Gibbs Magazine
The American Perspective: Its Impact
on Blacks Americans
Frank A. Jones
I am ever cognizant of people's perspectives and frames of reference by which they perceive and respond to various situations, ideas, other people, etc. And getting students (the same it true about all people) to perceive how they look out on the world is often very difficult. Most human beings like the comfort of their longstanding way of viewing life, regardless of how flawed or harmful it may be. And to challenge their almost invisible behaviors takes great academic and often spiritual difficulty.
Every person has a way of viewing a situation, an
idea, a set of circumstances; the way we view and behave toward other people
and their thoughts, beliefs and notions I call, for purposes of this
discussion, a perspective. It is through this perspective we
see and act. This perspective usually functions as a filter through which
we see or accept what is before us; often it dictates how much a person sees,
understands and accepts; it determines how one responds to most things, and
it is so much a part of us that it is almost invisible to us.
A person’s perspective is composed of many things, especially one’s background, the assumptions and beliefs of that background; it is also composed of teachings, the ethos around him/her, etc.
A few weeks ago a number of my
students and I discussed the various perspectives in America; we
identified the Black American Perspective, the Palestinian
American Perspective, and the White American Perspective—three
main groups in this course. Of these three, let us
look at the White American Perspective and how it fashions Americans to look at
the world, to respond to what they see.
Historically, Black Americans have understood much of the White American perspective, although we have not articulated it as the White American perspective. If a Black person does something that is disingenuous, we sometimes say, “That is quite white of you.” We usually mean that such an act is not done in good faith or to help; instead, it may be intended to harm, hinder, or be self-serving. This is a well-known aspect of the White perspective that Black Americans have known and experienced; it indicates the egocentric aspect of the White perspective.
James Baldwin, the great Black American writer, once stated, “The slave has to know his master more than the master knows himself…For the life of the slave is dependent on the master more than the master is dependent on the slave.” (1) Resultantly, Blacks have unwittingly and wittingly understood and examined Whites more than Whites have examined themselves. (2)
We know much of the White perspective
Few white Americans examine themselves honestly or think there is any need to. They see what they see--their own positive caricatures and favorable assumptions and stereotypes they have amassed about themselves through their media; to them, they are in a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix” mode. And according to them, things are just fine, as they perceive them. And when they are not just fine, there is a problem with someone else. Sadly, many or most Americans actually believe the TV, movie, and media images of themselves are who they are—the beautiful, the intelligent, the desired, the powerful, the deserving of all things good, etc. They have even made Christianity conform to the American reality.
America assumes that the rest of the world
envies them and wants to be like them because they are right.
(3) That egocentric view of self is so ingrained
that it hinders most White Americans from seeing
reality as viewed by that world they presume wants everything they have.
Example: President Bush explained the World Trade Center and the Pentagon's bombings through the "they hate us because we are prosperous and free" aspect of the American perspective. That reasoning, of course, has major logical flaws that are overlooked, which is normal when one buys into the American perspective.
American egocentric thought goes to assuming that the world wants what we want, such as money, property possessions, and our form of government. In blind rage Bush, steeped in his White American perspective said, “They” did this to us because we are rich and free. They want what we have--a democratic society." Of course, it was not strange that most of America accepted that superficial opinion of the cause for our worst national disaster. The alternative was too horrible and destructive to the American perspective to accept. It was too ego-devastating to allow the world’s view of America to shape or influence its view of self. To test this American perspective, he offered as opinion and got half of America and just about all of Congress (except Congresswoman Barbara Lee) to approve an invasion of a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with the bombings of this country and that posed no threat to America or its neighbor--a war of aggression that has cost the people of America half a trillion dollars and will probably cost a trillion dollars when all the costs are totaled.
And so steeped in this American perspective is this nation's people that they have ceased to think; in spite of cold hard facts that demand no other conclusion than that this president has lied, falsified, and dissembled to the American people and Congress, the American people, by and large, resist coming to truth. That is a strong American perspective that is blinding, distorting, and retarding thought.
What has brought about such a perspective that facts, stubborn facts, cannot correct? The White American perspective is a perspective rigorously built on the value of money and possessions and the primacy of money in one's life. Americans will do just about anything for money; they will steal, scheme, defraud, or kill for money. Money is the blood-pumping essence of America; it makes America go around, and according to their calculations, money makes the world go around. And this love supremacy is propelled by American media's romanticizing it above all hings.
In America no one asks the source of another's money, just that he/she has it. And when he has it, Americans will do anything to be near him/her and ascribe all positive attributes to such a person. In this nation, money is the sine qua non of all things, and no one cares where it comes from, how it is gotten or what is being done with it. We, by and large, only care that a person has it. With money, Americans imagine they can make men servile to the will of those who have money. Furthermore, they assume one can do anything with money. Whereas in another perspective, say a Muslim or true Christian perspective, God/Allah is the central filter through which all things are seen. But in America money is that central filter.
And when explaining, perceiving or responding to life, it is done through a dollars and cents logic primarily and that sense makes good sense to most Americans. All other ways of seeing things are confusing or simply absurd to most Americans. Vice President Dick Cheney and his war men thought that because America came to Iraq with dollars and cents, billions of US dollars and cents, the Iraqis would welcome us.(4)
Second, the American perspective is comprised of an over-valued self-image of American importance. America tends to think that it is more important than it really is and that being American entitles them to a certain status they have not merited. This expectation is the genesis for much white privilege that they would like to have the world recognize. Furthermore, they would like for all to pretend that white privilege does not exist but that their status is a merited right.
Throughout the world, arrogant Americans rush about asserting their status as Americans, as if that position shakes the world. And they expect it to. Never do they see that such arrogance generates hatred; instead the rest of the world "hates us because we are rich, etc." Americans would love for money to rule the minds of men because then men would be slaves to their perspective and slaves to them because they have most of the money--and that is the reason for Bush's religious and military propagation of Democracy/Capitalism for all people.
Hence, their implicit reasoning is, where you are strongest, elevate that strength to the max so you are ruler. Then you exaggerate the view of yourself and expect others to accept that view as well.
This self-importance ingredient causes Americans to
assume they are the head of their class in knowledge and just about
everything else and should therefore tell the world its truths,
supposing they know them. Usually the most unlearned and self-absorbed
are ensnared in their own self conceits, forever talking and supposing
they have something to say and little to learn. This is highlighted in a
comment an American engineer in Iraq:
The reason the Iraqi rebuilding is going so slow is because when we came into Iraq, we thought we had it all figured out, and our procedures, from requisitioning to rebuilding, worked. The Iraqis' procedures and engineering methods worked fine and were much better than ours, but we didn't listen to them. Now we are listening to them and getting things done. [NPR News Interview]
This is an example of the typical American perspective that can only be derailed by cataclysmic action--bombed out of our heads. But for people like Dick Cheney, it is hopeless to get him to see world realities--even after a thousands of commissions and committees had said there was no connection of Iraq to the 9-11 conspirators and Al Queada and that Iraq had no WMDs, that poor soul kept mouthing almost as a motor function the idea that there was a connection. Within his perspective (steeped Americanism) the bad guys did what they did to us because they envy what we have and hate us because they don't have it and we are good and they are evil. To Chaney, their actions had nothing to do with what this nation has and is doing around the world.
We are fine; they are just evil! And the American perspective is reality. []
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[Next week we will fully develop the ingredients of this American
Perspective and examine how it has been adopted in some adverse ways by
some Black Americans and how that adoption has impacted on us.]
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1.) At the last Press Conference in Washington , DC.,
Baldwin made this statement. Hear
Audio of Baldwin.
2.) There are not many Whites who examine how they see life or question the correctness of their perspective. Many are so certain that they have it right, they have only busied themselves teaching others and not learning from others.
3.) That egocentric view has been cultivated through continuous reinforcement ads of the ubiquitous American media that often mis-educates America of the world's reality and its place in that world in order to construct a favorable American image.
4.) Even though they told the American people that the war would pay for itself out of Iraq's $17 billion a year oil revenues, he argued that because of the "freedom that we brought" to that land. Those not steeped in the American perspective laughed then and now at that logic.
