cultural traits of mastering and controlling derive from its eradication of indigenous communities; to its violent enslavement and dehumanization of African peoples, and these acts are not only a part of its history, but of their structural agenda. This is why America is called consistently in
Black radical spaces the “colonial project”, for it’s creation and sustenance involves this methodology of control. The fact of the matter is that colonization, built on military conquest, remains the same as it was in the past, but in covert and overt forms that have changed over time.
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This structural agenda of master and control permeates throughout America as it is in the bed of her founded design. This section will present how medical systems are inextricably linked to the ways and methods of colonialism, and in result it’s same methodology. Although there are some by-products that can be viewed as positive, the institution of health while in the colonial paradigm does not aim to benefit a colonized people.
In the work of the revolutionary theoretician and awakener, Frantz Fanon, there are thorough case studies of the colonizer-colonized dynamic using France and Algeria.
In his collections of essays, Toward the African Revolution, Fanon explains how colonialism is colonialism everywhere. One form of colonization can never be seen as better than the other, for they are all wicked in nature (Fanon 1969). Therefore when discussing colonialism’s effect on Black health there is an uncontestable interconnectedness to all Black communities, for they face similar grievances globally.
The literal construction of health institutions in occupied countries only “sought justification for its existence and the legitimization of its persistence in its works”; they were not created for the betterment of the native within their own country (Fanon 1967
122). Within this section there will be an evaluation of health systems connection to colonialism in America towards Black people, but also an evaluation of erected health systems in countries like Ghana and Nigeria where the Western influenced systems continue to be inaccessible to Black masses. When health institutions were created in
Euro-America they were not for the benefit of the oppressed or occupied and this is the similar beginning of health systems within West Africa (in particular). Occupation, a characteristic of colonialism, reflects Fanon’s reluctance to emphasize or compare
14 geographical sights of colonization; it is clear that the intent of colonialism does not change no matter what form of occupation is being used to oppress a group of people
(particularly groups of Black people) globally. This is why French, Britain, Italian, and
American colonialism require no essential distinction between one another.
The health systems put in place were created for either ulterior or preferential motives: working for the ruling class, the justification of occupation, and/or the legitimization of white power structures and reliance. The system was created in many places to prove the need of dependency in occupied countries. Health systems regardless of a mission for humanity will time and time again defend, uphold, and act for colonialism, which it was built for to begin with. Fanon emphasizes the basis of section II saying that “the French medical system in Algeria could not be separated from French colonialism in Algeria” (Fanon 1967 123). Orthodox/Western medicine is not simply permeated with racism or structurally created with it, but it is saturated in anti-black racism, for it also works to uphold the system in place. This hope for healing turns into a form of terror and creates an abject distrust for the health system. The methodology of colonialism will be visualized within the folds of health institutions and explored in this section through studying the patient-doctor dynamic as well as the relationship between capitalism and health systems, the history and current violence in health research, and colonial medicine’s impact on colonial conquest, particularly in the subjugation of native/Black/colonized women.
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1: Interpersonal Relationship between the colonizer and the colonized: Terror in Hopes of Healing
One of the principle scenarios to why colonial medicine fails to provide adequate or proper health care is due to the dynamics that conspire between the patient and the doctor. The patient-doctor relationship is the same as the colonizer-colonized relationship where the former in both instances holds power and perceived-superiority. This perceived superiority and power wielding coupled with various forms of exploitation and discrimination leads to a strong and generational distrust for the health system in Black families and communities. The colonizer-colonized are presented as two subsets of society that are considered to be from different worlds in order to represent firstly, how vastly different their living experiences are. Fanon diagnoses that the schism between the colonizer and the colonized results from the establishment of a Manichaean society, which comes as a direct product of colonialism. “The colonial world is a Manichean world,” where the colonized are violently stripped of humanity and defined as the
“quintessence of evil” (in order for the colonizer to be inversely seen as the quintessence of purity). He continues by explaining that the, “native society is not simply described as a society lacking in values. It is not enough for the colonist to affirm that those values have disappeared from, or still better never existed in, the colonial world. The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil.” The distinctions made between the subsets of the Manichean society give explanation to why conflict and clash occur when the doctor and patient come together (Fanon 1966 41).
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The value system within colonialism, within the Manichean society, reflects how
Black people are seen as not only value-less, but as the negation of value. Black people in the geopolitical spaces of America are depicted as too difficult, violent, lazy, unhelp-able, and more not because of an individual belief, but because of the purposeful arrangement and enforcement of white supremacy. This problem of perception cannot be fixed by
“cultural competency” trainings (a common temporary band aid solution); it is clear that the issue of “discrimination” isn’t just stereotypes, but the decision of who is even considered worth living and deserving of care. The Manichean world is dichotomized both figuratively and literally in order to divide the colonized (the ghettos, the hoods, the lumpen-proletariat, majority Black spaces) from the colonizers (white people in gentrified neighborhoods, affluent neighborhoods and cities, privileged spaces). The dichotomy is not just physical, but it is pervasively psychological to the point where the location of an individual can decidedly dictate how “good” or “worthy” a person is. In,
Fanon’s text, A Dying Colonialism, he explains that this Manichean society within, “the colonial situation standardizes [the] relations [between the patient and doctor], for it dichotomizes the colonial society in a marked way”. He makes the point here that there is not just discrimination (a schism) created by the purposeful splitting and condemning of a subset of people, but that there is further, a standardization of what their value is through all and every institution within the colonial society (126).
This subset, the Black community, is standardized by doctors as always dependent and lacking the sense and means to take care of themselves. Black people are looked down upon and chastised in many settings but particularly within the context of health. From the time Africans were forced to America, the interaction between the
17 colonial doctor and the African was never positive. In history, African women were looked at as “breeders”. In 1808, by the end of the “official” slave trade, Black women’s value increased due to their need to continue slavery by producing children for enslavement. Birthing A Slave by Marie Jenkins Schwartz makes the claim that “Black women were distrustful of white doctors, who not only practiced a peculiar form of medicine but also served as agents of the slaveholders” (2). How can there be separation of a physician from slavery when most physicians owned Africans? The question manifests into more queries of current day social interactions between Africans and doctors (who work under colonialism). How there can be separation from the physician from racism when physicians are leaders/enablers and advocates of discrimination and bias? Pregnancy, a spiritual experience and undertaking, in the confinements of enslavement, became a commodity and a means of biological reproductive regulation by the slave master and his accomplice, the colonial doctor. The treatment of reproductive health to Black woman is unmatched, yet is closeted in all and every discourse on reproductive justice today. The doctor during “official” slavery that treated Amy, an enslaved African, grew “frustrated” at her hesitation to take on his medical intervention for her prolapsed uterus. Distrustful and aware that the doctor was not there for her well being, but for the slave master, she remained alert and resistant to all of his “expertise”.
Amy mentions that the device inserted in her uterus was uncomfortable and in return the doctor describes her in his notes as “resistive and intractable, behaving obstinately.”
Many examples follow in Schwartz research of mistrust being perceived as unruly behavior. The history of the Africans negative experience within American health systems only begins during slavery and continues in new forms (Schwartz 2010 57).
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Afro-American health dynamics mirror the enslavement and occupation of
African countries as colonial forces moved from slavery to colonization of the lands of the people they had stolen. Fanon gives an example of the common interaction of
Algerian patients in occupied Algeria: “The doctor says, ‘those people are rough and unmannerly.’ The patients say ‘I don’t trust them,’” and from this point there is no chance of serious progress (Fanon 1967 127). Continuing thematically accross both temporal and geographical lines, Audre Lorde, “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”, writes of her interactions with her doctor in 1980 in the midst of her struggle with breast cancer. Within her journals she writes about her doctors contempt of her very existence as his patient. Black people are not considered humans, so how can they be considered worthy of being a patient? Audre writes:
“[The doctor would] infantilize me with an obviously well practiced technique. When I told him I was having second thoughts about a liver biopsy, he glanced at my chart. Racism and sexism joined hands across his table as he saw I taught at a university, ‘well you look like an intelligent girl.” (White 1994)
Her doctor proceeds to patronize her for being empowered to make her own decisions on the cancer waging war on her body. Black patients unsurprisingly resist doctoral recommendations, for they do not trust that their true wellbeing is a priority to doctors.
“The sense of alienation from colonial society and the mistrust of the representatives of its authority, are always accompanied by an almost mechanical sense of detachment and mistrust of even the things that are most positive and profitable to the population” (Fanon
1967 139). Colonialism proves consistently that it is not to be trusted by the masses, and therefore continuously does not provide security or wellness to the patient. Further,
19 colonialism elicits a reflexive reaction of mistrust and raised personal-communal security in oppressed peoples.
As health disparity research continues to grow in America, there are now compiled meta-analyses of patient satisfaction disparities by race. Patient satisfaction is seen as a primary measure of quality health care and across the board numerous studies show discordant relationships between the doctor and patient (Johnson et. al 3 2006). A study was conducted for both Black and white cardiac patients (due to their large exposure rate to hospitals) and the results of many surveys show that Black people “are consistently less likely to report good or excellent satisfaction with care;” and although both white and Black patients “display a mistrust of the medical care system,” Black patients “were significantly more likely to report mistrust across all measures” (LaVeist et. al 2004). Patient attitudes showed that the perception of racism and mistrust significantly affected patient content with the care they receive. The continued repetition of history only fortifies patient mistrust. Consent has continuously been bypassed by hospitals in the case of Black patients. In 1994, the National Institute of Health (NIH) filed a complaint regarding the treatment of Black women who would come to the
Medical University of South Carolina for prenatal care. From 1989-1994 poor Black women who came to the hospital for prenatal care were tested, “for drugs without their consent, then [the hospital] reported those who tested positive to the police”.
Approximately 40 of the women were arrested, “some of whom gave birth while shackled to their hospital beds” (Washington 2008 211). Only a little more than a decade ago Black women were facing new forms of enslavement at the hands of the medical system.
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The dynamics between the patient and doctor manifests from the systemic dehumanization of Black people, enabled by Manichean societal structure, and stabilized by the created notion of dependency between those with power and those without. A
French doctor with his country’s violent intrusion and forced settling in Algeria has not only made the occupied country a home for himself, but believes that “this country owes us everything; were it not for us there would be no country” (Fanon 1967 122). Black marginalized communities in America that are bereft of resources and stability are seen as dependent on the government hospitals. Who could they be without them? Western health systems perceived-superiority has been comfortably enforced by colonialism.
Whether looking at Algeria under colonial occupation, or the Black colonies within
American occupation, there is a belief that without the medical system originated in the
West that the colonized would be inept to take action. The notion of dependency facilitates the continuation of the established patient and doctor relationships. Black people in America work tirelessly to prove themselves as worthy to a system that finds them worthless. American culture and its feelings towards Black people unveil itself across history; and history brings to the surface the pattern colonialism takes within all spaces including that of healing. How can a doctor who sees his patient as inferior prioritize their well-being?
Before the conclusion of this chapter, it is important to discuss the counter argument regarding the “increase” of Black doctors and administrators in the field of health. The impetus for “diversity” in institutional spaces has expanded as a long- standing project regarding the solution of health disparities. The issue remains that with this dialogue of diversity nothing has changed. The climb to high administrative or
21 doctoral positions by Black people only reflects their thorough socialization process to the ideals and belief system of America. A person does not succeed (by American standards) without accepting or reflecting the state of the society that they live in. In order to rise high in any setting in America, the Black person must subscribe to the values of America (which includes anti-blackness and white supremacy). This is why people like Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and countless others are called
Black but follow in white protocol and white supremacy. Black skin can never be the only indicator of Blackness. The meritocracy of this country is not based on how hard you work but on what you will do to continue the colonial empire’s machine. The native doctor in A Dying Colonialism, “for many of the colonized…is compared to the native police,” for they as readily and even more potently enforce the system of oppression.
There is “considerable aggressiveness” used by the native doctor to denounce any of his
Blackness in order to conform as much as possible for America (132). There is an attempt by these Black faces to prove that “racism has ended” in order to advance the colonial project. When the Black body works for white supremacy they are given white ascribed values like, for example; presidency/chair/CEO of an organization etc, and when they reject working for white supremacy they are defunded, fired, and removed. Many of those who decide to work within the system as neo-liberalists use the idiomatic expression of “making it to the table” to explain their goals or what “black goals” should look like. The idea of “being seated at the table” and getting a chance to make decisions with those in power is popular in liberal circles and again represents temporary solutions that have already proved to be unfavorable to Black prosperity. The expression becomes a metaphor for reformism, and it’s naïve in its trust of this “table” as if the table is the
22 right place to make decisions, as if this table shouldn’t be burned and held accountable for what it has done to people. “The native doctor feels himself psychologically compelled to demonstrate he belongs” at the expense of the rest of the masses. The dismal amount of Black doctors who do actively seek and prioritize Black well-being are not enough. The health care system is often considered neutral ground to the racist schools and racist work place, yet the predisposition of racism persists in health care systems.
2: Healthcare’s Colonialist Dues: The Adverse Effects of Colonial Health structures
The Colonial Doctor and Capitalism
Colonialism shapes America, for its origins begin as a settler-colonial nation state built off of exploitation and violence. The administration of healthcare that is given both domestically and abroad by America is ensconced in capitalist exploitation. The prioritization of capital continues to far outweigh the necessity of absolute humanity and sincerity in the lives of others. Capitalism works as a response to colonialism, for through colonialism, subsets of people can be stripped of their value. Humanity must be stripped and once a group of people faces condemnation by colonial powers they are portrayed as outcasts, thugs, undeserving of human status, and Wretched. They become what Fanon previously analyzed as those who not only lack the competency to ascribe to values but also are the negation of values. When a group of people are depicted in this light they can then be exploited, killed, and abused with minimal opposition. The ties between capitalism and colonialism are why the divine work of health and healing has so callously become a commodity and as a result torturous to Black people.
23
Time and time again when potential gain and profit surfaces within health contexts Black people ultimately suffer. The colonized will always suffer when it is supposedly for the “good of America”. This irrational belief has been used tirelessly in the defense of medical research practices and will be further discussed in the following chapter when specifically various research practices abuse of Africans in America is studied. In this chapter the medically relevant non-research actions, programs, and decisions made will be studied to expose its detriment to Black lives. It is not in every situation and instance that a doctor of the colonial world will “directly or intentionally” cause Black people pain or neglect. It is usually in the setting of conflict or opportunity that exploitation and other colonial tools are implemented. Conflict will always arise in colonial situations, for Black people will always resist the forms of enslavement that are recreated over time. When conflict does arise, the colonial doctor “adopts the attitude of his group” in its definitive treatment of the colonized. The symbolic representation of
“the doctor who heals the wounds of humanity” is simply the assumed external persona.
Behind the shroud and mystique of a doctor “appears the man, a member of dominant society,” who reaps the benefits and privilege of his status at an “incomparably higher standard of living” than those he serves. Doctors are, “integral part[s] of colonization, of domination, of exploitation…[and] it should not be of surprise we must not be surprised to find that doctors and professors of medicine are leaders of colonialist movements.”
The doctor when advocating for humanity will defend his status first, especially when colonialist propaganda has reinforced that these condemned people are of no value.
(Fanon 1967 133-134). The historical greed that comes from the Euro-American culture
24 of exploitation reflects the perpetual sickness that comes from the obsession with not only profit but for bourgeois status under colonialism.
Hospitals and the displacement of people of color
Doctors who are ‘leaders of colonialist movements’ should be of no surprise, because they fit in the same criteria with board members of hospitals, leaders of non- profits, and enablers of missionary-like abroad programs in the name of health. As hospitals continue to expand into poor neighborhoods and rapidly speed up “reverse white flight” or gentrification, colonialism continues in leaps and bounds without reprimand. In Boston, Massachusetts the expansion of hospitals has been relentless in its colonization of the spaces of communities of color. Historically Mission Hill was formerly known as Parker Hill and was actually a part of the infamous Black town,
Roxbury. Roxbury is comprised of a diverse community of Blacks including migrants from the Caribbean and continental Africa. Parker Hill consisted mostly of Irish immigrants and Black people. Parker Hill was later changed to Mission Hill and some people say that names and zip codes were changed as part of a marketing strategy to change the image of the area (Leyton 2013 1). The creation of Harvard Medical School in the 1960s (and later Harvard’s dental and public health school) has vastly reshaped and instigated the colonization of Black neighborhoods. During the early 1960s, Harvard began demolishing and buying houses to expand their conquest thereby displacing numerous communities. At this time white flight was in full effect due to “high crime rates” (which is coded language for high racial conflict) through the 1970s and 80s, which sent white people from these urban areas into suburbia (Elton 2003 14-19). One of
25 the most highly publicized stories of violence and racial tension in Mission Hill comes from the 1989 incident of Charles Stuart and the death of his pregnant wife.
“On October 23, 1989, Charles Stuart, manager of a prominent fur boutique on Newbury Street, and his pregnant wife, a lawyer, were driving through the Mission Hill neighborhood after attending a childbirth class at Brigham and Women’s hospital. Stuart claimed that, while at a stoplight, their car was approached by a black man wielding a gun, who ordered them to drive down St. Alphonsus street. Stuart then claimed that the man robbed them, shot his wife in the head, and Stuart in the stomach. The alleged gunman was not captured that day, and a racially charged, highly publicized investigation ensued. It wasn’t until months later, when Stuart’s brother contacted police, that it was revealed that Stuart’s story was completely fabricated. Stuart’s brother, Matthew, admitted to police that Stuart had committed the murder with motivation to collect life insurance upon his pregnant wife’s death.” (Latimer 2011)
Afraid of being so close to “violence,” Mission Hill was altered to have a “better” reputation, primarily by casting out Black people. There are to date many rough boundaries erected by construction (and the demolishing of structures) in order for Black neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain and Roxbury to be carefully divided from Mission Hill.
With the recent phenomena of what, revolutionary and author, Elaine Brown calls reverse white flight, white people who once fled the city are returning and pushing up the price of people’s homes, particularly in Chinatown, South Boston, and most recently Jamaica
Plain.
Hospital land expansion has now infiltrated communities of color in Chinatown and South Boston. These communities have been displaced and outsourced by the likes of
Tufts Medical Center and New England Medical Center (Tufts owned). Tufts Medical
Center drove to capture (and conquer) land during the struggle for Parcel C land in 1993 after taking over almost 1/3 of the community over the last two decades (Leong 1997 4-
11). Tufts Medical Center in particular built a new hospital parking lot where the YMCA of Chinatown once was (Vavra 2014). Students against the expansion of university
26 health and medical building expansion have addressed their concerns in forms of research reports, articles, and interviews. Below is an excerpt of an article written by students on the current methods of gentrification by Tufts health sciences.
“Since our university’s founding, our establishment and borders have been defined by a history of colonization, slavery, and exploitation. Today, our borders continue to extend into our host communities…As Tufts expands, the people who are outside of and excluded from our borders are negatively affected by our growth and are at risk of being displaced. Tufts is buying local property, forcing students to take up local housing stock, and refusing to pay recommended taxes to the city. Though one could argue that an institution as historically and systemically advantaged as ours can never actually integrate with or benefit our surrounding communities, the least [they] can do is cause less harm and be less invasive (Fong and MacLure 2015 3).”
“Less harm” and fewer invasions are not sufficient answers to liberation; however the way hospital expansion is visualized here is important. In hospital and health settings there is an expressed and implied avowal to care for the health needs of all people, yet imperialism, exploitation, and capitalism reign at the forefront. The agenda of America’s healing and aid services becomes warped, and continues to produce malignant consequences at the expense of Black people. The leaders of colonialist movements willfully displace and further oppress the colonized with their own actions for the sake of their own personal desires.
Colonial Cover Up in the name of Health: Non Profits, Humanitarianism, and Aid
Many non-profits and international “aid” agencies arm themselves with labels of compassion and devotion; however, their colonial and exploitive interests lie behind their crafted schemes. When Fanon analyzes the “doctor who heals the wounds of humanity” he addresses the outer layer or dressing that projects assumed benevolence and innocence onto the doctor (and to public health interventions, non-profits, NGO’s etc). These pseudo-healers who are here to ‘heal the wounds of humanity’ prove their own
27 superficiality when they inevitably return to perpetuating violence, exploitation, and domination to suit their particular interests. A quick Google search of “The Red Cross” leads to a quick description of a historical “humanitarian” program that aids people in emergency disasters and situations. Red Cross programs can be seen all around America, for their blood donation drives in particular. With high accreditation, The Red Cross symbol and name is widely accepted, referred to, and used at stores, universities, and other locations. This veil of purity shrouds the actual vulturistic and vampiristic qualities of non-profit corporations in order for them to go uncontested and unpunished for their racist actions. Colonialism enables and encourages “humanitarianism” work to make it seem as if America does charitable work for “underdeveloped” communities. After the
Haitian earthquake of 2010, the Red Cross was quick to start emergency relief funds and donation drives for the people of Ayiti. The Red Cross raised half a billion dollars for
Haiti, and with it built only six homes. When criticism arose, only very recently, the Red
Cross could not communicate where the funds had gone. Some reports claim the money went toward “internal funds” for future emergencies and for the needs of the non-profit
(Elliot and Sullivan 2015 2). Several years prior to Haiti’s earthquake, the Red Cross was hit with similar backlash for their inefficient dispersal of relief funds. The aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina left communities displaced and impoverished; however it was the
Black communities of New Orleans who recovered the least and suffered the most. When criticism rose from the lack of effort to aid certain communities the Red Cross had little to say. The Red Cross had nothing to say, but only that they would work on improving their “programs and management” during emergency situations (Dewan and Strom
2007). The exploitation of Black struggle for material gain is not a new game being
28 played by non-profits and “humanitarian agencies”. These groups have historically and currently been backed, condoned, and implemented through and for colonialist means.
The exploitative and violent natures of international aid programs are filled with blatant irony. Colonized lands and people do not have the independent ability to recuperate from disaster due to the exploitation of their resources by Western forces, yet
Euro-America is quick to “aid” and intervene as if they aren’t the cause of their dependence. Environmental disasters have become much larger and violent in magnitude over the last several decades due to capitalism and its callous treatment of the environment by those in power. Nuclear warfare sanctioned by large corporations and the government accumulates waste (Chemically and biologically) and are major contributors to environmental destruction. Environmental activists will “intervene” in environmental destruction with only small scale and reactionary actions. The American government and large capitalist corporations exploit the earth on a grand scale, and yet these activists would prefer to make communities separate their paper from plastic for environmental change. These larger and more insidious forms of exploitation (of the world and groups of people) are how missionary-based programs make money and ultimately continue their charades of superficial representation for Black life. International missionary work is simply a continuance of many methods of colonial occupation and oppression.
The United Nations “peacekeepers” and aid forces are by far the largest ironic and symbolic representation of the façade that is “humanitarianism”. In the security general report found in 2014 by the U.N., there have been 51 reported allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse with the majority of reports coming from Haiti, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan (Sengupta 2015 2). The findings came out only
29 a week after the UN was reviewing the sexual exploitation of Central African republic boys as young as 9 by their French “peacekeepers” (Ali 2015). The document was quietly released and since then only a few articles have addressed the epidemic of sexual violence and exploitation of Black populations under the guise of philanthropy. In Haiti,
UN missionary programs used their power to manufacture “transactional” sexual relationships with Black women. These transactions involved UN missionaries refusing to give the population nutrients, food, or medicine if they did not engage in sexual acts with them. At least 225 cases of this type of sexual violence and exploitation have been reported. The report also emphasized how strongly under representative the statistics were. This means that the number of sexual abuse charges made against the U.N. is largely underreported globally (or given recognition). When looking directly at the UN document the table showed how many of the sexual abuse and rape reports are said to involve minors under the age of 18 all over continental Africa and African diasporic spaces; 15 out of 51 investigations included rape of Black children. The reported incidents are not even relatively new, and for 20 years it has been a “mission” of the UN to reduce these statistics. The U.N. has not issued any form of punishment to the U.N. workers although the organization holds a “zero tolerance policy” for these crimes
(Ahmed 2015) (Secretary General 2015). The United Nations is funded and controlled by
Western imperial forces who influence the decisions that are made. The US has been the largest financial supporter of the UN since its creation in 1945. Financially the US pays into the UN 22% of its regular budget and 27% of its entire peacekeeping budget
(Schaefer 2010). The US with the amount of money and military “donations” given to the
UN is “expected to have a big say in final UN decisions – an influence that matched the
30 hundred of millions of dollars America has paid into the UN’s budget” (Trueman 2015).
Therefore the UN acts as a seemingly legitimate global forum when in reality it is a dummy program that defends and enforces the interests of white supremacy and the continuation of colonialism. American imperialism works in the present day under the semblance that it enters different nations without ulterior motives in order to address a country’s problems. Malcolm X in the speech, “Not Just An American Problem,” remarks on how colonialism remains invariable in its intentions, but consistently changes its strategy to continue its economic hold on colonized countries. The infiltration of countries under the guise of philanthropic interests is what Brother Malcolm calls the work of “benevolent colonialism, philanthropic colonialism, humanitarianism backed up by dollarism”; an imperialism that acts like it’s intentions are pure in order for America to exploit and continue its reign of terror (X 1992 182). He asks how it’s possible for
America to oppress and hate Black people on “their” land (that they have violently stolen) and go to Black countries and populations seeking to “assist them”. It’s not possible without an ulterior motive and is only continued propaganda for America. When addressing the relationship between capitalism and health there persists flowery imagery of what health programs and workers do globally. There is no discourse or intervention for the “incidents” of colonial violence and what results from their “benevolence”.
Internationalized corporations like The United Nations and the World Health
Organization gather world leaders to come together and tackle the overall health status of the world. In their large and expensive conferences they categorize, color code, and identify the regions that are stable in administering health care and those which are not.
As this section details, the countries that are doing poorly are scrutinized and it is decided
31 that they must construct interventions for the plighted countries. These international conversations lead to the release and “implementation” of major accredited health objectives like the Millennial Development Goals or the Sustainable Development Goals.
These global goals include missions like “Eradicating extreme poverty” and things like
“ensure healthy lives and promote well being for all at all ages” (World Health
Organization 2015). These goals, like the health definitions that began this thesis, are unattainable and rather useless when there is a purposeful negation of what historically and currently cause the life disparities around the world. America is considered a country with decent healthcare and resources, yet if you were to only analyze the Black people who live in the Americas the trend shows how the people of the Third World are riddled with poor health outcomes and status. Another example of this trend can be found in
South Africa. In statistics that demonstrate the prevalence of hidden hunger, micronutrient deficiencies, acute and chronic malnutrition, issues of wasting and stunting, the diagrams will always reveal how South Africa does better than majority of continental Africa, but it begs to ask the question of who in South Africa receives the best health care? The indigenous Black South Africans compared to the settler colonial white
“South Africans” show what a Manichean society looks like. South African health disparities appear to be worsening and the inequality is more extreme than when under
“legal” apartheid (Norris 2010). “Even though South Africa has the largest economy on the continent, a quarter of its people live on less than a dollar each day” Black South
Africans face high levels of poverty and malnutrition (Seekings 2007 9). The dialectic between a country doing well economically and its people doing well mirrors all Black colonies that live in a country occupied or controlled by the white world. If there is a
32 desire to change and alter health conditions of Black people then revolutionary action must be taken. The health of Black people does not create lucrative business and does not interest those in power. Health agencies at both the local and global level do not dig into the actual issues that relate to health and healthcare, but instead they remain stagnant in actual work to be done because of their status as leaders in global health and benefactors of Africa, who do nothing for the continent and its people. There are conglomerates of health agencies, programs, and infrastructure that ultimately fail to do anything meaningful for oppressed populations of the world, and even more so do more harm than good. The idea that progress is being made is only an aspect of propaganda to benefit the continuance of colonization.
Medical Experimentation: the Tools of Colonialism
Experimental practice deserves its own special chapter for its essential role in the historic and current day violence inflicted on Black people. Research used for the interests of colonialism works in two specific capacities. In Western ascribed value systems the “objective” is seen as far superior to the “subjective”. “Natural science” validates the theories and ideas of hierarchal Euro-America. Therefore, medical research was used (and continues to be used) to prove through its “scientific evidence” that Black people are subhuman primordial beings. Colonialism thrives from the negation of Black humanity. Since research is seen as objective, the experimental research grounded in racism can only be seen as impartial and detached from subjectivity. Black laziness, hyper sexuality, daftness, and criminality have been long established identifiers made by the authenticators of Black inferiority: doctors and medical researchers. Medical research was implemented to rationalize colonialism’s genocidal actions against Black people,
33 although their statistics are not always required to make oppressive actions. The way
Christianity has been used to excuse enslavement and murder is similar to how medical research uses its status of absolute objectivity to sanction the violence inflicted on Black people. Bulhan in Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression calls this practice the
“institutionalized rationalization” of colonial practices. Colonialism requires bestial and subhuman attributes to be strongly associated with Black people in order to rationalize their “need” to be subjugated (82). Innately criminal, lazy, and uncontrollable, Black people within colonialism are to be controlled by all costs. The pattern that colonized people must be suppressed, due to their own “natural” aggression, is found in the rationale surrounding Black suppression in America and in the rest of the world.
Proving genetic and cognitive inferiority of enslaved Africans during official slavery was a vital part of the institutionalized rationalization of Black inferiority.
Harriet A. Washington in Medical Apartheid describes medical experimentation, another product of capitalism, as the “scientific personification of enslavement” (54). Slavery, which requires torture and subjugation, are one in the same with early medical experimentation as enslaved Africans were equivalent to human cattle (chattel).
Washington collects numerous anecdotes of African history under medical enslavement to show the various forms of torture and suffering Africans experienced during official slavery. She includes the story of John Brown, an enslaved African who escaped medical oppression. John Brown, like many other enslaved Africans, was experimented on to highlight the differences between races that do not exist. Brown explains in his memoirs that he “was subjected to a new set of experiments, for which he was bled every other day”; each day filled with more horror and despair the physician would then, “set to work
34 to ascertain how deep [Brown’s] black skin went. This he did by applying blisters to
[Brown’s] hands, legs, and feet”. Brown also mentions that the physician “tried other experiments upon [him], which [he] can not dwell upon” (54). Washington interrogates the assumed innocence of research practices in her account of John Brown. She points out how Brown was “repeatedly burned and flayed” during captivity and continues by asking the reader to wonder what other experimental horrors Brown claimed he could not even bring to speak about. The horror that surrounds medical torture of enslaved Africans is hidden while also so vast, yet some stories come to the surface. While torture under the guise of research was used to “prove” Black inferiority it is clear that there is also a sadistic relationship established for physicians to do what they will with the bodies of
Black people in the name of research, however cruel and sickening.
The disposal and accumulation of enslaved Africans for science and medicine is not a new tactic of colonialism. The previously discussed methodology of colonialism uses both violence and terrorization as key devices for its stability; this would explain why experimentation so easily follows violence and terror, for it is a part of the culture created. Enslaved Africans were stockpiled as “clinical material” for hospitals and medical universities. In the 1830s, an infirmary that treated skin diseases advertised for their need of chattel for their lucrative experiments stating: “Wanted: FIFTY NEGROS.
Any person having sick Negroes, considered incurable by their respective physicians and wishing to dispose of them [emphasis added]…the highest cash prize will be paid upon application as above” (Washington 2008 103). Black people were habitually used for experiments, new techniques, risky medication, and other forms of clinical abuse without warning, consent, and almost always in the most wicked and violent procedures.
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Medical Accomplishments from the Blood of the Ancestors
Medical research in its second capacity seeks to improve the medical world and study the biological affects on the body at the expense of Black people. Physicians not only worked for slave owners during official slavery, but many slave owners were physicians who herded and raised Africans for experimentation. The physician was the slave master or was the oppressor, and these historical ties mirror the colonizer-colonized dynamics of today, and the history is never forgotten. With the prestige associated with medical discoveries and cures, doctors and researchers worked tirelessly to make a name for themselves by exploiting, manipulating, and killing Black people. To this day, medical “heroes and figures” of the white world have Black blood on their hands and robes. Washington writes of the savior and sadist, James Marion Mims, respected and known figure of female medicine whom without anesthesia or consent exploited and violated enslaved Africans. With lack of remorse and reprimand instead there is praise and reverence held for people like Mims (61). Washington unveils how Sims’ rise to recognition focuses on his contributions to female surgical procedures by courageous women without mentioning “that it was chattel slavery and morphine, not courage, that had bound the women to his surgical table” (67).
“Sims working with enslaved blacks, was constrained by no such delicacy. He made the women undress completely, then kneel on hands and knees while he and several physicians took turns inserting a special speculum he had devised to open the women’s vaginas fully to view. ‘I saw everything as no man had seen before, marveled Sims. Montgomery physicians flocked to Sim’s shack to see what no man had seen before. So did prominent citizens and local apprentices” (Washington 2008 64).
People would flock to see the invasion of and torture inflicted on enslaved
Africans because this sadistic nature is found throughout colonialist history. Sims “work” is rarely debated due to his invention of silver sutures, which helped vaginal repair
36 surgeries from his unethical treatment of enslaved Africans. Human beings were disposable to his work, but for the “good of medicine”, America, and Americanism, Sims is still hailed in historical medical settings as with many other physicians. Violent research methods without reprimand are a form of American culture. The historical tactics of abuse and terror from the past are associated and implemented in medicine of present day.
The most pervasive racist depictions of both Black men and women (since there was no “proper” distinction made before) were that of beasts with an insatiable sexual deviancy. Yes, distinctions were made between black males and females, but only for the usefulness to distinguish what could be exploited, raped, and violated; it is important to note that both sexes were treated as bestial females and males. This obsession with Black sexuality links to the strange obsession whiteness has with Black sexual organs.
Gynecological surgeries and incisions were implemented on enslaved African women in the study of the “obliteration of the vagina” in order to come up with responses to white female vaginal conditions. The same violent and exploitive surgeries were not easy or lacking risks (Schwartz 2010 251). The history of research and experimentation on Black people is not just a “dark” history but alarmingly morbid. “Science” was used to correlate sexual organs to sexual behavior and the need to control Black people’s sexuality for the
“good” of whiteness. This perspective of Black sexuality influences the conditioned racist media depictions of Black people, many white-black interpersonal relations, racist policies, and the genocide (stamp out) of Black children and women. Bulhan collects reports made on Black sexual organs being “of massive proportions” and Black male sexuality depicted as uncontrollable “stallion-like passion” that is a “menace to the
37
Caucasian race” (86). This belief led (and leads) to the mass hysteria surrounded by the idea of Black men raping white women, and in the same influence, the lack of concern for white men raping Black women. It is the racist scientific history that repeats itself in current day forms of racist exploitation and victimization.
The same horror associated with Black sexuality mirrors the “science” surrounded by uncontrollable unwed teenage “urban” mothers in America. Elaine Brown in her text,
The Condemnation of Little B, speaks on the racist myths that arise and then are further fortified by science for the purposes of white supremacy. Reagan’s “welfare queen” myth coupled with Bill Clinton’s “unwed teen mother” were backed by the history (and current) forms of colonial science. Racist pseudo-science creates racist sensationalized stories for the public about the “urban” (meaning Black) mother who has too many children and hustles government money and the wild “inner-city” (meaning Black) girls who are early sexual deviants. America enjoys remaining purposefully ignorant to how
American settler colonialism produces the struggles of Afro-American people, and even more, will exaggerate their claims to further vilify and victimize Black people. Brown explains that “not only has there been no [sic] increase in the rate of teen pregnancies over the last forty years, but in fact the rate of teen pregnancies in the United States has dropped, as it has worldwide” (101). Brown continues by demystifying the racist stereotypes of the black girl as a “seductive predator” and “bearer of ‘illegitimate’ off spring” that dates from early colonialism and continues to be recycled each time with new language. She concludes with emphasis that this notion comes from the hysteria surrounding the supposed rise of promiscuity among teen girls, and when coupled with racism, results in the criminalization of little Black girls (101). The obsession with
38 sexuality of Black men and women, Black boys and girls erupts into renewed acts of oppression for Black people. Whenever in need to “prove” colonial beliefs on Black people’s behavior, research studies will come up with new claims, sensationalized anecdotes, and intervention programs to establish new forms of control. Colonialism flourishes and works in conjunction with numerous health institutions to stabilize its irrationality.
The issue of sexual bestiality associated with Black men and women led to the
Tuskegee syphilis experiment among Blacks in Macon Country County, Alabama. The idea that Black people were cognitively inferior and had no sexual control propelled and reinforced the Tuskegee experimentation. Physicians believed that Black and white responses to syphilis differed; the notion was that since Black people were cognitively inferior that white people would have more damage within the neurological system. The
U.S. Public Health Service used this rationale to propel their study that derives from the obsession of Black sexuality. “Between 1932 and 1972, six hundred black men, their wives, and their children were deceived into participating in a research study that denied them treatment, so that PHS scientists could” follow the progression of the disease to their graves (Washington 2010 37). Senior official, O.C. Wenger, responded to his staff on the study with words of encouragement for the continuance of the study: “as I see it, we have no further interest in these patients until they die”(164). The physicians did not only want these Black men to suffer sick for the rest of their lives, but only did so to use their dead corpses for study. These men were monitored for 40 years in hopes that they would die riddled with all the cardiovascular and venereal side effects of syphilis left untreated. The study even went as far to inhibit these men from getting treated anywhere
39 else particularly when in the span of 40 years a vaccine and anecdote was found. In other circumstances the study blacklisted these men from military health services during World
War II and in the early 1940’s syphilis clinics dedicated to aggressive treatment and eradication of syphilis. The Tuskegee study had medical conferences, provided reports, and was known by many different health facilities; to be clear the entire medical world is complicit to their murders and suffering. “By 1955, nearly one third of the autopsied men had died directly of syphilis, and many of the survivors were suffering its deadliest complications. Forty wives were infected and at least nineteen children were born with syphilitic birth defects” (Washington 2010 166). To this day there has been not one person penalized or reprimanded for the Tuskegee study. A full wide spread government cover up was created to solely make the study disappear once becoming public knowledge (169). There is little to no discourse on the cover up, but in Washington’s research where she interviewed victims and looked up public records of the Ad Hoc committee created to manipulate, handle, and control damage the exposure of medical butchery. Colonialism breeds the sadistic nature of racism that is found comprehensively throughout medical experimentation history. As capitalism wed with white supremacy in the Tuskegee study, the results found in their laboratories were marketed globally and became profitable for the US government. Any invention arising from the Tuskegee syphilis study would become the sole property of the United States, as it should be. The blood money that smears research and the United States is well deserved and well earned.
When white supremacy weds with capitalism, America as a settler-colonial state is able to thrive from the blood of the ancestors.
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Research Today and Black Souls
The Tuskegee study ended as recently as 1972, yet that is not the most recent form of Black experimentation the scientific personification of Black enslavement. John
Hopkins Hospital, which is considered the top #3 hospital in the nation, has a history
(like many hospital centers) of exploitation of Black people. The infamous story of
Henrietta Lacks and her cervical cancer malignant cells are the subject of the book, The
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The book discusses how the exploitation of her cells lead to numerous landmark medical advances, “including the polio vaccine, the cancer drug tamoxifen, chemotherapy, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and treatments for influenza, leukemia, and Parkinson's disease” (Skloot 2011 129). It was not until after 20 years after Lacks death that her family (she a mother of 5) even discovered the use of her cells for multi-million dollar capital and profit. Her children received no access to her medical records until published in an academic journal (212). Henrietta Lacks’ son
Zakariyya went to John Hopkins for paid medical studies to help make ends meet and have somewhere to sleep; however when he went he changed his name with the family believing that if they knew it was Henrietta Lacks’ son they would never allow him to leave. He left after a couple of studies because they began injections (of malaria) and he feared in the following study that they would inject him with AIDS. This is the risk Black people take every time they enter a hospital when their wellbeing or healing is of no concern.
John Hopkins continued their trend of exploitation by injecting Guatemalans with
STDs in their study. There is no barrier or limit to American colonial hospital influence, for over 800 people in 2015 launched a billion-dollar lawsuit against John Hopkins
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University. American oppression works hard to oppress people of color around the world.
The people were deliberately infected with sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis. Again philanthropic programs like the “Rockefeller foundation were also accountable and accused of working its, ‘design, support, encourage and finance’ in the experiments by employing scientists and physicians involved in the tests, which were designed to ascertain if penicillin could prevent the diseases” (Carroll 2011). Aljazeera describes further details to the study endorsed and promoting by the US:
“U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, researchers initially infected Guatemalan sex workers with gonorrhea or syphilis, then allowed them to have sex with soldiers and prison inmates with the aim of spreading the disease…The suit says that orphans, children and mental patients were also deliberately infected without their consent, and that treatment was withheld from some people who had been deliberately infected.” (Laughl 2015)
There are vast amounts of research studies that have been inflicted on Black people for the benefits of white supremacy and colonialism. One can look into the early 1950s and the experimentation of Puerto Rican women to make the first birth control pill. The work of Dr. Cornelius Rhoads was an American pathologist who was sponsored by the
Rockefeller Institute; he deliberately infected Puerto Ricans with cancer cells. Puerto
Rican revolutionary, Pedro Albizu Campos, exposes Rhoads for his violence in a written letter. The letter read how, “Porto Ricans [sic] are the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever to inhabit this sphere…I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more…All physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects”
(Aponte-Vasquez 2004). Rhoads could be depicted as an unusual case of racism or as a monster, sure; however, his literal treatment of Black people does not differ in it’s violence and savagery to many other physicians who work for colonial order; he just
42 happened to say his thoughts aloud. Campos used Rhoads’ letter to write about US
(capital and industrial) imperialism and expansion to speak to his people of American exploitation under the guise of healing. Campos pleaded to Puerto Ricans that, “the mercantile monopoly [of America] is backed by the financial monopoly…” and it’s exploitation of the people and economy only reflect the United States “system of extermination” (Fader 3). There are no distinguishing characteristics between health and health care in comparison to imperialism and economic exploitation of colonized peoples.
What happens next to revolutionary Pedro Albizu Campos will be discussed later in the discussion of political prisoners and the continuation of colonialism by the massacring of revolutionaries in health systems. Rhoads can be depicted as a monster, sure, however his treatment of Black people does not differ in its violence and savagery to many other physicians who work for colonial order; he just happened to say his thoughts aloud. He was sponsored by uncontested capitalist corporations like Rockefeller that never receive any forms of reprimand for their actions due to Rockefellers influence on the white world. In these circumstances, studies either are buried or the institution works to hide the information from public discourse. Rockefeller conducted “Internal investigations” with
(very obviously) no evidence found. It is medical researchers themselves that have notated their coercion of Black people, yet they are in history books, museums, have received rewards, and have become rich off of their exploitation and butchery. Why? The basis of colonialism is capitalist exploitation and their achievements are contingent on the perpetuation of oppression. Health institutions are one in the same with colonial methodology of terror and violence. Through colonial methodology the oppressed are
43 simply “clinical material” for medical experimentation; they have become the guinea pigs and cadavers (alive or dead) of the research world.
4: Colonial Medicine furthers Colonial Conquest
“Everything—fear stimulant, massive doses of vitamins—is used before, during, and after the sessions to keep the nationalist hovering between life and death. Ten times the doctor intervenes, ten times he gives the prisoner back to the pack of torturers” Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, p.138
The Physician and the Colonial Agent: Two faces of the same coin
The processes of Western based health systems negative and violent interactions with Black people remain innumerable and complex. In a type of indirect way medical experimentation, patient-doctor relationships, and “humanitarianism” have worked to suppress Black autonomy and life. What has yet to be addressed are the more direct ways the Western medical program has furthered colonialism. Western medicine aids colonial conquests by its compliance to colonial missions no matter how violent and oppressive it may be. Western medicine and its accessory relationship with colonialism and slavery smother Black revolutionary and liberatory efforts around the world.
Harriet A. Washington determines from her vast collection of study of American health institutions and Black life that, “enslavement could not have existed and certainly could not have persisted without medical science” (2008 4). Physicians not only contributed to the system, but strongly relied on it for their economic interests (26). From the moment an African was captured and shipped off to lands unknown, the medical physician of colonialism would examine their bodies in order to determine who was fit to travel and who ultimately would be useful for enslavement; the others were tossed into the abyss. The doctor contributed to the rape and violence on those slave ships. It is
44 imperative to begin discussing the more direct acts of physicians to promote colonialism from its creation.
In continued forms of colonization, the missionary and colonial soldier mesmerizingly relate to their current day counterparts: the doctor and the police officer.
Visually and superficially, the soldier and police officer are enforcers of white supremacism while the missionary and doctor are depicted as “more kind” and “more helpful”; they are to be depicted as neutral parties who are without bias in their
“missions” without criticism of their missions, goals, or actual actions. The propaganda established between both roles is used to establish a pseudo-balance to the actors participating in imperialism. The doctor protected the colonial soldier. In times of conquest, the doctor created vaccines to keep the soldier safe from tropical diseases.
Their role was not simply to heal, but to work to keep imperialism in good health. The specific role of physicians “won a special place in the history of oppression” for how they nurtured and attempt stabilization of colonization (Bulhan 2004 89).
During liberation struggle, particularly in occupied countries, colonial doctors played an important role in counter-insurgency. For example, during the Algerian revolution against French colonialism, “any doctor treating an Algerian whose wound appears suspicion must…take down the name of the patient, his address, the names of those accompanying him, their address, and communicate the information to the authorities” (Fanon 1967 136). Here, the priority of any and all action of the doctor was to continue violence and aid oppression; the doctor is an oppressor. The doctor could also act as a literal colonial spy, using the role of doctor as a cover to accumulate information.
For example the liberation efforts of Morocco faced failure due to a doctor who was paid
45 to spy and help continue Moroccan occupation. The colonial doctor was banned from administering treatment to Algerian nationalists. In medico-legal examinations it was the
“medical expert” or the “expert witness” who worked to pay aid to colonialism. The colonial physician, “assigned to examine the patient always concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that the accused had been tortured,” and even more would sign fabricated records and documentation during wartime to claim that the Algerian or the native or the Black fighter for freedom died a natural death (136-137). The doctor prescribed the native a neutralized death when realistically they had perished from torture or were simply coldly executed.
A Palestinian author, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian speaks of how the dead bodies of her people are highly securitized and controlled by settler colonialists due to their fear of the “ghostly power” that emanates from the spirit and body of the slain. To undermine and hide the truth of the unjust death of the native “reveal the way in which the power of the dead body [is] furthered by the family’s and the community’s practices of giving his body and their society life and agency in the face of death. The making of new meaning of such loss, the positive outlook, the building of hope and the spirituality it carries can be seen as an expression of the community’s ability to speak back to colonial power”
(Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2015 118). The lies told of the death of a colonized people by the physician are used to stifle resistance and mask the atrocities made against colonized peoples. Again, although colonialism works in many forms it has the same concurrent theme and practices. Now, while settler-America is at war again with Black people, there is an even stronger emphasis on suppressing any and all information of how the police kill Black people. Freddie Gray’s murder had to be covered up as a “suicide” when the
46 establishment killed him and an autopsy report was provided to corroborate white supremacy’s innocence. Now, while Palestine is occupied by Israel, Palestinians are murdered and executed, and the causes of their deaths are backed as natural and as innocent for colonialism.
It is the research and technology of science and scientists that eagerly aids colonialism. Medicine and science research receive such strong funding from the government and agencies due to their contributions it brings to warfare. There is no escaping Euro-America’s history of bio-terrorism and medical warfare. This creation of fear, terror, and control keeps “underdeveloped” countries in line as well as maintains the dependency systems in place. Bioterrorism uses biological and chemical constituents and agents (like microbes and toxins) as a weapon to sicken and kill for colonialism.
Although the roots begin in Britain, the U.S. works incredibly hard to create and remain notorious in chemical and biological weapons of destruction for their specific purposes
(imperialism). During World War II, these colonial powers trained South African military personnel in biological and chemical warfare for imperial purposes. The implications of
(occupied) South Africa’s use of weaponized medicine traces to the release of anthrax against Zimbabwe in the Rhodesian civil war as well as many other questionable circumstances in the use of other agents like glander, porcine brucellosis, and psittacosis
(Washington 2008 365-368). Biological and chemical research, study, and professions are highly financed for warfare invention. The natural sciences are a form of “Bomb studies” for American imperialism.
The physician can be tasked with numerous directions of colonial warfare including their variety of interrogation tactics. Doctors collaborated with torturers to
47 break nationalists/revolutionaries throughout the history of Euro-American colonialism by administering serum and electroshock. During the Algerian revolution, doctors would work between torture sessions to prepare the captured for another session of torture; the doctor was a colonial agent financed and paid in full for his aid in squashing liberatory efforts and for pro-colonial warfare. Bulhan assesses that, “indeed some doctors, themselves colonial agents, deliberately inflicted pain in defense of the colonial system.
For just as they were property owners who in addition were doctors, so too did they readily become torturers who happened to be doctors, bringing their technical expertise to the practice of torturing nationalists” (2004 99). This evaluation by Bulhan, reflects the earlier assessment made in “the Doctor and capitalism” chapter; here a reminder is made that the doctor cannot be separated from colonialism.
Political Prisoners Under the Knife
In Palestine, similarly, health services within prisons are just another area of prison intelligence services against political prisoners. The medical physician would even partake in “beating parties” of political prisoners and then help conceal the evidence
(Nashif 2008 50). The relationship between political prisoners and the medical world continues to result in similar events, which must be thoroughly analyzed. The doctor façade disintegrates further when seeing their actions in relation to political prisoners.
The roles political prisoners play in revolutionary endeavor make them an even larger target to white supremacism. Political prisoners have been (even more) criminalized to suppress their power, mobility, and influence. There have been a myriad of Black
Panthers who have faced political based imprisonment in order to suppress Black
48 liberation struggles. Similarly to the political prisoners of Palestine, Black political prisoners have been propagandized to the public as cold blooded and savage murderers.
Assata Shakur, the “mother hen” of the Black Liberation Army went through several different prison systems as the American criminal system tried desperately to find a charge that would stick to her. Assata was moved to various prisons, even male prison systems, which nods to the introductory discussion of gender and how it rarely applies to
Black people. Another Panther and member of the Black liberation Army, Safiya
Bukhari, was also placed in a male prison when falsely imprisoned claiming that, “they didn’t know how to deal with [her]. Their way of dealing with political woman was to isolate her” (125). Again, usually the Black female and male are only distinguishable by things that can be exploited in colonial order. A revolutionary Black woman was something colonialists do not know how to handle. Assata’s pregnancy applies in this analysis as well, for during her pregnancy she was frequently malnourished and her prenatal care was dismal, nonexistent, and abusive in numerous ways. She had to fight for the right to keep the doctor of her choice due to how untrustworthy and manipulative the doctors within the prison were to her. Assata in her autobiography tells her reader that those who are most aware of the injustices of the world are the ones elaborately and wickedly killed, so there is no mistaking how revolutionaries have been murdered by the state for the state. She expresses that,
“In prisons, it is not at all uncommon to find a prisoner hanged or burned to death in his cell. No matter how suspicious the circumstances, these deaths are always ruled "suicides." They are usually Black inmates, considered to be a "threat to the orderly running of the prison." They are usually among the most politically aware and socially conscious inmates in the prison.” (Shakur 59 2001).
Like Assata, Safiya Bukhari in prison dealt with medical issues that were purposefully
49 ignored and neglected. Bukhari was continuously hemorrhaging due to ovarian tumors. In her book she claims she was in constant pain and not receiving any form of medical care even when she said she followed all prison rules. She escaped prison and went to a doctor to discover the magnitude of her cancer. When she was recaptured she fought for adequate medical care. Later when released from prison, Bukhari underwent surgery to remove her tumors and they were able to save one ovary, although if handled initially her circumstances would be extremely different. Bukhari went through consistent pain and suffering for being a revolutionary.
The Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party, George Jackson, was imprisoned for 12 years (with over half in solitary confinement). George Jackson in a letter within his collection of published letters, Soledad Brothers, spoke of “medical treatment [being] offered as a reward for cooperation” (1994 12). Cooperation here entails cooperating with the police/correction officers/the state and do their bidding. The political prisoner who remains steadfast to their passions to fight for the liberation of oppressed peoples would never “cooperate” with the reactionary actions of prison systems. In result the political prisoner would physically, mentally, and psychologically suffer. The Field Marshal of the
Black Panther Party also wrote for the Black Panther Party newspaper: The Black
Panther Intercommunal News Service. In his article, “A Tribute to three Slain Brothers”,
George Jackson writes how he was assigned to work in the prison hospital, but within worked against the hospital with the agenda of aiding the collective (Jackson 1970). In
George Jackson’s “peoples hospital” he used the medical skills he had learned over time
(sutures and primarily dispensing medication) to aid his brothers in prison from racist attacks and torture. When medical treatment was only provided if one betrayed the people
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(“cooperated”) George Jackson found other means with the situation provided to him and mobilized resources for the good of the people.
On August 2nd, 1971, George Jackson’s article on revolutionary comrade Ulysses
McDaniel was published and revealed the medical torture he was under in his years in prison. George tells us how in 1964 the prison system, “poisoned him, [and] shot at him each time the circumstances allowed, gassed him, beat him and denied him any medical attention until finally his health broke” (Jackson 1971 5). As a result comrade Ulysses’ intestines rapidly deteriorated into a terminal disease and his weight fell drastically from
200 pounds to 120 pounds. Leaving him to die, the hospital was “gracious” enough to offer him an ultimatum where he took the surgery that they claimed had a “75% recovery rate” or that he spend his last year in the hospital maximum ward and expect death (5).
Comrade Ulysses, well aware of the murderous intentions of the establishment via medical intervention, declined the operation. The doctors of colonialism promised him that he would not survive without their surgery, yet with a conversion to Eastern traditional healing practices and diets, Ulysses lived on for 6 years on “borrowed moments” and time. The state attempted to still force this “necessary operation” telling him aloud that if he does not take the operation would never be released on parole (5).
Both George Jackson and Comrade Ulysses were aware that the state simply wanted “to kill him under the knife. Or render him useless to the people” (5). Political prisoners are under attack from every direction, but here shows how twistingly unique medical physicians and medical care kill freedom fighters. How can there be a discussion of racial health inequity when the production of this disparity is purposefully insidious and explicit?
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The mysterious passing of Frantz Fanon when in CIA custody for medical treatment follows the same narrative where death is seen as “natural” and therefore the establishment can remain unaccountable to killing revolutionaries. Pedro Albizu Campos, previously mentioned in the previous chapter for speaking out against the experimentation of Puerto Ricans, was a Puerto Rican revolutionary who when detained was subjected to lethal doses of TBI (total body irradiation). When Campos protested what was happening to him the establishment declared him a lunatic with a variety of mental health issues. When health professionals came to see his condition (after his numerous letters) they claimed he was going through psychosis, paranoia, and
“hallucinations of all his five senses”. It was not until Campos was taken to a hospital after experiencing two full days of cerebral thrombosis that the severity of his torched body was looked into seriously. Now in a coma “for the last nine years of his life, Albizu
Campos was unable to walk, unable to speak, and the right side of his body was paralyzed” (Denis 2015). Dr. Orlando Daumy, president of the Cuban Cancer
Association, examined Campos and confirmed that: “[Campos’] sores [were] produced by radiation burns,” and “every symptom indicated a person who had undergone intense radiation”. The establishment used the fact that Campos would wrap himself in wet towels as a way to prove his insanity; however, Dr. Daumy also deduced that his wrapping himself in wet towels “was the best way for Albizu to diminish the intensity of the radiation” (Denis 2015).
If the deaths of revolutionaries in the 60’s are seen as “too far” from the present, then the simple investigation of the state of revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal can be used to awaken the numbness of medical oppression of Black revolutionaries. As a reminder in
52 reality colonialism has not changed, but continues in its activities. Mumia Abu-Jamal,
Black Panther and revolutionary, is currently 61 years old and rapidly deteriorating due to purposeful negligence and lack of adequate medical care in prison. In 2012, Mumia filed a lawsuit against the establishment. The lawsuit claims, “He was diagnosed with
Hepatitis C, a chronic blood borne infection that gradually destroys the liver” (Breitbart
2015). The attorneys tell the judge to rule out the lawsuit claiming Mumia is “unable to show ‘immediate irreparable harm’” (Breitbart 2015). Meanwhile Mumia in his video testimony (2015) speaks of the rupture of his skin with eczema, blisters, and bloody sores that have developed from prison doctor mistreatment of Hepatitis C and now covers 70% of his body. Mumia, since diagnosed, has dropped 80 pounds in the time span of three months. “When hospitalized, he had a blood sugar level just shy of 800” mg/dL, which would propel him if not accessed in a timely manner into a diabetic coma. “Mumia’s family has reported that he was shaking uncontrollably, had labored breathing…and may have kidney stones, yet the prison has been feeding him dangerous foods like pasta despite special prison diets available for those with medical needs” (Africa 2015).
Medical doctors and health services in prison systems without hesitation condemn the lives of revolutionaries when asked to by colonial powers. In every place in the world that has been discussed, the treatment of political prisoners by the settler colony,
America, works to provide stability to oppression. The medical execution of Mumia Abu
Jamal continues as the people resist the state’s abuse. Revolutionaries and political prisoners have been attacked by the medical system and these are the people who devote themselves to Black wellness. How can Black people be told to rely on a health system which enacts untold violence and then medically executes the people who fight for them?
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The political prisoners and revolutionaries seeking liberation and wholeness of oppressed people have been murdered and suppressed by the health establishment of
America. American imperial influence has been sure to use any mechanism or institution needed to destroy the fighters for oppressed people in order to keep the oppressed in their state of partiality and sickness. It is the uses of colonial medicine to directly continue colonial conquest that requires it’s own recognition. Colonial medicine is intensely special for using the tools of healing to destroy and exterminate.
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Section III: An expansion on the conceptions of Life & Death
Thought the vaccine offered by all the theorists and activists and clear thinkers and doers of the warrior clan would take. But amnesia had set in anyhow. Heart/brain/gut muscles atrophied anyhow… Something crucial had been missing from the political/economic/social/cultural/aesthetic/ military/psychosocial/psychosexual mix. And what could it be? And what should she do? She’d been asking it aloud one morning combing her hair, naked and tattooed with serrated teeth and hair alive, birds and insects peeping out at her from the muddy-heavy hanks of the ancient mothers’ hair. Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters, p. 258-59
Introduction
The global enterprise of biomedicine has outlined and naturalized their own concepts of life and death; however, Western hegemonic forces have not stifled African epistemological conceptualizations of the interpretations of life and death. African epistemology sees life and death as just different variations of the same occurrence. It is through this perception that other notions come to pass like an occupied life, incomplete death, living-dead, et cetera. Living and dying relate to the ancestors and the belief in spiritual realm(s); and therefore, when discussing wholeness and healing there entails aspects of healing uncommon to western cultural hegemony (Frye et. al 2008 46). In
Afrocosmology health is not merely the absence of infirmity but involves the spiritual, the ancestors, the psychological, and physical well-being of a person and their community. Fanon in A Dying Colonialism discusses the breadth of the Black psyche and it’s uniqueness due to the continuous oppressive force of colonialism. He concludes that
Black people under colonization “perceive life not as a flowering or a development of an essential productiveness, but as a permanent struggle against an omnipresent death. This ever-menacing death is experienced as endemic famine, unemployment, a high death rate,
55 an inferiority complex, and the absence of any hope for the future” (128). All of the violence against Black life resembles an incomplete death; and this is what will be explored: the various forms of incomplete death, an occupied living, and life without freedom. This section will tackle the question of what is really life, when life, in Fanon’s diagnosis, has been reduced to only coping responses to survival.
Bambara reflects the breadth of Black psyche and it’s uniqueness in the opening epigraph of this thesis. She speaks through Velma of Black people’s fight for wholeness.
The clearest thinkers and activists, she says, attempt to provide an antidote to the poison of colonialism, but that something has been missing in their attempts. She speaks of how
Black radical tradition has been forgotten and that this amnesia has made the community’s heart/brain/gut atrophic. This quote refines the discussion of various forms of death, for here wholeness requires socio-historical consciousness and spiritual centering. Bambara relates collective amnesia to the struggle and the necessity of remembrance, re-awakening, and recollection to be whole again. Although the necessities for Black well being will be discussed in detail in the final section of this thesis; this quote powerfully demonstrates how non-physical forms of violence affect the biological
Black body.
1: Multiple forms of Death and Dying: Breeders of Violence
The various forms of dying and death arise from the various forms of literal, spiritual, and mental violence that establish the condition of the oppressed as well as their various forms of sickness. The final section will discuss how a natural resistance and rejection of the West facilitates healing and discusses the tools of Black wellness.
Violence is used for conquest but also used to continue to keep the colonized down, sick,
56 and unwell in order to suppress resistance. Bulhan offers the point that, "the oppressed suffer multiple forms of death an that submission to oppression for fear of physical death is self defeating thereby ensuring, among other things, higher rates of physical, psychological, and social death” (Bulhan 12 2004). Bulhan concludes with familiarity that there are multiple forms of death due to colonial violence, but also determines that the fear of physical death destroys other forms psychological and social life. Bulhan’s analysis addresses multiple forms of dying as well as multiple forms of living, each affected negatively and directly through colonialism. Fanon comes to a similar conclusion, remarking, “Colonialism obviously throws all the elements of native society into confusion. The dominant group arrives with its values and imposes them with such violence that the very life of the colonized can manifest itself only defensively, in a less clandestine way” (Fanon 1967 130). It can be seen on the streets of Roxbury, in what once was Black Harlem, in Black neighborhoods of France and Britain, in Ethiopia, in
Palestine, in Haiti, in Senegal, in Algeria, and many other places that with colonialism and white supremacism there is abject and total subjugation by innumerable methods which lead to various forms of death in colonized populations.
2: Cultural Violence: The Destruction and Trivialization of Traditional Healing
Fanon in Toward the African Revolution calls to attention what is often neglected in colonial discourse: cultural racism. Here, Fanon explains that colonial racism is not just the physiognomic (skin color) racism, but that colonialism involves destroying, demonizing, and erasing the native’s culture. Western culture is seen as ideal or the most beneficial to the world; even more so, Western culture has been naturalized and all other forms of culture has been othered or casted out of use. The physiognomic racism is both
57 superficial and limiting, for it only addresses racism that manifests into prejudice, discrimination, and direct abuse; however by discussing cultural racism there is a demystification of colonialism and whiteness. Cultural racism addresses the colonial’s attempt to kill any and all forms of the native’s traditions, for their culture in itself is a form of resistance. The tradition and culture of the native can revitalize the weakened heart/brain/gut. In Toward the African Revolution, Fanon explains how oppression attempts to culturally mummify and stunt the growth of the colonized purposefully in order to keep them repressed and dependent on its structure when in reality colonialism is dependent on them because of it’s vampiristic nature (1969 34). Colonialism needs a colonized and colonizer to exist, and it needs to leech on the resources and livelihood the native possesses. Cultural racism then also consists of the destruction of traditional healing.
The general distrust of Colonial medicine is only fortified by the inferiorization and erasure of non-Western healing practices. The destruction of non-Western healing forms has always been a large part of creating this dependency on Western forms of healing. Whether speaking of enslaved Africans, or the Algerian oppressed in his own country, or the Black patients in different hospitals today, there has always been a marginalization of natural and traditional based forms of healing. Similar to the political discussions revolving around cultural hegemony, Western medical practice can be seen as hegemonic force that attempts to dominate and erase/trivialize other forms of medical practice. Seen in historical examples, the new “technique” of medicine, “takes over completely and does not tolerate the persistence of any shred of tradition” (Fanon 1967
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125). Bambara speaks of the amnesia that has set in and the need to find (and rediscover) the missing components that have been lost.
Enslaved Africans in the Americas had a long history of traditional healing and medicine. Continuously, Africans would resist and handle their own ailments within their own community and with their own healers as much as possible. Enslaved Africans
“generally exhibited a healthy distrust of their owners medicine men, who clearly served he interests of their slave holding clients. Unfavorable outcomes from invasive measures further convinces many…that regular doctors were no more efficacious than their own folk healers” (Schwartz 50 2008). The healthy distrust of “regular” doctors reflects the history previously discussed of patient-doctor relationships down colonial lines. Further,
Schwartz comments on Africans’ belief that colonial doctors “were no more efficacious” than their own is contradictory, for in her own text she proves that African healers produced better results than colonial doctors and were seen as more efficacious in many different anecdotes and journals collected. “Folk” medicine worked so well due to the fact that it scared to death white people who believed the skill of a healer would let to poisoning them. Traditional healing had to be destroyed for it was the anti-thesis of slavery ideology. The power of traditional healing unearthed the mythical conception that
Africans were subhuman beasts who were inferior to white people. This history, which has been mostly erased, reflects the previous discussion on objectivity and subjectivity.
African healing forms have been reduced to “malevolence and superstition” to downplay its command and influence (Schwartz 57-58 2008). When the realization of African healing power was recognized, owners and legislature in the typical colonial fashion
59 suppressed healers; therefore, healers remained in the shadows and in secrecy within enslaved African communities.
Colonialism has worked tirelessly to demonize and reject traditional healing patterns and practices Over time African healers have died out, but more accurately
African healers face ancestral amnesia and are not aware of their potential skill in healing. A cultural expulsion is colonialism’s hope of destroying communal Black determination and resistance. “…Around us they have placed a plethora of things screaming denial to our nature, things welcoming us against ourselves, things luring us into the whiteness of destruction” and now future generations of Black people are facing amnesia for, “whiteness they indeed have known; of our blackness they have yet to learn”
(Armah 1979 xviii). Ayi Kwei Armah’s summation of cultural racism speaks of the pervasive nature of colonialism to stifle and (Fanon) culturally mummify the means of resistance and healing needed for Black people.
3: War waged on the Mind: Mental Violence
Discussing the multi-faceted forms of violence waged against Black people and their bodies could never be part of health discourse when health institutions promote colonialism and are a part of colonialism. The truth and roots of health issues must remain buried and misdirected, hence the decontextualized and limited frameworks of health. Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks unearths the psychological ramifications of colonization. Within this text, Fanon dispels the myths of inferiority and dependency complexes of the colonized. He discusses the epidermilization process Black people encounter; describing how colonial violence begins to sear into the skin, trying to convince Black people of the colonial lie of a superior and inferior “race” of humans
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(Fanon 1994 11). Unlike anyone of his time, Fanon utilizes psychiatry-oriented language to assess the condition of Black people in a revolutionary way. He challenges psycho analyst O. Mannoni’s viewpoints on colonization by asking, “why [does he] make the inferiority complex something that antedates colonization?” (Fanon 1994 80). One of the biggest propaganda tactics used by colonialism is enslavement and colonial apologist discourse. Many slavery texts will speak (directly or in underlying words) of the enslaved potentially needing the colonizer to develop, learn, or change. Many of these texts with audacity make claims that without colonialism Black people would not have progressed as people. Fanon later declares outright that, “it is the racist who creates his inferior”
(93). Fanon’s criticism addresses Mannoni’s colonial apologist stance on the dependency complex and his hesitation to condemn the colonizers true role in colonization, which ultimately attempts to justify the inferiority process of the colonized. The inferiority complex is of most importance in this discussion because it is the reason why Black communities are bereft of self and collective determination. Most importantly Fanon further destabilizes pro-colonialist discourse by explaining how the inferiority and dependency complexes Black people face are induced, therefore not internal or naturally present to begin with inside Black people. This assertion opposes the tale told by white supremacy of the innate inferiority of the colonized. Colonialism in this book reveals itself in its truest form as a social sickness. If colonialism is a social sickness inflicted against Black people and Western medicine is a form of colonialism then Western medicine is anti-Black liberation. How could Western medicine battle colonialism as a social sickness when it lives and roots from colonialism?
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The induced psychosis of the Black body relates back to Bulhan’s analysis. When stunted and controlled by physical death, other forms of death manifest in higher rates. A colonized people resisting oppression is as natural as it is to breathe. The desire to resist remains present in every native and when fear encapsulates them the result is a destruction of the soul, which produces various forms of sickness. Fanon explains the nature of resistance where, “it so happens when the native hears a speech about Western culture he pulls out his knife – or at least makes sure it is within reach” (Fanon 1961 33).
As a result of the instinctual nature of a colonized people to revolt and resist, different mental and psychological challenges present themselves. If one decides to free themselves from the grasp of colonialism they must do so with strength and courage. If fear encapsulates the individual who questions if he wants to be liberated, the result is an incomplete life. Fanon begins Wretched of the Earth with the line that “decolonization is a violent phenomenon” (1961 1). There is a violent process of the individual’s decision to wage war on either oppression or him self.
This thesis in its entirety attempts to unmask the myriad forms of colonialism to prove how its methodology resembles or even replicates that of Western-based health systems. Colonialism is almost atmospheric, which is why Bambara refers to it as poison.
The atmospheric nature of colonialism is why Fanon creates the term “combat breath” to describe how every aspect of life is under occupation. He says in A Dying Colonialism, that “it is the country as a whole, its daily pulsation that are contested, disfigured, in the hope of a final destruction. Under these conditions, the individual breathing is an observed, and occupied breathing. It is a combat breathing” (1967 65). Colonialism aims to mutilate and induce the expulsion of self by, “[settling] itself in the very center of the
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… individual” (65). This internal war, regardless to which direction the individual takes in it, has health implications for the body that does not even have a developed language or discourse surrounding it. The few texts that encapsulated this experience can be seen in all the work of Toni Cade Bambara, Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynters and others.
The repressed under numerous forms of occupation are living a life that is no life at all. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian writes in her recent book, Security Theology,
Surveillance, and the Politics of Fear, shares the indoctrination of security and colonial violence, which produces continuous and pervasive fear in the mind and body of the
Palestinian by settler state, Zionist Israel. The Palestinian displacement, genocide, and settler-colonialist agenda are not only matching characteristics to the setter colonial state of America, but the two colonial forces support and work together to continue their terror.
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian connects the “new unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead” (2015 143). Her connections are further driven by her storytelling-mode of writing. Every aspect of life structured to create fear, “their daily pulsations” under terrorization. Physical, private, intimate, and communal spaces are tagged with impending violence and destruction, and further, within the mind, psyche, and breath.
Under occupied breathing there are numerous events that transpire as a result of oppression as understood via the work produced by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian and others. The process known as “assimilation” has been used in Western culture to describe how the acquisition of social and psychological characteristics of a group is normal and natural. Actually non-Western cultures are rejected and trivialized by the dominant group. The process of assimilation is taught to students in the U.S. as a natural position
63 and peaceful process and interaction between cultures. In Toward the African Revolution the process of assimilation is described in an anti-colonial framework where it exists as a ploy to continue colonial destruction. Steve Biko in I Write what I Like addresses the concept of true integration/assimilation and how it remains impossible (and the thought naïve) due to the context of where we are: in a world where one group violently subjugates another. Fanon asserts this same idea by explaining what the process of
“assimilation” does in the context of oppression. Assimilating to imperial (American) culture realistically works as a process of alienation and disarms the native. American culture is entrenched and based in colonialism. This breaks from the social justice paradigm, for being a part of America is not the plan. If being an American citizen means bombing Libya, facilitating the decimation of Palestinians, and exploiting continental
Africa, then there is no need to fight for reform. A Black person trying to “assimilate” attempts to ascribe to the value system of whiteness and the rule of white supremacy to become like the colonizer and therefore not against the evils implemented by the colonizer. This process (no matter how hard some try) does not make an individual white, but instead the individual loses (forgets) the power of his Blackness and the community that named him. This process also weakens the collective power the native shares with their community. When stripped of their identity, the Black person loses himself and falls into a state of blindness and amnesia. This individual, unaware of who he is, dies a spiritual death. This individual lives in a corporeal sense but his spirit roams lost. The
Salt Eaters, begins with Velma facing spiritual illness.
In The Salt Eaters the story of Velma begins with her in a destructive state and meeting with the healers and Minnie Ransom. She is an activist and uses her skills in the
64 struggle, yet with al the strength she possesses the poison begins to seep into her, and she ultimately attempts suicide. A suffering Velma is asked if she desires to be well, for there is a lot of weight when well. Velma had to spiritually re-center herself in order to continue her fight against the the woes of her community. Black people are forced to deal with a myriad of issues, tasks, problems, conflicts, and must always rise to the occasion to deal with them Velma’s experience is relatable. There is no easy way to fight and continue fighting when spiritually imbalanced. Physically Velma may have been fine to continue with life, but her spirit needed healing, and a specific type of healing that was inextricably tied with the fight for Black liberation.
The body and mind become unfamiliar to one another when abused by colonialism. Armah in Two Thousand Seasons explains that the people who have been alienated from their community (and therefore themselves) have become zombis, the undead. A product of colonialism and slavery, this is another form of death and life, which are inextricably tied to one another. The zombis are dead, having destroyed their souls by betraying their communalistic nature and becoming gluttonous individualists due to colonial influence. With their souls dead, they have become mechanisms that do work for colonialism. Fanon states that zombies become even more terrifying than settlers, for their reactionary soldier behavior (1961 43). Talking to Black people about their perspective of police officers works here in a similar capacity. The Black police officers are often much worse in comparison to the white police officer in their manner and behavior because they must constantly prove that they are working for white supremacy and that they favor no one in their line of bloodshed. Like the Black slavery-apologist or
Black general of US militaries, they must uphold their position using brutal force and
65 amoral actions; they must benefit white supremacy to remain. These “Black people” are alive in only the physical as they fight to distance themselves from Blackness.
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Section IV: Black Radical Tradition: Unraveling Oppression to Bring Liberation
Independence is not a word which can be used as an exorcism, but an indispensable condition for the existence of men and women who are truly liberated, in other words who are truly masters of all the material means which make possible the radical transformation of society. Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth p.250
~
Though she knew how to build immunity to the sting Of the serpent that turned would-be cells, could be cadres into cargo cults. Thought she knew how to build resistance, make the journey To the center of the circle, stay poised and centered in the work And not fly off, stay centered in the best of her people’s traditions and not be available to madness. Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters, p. 258
~ “There are things that might happen to my body, but my spirit will rise victorious.” –Janis Combs Epps, The Black Women’s Health Book. p. 43
Introduction
In order to truly see what colonization and imperialism has done to Black people, everything must be historicized and de-romanticized. Oppression must be demystified or unraveled by using the tools found in the radical tradition of Black people. Through traditional healing and its revolutionary conceptions, the diagnoses of Black conditions and illness can be found. Bambara reflects on the serpent sting, which represents the poison of colonialism. This epigraph speaks of the causal relationship between building resistance and immunity by staying “poised and centered” in the best of her people’s traditions. Resistance against the social sickness of colonialism builds self-determination and an essential union of oppressed peoples. Traditional healing connects life/living with stolen Black power. It allows the community to see their hidden power and stolen vitality.
Bambara in “Salvation is the Issue” communicates:
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“I despair at our failure to wrest power from those who abuse it; our reluctance to reclaim our old powers lying dormant with neglect; our hesitancy to create power in areas where it never before existed, and I’m euphoric because everything in our history, our spirit, our daily genius—-suggests we do it.” (Bambara 1984 46)
Bambara exudes African cosmological patterns that signify Black empowerment and liberation. All of her texts demonstrate the urgency of Blackness and its reclamation. A balanced spirituality allows Black consciousness to develop and wash away the things that have bastardized its purity; it is a necessary process of rebirth, recollection, and renewal.
1: Sight of Our Origins
The diaspora must have an acute awareness of the past to find their significance in the future; this is the foundation of Black Radical Tradition, it represents the vitality of passing it on. Bambara despairs at the failure to wrest power and reclaim old powers. A connection to Black history builds consciousness needed to see what lies ahead.
John Henrik Clarke, author and historian, begins in the documentary of his life, A Great and Mighty Walk, with explaining the potency of history:
“History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day it is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been what they have been where they are and what they are; most important, history tells a people where they still must go and what they still must be. The relationship of history to the people is the same to the relationship of a mother to her child” (Clarke 1996 [0:09-0:56]).
With history comes the discovery of who and what an individual is. The individual discovers that they are no one without the history, and reclamation, of his people. Man then understands that his self is only a partitioned part of the community (and community represents both the dead and the living beyond temporal space). John Henrik Clarke also nods towards human transformation via the understanding (remembrance) of Black
68 shared history. Again he says, “history tells a people…what they still must be” (Clarke).
The idea of being and/or becoming describes the transition that comes from learning and building from Black radical tradition (like a child who learns from his mother). The conditions induced by colonialism unravel when the collective is fortified and deeply entrenched in their history. Haile Gerima, Pan African and revolutionary filmmaker, in an interview on his film, Sankofa is asked questions that revolve around the difficulty of filming and portraying (historical) enslavement. The interviewer asks him about Roots the politically influenced film on Black history to which he responds that Roots is a political film and that art when turned into politics can be deceitful. In his subsequent statement, with clarity, he continues by saying: “healing comes from truth and reality”
(Gerima 1992 92). Black history is often politicized to fulfill colonialist propaganda and alternative agendas that have little to do with history for the purposes of (re)discovery.
Healing, via Gerima, comes from truth and reality of our enslavement to then bring liberation.
Ayi Kwei Armah, a Pan Africanist and Ghanaian author, writes of Blackness by boldly claiming the hidden power of the past, and how it must be drawn upon in order to move and look forward. His stories, like Bambara, are grounded in collective memory in an afrocosmological mode of thought that become vital gateways to Black consciousness.
In his book, Two Thousand Seasons, he begins the story with an extended metaphor describing the nature of colonialism and its effect on the people. The prologue sets the tone of the entire text; within Armah stresses, “a people losing sight of their origins are dead” (Armah 1979 xiii). Armah’s metaphor teaches what happens to a people who have been stripped or have forgotten their history. Forgotten history makes Armah question:
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“how indeed would a living understanding come to those who have fled knowledge of the source?” (Armah xvi). This question mirrors John Henrik Clarke’s telling of history revealing where an individual must still go. Both comments question where conventional knowledge production comes from and then where we should look for it. History tells us where we must go and how to (re)discover power in order to quell the poison that is used against us.
Once the native has (re) embraced his culture he can “no longer runs away from itself. The sense of the past rediscovered, the worship of the ancestors resumed…The past becoming henceforth a constellation of values, becomes identified with the Truth”
(Fanon 1994 43). The native’s culture strikes fear into the oppressor, for it is a gateway back to Black history and through this, the rediscovery of Black self-determination.
Whiteness, the ideology or world-view that is shaped by colonialism, objectifies the native’s culture and tradition. As a product of the racist trivialization of the native’s traditions, whiteness views culture as something tangible (to be exploited or co-opted).
The subcutaneous layer of Black tradition, the deepness of tradition, transforms and widens our perception: tradition is a way of life that keeps us sane in an insane world.
This power of stolen and lost culture lies innate within the oppressed, and this poses another reason for settlers to fear its (re)embracement. The Black Woman’s Health Book is a collection of stories and messages for Black women on healing. In the mode of storytelling, the women speak of their experiences through colonialism and how they were able to overcome when able to tap into their collective power. Through the stories of their journeys, this collection taps into the history and culture of Black people, so it is better understand where we come from and where we must go (Clarke). In one story of
70 transformation, a woman writes: “it is in recognition of the genuine conditions of our lives that we gain the strength to act and our motivation for change” (White 1994 148).
The conditions of colonialism can be mitigated through an understanding of why we are here and how we can change it.
Revolutionary endeavor as stimulus to life
A Revolutionary’s love for the people is a type of love only few could understand let alone act on. Revolutionaries combine useful tools of resistance to struggle with the people against the serpents poison. These tools weaponize Black culture and history towards anti-colonial action as a way to regain power. Colonialism and its health institutions do no favors for Black people, and therefore Bambara’s answers to reclaiming old powers are pivotal. Her answer to Black prosperity goes further than simply understanding history. Bambara pushes past understanding to also weaponizing our history. She mentions that it is “our hesitancy to create powers in where it never before existed” that makes her despair (Bambara 1986 46). She speaks on welcoming
Black history and culture, but also utilizing them in order to use these tools for liberation purposes.
This thesis required internationalizing the Black struggle. Previously mentioned,
Black oppression is everywhere and no type of oppression is better in one place than the other. Oppression is evil, and therefore there is no need to quantify its wickedness. If
Black oppression is everywhere, naturally then, Black resistance is everywhere. A large stimulus to revolutionary action is the connection of Black struggle through Pan
Africanism. Pan-Africanism is a tool to wellness, for it empowers the individual to come together with the collective. Pan Africanism welcomes the connection of our African
71 descent. El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz/Omowale/Malcolm X grounded all his speeches in
Pan-Africanism in order to internationalize movement by Africans in the America.
Malcolm explains that the relationship between continental Africa and Africans in the
Americas “have one destiny and…have one past” (X 1992 65). A physical return was not necessary to Malcolm, but what “is necessary is that we have to go back mentally, we have to go back culturally, we have to go back spiritually, and philosophically, and psychologically” (177). Pan Africanism creates diasporic links and momentum that will be potent and necessary when we turn the corner and revolution arrives.
Our political prisoners and revolutionaries use their steadfastness to survive the worst of torture by colonialism. Importantly, they have centered and grounded themselves in different formulations of revolutionary ideology to repel the forces of oppression and this is what keeps them living. When George Jackson speaks of his brother in the final letter of Soledad Brothers he speaks of how he truly was alive and free from the chains of oppression because of his center in revolutionary ideals. George in reflection says “he was free for a while. I guess that’s more than most of us can expect” (Jackson 1994 329). Jonathan Jackson found life in the fight for the revolution, sacrificing his physical life, in order to find his interminable one and unshackle himself from oppression. His family and the Black Panther Party did not meet Jonathan’s sacrifice for the revolution with sadness but with celebration and pride. Jonathan and other revolutionaries alike give their lives for the revolution because the life Black people have lived and live now at this very moment is no life at all. A nod to the previous section on conceptions of life and death, here we learn of what living will mean to the Black community. This is what Huey P. Newton’s concept revolutionary suicide aims to do: by
72 surrendering to the revolution, you live anew within others who will continue the fight.
Huey P. Newton says,
“By having no family, I inherited the family of humanity. By having no possessions, I have possessed all. By rejecting the love of one, I received the love of all, By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life. The reactionary suicide is “wise”, and the revolutionary suicide is a “fool”, a fool for the revolution in the way Paul meant when he spoke of being “a fool for Christ”. That foolishness can move the mountains of oppression; it is our great leap and our commitment to the dead and unborn” (Newton 129 1973).
The antithetical concept of revolutionary suicide is Huey P. Newton’s other created term, reactionary suicide. Newton calls the reactionary, “wise” and the revolutionary, a “fool”.
Reactionary suicide is wise because the individual would rather devote himself to personal and individual “gain” (alongside Western hierarchal values); these gains really mean nothing and bring forth a spiritual death. This is why at the moment of action versus inaction, love versus cowardice, it is considered wise and best to save ones self, but is it? Revolutionary suicide is foolish insofar that the individual gives up his colonized body (suicide) for the revolution; however, the key here is that the physical body means nothing to the essence that allows the body to move in the first place, and that is what must be nourished to bring proper healing. It is the devotion to Black people, of our dead and unborn that inspires cyclical life and continuance. Comrade Ulysses, whose story of medical torture was previously detailed, writes to George Jackson about his unwavering stance on revolution and how he would not falter even after the abuse he has received:
“If ever I should breath my stride, Or falter at my comrade’s side, This oath will kill me! If ever my word should prove untrue, Should I betray the many or you few, This oath will kill me! Should I be slow to make a stand, Or show fear before hangman, This oath will kill me!
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Should I misuse the people’s trust, Should I submit ever to greed or lust, This oath will kill me! Should I grow lax in discipline, In times of strife, refuse my hand, This oath will surely kill me!” (Jackson 1971 5)
George responds to comrade Ulysses spiritual strength and freedom: “Over the six years that he’s lived with death…the brother’s mind and determination to stay in the fight have never once weakened. A brother who refuses to stop his resistance, refuses to stop learning, refuses to die” (5). George Jackson in Soledad Brothers, says that if he were to die in “the future if worst comes to worst that's all right,” and that he will “just continue the fight in hell (Jackson 1994 127). Revolutionaries are untouchable by the forces of oppression, for they have overcome the fear of death by their devotion to healing and love of the people. This invincibility that exudes from revolutionaries is a reckoning force of Black radical tradition. With the spirit of revolt and an interminable life acknowledged colonialism could never win.
Although revolutionary suicide was term created by Huey P. Newton in the
1960’s the praxis of this concept have been around for a very long time. Where there is oppression there is unbridled resistance. Palestinians, instead of using the term revolutionary suicide, speak of sumud, which translates to steadfastness and the rising above the torture and violence of their Zionist occupiers; they like Ulysses and Assata and George devote their lives to the struggle and by doing so find new and eternal life.
Diasporic Literacy’s Continuance of Black Radical Tradition
Although Black people are scattered around the world, speak numerous languages and dialects, practice different customs and traditions, there remains a common literacy
74 and understanding to one another. This diasporic literacy transcends colonial language and whiteness; it works even further than a code becoming it’s own language to and for colonized peoples with messages of our future triumph through oneness. Diasporic literacy spreads through poems, music, essays, plays, books, films and other forms of expression in the tradition. The major texts used in this thesis are all modes of diasporic literacy created to bring continuity and enlightenment for Black people in hopes of healing. The work of Haile Gerima, John Henrik Clarke, Frantz Fanon, George Jackson,
Assata Shakur, Malcolm X and the many others that have built this paper have passed on
Black Radical tradition because of the endless devotion to the wellbeing of Black prosperity.
For the sake of our understanding or for the sake of our literacy, the ancestors give us author, Ntozake Shange and her choreopoem, “For Colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.” Ntozake Shange’s poem “TOUSSAINT” within the choreopoem explains the journey of an 8-year-old black girl from St. Louis.
She begins by telling us of the girl’s discovery of Toussaint L’Ouveture. Toussaint was one of the prominent leaders of the Haitian Revolution. She discovered Toussaint when venturing away from the dissimilar (white) children’s books in her public library, and when she found him she began a love affair with the revolutionary. Toussaint “waz dead and livin” to her (Shange 1997). The African girl in America felt linked to the African from Haiti and they plot together on how
“to run away from [her] integrated home / integrated street / integrated school / 1955 waz not a good year for lil blk girls.” (Shange 1997)
Before attempting to leave for Haiti with Toussaint, the girl runs into a boy, his name
Toussaint Jones. To her, Toussaint Jones and Toussaint L’Ouveture were not too
75 different. Both Toussaint Jones and L’Ouveture strongly resisted occupation and integration; both “dont take no stuff from no white folks” (Shange 1997). The young
Toussaint represents the continuance of radical tradition, while the old Toussaint represents the power of radical history. Shange uses her literacy on Black history to improve the literacy of her community thereby continuing to pass on the connections we feel of resistance tradition through literature. It is when an oppressed community understands how powerful their community is that they see how powerful they truly are.
Diasporic literacy aids an understanding of radical history to strengthen the poisoned psyche and create Black forms of healing.
Aside and within her autobiography, Assata Shakur writes poetry that awakens the power of resistance tradition. Her work is so special for its devotion to the struggle and her love for the people. In her poem, Tradition, Assata breathes life into our proud and strong tradition to resist oppression with unabashed resistance. A mode of diasporic literacy, her poem speaks of those who carried it on in “Ghana, Mali, and Timbuktu”
(Shakur). She speaks of overt enslavement (in comparison to the current covert neo- slavery) and the response of our ancestors through insurrections that passed and carried it on. Assata continues and writes of all the actions, even the menial, we have taken to carry on our proud tradition. Importantly she connects the diaspora over time and over resistance movement, “against nightsticks and bullets” “against tanks and tear gas”.
Assata reaffirms this thesis by mentioning the forms of oppression that directly relate to the realm of medical care. She says that we carried it on despite and against the “needles and nooses” and the “Bombs and birth control.” The bombs that kill Africans for imperialism has the same affect as birth control (and forced sterilization) used to kill
76 future Africans. The needles we are injected with affect us the same as the noose tied around our necks. Medical care has violently subjugated Black people with no remorse, or as Fanon remarks without a blush from colonialism; colonialism does not blush or function in any state of morality or humanism rather it makes the conception of Man myopic and based on Western privileges (Fanon 1966 223). Therefore any and every action within colonialism is made to privilege Western conventions and criminalize
Blackness. Assata intends to unravel the induced inferiorization of Black people, by carrying on radical tradition for empowerment. She ends her poem:
“Carried on the tradition. Carried a strong tradition. Carried a proud tradition. Carried a Black tradition. Carry it on. Pass it down to the children. Pass it down. Carry it on. Carry it on now. Carry it on TO FREEDOM!” (Shakur)
Her revolutionary principles speak of “FREEDOM”; the freedom that comes from a people armed with the knowledge of anti colonial history and culture. With self- empowerment and determination resistance continues to grow, and the violence of colonialism can then be strongly repelled and ultimately silenced.
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Section V: Conclusion
“The Revolution in depth, the true one, precisely because it changes man and renews society, has reached an advanced stage. This oxygen which creates and shapes a new humanity…” -A Dying Colonialism, Frantz Fanon, page 181.
~
For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.” -Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon, page 255
Black people’s journey to healthy minds and bodies has been riddled by the induced conditions of white supremacy and oppression. The war on the native continues.
Black communities seek healing for the historical and present day violence waged by
Euro-American colonialism. Colonialism is the core disease to the many forms of Black suffering on a global scale. The discourse on health becomes limited to Western world systems, and ironically these same health systems only create further turbulence. In hopes of healing where must we go? The resolution to Black health crisis cannot be found in the health institutions that further perpetuate the domination of the people. We have a distinct history and a distinct future, which we must ready ourselves for.
To find the answers we seek, there must be a re-centering of Black people, which already goes against the ideology of colonialism. The unbridled war against Black people has been found all through health institutions. There is no neutral zone where racism and colonialism do not aim to kill and maim the Black body; therefore I question the reason we use these systems as primary modes of healing.
It is with our collective liberation that we will find new tools of healing and find how we center ourselves in one another. Liberation requires and brings Black empowerment, self-determination, resources, power, and land: the antithesis to white
78 supremacy and the antithesis of the foundation and culture of America. Simply put, Black liberation is in hopes of a new system and mode of life, a revival of self-determination, and a process of human transformation.
We are at war. The natural response to oppression, ignorance, evil, and mystification is wide-awake resistance says Toni Cade Bambara. The answer to our issues is not extreme, for it is only a natural response to the powers that keep us unwell.
Liberation is not extreme; it is the violence against us that is extreme and must be put to an end. In the words of Omowale, “if we are extremists we’re not ashamed of it. In fact the conditions that our people suffer are extreme and an extreme illness can not be cured with moderate medicine” (Ambar 2014 31). When we look at colonialism as an extreme illness that creates conditions the people suffer from we return to the texts of Assata
Shakur, Frantz Fanon, George Jackson, and other great revolutionary scholars who diagnose the health of the colonized to find the cure. In Ayi Kwei Armah’s text the same connections are made: “against the disease Isanusi saw the cure: the hope of the way, creation of what is necessary…” (16). Colonization is the disease and a creation of what is necessary becomes our cure. Toni Cade Bambara’s citation on our hidden power reflects similar paths of healing. She tells us “to reclaim old powers” and to “create powers in areas where it never before existed” (Bambara 1984 46).
When Minnie Ransom asked if “you want to be well” it involves a decision that must be made on an individual to international-Pan African-collective scale. We must desire true ways of healing. We must rid ourselves of the chains that shackle us to pain, violence, abuse, and trauma. African cosmology transcends and penetrates all aspects of healing; it provides a deeper, more contextualized understanding of health, but also
79 allows rebirth and regeneration, which in turn build self-determination to fruition. When anti-colonial history and Black radical tradition are brought to us, they become vital pieces of restoration. To be free we must unveil the violence enacted against us by Euro-
America. To be free we must unearth our collective power, which we are often unaware lives inside us. To be free we must begin humanity anew.
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