I have finally figured out what is wrong with Black people! As a people (and of course this is a generalization) we suffer from emotional schizophrenia. If the psychological experts are right that most behaviors are driven by deep-seated emotional beliefs, then we as a collective tend to be driven by deep-seated beliefs which are often contradictory and at odds with one another. The result is a series of behaviors which are also contradictory and at odds with one another.

We have a serious split-personality problem. Perhaps the primal, socio-historical example of this collective schizophrenia has been the integrationist thrust of the Black movement for progress in America. While I firmly believe in a reasonably integrated society, we must admit that there is a serious contradiction in being enslaved, degraded and brutalized by white people for hundreds of years and then turning around and seeking to integrate with and be accepted and approved by the very people who have done you so much harm and wrong.

Jewish concentration camp survivor and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl shed some light on this tendency toward contradictory behavior among oppressed people in his landmark work “Man’s Search for Meaning.” He wrote about how the horrible treatment Jews received in the concentration camps produced anger and hostility as would be expected. But he also said that many Jews responded to the oppression and degradation by attempting to imitate the behaviors of the Nazis, dress like them and seek their approval.

What I am calling “emotional schizophrenia” or “split personality,” Frankl called “compartmentalization” – the ability to hold completely contradictory beliefs in your mind and act according to both beliefs even though they contradict one another. For example, we believe in strong Black businesses and institutions but we tend to undermine that belief with an integration-is-always best ideology. We are angry with the way we have been treated by whites but we fail to properly channel that anger because we constantly seek white approval and acceptance.

The bottom line is a type of stagnation in which we do not move strongly and with full force in any one direction. Those who say we hate ourselves are only partially right. We both love and hate ourselves. We hope for the best from our people but actually expect the worst. Thus, at 11 o’clock in the morning we can do something which shows love and respect for ourselves and our people and then turn around at noon and do something which demonstrates the exact opposite. Both actions flow from our contradictory beliefs about ourselves.

There needs to be a serious re-thinking in Black America. We have got to resolve this love-hate relationship we have with white people but more importantly we have got to resolve the love-hate, respect-disrespect and the I am beautiful-I am ugly relationship we have with ourselves.

Robert N. Taylor is editor of the National Black News Journal at: http://www.freewebs.com/blacknewsjournal/