Black is beautiful, living is revolutionary, Black is revolutionary.

Their black is
revolutionary. It is the melanin that protects. It is the color that consumes. It is
the true brown that is confused. It is black. They told said God was black, but he
still tryna figure out this white Jesus shit. Hes still learning to love this blackness
and everything it has to offer. Hes still learning how to exist, if thats even what
its called. Hes still learning how to love others. If we gone take it back, lets take
it all the way back
We need to rewind to the beginning of the clip, the beginning clip of history didnt
start with slavery it didnt start with the pillaging. It didnt start with the raping,
the pillaging, and exploitation of blacks. Lets start at the beginning. Lets start at
the opening credits. When the movie starts it starts with the acknowledgment of
production not just the production. It starts with how this move came to be, not
just what it is it starts with what we had to give thanks to. And it starts with
ourselves.

They are before. They are before the documented that is used to create a
starting point for Black. There should no longer be a skipping and ignoring
the start of the tape. The comprehension and recognition of all black history
is the only way that we can create true counter dominant knowledge. It is
inherently necessary to destroy the starting point for which we engage
these debates. To understand African American culture you must
acknowledge that everything about the African American culture has to do
with comprehension of the past.
hooks, 2003
We would rather talk about race and racism, the big things we cannot change, than talk about thinking
minds and feeling hearts that we can change. Tough-talking young black folks like to evoke Malcolm X,
but they are not really studying and listening and learning from the brother, because if they were they
would be embracing education for critical consciousness. They would be listening to the messages he
offers about the necessity of self-love, of changing how we see one another. Bambara told us, Wed better
take the time to fashion revolutionary selves, revolutionary lives, revolutionary relationships. That act of
self-creation begins with laying the foundations for healthy self-esteem.
To begin. We need think tanks in every state, where scholars and critical thinkers examine the issue of
self-esteem. Concurrently, we need community-based mental health centers, where folks can come and
talk about their problems. We need door-to-door educators who can teach progressive ideas about
parenting, about healing. We

can acknowledge the legacy of slavery while

simultaneously putting it in the context of an overall historical legacy, one
that begins not with slavery but with the African explorers who came before
Columbus. We need to study all aspects of African-American history. We need to create a real

relationship to the huge continent that is Africa, based on concrete study

and not on utopian fantasy. We need a mass-based movement for mental health patterned
after AA, where there are meetings people can attend and have education for critical consciousness. We
need literacy, a mass-based movement for literacy linked to education for
critical consciousness. This work can and must be community based. Consciousness-raising
groups can take place in our living rooms. Most important, we need to start where we
are, in the places where we live. Oftentimes I read a self-help book and it will offer a sample
test you can take to see if you have whatever problem the book is addressing. I do not have such a test to
offer because I have never met a black personwoman, man, or childwho is troubled in his or her selfesteem who does not know that he or she is troubled. Folks dont need a test. They do need concrete
strategies for creating self-esteem. I want to offer some. Get

over thinking that expressing

feelings makes you weak. Start expressing yourself. Start challenging those
folks around you who put you down when you express what you feel. If they
continue to shame you, stop talking to them, even if they are in the same house. Maintain a respectful
silence. If there is no one around you who can hear your feelings, write them or state them into a tape
recorder. One of the reasons folks know

A white perspective normalizes the suffering inflicted upon blacks foreclosing the
multidimensional aspects of blackness which can be rearticulated through positive images
hooks, 2001. (bell, doctor of philosophy of literature, former Yale professor, prolific author, public
intellectual, social activist, Salvation: Black people and love. New York, NY: Perennial Publishers pp.
______).48-49
Too much focus

on realistic images has led the mass media to identify black experience
solely with that which is most violently depraved, impoverished, and brutal. Yet these images are
only one aspect of black life. Even if they constitute the norm in underclass neighborhoods, they do not
represent the true reality of black experience, which is complex, multidimensional, and diverse.
Why is an image of an uncaring out-for-what-she-can-get crack addict more real than the
image of a churchgoing single mom who receives welfare and attends college courses an effort to
change her lot? Both images reflect realities I know people I know. The fact is that racism, sexism, and classism
together encourage individuals to assume that the negative image is more real; individuals
approaching blackness from this biased perspective have an investment -in presenting the negative
image as the norm. To do so promotes, perpetuates, and sustains systems of domination based on class,
race, and gender. I can remember longing as a girl to see more images of black people on television. At that time I
was not politically astute enough to ponder the issue of whether or not folks who embrace white supremacist
thinking (as the vast majority of people in this culture do) would be either imaginatively qualified or at all interested
in producing images of black people that would challenge stereotypes. When I grew up and became a cultural critic,
it was clear to me that there was a basic contradiction here, that no one working from a white

supremacist perspective would create positive decolonized images of black people. And that
includes cultural produces who are white, black, or from other ethnic groups, as well as black people who have internalized
racism. The vast majority of the images of black people we see in the mass media simply confirm and reinforce racist, sexist, and
classist stereotypes. Now, we all know that stereotypes often exist in part because when any subordinate

group is required by a dominant group to be a certain way in order to survive, the

powerless group will take on those characteristics.

Racism is alive and kicking and determines a lot of Black lives but we cant
let it determine black hearts, black minds, and black spirit. The traditional
focus of race is the same demoralizing and dehumanizing analysis that
keeps people of color locked in the brokenness and dilapidation that
debaters call the squo. Britani and I call for a holistic understanding of
blackness.
hooks 2003 (kindle edition, p. 19)
Without a core foundation of healthy self-esteem we cannot practice self-love. In Salvation I did not
emphasize enough the importance of creating healthy self-esteem. Folks with positive self-esteem know
that there are a number of factors that shape and inform our emotional well-being . We

know that
while race and racism may overdetermine many aspects of our lives, we are
still free to be self-determining. Many young black folks who are full of selfdoubt and lacking in self-esteem fixate on race in a way that is demoralizing
and dehumanizing. To a grave extent they project all their problems onto the landscape of racism because
it is the easy target. Though race is a vital aspect of our identity as African Americans, we cannot know ourselves fully
if we look only at race. Looking

at ourselves holistically, seeing our emotional wellbeing as rooted both in the politics of race and racism as well as in our
capacity to be self-defining, we can create the self-esteem that is needed for
us to care for our souls. In the black church of my youth we would sing the lyrics is it well with
your soul, are you free and made whole. Our continued survival as African-American people, in solidarity
with nonblack allies in struggle, demands that we care for our souls so that we can be whole and complete.

If we begin with self-esteem our success is assured. Well-being will be our destiny.

How can black people love themselves if they only understand their position
through negative articulations, if they have no positive agency to refer to?
This is this same method that Willie lynch used to produce slaves in the
Americas by taking your mind and placing it in a subservient world
Hooks, 2003
The fact that racism continues to impact negatively on our lives as African
Americans has led many of us to feel that we can never be free of suffering.
That is a slave mentality, because it denies both our history and our own
agency. We have to drop our addiction to suffering, to our complaint, whether its about what white folks have
done, or what your mama and daddy did, or what your man has done, or these children have done done. We have to
let the suffering go. And thats particularly difficult for those of us who have created life dramas out of suffering.

And then that white shit wanna try and put us at this binary of becoming
white but never being able to achieve whiteness. This binary continues
systematic violence that leaves our bodies at the hands of white people.
This is the internal conflict trapped between hating blackness and a desire
for whiteness that is impossible without first learning to hate myself.

Deadass````
Carter Godwin

Woodson 33

(The Miseducation of the Negro; pg 20-21, founder of the Association for the Study of African
American Life and History )

There can be no reasonable objection to the Negros doing what the white
man tells him to do, if the white man tells him to do what is right; but
right is purely relative. The present system under the control of the whites
trains the Negro to be white and at the same time convinces him of the
impropriety or the impossibility of his becoming white. It compels the Negro to
become a good Negro for the performance of which his education is ill-suited. For the white
mans exploitation of the negro through economic restriction and segregation the present
system is sound and will doubtless continue until this gives place to the saner

policy of actual interracial cooperation - not the present farce of racial

manipulation in which the Negro is a figurehead. History does not furnish a case
of the elevation of a people by ignoring the thought and aspiration of the people thus
served. This is slightly dangerous ground here, however, for the Negros mind has

been all but perfectly enslaved in that he has been trained to think what is
desired of him. The highly educated Negroes do not like to hear
anything uttered against this procedure because they make their living in
this way, and they feel that they must themselves, they are easily crushed by
the large majority to the contrary so that the defend the system. Few, mis-educated Negroes ever act otherwise; and, if they so express procession may
move on without interruption. The result, then, is that the Negroes thus miseducated are of no service to themselves and none to the white man. The white
man does not need the Negroes professional, commercial or industrial
assistance; and as a result of the multiplication of mechanical appliances or commercial
classes because Negroes have been taught that Whites can serve them more
efficiently in these spheres. Reduced, then, to teaching and preaching, the
Negroes will have no outlet but to go down a blind alley, if the sort of
education which they are now receiving is to enable them to find the way
out of their present difficulties.

Britani/ Linda and I advocate for a non-monolithic representation of

blackness There is a need for black folk to honor themselves, to
acknowledge their true history, to have a spiritual revolution. Wars, crimes,
violence, emotional and psychological sufferings will never be resolved till
we resolve this.
. hooks, 2003
Last, and most important, if we begin to practice love, defined here as a combination
of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we have
all the tools we need to build healthy self-esteem. Try it out when you are unsure about
any decision you need to make in any area of your life by asking yourself just what love would tell you to
do. Be guided by love and you will find the way to self-esteem . . . The spiritual emptiness that was rapidly
creating genocidal havoc in black life has intensified. It mirrors the crisis in spirit that grips our nation. In Ethics for
the New Millennium His Holiness the Dalai Lama offers the insight that all the people of the West have wrongly
believed joy could be found solely through acquisition of goods. He contends:

According to my understanding, our overemphasis on material gain reflects an underlying assumption that
what it can buy, by itself alone, can provide us with the satisfaction we require. Yet by nature, the satisfaction
material gain can provide us with will be limited to the level of the senses. It is obvious that our needs
transcend the sensual. The prevalence of anxiety, stress, confusion, uncertainty, and depression among those
whose basic needs have been met is a clear indication of this .

Our problems, both those we

experience externallysuch as wars, crime, and violenceand those
we experience internallyour emotional and psychological sufferings
cannot be solved until we address this underlying neglect. That is why
the great movements of the last hundred years and moredemocracy, liberalism, socialismhave
all failed to deliver the universal benefits they were supposed to provide, despite many wonderful
ideas. A

revolution is called for, certainly. But not a political, an

economic, or even a technical revolution...What I propose is a
spiritual revolution.Like our nation as a whole, black folks are in need of a
spiritual revolution that will enable us to collectively reclaim a way of
being in the world that allows us to honor ourselves, to value
ourselves rightly. Choosing spiritual revolution, black folks would
reclaim the power of soul.

These positive images are counter dominant to the traditional white gaze of
black society
Solvency
hooks, 2003
No black person in the United States can have any measure of self-esteem if he or she has not cultivated the capacity to be a critical
thinker, to live consciously. Used politically in relationship to governments, the term decolonize means to allow to become selfgoverning or independent. In a personal sense decolonizing

the mind means letting go of

patterns of thought and behavior that prevent us from being selfdetermining. Since our society is structured around the principles of imperialist white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, it is
structured in such a way to impede the construction of emotional wellbeing for the vast majority of citizens. However, the democratic policies of our nation
make it possible for everyone to resist the socialization of the thoughts, values, and actions that
perpetuate imperialist white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy if they are able to learn critical thinking.
Born into a

culture of domination wherein everyone is socialized to varying

degrees to hate and fear blackness, black people can create positive selfesteem only by resisting this way of thinking. This resistance takes the form
of critical consciousness. In Six Pillars of Self-Esteem Nathaniel Branden identifies
consciousness as the basic tool of survivalthe ability to be aware of the environment in some form, at
some level, and to guide action accordingly. Consciousness

is the ability to be aware, to have, as

Branden states, the option of exercising our powers or of subverting our means
of survival and well-being. Critical consciousness is a process by which we reflect from that
interrogative standpoint on our awareness of reality. For example, most black people are
conscious that we live in a racist and white supremacist society. This is a basic
state of awareness almost all black people hold. Critical consciousness is at work when we

are able to utilize our knowledge of this reality in ways that circumvent
racist exploitation and oppression. Plainly put, parents of black children, who are aware that they live in a
racist society that negatively stereotypes their children, may act in a critically conscious way by turning off the television set because
it is the primary propaganda machine of white supremacist thought, or providing their children with positive images that counter
the representations imposed by the dominant culture of whiteness. For many years in our nation the everyday survival of black
people demanded that they develop basic skills of critical thinking. During the long period of racial apartheid black folk had to be
critically vigilant to be always aware of how the system that was exploiting and oppressing them worked and as aware of what
needed to be done to intervene in this system. Choosing to be unconscious or unaware easily led to severe punishment or death.