The Real Making of Nigger

[Catherine Lewis]

No intent to offend, but this had to happen

If you google the word projection as a psychological term you will find something roughly like this: Psychological projection  is the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, in the case of this subject or people and more specifically other groups of people. Thus, it involves imagining, believing or projecting that others have those feelings, attributes and thoughts.

Projection is considered one of the most profound and subtle of human psychological processes, and extremely difficult to work with, because by its nature it is hidden. It is the fundamental mechanism by which we keep ourselves uninformed about ourselves. Humor has great value in any attempt to work with projection, because humor presents a forgiving posture and thereby removes the threatening nature of any inquiry into the truth.

According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else. It is a common process that every person uses to some degree. Carl Jung and named the culprit, The Shadow.

In Jungian psychology, the shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. It is one of the three most recognizable archetypes, the others being the anima and animus and the persona. "Everyone carries a shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."[1] It may be (in part) one's link to more primitive animal instincts,[2] which are superseded during early childhood by the conscious mind.

According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to project: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. Jung writes that if these projections are unrecognized "The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object--if it has one--or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power." [3] These projections insulate and cripple individuals by forming an ever thicker fog of illusion between the ego and the real world.

[Catherine Lewis]

Part Two

Now its actually would not take a long stretch of the imagination to see how this thought that kidnapped and imprisoned people from Africa were inferior given the concept of shadow and projection.

Based on their own concepts that are largely held to be true and effective by the great majority of the psychological field that this is a phenomena of the unconscious. Now simply overlay it over the people who came to represent the planter class and those before them like Johann Blumenbach and Thomas Jefferson who projected the pseudo scientific idea that so called Negroes were inferior and thus needed so called white people to bring them out of the savage lands to protect them from themselves. Apply this same concept of projection and the archetype of shadow and see who the real niggers really were and are.

As they say in 12 step programs, "If you spot it you got it!"

Aw, you thought I didn't know this all along huh? You thought we just let so called white people off the hook" You perhaps thought that Doc and I were just hard on so called black people. It's just that I am super relative to so called black people and if they don't have some kind of super consciousness soon there will be hell to pay like never before. So get over this notion of inferiority. You have nothing to prove.

Hell you mean to tell me you were named by people whom by their most sophisticated concepts proved that they thought of themselves as inferior and needed someone to carry their "psychological baggage" for them and you have carried it for so long you don't know how to put it down?

As Dr. Black says, "Negroes and white folks are just in a bad marriage, they need a divorce."

The joke is on you. It just tickled the shit out of me when I discovered this.

[E Donelson II]

There I have it; when examining my motives and behaviors that do not seem to run concurrent with my level of critical thinking (which is limited), this clarifies a lot. My military experience allowed me to learn about my "so called" psychological weaknesses, both real and imagined, which then allowed for my training to take root. Though my conscious mind tells me correctly "what" my behavior should entail in instances, my "shadow" infers otherwise. In most cases my projections have created more of a problem than I bargained for and created feelings that I did not like, in myself. Now at the risk of not gaining acceptance from others, I reserve opinion thus withhold attachment until I am clear as to "who" a person is and not my "projected" imagine of myself in them.