♪ opening music ♪ ♪ Good evening and welcome to "For The People."

This evening on "For the People," part two of our interview with Emory University professor, Doctor Sandra O'Neale, and a hypnotist talks about mind control.

In part one of our interview with Dr.

O'Neale, she talked about Zora Neale Hurston's attitude about integration.

So we put this question to her.

We've talked briefly about Zora Neale Hurston's attitude about integration, but what about Dr.

O'Neale's attitude about the impact of integration or desegregation, however you look at it, on Black people?

Now, I thought you said the question before was a difficult one.

[laughs] Well, we have, of course, gained a few material things.

As I've heard Harry Belafonte say, that White America never understood that what we wanted was not the right to live next door to him, or really the right to go to school with his children, or the right to marry his daughter.

What we wanted was economic opportunity.

And during the movement, when we decided to go for the vote rather than for the dollar, and John Lewis, city councilman now in Atlanta, who was a prominent civil rights leader with Martin, now admits that, that may have been our mistake.

We have gained, however, somewhat economically and for all intents and purposes, we are somehow diffused into the mainstream of society, but as I said in the presentation tonight of Zora, we're alive today, I believe many people would tell her that she was right in being against integration, because we have lost so much, from my own perspective and other research that I'm doing on a book that I'm finishing now.

The thing that we have to watch for the rest of this century is this sense of identity.

But our children don't have role models.

Our children are being influenced by a television, a communicative, a financial, economic, political system, which, in effect, tells them, in effect, tells them that they do not exist.

Listervelt Middleton> Some people would say, that the only... Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> You didn't let me fini me a loaded question, [laughs] and you didn't let me finish, but okay.

Listervelt Middleton> You go ahead.

Finish it.

Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> No you go ahead.

It's right.

Listervelt Middleton> Some people would say that the only identity Black children need is that American label.

Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> Well that's not the only identity that the Jewish American has.

That's not the only identity that the Italian American has.

That's not the only identity that any American has who looks to Europe for their existence, who celebrates Queen and Prince Philip coming to this country.

They have an identity of what their roots are, and they need that because this country is too new and too amalgamated for them to have a sense of history and a sense of roots.

Okay.

Now, why is it that we are told that it's enough for us to be an American?

Frankly, the country has never defined what that means?

You see, is it a race?

Is it a nationality?

What is it?

Okay.

For our own survival, we must know that we are African.

Listervelt Middleton> Why is that important?

Why that identity important?

Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> For the survival of Bl in this country, they must decide two things.

Who is their father?

Okay.

And who is their god?

It is important for a people to know what their racial background is, what their cultural background is.

That's all that we have.

You know, a job at I.B.M.

in middle management and a Maserati, and the big screen television, you know, and the bed that slides out of the wall and the silver, for dinner and the diamonds and the gold, that won't replace a sense of self.

And you know what we had before the 60s, no matter how wretched it was, was that marvelous sense of self and that marvelous sense of family, that sense of community that Whites never understood.

That was the strength of our very survival.

And now it's being sapped and eroded away.

And, as I say, really only largely preserved through the literature.

Listervelt Middleton> Could you finish the I'll ask the last question?

[laughs] Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> Yes.

So safe to do all of this when one is in Columbia, South Carolina.

[laughs] Listervelt Middleton> No, that gets to my As I feel you, you don't just do this in Columbia, South [silence] As a teacher, what is your mission?

I can see it's not just imparting, you know, this listing information on the board.

[silence] Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> I'd have to give you many answers.

First of all, my mission is to prove to.

Several White institutions that I exist.

That I am a Black intellectual, a capable one.

As both a Black and a female; that they do not define the world.

That they do not decide that, everything begins and ends with Shakespeare or with their perspective of culture.

Secondly, I teach because, of the Black child, the Black student who is in the White university world and who without me there, doesn't have, a sense of community if Black teachers are not in that White world.

Black teachers who care, who will spend time with them.

I teach because I do not want the Black student getting a totally anglicized view of American history and American truth, because there's another side that's seldom told, and I want them to know that if they want to hear that other side, I'm there.

I teach because I want to write, and because, one can't necessarily earn a living in this country as a writer.

And I teach because I love it, because I discovered myself in what I'm doing.

I discovered my own identity.

It doesn't pay very much.

So one has to do side gigs in Columbia, South Carolina.

But... Listervelt Middleton> This is not a side gig.

Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> This is not a side gig?

Listervelt Middleton> This is a main gig o Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> Alright.

[laughs] I will go back down and tell Emory University that they are a side gig.

But, because I know I'm part of a tradition, I remember being at Dunbar High School, Shaw Junior High School in Washington, D.C.

Howard University, And a Black teacher was the only contribution that Black women were freely allowed to make in the society, both in the Black community, and this was this was the position that Whites even expected of her.

We were to mother the children.

We were to produce a super race, you know, with half a textbook left over from last year's throw out from the White school.

We were to tell the Black child, you must be better because you're Black.

I teach because I want to be part of that tradition.

Because I know, I know that the greatest, this country has not seen a rumble yet, until the Black children of this generation discover that all of that materialism still means that they are denied totally equal access in this society.

Those kids are going to rumble, and I want them to have a responsible background of knowledge from which to make choices and decisions t I.B.M.

computer, and I'm sorry to pick on I.B.M.

so much tonight.

Let's say, you know, Apple Computer, you know, that sense of culture, that emptiness cann if I were not there.

Listervelt Middleton> I promise you, this [laughs] Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> May I take a sip?

Listervelt Middleton> See, you keep bringing up pearls.

[laughs] How safe would you say is a Black mind, student I'm talking about, in a predominantly White college or university today?

Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> Safe from the point of view of the dominant society?

Safe from the point of view of the Black nation?

Or safe from the point of view of the student?

I'll answer all three.

If Black teachers are not in that institution who are committed to it, and even that really is not enough, I think, I know that the Black student on college campus today, his mind, his identity, his selfhood is in danger of effacement more than ever before in our history, beca we used to be able to get our bit in, our sense of blood identity in through those institutions that I have mentioned, but no more.

And by the time they come through, a system which tells them that Whiteness succeeds in this world and Blackness is a failure, so that the best thing for him to do is to become diffused in White society and lose his sense of self.

By the time he finishes that, his mind is lost to himself.

Now he is a perfect tool for the White society.

They will use him to keep the uneducated Black in place.

They will use him as a token of what they have achieved since the days of integration.

For the Black nation, that child is a loss because of the blood that has been shed for 400 years to produce this day.

Listervelt Middleton> Now you say Black nation.

Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> Wait a minute.

Now we were the last question and I haven't even gotten the third part.

[laughs] Go ahead, sir.

You the interviewer.

This is your column.

Listervelt Middleton> That's interesting because I have a grand aunt whose name is Titter.

I don't think she'll mind that.

Now, I was talking with her a couple of months ago, and she used the term Black nation, and I don't think she got it from Stokely Carmichael or anybody.

What do you mean?

What's inside that term for you?

That word?

Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> When I was in graduate school, we, my husband was in school also, and we bought a house in a little town in Kentucky, first house we'd own for a year, a few years, because we had returned to college as adults and really sacrificed to go back to school, and down the street.

I had a neighbor named Owsley, Omer Owsley.

Omer probably didn't go above the eighth grade.

You know, he was a working man struggling to take care of he and his family and we became good friends.

We had sons and daughters the same age.

And I heard Omer on one of his Saturday nights when he'd had 1 or 2 beers, too many, was talking to Leonard out back, and they were laughing and joking, and he said, yeah, man, we've been through this, and we've been through that, and we still ain't got no nation.

And Omer was born in America.

Omer's parents, grandparents, great grandparents were born in America.

But Omer, with his little education and going to work for the city every day, Omer, as far as he was concerned, didn't have a nationality, did not have a home, was not an American.

[silence] We have always been a people who were a nation within a nation.

Not always, and in fact, never by our own choice, but because we were excluded, you see, from the dominant society, never given a place in it.

The Black nation, the term means that to me.

It also means that we are a part of a diaspora of African people who are spread around the world, around the globe, who are just now beginning to realize our oneness, our part of Africa.

Moreover than that, though, as far as I'm concerned, Black people are the only true Americans.

We were the ones who made this country be what those papers say that you supposed to be.

We were the ones who enforced the Constitution, The Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Before that, it was a grand experiment.

It was it was so much talk, you see.

We were the ones who said, "Wait a minute, we're here."

As Langston Hughes said, "I am the mistake that happened at Jamestown long ago."

No one else had to give as much as we have given for this nation and has received back so little.

But I think America is the symbol of freedom that she gives today, because Black people made and are continuing to make her live up to some of the promises that she has made to the world.

Listervelt Middleton> You got any empty spots in your class?

[laughs] Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> There's always room for you, Professor Middleton.

Listervelt Middleton> Thanks a lot, I appreciate it.

Dr.

Sandra O'Neale> Thank you.

Listervelt Middleton> Most of us think of hypnosis as the mental state which occurs when a hypnotist swings a pendulum before a person's eyes, but that is not the only way we can become hypnotized, as we learn from Doctor Thomas Wilson of South Carolina State College.

You are a certified hypnotist.

What does that mean?

What it really means is that you have been trained under someone who has been certified to train individual, professional individuals, to carry out that particular skill.

It entails something like 21 to, 21 and above hours of clinical training.

At the end of that training, usually there's what we call an educational comprehensive exam where you have to demonstrate those skills that you have been, hopefully, you've been taught.

Some of them may include age regression, post hypnotic suggestion, caring a person to the different levels of hypnosis and that sort of thing.

Listervelt Middleton> What is hypnosis?

Dr.

Thomas Wilson> Hypnosis is really in an altered state where the indiv Rather, I should say, is allow himself or herself to be taken away from their present environment with the assistance of a therapist, to the extent that the therapist is now able to create images for that individual rather than that individual creating images for him or herself.

Listervelt Middleton> Can an entire people Dr.

Thomas Wilson> Yes.

If a person perceives someone else as having the power or the wisdom to make decisions for them, that's better than the decision they make for themselves, at that point, that person is hypnotized.

Because what happens is, you tend to follow that individual in what we call a blind manner.

You don't question, you just respond.

So yes, nations of people have been hypnotized.

Prime example of that when Hitler, during the Hitler movement.

Masses of people were hypnotized through Hitler's way of, his charismatic, if you want to call it that, because how you look at the man was charismatic.

He was able to get children to tell on their parents.

He was able to get a person who, who believed in, some forms of religion to give all it up, for what he had given them, and they in return, believed to be better.

So, whenever you allow yourself to allow someone else to think for you, then you've lost, or rather you've given away those control, those mechanism you have that make decisions for you.

At that point, the other person is in control.

And so you don't think, you just react.

And that is hypnosis.

Listervelt Middleton> You mentioned the German situation with Hitler.

Following that, line, how would you describe.

The mental state of Black people in this country?

Dr.

Thomas Wilson> Very much controlled.

Very much controlled.

It starts almost at conception.

Let me give you an example of this, and I've thought about this and thought about it, and I said, "My God!"

I took my little boy to a pediatrician who happens to be White.

My son is 18 months old.

One of them.

The physician had to do something that were somewhat painful.

When we left the doctor's office, we went to a tire company because I needed some tires.

It was a Black fellow who was changing my tires.

My 18 month-old child had no problems.

But when a White postman walked up, it frightened him.

It frightened him.

He had not lost that image of a person of a particular cosmetic makeup inflicting pain on him.

And the question I asked myself, how long would this last?

And how often is that reinforced in our system to the extent that we really never grew out of it?

Going to the bank to make a loan.

Again, you put in that position where you're looking up to a person of the same cosmetic makeup.

At some point, this behavior modification comes into play where, you conditioned to react a certain way to a certain person of a cosmetic makeup, regardless to his level of education, finance, training, whatever the case may be.

There is a conditioned response to the individual in this nation we call the White man, the White woman, and it starts very early.

Listervelt Middleton> What role do you think the media plays in, the, quote, "hypnotizing" of Black people in this country?

Dr.

Thomas Wilson> Well, what happens is that those roles that they have conditioned us to believe is reinforced through the media because, they project that in front of you constantly, your White doctors, your White lawyers, your White educators, your White coach on, one of the programs, they had a White coach.

I don't recall the name of some of these programs, but I try not to remember some of this stuff, not too much, anyway.

Where are the two Black kids who, Listervelt Middleton> "Diff'rent Strokes," Dr.

Thomas Wilson> "Diff'rent Strokes," where the two Black kids had absolutely nothing, and they were put into a White environment where they had everything.

Here's a Black kids sitting now look and saying, "My God!

I wish I could be adopted," or "I wish something happened to me where I could end up in a family where there's lots of money and almost anything I want."

Whereas, on the other end, the other spectrum where you have Blacks being reared in a Black family, with J.J.

"Good Times."

They're stuck in a cycle that they seem not to be able to get out of.

There tend not to be any success in terms of, the movement of the family in any kind of an economic way or educationally.

There's a desire for all of these things, but the movement never happens.

There's a desire for education on the little boy's part.

There's a desire to move into art on J.J.

part.

There's a desire to move up, but day after day they're in the same position with the desire to move up and never moving.

So what that tells that Black kid who's watching it is that you won't move.

The desire may always be there, but tomorrow you going to wake up and still be in that apartment, and there is no success.

Listervelt Middleton> We always talk about, how children are easily influenced, but what about adults?

You mentioned the television thing.

Are adults, Black adults not being just as influenced?

Well, it goes back to that notion.

If you train a child the way you want them to go, when you get old, you turn them loose.

You don't have to worry.

He's going to do exactly what he's been taught to do.

So adults are just children of higher age conditioned, no less, No more.

Listervelt Middleton> I'm not going to ask you to hypnotize anybody here.

I think we've seen that enough.

And this is a very serious kind of thing, but, what are some of the, What's the word?

What are some of the, How does one get hypnotized?

Maybe that's the word.

Dr.

Thomas Wilson> Well, first, there's a need.

The person only go to a counselor or a hypnotist when they feel themselves in need of something.

Okay.

So they go in willing, to allow whatever this person, say need to be done to happen.

You go in and you say, I have a need for some assistance to get over either a physiological or a psychological pain.

And your perception is that this person can do it.

And of course, if you want their help, then you have to allow that person to do it to you.

And as a consequence, it is done.

You follow what I'm saying?

You go in with the need and with the notion that this person can somehow fulfill that need.

So you allow yourself to be hypnotized with the belief that once it is over, you're going to be better off.

And that's why I usually happen.

That's why it usually works, because you want it to work in order to get rid of something that has been bothering you, that caused you to go in for the assistanc Listervelt Middleton> In your studies and research, have you seen any relationship between hypnosis and religion?

[laughs] Dr.

Thomas Wilson> It's been said that a good minister is is an excellent hypnotist.

Yes.

[silence] Most ministers tend to hypnotize the congregation.

That is, most persons go to church to quote, carry their sins and our burdens.

And then somehow, once they leave, they're going to be better off, okay?

They're going to feel better about themselves, hey've been forgiven for their sins and etc.. And a minister is the individual who carries the message somehow to their God to make sure that this is going to happen.

So the people go in wanting, to be mesmerized, if you will, to be hypnotized to be, to be told somehow that things will be better.

And because they believe it when they walk out, psychologically things are better.

Their perception is things are better.

That does not necessarily mean that anything is really changed.

Listervelt Middleton> How do you feel about that?

Dr.

Thomas Wilson> I think in some ways church has been good for us and it's been bad.

Of course most things are like that.

I always wondered, why is it, it was illegal for us to read as a group of people at one point, but yet when they found out that we were going to read anyway, the first book you gave it was the Bible.

I wonder about someone who oppressed me, giving me something that's supposed to som I've always question it.

I think Blacks tend to rely too much on something mystically happen to them that's going to create a better, a better person, a better world.

We tend to go in saying that God is the answer to all things.

He may be, but He also said that, you have to do for yourself first.

We tend to forget that.

We tend to believe that if we go up and to the altar and leave our burden that somehow He is going to take care of it.

We leave it there and this is what we are told in most churches.

Leave it here.

When in fact, He said, no, don't leave it here.

Go out, do something about it.

You take the first step, see, and then I will assist you in those steps, afterwards.

But we tend to go in and so the first step is just bringing it here and leaving it.

Now you take all the other steps and make sure that everything is better.

The other thing about church, you see in the greater system, other ethnic groups use the church for more than just quote "religion."

They use it as a social forum, also, We tend to use it as a social forum, but not in a way that other ethnic groups tend to do so.

We tend to go there for spiritual divineness, this sort of thing.

Other ethnic groups go there to set up tax free experiences.

Going on trips to Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head, through the church.

Well, of course, the trip is now tax deductible.

Building schools on to the church, donating money to the church to build a school and turn around and say only certain ethnic groups can attend that particular church related school.

Buying busses.

You see, that money goes into the church, which is tax deductible.

But, you were riding the bus and you're taking these tax deductible trip.

They tend to use it that way.

We tend not to.

We tend to build too many churches.

You see, when you go into most cities, you see a large churches that have been built by Whites.

You tend to see a lot of little cinder blocks churches that are built by Blacks.

It's too splinter.

The message from the ministers is too diverse.

You get too many, too many people telling you too many different things.

♪ closing music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪