A construction worker who just so happens to be down on his luck discovers a pair of special sunglasses that allows him to see the world as it really is. People are being constantly bombarded by various media with subliminal messages such as conform, stay asleep, no imagination, submit to authority, marry and reproduce, consume, watch television, and obey. Even scarier is the fact that the glasses give him the ability to see the true nature of some regularly normal looking people are in fact some very frightening aliens that are managing a massive propaganda campaign to keep humans subdued. The glasses reveal a black and white world full of messages of mind control.
Of course the aliens could not have done their subjugation without the help of some humans who are assumed to have played a key role in the alien’s domination. Some humans have consciously made the choice to betray the rest of the human race. Others humans are unwittingly working with the subjugators by allowing themselves to be manipulated for their own personal gratification while the rest of their community suffers.
The movie is a social commentary about the too often corrupt, deceptive, and indifferent character of our economic, social and political culture. The controlling alien race has managed to exploit the human race with maximum effect. The thought control that the aliens have managed to develop allows people to allow themselves to be subjected to substandard living conditions such as homelessness, unemployment, hunger, and poor finances while the aliens live large and lavishly. We sleep while they live. We obey while they write the rules. We consume everything they market to us. We pay while they profit. We have no idea how long the aliens have been here. All we know is that they are here.
This movie serves as a perfect analogy for the disparity between the black community and the white community. We allow ourselves to make due with substandard housing, the gentrification of our traditional black neighborhoods, rampant unemployment in the black communities, woefully substandard medical care and substandard education while the white community enjoys the best of everything. Some black people are doing well but the black people who do well are black people who are full supporters of white dominance. These well to do black people are fully aware of the disparity between the black and white communities but are either too selfish to think about the welfare of the black community or are consciously participating as full collaborators.
The subliminal messages that are constantly being directed at the black community run along the lines of consume, sleep, reproduce, stay asleep, and everything else that appears in the black and white world from the movie. Even though black people are far less likely to have the financial resources or make the salary of their white counterparts, members of the black community are pushed to consume the products put forth by corporate America. The few television programs targeted to the black community run along the lines of buffoonery and tomfoolery. The vast majority of black characters illustrated on so many television shows and movies are depicted with the most negative and the most nonsensical behavior of black stereotypes. And too many of us want to emulate this behavior and convince other black people that being subjugated is a good thing.
There are people now talking about the benefits of black people lifting themselves out of their predicament by taking on their personal responsibility. People promote the idea that universal healthcare is bad and it is much better for the country to have a very large and ever growing segment of our population living without adequate healthcare or under insured with respect to medical coverage. People will say that it is better to have a low minimum wage where more people can work themselves into their graves rather than employ people at a living wage.
But the true nature of these arguments is a defense of the status quo which can easily be translated into a system of white privilege and black subjugation. A large segment of our population has plugged into this message and has conformed. At the same time another large segment of the population has plugged into the other message and has gone consciously asleep and remains unaware. Another segment watches television and remains oblivious while another segment simply obeys what it is told by the media.
Submit to the establishment and you too will do well and enjoy a small portion of society’s good fortune. Tow the line and you will be rewarded. And it is interesting how the often marketed role models of the black community are the very blacks who are most adept at distancing themselves from the black community and at the same time promoting behavior that will help other black people assimilate to mainstream America.
For example the mantra of go to college and get good jobs is deeply rooted in a philosophy of learn to conform. Colleges are most proficient at teaching young adults to conform to the status quo. Not many people who go to college and graduate are harbingers of rebellion or deep philosophical change to our social makeup. But most black people with success stories will fund scholarships and grants for black people to go to school and get higher educations instead of helping to develop black businesses primarily focused on the black community. The promotion of assimilation is thick in the African American community. And it is this very promotion that is helping to subjugate the black community.
To continue the same old patterns of behavior and expect change is insanity. Therefore, we are truly living in an insane world. We don’t like the growing disparity between the black and white races but we continuously promote the very behaviors that will widen the gap between the races to even higher proportions. The dominant culture will continue to thrive and flourish and accumulate wealth and be the very definition of success. The black community will continue to promote all the values that will assure our subjugation. Until we find our sunglasses they will live and they will live well. We will live only as much as they allow us to in our perpetual state of subjugation.
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Excellent post! Right on point as usual!
You have expressed so well what has been troubling me for many years about our people. I have often wondered about the so-called gains of desegregation and the assimilation of so many of us into the dominant society. It has ruined our neighborhoods, schools, hospitals and businesses in this twisted belief that everything the white man has is better.
Thank you for writing this post.
Excellent post.
I was feeling so frustrated at a friend of mine today to the point I’m really considering putting him on my list of Negroes To Take In Very Small Doses. And the list has been getting longer by the day.
This negro lives with his partner on the north side of chicago, both have good paying jobs, no kids, buying a condo and own some small piece of rental property.
And yet my friend can’t keep his cell phone on and everytime we’re togther he thinks he can blow up my cell phone. I have to tell him that I got 2 kids, a husband (who works) and bills to pay too.
Calls jesus christ name every chance he get, wines about being broke to the point you would think the negro was proud to be broke, yet smokes weed like 40 goin north. But what really got me at the end of my rope with this negro is how he seems like a clone of bill cosby!
Will put down a black person at any chance he get. I was telling him about this run down neighborhood about half a mile from where I live that I didn’t know even existed, and the 1st thing he assumed was that the inhabitants were all black. I said no, it’s predominately white and their hood looks like how the poor white folks live in the Appalacian mountains. He said where is the Appalacian mountains?
But when I say to this negro, now that you are in some what of better financial situation to volunteer to help out those that are less fortunate, or hook up some of your less well to do family members with a job, all you hear is crickets.
And the sad part, the negro only travels to his job, goes to his moms house, walk his dog around the block, come see me on the southside every now and then, and he got full world view of how all black folk are.
Now I’m sorry to had ramble on about that negro, but he is a sample of what I have come to conclude about my black people here in the u.s., they are worse when it come to racism than are the white people who invented racism.
If nothing else we as a people has learned living in this society, a sad large number of us has learned to retain self-hatred.
I have been so disgusted by what I have been seeing black folk doing to each other since Obama annouced that he is running for president of the u.s., all the killings in the black ghettos are nowhere near as destructive as what our so called black leaders have been doing to our own people.
It’s not even worth trying to march or protest for the rights of blacks in the u.s. any longer. We as a people are just as good as dead.
Mobile68,
I understand your position and can not stomach that behavior either. Yet, I don’t think that your friend in any way represents the majority of blacks. Just like the poor ghetto folks that Cosby is constantly berating represents the majority either. The majority is somewhere in the middle. They are not deep into self hatred yet not afrocentric by any stretch.
So how helpful is it to say that the black community is just as good as dead? If back in the day the populace who was fighting for the rights of all blacks had that attitude because of the nay sayers like Condoleeza Rice’s family who thought that the civil rights movement was just a bunch of trouble. No one would have rights today.
There is always going to be the self hating Tom’s and Jemima’s out in the world but you can’t let them dictate our entire community. Since that is our problem now allowing our community culture to be dictated by every type of media known to man. We have to move forward and drag those unwilling or unknowing with us.
Thanks
We as black people can’t afford to have a defeatist mindset. That’s our biggest problem. We have to cultivate our people to do better, because this society will never stop hating us, because they want us to disappear rather than respect us for building the very foundation of this nation. Now that we are free, they wish we were not here. That’s why america exploits us. It doesn’t help us as a race to use the same formula on each other, but that’s exactly what we are doing. Everyday you wake up free is a wonderful thing. We have work to do, so get busy.
Awesome! Thanks for good posting