How Black Women Can Heal From Eurocentrism
The Mental Entrapment of Afro American Women in Eurocentrism
Rooted in the primal compulsion to adapt and survive in any circumstance, the Afro American woman has been forced away from her original natural psychological, emotional, and communal state through the mental and physical violence that has been wrought upon us over the course of the past centuries. Through the devastation of global European colonialism and patriarchy, Afro women have been cast to the lowermost grades of the unnaturally constructed society that has overtaken much of human consciousness.
Despite the glaring fact that the oppressive systems that we continue to exist under are the most detrimental to Afro women, the unfortunate effects of being perpetually raised within them over generations has severely deteriorated our perception and vision of self. This bewildered state has resulted in Afro women upholding and perpetuating the very systems that harm them.
Even though there have been and are many that combat the effects of the ongoing psychological damage of global colonialism, the intentional effort that this resistance requires is still absent in much of our community. It is a common characteristic in humanity to desire to merge with whatever is considered the common standards of society, even when those standards are at odds with the collective that adheres to them. In a spiritually weakened state and unable to self-actualize, individuals frequently succumb to the pressures of society in fear of the loss of social validation and even their health, safety, and wellbeing.
In the case of Afro American women, the yearning for social acceptance and mobility has led to this collective of women adopting behaviors and beliefs that function to sever their connection to self, the natural world, as well as one another.
Through the enforcement and aftermath of chattel enslavement, Afro American people have sought ways to forge a collective identity from the practices of our past ancestors to our present incarnations. However, even today there is still a deeply embedded infection of eurocentric philosophy that hinders the further advancement of our community.
Healing Generational Trauma
Biological studies in the field of epigenetics have shown that the impact of a life of trauma and stress does in fact alter the mechanism of an individual’s genetic expression and furthermore can be passed down through offspring. These alterations have been known to cause a higher prevalence of health conditions such cancer, cardiac, and neurological conditions.1
Afro Americans specifically face disproportionate instances of heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and kidney disease.2 There is a possibility that some of the health concerns that modern Afro Amreicans face are caused by stress based anomalies in genetic expression following centuries of systemic and normalized abuse in society. In order to lessen the effects of intergenerational stress we must adopt an intentional awareness of our physical, mental, and emotional health and wellbeing. Through dietary regulation and therapeutic practices, we can prevent the onset of the disorders and illnesses commonly faced by our community.
Aside from irregularities in gene expression, our communities have also been passing down deep self-hatred and negative views of the beautiful natural and cultural attributes of our own people. If we cannot create love and appreciation for ourselves then we will continuously fall prey to the prejudiced perceptions of non-Black communities that tend to favor erroneous white supremist ideologies and assumptions.
We can only look to ourselves for validation and there is no opinion that is more important than our own. In general, people will look for various ways to compare themselves and feel superior to others, and individuals must self-actualize in order to attain their highest state of existence here on Earth. For the Black community, race was constructed and weaponized against us in order to assert the social dominance of the white descendants of the European colonizers.3 It makes no sense to continue to harm ourselves with the weapons of oppression and prioritize the notions of those who intend to destroy the collective spirit of Afro Americans.
Revolutionizing Respectability Politics
By now, it has been made abundantly clear that no matter the lengths that Afro Americans go through to gain the favor of the majority of society, we are persistently and intentionally viewed as a people to be abused, gaslit, and taken advantage of. Afro Americans continue to face discrimination in the workplace, the justice system, as well as in academic institutions. Continuing to vie for the approval of those who are intent on maintaining the climate of eurocentric attitudes and behaviors will only ever be a detriment to our communities and a hindrance to our spiritual development as a people.
Respectability politics is rooted and centered in eurocentrism and the proximity that an individual has to it.4 The more an individual displays non-white characteristics and embraces non-European cultural traits, traditions, and mannerisms the more they are perceived as being unrespectable or improper. The very concept of respectability in western societies is simply another tool of oppression and colonialism that is used to sever masses of people of color from their unique cultural practices and create a sense of docility and acceptance toward their covert subjugation.
Even more damaging, is when Afro people intentionally use this tool against one another, enforcing self-hatred within our own communities. By unnecessarily imposing tight eurocentric regulations on the way that we appear, speak, and behave in the public space, we willfully assist in the destruction of the Afro American spirit and the rich culture that we have developed over the course of the last four centuries. This expectation of likeness to whiteness is frequently established even in our children, who are covertly taught to act out the poisonous principles of white supremacy even in their early years.
Afro Americans have struggled through deep adversity to alchemize trauma into a creative way of being and expressing ourselves that has become the source of a significant percentage of popular culture and media.5
Loving Our Hair
One of the most prominently unique and distinct characteristics of Afro people is our coily hair. Even with a very pale skin pigment, Afro people are still highly distinguishable from the natural textures of our hair. Despite the fact that coily hair is an ancient human phenotype, it has been the source of unexplainable controversy among people that cling to the tendrils of eurocentrism. After generations of facing the disdain for our genetic hair, Afro people have gone through trials of styles involving wigs, wraps, and straighteners to gain favor in career and academic settings.
When I was growing up, I had the common experience of hair relaxers being regularly used to straighten my tightly coiled hair. I would have to sit with this burning chemical on my scalp for 15 to 30 minutes before it could be rinsed out. The very experience of having to endure this searing sensation for my hair to get done effectively communicated to me that my hair was not a good thing in the natural way that it grew from my head.
However, in recent years Afro Americans have been embracing our normal textures more and more and reclaiming the creativity that we are afforded with our gravity defying curls. Unfortunately, there are still many that are indoctrinated with eurocentric hair standards and continue to pass negative judgment upon those who have come to embrace themselves as they are. This is particularly prevalent with Black women as we face hair discrimination from non-Black society as well as from the people of our own communities that uphold eurocentrism.
The only solution to this illness is for Black women to actively deprogram themselves and spearhead the liberation and reverence for the natural textures and styles of Black people gifted to us by our Mother Gaia. The coiled pattern of our hair can be observed throughout the natural world in plants, animals, and even in macromolecules.
Reclaiming Our Bodies
The bodies of Afro people have been persistently and unapologetically exploited, oppressed, desecrated, consumed, polluted, ravaged, and debased for the entirety of the crusade of European colonization. Within the communities of Afro people, this has caused an intergenerational normalization of abuse and self hatred that only serves to fuel the operations of white supremacy. We as a people cannot listlessly wait for anyone outside of ourselves to bring an end to this cycle of destruction.
We have incorporated the grievous behavior of hurting ourselves in hopes of evading or lessening the harm caused by others that seek to annihilate our collective spirit. It has been common practice ever since chattel slavery to “make examples” of individuals of our people through torture and murder in order to frighten the rest of us into complacency. This complacency does not serve us but to keep us locked in a perpetual state of fear and mental enslavement.
Self love is the only way that we can overcome this mental illness that was forced upon us generations ago. We must embrace our bodies as the beautiful human vessels that they are, awarded to us as reflections of the cosmos and Earth herself. Eradicating colorist mindsets and embracing our magnificent range of complexions and tones is a necessary step toward liberating our minds. It cannot be ignored that the variety of melanin that we possess is a direct reflection of our home planet and the natural earthy hues that have been observed throughout nature. The biological structure of the world and the evolutionary formation of organisms, including human beings, is beyond the whims of those that desire control over life.
In the fields of science, there remains a pervasive imagery of the white man holding a proverbial magnifying glass over the wild world around him, including others of his own species. Despite the animalistic violence that global cultures have suffered under white supremacy, white men are still frequently viewed as the model human to imitate. In order to begin the process of decolonization, we must embrace our unique selves and recognize that diversity is of Earth and that pre-colonial systems were much more Earth and human friendly.
Reconnecting With Mother Gaia
We are the children of the Earth, and over the course of these past centuries we have been stripped of our spiritual and physical connection with the lands that we all originate from. Everything that we are is of our mother planet, and our relationship with her is what has allowed our species to live and thrive over the millions of years that we have roamed on Gaia. Allowing the systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism to overtake the human consciousness has gradually driven us away from our natural free existence to one of oppression and dystopian despondency.
Forced to learn to exist in this manner for so many generations, we are now at a point where the collective human community believes that this disordered way of living is a normal state for our species. The very concept of the “civilized” human is a weapon that has thrown much of humanity in a cascade of energetic and psychological destruction. Regardless of the teachings of this matrix, people are coming to the realization that the world that we have allowed to be built around ourselves is a false one little different from a wild animal being kept in an undersized enclosure in a zoo to be viewed by spectators.
The natural human habitat is the forest, the environment that is demolished in order to construct and fuel our artificial concrete enclosures. How can we possibly begin to reverse even a modicum of the havoc that has been enacted upon humanity? Even though it is one of the most difficult undertakings, shifting our belief systems and ideologies is necessary for our future.
We have been taught to uphold a negative viewpoint toward those that live within nature, associating so-called “primitive” lifestyles with poverty and lack of intelligence. Ironically, it is these populations that have historically been attacked, displaced, and slaughtered in order to gain access to the natural resources that they traditionally subsist from. We are dead without the natural world of Earth no matter how we attempt to remove ourselves from nature.
Empowering Our Daughters
Women are the heart of communities and the young Black girls that are growing up today will set the tone of our culture in the imminent future. With Black women facing violence and opposition from nearly every angle, it is imperative now that these children develop a strong sense of self worth prior to reaching adulthood and continuing the patterns that have done nothing to benefit us. Indoctrinating girls with the traditional practices that have dominated societies up until now will only aid in their future destruction.
Learning independence and self-reliance is crucial to self-actualization and having the ability to self-regulate and make conscientious decisions over one’s life. Despite popular patriarchal philosophy, it is not beneficial to the human condition for girls and women to be mentally and physically constrained for the sake of developing lifelong reliances on males. Humanity can only evolve to a higher state of existence when we are all operating at our highest potential.
The systematic dehumanization and objectification of girls and women serves to uphold the destructive oppressive systems that we exist under. Also, the planet Earth is a feminine entity, and the manner in which feminine beings are being viewed and treated will directly impact the collective treatment of Gaia. Given the current state of the geosphere, the centuries of subjugation of feminine beings has resulted in the climate chaos that people are struggling under. Some of the characteristics of feminine energy is community, empathy, and compassion, traits that are essential in healing Earth and maintaining human existence on this planet.
Due to the intergenerational indoctrination into male dominant social standards that are centered on short sighted resource hoarding and perpetuating unbalanced power dynamics, the young boys of today are unlikely to seek to deconstruct these existing conditions. The empowerment of young girls and altering the trajectory of humanity’s path of death and violence is the only answer that we have left.
Forging a New Pathway
The only way to change the future is to change the patterns of our thoughts today. How we move in the world, respond to our environment, think of ourselves, and interact with one another all begins with our own internal foundations. The choice is in our hands whether we choose to release or cling to what makes us feel comfortable. Though peculiar, even thought and behavior patterns that cause us harm can be a source of comfort and familiarity. Staying suspended in this state of familiarity will only further cement us into the current state of dysfunction that we exist in.
To heal the deeply embedded eurocentrism in the Black community requires healing the way that we view and treat ourselves individually. Black women must realize that seeking validation externally from ourselves, even from each other and especially from men, is a heavy detriment that will keep us from freeing our minds and spirits. We must be our own saviors and detoxify from self-hatred and fully embrace love and admiration for ourselves and each other.
References
- Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry, 17(3), 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20568
- Assari, S. (2018). Health Disparities due to Diminished Return among Black Americans: Public Policy Solutions. Social Issues and Policy Review, 12(1), 112–145. https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12042
- RACE – The Power of an Illusion . Background Readings | PBS. (n.d.). https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-09.htm
- Landor, A. M., & Barr, A. B. (2018). Politics of respectability, colorism, and the terms of social exchange in family research. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 10(2), 330–347. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12264
- Tuazon, A. (2022). Marketing Insights from Black History Month: A Look at Black Influence on Pop Culture. Market Research Chicago | Market Research Companies | C+R. https://www.crresearch.com/blog/black-history-month-pop-culture/
