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What do you call a black man with a Ph.D.? This is an old question, and one to which everyone in America already knows the answer. In his new book, Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority, Tom Burrell attempts to explain why the answer to the question has been, and continues to be: A nigger.
Burrell, an advertising executive, looks at some of the most talked about problems in the black community. He poses specific questions (for example; Why do we perpetuate black sexual stereotypes? Why can’t we stop shopping? Why do we give up our power so willingly?) and analyses sociological and advertising trends from the early 17th century–when African “brand” slaves were introduced to the market–to the present day.
The author laboriously cites historical moments when actions were taken against the enslaved and freed populations to single them out as deficient, and inferior in every way. It was an entire system of marketing, legislation, social and economic alienation, and inappropriate education, all carefully tailored to keep an entire people on the lowest possible societal wrung, and all due to something as insignificant as skin pigmentation. The reading experience was enough to make N. Xavier Arnold’s The Genocide Files seem like a leaked government conspiracy instead of a work of fiction.
Burrell backs up his claims with a fascinating illustrated timeline that presents various historical advertisements. What is most jarring about some of these images is how little things have changed over the centuries. Black Americans remain locked into the same stereotypical archetypes that plagued our ancestors both during and post-slavery. Worse yet, is the fact that the black community has become such willing participants in the campaign to belittle, malign and misrepresent our people. We no longer need others to lock us into savage buck, idiotic coon and wanton Jezebel stereotypes. We gleefully do this to ourselves and label it ‘success’. Upon examination, one must question why.
In fact, the branding of black inferiority is so deeply ingrained in American minds that not even winning the highest office the nation has to offer could serve as protection from being likened to a chimp (still the preferred racist descriptor), as was aptly demonstrated in the highly inflammatory New York Post cartoon that served as a reminder that black men are not to be taken seriously, not even when the black man in question is the President of the United States.
The buck(shot) stops here? Is this New York Post cartoon obviously advocating the slaying of President Barack Obama, playing on a long-standing racist slur of African-Americans, and using a veiled threat?
Still, this topic is not entirely new. The media has been accused of brainwashing the black population in the past, but Burrell’s insider look at the subtle ways advertising messages (both print and verbal/cultural) take root makes a compelling argument, naming the consistent negative messages as the administrator of the indoctrination and subsequent institutionalization of the learned helplessness that cripples black America today. Brainwashed is certain to strike a nerve as readers see their own dysfunctions illuminated in Burrell’s spotlight.
As I read the book, I found myself struggling through the chapter titled D’s Will Do: Why Do We Expect So Little of Each Other – and Ourselves? One of the reasons Burrell identifies is a strong, yet misguided, sense of protection as parents who, having experienced Jim Crowism first-hand, teach their children to avoid the noose by staying off the white RADAR. From my own experience, I cannot begin to count the times my mother raged that I was becoming ‘too big for my britches.’ On multiple occasions, I was warned that my ambition would get me killed. She insisted that the unnamed “They” would never let me become an astronaut, a lawyer or a writer. She fluctuated between ignoring and discouraging my academic pursuits, and employed guilt and shame to dissuade me from going away to college. All of this in an effort to protect me from the world as she knew it, the nightmare place where she was certain, I would be harmed, if I were ever caught with “high pockets.”
I was an adult when I finally understood the level of fear she must have felt every time I showed interest in something new, every time I asked to be exposed to something her experience told her would hold hidden dangers. The end result is a self-censorship so regimented and extreme that I don’t always realize I have hindered myself until whatever opportunity I sought has passed. In effect, I have been brainwashed into withdrawing when I notice myself dangerously approaching a sought after goal as, in the back of my mind, my mother’s panicked voice reminded me to avoid drawing attention to myself.
Claiming that the Vogue cover photo was not based literally on King Kong does not change the fact that the cover image took its inspiration from a long line of damsel-dragged-off-by-brute representations, making King Kong and the Vogue cover siblings, of a sort, in that both appear to have been inspired by the same propaganda poster.
The book is peppered with tables that describe the various problems, as Burrell sees them, and breaks them down into explanations of both their current manifestations and their historical roots. While this is interesting and informative in many instances, in some, it comes off as a little forced, insubstantial, leaving one to wonder about the author’s qualifications to theorize about the sociological root cause of this crippling dysfunction. Despite this, however, much of the book was as engaging as it was informative.
The final pages, in the authors attempt to leave the reader on a hopeful note, failed to inspire me to do much more than seek additional information. Burrell’s plea for a systematic change in the way corporations market to the black community came through loud and clear. Still, I was not moved to sound my battle cry despite the effort to stir pathos with a letter that was certainly meant to inspire action. If nothing else, the more autodidactic reader ends the text with an interesting reading list with which to continue research and study. For some, that alone will be worth the cost of the book.
Related Posts:
- A Call to Action
- What if Martin Luther King, Jr. Pressed Snooze on The Dream?
- I Ain’t Yo Nigger!
- Barack Obama’s Connections to Socialism, Communism and Racial Divisiveness
- Winter in America
