manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the
targeted person. For living individuals, this can cause the target to be rejected by his or her community, family, or or members
of his or her living or work environment. Such acts are typically very difficult to reverse or rectify, therefore the process
is correctly likened to a literal assassination of a human life. The damage sustained can be lifelong and more, or for historical
personages, last for many centuries after their death."
The credo of the entity
that uses defamation of character to vanquish a potential enemy is to "define your opponent before he tries to define
himself."
Life can be untenable for the victim(s) of character assassination.
History is replete with the struggles faced by the victims of character assassination. A prime example of this is Dr. Martin
Luther King. The FBI attempted to label him a communist. It also attempted to infer that Dr. King was involved in an extramarital
relationship. What is interesting to note is that Dr. King's ultimate assassination came not long after the United States
government's attempt to assassinate his character. That rendering a person, or group of persons "persona non grata"
opens the door to outright oppression is a well-established fact.
It is normal
and natural to want a good name, a good public reputation. Unfortunately, for the descendants of African slaves, attaining
and maintaining a good public image -- a good international reputation -- remains an elusive goal. African men are, on many
occasions, portrayed as incorrigible criminals. They are oftentimes viewed as having apelike strength in their pursuit
of sports stardom. Sometimes they are viewed as lazy, shiftless recipients of financial assistance from the government. African
men like the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Professor Leonard Jeffries, who represent a major shift away from
the racist governmental status quo are labeled by the media as, the worst of all epithets, anti-Semitic.
African
American woman are oftentimes portrayed by the media as being loud, slang-speaking and overbearing. African American women,
in some instances are viewed as women who breed uncontrollably and as single-parent, unemployed, uneducated project dwellers.
Public belief in the inferiority of dark skin is the catalyst behind the character
assassination of African people. The ABC show Good Morning America broadcasted the story of 17-year-old African American
Kiri Davis, who made a video named "A Girl Like Me." In this film, Ms. Davis recreates an experiment that was
performed half a century ago by an African American man named Dr. Kenneth Clark. In the experiment, several African American
children were shown a white doll and a black doll and asked to choose the good doll. All the children chose the white doll
as the "good" doll. In the powerful video, Davis asks a little girl, "Can you show me the doll that looks bad?"
The girl immediately chooses the black doll. "Why does that look bad?" Davis asks. "Because it's black,"
the girl responds.1
The
deleterious effects of the belief in the inferiority of dark skin are alive and well in the 21st century. Unless Africans
do something to properly address this issue, we will bear yet another generation of Africans who hate themselves and each
other.
Even several hundred years after the declaration of the Emancipation
Proclamation, there is virtually no public discussion of the real cause of the destruction of the African community's
reputation. What can we Africans do, now that we are still in the grips of the centuries-old habit of portraying Africans
as the world's pariahs?
We must do the following:
· Learn the cause;
· Publicly expose it and its source;
· Engage in dialogue to foster awareness of the damaging effects of
this slanderous myth.
The issue of African reparations has been addressed by many well-meaning
members of the African diasporal community. However, their suggestions do not always address those things that were lost by
the descendants of Africans. The Committee on Slavery and Justice, appointed by Brown University's first African
American president Ruth J. Simmons, suggests such things as building a memorial, creating a center for the study of slavery
and injustice and increasing efforts to recruit minority students from Africa and the West Indies. While these things are
good, they do not address the first and most important thing that Africans in the Diaspora have lost -- their public reputations
-- that is, their "good names." Having a college education is useless unless the public's mind is readjusted
by exposing the original set of lies that led to the centuries-old practice of publicly defaming Africans.
Our
first order of business must be the acquisition of our good names and the restoration of our reputations. Without a good international
reputation, we, the descendants of those Africans slaves whose characters were assassinated are as good as dead.
Footnotes:
1 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2553348&page=1
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