Reaction Paper to Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery

Reaction Paper While reading this book I agreed with the things said by the other. This book also reminded me of another book that I started reading a while ago "Post traumatic slave syndrome". Like Post traumatic Slave Syndrome, Breaking the chains to psychological slavery discusses things that happened to slaves and then connects them to things that the decedents of those slaves are currently dealing with. Things such as Leadership; One point Na'im Akbar made about leadership was that " any slave who began to emerge as a natural head, that is, one oriented toward survival of the whole body, was identified early and was either eliminated, isolated, killed, or ridiculed. In his or her place was put a leader who had been carefully picked, trained, and tested to stand only for the master's welfare. (pg.9) He connected this to a more recent knowledge of African American leadership. "In the 1995 million man march when many traditional religious and political leaders rejected the leadership of Minister Louis Farrakhan because he wasn't approved by the white establishment" (pg.10). Another point that caught my attention in chapter one was the section on family. The family is believed to be the most serious impact of the effects of slavery. "The slave has not rights, of course; he or she cannot have rights of a husband, a wife. The slave is a chattel and chattels do not marry. The slave is not ranked among sentient beings, but among things, and things are not married" (pg 19). This sort of explains why so many marriages today are failing; because we are still connected in some way to our ancestors and their struggles.
In chapter two the author talks about Liberation from mental slavery. He expresses the fact that "In order to change the African American consciousness we must change the information that is in the African mind. (pg. 34) I agree with him because Africans in America are only taught the American truths. They are not taught the African truths therefore we are fooled into believing that we are free when we aren't we have simply settled for some forms of equality. An example of changing information is:You learn in grade school that during segregation the front seat of the bus was for whites only. You also learn that Rosa Parks refused to get up from the "front seat". American history books fail to teach that the front seat they were talking about was in the blacks only section. Meaning Rosa Parks refused to give the front seat of the blacks only section in the back of the bus up. When I first found this fact out I was shocked and this is what has lead me to seek the African Truths. Rather then the truths taught to me by people who can't understand an African and their struggles. In my opinion another strong fact in chapter 2 is that people who are seeking to know them selves and discover the truths must have unity. "There is strength in solidarity with others who are seeking to break the chains" (pg. 42). In order to change slaves mentally we must stand together. We must also stand together on the basis of racial realities. Two blacks who are in the same group such as religious or political groups will have more things in common then one black and one non-black person in the group. We must identify those with common racial realities and unite because "it is not possible to be free alone." "The chains are very heavy and interconnected which requires us to free each other as we free ourselves." (pg 43). At the ending of chapter 2 the author explains to us some what the beginning of a solution. "The first step is acknowledgment of our slave mentality and the fact that we remain limited in our effectiveness because of the slavery experience." (pg 46)
The final chapter of this book discusses racial religious imagery and psychological confusion. The author talks about being narrow minded and religion. "People with a limited or narrowed concept of god, then, have an automatically limited and narrowed psychology."(pg 52) He also talks more abut this on pg 53 and 54. "If you can put god into a frame, then you've got him and he does not have you. He then continued, if you can hang him up on your wall, he belongs to you; you do not belong to him-you can take his picture, put it in a frame, lock him up in a room, and do whatever you want to do. However if god is going to be god the ruler, the creator, the maker of all things, then he cannot be put into a limited frame." This is something that made me read it and think "oh wow that's true." I think what the speaker meant is don't be narrow minded about what the image of God is. No one really knows what he looks like so don't get an image of him in your head. For me this chapter wasn't much of importance in my own experiences due to the fact that I am not a religious person and I do not have an image of god. This does not however, gear me toward telling others of the information and expressing the valid points made in this chapter. There is once again another solution at the end of this chapter about the images of religion. And I will end with the broader explanation of these solutions. "One mode of attack involves the removal of the images from the outer world and the second involves the removal of the internalized images from the inner being." (pg.66)