On The Road

Daisy Bates and I are taking to the road again in Part II of our Civil Rights Road Trip. We will be on the road for about a week, so I will not be able to blog during that time.

During the trip, we'll be sliding through Virginia to see Appomattox and Monticello. We'll pass the site of Nat Turner's Rebellion and we'll stop off at Moton High School (one of the five schools involved in Brown v. Board of Education) and pay homage to James Farmer at his home.

In North Carolina, we will go to Greensboro where the first sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter took place. Later we'll visit Sedalia, where Wellesley College (!) and civil rights collided long before the establishment of Ethos. There, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, a black scholar, named the school she founded after her mentor Alice Palmer, President of Wellesley College. In Raleigh we'll see Shaw University, where the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was born.

Then its on to South Carolina, for Fort Sumter and the site of the Orangeburg Massacre, also the home of Demark Vesey and the Septima Clark Memorial. Any first trip to South Carolina must also include a visit to the Gullah Islands, home to the vanishing Gullah or Geechee culture.

Finally, we'll see the coast of Georgia, visiting historical sites such as the first black Baptist church in North America, one of the nation's oldest black cemetaries, General Sherman's Georgia headquarters, and a little of the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil allure of Savannah.

Wish us luck, we'll be back in a week!

He's Not Heavy, He's Embarrassing

A good friend of mine who is a psychologist has recently taken to task members of the black elite and middle class for riding the black lower class so hard. She decries Bill Cosby (I know, sacrilege, I’m still mad too) and Juan Williams for focusing so intently on the personal shortcomings of the black urban poor and leaving out any discussion of the persistent and debilitating effects of individual and institutional racism.

My friend’s complaints crystallized a key aspect of any program or philosophy of uplift: it must be done in a spirit of pure altruism, of pure justice. Many of our forebears who did what was called “race work” in the early parts of the last century were as selfless as they were self-interested. Poor, uneducated black people made them look bad and dragged down their social capital in larger society. The activists fed and educated poor blacks in an attempt to raise the standing of the black community in white eyes partially because they knew that the rising tide would raise their boats as well. Black leaders in the early 1900’s thought that if they could prove to white America that blacks were just as moral, clean and educated as they were, white America would then extend the hand of full citizenship. They were far too optimistic.

It is the curse of the minority in a racist society to be judged by the conduct of his brethren, rather than by his own. A racist society will also judge those minority groups by the conduct of their lowest-performing members to prove that such conduct is indicative of the entire group. Even members of the minority group fall prey to such salacious stereotypes. This is why Jesse Jackson found to his horror that he was nervous walking alone in the street with anonymous young black men.

It is understandable that members of minority groups who want to be judged as individuals would want to throw off the burden of negative stereotypes. However, if the method of throwing off negative stereotypes is to force a straitjacket of conformist behavior on all members of a minority group, the spark of individuality, the expression of which is the essence of freedom, is lost.

No one thinks any better of black people as a whole because of the accomplishments of Colin or Condi, Denzel or Halle, King or Barak. Just give it up. Stereotypes are incredibly difficult to overcome and anyone who doesn’t fit the stereotype will simply be seen as “exceptional.” Although they are the majority in practically every conceivable classification (good and bad), whites are still seen as individuals. Even after the spate of corporate wrongdoing in the era of World Com and Enron, there was no surge of outrage suggesting that white men are far too immoral and sneaky to be CEOs. Some pundits would have you believe that we are saddled with the worst President since Nixon, yet no one has even intimated that it’s time for the white man’s grip on the Presidency to loosen. Members of the majority are judged as individuals, the rest of us exist in predictable groupings encumbered by stereotypes that undermine the individual expression of the actor and stifle the imagination of the observer.

“But YG&B,” you protest, “your argument makes sense but it proves too much. Am I really extinguishing the ‘spark of individuality’ when I simply want young people to stay in school and out of jail?” My response is of course not – as long as those desires are born of altruism, love of justice and a desire to create a better future. Loving correction that springs from an altruistic fount can still demand that low-performing individuals take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. However, if you want to change their behavior because their conduct embarrasses you as a black person since you know the whites will measure you with the N-yard stick, then I say you are fighting the wrong enemy.

Thanks for your thoughts, AEM.

More Good News: Cause for Hope II

Below is a continuation from the original post, Cause for Hope, that lists a few more instances of apologies, reconciliations and efforts to heal past wrongs from PRRAC's compliation. Have a great day.

“Norway will compensate the country’s 8,000-12,000 ‘war children’ – born to Norwegian women and German soldiers during the World War II German occupation – for the systematic harassment and bullying they were subjected to after the war. Each will receive $3,000 - $30,000; but the amounts fall short of claims of up to $72,000 sought by the Association of War Children. (NY Times, 7/3/04)”

“Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn and a representative of the Illinois State Legislature came to Salt Lake City to present to Utah Governor Olene Walker and Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a copy of Illinois’ house Resolution 793, expressing ‘official regret’ for the violence and state-sanctioned condemnation that caused the Mormons to leave the state in 1846 on the trek that led them to Utah. (NY Times, 4/8/04)”

“The Dutch national railway company apologized for its role in deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Poland during World War II. The company collaborated with Nazi occupiers in transporting 107,000 Jews, 70% of the country’s Jewish community. (NY Times, 9/30/05)”

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

Juan Williams recently published an essay in the Washington Post that previewed his new book, Enough. The essay, “Banish the Bling,” decries a popular strain of black youth culture that focuses on immediate gratification and the conspicuous display of wealth to the exclusion of traditional achievement through education and hard work. Williams takes modern black leadership to task for not having marches or programs designed to support lower-income parents to enable them to spend more time parenting and for abandoning other issues such as educational achievement, that hold promise for improving the plight of poor black people.

Most of Williams’ focus is on black youth perpetuating a culture of failure. It is no surprise that contemporary youth culture is rebellious. Youth culture at any given point in history is often counter-cultural. The hippies and peace activists in the Sixties were counter-cultural, as were the young people involved in the Civil Rights Movement. The flappers and their ilk in the Roaring Twenties were oversexed Gatsby-ites. Youth is a widely accepted time for rebellion and experimentation. The hippies grew up, got greedy in the Eighties and are now part of the Baby Boomers running the country. Gatsby's cohorts were tempered by the Depression and went off to fight in World War II becoming Tom Brokaw's “Greatest Generation.” The characteristics that make this contemporary turn of counter-cultural youth expression more dangerous than those in the past are threefold:

1. Nobody Grows Up Anymore. Children are living at home longer than they used to (no comments please, my gentle parents) and those who have left home put off the usual trappings of adulthood longer-buying homes, getting married, having children. Because more people are living collegiate-style lives longer than ever before, we are driven by, and act within, youth culture well into our thirties.
2. The Pathologies of Youth Culture Have Broader Reach. Not only do more adults want to look young by dressing like teenagers, more adults are also adopting perspectives that created excitement as teenagers, but are deleterious for grown-ups. Men and women in their thirties and forties adopt the thug life and are busy negotiating relationships with baby daddies, baby mamas, and wifeys – mimicking hip hop songs.
3. The Pathologies of Youth Culture Have Deeper Reach. The counter-cultural activities of the youth culture have consequences that reach deep into adult lives. Rejecting school, joining a gang, selling drugs, sexual promiscuity and incarceration all lay a groundwork for failure in the future that is not easily overcome.

The youth culture has morphed into the prevailing culture of many low-income people and it is trumpeted as the only cool lifestyle for blacks by the entertainment industry. The traits of this culture are especially nefarious because the people who will benefit the most from being in school, avoiding criminal behavior and steering clear of activities that can lead to unwanted pregnancy and disease are poor people. The upper and middle classes have something of a buffer to keep them from suffering the full brunt of the negative consequences of youthful indiscretions (please see George W. Bush). The poor have much less room for error. Williams strenuously points out in his essay that images of people hypnotized by shiny jewelry, treating women like sexual playthings, relentlessly dealing drugs and happily, if pugnaciously, marching off to jail is not black culture. Of course it isn't. No people could survive long with such destructive values (here I’d like to insert a rousing rendition of the chorus of “Self-Destruction” and quote Kool Moe Dee, “I never ever ran from the Ku Klux Klan and I shouldn’t have to run from a black man, ‘cause that’s self-destruction…”).

What is the answer? Well, first we will all have to grow up. As adults, we would serve our people well by being good, and realistic, role models. In the real world, financial success does not come quickly or easily unless you are an “heir.” As one of my friends says, “You gotta grind, son.” Everyone has to grind. Bill Gates, Sean Combs, Andrew Chenault and Condoleeza Rice all had to, and continue to, grind. Successful drug dealers, thieves and gangsters also must grind. Since success requires grinding anyway, why not spend that energy building a life, an empire, a foundation for future generations that is grounded in a pursuit that will keep you out of jail? A pursuit that will keep your hard-earned assets from being frozen and auctioned off, the fruits of your labor scattered to the wind?

Williams blames civil rights organizations for failing in leadership. He is right. However, organizations and leaders have to be able to convince people to follow them. Individuals have to decide to reject the “street cred” of incarceration and bullet wounds. Women have to decide when they have had enough of their denigrating treatment. I would love to blame the NAACP and walk away, but we too, must accept our portion of the guilt. In the end, we each have to decide whether or not we will drink the pimp juice.