A MODERN SLAVE NARRATIVE (O’Bu Mar’Konash)

People often refer to African American servitude/slavery as if it is a thing of the past… Using phrases like– “When we were slaves…“ or “Back during the time of slavery…” My question is– what is your definition of slavery and when did it end? If you define slavery merely in the sense of physical bondage, must I remind you that our land of the “Free" has the largest population of prisoners on the face of the planet? The United States has only 5% of the world’s overall population, but somehow 25% of all of the people in the entire world who are locked up– belongs to the USA (the land of the “free"). Black people comprise a mere 12% of the US population, yet 40% of the US’s prison population is Black.. According to a New York Times article, the US spent $80 “BILLION" in 2010 alone on incarceration; this industrial prison complex is even defined as “slavery" in the US constitution— see article XIII, section 1… My point of all those stats and facts is to point out that the “physical" slave trade is alive, well and more lucrative than ever before. Nevertheless, there is a servitude that is more detrimentally destructive than being bound by mere shackles and/or bars, a servitude that the physical eye cannot behold.

Typically when the African slaves were working the fields, they weren’t in chains and shackles; they were physically free to roam or go wherever. Plus, there were far more slaves than there were overseers, but what kept them from escaping or overthrowing the overseers? What keeps a “trap nigga" trapped trapping in the trap? What keeps them from escaping their surroundings (the hood)? What compels them to accept, tolerate and ultimately become victims of such deplorable and dehumanizing conditions? Inasmuch, what is it that keeps many of our most gifted and intelligent people working dead end jobs– occupations that they utterly detest?

“Ignorance, fear and dependency.”

Ignorance begets fear, and ignorance and fear beget dependency.

• Ignorance- of both self and the encompassing knowledge to substantially build for self without taking away from and destroying others.

• Fear- of what we do not know, and since we’re ignorant of ourselves– we become fearful and skeptical of those who look like us, thus our worst enemy becomes our self. The possibility of escaping what we have accepted as “life" is also frightening, for all we’ve ever known is the perceived reality of our surroundings, and anything outside of the proximity of our confinement (I imagine) is just as scary and unfamiliar as the wilderness that surrounded many of the Southern slave plantations.

• Dependent- on the familiarity of the existence we accept, thus becoming dependent on the very system that ultimately contributes to our demise. Many find an acute comfort in the chaos… These notions are the rotten fruits of a system of oppression – a system that this nation was conceived upon. And these fruit exists only in the mind; therefore it is a mentality or state of mind.

The slavery I speak of is not defined by chains on our bodies, but by the yokes and cages of our minds. The greatest slave trader in American history (Willie Lynch) wrote a letter to other slave traders titled, “The Making of a Slave". A letter in which the overall premise is (in his words), “KEEP THE BODY, TAKE THE MIND! In other words, break the will to resist…“ The key methods that he outlined to achieve this was– deception and intimidation through humiliation; over time, these methods effectively contributed to a “psychological rewiring”, or in his own words– “…braking them from one form of mental life to another.”

We were never “freed", at least not entirely; the thing that made us slaves centuries ago is the same thing that has us enslaved today; and that’s our mind. The same mentality that contributes to our servitude and demise today– is as it was in the days of our ancestors, and the most damning thing about the slaves of today, is that we’re distracted and deceived by an illusion of “freedom". What’s worse than being a slave– is being a slave that doesn’t know he’s a slave…

“ You can lock my body, but free my mind…“

July 5 2013 par Mar'Konash