Get it? You are the Punchline. SNL = White Folks and Black Jokes. In contrast to the white media's reaction to Chris Rock's instagram revelations that he [like all Black and Latino men] has been pulled over too many times by cops for trivial bullshit, (specifically he said 3 times in the past 7 weeks) white folks and their media praised Taraji Henderson after she kissed the white cop's ass who pulled her son over. Cops everywhere use local traffic laws arbitrarily to target Black and Brown men who drive on a regular basis- like her son [see Walter Scott]. His 4th Amendment rights were ignored by idiotic white cops who searched his person, backpack, car and trunk looking for one pill of Ritalin during 40 minute "routine traffic stop." [have you seen the entire video? was the pedestrian in the middle of the street? only white "journalists" see it]. But SNigger Taraji thanked them because they were "kind" to him in the process [MORE]. Perhaps another reward from this scripted response was an opportunity to host the racist show, SNL this week. Like all their shows, last night's SNL was more racist nonsense for your mental consumption or as Amos Wilson explained, "psychic violence." Stop supporting white supremacy. 

Like white cop said, Pedestrian on the far right "was in the Middle of the Street," - "almost hit" by Henderson's son [MORE]

More from Mr. Wilson below; 

"The long history of White American domination of Black Ameri­cans — which has been enforced and reinforced by the use of physical force and violence, psychic violence and coercive power — has in effect convinced the majority of Blacks that Whites are invincible. Moreover, this history has undermined the self-confidence of most Blacks, narrowed their vision of their possibilities and power, restricted their aspirations to the narrow confines of racial accommodation and assimilation, to being the paternalistic recipients of White sympathy rather than expanding their aspirations to include the overcoming of White power and achieving full, unfettered self-liberation. The unending maintenance of this self-defeating state of mind in Blacks is the fundamental objective of White power and the keystone upon which the infrastructural facade of White power rests.

We are not arguing here that White power is purely delusional or does not contain truly lethal actualities. However, we are arguing that if Black Americans and Afrikans the world-over do not permit themselves to be "psyched out" by White racist propaganda; if they both recognize and actualize their potential to neutralize White power in either its imagined or actual forms, they can by these means neutralize it. [MORE]

The Productivity of Coercion — We can recall from our prior discus­sion that the use of force is essentially socially negative, expensive and prone to provoke overt resistance to its application by those subjected to it. We also intimated that force is essentially restrictive and preventative in character, more effective in obstructing people's behavior than in causing them to behave in certain productive ways (from the power holder's point of view). Coercion, in contrast to the use of raw force, permits the power holder to benefit rnore readily from the subordinate subject's actions and reactions. According to Wartenberg, "Unlike force, coercive power actually functions by getting an agent to do something. The logic of the threat is precisely its positing an action that an agent is able to forestall by acting in an appropriate manner." For Wartenberg, coercive power is productive in that (1) it produces action on the part of the subordinate subject, and (2) because the actions of the subordinate subject elicited by coercive threat may actually produce something of value or of benefit to the coercive power holder. The scope of coercive power, particularly in its political and institutional forms, is, as argues Wrong, "at least in the short run . . . undoubtedly the most effective form of power in extensiveness. comprehensiveness and intensity."

However, despite its efficiency and productivity relative to force, the exercise of coercive power like the exercise of force may be expensive, socially and politically costly, and provokes resistance from those subjected to its application. Because the subjects of coercive power are aware of its application against them and realize that freedom to act has been threatened or restricted, they resent such an imposition and may attempt to break or thwart the power holder's coercive power over them. The use of coercive power as its chief means of control often means that the dominant group must maintain constant surveillance and must constantly keep itself fully informed as to the thoughts, attitudes and activities of its subjects. Consequently, to the costs of acquiring and maintaining the means of production (if they are an owning class) the cost of procuring, maintaining and deploying the means of force and violence must be added the costs of information-gathering and espionage operations (Wrong). The relative inefficiency, counter-productivity and costliness of exercising force and coercive power as the primary means for dominating other groups serve to motivate powerholding groups to develop other more effective but less obvious or intrusive ways of exercising coercive force and power so as to reduce, if not eliminate altogether, the reactive resentment and resistance of their subordi­nate subjects. This end is accomplished when power holders discover and utilize ways and means of obscuring or hiding the use of coercion by inducing misperceptions and misunderstandings among their subjects about whether they are actually being coerced (Wartenberg) or are being subjected to a "power play." The other forms of power we shall discuss below have in good part been developed and are utilized to obscure the actual nature of the coercive power relationship between power holders and their subjects. However, we should note at this juncture that the ability of power holders to obscure their coercive and exploitative actions from their subjects will be critically successful to the degree that their subjects have not developed and utilized their own analytical/critical, perceptive, and creative capacities to see through and subvert the hidden coercive machina­tions and intentions of their oppressors.

Influence as Power

Influence occurs when a person acts in compliance with the wishes or directions or suggestions of another, based on his sheer positive regard for love and admiration of the other, or based on a desire to please or serve the other because of the other's personal significance to him. Influence is achieved when the subject's behavioral compliance is attained without the influential party having to possess or use force, coercion, material rewards or making appeals to authority. This is especially the case when the subject complies with the wishes, suggestions, or commands of the other while engaging in no relevant, independent or deliberate thinking, reasoning, or rational processes whatsoever; or when the subject complies out of a "conditioned habit of obedience" in regard to the other. [in photo, racist suspect, Lorne Michaels, the producer of SNL.] 

Wartenberg mentions two important types of influence with which we are familiar: rational persuasion and personal persuasion. (He also mentions a third, expertise, which we discuss as "competent author­ity," presently.) In the first instance the subject retains the use of his critical or rational faculties but is led to reassess his understanding or perception of a situation or of reality, or to accept as reasonable or correct the conclusions reached and recommendations suggested by the other as the result of the other's apparently logical argumentation or reasoning. In the second instance the subject's behavioral compli­ance, the argumentation or demands of the other occur essentially because he wishes to satisfy the desires of the other as he perceives them to exist. As Wartenberg posits, "The central feature of influence via personal persuasion is that the influenced agent does not make her choices on the basis of reasons that she can present in the form of rational argument, but rather on the basis of the desires of the influencing agent." Another form of persuasion might be referred to as propagandists persuasion, wherein through various media and forms of indoctrination techniques the subject is influenced to accept certain opinions or beliefs which lead him to think that he is acting in his own interests when this really is not the case.

Influence as power involves the power holder's ability to gain his subordinate subject's "voluntary" acceptance of and behavioral compliance with the power holder's interpretations of reality, value judgements, prescriptive suggestions and commands, based on the power holder's perceived status, resources, personal/social attributes, competence, expertise, or legitimate authority. When power holders as a group possess a monopoly of the positions of influence due to historical and other social factors, they may use their influence as a means to secure and obscure their possession of other types of power, and at times render unnecessary the naked use offeree and coercion.

Influence requires that the subject subordinates his judgement to that of the other, that he is guided by the judgement of the other. As such, influence is a more secure and "hidden" form of power in that the influenced subject complies with the demands of the power holder either without questioning the role or motives of the power holder or after being persuaded by the power holder's apparently logical argumentation. Consequently, influence as a type of power, as a type of rational, personal, propagandistic persuasion, may serve to render the possession and exercise of other types of power unnecessary and more secure, or to obscure them altogether. Thus, influence may itself function as an exceedingly potent or subtle form of power.

To a very significant extent White domination of Blacks, which initially and until relatively recently was expressed in terms of physical force coercion, the threatened use of force along with its occasional use, now expresses itself as influence. By means of the various forms of influence we have discussed, Whites dominate Blacks without appearing to deliberately do so and without having to revert to the sheer use of force and coercion. Consequently, they convince or persuade many Blacks to behave in ways compatible with maintaining White power, and incompatible with generating Black Power, while Blacks self-deceptiveiy think that such behavior on their part is purely "voluntary," reasonable, or obligatory. This situation devolves from Blacks having accepted Eurocentric frames of reference and perceptions of reality. Only by choosing to accept and live by an Afrocentric frame of reference will Blacks escape the dispowering White influence and, correspondingly, enhance their own power.  [MORE]