Reparations Means Recognizing Cognitive Dissonance

Ok, I must resort to the big words and scientific terms: Cognitive Dissonance. According to Dr. Joy Leary (author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome), it is cognitive dissonance that explains what we view as racial insensitivity.

Reparations means recognizing cognitive dissonance. For example when 19 Philadelphia Police Officers brutally attack 3 unarmed Black teens, it is cognitive dissonance that explains why the police commissioner would suggest that the police were under "stress and pressure" after losing one of their own. Does that justify their actions? Does "stress and pressure" mean that it is ok for the sharks to go on a feeding frenzy? But, he must attribute their actions to something because he must show that there is no racism on the police force and that this attack did not happen because the teens were Black...it happened because of the officers' stress-level. It is this dissonance that leads Mayor Nutter to say that we must view this incident in the proper context. The hope is that we feel sorry for the officers and have no feeling whatsoever about the real victims.

Cognitive dissonance would explain why in the Sean Bell Murder Trial, everyone focused on the criminal records of the victims and not the crime. It is this dissonance that causes the judge to state that the credibility of the officers outweighed the credibility of the victims...and that this negates the crime. Is the judge saying that because they had a criminal record, they deserved to be shot and one deserved to be killed?

Reparations means recognizing cognitive dissonance. These suggestions are just distractions. And, they must pose distractions so that they can remove any conflict between what we are told about American society and what we see in American society. And, recognizing this means that we are not distracted by contortions that have no bearing on the true issue.

This is why we need Reparations. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome affects both the enslaved and the enslaver. To deal with this generational trauma we engage in cognitive dissonance...preferring to ignore the issue or act as though it does not exist. Yet, the only way to recover from trauma is to deal with the trauma. And, that does not mean numbing folks down and reinforcing inferiority complexes. But, it means building institutions through which we give people the tangible tools to overcome the problems plaguing people. It means engaging in dialogue that exposes us to dissonance, because the only way we can extricate a problem is to recognize its existence. And that folks, is how we repair our nation.

Come and Get Your Reparations!