What Is Metaphysical Imperialism?

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Religious Community I remember clearly seeing my first picture of a lynching and a burnt body contorted into a sculpture of twisted pain, Emmett tills swollen body reminding me of the fragility of human life and the hatred that could fall on me for simply being the wrong color at the wrong place. These ghosts and the pain they possessed served as a warning that I was to function as a militant black male and continue the work of Malcolm X and lead my race into enlightenment. I was raised Christian my religion is based on the new testament of the bible and embodies the teachings and life of Jesus Christ in my Belief God is a trinity encompassing God, The Son, and the Holy Spirit. Because of Adam and Eves disobedience man introduced sin into …show more content…

The church brought American media on trail and in doing so made me aware of how even at a young age we are programmed to believe that black is bad and white is good. Author Jared Diamond referred to this dichotomy as Metaphysical imperialism and explains its theory in his book called Guns, Germs, and Steel. The theory reveals how in its essence metaphysical imperialism is psychological in nature and its ideals are perpetuated by using the media, and sustained by promoting stereotypes. These stereotypes create self-hatred. Stokely Carmichael illustrates a great example of the mechanics behind how mind-altering this oppression can be. Carmichael was a Trinidadian-American black activist. Carmichael gained notoriety and distinction being involved in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movements. He uses a memory of watching Tarzan in his youth to illustrate one of the ways African American’s are trained to hate their selves. He recalls seeing Tarzan movies on Saturday where the white alpha male Tarzan would beat up the African natives. In retrospect he remembers cheering Tarzan on and instructing him to kill these African beast, “kill the savages”, what he realizes now is that he was actually telling Tarzan to kill him. He uses the analogy of a Jewish boy cheering on the Nazis as they took Jews to the ovens. (Hallman, M. 1998) He used this imagery to exemplify the self-hatred that the media instills in us on a psychological level. Carmichael says that even if these cleverly placed mind controlling, media tactics where to cease, “it takes time to reject the most important lie: that black people inherently cant do the same thing white people do, unless white people help them. (Hallman, M.

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