Friday, 03 August 2012 13:27
The Role Of Absence Of Love In Black On Black Crime
http://www.chatafrik.com/articles/lifestyle/item/1090-the-role-of-absence-of-love-in-black-on-black-crime.htmlWritten by Ozodi Osuji Ph.D
This essay points out that black folks tend to serve their individual interests and seldom love and care for other black folks. Young black kids growing up in loveless environments feel abandoned by the black adults that did not serve their social interests. They feel angry at the black folks that abandoned their needs. One way they show their anger at being abandoned by black folks is to commit crimes against black folk hence high black on black crimes.
Black Folks Abandon Their People; Abandonment Contributes To Black On Black CRIMES
Ozodi Osuji
There is an epidemic of black on black crime in North American (inner) cities. No one has really understood why black folks, victims of white racism, kill their fellow victims. One would think that they would direct their anger at those who victimized them, white folks but that is not the case. They direct their rage at their fellow black folks. This reality did not make sense to me and for years I thought about it and gave up.
Finally, I got it! Black Americans merely talk politics, talk about what evils the white man did to them. They gather and talk about all the wrongs that white men have done to them. But while they are so talking they do not want to know how each other is doing. They actually have no desire to help each other.
They merely gather and talk negative talks about white men (I attended one such group for a year and at no time did any of the members call to ask how I am doing; I assume that they also did not call to find out how other members are doing; once in a while I called them to touch base and find out how they are doing).
What is now apparent to me is that these people do not care for their fellow black folk's welfare. Young black children are abandoned by their fathers. Only a few black children are lucky and have black mothers that care for them (those do not gravitate to criminal activities). The majority of black children are emotionally abandoned by black folks, especially by the black men that talk politics.
These children grow up knowing that the adults in their lives do not care for them. They try to figure out a way to make a living (usually in sports, music and government work) and if they fail they easily gravitate to criminal activities.
Their victims are mostly their fellow black folks. They steal from other black folks or kill them, I think because, by and large, they do not have respect for black folk.
And why should they love and respect black folks when they were abandoned by adult black folks. Black folks have serious problems. The core of these problems is that they do not care for each other.
Mostly, what adult black folks do is filling each other's ears with talk on politics and what the white man has done to them. They do not see what they are doing to themselves by ignoring each other.
By not caring for their people, especially the young ones they are making their young folk see them as irrelevant hence justify killing them.
Black Americans do not have community feelings (although they talk too much about the black community); their community is broken. Black Americans, among themselves, incessantly talk about how uncaring white people are but they themselves seem more impersonal and uncaring than white folks. How do I know? If you joined an organization that is made of mostly white folks you would find out that the other members would occasionally call you to check on how you are doing and, in fact, some of them would go out of their way to seek ways to help you in whatever way they could.
Black folks relationship with you begins and ends in venting about what the "man" did to harm them; your personal issues are of no relevance to them.
This way they ignore their young ones issues and those feel uncared for and tune them out as useless folks who merely talk politics but do not do what matters most in people's lives: love and care for people.
One of the lessons I learned when I was in high school was that if I want something done I should do it by myself; I learned that I should not look to a black person to do anything for me for if you wait for a black person to do something for you, well, you would wait until eternity and he would not do it!
And yet these people who do not help each other fancy themselves better than white folks and always talk about the evils done by the white man (white men have their issues alright but I doubt that they are worse than black folks).
Community is characterized by people's loving feelings for one another, by people caring for one another. I do not see love and caring for one another in what is called the black community. I see a place where each person looks after his self-interests and a few succeed and the many fall by the way side and some gravitate to criminal activities.
This tendency to be primarily concerned with one's self interests is obviously rooted in the larger American political economy. America has a capitalist political economy. In this economic system, each person is supposed to be self-interested and go out in the world and compete and get whatever his skills can get for him.
In competition a few win and many lose; that is the nature of the free enterprise system. It is a philosophy of: May the fittest survive and the weak die out.
Evolution is said to be best served if the unfit dies out and only the fit survives and produce the next generation.
The point is that the American political economy has something to do with black Americans self-centered behavior. That been said, in a community folks are supposed to care for each other's survival. No man is an island; no man can by his efforts alone survive; we all receive help from others if we have so-far survived.
Africans in the urban areas are increasingly becoming like black Americans; increasingly, Africans do not care for one another. At the rate they are going, soon, Africans will reach the black American level where people have no community feelings for one another. Africans, too, would start killing one another as in black on black crime.
In Africa the political class practically exists to steal from their national treasuries. Corruption in African countries is so astonishingly high that you wonder if the people are born amoral and criminal. How exactly do they expect to develop their countries with this amazingly high level of corruption? Of course they do not want to develop their countries; they do not give a damn for their people; each person is out for his self-interest and may the devil take of the rest of the people.
And while these folks could care less for their people's welfare they sit around amusing themselves how they are better than their former colonial masters. They blame everything wrong in Africa on the white man. Even when heartless Africans order the massacre of their fellow Africans their pseudo intellectuals attribute the killing to colonial masters (neocolonialism).
If you listened to them you would conclude that Africans are children hence are not responsible for anything going on in Africa; white men who are supposed to be adults are responsible for the wrongs in Africa.
Africans, children, that is, blame Europeans for their poor management of Africa's affairs; they attribute to other persons their inability to get anything done right in Africa.
You, of course, quickly learn to ignore their always blaming other people for their issues, for you understand that they are merely indulging the defense mechanism that makes other folk seem bad so that they may seem good in their self-estimation, even as they do the wrong things. Africans are responsible for whatever has happened in Africa, blaming non-Africans for their fallen house does not obviate this reality.
If Europeans mastered Africans and colonized them, why did Africans remain weak hence made it possible for strong persons to conquer them; didn't anyone tell them that in a competitive world the strong rule the weak?
Each of us is responsible for his fate, period; blaming other persons for one's fate is unrealistic and childish behavior.
In certain parts of Nigeria black on black crime has already approximated black Americans level. In Igbo land abandoned youth, that is, those children who Igbo adults did not care for, are kidnapping their fellow Igbos and holding them hostage until monetary ransom is paid to them. They do what they do because the adults in their lives ignored their needs as children, did not love and care for them.
Igbo society embraced the capitalist philosophy (see Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations) that we live in a dog eat dog world and each person is out to optimize his self-interests and does not care for others welfare.
Igbo kids increasingly grow up with no community caring for them. They develop no feelings of attachment and bonding with other Igbos (and people in general). Consequently, they do not see anything wrong with kidnapping and stealing from the people that abandoned them.
Society has to do with emotional bonding; where that is missing anti-social behavior is engaged in without folks feeling guilty and remorse for such behaviors.
Why should a kid who was not cared for by adults care for the adults that did not care for him? Kidnap them and let their people pay up before they are released or they are shot, who cares.
This is total social breakdown and return to the jungle, to what Thomas Hobbes in his seminal book, Leviathan, called state of nature where each is for himself and take from others and life becomes nasty, brutish and short; folks live in total insecurity.
This is very sad. Something must be done to transform black folks into a community where folks care for one another and love one another.
Clearly, what is missing in black communities, be it in North America or Africa, is love and mutual caring for one another's welfare.
So, how do we inject what is missing into these communities? How do we teach the people to love one another and care for one another instead of ignoring one another's needs and merely talking politics of hatred for the white man?
By the way, if you hate other people you must necessarily hate yourself for what you do to other persons is what you do to yourself; what you give to others is what you receive; giving is receiving; that is why it is better to love others for in doing so one receives love.
How do we generate love in Africans? We must remember that Africans beginning around 700AD sold their people to Arabs and beginning around 1500 AD added selling their people to Europeans (to be used as slaves in America). That is to say that Africans have been behaving without love for over one thousand years. People who sold their people for over a thousand years clearly are not a loving and caring people.
It would, therefore, be naïve to think that one can wish for Africans to be a loving people and they suddenly become a loving people. It would take a lot of doing to make Africans over to a loving people.
Christianity's main tenet is love for God and love for all people. I think that given Christianity's emphasis on love that it can help in teaching Africans to love. Instead of rejecting Christianity Africans ought to embrace it.
Christianity has many denominations. Each person embraces the denomination that suits his temperament but all of them teach love and caring for all mankind.
The sect of Christianity that I embrace teaches that God is love. It teaches that God created us. Since God is love he created us as loving. We are like our father, loving. In our true state we love. Our real selves are loving selves.
According to this doctrine, where there is no love something has gone wrong. Therefore, we have to find out what has gone wrong and remove it so as to return to the awareness of our true self, loving self.
In our true state we are love but we have placed obstacles to the awareness of that love. We must therefore remove the obstacles to the awareness of love and know that we are love. When we remove the blocks to the awareness of love we experience love; when we remove the veil we placed over the face of Christ (love) we see love. (See Helen Schucman, A Course in miracles.)
Love is what glues the many into one. Love is a unifying force. Love is what unifies God and all his creation, children into a shared self and shared mind.
Love unifies; love is union. God is unified state, God is union.
We, the children of God, children of love, separated from eternal state of union (God, love) and now see ourselves as separated from God and from each other.
Originally, we are unified spirit. When we separated from God and from each other we devised matter, space and time and used those to make separation seem real. We now clothe ourselves in matter (body) and seem to live in the world of space and time.
Our bodies give us a feeling of boundaries; each of us feels that he is in his body and begins and ends there and sees other persons as in their bodies. Thus, one believes that one is separated from other persons.
Each individual now sees himself as having different interests from other people. He believes that what serves his interests may not serve other peoples interests. He associates with those he believes serve his interests; those who serve each other's mutual interests.
People believe that they are now different from each other. They do not believe in sameness and equality (in our world empirically people do not seem the same and equal for some seem taller than others; some seem more intelligent than others; some seem wealthier than others; some seem more powerful than others etc.).
Separation is the greatest obstacle to the awareness of union (and since union is love, to the awareness of love). As long as people see themselves as separated from each other, as having different interests etc. they cannot really love one another.
To love one another folks must see themselves as one, as unified, as the same and equal and as having the same interests.
In the reality of the here and now this means overlooking the empirical separation we see in our world and treating people as if they are unified with us.
Clearly, you seem separated from me. I am here and you are over there; there is space and time between us. I see this separation between us but must now overlook it. That is, while seeing you as not me I must treat you as part of me. I must treat you as I treat myself.
How do I treat me? If I am sane I treat me with love (there are insane masochists who do not love themselves, who inflict pain on their selves). Treating you as I treat myself means that I love you. This way I love me and love you.
I love every human being for I recognize that they are all parts of my one shared and complete self, my unified self.
Love closes the gap we see between us; love closes the space between the seeming separated children of God. (I say seeming for in reality we remain as God created us, unified; there is no force that can undo what God created; God created us unified with him and with each other but we can dream that we are separated from him and from each other and make the dream seem real in our awareness but in reality we remain unified). Love unifies people into one people.
All these seem abstract but they are really simple. I see you as separated from me (that is an illusion but this world is an illusion so let us accept the illusion of separation and transform it into a happy illusion). I see you as over there. Okay. I decide to love you as I love me; I decide to care for you as I care for me.
One cannot give to others what one does not give one's self...that is, you cannot love other people if you do not love you, if you hate you by logical necessity you must hate other people.
When a person loves himself, loves other people, cares for himself and cares for other people he has metaphorically closed the gap that separates him from other people; he has returned to the awareness of union; he has overlooked separation, the world of space, time and matter and behaved as if he is one with all people; he has behaved as we are in spirit, one.
Love you and love other people, care for you and care for other people and you know oneness. What this means in the here and now world is that you pursue doing what interests you, what you have aptitude in and what you are trained in doing. You do it to the best of your ability. However, now you do it with a feeling that you are serving all humanity through your work. Your work benefits all people.
If you are a medical doctor you heal people's physical illnesses. If you are a psychologist you understand and help people to heal their separated minds by returning them to unified mind via love and forgiveness. Whatever you enjoy doing you do it but do it with an eye to serving all people through it.
When you see a person on the street you recognize that you and that person share one unified spirit self and you love that person; you do whatever serves your and other peoples common interests.
This is particularly necessary in dealing with children under the age of twenty. You must always figure out a way to be of use and service to young people. You must be involved with the youth in your community. You must serve the youth of your world; you must not detach from them and abandon them. You must love and care for them (sometimes this involves merely paying attention to them and at other times it involves giving your time and money to them).
In doing this, I believe that black folks would rehabilitate their shattered community. Their community has been shattered since they began selling their people into slavery in the 700s AD (if not before that time).
If they do not do these things I believe that the black world is truly a defeated world. Arabs, white folks etc. have defeated Africans (in Africa and elsewhere). The black world is shattered to pieces.
Those fragments need to be picked up and rebuilt into a community. Love is what builds a community, for love glues people together as one people.
Love would glue together the shattered pieces called the black community. Without return to love the black community would remain a shattered community, a defeated community.
Talking about what white folks did to black folks, preaching hatred for white folks would not heal the black community.
Talking about hatred, what did Jesus say about it? Jesus Christ asked his followers to forgive those who wronged them. Therefore, Black Christians must forgive those who enslaved and discriminated against them. Black folks in Africa and America must forgive white folks for their past injustices to black folks.
Forgiving the past does not mean tolerating present injustice. Having forgiven past slavery and discrimination we must work for justice for all today.
No one has the right to enslave or discriminate against any one today. Anyone who discriminates against people ought to be tried by a court of law and sent to jail and while there taught love for all people. The point is that forgiving the past does not mean tolerating racism today.
We must love all and forgive all and correct all behavior that does not love. It is in doing this that we glue together God's shattered children, especially black folks.
I believe that black on black crime can be reduced if black folks are taught love for one another and are helped to learn how to care for one another.
Children who feel loved by their parents and significant others in general tend to love people in their world. On the other hand, children who feel not loved by their parents tend to hate people in their world and do what harms them.
Love, I believe is the answer to most of our human problems. But instead of seeking ways to love and care for one another we talk the politics of hatred for other people, and fill our minds with hatred and that hatred kills us (many black folks die young).
We forget to love our people; we especially forget to love our young ones and they grow up feeling abandoned and angry at our people and show their hatred by their criminal activities towards our people.
It is now time to return to love and caring for all the people in our community and working for our mutual social interests (see Alfred Adler, What Life should mean to you).
CONCLUSION
This essay points out that black folks tend to serve their individual interests and seldom care for other black folks interests. It says that black folk seldom love other people. Young black kids growing up in loveless environments feel abandoned by the black adults that did not serve their social interests. They feel angry at the black folks that abandoned their needs. One way they show their anger at being abandoned by black folks is to commit crimes against black folk hence high black on black crimes.
Of course there are other factors contributing to high black on black crimes, such as poverty, broken marriages, broken families, broken homes, absent fathers, racism, unemployment etc. but this essay chose to focus on the absence of love as a contributory factor in black on black crimes. It leaves it to academic folk to write about the "complex factors' underpinning human behaviors and simply focus on the "simple factor" of love affecting human behavior (human beings minimize the most important factor in their lives, love and talk nonsense about politics).
If this paper is deemed reductionistic in attributing black on black crime to lack of love, so be it. Others talk about biological and or social factors as the cause of human behavior. Those, too, are reductionism at work. They do not have complete evidence demonstrating the causal reality of genes and social factors in human behavior.
In this essay, one chose what factor one wants to employ in explaining human behavior, love. Of course one recognizes the role of biological and social factors in the genesis of human behavior.
Ozodi Osuji
August 2, 2012
Dr. Osuji can also be reached at (213)807-5944
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Ozodi Osuji Ph.D
Ozodi Thomas Osuji is from Imo State, Nigeria. He obtained his PhD from UCLA. He taught at a couple of Universities and decided to go back to school and study psychology. Thereafter, he worked in the mental health field and was the Executive Director of two mental health agencies. He subsequently left the mental health environment with the goal of being less influenced by others perspectives, so as to be able to think for himself and synthesize Western, Asian and African perspectives on phenomena. Dr Osuji's goal is to provide us with a unique perspective, one that is not strictly Western or African but a synthesis of both. Dr Osuji teaches, writes and consults on leadership, management, politics, psychology and religions. Dr Osuji is married and has three children; he lives at Seattle, Washington, USA.
He can be reached at: Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org ; ozodiosuji@yahoo.ca (206) 853-4245
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