While deindividuation and the formation of enemy images are very common, they form a dangerous process that becomes especially damaging when it reaches the level of dehumanization.
Once certain groups are stigmatized as evil, morally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of those groups becomes more psychologically acceptable. Restraints against aggression and violence begin to disappear. Not surprisingly, dehumanization increases the likelihood of violence and may cause a conflict to escalate out of control. Once a violence break over has occurred, it may seem even more acceptable for people to do things that they would have regarded as morally unthinkable before.
Parties may come to believe that destruction of the other side is necessary, and pursue an overwhelming victory that will cause one's opponent to simply disappear. This sort of into-the-sea framing can cause lasting damage to relationships between the conflicting parties, making it more difficult to solve their underlying problems and leading to the loss of more innocent lives.
Indeed, dehumanization often paves the way for human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide. For example, in WWII, the dehumanization of the Jews ultimately led to the destruction of millions of people.[9] Similar atrocities have occurred in Rwanda, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia.
It is thought that the psychological process of dehumanization might be mitigated or reversed through humanization efforts, the development of empathy, the establishment of personal relationships between conflicting parties, and the pursuit of common goals. (source: Beyond Intractability)
From the Wall Street Journal Online, "The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975," by Steve Dollar, on 15 September 2011: If, as Winston Churchill said, "History is written by the victors," then perhaps it is rewritten by the janitors. Not that filmmaker Göran Olsson was on custodial duty the day he stumbled upon a small mountain of 16mm film reels stashed in the basement of the Swedish Television offices in 2007. But in reclaiming endless hours of interviews shot by crews dispatched to survey the volatile American political scene of the Vietnam Era—aka "The Sixties"—Mr. Olsson has done something close to that.
Angela Davis
Edited down to a remarkably concise 100-minute collage, "The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975" chronicles the Black Power movement from the inside-out. The documentary uses the vintage material, originally used for a series of broadcasts on Swedish Television (before going missing for some four decades) to present the major personas of the movement—Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale and others—neither as larger-than-life icons of resistance nor the angry rabble-rousers demonized by the media. They're just regular folks, standing up for their own at a time when every facet of American society seemed to be turning upside down. The film's soft-spoken vibe is encouraged by the polite engagement of 16 Swedish journalists involved in the original interviews that were broadcast back in Scandinavia, as well as the laid-back grooves of a soundtrack composed by Roots drummer Amir "Questlove" Thompson.
Stokley Carmichael (Kwame Toure) interviewing his mother, Mabel R. Carmichael.
The discoveries of these pale strangers in a strange land are due, perhaps, to their foreign non-combativeness, but they get to truths that were largely overlooked by the major American networks. Mr. Carmichael interviews his mother about the family's hard times. Ms. Davis, her afro coiffure buoyant even in the California State Prison, schools her interviewer on the meaning of revolution and the question of violence. The encounters are mediated by a chorus of unseen voices, such as former Columbia University professor Robin D.G. Kelley, Brooklyn hip-hop star Talib Kweli, Harry Belafonte and Ms. Davis herself, speaking in 2010.
Angela Davis interview
The aim is not to make revisionist claims as much as it is to frame the period in a broader, more human perspective, stripped of hype and hysteria. Though much of it feels past tense, the relevance has yet to fade. As Mr. Kweli relates, he was detained at JFK once, post-9/11, and questioned about a tape of Mr. Carmichael's he'd been listening to—somehow overheard when he'd called to make a JetBlue reservation. "The FBI is still scared of this man," he says. It's one of the revealing moments that make "The Black Power Mixtape" essential viewing. (source: Wall Street Journal)
Angela Davis speaks about growing up in Birmingham, Alabama 1963
The figure of the mammy occupies a central place in the lore of the Old South and has long been used to ullustrate distinct social phenomena, including racial oppression and class identity. In the early twentieth century, the mammy became immortalized as Aunt Jemima, the spokesperson for a line of ready-mixed breakfast products. Although Aunt Jemima has undergone many makeovers over the years, she apparently has not lost her commercial appeal; her face graces more than forty food products nationwide and she still resonates in some form for millions of Americans.
InSlave in a Box, M.M. Manring addresses the vexing question of why the troubling figure of Aunt Jemima has endured in American culture. Manring traces the evolution of the mammy from her roots in the Old South slave reality and mythology, through reinterpretations during Reconstruction and in minstrel shows and turn-of-the-century advertisements, to Aunt Jemima's symbolic role in the Civil Rights movement and her present incarnation as a "working grandmother." We learn how advertising entrepreneur James Webb Young, aided by celebrated illustrator N.C. Wyeth, skillfully tapped into nostalgic 1920s perceptions of the South as a culture of white leisure and black labor. Aunt Jemima's ready-mixed products offered middle-class housewives the next best thing to a black servant: a "slave in a box" that conjured up romantic images of not only the food but also the social hierarchy of the plantation South.The initial success of the Aunt Jemima brand, Manring reveals, was based on a variety of factors, from lingering attempts to reunite the country after the Civil War to marketing strategies around World War I. Her continued appeal in the late twentieth century is a more complex and disturbing phenomenon we may never fully understand. Manring suggests that by documenting Aunt Jemima's fascinating evolution, however, we can learn important lessons about our collective cultural identity.
Reviews
"In the white imagination few images are as recognizable as Aunt Jemima. As a negative stereotype reinforcing both racism and sexism, Aunt Jemima symbolically valued the humanity of black women. As M.M. Manring's thoughtful and well written account makes clear, the racist image of the black mammy has had a powerful impact upon American culture and society. Slave in a Box documents the continuing commodification of racial and gender inequality within white America." --Manning Marable, Professor of History, and Director, Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University
"Unflattering images of African Americans have been common in popular culture over the past 150 years - for example, the pickaninny, Little Black Sambo, and Uncle Tom. Another is Aunt Jemima, a domestic servant whose title of 'aunt' was a commonly used term of subordination and familiarity for African American domestic servants, nannies, and maids. Aunt Jemima is a caricatured jolly, fat character who has been used recently to sell commercially prepared pancake mix. In the 1972 mixed-media piece 'The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,' Betye Saar used three versions of Aunt Jemima to question and turn around such images. The oldest version is the small image at the center, in which a cartooned Jemima hitches up a squalling child on her hip. In the background, the modern version shows a thinner Jemima with lighter skin, deemphasizing her Negroid features. The older one makes Jemima a caricature, while the new one implies she is more attractive if she appears less black.
"The middle Jemima is the largest figure and the most emphasized. Her checked and polka-dotted clothing is very bright and colorful. Her black skin makes her white eyes and teeth look like dots and checks, too. This Jemima holds a rifle and pistol as well as a broom. A black-power fist makes a strong silhouette shape in front of all the figures, introduing militant power to the image. The idea of Aunt Jemima, in any of its forms, can no longer seem innocuous. Saar enshrined these images in a shallow glass display box to make them venerable. Symmetry and pattern are strong visual elements."
A. As a black ad man, I was compelled to understand the way that words and images have been used to manipulate how blacks are viewed in this country and the way many of us unconsciously view ourselves. Connecting the black dots on a larger level early on—from slavery and Jim Crow segregation to contemporary commercial and social propaganda—became my passion.
Q. What makes you an expert on the so-called Black Inferiority complex?
A. As the former founder and CEO of one of the top ad agencies in the country, I bring more than 45 years of advertising and marketing expertise with black consumers and social behaviors to the table. Brainwashed, to my knowledge, is the very first book that talks about the selling of race-based inferiority from both a historical and contemporary marketing perspective, and its devastating impact on both blacks and whites. I wrote this book to serve as a catalyst for deprogramming society from the myth that blacks are innately inferior to whites.
Q. What is the genesis of the White Superiority/Black Inferiority brainwash attitudes? A. American slavery. It was in America that Africans were chained and branded, both physically and psychologically, as subhuman beasts of burden. It was here that we were first indoctrinated with the idea that we were, in fact, not humans at all, but property.
Q. How do propaganda and brainwashing fit together? Why did you choose such a strong term?
Gone With The Wind
A. Propaganda is the outer layer of this brainwashing onion. In the marketing world, propaganda is the first tool of persuasion. Brainwashing is the outcome, but propaganda got us here, and its continued use keeps the inferior/superior mind game in play. Instead of using torture and other coercive techniques, the stealthy, media-savvy propagandist uses mass media and other forms of communication to change minds and mold ways of thinking. I have no intention of shying away from the term propaganda. I say we use it—take what was thrown at us, shuck it off, and replace it with “positive” propaganda.
Q. Many of the events covered in your book took place hundreds of years ago. Aren’t you encouraging readers to wallow in the past?
Sony Playstation Advertisement
A. The Black Inferiority campaign has left us with centuries of unresolved trauma. We can’t move forward as a collective until we have honest and detailed conversations about the painful influences of our past and the connections to the present. Until we are fully cognizant of the triggers that enable social, political, familial, and personal dysfunction we will be forever trapped in a counterproductive cycle.
Q. Didn’t the media brainwashing that you speak of die in the wake of the Jim Crow and the civil rights era? A. While some might argue that racist media practices died with the end of the Jim Crow era, a few thousand folks stranded for days on sweltering rooftops or in neck-deep, toxic floodwater in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 might disagree. We now know that many of the 24/7 news accounts of black-on-black sniper attacks, mass murders, and the rape of women and babies were largely unfounded. As if stuck in a vortex, mainstream news outlets today still heavily focus on the negative aspects of African American life while ignoring or downplaying our positive contributions and efforts.
Q. You say that “Black people are not dark-skinned white people.” Explain.
Beyonce in blackface and whiteface
A. Too often blacks and whites live in different worlds. My point is that black Americans, because of our heritage and history, have a unique culture that could best be reached through strategies, words, and images subtly or overtly related to those historical and cultural factors.
Beyonce in whiteface
Q. What are some of the lessons you learned about black Americans during your tenure in the advertising business?
A. Burrell Communications’ research of the 70s and 80s showed that African Americans have distinct psychosocial needs, desires, fears, hopes, and aspirations, all born of the circumstances arising from slavery and a history of racial oppression. We discovered, for example that:
• Black preference for high-end status brands was driven by the need to compensate for feelings of low self-esteem. • Our penchant for a lopsided spending/savings ratio grew out of our need for immediate gratification, based on a chilling pessimism about an uncertain future.
Janet Jackson on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Q. Did the “black pride” feeling of the 60s and early 70s weaken the Black Inferiority brand?
A. Yes and no. During that exciting time in our history, we paid lip service to being black and proud, but the sudden conversion was not supported by the necessary psychological machinery to make the change permanent. Even today, we have no permanent cultural mechanisms to undo what a 400-year marketing campaign has achieved.
Q. How does the election of President Obama impact the Black Inferiority campaign in America?
A. Images are powerful. Never before has America seen a black man occupying the highest office in the land, delivering the State of the Union address, drafting and promoting national policy, or disembarking from Air Force One with his black wife and daughters. From a marketing perspective, this is powerful, life-altering stuff. Barack Obama, through intelligence, will, self-determination, and yes, not a small confluence of favorable circumstances, may have reached his Promised Land, but tragically too many black Americans are still wandering in the wilderness.
Q. Are black Americans finally making measurable progress in this country?
A. The National Urban League’s annual report, The State of Black America, presents some pervasive and depressing themes: social chaos, irresponsible spending, economic stagnation, and disproportionate death and incarceration rates. No matter what the category, blacks statistically trail behind whites and other ethnicities, and in some areas, such as educational achievement and overall life expectancy, our numbers are actually getting worse.
Q. What are some of the disturbing brainwash messages that black adults often unconsciously pass on to children?
A. At a very young age, black men and women are inundated with messages that they cannot trust or depend upon one another. Children hear comments and jokes about lazy, greedy, irresponsible, or otherwise flawed black adults. They are warned to be tough, trust no one, and always, always be prepared for the doomed relationship. It is not really a revelation that incompatibility, lack of love, and oftentimes violence become the inevitable conclusions of these tainted individuals’ relationships.
Q. What messages dominate media portrayals of black men?
A. The message that black men are America’s demons is peddled relentlessly on the nightly news and crime shows and through entertainment media. Through slick propaganda, the criminal code of respect is now regarded as a “black thing.” These messages hit black boys everywhere—on the basketball court, in the schoolyard, and when they gather on the street. Negative media reinforcements not only influence how cops, judges, employers, and others view black males, they affect how young blacks view themselves.
Q. Why should we care about the controversial image of NBA star LeBron James looking “King Kong-like,” posing with a white model on the cover of Vogue?Lebron James, Vogue cover
A. The reason we should care about LeBron’s image is the same reason we should care about the image of Tiger Woods on theFebruary 2010 cover of Vanity Fair magazine.
In framing James as King Kong and Woods in the classic Boyz ’N the Hood pose, Vogue, which reaches 1.2 million readers a month and Vanity Fair, perpetuated one of the most enduring stereotypes of black sexuality—the Brute.
Tiger Woods, Vanity Fair cover, Feb. 2010
Depictions of LeBron as the modern-day rendition of the brutish, ape-like menace and Woods, angry and muscled in a prison-yard pose, with the not-so-subtle reminder that both men preyed on fair-skinned maidens, do indeed matter—especially in a society still fixated on warped, racial images of oversexed black men.
Q. Your book challenges the work of black entertainers such as Tyler Perry, Steve Harvey, Lil’ Wayne, and other high-profile individuals and organizations. Is it your intent to embarrass or chastise these individuals?
A. No, not at all. We are all victims of the overwhelming BI campaign. The idea is to challenge everyone, including myself, to question what we put out, what we take in, and what influences we promote in our communities and the wider world. If readers agree with the material I detail in the book then new awareness must turn into conscious action.
Lil' Wayne on the cover of the Rolling Stone
Q. Many of the successful blacks entertainers have helped extend what you call the “BI brand—rappers, comedians, TV, films, and others. How do you feel about this?
Dennis Rodman as the devil.
A. In the book, I explain in great detail how many of us contribute and continue perpetrating stereotypes developed to forever keep us branded as inferior. More important, however, I explain the historical motivators that cause us to respond to such disinformation negatively. I’m no position to condemn anyone. I’m a firm believer that once we know better, we will do better.
Bill Cosby plays the Devil
Q. Why do you feel black American unity is so important?
A. There’s strength in numbers. African Americans share a legacy of resilience and strength but also a history of understandable division based on Black Inferiority conditioning. If we can unite around a very basic but necessary agenda of reprogramming ourselves and promoting uplifting images and messages about ourselves, I believe we will have finally laid a foundation for exponential progress. Instead of crabbin’ and backstabbin’, this generation can be the pioneers who pool their resources and talent, the generation that soars. This can be the generation that says, “Enough. The master puppeteer will no longer pull our strings.”
Q. What’s the most important lesson you want readers to take from Brainwashed?
Whoppie Goldberg
A. More than anything, I want readers to understand the effects of a centuries-long propaganda campaign. I want them to start scrutinizing everything we see, hear, or say about African Americans. I want us to hold ourselves accountable and realize that we all can play a part in flipping the propaganda script.
Q. What is The Resolution Project?
A. I created the nonprofit Resolution Project in 2007 with the goal of sparking intra-racial dialogue and sharing ideas about ways we can challenge and change how we perceive ourselves. Brainwashed is the project’s first tangible product. Our task from here forward is to create a coalition of engaged citizens dedicated to using positive propaganda to eradicate negative images and replace them with a bombardment of positive words and images.
Q. What is the “Flip the Script…Stop the Brainwash” competition? Who can enter and how? A. In order to recruit “evangelists for positive propaganda,” I established The Resolution Project, an organization dedicated to promoting community-based new media campaigns. One of The Resolution Project’s first activities will be to sponsor the 1st Annual “Flip the Script…Stop the Brainwash” campaign. This worldwide competition will honor the best positive propaganda campaigns in video, art, creative writing, poetry, music, and other media based on a theme inspired by Brainwashed. (source: http://www.stopthebrainwash.com/?page_id=90)
"Degenerate Music - a detailed statement by State Secretary Dr. Hans Severus Ziegler, general manager of the German National Theater in Weimar.
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The Kampfbund fĂĽr deutsche Kultur (KfDK, or Fighting League for German Culture) was founded in 1929 by Alfred Rosenberg, with the aim of promoting German culture while fighting the cultural threat of liberalism. Ironically, this organisation – best known for disrupting concerts and music classes, insulting and threatening artists, and distributing inflammatory and anti-Semitic pamphlets – was originally aimed at the nation’s elite. Hitler and other early Nazi leaders were searching for a way beyond mob-style violence, and decided to create a cultural organisation as a way to court the intelligentsia.
During the first years of its existence, the relatively small and regionally-organised KfdK attracted many intellectuals and, increasingly, musicians. With its conservative agenda of fighting ‘degenerative Jewish and Negro’ influences, it spent much energy promoting the ‘cleansing’ of museums, university faculties, and concert programmes of unwanted artists. In general, the KfdK appealed to radical nationalists and anti-Semites, to those who felt betrayed by defeat in World War I and by the Treaty of Versailles, and to those who felt outraged by the leftist, modernising and ‘cosmopolitan’ tendencies of the Weimar Republic.
The KfdK was initially not very aggressive, relying instead on lectures, intimidation and propaganda. After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, it became increasingly violent, with the support of the Stormabteilung (SA, Storm Troopers, or brown shirts) changing both its techniques and its membership pool. The KfdK had its own orchestra, which was selected to perform a special concert for Hitler’s birthday. It also acquired control over the important music journal Die Musik, which gave it an official outlet for racist and nationalist opinions on music.
Centre Section of the triptych Grosstadt, 1927-8, by Otto Dix (1891-1969). It is an evocation of the Gershwin (1898-1937) period - the Jazz Age. This age and the kind of music (Jazz) were condemned by the Nazis as decadent and racially degenerate
Indeed, the Nazis were so fearful of African and African-American culture (particularly jazz) that in 1930 a law was passed that was titled "Against Negro Culture." In other words, the Nazis were clearly aware of the potential for popular cultural forms to taint what they considered to be genuine Aryan culture—whether this taint was a result of marriage or of music. As a consequence, the Germans often conflated stereotypes of African-American musical performers with those of Jews and Africans into some of their most heinous propaganda pieces.
Two of the most infamous and well-known Nazi propaganda artworks were posters which advertised cultural events. In a poster advertising an exhibition of entartete musik (degenerate music), for example, the viewer is confronted with a dark-skinned man in a top hat with a large gold earring in his ear.
This distorted caricature of an African homosexual male in black face playing a saxophone has a Star of David clearly emblazoned on his lapel. To the National Socialists, the most polluting elements of modern culture were represented by this single individual. They were suggesting that anyone who listened to jazz (or enjoyed other forms of art that they judged to be degenerate) could be transformed into such a barbarous figure.
Nazi propaganda poster titled "LIBERATORS" that epitomizes many perennially-recurring themes of anti-Americanism, by the Dutch SS-Storm magazine that then belonged to a radical SS wing of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (1944)
Toward the end of the war, the Nazis circulated posters in a somewhat desperate attempt to get their "white European brothers" to join their cause. In one infamous poster, the designer depicted a multi-armed monster clutching two white American women. Attached to his muscle-bound body are iconic references to the Ku Klux Klan, Judaism (the Star of David), boxing gloves, jazz dancing, and a lynching noose. At his middle is a sign that reads in English "Jitterbug—the Triumph of Civilization." This poster was directed at white European men, and it urged them to protect their wives and their culture against a coming invasion of primitive, inferior American men. As occurred in the poster that warned against jazz, this image conflated stereotypes of the Jew with that of the African in an attempt to frighten white (Aryan) Europe and America into joining their cause. The exaggerated racist stereotypes served to strengthen and amplify widely accepted attitudes regarding racial and ethnic superiority. With these images, the National Socialists were offering their justifications as to why certain groups should be feared and thus eliminated.
Q. What is the genesis of the White Superiority/Black Inferiority brainwash attitudes?
