Dispelling Myths About African People

For centuries people of the African race have suffered humiliation, slavery, and extreme hatred towards them just because of their skin color. Once classified as only a third of a human and treated as if a barbaric animal, people in the African Diaspora have had to pull themselves out of the depths of the stereotypes to the success of being classified as an equal. In this article, we will take a deeper look into the myths and misconceptions people of the Caucasian (White) race have posed on Blacks.

Porch monkeys, Black Sambo, lazy, ignorant, nigger, Aunt Jamima are only a few of the several degrading names Africans have been called throughout history. African's short hair, dark skin, plump lips, and wide nose are only some of the reasons this race has been the center of inferiority according to the White race.

Throughout history, White has always been referred to as good while Black was considered as bad. Most Whites saw themselves as being pure, innocent, conveyors of truth, and as having a civilization superior to all other races. They used means of trying to justify why the African's enslavement, separation, and horrible treatment were related to their inferiority as a race.

Whites used the curse of Ham as a means to justify their superiority over the black race. Ham was Noah's (Peace be upon him) son who allegedly walked in on him while he was in a drunken state and found Noah (PBUH) naked. Ham supposedly did not cover his father and the prophet asked God to curse him and his descendants for walking in on him and seeing him naked. This biblical interpretation was used by Whites to degrade Blacks into thinking that God had cursed them.

African people were also looked upon as genetically and intellectually inferior to Whites. Many people believed, and some still believe, that Blacks are less capable of attaining the success of Whites. They are dumber and genetically prone to being less capable of civilizing.

United States President, Richard Nixon, stated, "America's black could only marginally benefit from federal programs because Blacks are genetically inferior to Whites." Hateful statements like these from the nation's leader only opened the doors to more hatred being thrown at the African-Americans.

Arthur Jensen, a noted psychologist, stated in 1969, "Whites are more intelligent than Negroes; intelligence is overwhelmingly the result of genetic inheritance rather than environmental influence..."

It is amazing to me how these men have tried to downsize African-Americans as being less intelligent human beings, when the Blacks were not allowed adequate access to a good education in America when the Whites were.

In 1973, William Shockley, a Nobel Prize winner stated, "Since Negro intelligence is naturally...low...let's give Blacks cash incentives not to breed...A voluntary sterilization program for people of low intelligence."

In a more recent interview, Andy Rooney, "60 Minutes" commentator stated in 1990, "I've believed all along that most people are born with equal intelligence, but blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children. They drop out of school early, do drugs and get pregnant."

Not only have Whites used genetics as a means of justifying their actions towards Blacks, they have also gone as far as to say that Blacks are close to animals in species, as if their human appearance was only a façade.

George Cuvier, an anthropologist and founder of geology, paleontology and modern comparative anatomy stated in 1882, "She [Hottentot Venus/African woman] had a way of pouting her lips exactly like what we have observed in the orangutan. Her movements had something abrupt and fantastical about them, reminding one of those of the ape. Her lips were monstrously large. Her ear was like that of many apes, being small, the tragus weak, and the external border almost obliterated behind. These are animal characters. I have never seen a human head more like an ape that that of this woman. Horrible statements like this, made it ok for Whites to call Black people monkeys or apes whenever they described them.

Another myth Whites used was that African people were the lowest of all the races. People like U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin felt that Blacks were polluting America by having more children. Some Whites would use the phrase "Go back to Africa" as a degrading message to get the Blacks out of the country. Many White people felt that Blacks could never rise up above any people and that they were the absolute lowest of the low in the human race.

Some Whites could not believe the concept that Africans were the builders of the great pyramids and once ruled some of the world's greatest empires and civilizations. For example, many would say that Egypt was a White, not an African civilization. C.G. Selmon, anthropologist, Races of Africa, stated in 1929, "...the incoming [to Egypt] Hamites were pastoral Caucasoids [Europeans] - arriving wave after wave- better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes..."

The last myth I am going to discuss is that African people are socially inferior to Whites. Many Whites used this as a means of justifying segregation, enslavement, lynching, and other hateful crimes against the Blacks.

In the case Plessy vs. Ferguson, in 1896 it was stated by the U.S. Supreme Court, "If one race is inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane."

Many Whites were frightened of Blacks because others would describe them as being barbaric, criminal, or harmful creatures that were out to hurt the well-being of the White man and woman. Stated by Dr. Paul B. Barringer, a professor of medicine, in 1900, "All things point to the fact that the Negro as a race is reverting to barbarism with the inordinate criminality and degradation of that state. It seems, moreover, that he is doomed at no distant day to ultimate extinction...the young Negro of the South...is reverting through heredity forces to savagery."

In a quote dated in 1900 by Thomas Nelson Page, writer of The Negro: The Southerner's Problem, Page tries to justify lynching as a means to get rid of the people who are trying to harm the White woman. He stated, "The stern underlying principle of the people who commit these barbarities [lynching] is one that has deep root in the basic passions of humanity: the determination to put an end to the ravishing to their women by an inferior race."

The Whites also exaggerated strong sexual desires of the Blacks as a scare tactic for the White women. They would warn their women of how the Black man would rape her if she was not careful. Often times this was a way to get a Black man lynched, just by saying that he looked or whistled at a White woman in a sexual way.

Many of the White men would also use the strong sexual desires of Black women to justify their reasons for having sexual intercourse or raping them. Even after Thomas Jefferson's horrid comments pertaining to Blacks, he still had intercourse with one of his Black slaves, and fathered children by her.

Until we can all look at the past, we will not be able to change the future. We all, as a human race, need to learn to love and respect one another, regardless of race, nationality, sex or religion. We need to start to tear down the walls of racism so that they do not get built back up again.

I hope that God willing this article gave you some insight and a historical review of the racism that has been poured on Blacks throughout history.