“We cannot destroy white supremacy until we address the internal contradictions in ourselves and in our communities that allow white supremacy to continue to flourish.” –Runoko Rashidi

Since the first Africans were forced onto the shores of America and enslaved, Africans and their descendants have defied the Lie of White Superiority and Black Inferiority, in all its forms, through creative acts of defiance. 

Black people living in Montgomery defied Jim Crow by refusing to buy bus tickets and thereby shutting down Montgomery’s bus system. Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley defied her son’s murderers by opening her son’s casket. One million black men defied the systematic mistreatment of American black men and their families by marching into the nation’s capital. Colin Kaepernick continued their legacy of defiance by kneeling on the football field to condemn the constant mistreatment of young Black men. April Ryan defied Hollywood’s refusal to reward Black excellence at the Oscars by creating a hashtag to challenge the lack of Black nominees. And so forth, and so forth, and so forth…

In far too many instances, The Lie of White Superiority and Black Inferiority contorts the minds of Black people to accept a “white” definition of humanity. Simultaneously, it all too often weaponizes the minds of Black people against Black humanity. As a result, Black people can become walking embodiments of anti-Black sentiment toward themselves and other Black people.

Embodying anit-Black sentiment is the result of a progressive dis-ease that I will call internal colonization. Once inside the mind, it divides one against oneself, spreading throughout Black communities, and finally infecting the African diaspora. Internal Colonization is a hollowing-out process, rendering Black people devoid of the deep sense of Blackness as a distinct, and Godly, expression of humanity. It compromises Black people’s ability to act in their own best interest or the Black community. As long as Black people across America and the Africa Diaspora remain hollowed-out by internal colonization, individual and collective acts of defiance will have little lasting effect, if any, because our mind remains enslaved. 

Community Healing Network (CHN) in collaboration with the Association of Black Psychologists is calling on Black people to engage in a new kind of defiance. Their “vehicle “ for this defiance is a special kind of healing circle called Emotional Emancipation Circles (EE Circles). This new kind of defiance against the Lie of White superiority and Black inferiority that CHN offers Black women, men, and children is: emotional emancipation–from the lie of Black Inferiority and White Superiority.

Emotional Emancipation is the most formidable act of defiance available to Peoples of the African Diaspora. CHN’s EE Circles offer powerful psychological tools and skills that help restore Black people to an uncolonized state, annihilating the lie of White Superiority and Black Inferiority from within themselves, ultimately clearing the way for Black people and Black children to flourish. 

Join CHN in a massive act of defiance at the 2019 Valuing Black Lives Global Summit in Richmond, Virginia where ABPsi psychologists will train our largest cohort of EE Circles facilitators who in turn will proliferate healing circles throughout Black communities and bring about emotional emancipated people who can rise up and flourish.  

Your best weapon against anti-Black racism is your mind.

Written By Chandra Roxanne, CHN Outreach Consultant

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