I will attach the documents - Essay Example

It is not to argue that the conditions of slavery still too exist without any substantial changes. Of course, blacks have progressed a lot and the same goes for the way the mainstream society looks at the black people. But, what remains unchanged or being endlessly reproduced is the slave mindset. It is the very legacy of the slavery that it still permeates all the aspects of social life of the nation in general and the personal lives of black people in particular. The effects of slavery are continuingly expressed in the family lives, world outlook, and self respect and so on of the black people.

Issues and Concerns of Black Liberation Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery is a groundbreaking study in the field of cultural psychology. Akbar has famously asserted that “slavery that feeds on the mind, invading the soul of man, destroying his loyalties to himself and establishing allegiance to forces which destroy him, is an even worse form of capture. The influences that permit an illusion of freedom, liberation, and self-determination, while tenaciously holding one’s mind in subjugation, is the folly of only the sadistic” (Akbar, 1996, p.VI). .

Here, although I completely agree with Akbar’s proposition that the legacy of slavery is still tormenting both the minds and souls of black people, it is difficult to buy his argument that black people are completely subjugated by the master narrative. For Akbar, the subjugation of blacks or the mental colonization of the blacks by the whites is total, unlimited and infinite as it knows no outside. From a dialectical perspective, on the contrary, one could argue that the white/black relationship is mutually dependent and, at least in the mental space, the blacks are more liberated than the whites as they have nothing to lose from the abolition of slavery.

In other words, the idea of total ‘capture’ of black mind by the oppressor ideology itself is a negation of the subjectivity and active agency of the black people. It does not hold true if we look at the real life examples. In many cases, it is not through a hegemonic ideology, but through sheer repression (through ku klux klan or police/military actions) and economic violence (denial equal opportunity, discrimination etc.), the black bodies are made to be docile. For Akbar, the problems of the blacks that arises not only from the retrogressive material conditions which exist in a repressive White society, rather, he locates the black subjugation in the realm of consciousness by arguing that “the slavery that captures the mind and imprisons the motivation, perception, aspiration and identity in a web of anti-self images, generating a personal and collective self-destructive, is more cruel than the shackles on the wrists and ankles” (Akbar, 1996, p.V). Here, also, Akbar fails himself into the deeply entrenched racist trap and believes that the power of the master is all-pervasive