#BlackMentality by William Seitshiro

#Black Mentality

Black Nation arises, arise and prosper


'Apartheid has left us with no hope for the future,' so we say.

Introduction

 We were taught to depend on white people, we were taught that we are too stupid to be leaders or too dumb to be successful. We have learned from the old white generation, that South Africa will be a deserted place with broken dreams and nothing to live for when black people will be set free, the same white generation has killed and murdered many black people, by so doing they automatically thought that they had power over black people even to this day many white people would expect to be respected highly when they walk in and black people are there. Black people rather, we are taught to fear white people, we were taught by our fathers, mothers, and brothers that white people have destroyed our lives to a point that until we all die and the world comes to an end black people will be working for white people.

A few days ago I had an epiphany that apartheid has left us broken to the point that the older generation that went through it cannot encourage the young generation in a positive way. Many people died for us to have a better future, but as we grow older in South Africa, we are brought up  by the mentality that as long as we are from the townships we are not going anywhere. We were taught by our family and friends who still have fear that apartheid might come back.

Who are we to look down on ourselves?

Who are we to consider ourselves cursed because we're black?

Who are we to think to ourselves that white people were born to live in high places while we live in the townships?

How dare we think that our fate is determined by white people?

How dare we forget the power in the words 'I Am an African’?

How dare we consider ourselves foreign in our own land?

We have been taught by the older generation that we are going nowhere; some would encourage us to find ourselves in this democracy and make living out of it. Should it be like that thought, should we have to walk out knowing that I am black and I stand a chance of not being hired in some other companies.

We have been trained by many people like friends and families and the people in the townships that we are not going anywhere, we were taught to think lowly of ourselves, we were taught to think that we have no future, we were taught that in order for us to make it we have to fight the white goliath, we were taught to view ourselves as failures and people that are going nowhere in life.

We were taught to be black not who we are on the inside or not who our dreams say that we are. Instead we are taught to be black to have a black mentality that shows us the negative side of the world that there is no place for a black person.

Wherever you can go in the world, USA, Africa, UK, Australia all the places in the world a black person is considered black not that we are not, but why are we not considered people like many others. Black people around the globe were consiountized to think of themselves as black, to be black, and to have a black future. We are not people that are aspiring to be someone in the future but we are considered black people who struggle to make it. We are not businessmen but struggling businessmen, to show that we struggle in South Africa they have created organizations that help out young black business people which is good, but why can’t we get position that we deserve in a white company.

At one point i was summoned by a school in Mamelodi (my home township) and humbly asked me to share a word at their matric event to encourage them. i want you to picture a room with 100 young black people, some smoke and drink alcohol, some are pregnant, some do not care about life and they want me to encourage them. Should i tell them that they have bright future, yes! But it doesn’t look that way. I kept telling them, 'do not be like your friend who smokes and drinks, but be royalty in their eyes. You should put aside their black mentality that life is over and keep pushing in life because we are not going to become like our parents but we are going to be a success even beyond Mamelodi'.

In kasi, black people still have the positions that our great grandparents had, teaching, nurses, construction, domestic and Many more low classed position. A while ago I had a chance to sit with a big time black lawyer and out of his heart he said he had to fight to get where he is today "there will be white people who are below your qualification that will take your position" he said.

A few years ago I met a guy while I was working at a campsite who once said "I was in maintenance position, until a white guys who dint know anything came and I had to teach time how to do the job I am doing just so that he can take it".

As black people we were taught to think that we will always be over powered by white people. We were taught to think we have no say, no power, and no wisdom or knowledge to do anything.

We were taught to live under a black mentality,  a black mentality that suggest that we will always be in kasi (townships), we will always have a future in picking up papers on the streets, we do not belong I. This country because only white people can make it, we are animals, we have no future I. The corporate world, we can never be more intelligent than a white person, we should humble ourselves when a white person walks in and we should listen to him, a white person is a god over black people.

We need to remember why we call ourselves a young African Generation, we need to remember why we say SWAG is Something that We Africans Got, we need to remember who we are, WE ARE AFRICANS. Many things that make other countries look all good and famous come from Africa, we might look like we are idiots and our presidents have many wives but 'WE ARE AFRICANS', we might be poor in money but man we are wealthy in 'WE ARE AFRICANS'.

I believe that this is the time stand together as a continent and says No! We are not black like our shoes, No! We are not idiots, No! We are not going to fail, and No! you haven’t seen the last of us, because we are strong Africans, we were oppressed by white people through slavery, we were killed by white people, white people tried to take away our dignity by raping our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandmother, and grandfathers but we are still standing, they tried to kill our future but we are strong Africans, and we are here to stay, millions in number, trillions or trillions in wealth, strong in character, and unmatched in wisdom and knowledge we are strong Africans.

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A black mentality suggests that 'we have no place in the world! But who is fooling who?'

We have become stones and rocks in our country that people use to decorate or close the ten feet pit for dead people, we are objects that are waiting to be used.

 We are nothing and what hurts the most is that we are taught not to care.

Yes! People fought and died for us to have freedom but the latter generating, that which was busy drinking alcohol and abusing their wives showed us that there is no life for black people after apartheid.

We are pregnant with business plans, but we do not care.
We are good leaders but we do not care.
We are intelligent and can change the world, but we do not care.
We are walking on top of Gold, Diamond and platinum, but we do not care.

We are living within a mind that builds up negative thoughts, thoughts that do not build but destroy.  We are living a life that moves to and fro from home, shops, alcohol and smoking, the life that is based on hustling, but the hustling does not build a future.

We have become rappers, Kwaito stars,  party goers, alcoholics,  smokers,  couch fillers, weed entrepreneurs, rape addicts, abusers, serial killers, we have become black because we are living in this black mind that says we are all the negative things that white people are not.

We have become slaves of the black mentality.

Every time we write article to caution the young African people and advise them to take the right path and see that they are not a disadvantage but an advantage, yet the black mentality has over taken us to a point that when a black person becomes a millionaire at a young he is considered a witch because 'a black person should struggle first' we believe. This is the time we put this black mentality at rest and destroy the curse that was placed upon us that we are better of dead, we are animals and that we are not going anywhere.

AFRICAN NATION ARISE, ARISE AND PROSPER.

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Early morning in Mamelodi

Broken dreams make us remember that life is tough. In many cities like Johannesburg there lie broken dreams broken, by broken dreams I mean those business plans that we draw up but they never became a success.

Broken dream are found everywhere and everywhere you go, you will find someone broken and can't be fixed because they tried and failed.

In that pain of Unrealized and unnoticed and broken dreams there is a place called Mamelodi. A place of life changing possibilities. Mamelodi has become the heart of Pretoria, where people can go to find joy and happiness but most of all education.

No one can ever top our class, simply because we keep elevating in success. Broken dreams have become a stepping stone to the success of our township.

Are we saying we are unbeatable and we over power every community? No! We just make dreams become a reality.

Early morning in Mamelodi made me realize that our community is blessed with opportunities even thought we do not see them. When we as black young men and women look at ourselves today we see typical black people who have no future. My view as a pastor is this, life will always be what you want it to be.

On a day to day life skill teaching (church) we encourage people to be positive (have positive thinking, positive life style) In so doing people get live and become what the profess.

Mamelodi is full of business opportunities, we have to see it and do it so that we can become bigger than what our community thinks of us. An early morning in Mamelodi is all that one needs so that we can get a wakeup call.

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As a Pastor I wrote that article to motivate young people in Mamelodi to rise up and change their lives by doing something positive, but the black mentality will take more than articles that we write and speeches that we present to break it.

Black mentality has changed the lives of black people and even though 1 out of 10 black people make it I'm life, It does not change anything.

In this book, I will be discussing the black mentality that has over powered the minds of black people, I will be interviewing people that I know and people around my township Mamelodi and also get one of the popular people that grew up in Mamelodi to speak about his view on black mentality, mostly I will be speaking about our future from here as young black South African's.

I always mention this thought that keeps speaking to my heart, 'the beauty of life is not about the trials that beat us down but it is about how to get up after being crippled by life'.

As Christians we believe that God will see us through in all things including this wretched life, we believe that we do not belong here, we are just passing by. I agree, yet we are here and we too are affected by the black mentality because we cannot reach out to people and tell them about a spiritual solution if we do not address the issue in their minds.

We as Christians, Islam/Muslims, Jews and all kinds of religions in the world we will not over power poverty if we do not deal with the black mentality. We need saving as black people not from hiv/aids, not from Ebola or cancer but we need saving from our minds. We need help from ourselves. It is impossible for our country to be like UK because of the black mentality.

AFRICAN NATION ARISE, ARISE AND PROSPER.


CHAPETR 1


#BLACK IS BLACK


We were not created to be black or white but human!

THE NATIONS IS PAINTED WITH TWO COLORS, BLACK AND WHITE. BETWEEN THESE TWO COLORS ON IS GOOD AND ONE IS BAD, BETWEEN THESE TWO COLORS ONE STANDS OUT AND THE OTHER DOES NOT. WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT THERE WILL ALWAYS BE TWO SIDES IN THIS WORLD, THE RIGHT SIDE AND THE WRONG SIDE. BUT THAT DOES NOT SUGGEST THAT WRONG CANNOT CHANGE AND RIGHT CANNOT CHANGE BUT IT MEANS THAT LIFE CHALLGES AND PEOPLE CHOOSE SIDES.

What is black?

Black is a colour that is more dark that all the colours of the world. When religion looks at the colour black they speak of Satan whom we call the devil which is a bad spirit. People were trained at a young age that black is bad, people were taught to think that black can never do anything right.

I once watched a video clip that psychologists wanted to see what people think about black people (African people) and white people (Western people).

a. The psychologist placed two dolls (one was black and the other one was white) in front of a two - three year old black child and they asked her which doll do you think is good and she picked a white doll and they asked her which one do you think is bad and she picked the black one.

b. The psychologist did the same thing but instead of asking a black girl he asked a white kid, which doll do you think is good and she picked a white doll and they asked her which one do you think is bad and she picked the black one.

The psychologist never shared his consensus but clearly if you study the situation in an objective point of view, you will notice that many people were taught at a young age that black people are bad people. We also as a black community do not even trust black people with anything but we trust white people. We were consciousntized to think bad is black and black is bad. We were taught to think that we are bad and white people are good.

What is black mentality?

Black mentality has nothing to do with how we treat other people, but how we treat ourselves, how we view ourselves and what we think of ourselves. It has nothing to do with the concret self but abstract self. Black mentality is a theory that was introduced because the clergy realized that apartheid or slavery will always live in the minds of African people.

Black mentality has a lot to do with the power of the mind, like i have mentioned black mentality has to do with how we view ourselves and what we think about ourselves. Black mentality is psychological problem, because the more it affects the mind of the people before it affects the world that we see.


Abstract Self

The world gets destroyed because we are a destruction in the inside, and without us dealing with how we view ourselves and how we view the world then we will always be black. Being black is not a colour issue but the mind issue, as soon as you see yourself as an African who is strong in character then you will see who you are.

We should come to the place where we understand that black mentality does not define or describe us. We need to understand that who we are is deeply rooted in our history

Concrete Self

When we speak about our concrete self we are speaking about who we are in the world and what we do. Concrete Self has to do with our careers, our families and friends, i call it concrete self because sometimes we feel like what we have that seem physical, tangible or real defines who we are to a certain point. Because of Our Concrete Self many commit suicide while others becomes successful, some persevere while other quit.