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Asar Imhotep Amen, Ph. D. Creative Growth and Development Associates Mentacide: The Psychological and Physical Murder of Black Men, Women, and Children By Asar Imhotep Amen, Ph. D. Introductory Remarks There are two fundamental questions that will plague the Black nation in Amerika for the remainder of the twenty-first century if we don't get ourselves together as a nation of people within this nation. The first question is: Will Black people survive mass murder ("genocide") by White Amerika in 2015 and beyond? The second question is: Who will win the battle for the collective Black mind? Are we Black people capable and willing to change our slave mentality? Do we as Black people have the collective will to fight the enemies of our National interest? The battlefield in 2015 will be (as it was in the '90's) for the collective mind. It is a war that we must win. Whoever wins the collective mind and will of Black people will ultimately determine whether the physical war against the enemies of our race will be won, or if the Blacks of Amerika will be destroyed. Clearly, many of our problems lie in our slave mentality. I am not blaming the victims for the origin of their problems, but the victims must bear the burden of failure to resolve their problems. Who else can be held responsible for our survival but us? It is the intention of this government and of white people in general to destroy us. It is their intention to destroy our life-support systems. Without life-support systems, life cannot survive. But is it an issue of mere survival? We as a people want more than just to exist on a physical level, like animals. There must be a higher level of existence. What is the ultimate meaning and purpose of life? As slaves, we survived. Now we must survive with a purpose, a vision, a national direction. This purpose for which we live must be a sovereign nation with borders and land and an army to protect and secure it. But these things cannot occur without a change in our mentality. The Mentacide Concept Mentacide, according to the late, great Ancestor Dr. Bobby E. Wright (1985), is the systematic, deliberate destruction of an individual's or group's collective mind with the aim of group termination. Mentacide is the silent rape of a people's collective mind by the penetration and perpetuation of alien culture, values, belief systems, or ideas for the purpose of group destruction or for political use of the victim group. Mentacide's method is to control the behavior of the victim through mind control. Mentacide systematically utilizes the institutions which project images, values, beliefs, and opinions. In my opinion, mentacide is designed to reduce Afrikans (Diasporian and Continental) to a state of subservience essential for our psychological and social oppression/enslavement. That failing, the next objective is to reduce us to a state of profound psychological incompetence sufficient to neutralize us as efficient, self-directing antagonists. That failing, the only alternative is to destroy us preferably by making us desperate enough to destroy ourselves. In addition, mentacide consist of any organized system of psychological intervention in which the psychopathic oppressor injects his own demented thoughts and words into the minds and mouths of the oppressed/enslaved. By assaulting ego strengths, culture shock is deliberately created with psychological and political warfare tactics, severe miseducation, terror, massive acculturation, divide and conquer strategies, subjugation, Eurocentric propaganda, manipulation, racism/white-supremacy, violence, poverty, malnutrition, non-Afrikan religions, narcotization, isolation (e.g., ghettos and prisons which are one in the same), alienation, intimidation, hopelessness, powerlessness, demonization, economic sabotage, marginalization, devaluation, and as a result the oppressed/enslaved becomes increasingly vulnerable to the implantation of ideas or the subliminal suggestion of behavior that would ordinarily be rejected as unacceptable and/or abnormal. Mentacide effects four major areas: 1.) Behavior Control 2.) Thought Control 3.) Emotional Control 4.) Information Control Mentacide creates an illusion which the victim believes to be real until it's too late. Black people are given the belief that they are citizens of the United States, yet the reality is that Black people are slaves in this country. Dr. Bobby E. Wright defined enslavement as follows: whenever the life-sustaining resources (food, shelter, water, etc.) of the group (the Blacks) are controlled by another group (the Whites, the Arabs). Nevertheless many Black people believe that they are actually first-class citizens in Amerika. Effects of Mentacide Our collective mind has been raped, violated and penetrated with white perceptions and white belief systems. Our behavior cannot help but be white-inspired. What other way do we know as a people? Unless Black people change their thinking, we will be phased out of existence, like obsolete equipment. Remember, we are neither needed nor wanted by the society at large. Machines provide the labor Black people used to do. Machines and computers are cheaper and less troublesome than people, especially Blacks. The controllers of this society have made use of psychological warfare to erode and destroy the will and mind of Black people. This is Mentacide pure and simple. Once the victims discover the truth, we are forced to change our lives. But, the victim fears change because the victim doesn't know where that change will take him or her. Indeed, we fear the unknown. The victim seeks to deny. But, denial of this reality is problematical because the victim is reminded every day. The victim is caught in an internal double bind, damned if they don't, damned if they do. The effects of mentacide begin to overwhelm the victim, causing survival fatigue. As the victimizer applies continuous, constant pressure, the victim begins to slowly die inside. As the victim loses the self, depression and fear set in, causing illness, death, etc. What has the victim done to deserve this fate of a slow, tortuous death? The victim has lost hope and has learned to be helpless. When the victims cease to see themselves as victims, but as a nation within a nation, then the victims regain themselves. The victims must reject the society's culture and values. Only then can the victims minimize the effects of mentacide. The victims must develop a new consciousness, based on truth, to replace the negative consciousness implanted by the psychopathic victimizer. The victims must seize and develop their own institutions in order to reinforce and encourage their belief system and behavior. The key is that the victims must create a new generation of minds which have been brought into the new consciousness, to the point that it becomes a part of them. The "slave mentality," however, is a major impediment. "Slave Mentality": A Meaningful, Useful Colloquialism The Black slave in Amerika views the world through his master's eyes, which is why our belief system is not "ours," but rather that of the slave master. How a race perceives the world will determine what that race will think and believe about the world, which will determine what that race will do about the world. One of our greatest problems is that this slave mentality that is made up of learned perceptions, learned belief systems, learned behaviors taught to us over 400 years of slavery. This mentality is an Amerikan-made product designed with the intention of controlling the Black slave. The Afrikan psychology literature uses the conceptual terms mentacide (defined earlier) and psychological misorientation (operating with a non-Afrikan belief system) to describe and explain this prevalent psychological state. However, employing the colloquial "slave mentality" term when discussing mentacide-induced misorientations is appealing because it grounds the technical terms and the reader in the true reality of the Black condition: enslaved, slave mentality being prevalent. Being free begins with our mentality, for there is no way we can become an independent people with our present slave mentality. Six factors were involved in creating this slave mentality: (1) The establishment of strict discipline over the captive Afrikan community in Amerika; the development of "unconditional submission"; (2) The development within Black people of a sense of personal inferiority, especially in relation to their Afrikan ancestry; (3) The development of raw fear, "to awe them with a sense of their master's enormous power" (of course, behind the power of the master stood the power of the local and national governments); (4) The establishment within the enslaved person of a sense that the master's welfare was really synonymous with his own; (5) The creation of a willingness within the Afrikan captives to accept the slaveholders' standards of conduct as their own; and (6) The development within the captive people of "a habit of perfect dependence upon those who claimed to be their masters." If we are to be free, then we must change this state of mind. We must reject everything in White Law Society because only through this rejection can the mind rebuild itself with new thoughts. This also gives time for the new thoughts to take root. These new thoughts must come out of the development of a collective race consciousness which is based in skin color first. That is, being Black is the first requisite standard for our collective race consciousness. At first glance, the criterion of skin color might seem trivial. Actually, it is paramount. Dr. Bobby E. Wright stated the matter plainly: We are in a race war. We are the only people who don't know it (that we are in the midst of a race war with the whites.) And, we are the only people who don't know what race we are. (Historically supports Wright's observation of a continuing race war. Indeed, mentacide is effectively undermining Blacks' racial awareness, which is defined as "the knowledge of the visible differences between racial categories by which one classifies people into these divisions and, once such knowledge is cognitively achieved, the acceptance of it." Without racial awareness Blacks cannot contemplate the social theory articulated by the Ancestor Marcus Garvey: Race First by Dr. Tony Martin 1976). The second standard upon which this collective race consciousness is built is that of laws and interests. Until a race knows its laws and interests, it can never become a force in the world. We must become Black Law conscious, for Black Law consciousness today means movement toward independence, sovereignty tomorrow. Common interest + Common Laws = Common Destiny. To be authentic, Blacks' interests and Blacks' laws have to be based on a sense of Afrikan-centered history and culture that is concretely applied to contemporary circumstances. The common destiny for Blacks resulting from this would reinforce Blacks' collective race consciousness. In turn, this would be enabling for a Black Law Society that is neither in reflection of nor solely a reaction against White Law Society to take root. There would be no room for the development or continuation of slave mentality. However, the perpetration of mass murder ("genocide") on Blacks must be derailed and ultimately stopped if an effective Black Law Society is to be realized and sustained. Genocide? Since through the efficacy of mentacide our collective race consciousness is underdeveloped, White Law Society has effectively maneuvered the Blacks of Amerika into genocide-prone position. Despite all of the available statistics on life chances and quality of life in the United States indicating that Blacks exist on the precipice of extirpation, many Blacks refuse to admit or believe it. However, it must be understood that it is normal behavior for the victim to disbelieve, since nowhere in the victim's "collective view" can it be imagined why any group would seek to destroy them. This is the mentality of the victims. Consider the following quotation from Destruction of European Jews: "People do not easily accept the fact that they are going to be killed; if they have the know-how to resist, they will defend themselves as best they can. If, on the other hand, they have unlearned the art of resistance, they will repress their knowledge of the true situation and will attempt to go on as though life could not change. The Jews could not resist. In complying with German orders they therefore tried, to the utmost of their ability, to ignore all evidence of danger and to forget all intimation of death. They pretended that nothing unusual was happening to them, and that belief became so crucial that they did anything to perpetuate it." To overcome this denial we must first realize the reasons why Amerika must destroy 30 million members of our race: Black people in Amerika are no longer needed by industry. Black people are obsolete as a labor force. With the advent of automation, Black people have become expendable. S. Wilhelm, author of "Who Needs the Negro" (1975) has provided some important insight on this point. For a time, the post-industrial white man was still dependent on human labor to run his machines. Now machines themselves have liberated him from that dependence. Machines run machines, making Black workers obsolete. This is the new social outlook of Amerika. Thus, Wilhelm further elaborates, "The black race is caught in a cross-fire of technological change. He is in the transition period. Once the solution to the white problem, today he is the white problem. Why? Because 1) machines produce more efficiently than people (less time and more work done), 2) it costs less to operate a machine in the long run, 3) machines create a greater profit, and 4) there is no longer a need for blacks because of the ultimate technological advances." Amerikan wealth is limited and the economy is not growing as in previous years. Whites and Blacks must compete for the same resources. It becomes an issue of survival of the fittest. Amerikans will attempt to destroy the Black race rather than allow our people to acquire any resources because it is a White Law Society view that "a job for a Black means one less for the whites." White Law Society is in pursuit of its own interests. Andrew Hacker, author of "The end of the American era" (1970) has stated the situation plainly: "Those who preoccupy themselves with the immorality and irresponsibility found in slum society would do well to turn their attention to the new generations of youngsters being spawned in our ghettos this very moment. These infants will be adolescents 15 years hence and potential criminals, terrorists, and unemployed a decade thereafter. Having come into the world unwanted by their parents and unneeded by society, they stand only the slightest chance of knowing love or encouragement or even recognition of their humanity. In the process of creation right now are rioters and rapists, murderers and marauders, who will despoil society's landscape before this century has run its course. The time has come for some unwelcome candor; to admit that white America does not want to deploy its resources toward redeeming the black citizenry, (because) any meaningful amelioration of Black America's condition would require money and effort, personnel and priorities - indeed, moral and emotional commitments - that the white society simply will not muster." Hacker continued: "White America's responses...will adhere to less costly alternatives...Indeed, the white majority has already committed itself to a course whose effect, if not intention, will be to frustrate the most pressing of black aspirations. White wealth, white votes, plus the sheer preponderance of white numbers will be used to preserve the style of life white Americans have won for themselves in recent decades. The white population has nothing to gain and everything to lose by any significant alteration of the lines now separating the races." National Vision A mentality of proactive national vision must undergird our drive toward national independence. What is our national vision? Do we as a race have a National Vision? Are we just locked into the here and now? Where do we see ourselves by the year 2030? As used here, "vision" means being able to see mentally, in vivid clarity, what others dare not see, or are blinded to. Vision allows a people to see new possibilities, while others see only the impossibilities. Vision is the balance between reality and dreams. Dreams are imaginations never carried out, ideas never materialized. The dream mentality is cheap and requires no price because it remains in the dreamer's mind. "Reality" as used here is simply what is now. Reality demands only to be lived for the moment. Each mentality carries with it its own behavior. The slave mentality discussed earlier lives for the moment, seeing reality now, never daring to look beyond to a possible world of its own creation. The slave mentality never imagines the possibility of that ever happening. This mindset sees the reality of White Law Society as being absolute, unchangeable, and overwhelming. This mentality views reality as rigid. This mindset is not receptive to new possibilities nor can it perceive a notion of independence, borders, or a national Black Law Government. This mentality is limited, not just in thought, but also in direction. It tries the same old solutions that, frankly have never worked for our people. This mind is locked into dead-end roads that are devoid of creativity. This so-called realist cannot see beyond his nose. He fails to understand that reality can be made, changed, and brought into existence. Then there is the mentality of the dreamer who wishes, hopes, and prays that reality will go away, never giving of their time and energy in order to make the reality change into their dreams. The dreamer has "spaced" on reality and lives in a universe of fantasy. The dreamer is too pure to touch the contaminated tools of reality, to make his or her dreams a reality. This mentality has lost its balance and flexibility. The dreamers hope unreal hopes, pray for salvation, failing to understand that they are their own salvation. Finally, there is the visionary who dares to look into the unknown, who dares to imagine the creation of a new Black world. It is imperative that the visionary embrace and actualize an Afrikan-centered cultural and historical frame of reference lest s/he engage in misguided action. The visionary uses reality as a tool to carve a universe of his own image. The visionary uses reality to ensure that his vision will exist. The visionary uses reality to recreate reality. This is dangerous to our enemies because the visionary ceases to see himself as a slave. Her/his mentality is one of balance and has no "hang-ups" implanted through mentacide. S/he is free mentally to think and grow to the highest level of his/her potential. Technically speaking, the visionary as described here reflects the Black personality states of correct orientation and Afrikan self-consciousness. The Visionary's Task The greatest test of a visionary is whether or not s/he has the ability to sell that vision to the race. The masses of our race, through this vision, can acquire a higher level of consciousness. The masses of our people must believe in the vision, share it, and support it. The dedicated of the race must struggle to implement it. The races thinkers, planners, and formulators must figure out how to bring the vision into existence. The Blacks of Amerika need a national vision which will become our national direction. We need a "Mantle of Heaven." All nations have a vision for tomorrow - a new world, a new life, a destiny. The ancestor Dr. Chancellor Williams, author of "The Destruction of Black Civilization" (1976) provided the race with a mighty foundation and blueprint from which to achieve our national vision and national direction. That our race has not effectively moved toward proactive national vision and direction reflects more the formidable grip that mentacide has on the psyche of Blacks, sustaining the slave mentality, than the inability to formulate the vision. Clearly, then, the Afrikan-centered psychologists and social workers, and other healers of our people must run the gauntlet thrown down by our enemy and work to overcome mentacide so that our national vision can be realized. As Dr. Chancellor Williams documented, "The Black World (is) at the Crossroads": our current course leads to death by mass murder ("genocide"); the successful course requires national vision. The following works are highly recommended for Nation Building: (1) The Blueprint For Black Power by Dr. Amos N. Wilson (2) The Destruction of Black Civilization by Dr. Chancellor Williams (3) The Sankofa Movement: ReAfrikanization and The Reality of War by Kwame Agyei & Akusa Nson Akoto (4) The Rebirth of African Civilization by Dr. Chancellor Williams Correspondence: -- (Aka Asar Imhotep Amen, Ph.D.) -- -- --
