Thank you for taking the time to read my post and leave such a thoughtful comment @erikaharris .. I'm humbled by your words of kindness.

In light of that astute observation, what do you make of the word-patterns around 'black'?

Great question, I don't feel the negative connotations around the word black arise directly from the El ites .. but I do feel this fear has been exasperated and manipulated. From my perspective, I feel this negativity arises from superstition and an inbuilt fear of darkness. Indeed, from the relative comfort of our homes it's easy to laugh at those that are afraid of the dark .. but perhaps before we were top of the food chain we can see why it was relevant, certainly even today it would take a brave man to wander across the African bush at night.

So yes although I feel as though the negativity originates from a valid primal fear of darkness, of nothing, the void. I also believe that both primal fear and tribal instincts have been hijacked and utilised as tools of fear and division, which lead to hate .. providing the foundation from which to mold a negative perception (an increasing array of negative names you mentioned etc) and ferment division. As I wrote in a previous post:

Whilst I’m discussing the manipulation of our tribal heritage I will take a brief aside to point out that racism is manipulated play on tribalism and as such in many ways it’s also manufactured. It’s perfectly understandable that within the tribe outsiders would have been viewed with mistrust, indeed this is a hardwired survival mechanism. But where I believe our true path of evolution would have gradually built towards one tribe, the social engineers have again used this hardwiring to ferment racism as a tool of perpetual division and control.

What we basically have is an inversion of duality .. two opposing spectrums that create a beautifully cohesive whole being relegated to a tool of division and competition. Like I mentioned in the post, men & women becomes men vs women, black & white becomes black vs white, day & night/ light vs dark .. forgetting that in order to survive, the ecology of the biosphere requires both the blanket of darkness and the warmth of day.

How do you think this linguistic shaping of mental syntax impacts The People who are referenced by the same negatively connoted word??

If we're discussing race, social class etc etc .. I think it makes them feel subconsciously unworthy and so they accept the unacceptable as normality, conditioning them to limit their expectations of life, that their opinion doesn't matter (us & them). Again I feel as though this pulls us (the oppressed and oppressor) back into the tribal mindset .. an us & them mentality. Once people attach a label (or have a label attached) to themselves they begin to view the world through the eyes of the label, thus creating further division and equally failing to obtain an objective view of reality and events around them. In a world of a million shades of grey we're being increasingly pushed towards simplistic and polarised black and white answers, you can watch this occuring in real time throughout social media. Once this mentality becomes set in place it then becomes easier to dehumanise those that look different, live differently or have opposing views. Equally from the perspective of the oppressed their survival instincts often kick in (fight or flight) and this creates a snowball effect of division. We can see it within the ghettos in the States .. in fact, I wrote an entire post about how gang culture was an externally created construct and that after a while people began to become who they are consistently told they are, domestic abuse is another example .. this perceptual manipulation is incredibly powerful.

In terms of word manipulation (or inversion) I think "power" is a good example. When most people think of the word power they have been programmed to think of war, explosions, fighting, violence .. this is both an inversion and an externally created construct; in reality violence is a sign of weakness, an outward expression of an inner self-loathing .. the need to retain control because in reality you're weak and scared. Love is power, compassion is power, kindness is power, .. you are power, and we are powerful .. but they sell us an externally created an illusion of power. Imagine how different the world would be if we each had that truth burned into our subconscious?