Throughout our history of trials and triumphs, our songs have been of freedom; as we plowed the fields of justice and planted the seeds of equality, we sang of a brighter day to come. That day is today, as we “lift up our eyes unto the hills.” Our faith, resilience, and determination have brought us a new song of freedom.

We have now come full circle. And what have we learned? What is the truth? For far too many, the story and reality of Africa springs from the imagination of Europeans. It is a story of initial contact situations in which the Europeans discovered Africa and the Africans (see Chapters 1 and 2). This story is part mythology, part apology, and part ideology, as Europeans emerge as White, superior conquerors, and the Africans are defined as Black, inferior, and victimized. We explored how even what is considered science is replete with racial overtones. Much like the father of American psychology, Samuel A. Cartwright (1851), who argued that enslaved Africans seeking to escape were mentally ill (drapetomania), the father of American sociology, Lester Frank Ward, is notable in that he advocated Social Darwinism, arguing that Western civilization's oppression of Africans was a result of the survival of the fittest. Ward went so far as to assert that lynching was a necessary consequence of the inferiority of Blacks (see Chapter 5).

Thus, from its beginning, sociology was imbued with scientific racism and White supremacy. For upper- class Whites, racism, and oppression were not only justified but encouraged. Following suit from the University of Chicago, Robert Park would argue that the failure of Blacks and other “lesser” groups to assimilate demonstrated that they had not quite developed. At best, they imitated, albeit imperfectly, the traditions of more advanced Europeans (Park, 1919). According to these scholars, the Africans suffered from a culture of poverty, ghetto mentalities, and generational poverty. Consequently, either because of biological or cultural defects, the Africans were in a constant state of failure (see Chapter 2).

Malcolm X, in 1962, asked:

John Henry and the objectification of Black masculinity

Many know the story of John Henry, famous in Black folk ballads. The story describes a strong Black man, pitted against a machine, who died “with his hammer in his hand.” John Henry, for decades, has been a symbol of Black masculinity and defiance, resistance, and perseverance.

It is a story of a man who refused to submit, but constantly needed to prove himself worthy. But rather than being rewarded, he was forced to prove himself continually. Finally, in his struggle against the racist system that repeatedly tried to suppress, oppress, and reduce him to an object, he faced the ultimate test: man against machine. And in his final contest against a steam- powered drill, this hero won the battle but lost the war. He collapsed two steps ahead of the machine, driving the last steel drill into the rock.

Sherman James and Associates adapted the story into a psychological construct – John Henryism – to characterize a “strong behavioral predisposition to cope actively with psychosocial environmental stressors” (James, 1994: 163). According to James's formulation, three characteristic features were associated with this construct:

• 1. efficacious mental and physical vigor;

• 2. a strong commitment to hard work; and

• 3. a single- minded determination to succeed.

In this chapter, I want to discuss how the battle wages on. These unsung warriors, heroes, and heroines continue to navigate toxic racial environments. And even as they chart new paths and scale new mountains, they continue to bear the tremendous weight of operating within racialized spaces.

In a scene reminiscent of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, Haitian migrants were run down by U.S. border guards for just trying to seek asylum. But this tragedy did not start here, nor is it confined to the Haitians. This particularly militarized zone along our southern border and these Black people have long been part of our tortured racial story.

It's a story that begins with European imperialism and runs through slavocracy; that matures during deliberate and strategic periods of disinvestment, disempowerment, and denial; and finally, it jettisons into our complicated, racialized universe. Tracing that story helps us to understand how we got here, how other racialized stories were constructed, and how we might get beyond the point of merely blaming or commiserating with the victims but confronting, repairing the damage, and remedying the problems.

The first slave and Indigenous rebellion

Haiti is part of the island originally known as Hispaniola. The original inhabitants of the island were the Taino people, an Arawak tribe that originated in what is now Venezuela. The island formally came under Spanish control when Columbus claimed it in 1492. A year later Columbus returned with 1,300 men and African slaves to establish the permanent settlement. The Tiano population declined precipitously as they succumbed to excessive labor demands, military conflicts, and disease (Altman, 2007). This resulted in the Spanish needing a more durable labor source. Ferdinand and Isabel, in the charter of 1501, allowed for the importation of slaves. What the Spanish did not foresee was the Enriquillo Revolt, from 1519 to 1533, in which the African slaves and the Taino rebelled.

Enriquillo, a Taino chief, in 1519 orchestrated the one of the most remarkable rebellions against the Spanish empire in the Caribbean period. To this day, the Enriquillo Rebellion is celebrated across the island, in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as the most remarkable rebellion against the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean. The rebellion, following several during the first half of the 16th century, started as several Tainos in the mountain region of Bahoruco rebelled. The rebels utilized guerrilla tactics, taking advantage of their knowledge of the mountainous terrain (Altman, 2007).

The year 2023 was gut- wrenching for me and many of my colleagues, certainly a foul endcap to a series of years that began before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, I asked just how many rights are we collectively willing to lose before enough is enough, that year marking the historical heartbreaking decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse Roe v Wade. In the year to follow, we witnessed further attacks to academic freedom; the stifling of protests; whitelash against changes to the White supremacist status quo; anti- DEI/ JB (diversity, equity, inclusion/ justice, belonging), anti- CRT (Critical Race Theory), and anti- woke sentiments and legislature; increased antisemitic and anti- Muslim hate across the globe; and attempts (some failed yet some successful) at rewriting history(ies) in ways that further erase or render invisible U.S. racism and ethnic oppression. As I write this series preface, we are only a couple of weeks in to 2024 and it remains to be seen what further freedoms will be lost, and in what ways will whitelash continue to regain lost nostalgic White supremacist ground (forget about maintaining the status quo). The anti- CRT and anti- DEI/ JB rhetoric that has spread across the United States, and in several states like Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma (33 states as of December 2023) that have passed anti- DEI legislation, is alarming although it was not a surprise to those of us who have been studying diversity in the U.S. for the past many years. Several scholars, me included, questioned diversity ideology in higher education and other institutions as empty rhetoric. So, attacks against DEI are political at best. However, it does allow for liberal diversity “champions” to make claims that were it not for right- wing politicians/ politics, we would be better off in terms of racial and other forms of equity and equality. There is little evidence for many U.S. institutions that this is true. And I would suggest that many such organizations who claim this are more likely to be White sanctuaries than bastions of critical diversity. Yet here we are.

Racial imperialism created racial hierarchies in the colonized countries based upon the ideological and presumptive beliefs of the colonizers toward the colonized. In the previous chapter we examined how racial realities were created by ideologies developed by both conservative and liberal philosophers. We also examined the alternative construction of reality developed by the so- called racialized other. In this chapter we will examine how racial imperialism constructed and externalized the other. We shall also examine how the subjective realities constructed by the African and others served not only to react, but to actively engage those realities. In the process, we will see how history is the result of creating what Du Bois called double consciousness, or what I will refer to as bipolar extremes in both historical narratives and racial realities. We shall begin this chapter by exploring how the ideologies manifested in what has become known as racial imperialism, which created, maintained, and continually serves to perpetuate racial hierarchies. The colonial past, which included Indigenous genocide, slavery, racism, and colonial imperialism, cannot be ignored. But neither can we ignore the racial realities constructed by the African and various Indigenous groups. Their active agency not only denied racial imperialism total victory, but their subjective construction of self was both reaction and action. They were more than reacting to racial imperialism, but actively engaged in constructing/ reconstructing their realities. The truth requires us to examine these bipolarities in an effort to understand the externalities produced by the racial state and the subjective awareness constructed by the various groups. We begin with an examination of racial imperialism and the racial construction of the other.

The racial imperialism and the racial construction of the other

In 1914, only China, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire were free of European control. As Jared Diamond argues, three factors – guns, germs, and steel – account for the success of the Europeans. These germs (smallpox and other herd diseases) and gunpowder might be the primary culprits (Diamond, 1997/ 2017). However, while germs were quite effective in eradicating massive numbers of Indigenous peoples, the availability of gunpowder was tremendously important. Gunpowder allowed Europeans with a small military force to devastate a large population (Hoffman, 2017).

Black women's identities have been prescribed and conscribed almost from the beginning of our nation. These representations of the African woman in America have rarely reflected the contributions to the American project. Even when there is an attempt to acknowledge their true histories grudgingly, it barely scratches the surface. Black women have blazed the trail, set the bar, and creatively constructed their identities and realities from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, from the Industrial Revolution to the era of civil rights, and from “Hidden Figures” to “the Black Lives Matter Movement.” This chapter acknowledges the various ways Black women have been both sterilized and characterized, yet they remain resilient, resistant, and rebellious, unsung warriors. Explored, therefore, will be the classic stereotypes that have attempted to racialize and minimize her. But this chapter will also explore their responses and their active engagement in creating, sustaining, and maintaining feminine identities that are uniquely African, Black, and proud. We begin with Nina Simone's 1966 classic as she captures the four principal character types:

• 1. She heralds “Aunt Sarah” as a strong, resilient woman who declares, “My skin is black/ My arms are long/ My hair is wooly/ My back is strong/ Strong enough to take the pain/ Inflicted again and again/ What do they call me? / My name is Aunt Sara.”

• 2. Then there is “Saffronia,” a mixed- race woman whose skin was described as “yellow” and who was forced to live “between two worlds.” In this in- between place, she is buffeted by the Black and Whites. “My father was rich and white; he forced my mother late one night.”

• 3. Then there is “Sweet Thing,” accepted by both Blacks and Whites, whose primary attributes were neither good looks nor fine hair but because she could satisfy the sexual needs of men: “Whose little girl am I? / Anyone who has money to buy.”

Africans have been central to the shaping and the making of the Americas from its founding. The first antislavery societies were established the same year the Declaration of Independence was penned. From then to the present day, our nation has been consumed with the idea and the reality of race. This chapter will explore this shaping and making. More formally, this chapter will examine the system of racial triangulation created to keep the Africans in their places. Racial triangulation, the intended outcomes of racial imperialism, has been associated with centuries of forced servitude, followed by the Civil War and Jim Crow laws, forced segregation, racial intimidation and terror, redlining, differential access to education and training, and finally, the cradle- to- prison pipeline. The Africans have repeatedly and consistently fought against each of these attempts to contain, restrain, and pervert their very being.

It would be inaccurate to reduce the various responses of the Africans as mere reactions to racial imperialism. In this chapter, I will demonstrate how the Africans creatively restructured racial imperialism. Therefore, the various aspects of racial triangulation developed to control the Africans by the imperial state have been responses to the continuous, organized, and deliberate acts of resistance, rebellion, and revolts orchestrated by the Africans. Consequently, shaping the Americas reflects the imperial state's reaction to the African's agency in asserting identity, liberty, and justice.

At the onset, we must clarify that there were hundreds of large- scale rebellions across the Americas. There were also innumerable individual acts of rebellion, from the destruction of equipment and crops, work stoppages and slowdowns, escapes, and even suicide. The day- to- day acts of rebellions were a constant part of the continual response of the Africans to racial imperialism. With this understanding, we begin by examining the impact of the Haitian Rebellion upon the United States.

African rebellions in the United States

The Haitian Revolution, as the only successful slave rebellion in the Americas, also catalyzed several slave rebellions within the United States. The four most significant rebellions were Gabriel's Conspiracy, which took place in Richmond in 1800, the German Coast Uprising in 1811, Vesey's Rebellion in 1822, and the 1831 rebellion of Nat Turner.

During the insanity of war, an unknown pregnant woman and her baby were killed as a massive missile attack destroyed the maternity ward where she and other expectant mothers were being treated. They join thousands who have died and millions who have been displaced as a result of what can only be called the egomaniacal desires of an autocrat.

As a paranoid dictator, Vladimir Putin joins not only his predecessor, Stalin, but a list of others, such as Hitler, Idi Amin, Papa Doc, and Ferdinand Marcos. Like these other dictators, Putin has no concern for what will happen once he leaves the scene. Putin frankly doesn't care, as he follows the script laid down by dictators who came before.

One such example comes from 1757 when King Louis XV of France dismissed the stunning defeat in the battle of Rossbach. According to one account, Madame de Pompadour, equally unfazed, declared “apres nous le deluge,” or “after us, the deluge” (Mould, 2011). Such dismal conditions are standard fare for failure among autocrats and dictators.

Similarly, Putin exhibits a nihilistic indifference to the consequences of his actions. The reality is that this insane war was premeditated, conspicuous, and deliberately conceived and executed by Vladimir Putin. The truth is that Vladimir Putin is waging this war, has been planning this war, and has no intentions of ending this war until Ukraine no longer exists and its people have been annihilated. And this will serve no political, economic, or sane reason other than the inflation of Putin's ego. These same truths are part and parcel of the history and reality of racial imperialism across time, space, and reality. These truths are the essence of this volume.

Let us begin.

There are many truths, as many as there are realities. What truths you subscribe to in many ways reflects the position you occupy. The truth of a child is different from that of their parents, and the truth of the victim is different from that of the victimizer. Which truth you choose to adhere to is the truth you will live by. But all truths, as with all realities, grant your insight.