More than a third of black Americans no longer believe that blacks are a single race. This finding has alarmed some -- but it could help America out of its racial mess.
By Gary Kamiya
Nov. 27, 2007 | Ever since 9/11 and President Bush's response to it, all other issues in the United States have faded into insignificance. When jets were smashing into skyscrapers and U.S. troops were invading an Arab country, it was hard to care about anything else. And one of the things that America stopped paying attention to was race.
It's hard to believe that just a few years ago, issues of black vs. white dominated the national discourse. The Rodney King riots and the O.J. Simpson case inspired endless discussions and reams of editorial soul-searching. Affirmative action and racial preferences, multiculturalism, and political correctness were fraught topics. Then the twin towers fell, and suddenly we had a completely new enemy to worry about.
During the Katrina debacle, images of thousands of impoverished blacks jammed into the New Orleans Superdome brought the scandalous reality of black poverty back into view. But the moment passed. Today's most charged racial issue, immigration, doesn't involve blacks at all, but Latinos. The painful legacy of slavery -- which, along with our de facto genocidal campaign against its native inhabitants, is America's primordial racial trauma -- is no longer at the center of the national consciousness.
In some ways, this timeout from race is a positive development. The old black-white dialogue was going around in circles, trapped by rigid assumptions and stultifying formality. The great breakthrough of the civil rights movement, sadly, failed to erase the subtlest and most powerful barriers: internal ones. Whites learned to acknowledge the history of racism, foregrounding their own racial guilt. That was necessary but insufficient. It resulted not in racial enlightenment but racial politeness. Politeness is far better than open bigotry, of course, but it is still a superficial response, an early stage on the road to Martin Luther King's dream of a society in which people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. By taking a break from race, we gave simple human interaction a chance to work.
But the sidelining of race has also been calamitous. Regardless of the progress made in racial attitudes, the existence of the black underclass is an ongoing scandal. More than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education ended de jure racial segregation in this country, poor urban blacks continue to be a group apart, plagued by disproportionately high rates of crime, incarceration, drug use, and poor health. Inner-city black children go to bad schools, live in substandard housing, eat bad food, are disproportionately raised by single mothers, and are exposed to a pathological street culture in which aggressive demands for "respect," ugly misogyny and the crudest markers of male machismo are valorized, while education, self-discipline and personal responsibility are dismissed as "acting white."
It's a peculiar moment. The white reaction to Barack Obama shows that the old I'm guilty, you're innocent, everyone-bow-and-return-to-their-corner two-step is no longer useful. Obama's race is still a factor, of course, but it is far less of one than anyone could have imagined even 10 years ago. Many whites are not just ready but eager to embrace a black man who has opted out of that worn-out racial dance. Yet the crisis of the black underclass rages on, and America seems less interested than ever in tackling it. And until that crisis is addressed, it will continue to cast a shadow over all black-white relations.
But this split reality contains within it the possibility of a breakthrough. After spending billions of dollars to try to stabilize neighborhoods in Baghdad, perhaps now Americans will be prepared to invest in the war zones in their own country. This may sound like pie in the sky, but there's reason for hope. Something amorphous but potentially transformative is happening -- and, critically, it's happening within the black community itself. According to a recent NPR/Pew poll, 37 percent of blacks agreed with the statement that blacks today are so diverse they can no longer be considered a single race. Among the youngest respondents, aged 18 to 29, a staggering 44 percent agreed.
This is extraordinary. More than a third of the blacks who responded, and almost half of the young blacks, have rejected the cornerstone of American racial politics: black racial solidarity. If the poll is accurate, the most emotionally charged and immutable racial truth, the one-drop rule, is no longer sacrosanct for a large number of black people.
Mister Mann Frisby, a former Daily News reporter, told the paper he found the widespread black rejection of racial solidarity "scary." "When I see studies like this, it makes me cringe because I never want to separate people," Frisby said.
I don't know if it's just me, but I find this statement very ironic.
After spending billions of dollars to try to stabilize neighborhoods in Baghdad, perhaps now Americans will be prepared to invest in the war zones in their own country. This may sound like pie in the sky, but there's reason for hope.
The author writes as if billions weren't already spent on the "war on poverty" in U.S. "war zones," and we don't have social programs today.
Mister Mann Frisby, a former Daily News reporter, told the paper he found the widespread black rejection of racial solidarity "scary." "When I see studies like this, it makes me cringe because I never want to separate people," Frisby said.
Mr. Frisby doesn’t realize that the findings simply underscore the socioeconomic diversity of black America. Also, 37% of African Americans acknowledging that they are not a single race really isn’t anything new. Many black Americans make the claim that black people come in all different colors and black is mixed and mixed is black. So, this could be seen a reflection of that belief, and this doesn’t obviate the existence of ethnic solidarity or at least paying lip service to it.
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Molefi Kete Asante, professor at Temple University's African American Studies Department, told the Philadelphia Daily News, "There are some people who don't live or operate in the African-American community because they are in a community of rich people, whether they are white, black, Japanese or Latino. They are just in a whole different world from the rest of us."
I love assertions based on scant to no evidence. Asante presents a picture of the black community divided into the wealthy and the rest of us who are not wealthy. Presumably all non-black communities are wealthy and only “wealthy” blacks are “out of touch” by virtue of their wealth. The reality is more complex than that. There are at present black middle class neighborhoods. There are even black upper middle class neighborhoods. I certainly wouldn’t call these people “out of touch.” Many of them are civic minded and contribute to black causes. Perhaps he is willing to conclude that “real” black people are working class, poor, or members of the non-working underclass.
Asante should be careful making sweeping, baseless assumptions lest he get snared by them. After all, doesn’t his paycheck-Afrikan garb and name notwithstanding-set him apart from many blacks in Philadelphia?
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And that's potentially a very good thing. It's good, first, because middle-class black rejection of underclass values has the potential to positively affect poor blacks.
Not if poor (or does she mean underclass?) blacks reject the black middle class as inauthentic.
The author appears to be using poor and underclass interchangeably here. There are black people who-like people of other races in similar situations-are members of the working poor. I wouldn’t group these people with members of the underclass.
this article pretty much sums up the thoughts and feelings i have been having over the last few years. There is a new shift or paradign in what the concept of "blackness" is today and what is was in the past. I have rejected the ideas of "black solidarity" and other rhetoric of black political thought and have been looking for new ways to define myself and my ideas beyond some essentialist, old form of blackness. I have gotten critized for it. I have been called a eurocentrist, mentally enslaved for just simply challenging old ideas or unquestioned believes black people have had for a long time. The new generation of black people are not restricted or dominated by racism like in the past. And the old identities or strategies that have worked in the past no longer work today in this post-industrical, post-segregation world. To me there are several black identites. I define my own concept of not only what it means for me to be black, but more importantly, what it means for me to be a man or a human being. The continued immigration of mexicans, the increase in the population of people of multi-racial identity who reject tradition racial concepts, immigration of people from around the world to the us, will alter the politics of the united states and creat new battles that no longer place black vs. white as the central battlefield. I find it humorous that are many black people who keep saying statements like "why must be continue to divide our people". This is based on the assumption that all black people in this country are one homogenous mass who have the same religion, same political beliefs, same class, same sexual orientation, same background, etc. In my opinion, they are holding on to a false concept of Black Solidarity which is mythical and unrealistic. It doesnt acknowledge the diversity of black people and seems to think that black people all have to AGREE in order to solve problems. Basically, all independent thinkers who dare think outside the box(ie Clarence Thomas) are vilified by black people or charged by others as not being "authenically black". What does that mean anyway???????? Many black people still blame racism on the social ills of poor black people in the inner cities when the major reason for their suffering is the fact that are poor not necessarily black. Secondly, i find it quite disturbing that many of the values and ideas about what is "real blackness" seems to be expressed in hip hop or only black people who are working class or poor. Its almost have if having wealth, living in a nice neigboorhood, speaking proper english is not black. Then what the hell is being black??? being poor, living in the hood, speaking "ebonics", anti-intellectialism?? I think not. I feel that a lot of the traditional thinkers amoung black people see many of these changes in America as a THREAT. Maybe they are afraid that black people are no longer "THE MINORITY" but just a collection of being minorities in a white-dominated society. Lets be honest, the less and less racism plays a factor, old school black activists from the 60s like Sharpton and Jackson will be out of a paycheck. There careers are dependent on finding every single example of anti-black racism in this country. Thats another reason why i think sharpton, jackson, and other black people are threatened by a Barack Obama. He is the new America. Another type of person who self-identities as Black without carrying the psychological/historical baggage that traditonal black people have carried. Also he not from the activist-religous protest, civil rights tradition school like Sharpton and Jackson. He is actually a politician who was educated as a ivy league school and who appeals to white people in ways Al and Jesse could never. So, I've started to look beyond race. There is no universal, monolithic "black community" or sameness. Black people have always been a diverse bunch in this country and will continue to be so. Our identities are going through a state of flux as i can tell from reading the article. So black people get ready. Its a new world. open your mind, find new ways of identitfying yourself and improving your life, because there is no proverbial white preventing you from climbing the glass ceiling.
It doesnt acknowledge the diversity of black people and seems to think that black people all have to AGREE in order to solve problems. Basically, all independent thinkers who dare think outside the box(ie Clarence Thomas) are vilified by black people or charged by others as not being "authenically black". What does that mean anyway????????
MP: Quin, I think some black American people dislike of Clarence Thomas has to do mainly with his attitude that makes some blacks think he dislike blacks. They feel he is kind of hostile and angry at blacks especially light skin blacks.
MP: Quin, I think some black American people dislike of Clarence Thomas has to do mainly with his attitude that makes some blacks think he dislike blacks. They feel he is kind of hostile and angry at blacks especially light skin blacks.
I've read that in his bio, he said that he was teased a lot by black people on the light side of the color spectrum for being too dark.
Many black peope dont like him because of the fact is he a..
1. Black Conservative
2. He's married to a white woman
3. He is one of the most venement critics of Affirmative Action
all of this despite the fact that he was like the first black supreme court judge in almost hundred years. I have issues with his conservatism but I dont diss the man personally.
The outrage that he is conservative and married to a white woman pales in comparison to his stance on affirmative action. The main problem that many black americans had/have with Clarence Thomas is that he is against the very thing that helped make him and propel him into the lofty heights where he resides today. And many believe that makes him one of the biggest hypocrites alive today.
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