The blogosphere abuzz with the Obama candidacy and the connection between Mr. Obama and pastor Wright, one can hardly avoid contemplating the issue of Black and White people. I want to lay out some of my current thinking on the issue, admitting outright and up front that I am not certain about most of what I am about to say. Much of what any of you add in the comments, if any of you do, will likely effect my thinking.
As long as I remember, modern schools and pop culture have been teaching kids that skin color is irrelevant, and that to hold that one is different from you by virtue of the color of their complexion is stupid if not immoral. I think that they have done a good job of it, if one is to judge by the professed ideological convictions of white people who represent the American mainstream.
Negative views on black people as a class have been eradicated from conscience thought, and are relegated, in them in whom they exist at all, to deeply rooted behavioral biases held by their owners as something either to be denied or fought against, but by no means embraced.
As a young child wading my way through public schools, I and my white and predominately Jewish friends looked up to Michael Jordan, listened mainly to black music artists, and wore the latest styles, whose origins were predominately from black men. It was to us obvious, as in not even a subject for discussion, that America as an unifying identity was color blind.
My two year foray into secular reading leads me to conclude that our view of the American nation is the now mainstream view.
Naturally, one educated in this light looks at the idea of a distinct black people with not a little confusion; since skin color in and of itself is meaningless, and since the American identity is color blind, why is there ‘a black people’? Is there ‘a white people’? Of course not.
When you think about it, however, the two identities are not similar. While there is no ‘ white people’; there certainly is a black one:
The various identities that unify men into distinct groups are created by many and various causes; an identical creed or ethnicity or homeland are historical causes. But for whatever reason, white skin color has not been. The Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Russians, and the English are all distinct nations; lack of skin pigment did little to iron out those distinctions. On the other hand, though, black people in America have been melded into a distinct entity, not by force of their dark skin, but rather by force of the shared experience that engaged, and engages them, brought about, partly and less now than in the past, because of that skin color.
So as it incorrect to hold to the existence of a white unifying identity–there isn’t one–it is equally incorrect to hold to the absence of a black one.
Are black people Americans? Of course they are. In fact, most if not all men have more than one identity; I am Jewish, for instance; I am also American; I am also a (last name here).
The question is one of dominance. Just as I am an American Jew, another could see himself as a Jewish American. Likewise, one black man can see himself a black American, while another an American black man. A black man could also eschew the black identity completely, opting to identify himself, simply, as an American who happens to be of dark complexion.
It is my hope that black people are one day assimilated into the American identity in the same way early Irish and Italian immigrants were. Not all cultures are equal and the American is one of the healthiest on earth.
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Just to clarify,
None of this is a justification for the harmful foolishness issued forth from Obama’s church. As far as I can tell, that preacher and those like him are a most dangerous enemy to black people.
Do you think that just maybe, MAYBE, black people would be more easily and quickly integrated if they weren’t fed racist, hateful trash on a daily basis from their freaking RELIGIOUS LEADERS?!? From the PULPIT?!?
Maybe? A little?
Do you think White churches are full of pastors filling white congregations heads with racist hate-filled garbage about BLACK people?
Do you?
Do you have any idea where that makes me think a large part of the problem really is?
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Yep, that’s me, the old ?Flat-earther??
Not yet; but we get a little closer every day. Those views haven’t been eradicated, just reduced and also closeted. The sad thing is that Rev. Wright and black racists like him make white racists less willing to change their views (and vice versa).
Sometimes your brother is the one with the plank in his eye, and you only a mote.
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but rather by force of the shared experience that engaged, and engages them, brought about, partly and less now than in the past, because of that skin color.
Closer, but you haven’t quite put your finger on it. IMHO, the ’shared experience’ is that every subsequent immigrant group has been tacitly invited to participate in denigrating Blacks as a group despite the fact that Blacks as a group have contributed to American society in ways they haven’t, even to the present day.
CosmicCon is right in IDing hatred spewed from the pulpit as a factor, but so is the way that nearly every identifiable group have treated them in order to ‘become white’.
Martin,
I agree, I overstated it somewhat.
Urthshu,
I think that’s a little unfair. It seems that Anti Black sentiments–I dislike the word ‘racism’– is as much imported as the immigrants themselves.
urthshu:
That is an interesting argument, but I don’t believe it holds up. If I am understanding your argument, you are saying that other ethnic groupse were “invited” to become more white by contributing to the overall white society’s denigration of blacks.
First of all I would say that this is a monumentally cynical view of history and racial cultural norms in this country (or the world).
Second I’d like to see you post some evidence of this “tacit invitation” you describe, something that would demonstrate how, say, an Asian freshly arrived from china would “get the message” that they could become more white by spitting on a few blacks in the street. In particular I’m wondering if or when you think that “tacit invitation” has ended.
If I look at some other ethnic groups, I frankly see them treated with as much disrespect and racism as blacks. Native Americans and Asians come to mind. It’s been 140 years since we ended slavery in this country, but it’s only been a bit more than 40 years since we stopped rounding up Asians and sticking them in “detention centers” for the “crime” of having yellow-ish skin.
And yet Asians, in general, seem to do fine in this country while blacks continue to struggle against the “white oppressors”.
I contend that a big reason for this is because Asians do not have “leaders” who perpetuate a cycle of resentment, dependency and despair by ramming hatred and racism into their heads every day.
I have never been to an Asian0 church in this country, but I would be willing to bet you that you would have to look long and hard to find any Asian religious leader who would claim that the AIDS virus was invented to kill off Asians, or that the U.S. engineered entry into WWII just to have an excuse to invent and drop the atom bomb on two Japanese cities.
I know it is “politically incorrect” to criticize blacks or black culture. To do so in certain circles is to be accused immediately of being a racist. I have been accused of being a racist for saying that I find hip-hop music in general to be unappealing. If I say that Asian music doesn’t melt my butter, nobody mutters “racist” under their breath.
There are a lot of problems that lead to the current black community problems in this country. But right at the very top of them, in my humble opinion, is the baldfaced fact that for the past forty years the “leaders” of the black community have fostered, encouraged and even incited blacks to these feelings of resentment, entitlement and outright hatred of whites. When this stuff is spewed from the pulpits of INFLUENTIAL black churches, and the worst practitioners of hate-filled rhetoric (Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Wright, etc) are lifted up and lauded as “authentic black voices” the end result is a cycle of self-defeating behavior.
What makes it worse is the pervasive attitude of “white guilt” that accepts this as “justifiable behavior” such that anyone, white or black, who tries to stop this tide of resentment and anger is called a racist if white and a race traitor if black. Bill Cosby, who has done more for black education in this country than any other single person I can think of, was viciously attacked and savaged by “black leaders” for publicly saying that black people should pay more attention to staying married, raising kids, teaching their kids English and working on assimilating into the overall culture. Now Bill Cosby is voted off of college speaking lists, and people like “reverend” Wright are voted on in his place.
Anyone who can’t see how self-defeating that is really does not deserve anything but scorn and derision.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Yep, that’s me, the old ?Flat-earther??
naftali – certainly.
CosmicCon – You’ll note I’ve agreed that the ‘grievance industry’, for lack of a better term, is a substantial part of the problem. And this dates way back, with the earliest negative remarks that I’ve found on it being made by Booker T. Washington.
But you asked about the ‘tacit invitation’ that I averred to. I think the pattern was set probably prior to the Civil War and in the case of the Irish, who were treated to such names as ‘white nigger’, were oppressed in their own way, etc. It came to a head during the Draft Riots in the 1860s.
Other racial groups, as you’ve noted, were oppressed as well and I recognise that. Not all have displayed racism as a way to rise in station, but not very many have allied themselves to the Black community or their interests, either. I’d say its probably only the Jews and Hispanics who have historically had much interest, and even there the Hispanics are very split on the issue.
Have I answered you?
Urthsu:
No, you’ve provided a couple of anecdotes that don’t really even support your claim that other immigrants were “tacitly invited” to become more white by heaping denigration on blacks.
I don’t see that at all. In fact, as someone with a significant native American heritage, my personal opinion is that Native Americans were treated worse than blacks were. They experienced virtual genocide and were rounded up and put in the least livable areas in this country and left to rot for generations.
This constant refrain that blacks have “suffered worse” than any other ethnic group “because of slavery” is the common politically correct position to take, but I suspect if you could ask the millions of dead native Americans who were simply killed outright, they might have a different view.
In a hundred years, when people are able to look back on the 20th century with something like objectivity, I believe the consensus of historians will be that black-white relations in the last half of the 20th century through the first half of the 21st century were significantly negatively impacted by the gross irresponsibility and rank political opportunism of their “leaders” who routinely used racial tensions as a means to secure personal power and to advance the agenda of their own narrow constituency. Martin Luther King was a great leader, a man of vision and a man who understood sacrifice and redemption. Since MLK there has not been a single black “leader” who preached reconciliation and personal responsibility as a means to reach the “promised land.” Or if there has been, their voices have been drowned out by the shrill racial politics of the generation of “leaders” who wrested that title in the aftermath of King’s assassination.
Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and their ilk have done more to damage the black community than anyone will acknowledge for another forty years. But when they finally do write the chapters on racial relations in the distant future, their names will not be remembered fondly.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Yep, that’s me, the old ?Flat-earther??
Couple of things to ponder:
Most Italians weren’t considered “white” until well into the 20th Century.
Urthshu is right that other immigrant groups were encouraged until somewhat recent generations to “become white” by looking down on black people, tacitly. There was an old phrase, “free, white and 21,” which was a status to which to aspire. It’s all but disappeared to the point where most people don’t even remember it, but it once was a very common refrain to make you proud to be an American. Asians (”orientals”) could not quite aspire to be white but they could at least aspire not to be black. This is old, dirty laundry, and most people these days just don’t think that way, but it did happen in the past.
My own view is that “Black” is an ethnic identity and not merely a skin color, and once you understand that, a lot of the politics of the black community start making a lot more sense. Caribbean and African immigrants who came here post-slavery, and especially post-1960s, don’t share that ethnic identity even if their skin is as dark as coffee beans. It’s as alien to them as Irish culture or, for that matter, Jewish culture.
The most important point, to my way of thinking, is this: black people were not accorded their full civil rights as Americans until the 1960s. Slavery ended in 1865, but they weren’t even reliably able to vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965–100 years after the end of slavery.
When viewed from this vantage point, it suddenly becomes apparent that what black ethnic identity looks an awful lot like is immigrants who arrived not on slave ships, but only truly “arrived” around 1964 or 1965, blinking in the sun and not sure what to do with themselves, or even what it meant to be “black” anymore. The community has been struggling with that ever since.
Some of them, by the way, see assimilation as a very negative thing. Why? Well because over multiple generations they developed their own culture, and people who angrily look at them and demand that they just strip it all off and throw it on the trash heap look racist to them. I think they’re wrong to think it racist, but it’s understandable that they do.
I think that, just like most immigrant groups, it takes 2-3, maybe 4 generations to feel fully comfortable in the wider society. By that way of thinking, it’s going to take the black community probably another generation or two–meaning that, by the middle of the 21st century, it’ll probably be 99% a non-issue.
By the way, this “looking down on blacks to elevate yourself” is in no way unique to the American experience. This was also found in Indian and South African culture, for example. Indeed, one of the seldom-mentioned facts about the early Mohandas Gandhi, at least early in his career, wrote scathing editorials denouncing black people as stupid, lazy, and immoral, using the “n-word” repeatedly to describe those disgusting creatures, while arguing that people of his racial background (Indians, basically) should be treated with the same respect as whites.
In other words, it happens, and at one time was very common.
In fact, here’s one of the dirtiest secrets of all, one that a lot of black people try to avoid talking about around non-blacks: there’s a tendency of light-skinned American blacks to look down on darker-skinned ones. No lie. And if you think really hard about it, that’s just about the most sad point of view you can imagine.
Dean:
Your comments on black ethnic identification being comparable to having “just arrived as immigrants” in 1964 is insightful.
The stuff about “free, white and 21,” not so much. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it applied to more ethnic groups than the single group that you seem to feel has been hampered by it. Again I would use the example of native Americans as a group that was far more viciously treated than blacks ever were. To say that Asians could not aspire to “white” but could at least aspire to “non-black” directly counters your whole “free, white and 21″ argument since the saying is not “free, non-black and 21″. Your assertion that denigrating blacks was a ticket to assimilation is no better supported than Urthsu’s was. It surely is your opinion, but that does not make it fact.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Fitna?
Besides, I find the whole argument that white people in this country, as a whole, systematically took kicking of black people as a substitute for racial purity in order to be allowed to participate in society. That is such an insulting and cynical view of the white race that I find myself reacting emotionally to it.
There is no doubt that some white people were and are racists. But it was the violent death of over a million white people that freed the black people from slavery. And those who died fighting FOR that goal, knew exactly what they were fighting and dying for.
I will give white’s grief for their complicity in initiating and spreading slavery, but I will also give them credit for the incredible sacrifice they made to end it.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Fitna?
CC,
I agree with your comment whole heartedly.
I also get a little peeved when folks overlook some other bits of history.
For example, slavery was forbidden in the 1700’s in many states. And in many areas, black men were allowed to vote for more than a century before women could vote.
And in the early 1800’s some areas, like Philadelphia, had a large and flourishing free black population, with wealthy merchant and craftsmen classes, arts communities, and basically every benefit of then-modern civilization.
My point is that there were parts of the US where blacks have been treated as the equals of whites for centuries. And that’s often overlooked.
The policies of the US government didn’t mandate or explicitly sanction oppression or discrimination against blacks. The possible “sin†of the government is that it didn’t go far enough in forbidding slavery or oppression in certain parts of the US.
Still, there was always a large population of whites who fought to have the federal government do more to intervene. And that gets glossed over too.
“I think that, just like most immigrant groups, it takes 2-3, maybe 4 generations to feel fully comfortable in the wider society. By that way of thinking, it’s going to take the black community probably another generation or two–meaning that, by the middle of the 21st century, it’ll probably be 99% a non-issue.”
Say we view the black community as “arriving” in the U.S. like any other ethnic group in 1964 or 1965, and feeling comfortable with the wider society in 3-4 generations, just like any other immigrant ethnic group. Is it legitimate to draw comparisons to other immigrant groups in other areas, such as economic success, or family size, or education levels?
In other words, if we say they follow the immigrant pattern in comfort levels, would or should they follow the immigrant pattern in other areas? If the answer is no, wouldn’t that affect their ability to feel comfort in the wider society? If the answer is yes, do we know how the black community compares to immigrant groups who arrived in the mid 1960’s?
Thomas Sowell wrote a great book on this stuff, with a provocative title, that probably only he could get away with –”Black Rednecks and White Liberals.”
Here’s the truth, whole truth and nothin’ but the truth:
Race does not matter, culture does.
I grew up in an urban Blue State, lived in working class neighborhoods with lots of blacks, went to public school with them, played sports with them, listened to Earth, Wind and Fire and Isaac Hayes with them, danced with them, dated some, fought with some, served in the military with some, had quite a delightful childhood, and only few minor problems every once in a while. We all got along pretty darn well.
But, this was way before Gangster Rap and the explosion of out-of-wedlock births. We had Fathers with straps, who set some pretty stern parameters, if you know what I mean.
Nobody cares if you are black. God Bless you. If you are black, wear a nice suit, and get A’s and B’s in High School, Hell, Harvard, Yale and Stanford will be fighting to get you.
What most people care about is culture. If you are poorly dressed, loud, inconsiderate to others, and prone to fighting, — white or black, well, most folks ain’t interested in you. They’re too busy working hard, feeding their kids, trying to pay rent, going to church, reading the sports page, washing their car.
Moreover, the vast majority of blacks are a hard-working folks just trying to make it in a tough world — and THEY are some of the most unfortunate victims of the trouble-makers in their community.
Culture, not race. Say it loud!
HankB
Naftali, I think basically you’re pissing up a rope, unless of course you agree with Hank in that culture has never been the result of DNA.
So I’ve exchanged your words transposing white=black and black=white. Check it out.
Naturally, one educated in this light looks at the idea of a distinct white people with not a little confusion; since skin color in and of itself is meaningless, and since the American identity is color blind, why is there ‘a white people’? Is there ‘a black people’? Of course not.
While there is no ‘ black people’; there certainly is a white one:
The various identities that unify men into distinct groups are created by many and various causes; an identical creed or ethnicity or homeland are historical causes. But for whatever reason, black skin color has not been.
On the other hand, though, white people in America have been melded into a distinct entity, not by force of their white skin, but rather by force of the shared experience that engaged, and engages them, brought about, partly and less now than in the past, because of that skin color.
So as it incorrect to hold to the existence of a black unifying identity–there isn’t one–it is equally incorrect to hold to the absence of a white one.
Are white people Americans? Of course they are. In fact, most if not all men have more than one identity; I am Jewish, for instance; I am also American; I am also a (last name here).
The question is one of dominance. Just as I am an American Jew, another could see himself as a Jewish American. Likewise, one white man can see himself a white American, while another an American white man. A white man could also eschew the white identity completely, opting to identify himself, simply, as an American who happens to be of white complexion.
It is my hope that white people are one day assimilated into the American identity in the same way early Irish and Italian immigrants were. Not all cultures are equal and the American is one of the healthiest on earth.
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