Transcription
So the first thing that I want you to do if you're someone who identifies themselves as black is I want you to bring your arms out like this and I want you to examine closely with clarity of vision the color of your actual skin here, your flesh here in the physical world. Examine it, look at it, take a note of it.
And what you're going to come to find out is that most people who identify themselves as black have a skin tone ranging from a light brown all the way up into a rich brown and everything else in between. And so understanding that information, one of the first questions that should come to the mind of any thinking, rational person is, if my skin color is brown, then why am I calling myself black?
For example, I have this white t-shirt on right now. If I know I have a white t-shirt on now and I'm talking to you and I say and I reference this white t-shirt as a red t-shirt, immediately something's going to snap into your mind and say, "Something is incorrect about that usage of word." And you'll ask me, "If your t-shirt is white, why are you calling it red?" It's a very rational question to ask. And so if that is a rational question to ask on something as superficial, irrelevant as a t-shirt, you would think it would be even more important to ask such a question that's dealing with something held tight and and identified with on a daily basis, something as deep as an identity, right?
And so the problem is is that it's got a similar effect to something that we experience in the United States as a lot of people walking around being overweight. And because we see people overweight all the time out here, it's a norm. Most people don't think to ask a question about it and question that status of people walking around being overweight. It's just something that people have gotten used to. But just because people have gotten used to it, that doesn't make it right, right? At least in my observation, in my opinion, in my beliefs, it's it isn't a right thing, at least for me.
And so when we deal with this word black and why it's placed on people whose skin color is brown, we'll understand that it comes from the early 1400s, being placed on slaves, African slaves to be specific. And what it was was an exaggeration of the skin color of those Africans used by the colonial European power at that time. They were able to pull that over and to place that brand on those Africans.
And so I want you to get very familiar with the concept of an association of ideas and how we associate different words with experiences and other concepts that we have stored in our own psyche. The important thing about a name is the impression which it makes in the minds of others and the reactions which it invokes through the association of ideas. Now, this is profound what Richard B. Moore is saying in this book, and we're going to reference this multiple times throughout many lessons because it's super important to understand how names pull up other meanings in people's minds when they hear a a a specific word.
So right now, what I want to do is I want to go through the dictionary. And the dictionary is a very, very profound thing that everybody here on here must become accustomed to using. It's a dictionary. You have to get into the dictionary. The dictionary is like a shortcut telling you how in this society certain words are used and what are what what other words and ideas are associated with those words. So it's a shortcut to the association of ideas and the minds of other people.
And so what we want to do right now is go into the dictionary and find out what other associated ideas are related to the word black: black ball, a negative vote, especially in deciding on an applicant or candidate; black comedy, comedy that employs morbid, gloomy, grotesque, or calamitous situations in its plot; blackmail, to extort money from a person by the use of threats; blacklist, a list of people or things that are regarded as unacceptable or untrustworthy and should be excluded or avoided; blackhand, a lawless secret society engaged in criminal activities such as terrorism or extortion; black market, an illegal traffic or trade in officially controlled or scarce commodities; black sheep, a member of a family or group who is regarded as a disgrace to it; black magic, magic that is associated with the devil or with evil spirits, evil magic.
So now you can see a short list of some of the things that are associated with the word black defined in the dictionary. And there's other things too, other things that we use in our everyday language in society. A black cat, when we think about a black cat, there's something that's supposed to be avoided. There's also black propaganda. There's also a blackout. When a blackout happens, all the lights get cut off. It's a symbol. The lights get cut off. When the lights get cut off, that means you can't see. When you can't see, that's a form of being ignorant, being in darkness. That's why it's a blackout. There's no light, which is another one of the definitions of the word black. It's talking about without light, moral or spiritual. Black, the meaning fierce, terrible, wicked, is from late 14th century. The figurative senses often come from the notion of without light, moral or spiritual. We also have black eye. When you receive a black eye, it's the the the actual color of it is not actually black. It's figurative language that we're speaking, but you receive a black eye when something happens injurious to you. In other terms, also a black eye is used as having a bad reputation, right? If you give the business a black eye, bad reputation.
So I want you to think about this entire list of things here. Here we go. What do we have? We have black mass, Black Lodge, black magic, black ball, black comedy, black hand, blackmail, blacklist, black market, right? We have the Black Death. That's another thing that we have. The Black Death, that's the Bubonic plague where millions of people died in Europe. They attached that name to black, associated it with black. We have the black cat, we have black sheep, black propaganda, blackout, black eye. What else do we have? Black culture. Think about that. Think about that. Black culture. Does that align in the same category and association of ideas with all the other words that we just went through that are attached to black? When somebody thinks about Black Culture, is is Black Culture dealing with studying, getting your mind right, being friendly, having a a wonderful neighborhood, having a the home intact, uh, great relationships that that work, being there for the children? Is that what is that the symbol of Black Culture? That's not. So we know that it fits right in here with these other associated ideas, right? It's doing exactly what it is what it says it does. It's Black Culture. Think about that. Who does Black Culture? Whose identity is tied to Black Culture? Black people. This is how the association of ideas work. Black people, you have all these other ideas tied to the word black, and you say, uh, black people, you should expect black people to align with the rest of that those associated ideas. Does it align? Do black people do Black Culture? What else is part of Black Culture? Killing, crime. That's a massive part of it, right? It's a massive part of it. So does all this align? It absolutely aligns. And you know it aligns also because what happens when you fall outside of that that norm of what people associate with black? They say you're you're not acting black. You don't act black. Think about this. This is the language. This is the the parts of people speaking, the automatic parts of people speaking, the unconscious part of people speaking with ideas deep into the recesses and patterns and of beliefs inside of their mind, expressing you and telling you exactly what it is that they mean. You don't act black. You don't fit within a certain stereotype that black is supposed to behave like. And when you start to fall out of that, that's when you get categorized as that of not acting black. You don't conform.
Understand what is being said. Internalize it. Allow the seed to grow from there. You'll become someone who will be able to see. And so what I ask some of you out there is, which part of black describes you? How do you fit into this entire equation here? How do your beliefs align with this? How do your values align with this? Your morals, standards, the behavior that you have, how does it align in here? For some people watching, it aligns perfectly well, and that's perfectly fine. That's perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with that if that's who you are. I'm talking to the people who whose values, morals, and standards do not align with any of those things, but they still have some type of confusion with this identity because those are the people that have an opportunity to change, right?
So if you feel like something is just not lining up, you're correct. There is something that's not lining up. And I used to feel the same exact way. I used to feel that there was something going on. I don't know what's going on, as if there's like some world pulled over my eyes and I have no clue what this thing is about. And so at one time, I did used to identify myself as black, and my behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs did match that. So it was fitting for me at that time to have that name, and all the people around me had that name as well and were in alignment with what that word describes.
But when I turned 18, that's when I began to do a lot more deeper diving and questioning, and I start removing myself, some of it unconsciously and unknowing, and some of it consciously and knowing, from a lot of the behaviors that I once had growing up. And so I would curve a lot of things, being on the block, curving it, hanging out, curving it, watching TV, curving it, being into sports, curving it, cutting things off. And I started replacing those things with other things that started to matter to me at that time. Studying, looking into finding someone instead of being out there dealing with a whole bunch of women and in that realm, because I was heavy in that realm, and looking for someone maybe I can settle down with, going in that direction, thinking about how I can better my life, how I can change my worldview, how I can get better morals, standards, and values. Things started to shift as my thinking started to grow and my curiosity began to uh advance.
And so I began to question a lot of things. A lot of things. I had a strategy: questioning, studying, researching, and then making adjustments. Questioning, studying, researching, making adjustments. Questioning, studying, researching, making adjustments. It keeps going. And a pattern like that, every time I have questions, I will go and seek the answers for it. And if the answers were suitable, I would make the adjustment because I'm trying to figure something out that I don't know what I'm trying to figure out, but I know there's something there that doesn't make sense, and I'm going to figure it out, right? That's the mindset that I had.
And after doing this and repeating this over so many times, I started making all these little adjustments here and there, changing behaviors, changing the way I'm seeing things. Some things are better than what I used to think. Okay, I'm going to use this instead. Some people do things better than the way I used to do it. Okay, let me do this. And they come from different backgrounds, making little changes over time to where I got to a point to where I can look back and say, I'm not that person anymore. I can't believe that. Wow, I came from that. That was the person that I was. And I had realized just how far in the pit I used to be because now at that point, as I've gotten U matured, I'm able to look at it, look at the pit from outside of it, having a bird's eye view of what it looks like because I used to be in there. And I can see the depths of it. I can see the length of it. I can see the roads that lead down down to it. I can see the roads that lead up out of it. And it became something to marvel at because I realize that the majority of people are in that pit, most of them unaware, with no desire to even consider that they're in the pit. Many of them making their home and being very comfortable in the pit. Few of them taking steps to walk themselves out of the pit, but continuously getting pulled back down into the pit by the many that don't want them to leave.
And I only got to this point because I was searching for truth and understanding with sincerity. And it's over a period of searching, questioning, receiving answers, and making adjustments of 18 years, right? Where the last 10 of those years is being in a rural city with less than a 100 people and basically secluded from the rest of the world in order to gather understanding and and and and really get answers to the questions that I need and not be bothered by other people that are in the pit, right? So I had to remove myself. Right.
And I did come to understand that there's a world pulled over the eyes of just about everybody, right? And I had to remove that lid and that blanket from around my eyes so I can see clearer. And it's a continuous process. Still searching, still asking questions, still making adjustments. It's a never-ending thing. And like I said, for the vast majority of people who have been branded with the name black, it's going to be a fitting identity for them, and they'll hold on to it, and they will live within that realm, and that's okay. Like I said, that's perfectly fine.
But for the few people, the few people who are curious, questioning, and care enough, they will remove themselves from the pit so they can pass on a different reality to the children and their offspring that come after them. And one of the most important things that I realize that has to be done is that a different identity has to be established. The slave had their time, and they became who they became during that that era. The slavery time is over with for some people, and from there, you have to pick yourself up and pull yourself out of the pit.
And so that's the purpose of these videos, is to give you keys to help you liberate yourself so you can pull yourself out of the pit because nobody else is going to do it for you. That I can promise you.