Over the years I have tested many life theories against my experience. This does not always provide me with the insight required to see through the fog of life clearly. The ancient people of Indus Kush said that all life is illusion. I understand that to mean our reality is based on our perception. Our perception is based on our conditioning. Our conditioning is conditional and idiosyncratic based on the variables that have informed our expression based on gender, culture, physical status, etc.
In this regard I have continued to seek insight into the social condition of people of African descent the world over but particularly in the United States of America. In this regard I confess to responding to the social context and emotional environment that I entered at birth. In response to the my experience I adopted the ideological orientation of Black Nationalism. This seemed a reasonable and necessary step in the face of the white supremacist dominant narrative that had crippled some and crushed others of African descent as well as other members of non-European ancestry.
Fighting for the "right" to be "white" is fighting for the justification of the privilege and power that rationalizes the dehumanization of the First Nations people and the theft of their land and the dehumanization of African people and the theft of their labor. Anything short of addressing this issue is cutting branches. It is not enough. We have to strike at the root.
When I am met with objections and recriminations when I decry the dehumanization of the African personality in the European imagination, I point to the social experiment created by Dr.s Mamie and Kenneth Clark called the "Doll Test."
How much of reality is socially constructed? To what extent is our experience politically constructed?
