A Psychosocial Analysis of Africans in American

By Dr. Ben "Menes" Robertson

About the Book
As an educator at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), author Dr. Ben Robertson Jr. is appalled by the severe lack of information in books used in human behavior classes in the social environment, and it spurred him to write this fascinating book. A Psychosocial Analysis of Life in America for Afrikan Americans is designed to portray a truer picture of the challenges, shortcomings, and successes Afrikan Americans have encountered throughout their lives in America. It’s both a historical account of what Afrikan Americans have gone through as well as thoughtful, pivotal instructions and suggestions directed toward the Afrikan American community with respect to making important improvements in the lives of its members.
About the Author
For the past fifty-plus years, Dr. Ben "Menes" Robertson has been involved in activities centered around empowering members of urban Afrikan American communities; this includes his work in public and private schools, teaching at HBCUs, and assisting public officials to improve the life conditions and chances of success of every man, woman, and child living in those communities. Every article he has written, workbook he has developed, and program restructuring he has implemented has been designed to empower the urban Afrikan American community to do what it can do for themselves as residents as well as through coordinated efforts towards improvements with other concerned persons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Dec 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889257066

Book preview

Chapter I

A people without the knowledge of their past history,

origin and culture are like a tree without roots.

– W. E. B. DuBois

A great deal of controversy surrounds the history of humans on this planet; however, the major issues of contention are centered in the Christian biblical information and documented anthropological findings, which vastly differ in their account of when the first humans appeared. Further, there are vast differences regarding what the first humans looked like, whether or not they walked upright or on all fours, or better yet, what their physical features were, including skin coloration. Although an exact timeline about how and where the first resident of humans was, there is sufficient documentation to draw responsible conclusions. These issues are important for a more accurate picture of the history of life on Planet Earth as it is now and going forward for all humans, especially Africans throughout the diaspora. There is an African adage that states that you can’t accurately gauge where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been, as well as where you are now. For humans, this literally means we must gain as accurately as we can a true picture of how we got to this point—good, bad, or indifferent—in order to proceed making the future of life on this planet better for future generations, particularly those who have accepted a lowly subhuman characterization. There is no better time than the present because for too long, the history of humans has been clouded in mysticism and false information, which has left the average person dazed and confused about themselves and the world around them. However, the entire history of humankind would be more than this chapter can adequately deal with, and such an undertaking is beyond the scope of the purpose of this book. With the blessings of the Creative Force and the ancestors, later works will undertake such a task; this chapter will focus almost entirely on Africans on the continent of Africa.

The history of Africans, in general, is the history of the first humans on Planet Earth. Evidence exists that suggests the earliest humans, more than 5 to 8 million years ago, walked upright on their legs and used their hands to grasp and manipulate instruments as tools. Dr. Leakey (1961) reported on material unearthed in Kenya about the remains of an African woman who had reportedly lived more than 3 to 3.5 million years ago. Much of the discussion about Lucy suggests that she was the first ancestor of humans to walk upright on her hind legs, thus distinguishing her as the break from the lower species of animals. When the question arises about why other apes have not evolved to resemble the current strain of humanoids, the resolve is that this was a special ape that no longer exists. However, others have offered a more pragmatic conclusion for the current lack of evolution of present-day apes evolving into humans. First, instead of acknowledging the first humans as having evolved from apes and white being the more evolved race, the racist ideology that’s being supported is that whites are the more evolved race and blacks or Africans are lower on the rung of human evolution. For example, a book by Jonathan Wells (2002) depicts a picture of five figures, with the ape in the first two frames, a Caucasoid in the last two frames, and a neanderthal in the middle; it clearly suggests the evolution of humans from the ape through African to the white race. Such tactics as this and a host of others, such as Africa as the dark continent and Tarzan as a white man who’s able to control every kind of animal in Africa, only delay the process of the average person freeing the African mind to realize his/her true self and the potential that exists within.

Again, it is virtually impossible to know where you’re going unless you have knowledge of where you were and your present state of affairs. Therefore, accepting that Africans were the first people, Finch (1990) has described them thusly, With the appearance of Australopithecus some four or more million years ago, we reach the dawn of humankind. There are certain things we can say about the Australopithecines with confidence: 1) they were efficient bi-pedal walkers, 2) their habitat was largely open savannah and woodland, 3) they lived in hunting-gathering societies, and 4) their stature ranged from three and a half feet (Lucy) to just under five feet (p. 29).

While making a distinction between human and subhuman characteristics is important, the point about different groups evolved differently, as influenced by their environment, and no one more superior than another is also important. However, information exists that sheds light on Africans’ earlier development of many of the areas considered representative of advanced cultures, such as philosophy, medicine, architecture, and mathematics, particularly algebra (James, 1954). As a result, the history of Africans in general, and the Africans of Hemet, Kenya, Ghana, and Zimbabwe must be recalibrated to take into account their contributions to world civilizations. Reconfigurations that must, out of necessity, include not only contributions to the hard sciences, but contributions to an enhanced understanding of the multiverse to include the places where stone circles exist, as in Kenya, Nubia, and Zimbabwe. Such stone circles were built to represent the multiverse on Earth, just as the three pyramids of Giza represent the three stars of Orion’s Belt/Osiris pointing to Sirius B, which the Dogans indicate as the planet of their origin. As a major indication of the amazing feats of the African people who eventually settled in what was originally known as Kemet, they built along the Giza Strip the three Great Pyramids, which are oriented to the south of present-day Egypt (Finch, 2007). Estimates have the building of the three Great Pyramids of the Giza Strip between 3,000 to 3,500 years BCE. While many Egyptologists have admitted that the pyramids, or Miru, according to ancient Kemet, were utilized as learning centers, much more has recently been revealed about their use. For example, Dunn (1998) has indicated that there were highly technological engineering feats accomplished in the Great Pyramid, particularly the king’s and queen’s chambers. In fact, Dunn indicates that the Great Pyramid was used as an enormous power generator that utilized the energy from the core of the Earth as well as the light from the sun in what is referred to as reflected ray, or light bouncing off of mirrors.

The Three Great Pyramids/Miru of Giza

There is information indicating that the three structures, commonly referred to by the Greeks as pyramids, which means houses of fire, were built more than 3,500 years ago.

At this time, in the early evolution of Kemet/Egypt, the people living there were dark-brown or black in coloration or black in the estimates of most Africentric scholars. When the Greeks referred to those huge structures as pyramids, they were referring to the activities which occurred in those structures, which is why the designation house of fire was indicated by Christopher Dunn (1998). Accordingly, the Pyramids of Giza were actually power plants that produced energy by harnessing the electromagnetic energy from both the center of the Earth and from sunlight. As it is explained, at the center of the Earth there is multinet lava which gives off electromagnetic energy through the process of reflected ray, bouncing light off of mirrors. These lasers might have been used to make fine cuts in the granite sculptures. Perhaps these estimates are modest and the pyramids were built much earlier than the 3,500 years approved by the by conquering group. However, what can also be summarized is the fact that the people who devised such machinery were highly intelligent beings who must have, in all probability, utilized a great deal of their total brain capacity.

Estimates have it that by the years 8,000 to 3,500 BCE, human intellect had grown astronomically, as indicated by the Africans’ development. Enough cultural factors existed from which early Greek and, later, Roman societies were able to benefit and get a kickstart for their own cultures, although few modern scholars would admit such (James, 1954). Further, the Edwin Smith Papyrus and the Ebers Papyrus, which are both medical treaties, were compiled by the ancient Kemetians; however, it is obvious that the research complied in these documents was developed over many years (Carruthers, 1995). Additionally, while humans were evolving elsewhere, particularly over the last four thousand years, Africans, apparently, were evolving at an astonishing rate, as evidenced by what they had achieved up to this time. Then the world turned upside down, and Africans, all fifty countries to one degree or another, began to exhibit a decrease in intellectual powers. Therefore, at a point in time, earlier humans, Africans in particular, used one hundred percent of their total brain capacity; however, in Africans, having their world turned upside down, there has been a concomitant decrease in the use of the entire brain. The point that is apropos here is that there is information that suggests the average human makes use of only ten percent of his or her total brain capacity, while ninety percent goes relatively unused or unavailable for use to the average person. The African origin and development of humans documents that the earliest humans were not only black in coloration, but they walked upright using brains that evolved as they were used by those early humans to the multilayered structure that now comprises the human brain. Therefore, contrary to popular belief that today’s humans are an evolutionary end product of the progression of humans from a lower stage of development when applying the law of use and disuse, humans wouldn’t have the highly evolved brain of today if at one point they didn’t use their total brain.

The history of early Africans is a major part of the information that has to be factored in as it relates to understanding both the early Africans and what is known about the human mind, encompassing understanding evolution of the human brain and its various stages of development through increasing unfolding of its various parts and what is presently observable. For the past two thousand years, or since the last twenty-fifth Nubian Dynasty, or 747 BCE to 656 BCE, the focus on human information processing has focused exclusively on reasoning at the exclusion of other parts of the body processing information. R. A. Schwaller de Lubricz (1978) has indicated that ancient Kemetians, the people who built the Great Pyramids of Giza over eight thousand years ago, actually utilized the entire human sensing system to process information. The author referred to this as analogically processing information, which means that the entire human system, which includes all of the senses as well as the brain, as opposed to just the brain, processes information. However, with the increasing influence of conquering countries, indigenous Africans eventually discontinued their spiritual practices. Kenyatta (1962) explained a similar regression of spiritual practices while being coerced into practicing the faiths of the invaders such as Islam and Christianity from the perspective of Europe and Buddhism as practiced in India. The process was diabolical to the point that they originally came to the continent as traders, missionaries, trappers, or in some cases, outright slaves, and once they were settled into Africa, it became impossible to remove them (I. Chinweizu, 1987).

It would take the writings of Chinweizu (1987) and Armah (1973, 1978) to be able to fully grasp the magnitude of the forces that were unleashed on the people of Africa by one invading group after another. While his works par primarily novels, this doesn’t detract from the message they deliver about the conditions wrought by the African invaders who entered the continent to become colonizers. Novelists appear to have an uncanny ability to write in a single book about issues too sensitive or too comprehensive for historians to deal with, however needing nonetheless to be presented and discussed be serious thinkers. For example, Chinweizu presents documentation about the invasion of Nigeria, his native land, and many of the surrounding countries where, despite the various methods of intrusion, the ultimate objective of the invaders was the conquest of Africa. For example, for those African countries where the leaders were willing participants in slave trade, a dispute between neighboring African groups yielded captives who were sold for money (Chinweizu, 1987). However, there were others in African countries who steadfastly opposed entering into the slave trade and were dealt with in some of the most vicious manners, such as having their food supply cut off or having to withstand a military siege. In either case, an African community or country literally suffered a stronghold until they gave in to the demands of the slavers for captives, and selling some other community into slavery was far better than selling your own countryman into perpetual condition of servitude (Chinweizu, 1987). As a result, there were instances where entire African villages were destroyed or laid siege by one conquering force after another or captured and exported as slaves for profit to warring Africans and slave-capturing Europeans.

Once the Africans were captured, hordes of them were taken to the Southwest coast of Africa, where they awaited transport to parts unknown; they were held in the slave castles on Goree Island and the Door of No Return (Goree, 1997). Capture, confinement, and transportation on the slave ships intensified the only intensified ordeal of the abducted Africans; however, it was particularly traumatizing for the African women, both young and slightly older (DuBois, 1896). It must be remembered that the capturers were particularly selective in the kind of slaves they wanted, which meant the young and strong most often were selected as prime choices for abduction. However, in the case of the women, often they were used—raped—by the whites guarding the slave castle as well as on the slave ships. It has been reported that the frequency of the slave ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean brought the frequency of deaths, as well as voluntary jumping overboard. After a while, sharks would follow the slave ships anticipating bodies jumping or being thrown overboard, which meant food for them. In many cases, the bodies of those who were thrown overboard were those of slaves who died because of severe overcrowding or those who jumped overboard preferred death to the life as a slave (DuBois, 1886). To participate in such drastic measures is, psychologically, highly suggestive of a people who had been forced into servitude after knowing what freedom was all their lives. This ultimately led to the eventual actions of such persons as Harriett Tubman. Tubman, along with a host of slave revolts led by Nat Turner, Demark Vesey, and Gabriel Processer, was considered the Moses of her race and risked her life to free Africans from slavery. However, seldom mentioned, the largest recorded slave revolt in North America was the 1811 slave revolt, which occurred in Louisiana by slaves headed from present-day Laplace in route to New Orleans (Aptheker, 1993). Such efforts were aided by a number of white abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison, and the Quakers aided multitudes in their escape to freedom (Franklin, 1974).

Taking all of the revolts that occurred prior to 1865 to include Nat Turner, Demark Vesey, and Gabriel Processer, all met a devastating ending, and most tragic was what took place following the slave revolt of 1811, led by Charles Deslondes (Aptheker, 1993). In most cases of a planned slave revolt, the revolt was betrayed by one or more of the enslaved Africans, usually one of the house servants who most often were the illegitimate children of the white slave master and one or several of his African slave women. Such behaviors occurred out of a displaced sense of loyalty to their, most often, white slave masters and the fear of losing the conditioned comfort, rather than pursuing independence by revolting or running away. From this group’s inception, house servants were trained more carefully in ways important to their job and proximity to the white slave master (Frazier, 1990). Because of their close proximity to their white slave master, members of this group have served as a buffer between the white slave master and the field slaves, from where the revolting leaders came, and the field slaves tended to be of a darker hew compared to many house servants, and they were more apt to desire freedom and independence (Frazier, 1990). Not every member of this group behaved thusly; persons such as W. E. B. DuBois, Frederick Douglass, and the likes of Thurgood Marshall remained conscious of their responsibility to humanity in general and African-Americans in particular. This was in light of the fact that regular and consistent rewards, such as less harsh treatment and first shots at better jobs, flowed to those persons willing to demonstrate their tolerance of white domination and preferential treatment in America (Hare, 1991).

Another one of the ploys that has been used to suggest that the African-American family has no sense of strong family values has been refuted by the work of persons like E. Franklin Frazier. In the book From Slavery to Freedom, John Hope Franklin discusses how after 1865, large numbers of African-American men would travel the country trying to reconnect with family members who had been sold off to other plantations. On top of this, the data indicated that African-Americans once freed would purchase the freedom of family members who were still in bondage. In many instances, African-Americans would work extra jobs to earn money to purchase the freedom of their loved ones, despite the enormous pressure or re-enslavement for African-Americans living in Northern States (McIntyre, 1993). Contrary to the belief that African-Americans lacked any sense of strong family ties, it wasn’t unusual for Africans—males and females—to work hard in fighting to maintain family contact and unity. Information which runs contrary to the belief that African Americans lacked any sense of strong family ties.  Just as important, those who tout such ridiculousness fail to consider the enormous factors in place to limit and, in many cases, restrict adequate functioning of African-Americans, in particular, and minorities, in general, from having/displaying any sense of strong family commitment. This again suggests the strong African ties, commitment to family, and the extent to which African-American men would go in their attempts to reestablish their family connections. Finally, despite today’s challenges, strong African-American men and women are continuing to raise their children to be respectful and productive to themselves, their families, their communities, and society at large. Although the numbers are not as large as they should be, however, as evidenced by the fact that 37% of African-American children live with two parents (The Institute for Family Studies, 2021).

What isn’t factored into the statistics related to the increase of African-American single-parent households are such factors as the sexual revolutions of the sixties and seventies, increasing number of women entering the workforce, and the increased ease at which marriages ended post-1980s. For example, in 1965, the percent of African-American female single-headed households was 25 percent (Hare & Hare, 1984), while in the percent of African-American female single-headed households in 2022 was 67 percent (Kids Count Data Center, 2022). While single parenting alone—male or female—does not account for the host of challenges faced in attempting to raise children with a sense of respect, values, and a sense of purpose in life, the job is made much more difficult when tackled alone. It goes without saying that some children fare out as productive human beings with or without two parents, especially when the parents don’t get along or either one or both of them set bad examples of what it takes to be a productive person, as well as one who is proud of his or her culture of origin. However, the ease at with which marriages end too frequently, as well as young women and men electing to engage in sex without an inkling of planning for the consequences of unprotected intercourse, is even more devastating than the number