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For instance, if a Black person is watching tv, instead of being bombarded by anti-Black images and messages hour after hour, they should be able to relax and be at peace in the knowledge that Black people control the media. When their children go off to school in the morning, Black parents and other members of their community who provide love and support for their children, should be able to know that the teachers won’t be anti-Black and won’t fill their children’s heads with ideas that make them hate themselves or feel less worthy and less valuable. The Black community should be confident that their children are being taught their history, their ideas (Black Thought), and are being told they are beautiful and good. There shouldn’t be any worries about schoolmates of another race making their children feel inferior. When they grow up and go to college, Black students should be confident that Black administrators and Black professors have created an environment and curriculum which encourages their entire educational development, not only providing skills for the workplace but nurturing their minds and their sense of community. And when these students go out into the workplace, they should be confident that Black-controlled industries will be hiring them with Black managers in charge. Racism will become a non-factor. Most significantly, when Black people have control over their community and have Black citizenship they won’t be forced to go through every day under the constant terror of being harassed, brutalized and killed by the police. The psychological weight that would be lifted from them would be historic. A new sense of energy and security could be channeled into self-affirmation and community-building. I have little doubt that such a moment in history would lead to unprecedented strong race relations between citizens of this Black nation and whites in the current nation. It’s almost impossible to have truly strong or positive race relations when one group is constantly required to bear the burden of oppression, and the other group feels the need to ignore or deny the existence of this oppression while also enforcing it. The levels of tension and dishonesty are an enormous drain on everyone involved. What a sweet and beautiful day it would be when Black people would simply not have to think about whites anymore. In the same way that amerikans spend so little of our time thinking about Lithuanians or Norwegians. And when you aren’t forced to think about someone, or forced to live the way they tell you to live, it’s a pleasure to get together and visit voluntarily. Black people and Europeans on this continent (amerikans) would still talk to one another. We might even still live in the same neighborhoods. But the difference is that Black people would be their own people. They would no longer be surrounded by the circle of whiteness. The black dot on the white page: the exception to the rule. White rule. Black people would be a nation. An entity unto themselves. They would not be required to imagine themselves within the context of whiteness. Their minds would be freed from the perpetual interpretation of every action and word (it seems even every thought) through whiteness. Africans (Black people) would simply be Africans. A people defined by their own terms, their identity neither within nor without the boundaries of whiteness.
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Samantha Foster (an experiment in revolutionary expression: by samantha j foster)