Author: Nkozia Bethune

As a self-identified black woman born in America, I can shamefully say that I have discounted the contributions of black/indigenous women in history and I can only hope that the following writings can help attest to the power, strength, and potential of black women. It is critical to note that when speaking of black women, it is implied the corporation of indigenous, native, non-white women as well.

Unfortunately, in today’s age, black women have forgotten their history presumptuously losing their power and strength in this patriarchal society. The Afro consciousness of man and women have been compromised because we do not recognize the true nature of our ancestors. We have adopted the behaviors and mannerisms of our captors and in the process lost the matriarchal society. The Afro people have either been taken from their history or indoctrinated by their colonizer’s deception of education. This society has distorted many truths of history but especially for women. Black women were once protectors of land and society, seen as sacred to the balance of life and death. However, black women today have subconsciously chosen subjugation and allowed over-sexualization of their bodies – not understanding the the full spectrum of sex, and the power it has to create life. 

Black women have been the bearer of humanity and it has been a hidden truth because of the fear of black women. Black families have been strategically targeted by colonizers and Europeans because it bestows the psychological trauma of the descendants. A prime example in America during slavery, the Black man was stripped of his ability to produce and protect the family and the Black woman was stripped of her duty to be in control of reproductive rights. However, it is much larger than this because the black woman solidifies the black family as she nurtures not only the children but the men. We begin to recognize mestizaje as the first attempt to dismantle the unity and peace amongst indigenous/black households. Mestjzaje is the romanticization of rape and sexual assault as a foundation for people but it was also a tactic to create social hierarchies, therefore, creating psychological tactics towards self-hatred. Nevertheless, I am stating that black, indigenous, native and non-white women must bear arms to begin the battles to end white supremacy. Women are oftentimes discounted, abused and mistreated, becoming the primary victims in this unjust world and it would be and injustice not to take a vital role in our own liberation.

When the women liberate themselves, the families, communities and nations will simultaneously become liberated because we are the bearer of humanity. (Can you dig it?) From this understanding, we can attest that if the women are oppressed, their families, communities, and nations are also oppressed. Race and racism are often a common discourse but we fail to recognize that this social construct is created by white men and is only voiced by them. Our colonizers have created social structures to divide and conquer routinely. This includes constructing institutions, concepts, credentials which benefits their delusions of superiority out of FEAR of the indigenous woman and man. Negative emotional psychological states such as insecurity, fear, and self-doubt fuel the engines of patriarchal white male supremacy. White men have formed a fraternity of whiteness whose agenda is to eliminate their collective feelings of insecurity, fear, and self-doubt which have plagued them for centuries and bestows these spirits upon the indigenous blacks group which can be attributed as generational curses.

This fear is of genetic annihilation which is apparent through the studies of duplicity in biological anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, economics, United States history, European history, international politics, and security, etc. Their curricula have a basis of indoctrination which decides to share a story which is untrue while also letting us know they were avarice and jealous of their counterparts who were nonwhite. They were jealous of their societies so they created anthropology, they were jealous of their knowledge so they created Egyptology, they were jealous of our bodies so they created medical practices to harm and abuse us. The westernized education one objective is to promote fear and submissiveness in all non-white people. In the Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors, the beloved Frances Cress Welsing beautifully identified:

“The Color-Confrontation theory states the white or color-deficient Europeans responded psychologically, with a profound sense of numerical inadequacy and color inferiority, in their confrontations with the majority of the world’s people– all whom possessed varying degrees of color-producing capacity. This psychological response, whether conscious or unconscious revealed an inadequacy based on the most obvious and fundamental part of their being, their external appearance. As might be anticipated…whites defensively developed an uncontrollable sense of hostility and aggression.”

Consequently creating the enforcement of businesses and politicians that White men must remain on top by any means necessary, adhering to all changes in laws, policies, and rules according to their needs, concerns, and desires.Now following back to the concept of mestizaje, the infamous Angela Y. Davis describes the rape of black women during the European slave trade as being manifested as an institutional pattern stating:

“It would be a mistake to regard the institutionalized pattern of rape during slavery as an expression of white men’s sexual urges, otherwise stifled by the specter of a white woman goods chastity. That would be far too simplistic an explanation. Rape was a weapon of domination, a weapon of repression, whose covert goal was to extinguish enslaved women’s will to resist and in the process, to demoralize their men.”

Sexual weaponry is a tactic of white supremacists to dehumanize black women and men. The concepts of integration and interracial relations between blacks and whites find a way to make this truth omitted from history, thus, perpetuating self-hatred in our families and confusing later labeled “mixed” children. As a result of this social conditioning and spirit of confusion, it has instilled in society to be better at performing various sexual acts that they are at developing and maintaining the psychological and spiritual elements of love.

This is where the over-sexualization of black women is now understood, seen and perpetuated by not society alone but black women themselves. The true disgust and misfortune of it all are the black men who unknowingly, through social conditioning and miseducation adopt the abusive and perverted behavior of white male supremacists toward their black women. The life bearer and cradle of humanity.