White on Black

¶ … accepting slavery in the west may never be uncovered to a level of acceptance of those who suffered under the terrible treatment. Slavery was an unjust and evil order which structured society on the basis of skin color, nationality, and land ownership.

While understanding this concept is difficult to some, alternate theories which have been brought forth over the past three decades as a result of the merging of advancing sociology, psychological, and political studies are even more difficult to comprehend, unless the proponents of the same are still holding an axe which needs to be ground. One such theory is expounded in White on Black. The article, which propounds to be a piece of scholarly research, attempts to piece together apples and oranges in order to create a reasonable theory.

But what seems to be more the object of the article is to give black Americans, and blacks world wide an intellectual grudge to hold over the heads of white on a global scale. Black on White is built on the premise that the social orders which encouraged and supported racial slavery were based on sexual repression of a vague 'Victorian complex.' Researchers have long assumed that the moral structure which typified the Victorian era were responsible for harming individuals.

The moral boundaries established in the context of a mostly homogeneous society limited the social and sexual appetites of the citizens of the time. As a result of this emotional and psycho-social pain, the society which accepted these moral constraints found outlets for their sexual frustration in other ways. Black on White asserts that one of the outlets of the Victorian repression was the forced domination of the black race.

Victorian repression, according to the author, was to blame for the entire western attitude toward the African nation, and its designation as the Dark Continent (dark in relation to skin color, and lack of social order). Freudian thinking has also influences this author, as he seeks to make sexual domination the predominant causal factor of slavery.

Freud, who seemed to want to link every social disorder to a sexual dysfunction, suggested that our sexual desires, which are some of the most powerful drivers of human behavior, were the causal factors for all behavior and choices. Pieterse, in his article, combines loose Freudian theology with the indefinable forces of Victorian repression, and comes up with his own hypothesis for the purpose of slavery. The black community was stereotyped as a hyper-sexualized group.

According to Pieterse, the black male was considered to be little more than a "walking phallus." As such, we would represent that which the victiorianly repressed white western male could not be, have, or do. The black man could be sexually free, to the extent which his internal desires craved, while the white man could not. As a result, according to Pieterse and Freud, the black man represented that which the white man wanted, and couldn't have -- sexual freedom.

As a result of this dichotomy, the white man built the structure of slavery around the black man to control him, and to punish him for exercising the freedom which the white man secretly desired. This explanation is one of the most bizarre hypotheses I have encountered regarding the wrongful tragedy of slavery. The enslaving of one people by another people is an immoral and evil act. No justification can describe it, and no reason can lesson the evil. No other reason is needed than the fact that men.