Black in a New Light
The Wall Street Journal joins the growing debate on what is “African-American”
Interestingly, in a poll by the Pew Research Center 1007 African-Americans if blacks should be thought of as a single race…37% of respondents said no. I tend to agree with that and I expect for that number to grow
Barack Obama’s rise is driving a sometimes uncomfortable debate in the black community: What does it mean to be black in America?
Sen. Obama embodies contradictions in the community that are starting to bubble to the surface — largely out of the earshot of whites. He is the biracial son of an African father and a white mother in a community where most people are descended from slavery or whose ancestors had direct experience with segregation. He is the married father of two in a community in which more than 60% of children grow up in a single-parent household. He’s a politician who isn’t steeped in the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s and didn’t grow up in the inner city or in a black neighborhood.
This history reinforces the notion that there is no single “black experience.” The black community encompasses many immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa. Within that diversity is an achievement gap, with first- or second-generation immigrants making up a disproportionate share of black students at elite colleges.
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Sen. Obama declined to be interviewed for this article. “The African-American community is not a homogenous community,” says a close friend and adviser of his, Valerie Jarrett. “It is healthy for these discussions to go on. It is also healthy that the rest of America is interested in those conversations. If we stay within our communities, our challenges won’t be overcome.” She notes that Sen. Obama himself “had to work through his internal conflicts.”
In his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” Sen. Obama wrote that in college, “I didn’t have the luxury, I suppose, the certainty of the tribe…. I hadn’t grown up in Compton or Watts. I had nothing to escape from except my own inner doubts.”
I understand what he is trying to get at, but there is so much more to the black American experience than growing up in Compton or Watts. There is also an authentic black experience in Mississippi and Alabama as well.
Meeting others who were biracial unnerved him. “In their mannerisms, their speech, their mixed up hearts, I kept recognizing pieces of myself,” he wrote. “And that’s exactly what scared me. Their confusion made me question my own racial credentials all over again.”
When blacks first started attending Columbia University in large numbers in the late 1960s, Sen. Obama’s alma mater, like most colleges, aimed to recruit students who were descendants of slaves or whose parents or grandparents had grown up under segregation. Now 40% of black students at Ivy League colleges are first- or second-generation immigrants, meaning they have at least one parent born abroad, according to a study by researchers at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
This is a combination of a difference in cultural values that strongly emphasize education (something missing in much of the black American culture nowadays) and the fact that the Africans that elect to come here are from amongst the best and brightest.
Immigrant blacks fare better for many of the same reasons as other immigrants: They’re often a self-selected, highly motivated group. (Sen. Obama’s father was an economist who came to the U.S. to attend graduate school.) The growing prominence of black immigrants is prompting some to favor the term “black” as more accurate, and inclusive, than “African-American.”
I have always thought of “black” as the general term to describe anyone that is “black” such as a Kenyan, Nigerian, Senegalese, Ethiopian, or Haitian. Any American from those groups can be called a “Kenyan-American”, a “Nigerian-American” and so on. The term “African-American” is now just too broad and is basically meaningless. There needs to be a new term to describe the decedents of slaves.
But the growing diversity of blacks in America, epitomized by Sen. Obama, also breeds tension.
“I have definitely heard parents and friends who are Rwandan tell me, ‘You don’t want to associate with African-Americans. They are lazy. They have bad habits,‘
Filed under: Changing World
I’m glad that this debate is about changing attitudes and introspection among black people. I think I may have mentioned in one of my previous comments that if I had a dollar to either change the attitude of America to black men or the attitude of black men to America, I would bet on the latter.
My attitude is that I don’t care who put you down, it’s your responsibility to get up, whatever it takes! We can’t keep waiting for government, business or individual leaders to deal with adversities that disproportionately affect black people, or wait for all racism to end.
How do we do that? First, take racism (discrimination) as a given. I grew up in a country where what would be considered racism in America is perpetrated among black people on the basis of ethnicity, geography, what have you. Obnoxious as it is, we have to acknowledge that it’s human nature.
Second, recognize that in a free country the government’s ability to legislate against all forms of discrimination is severely limited. On the other side of the coin, the government’s ability to racially target economic development is equally limited. So we have to stop waiting for the government to “address black issues” or “do things for the black community.” Frankly, businesses are getting tired of it too.
So, for instance, jails are disproportionately filled with blacks. What does that mean?: Blacks are disproportionately commiting crimes, the laws are unfair against blacks, or law enforcement is disproportiately targeting blacks. The answer may be a combination of all three, but I would venture more of the first. Besides, that is the only one directly within the control of black people.
At the end of the day, the new black narrative should focus on personal responsibility rather than victimhood. (See Charles Johnson’s thoughtful piece: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/narrative-johnson.html)
It’s about changing OUR attitudes to America. We are at a point in history where you can choose to spend your energies fighting THE man or being A man. Gosh, come November, the man could actually be a black man. That, I think, is what makes some people so uncomfortable; it would make it harder for them to blame the man.
Kobi,
There are some things you have said that I agree with. But how you say them reveals the assumptions you are making about Black folks. It’s not like you are saying anything new about personal responsibility. I mean, come on man are you out of touch with the Black intellectual tradition or what? And if so, then I’d say that you are making some uninformed comments that offer little solution to improving the condition of Black Americans.
Black Americans were industrious and built institutions to improve our condition even during the time of slavery and Jim Crow. There are continuing programs, speakers, and activists who are working to empower Black folks. You have the narrative of Frederick Douglass who improved himself by learning how to read even though the laws forbid him from doing so. I just think you’re way out of touch with the Black intellectual tradition. You can go back to George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington to find this message. It rung true then as much as it rings true now. While improving our condition, we cannot accept that racism is the natural condition of people. If it is a biologically predetermined condition, like many of our biological drives to take a dump or piss where we like should be put in check. We are thinking beings with the ability to use our rational minds to overcome irrational prejudices and fears. So given that, each person with education and proper intellectual training can rise above prejudice.
While most of us agree that it is our responsiblity that we should pick ourselves up, you seem to think that all of us Black American activists, scholars, students, entreprenuers, businessmen, workers, engineers, thinkers are blaming “the man.” I don’t know any Black people, whether friends, family, or classmates, that are sitting there blaming the “man” for not getting it together.
As for government getting out of the race issue? Who else can hold businesses accountable for their managers’ potentially discriminatory hiring practices. In many places where nepotism runs rampant (which is probably the case in the country of your origin), we see whole ethnic groups excluded from government positions. This has led to great political instability in places like Yugoslavia and even Nigeria. That being said, any business that is going to take funds from MY tax dollars, whether that is by being a government contractor or getting tax incentives, should not be allowed to discriminate or exclude any other group. That business should reflect the demographics and people that it serves.
Second, you seem to assume that the normalized condition for Black folks is poverty and crime. You act like all of us are wallowing in poverty and ignorance waiting for a government handout. Not that I’m a statistician, but I draw on some states from Institute for research on poverty:
http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm
Yes, a disproportionate percentage of Blacks are in poverty, at 22%, while it is 12% of the nation as a whole. Hispanics are at about 20% Asians, approximately 10%, and Whites at 8%.
So given that, 78% of us are striving to stay above the poverty line and doing our best to lead normal lives like the rest of us. And then you ignore the efforts of working class, middle class, and affluent Blacks at giving back to improve the overall condition of Black folks. We’re not just saying, hey I got mine, you need to own up and pull yourself out of those piss poor schools and areas with no job opportunities. We are working with local communities and local counties, states, and the government to reverse the cycle of poverty. You’re not going to hear from any of these activists or community leaders talk of the man. I just wonder you drummed up that cliche. I think you were watching too much Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, because you’re just parroting the neo-cons.
I am glad this issue is being addresesed. It has been an elephant here in the South. People want to talk about it, but kind of whisper about the issue because the big R word is such an enigma anymore. I hope more discussions come about whether Obama is president or not.
I also hope discussions like these bring to light the status of blacks worldwide. To flip this around, when I lived overseas, no matter how educated a black African was, a black American had a lot more status in society, regardless of how dark they were, simply because they were American. The black American was treated better in work situations and better at the embassy, even if the black African had become an American citizen.
I witnessed one instance where an American citizen of Somali descent was made to stand in line with non-citizens until a few of us made a huge fuss that she was an American just like the rest of us. The guards were a mixture of American races, but the prejudice was obvious…
while the introspective view of black is not a monolith is of value, i think it has already been introduced. it flourishes outside of political debate where black is not a color or an ethnicity. it’s just “that thing” that so many comfortably affirm, nearly regardless of phenotype.
the political version held by non-black people is what we should consider.
Check what one black Brazilian says upon being asked about racial attitudes and the back and forth on the ethnic and political technicalities that attend, “Who is black?” in his country.
Response by professor H
Thank you Margari.
Tariq:
This is just a BIT off topic, but it came to mind after reading, especially the father/ethnicity section of this particular post. I have met several (I don’t know if they have any studies out on this) off springs of African/American unions who grew up without a father (usually the father is African) based on mainly two or three case scenarios:
(1) The father had another family usually “back home” that the American mother was unaware of.
(2) Father doesn’t hold much value on his “American family