https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/gjay/www/Whiteness/stranger.htm
A couple weeks ago I bought James Baldwin's Notes Of A Native Son, and I devoured the entire book in a couple nights after getting off work. One of the essays within the book that really stood out to me was, "Stranger In The Village." It recounts the author's experience of being the first black man to visit a certain remote Swiss village during the early 1900s. He traveled to this village seeking tranquility to assist his writing. Throughout this essay he compares his experiences with white people in both America, and this remote Swiss village. What really stood out to me in this essay, was how similar were the experiences of blacks at that time, and what we as apostates are dealing with now. I wanted to share a couple observations with you. I'll just copy and paste certain points from that essay, and add some brief comments of my own. I put a link to the entire essay above for those that wish to read the whole thing.
And this is so despite everything I may do to feel differently, despite my friendly conversations with the bistro owner's wife, despite their three-year-old son who has at last become my friend, despite the saluts and bonsoirs which I exchange with people as I walk, despite the fact that I know that no individual can be taken to task for what history is doing, or has done. I say that the culture of these people controls me-but they can scarcely be held responsible for European culture. America comes out of Europe, but these people have never seen America, nor have most of them seen more of Europe than the hamlet at the foot of their mountain. Yet they move with an authority which I shall never have; and they regard me, quite rightly, not only as a stranger in the village but as a suspect latecomer, bearing no credentials, to everything they have-however unconsciously-inherited.-James Baldwin
In the same fashion that the white villagers viewed JB as a suspected latecomer, bearing no credentials, the WT has created a similar culture within the average JW congregation. Due to the WT's doctrines regarding the "faithful and discreet slave", and "Babylon the Great", its impossible for a JW to look positively upon any other individual Christian, or group of Christians. Even the word "church" is a foul word amongst JWs. The other thing he touched on, was that the villagers recognized their superior position over the writer, despite the fact that they contributed pretty much nothing to the advancements in modern civilization during that time. Essentially, he was more sophisticated and experienced than the villagers, but they still recognized him as being less than themselves. The superiority that they felt over him, which he acknowldged, was unconsciously inherited. Reading that made me think about Lyman Swingle's comment that Ray Franz recounted where he said that the WT got 1914 from the Seventh Adventists, lock, stock, and barrel. The average JW isn't remotely aware of this organization's history of false prophecies and use of pyramidology. Yet JWs will still thumb their nose at "Christendom." JWs see themselves as superior Christians, despite the fact that they unconsciously inherited major doctrines from Babylon the Great. Not to mention, the more I research I'm finding that Babylon the Great has maintained some doctrines that the WT for whatever reason is hesitant to acknowledge as truth.
This was not the case with the American Negro slave. He is unique among the black men of the world in that his past was taken from him, almost literally, at one blow.One wonders what on earth the first slave found to say to the first dark child he bore. I am told that there are Haitians able to trace their ancestry back to African kings, but any American Negro wishing to go back so far will find his journey through time abruptly arrested by the signature on the bill of sale which served as the entrance paper for his ancestor. At the time-to say nothing of the circumstances-of the enslavement of the captive black man who was to become the American Negro, there was not the remotest possibility that he would ever take power from his master's hands. There was no reason to suppose that his situation would ever change, nor was there, shortly, anything to indicate that his situation had ever been different. It was his necessity, in the words of E. Franklin Frazier, to find a "motive for living under American culture or die." The identity of the American Negro comes out of this extreme situation, and the evolution of this identity was a source of the most intolerable anxiety in the minds and the lives of his masters.-James Baldwin
As a born in, I often feel like I have no past. I don't have any roots to connect with, spiritually speaking. Ever since I've begun this spiritual journey, I've struggled at times with moving beyond WT Publications. It was a tremendous step to browse the religious sections at book stores. As a born in JW, the buck stops and begins with the WT. Everything else is false, untruth, lies, misleading information, worldly propaganda, Satan's system of things, etc.. It hasn't been a simple matter to explore doctrines, and other material that contradicts what I was raised for so long to believe as The Truth. In a way this has actually benefited me because as JB quotes E Franklin Frazier, I had to find a motive for why I may continue on as a JW, or leave the faith I was born into. It wasn't enough to go out in service, and attend meetings and simply play along. I wasn't satisified, and quite frankly I felt I was getting the wool pulled over me. It's been a heluva journey so far, and hasn't been easy by any means, but I'm yet to lose any motivation. I need to find what I'm looking for.
For the history of the American Negro is unique also in this: that the question of his humanity, and of his rights therefore as a human being, became a burning one for several generations of Americans, so burning a question that it ultimately became one of those used to divide the nation. It is out of this argument that the venom of the epithet: Nigger! is derived. It is an argument which Europe has never had, and hence Europe: quite sincerely fails to understand how or why the argument arose in the first place, why its effects are frequently disastrous and always so unpredictable, why it refuses until today to be entirely settled. Europe's black possessions remained-and do remain-in Europe's colonies, at which remove they represented no threat whatever to European identity. If they posed any problem at all for the European conscience, it was a problem which remained comfortingly abstract: in effect, the black man, as a man, did not exist for Europe. But in America, even as a slave, he was an inescapable part of the general social fabric and no American could escape having an attitude toward him. Americans attempt until today to make an abstraction of the Negro, but the very nature of these abstractions reveals the tremendous effects the presence of the Negro has had on the American character.-James Baldwin
In the same fashion that the early Americans were disaffected Europeans, I view the WT's early history much in the same way considering Russell wasn't satisfied with what he'd been spoonfed. Rutherford took it to an entirely different level by taking over an organization much of the same way the early Americans did the Natives Americans, and then he created a culture within the organization of an us vs them mentality. That mentality is still present today, and in my personal opinion, nowhere is it more prevelant than what we see on this message board. We really are the niggers of the WT organization. The question of what to do with the Negro in this country was one of the issues, if not thee issue that drove this country to civil war. In a similar vein, the question of what to do with those not doing obesience to the faithful and discreet slave as the WT defines it, has created skirmishes here and there throughout the organization. A Civil War of sorts may have been narrowly averted when one considers "The Franz Incident." If an incident such as that occured today, with the internet, it would pick up some serious steam and I believe would have the potential to rip this organization apart, or at least severely wound it.