"Inferiorization is essential to the process of oppression. It ensures that the oppressors need not be troubled to hold the oppressed constantly under gun and key to keep them in the oppressed state; it keeps the oppressed from effectively challenging the oppressive process and system. In this way, the oppressors mold the oppressed to share fully in the process of their own oppression. In the final analysis, the process of inferiorization is designed specifically to prevent the maximal development of the genetic potential of the non-white oppressed. Black people must learn that no system of oppression ever maximally develops those whom the system is specifically structured to dominate. Such a system only permits the oppressed to survive so that they can continue being oppressed. No system of oppression is structured consciously to destroy itself. The maximal development of all Black people would prove false the ideology of white superiority. Thus, if Black children and Black people as a whole are ever to be developed fully, Black people themselves will have to enact that development...Instead of developing behavior patterns for further useless protest, Black people should be cultivating patterns of self-help for self-development. Since the Black family setting is the first social institution under the racist system in which the Black child begins to experience inferiorization, it is of key importance that all Black people begin to understand(1) the true function of family life, (2) how some of the most important aspects of inferiorization can occur there and (3) that the Black family is the one social institution over which we as Black people can begin to exercise some control. Control of the Black family will be evident once we gain some mastery over our individual lives. We will learn that dysfunctional behaviors can be changed through the exercise of willpower. Thus, within the family setting, Black people can begin to alter the inferiorization dynamic and create a process for the maximal development of Black children.
The functional family unit is composed of the father, mother and offspring. The ultimate role of this vital social unit is to instruct the children as to how adult males and females function, usually and harmoniously together for the maximal development of a people. Individual family units are but cellular units of a whole organism called a people or a nation. All of the units must function efficiently and effectively if the whole organism is to live a healthy existence. If a family unit cannot instruct the young in harmonious patterns of relating between adult males and females, then ultimately the people will perish because adult male and female alienation eventually leads to the end of the procreative process. Without the young, the people will have no future." -From, "The Isis Papers" By: Dr. Frances Cress Welsing
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