The Political Psychology of Black Consciousness

This lecture makes up the third and final installment of Amos Wilson’s, Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness series. Similar to Chancellor Williams’s, The Destruction of the Black Civilization, Wilson’s series does a great job of placing the Afrikan experience into a historical context. If one does not read all three lectures, then a reasonable criticism of the text is Wilson is simply preaching to the choir about the current social reality of the Afrikan. However, this final lecture, like Williams final chapter in Destruction, highlights a path to the process of the Afrikan reclaiming his proper psychological consciousness.

Wilson argues that, “white domination and Black subordination involve special types of social power relations constructed predominantly by whites in order that they might receive certain material and non-material benefits thereby.” The point here is that white domination is only possibly through carefully crafted systems and ideologies being uncritically accepted. Wilson goes on to argue that under the current system of white supremacy, Black “consciousness and behavior are socially manufactured, labeled, and judged by whites in ways constant with their social control and expropriation of Black natural and acquired resources.” The ways in which oppressed Afrikans have been conditioned to view and think about the world is also a social construction of the European.

Wilson argues then that the medical label of “normal” and “abnormal” behavior is political in nature. Wilson argues that, “the norm is in essence a principle of coercion; a constraint on behavior; a rule to be followed.” As the European is the only one who can establish what is normal and acceptable in the West, then all other cultures of people are forced into assimilating to this conceptualization of “normal”. Wilson argues that “the alleged normality or abnormality of Black consciousness under white supremacy requires that Black’s involuntarily and obsessively deceive themselves.” By adhering to the current system of white supremacy the Black man and woman are living counter to their nature.

Wilson argues that the “authority to label is a central factor in the processes of social power and often functions to maintain or increase power inequalities.” Again, the European is the authority on diagnosis and prescription in the west, he alone has the authority to classify and define. Given this reality, the consciousness of Black’s and all other oppressed peoples in the West are subjects to the will of the European labels and classifications. Wilson argues that, “the medicalization of many types of criminal, anti-social, deficient, and maladaptive behavior by Afrikans in America permits the ruling white supremacist regime to deny that its policies and practices are responsible for much of the occurrences of such behavior.”

Rehabilitated black social workers and medical professionals are needed to help reform and heal the damage done by European medicalization and psychotherapy. Wilson introduces readers to the Ronald Leifer’s concept of Ethnicized Psychotherapy. Leifer argues that the “ethnicization of psychotherapy is the molding and the polarization of behavior so that it conforms to prevailing cultural patterns.” The medical profession and self-help professions have colluded and conspired to classify black behavior and practices as abnormal and criminal. Thus, these behaviors are classifiable through the process of the ethnicization of psychotherapy.

Wilson then begin to lay out the process by which we as Afrikans can reclaim our consciousness and thus our sovereignty. Wilson argues that there is a need for an Afrikan centered consciousness. Wilson writes, “an Afrikan centered consciousness and behavioral orientation which will maximize the positive expression of his fundamental humanity and his ability to maximally contribute to the growth and development of the Afrikan community of which he is a number.” The need is for men and women who can positively contribute to the growth and development of the community.

Wilson goes on to argue that, “Afrkan centered therapeutic and educational encounters discovers how he has been unconsciously conditioned by a Eurocentric system to respond habitually and unthinking to its social cues to Eurocentric authority.” This therapeutic process is a necessity in the development and growth of the Afrikan community because without this process, we cannot understand the ways in which we have been conditioned by a Eurocentric system to act uncritically to its social and political cues.

Wilson argues that the “ability of dominant whites to socially manufacture or markedly influence Afrikan states of consciousness and conduct are in the interest of perpetuating white supremacy.” He goes on to argue that the way to reverse this trend is that the “power differentials have to be equalized or reversed by the Black empowerment apparatus, that we as a community are still responsible for creating.

Wilson claims that the process to restoring the Afrikan consciousness must “include the thorough decolonizing of Afrikan consciousness and the strategic organization of the Afrikan community. Wilson goes on to offer the following solutions to the restoration of the Afrikan conscious process:

• Reintegration of Afrikan history
• Upgrading of Coping Resources
• Neutralizing of Social Stressors
• Reversing Reactionary States of the Afrikan Body Politic
• Controlling of Effective Coping Strategies and Tactics
• The Afrikan control of labeling and Treatment Processes

I will be writing an entire post on this restoration process. Here, I simply wish to introduce this plan to readers and students of Wilson’s so that they can continue this study on their own.