Conspiracies, Racism, and Paranoia in the African-American Experience (article)

This article investigates social-psychological explanations for African-Americans’ tendency to subscribe to what some term conspiracy theories, i.e., “the white establishment is out to get us” attitude. Of additional concern are the implications of such adherence for the new millennium: How will leaders of tomorrow build the community of communities, i.e., the meta-community, in the 21st century given the implications of a conspiracy discussion? We suggest that the consideration of the possibility of conspiracy has an impact and legitimacy in the black community that is of interest.

Limited neither by education, wealth, or location, conspiracy theories among blacks have a long history. Some have proved to be real and some not so real. Dr. Marimba Ani, author of Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior (1994), an attack on what she calls “European intellectual imperialism,” maintains that Europeans have conspired to control the world since Plato claimed the ultimate knowledge of the truth for his culture and Constantine claimed a singular connection to the one true God. While Dr. Ani’s 600-page tome may not be convincing to all, the fact of Europe’s domination of the world cannot be denied. Certainly, her book has become a favorite of an African-centered intellectual community with a penchant for believing that “the Man” has conspired against people of color for centuries.

While Ani’s theories reflect a cultural hegemony, much of the most documented intrigue came from more putative sources. There is ample evidence of the American government’s involvement in various conspiracies against black Americans. Clayborne Carson, author of Malcolm X: The FBI File (1991), traces the counterintelligence schemes of former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edger Hoover to targets such as Marcus Garvey and Asa Philip Randolph in the 1920s. Even nonviolent hero Martin Luther King, Jr., was not spared Hoover’s plots. David J. Garrow, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning effort Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986), recounts numerous FBI intrusions on the civil rights leader and his supporters.

As inner city after inner city went up in flames in the 1960s, black commentators from columnists such as Carl Rowen to academics such as Professor Harold Cruse began to believe in the possibility of government counter offensives against black militants. Time would often confirm their suspicions. Mary Francis Berry in Black Resistance White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America (1994) reports that an FBI informant, William O’ Neal, gave floor plans for Black Panther leader Fred Hampton’s apartment to the FBI’s COINTEL-PRO (Counter-intelligence program). O’Neal also indicated when the Panther leader and his followers would be most vulnerable. The Chicago police subsequently fired 83 shots into the apartment, killing Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark, and wounding others. Hampton never raised from his bed, and the Panthers fired only one shot in retaliation.

Little wonder that poet/singer Gill Scott Heron’s “King Alfred Plan” became a widely-played hit among urban black Americans during the early 1970s. The King Alfred Plan was allegedly a government conspiracy to contain blacks to the Ghetto “when the revolution came.” When Heron rapped about the Plan, he was mirroring a long-standing tendency in the black community to consider as possible plots to subvert efforts of eq-

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uity and justice that has survived into the 21st century. While the Plan was never proven, the government’s supposed machinations against blacks continue to be deliberated. The CIA’s involvement in the flow of drugs to South Central Los Angeles received congressional attention in the 1980s. Accusations including redlining of black neighborhoods and profiling of black drivers have been proven as the new millennium opens.

Among the most sinister of the anti-black conspiracies was the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. The “Tuskegee Study,” as it is often called, was one of the most morally bankrupt and racist biomedical research efforts ever undertaken in the country. It very strongly suggests the existence of a multi-tiered local, state, and federal conspiracy against blacks.

The experiments began in 1932 when the United States Public Health Service, in the name of science, needed bodies upon which to study the ravages of syphilis. The Public Health Service recruited 399 African-American men from a rural, isolated community in Macon County, Alabama, who tested positive for syphilis. These essentially impoverished, unlettered sharecroppers were supposedly in the tertiary stage of their syphilis infection. This stage often results in tumors and skin ulcers; causes liver, cardiovascular and central nervous system disorders; and induces paralysis, blindness, and insanity. The Health Service doctors were already familiar with the degenerative, gruesome nature of the disease, yet they chose to mislead their patients. The men were told they were being treated for “bad blood.” The term, familiar to members of the black community, encompassed syphilis, gonorrhea, and anemia. According to James H. Jones, author of Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1996), treatment entailed hot lunches on the day of any examination, painful spinal taps, bottles of pink aspirin, and nominal burial money of $35-50. (Half of the burial money was given to an undertaker to secure cooperation at any autopsy.)

Despite the facts that in 1946 penicillin was touted as a cure for syphilis by the same arm of the government that was conducting the experiment and that by 1954 both state and federal laws mandated the use of penicillin for individuals infected with syphilis, these men were denied legitimate treatment for over 40 years. One of the survivors, Herman Shaw, indicated in an hour-long documentary titled “Bad Blood” that he was deliberately pulled out of a treatment line when it became evident that he was one of the Tuskegee Men. The study ended in 1972 in the midst of a national scandal when media reports exposed the project. By then only 71 of the men were still alive.

Undoubtedly, this national disgrace has left an indelible, psychic wound on the black community. Proven conspiracies such as the Tuskegee experiment couple with the widespread disparities between much of the black and white communities in areas such as family income, infant mortality, education, and incarceration to leave blacks ready and willing to consider the possibility, even probability, of sinister plots against their community by “the establishment” in particular and whites in general. Acutely aware of the history of conspiracies against the life and freedom of blacks, many African-Americans have come to accept that vigilance and even resistance are essential to their health and well-being.

An important impact of conspiracy theories on the meta-community can be ascertained by discussing how they contribute to the attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive variations between blacks and whites, i.e., how these theories contribute to why blacks and whites view similar events, processes, and phenomena in markedly different ways. That this is true can be seen in both academia and the daily lives of Americans.

The 1996 University of Michigan Medical School Cultural Diversity Assessment Final Report confirms perceptual differences between blacks and whites in the academy. Forty-six percent of blacks surveyed felt they were treated with respect while 88 percent of whites felt they were treated with respect. Sixty-four percent of black faculty agreed that they had witnessed outright race discrimination, while only nine percent of white faculty agreed. Fifty-four percent of black faculty agreed with the statement, “I am afraid to speak out about what I believe are the inequities that women and minorities experience here.” Only 19 percent of whites agreed.

Clearly, blacks and whites occupying the same space in the University of Michigan Medical School experience markedly different realities. Misunderstanding this phenomenon makes even well-meaning whites less sensitive, and it makes blacks feel abandoned. One respondent offered an insightful observation concurring with the impact of such differences on the meta-community: “Race and gender discrimination (differential treatment) is, for the most part, subtle and related more to dif-

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fering world views than maliciousness. Since white male world views predominate, especially in leadership, ignorance of alternative ones and, hence, differing treatment and discriminatory policies predominate” (p. 19).

These differences are not limited to institutions of higher learning. The OJ Simpson trial provides a less rarefied example of how the difference in black-white perspectives shapes the difference in group fantasies. The vision of the Los Angeles Police Department as conspirators against Simpson was easily accepted in the black community: even a powerful, famous black man can be brought down by a police conspiracy. The white community was as opposed to the notion as blacks were accepting: justice is being done and the police were just doing their job. Thus, while blacks rejoiced at the verdict, whites were appalled; each looked at the other with distrusting eyes.

What is critical to any analysis of the consciousness of black America is the recognition that black beliefs in conspiracies are not abnormal given blacks’ reality. They are rational and justified, not paranoid. Failure to clearly factor this understanding into discussions of race will distort the chronicler’s findings. In the meta-community then, scholars must, as the old American Indian proverb says, “Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.” Making the journey does not preclude objectivity; it enhances understanding.

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