INJUSTICE AND THE QUEST FOR SELFACCOMPLISHMENT IN MANCHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND

INJUSTICE AND THE QUEST FOR SELF ACCOMPLISHMENT IN MANCHILD IN THE
PROMISED LAND

Criminality as prevailing among the youth

 In a society which flies into pieces under the effect of unemployment and tensions brought about by social situation, relations degenerate more and more in violence, which leads to criminality. The hundreds of thousands of migrants from the South to the North are constituted mostly of ill-prepared people. In addition, the participation of the Blacks as soldiers in US Army profits them; for, they received their military training in the South and that had great consequences in their active life. As a result, what happened both in the defense plants and army camps has naturally repercusions in every Negro Ghetto. This first generation landing to the North in seeks of better living conditions was at the slough of despond and disillusionment. They were expecting to enter a Promised Land where all equal opportunities are guaranteed. But these pilgrims once in the North find things differently and their dreams start collapsing down, and consequently, they lull with false hopes. Bequeathed this hopelessness and bitterness, new black generations find themselves trapped between pity for their families, where children lack deadly pertaining to family affection, and guilt because most of them were shot or murdered or sent to jails. Then, Whites and Blacks relations were so strained that hatred itself becomes an exhausting and self-destructive pose. Indeed, in a well managed society, all citizens should benefit from liberty, from basic well-being, and ethnic and racial equality and more importantly have the possibility to earn a living according to their efforts. But, the contrary would occur when economic stagnation and deprivation and all sorts of opportunities are nipped in the shell of presumption. From this ill-treatment, Young black Americans try, by all means, to find their real place in the society. And to corroborate it, James Baldwin in his work entitled Notes of a Native Son says: Most of them care nothing whatever about race. They want only their proper place in the sun and the right to be left alone, like any other citizen of the republic . However, measuring their economic, social and political advancement by the norms and standards which prevail in their local community, Blacks find themselves deprived of basic opportunities which triggers frustrations; hence violence and criminality as prevailing among the youths. The hard living conditions in which African-Americans live have brought about violence within the community, which we can classify as follows:Moral violence which psychologically terrorizes people. Being Black in the United States of America is a Handicap; but being both Black and terrorized is another barrier for Blacks progress. It is this moral violence that Maya Angelou tries to point out overtly in I know why the caged bird sings. Blacks live in permanent fear which secludes them from the white world. Debased and traumatized were Blacks in their community. Uncle Willie exemplifies this low social stratum crippled economically, socially and politically under the White oppression. And the presence of Whites on horse at grandmother’s store terrorizes not only Uncle Willie who hides from potato plants, but also Margaret who, at her tender age, tarts experiencing this moral oppression. But, even if this moral pression towards Blacks is remarkably denounced in I Know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou, Claude Brown lays more emphasis on this racial issue. Parents are docile before the white man who causes for most of the time frustrations and selfhatred among Young African-Americans. Claude‘s father symbolizes this moral oppression when he almost cringed before the white Judge in the court when Sunny was kicked by a bus Company. And to confess his disapproval of this moral violence, Sunny says as following: The lawyer told us to sit down ‘’over there’’ for a while. Dad almost ran to the seat and I wanted to grab him by his coat, kick him in his ass real hard, and say, ‘’Look here, you simply-actin’ nigger, you better try to be cool, ‘cause you wit me’’28 . In this fact, the consequences of economic and social context in which Blacks live, reinforce day after day the social fraction and seem to justify the bitterness of a more and more important number of Black Americans and the feeling of injustice. That is why Bob Jones in If He Hollers Let Him Go tells his feelings of fear when he says: But now I was scared in different way. Not of the violence. Not of the mob. Not of physical hurt. But of America, of American justice. The jury and the Judge, the people themseves29 . However, moral violence constitutes a great handicap mainly for the old generation who permanently live in fear. Though this psychological feeling was wide spread in Black communities, taming and nippling elders in the mud of inferiority complex, physical violence constitutes blatantly and overtly a phenomenon which was eating up the whole community.

 THE QUEST FOR SELF-ACCOMPLISHMENT 

 Even if drugs and sex and criminality are today a refuge place for some marginalized people, the fact remains that the latter, at given moment, musing upon their fate, pave a new way of living not collectively but individually. In the African-Americans’ community, collective actions to depart from social injustice were a heavy task that blacks find it difficult to carry out. This was brought about by a segregationist policy which marginalized African-Americans in all public places in the U.S. This racial segregation put them under the shadow of all common actions; hence, integration constituted a major action for them. In addition, disillusionment and bitterness had eaten up their sense of common fight increased by whites’ presumption which considers blacks as inferior people. All these parameters make blacks disheartened, and bewildered, and they thought but their own actions so to get out of this slough of despair. However, for this new change, blacks operate great changes by converting themselves from Saul to Paul just to draw a close parallel with Paul Christ’s disciple. As a reminder, Saul was perpetrating violence upon Christians; but at a given time, he realized that he took the wrong way and ultimately turned to Paul and then undertook good actions so to overlast love between people and Jesus religion. Claude and Maya advocate this action at the turn of their lives. To corroborate it, Sambo said: ‘You start Saul, and end up Paul’, my grandfather had often said.’ When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whip your head a bit and you start to trying to be Paul39 ’. In this perspective, Claude and Maya show that African-Americans become aware that there were two of them: the old self that had been flying without wings out of their loss and the new self that must put the break on the wheel of wrong actions and undertake individual actions for their self-accomplishment. This new shift will be changing Blacks’ fate and putting them into the position of competing with Whites in every level of the society as they rise up from inferiority complex to self-possession; hence, the study of our work in the first part of the second chapter.

 From inferior complex to self-possession 

According to the free encyclopedia, an inferiority complex is a feeling of intense insecurity inferiority or of not measuring up. It can be seen as negative or useless reactions to problems in life. Although the inferiority complex may be seen as comparing individuals or groups as one being superior to another, it more closely describes how one deals with a fear of failure. Furthermore, it is an abnormal or pathological state which, due to the tendency of the complex to draw unrelated ideas into itself, leads the individual to depreciate himself, to become unduly sensitive, and to adopt a derogatory attitude towards others. As to self-possession, we are introduced profoundly to a philosophical insight. That insight is that people are understood through their actions and not through their own words. But to examine deeply self-possession, we must point out the origin of the word possession as coming from the Latin potus which means to be able and sedere, to sit. In other words, to sit on my own property. This demonstrates that it is mine and I am responsible for its upkeep and output. Since the person is in possession of himself, his actions flow from his own responsibility over himself. However, this duality concept of inferiority complex and selfpossession constitutes a binomial to which all man’s success or failure spins around. In the United States of America, African-Americans’ history had been spun around deception and disillusionment, bitterness and hoplessness. This is due to the inheritance legend of white superiority which continues to happen and still happening in which whites purposely do create a myth of inequality between the blacks and the whites. Behind this superiority myth, draws a web of inferiority complex which traps and maintains blacks from recognizing their ability to compete with whites. This is why Sunny said: Mama told him (Pimp),’ boy, don’t you wantin’ things that ain’t for you. You just go out there and get a good job’. A good job to Mama was a job making fifty or sixty dollars a week, and that was as much as any body should have wanted, in Mama’s opinion40 . And yet, everyone starts life with some feelings of inferiority. Subsequent success or failure is determined by the ability to adjust the inferiority feeling to the demands of life. In addition, the complex may cause a person to have ultimate failure and maladjustment. No one succeeds without some inferiority feeling and almost everyone who fails does so because of an inferiority complex.