How many Blacks live in Africa? Very few and only if they immigrated.

I was born in the United States in 1950, the daughter of an immigrant, grand-daughter of the Deaf, niece of a dwarf, neighbor of a blind boy. I grew up and later worked with many refugees from many wars and attended a working-class public school that included a special class for the mildly mentally-retarded. My relatives, neighbors, school-mates, teachers and fellow employees included Norwegian, Latvian, Dutch, Friesian, Afrikaner, East Indian, Flemish, American Deaf, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, English, Scottish, German, Jewish, French, Bohemian, Hungarian, Italian, Greek, American Black, native Hawaiian, Lebanese, Syrian, Armenian, Eritrean, Nigerian, Hindu, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, Mississippian, Puerto Rican, Canadian and Michigan Yoopers. Each group took care of their own except two Negro girls from Kenya who did not join forces in a strange new country and even refused to speak to each other. Today there have been about 40 separate ethnic groups identified in Kenya.¹

I heard many different languages spoken daily. My Dutch grandparents spoke Dutch. My Deaf grandparents spoke Deaf. (American deaf sign language is not a word-for-word translation of English. It's more like a shorthand demonstration of physical movement.) They talked and wrote the way they signed. My grandmother said, "I store go." My uncle Nick spoke Norwegian, my cousin Helen's husband spoke Bohemian. My neighbors; Mr. Ribski spoke Polish, Mrs. Hubbard spoke French, Mr. Schenden spoke German, Mrs. Casares spoke Spanish. At school; the janitor, a WWII Displaced Person who had been a college professor in the "old country", spoke Latvian, the principal, Mr. Romulus V. Romani, spoke both Italian and English so we students knew he must be connected to the Mafia so we gave him respect, Miss M, the gym teacher, a former Prima Ballerina in the "old country" spoke only Hungarian. (she demonstrated how she wanted you to stand, then moved you physically if you did it wrong). The Greek students talked Greek, the Italian students talked Italian, the Black students talked Black. I really thought of Black as just another ethnic group. The only preferences I observed were for boys and the rich.

Everyone followed their own ethnic customs in their own home. Everyone attended an ethnic church where sermons were given in the "old country" way. At home I was served Dutch food which I hated - plain, plain, plain - herring, tongue, sardines. When I visited a German home, I was fed German food which I did not like - heavy unrecognizable stuff in thick gravy. When I visited a Polish home, I was served Polish food which I liked the best; hamburger wrapped in cabbage (golabki), cheese wrapped in what looked like ravioli (pierogi), sausage (kielbasa), sauerkraut and rye bread. When I visited a Black home, I was served soul food; pork chops, red beans, black-eyed peas and corn bread. But outside the home, EVERYONE was an American.

Negro is a race "a division of mankind possessing traits that are transmissible by

descent."² Negroes in Africa have a tribal or ethnic identity "people classed according to common traits and customs"² - Kikuyu, Bujeba, Benga, Zulu. American Indian is a race. Sioux, Cheyenne, Apache, Ottawa are tribal or ethnic identities. Caucasian is a race. Celtic, Jute, Pict, Norman are tribal or ethnic identities. Not all Caucasians are White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Just ask the Irish. Not all Caucasians are even white-skinned. The story of little black Sambo is a story about a Caucasian boy in India with very black skin.³

Not every person of the same race is from the same ethnic group. Not every person of the same ethnic group is from the same social class. Nor is every person of the same

country from the same race or ethnic group. Been in Yugoslavia lately? Oh, that's right. They had a Civil War.

So why are Blacks in America so confused? Negroes were kidnapped in western Africa by enemy Negro tribes or Arabs and sold to white slave traders. Negro slaves who were strangers to each other from different tribes were forced together outside of their homes in Africa. They may not have spoken the same language. They may not have had the same religion. They may not have had the same customs. But they had to be together yet apart as a group. They had to invent a new language, a new religion, new customs. And they did. They replaced their many old tribal identities with a new one - American Black.

Black is an ethnicity, Negro is a race. Slavery, the creation of the Black ethnic group in the United States, ended but segregation took its place and the Black ethnic group continued to exist, separately and equally albeit at a lower scale. White society could be divided into upper class, middle class, blue collar and White Trash and they lived on opposite sides of the railroad tracks. Black society could be divided into upper class, middle class, blue collar and Black Trash (Nigger). But unlike Caucasians, all Blacks of every financial class lived together in a ghetto "a quarter of a City in which members of a minority group live."². Rich, poor, educated, uneducated - it didn't matter - all Blacks lived together.

Integration changed that. The upper class and middle class Blacks moved out of the

ghetto and suddenly the social structure that had existed in Black culture for hundreds of

years was broken. Black culture got lost in the shuffle. The lower class, the poor, the old,

the uneducated remained in the ghetto. Suddenly Black meant poor, uneducated, unruly.

Any person of the Negro race who sought prosperity was called Uncle Tom. Any person

of the Negro race who behaved civilly was accused of following White Man's Law.

Suddenly being poor, uneducated and addicted to drugs and only being poor uneducated

and addicted to drugs identified you as a true Black. If you're a Negro and you are educated and prosperous, you are accused of being disloyal to the black race.

But this narrowing identification of Black culture is a new recent creation formed by

integration. Now the confines of the ghetto are mental not just physical. Blacks see Black and White but fail to see the many shades of gray. Legal racism has ended. Blacks forced integration into any Caucasian group without regard for ethnicity not realizing that any different ethnic group would have been rejected. Blacks don't understand that Caucasian ethnic groups have to "pass" too. The Polish would reject the Dutch. The Dutch Protestants would reject the Dutch Catholics. The Hearing would reject the Deaf.

I really wanted to be Polish when I was a kid as the Polish kids played outdoors on Sunday. As an adult I deliberately chose to move to a Polish Catholic neighborhood that just happened to fall on the boundary line between two parishes. A neighbor welcomed me with, "Are you going to St. James or Sacred Heart?" How funny she looked when she heard my reply, "I'm not Catholic." On my way to the bus stop early in the morning, I walked past little old Polish ladies out front of their homes sweeping the sidewalk. They all waved good morning while chattering away in Polish. I smiled and waved back. It never crossed my mind to be offended. At the neighborhood drug store, the clerks spoke Polish first and it was only when they saw my puzzled response that they switched to English. At the neighborhood branch of the Public Library the entire second floor was devoted to books written in Polish. It was disconcerting, though, when I had to vote for President of the United States in a Polish hall where Polish was the only language spoken, but at least the ballots were in English.

I studied Linguistics (the scientific study of language) in college just when bi-lingual education was being proposed. The idea was that any student could attend bi-lingual classes as was common in other countries. The classes were to be taught in the native language of the teacher regardless of the ethnic identity of the student. It was viewed as an opportunity to expose all interested students to other cultures NOT segregate students by their own ethnicity thus preventing them from becoming Americans. America is about sharing not excluding.

To quote Tank Johnson (a Black football player for the Bears) " Where I grew up you'll never understand. White America or however you want to put it. (sic) I grew up different" (sic).² So did I. White America never existed for all Caucasians. It never existed for me. I grew up different (ly) too. White America is a social class that was predominately White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (English and Episcopal) now becoming more and more defined by how young, pretty and rich you appear. Actions no longer determine who you are which is what made America unique. Its what someone else thinks of you by how you look to them that identifies who you are. Your ethics "what is good and bad"⁴ and morals "principals of right or wrong in behavior"⁴ are determined not by your beliefs or behavior but by what someone else thinks your morals and ethics are by looking at you - how fashionable your dress is, how old you are, how skinny you are, how big your house is. Political Correctness is telling someone what they should think instead of asking. Blacks successfully fought the old racism but fail to see that it has been supplanted by classism. They are losing this new fight. We all are.

Class is so important to some people as it can mean power and control.

The Good Ole' Boys of my generation had the power and control of the business world while their wives controlled society. It was believed that the domination of socially-inferior women and Blacks was for their own good. The boys selected the best candidate for promotion. He had to be a white male, that was a given. Then the candidate was mentored, encouraged, trained and his back was watched. He was brought into the fold, protected when he strayed but punished if he strayed too far.

Now comes Affirmative Action. The Good Ole Boys suddenly HAD to promote females and Blacks. They should have selected the best Black or female candidate and brought them into the fold. Then the Black/female candidate should have been mentored, encouraged and trained. Affirmative Action should have just opened the door while the Black and/or female candidate still should have earned any subsequent promotion.

But instead of selecting the best candidate, they selected the most convenient candidates who were not mentored, encouraged or trained. They were just kicked up to the top and ignored. They "achieved" success without earning it. They were given free rein to ignore common practice and break the law while being held unanswerable for their actions as any criticism, all criticism even with plenty of evidence was dismissed as bigotry. These newly promoted, untrained, unmentored, unwatched humans began to believe they deserved their position of power not because they had earned it but because they were entitled based on the physical characteristics they were born with courtesy of their ancestors. This has led to the growth of abuse in the business world.

Abuse is a term greatly mis-understood. It is not about uncontrolled anger it is about control of others without constraint. The elements of abuse are " control, entitlement, disrespect, excuses, and justifications including victim blaming ---"⁵ An abuser believes "that he has a special status and that it provides him with exclusive rights and privileges that do not apply to (you)"⁵. An abuser is willing to sink lower to win a fight. He believes he's smarter because he's willing to sink lower. Winning is all that matters to him not how. If he has to destroy you in order to win, he doesn't care. If you're unwilling to destroy him to win, he doesn't see morals and ethics he sees stupidity and cowardice.

I was abused by a female boss who got her job through Affirmative Action. Some employees laughed at her, some enabled, some took advantage of her victims, some suffered. I suffered. Why was I so vulnerable? So I read up on the subject. I read the Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans and Why Does He DO That? by Lundy Bancroft.

I was abused as a pre-teen although I didn't know what it was called then. When my mother got a job she left me in the care of an abuser. When my mother discovered the abuse, she protected the abuser because "it was easier."⁷ I believed it was my fault. But no one talked publicly about family dirty laundry back then so I didn't know it had a name. I didn't understand. To paraphrase Mr. Bancroft - Children who are abused will be at greater risk for accommodating abuse by others as they go through life.

Both books are about abusive husbands so when I showed my discovery to others, they dismissed my comparison since my abusers hadn't been men. Abusive husbands might be the most common but it is not exclusive to them and I believe it is growing rapidly far beyond that narrow application. Abuse is unrecognized in female abusers because women use more subtle tactics but susceptible victims notice. Since many female abusers use ineffective tactics, most men and many women just laugh at their attempts but not all female abusers are ineffective and some victims are vulnerable.

I quote from Mr. Bancroft, "The term abuse is about power; it means that a person is taking advantage of a power imbalance to exploit or control someone else. Where power imbalances exist, such as between men and women, adults and children, rich or poor some people will take advantage of those circumstances for their own purposes. Thus the defining point of abuse is when the man starts to exercise power over the woman in a way that causes harm to her and creates a privileged status for him".⁵ Mr. Bancroft goes on to say that abuse is a form of oppression. "A home where a woman is abused is a small-scale model of much larger oppressive systems that work in remarkably similar ways". I have personally witnessed abuse between Black or White, criminal or victim, boss or employee, company or customer, politician or voter.

In the United States, Black or White is one of the oldest and most-enduring of these power imbalance categories. Racism is simply a " belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race"² Racism is caused by ignorance. Blacks were an easy target of abuse for centuries in the U. S. because racism was legal. Not all racists are abusers. Not all abusers are racist. Racists who aren't abusers don't understand how their simple ignorant hatred can possibly adversely affect people they've never met. Abusers who aren't racists don't care about about anyone whom they perceive as weaker. Racism is not the cause of the abuse it's just a convenient cover.  And you wonder why Blacks are so confused?

Now abusive women whose abuse of other women was limited to only social interaction have been given power in the business world where they have been able to widened their scope of abuse. Women abuse differently so its not so easily identifiable since their abuse rarely leaves a black eye. A lot of women have no self-identity. She is someone's daughter, someone's mother, someone's wife, someone's friend. She only associates with other women who are just like her as there are only two possibilities in her world - Right and non-existent.. She cannot exist unless you are Wrong. Different doesn't register. If you're different you MUST BE WRONG or she cannot exist. She will laugh at you. She will gossip about you behind your back. She will lie to your face but she justifies her "white lies" as being polite. But she's lying to herself. She lies because she is a coward. She's nice if she smiles to your face. What she does behind your back doesn' t count. She's a lying coward. She cannot accept different. She will force you to be like her. She will force you to be RIGHT like her or she feels justified in destroying you because you must be WRONG.

She believes as a female she is not capable of anything beyond control of her physical appearance. Being pretty is the only power she has to attract a MAN who has the true power. So her "job" is to attract the man who has the money and power she wants. She can then be the power behind the throne by pretending. She can attain what she wants easier by lying down and spreading her legs instead of standing on her own two feet. Standing is very hard particularly if you are a coward. She feels morally and ethically superior to those tough old broads who are less pretty because they WORK..

Now these women want a career but they only see that career as an extension of their real "job" - the need and desire to be pretty. So if they are attractive, they can get away with doing a poor job and feel justified in demeaning anyone who disagrees. I call this the "Perfect Wedding" mentality. Their wedding must be perfect. What they want is perfect. What you want is WRONG. Facts and logic are irrelevant. They got away with this because the man who is thinking with his dick ignores facts and logic too. But in the business world there are lots of different people who don't think like her so she can't allow them to exist or she ceases to exist.

Mr. Bancroft said "They (business abusers) can continue abusing for twenty or thirty years, and their careers remain successful, their health stays normal, their friendships endure – abusers actually tend to benefit in many ways from their controlling behaviors – because he isn't the one who has been traumatized by years of psychological --- assault" while the victim of abuse "may develop physical or emotional reactions - such as depression, nightmares, - numbing, or eating and sleeping problems --." ⁵ The abuser is suave Dr. Jykell in public but Mr. Hyde behind closed doors.

He goes on to say "Chronic mistreatment gets people to doubt themselves. Children of abusive parents know that something is wrong but they suspect the badness is inside of them. Employees of an abusive boss spend much of their time feeling that they are dong a lousy job, that they should be smarter and work harder. Boys who get bullied feel that they should be stronger or less afraid to fight." The abuser "wants to deny your experience. He wants to pluck your view of reality out of your head and replace it with his. When someone has invaded your identity in this way enough times, you naturally start to lose your balance."⁵ How did the abuse allowed by the existence of legal racism in the U.S. affect Blacks? Has it caused them to not take responsibility for their own behavior as they blame racism for life's normal frustrations and disappointments? Is it because they doubt themselves when they confuse simple racism with racial abuse?

In my time, good business sense allowed for serving everyone by including anticipated loss into the price structure. With the technological advances of computers, companies can now easily exclude less profitable customers while concentrating on making the most money from the easiest customers with the least effort. This allows their unsupervised employees to abuse those same undesirable customers - customers who are old, ugly, handicapped, poor - resulting in the new business mantra for the average customer, The Customer is Wrong, the Customer is always Wrong. The customer has to please the company or the company's computer will shut them down. Any phone call can be routed automatically to a pre-selected response allowing the customer no avenue for redress. The customer who finally gets through to a real person has to kow-tow to that "service representative" or the clerk will hang-up the phone or turn his back and walk away while the supervisor is "unavailable" or maybe non-existent. This is a very short-sighted approach to business that borders on abuse - control of another person in a way that causes harm to the customer while creating a privileged status for the company.

Political abuse of the voting taxpayer is the newest category. Candidates for president used to begin at the local level selected by a political party who groomed him, supported him, mentored him while he showed his loyalty to the local people who elected him. He then gained experience while he climbed up the ladder to the national level with the party's help. They argued behind closed doors but stood together publicly. Everyone had the opportunity to start local which did not require a massive war chest. Now it has become an expensive national popularity contest without any local input. Now party members argue and put each other down in public for years. Then when a candidate is finally selected by the public these candidates suddenly try to present a united public front and wonder why no one believes them. Now a candidate can run for high office while bypassing the locally-run portion of a political party. The candidate for national public office has no loyalty to a political party that didn't select him or finance him. His loyalty is to whoever is paying his bills - Big Money. Our individual votes don't count as we have been bought out by flashy, manipulative mass media "news shows" which by the use of humor encourage "The tactics of control: the intimidation of victims who try to protest, the undermining of efforts at independence, the negative distortions about the victims in order to cast blame upon them, the careful cultivation of the public image of the oppressors –"⁵

I grew up with refugees from WWII. As a young child, I heard talk about Hitler from all my neighbors who all said that someone like him would never succeed in the United States. Well, how did Hitler start? He didn't start as a murderer. He told the voters what they wanted to hear. He lied. He manipulated. He was charismatic. He was a great politician who was ELECTED. Hitler was the King of Abuse.

In a recent past election for governor of Michigan, the Democratic party candidate was officially disowned by the Democratic party. The Democratic party campaigned against the Democratic candidate who had been chosen not by them but in the primary popularity contest by cross-over voters who deliberately selected the worst candidate for the purpose of sabotaging the Democratic Party. Shouldn't a political party be able to select and back their own candidate?

Abuse is simply a combination of selfishness and an easy willingness to inflect pain by hitting below the belt. Before I studied abuse, I worked at the police department where I witnessed abuse perpetrated against everyone. Back then, I didn't even know abuse existed, but I sure saw it. All criminals are abusive, they only vary by degree. A small group of police officers was abusive too. Unfortunately, abuse is about control, and a policeman's job is about control so being a policeman appeals to abusers. But also even more importantly, some good men who are exposed to the abuse of criminals loose sight of normal people while slipping into being perpetrators of abuse themselves. "An abuser minimizes his behavior by comparing himself to men who are worse than he is, whom he thinks of as 'real' abusers".⁵ And cops know lots of people worse than they are. A cop can lose sight of non-abusive people while becoming accustomed to the existence and use of abuse. Abusive cops respond viciously instead of using minimal force. Abusive cops abuse EVERYONE even other cops.

Abusers are selfish with no empathy. They use abuse because it works. Children are born with self-esteem. Ask any 2-year-old. He'll tell you and if you don't listen, he'll tell you louder. They hit Johnnie over the head. They pull the puppy's tail. That's what children do. It's only through the trials of life or by being victims of abuse themselves that their self-esteem gets squelched. Good consistent discipline doesn't squelch self-esteem. Children need to be taught empathy, compassion and humility or they grow up to become abusive adults. And just becomes a woman smiles to your face and speaks softly doesn't mean she can't be abusive even if just behind your back.

I worked in federally-funded Public Housing when Clinton was president. That's when I stopped hearing management talk about our being public servants responsible to taxpayers. This change in perspective continued as I transferred to another department where another female boss promoted through Affirmative Action said to me "taxpayers only fund us. Otherwise they have no say. The only thing important in this office is me, me, me, me, me, me, me."⁶

My uncle Jack, a veteran of the Korean Police Action, voiced this opinion. The WWII generation who learned first-hand by growing up during the Depression and spending their young adult years fighting a World War how to obtain peace and prosperity overall. They were replaced by Korean veterans who tried to keep that peace and prosperity while opening the door a little for others. While their Vietnam War counterparts were busy fighting, hippies and draft-dodgers gained control of society. Some of the children of  the prosperous threw away that given prosperity. You can only have contempt for prosperity when you don't earn it.   The cowardly draft-dodgers, who were not the consciences objector medics of yesterday, but sat on their self-serving asses collecting oodles of credentials at someone else's expense. I witnessed the switch first hand when seemingly overnight experience and seniority were thrown out in the name of Affirmative Action and suddenly those holding the most credentials were promoted. The former draft-dodgers had the most credentials. They are the ones who promoted the incompetent cute young girls with the spreadable legs instead of the tough old broads.

Abuse is a terrible thing. It is fast becoming acceptable social, business and political custom. It is reality.

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Last modified: 06/05/06