Culture, Sub-Culture And Black Self Genocide pt1

CULTURE, SUB-CULTURE AND BLACK SELF-GENOCIDE pt1

What is culture? What does it mean, and what use does it
hold for a Black man in America? Do Black people in America
truly have a culture? Culture simply defined means, “That
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,
law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by
man as a member of society”.
Society, what society! Has the Black man ever been an
interrelated whole within the so-called American society?
Society defined means, “An aggregation of human beings (a
population) living as a distinct entity and possessing a distinct
culture”. Therefore to say that a Black man in America has his
own distinct culture means that Blacks are in essence
something abstract, something that is out of the physical or
meta-physical confines of the American society at large. So
then to speak of another distinct culture within “one”
so-called American society” becomes a most profound
contradiction of American ideals and/or a hypocritical racist
oriented concept.
When we think of the Black man in American we always
think in terms of “dualism” and “double consciousness”,
because that is the social disease or stigma that white America
has imposed upon our conscious and sub-conscious mind. This
social and psychological dualism the need of having a
so-called American Negro culture comes about primarily
from the inferiority that many Blacks have toward themselves,
and our racist institutions who perpetuate such myths. These
concepts on a distinct Negro culture are white America’s, and
not our own; these very concepts that sound “ideal” and
“classy” are the concepts that will insure for white America a
“good Negro” who thinks, believes, and accepts the
implication that he is not truly a part of the American society.
I am not however eliminating the fact that we have our own
distinct patterns of behavior; only if we possessed a distinct
“social” entity with the American population which is
impossible could we claim to have such a culture. We must
therefore speak of sub-culture (one that grew our of our racist,
so-called American culture), folkways ( a mode of thinking,
feeling, or acting common to a people or to a social group),
and stateways (differences between the northern and southern
black), rather than a separate culture. To have what can be
called a culture one must first have a “society” that they can
most easily identify with.
To have a “culture”, one, who is without a “society” that
accepts them (as in the case of black people in America) must
in the final analysis find a society which is willing to
identifiable relate; or, it can also work in reverse, whereas, the
group of people (black people in America) take it upon
themselves to relate (emotionally, economically or otherwise)
to a people who possess a country and social entity needed to
have a distinct cultural heritage.
Next week in Part II, I will discuss the differences between a
culture complex and an actual or real culture; and also
practical solutions toward “psychological liberation” and
“self-determination”.