A reading from Ralph Ellison's book "What America Would Be Like without Blacks" written in 1970:
Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the "outsider". Many whites could look at the social position of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American. Perhaps that is why one of the first epithets that many European immigrants learned when they got off the boat was the term "nigger" - it made them feel instantly American. But this is tricky magic. Despite his racial difference and social status, something indisputably American about Negros not only raised doubts about the white man's value system but aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he is also somehow black.
Hear Malcolm X's words spoken in 1964:
"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress. No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I'm concerned, as long as it is not shown to every one of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me."
from Toni Morrison's book, "Beloved" (1987):
"Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick them out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face because they don't love that either. You got to love it, YOU! . . . This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved." Race Matters
You see their faces on the television news and the police docu-dramas as they are eased into the back of police cars. Young black men casualties in the war on drugs, arms handcuffed behind them. We see their faces and hear of their alleged acts but we don't know them. There is the temptation to judge, yet we don't know their stories. Most of us don't have any idea what it is like to grow up today as a young black man, the pressures, the degradation, the opportunities, and the desires.
Yet if Richard Wright is correct, we have much to learn about ourselves by beginning to understand their reality. We do not live in two separate worlds, separate and equal. Our worlds intersect, as the Rodney King riots in L.A. testified. The urban reality touches our suburban identity. The drug trafficking goes on here in Charlotte and Sarasota Counties, at night, planes landing on undeveloped roadways.
At our U.U.A. General Assembly this past year in Charlotte, North Carolina, a day was set aside to discuss issues of race within our movement. The keynote speaker was a professor from Princeton named Cornel West. Dr. West is one of the leading writers and lecturers on the issue of race relations, so I thought it would be worth discussing some of the insights gleaned from his bestseller, Race Matters. A professor of political philosophy and head of the Afro- American studies department at Princeton, on his way now to Harvard, he takes his ideas out of the academy and applies them to the times, following in the tradition of John Dewey and W. E. B. DeBois, two of his heroes.
There can be no question that the efforts at integration in the sixties have had significant societal effects. Many African American men and women have risen into the middle class, obtaining good jobs and salaries. But many more have been unsuccessful at leaving the ghettos and establishing footholds in the American social order.
Holding a middle-class job and making a middle-class salary though does not translate into social acceptance in the workplace or the community. Many blacks, irrespective of their talents and abilities, are labeled as racial tokens who are assumed to be less competent. Rising up the corporate ladder is difficult, and the glass ceiling blocks advancement. This can lead to an invisibility which turns them into non-persons at work.
Cutting ties with traditional sources of traditional black community is one of the biggest threats to the black middle class. For example, one response to moving into an upscale neighborhood is to keep a low profile and avoid being noticed. This anonymity, modeled by many of the white middle class, leaves the African American middle-class families isolated and alone. They have the visible signs of success without recognition and acceptance, without the inner satisfactions and relationships.
The lot of the middle class is much different from the urban poor who have little hope of climbing out of poverty. Many are people who have few information-age skills. The mechanization of agriculture has swelled their ranks in the inner-city. Our continuing export of manufacturing jobs has further reduced their opportunity for advancement without a degree. These are the ones who have by and large been left behind in the dust to fend for themselves. They experience the judgment of the society which wishes they would just disappear. They are a disenfranchised population. This desolation certainly isn't limited to the urban black population in these times of economic restructuring, but it is more intensely felt by them. Like the joke, when Uncle Sam sneezes, Mexico catches a cold; when White America sneezes, Black America gets pneumonia. Those without safety nets become wards of the state, die or subvert the community in criminal activity.
The effect of this disenfranchisement creates a feeling of despair and a deep- seated rage. When White America doesn't recognize that there is a racial problem, as Rush Limbaugh would have you believe, those feelings are intensified. But the rage isn't just outwardly directed, it also has an inward direction. If every one you meet tells you you're worthless, after a while you may begin to internalize that lie. Yes, there are a few high profile black Americans who have made it in entertainment and professional sports serving as role models. But the widely held view among black youth today is that you must sell your African soul to make it in white America. Yet if some of your friends "act white", go to college, and get jobs and the appearance of success, self-judgment still rears its ugly head. "There must be something wrong with you because you couldn't or didn't."
The messages of unacceptability bombard black youth. The culture, through advertising and television, sends the message that dark skin, thick lips, kinky hair and wide noses are ugly. Rap music is worthless. The black youth fashions are symbolic of rebellion.
Poverty itself damages self-esteem. Do you remember the experience as a child of seeing things in the shop window, catalog, or on television without being able to purchase them? Advertising creates strong desires among the poor as well as the rich. The visual images will still stimulate the desires for expensive luxury cars, the latest electronic gadgets, trips to the Caribbean, cruises with attractive white women. Advertising stimulates the desire to consume and the quest for pleasure, property and power as the highest values of the society, none of which are attainable by the poor. Dr. West observes that these seductive images edge out the tamer non-market values such as brotherly love, sisterly care, and community service which are readily within reach in the poor community for a sense of meaning.
The continuing experience of discrimination, the unfulfilled dreams of integration, and internalized self-hatred create a feeling of nihilism which pervades the African American world. Cornel West sees this devaluing of existence, of one's own and of the other's, black and white, as one of the most pressing problems facing our country. When a segment of the population no longer believes in the foundations of the society, they will become a force to subvert it. This is not exclusively a black problem. The riots in L.A. after the Rodney King verdict may be a chilling harbinger of things to come. The drug war in large measure is a covert race war being fought in our city streets. In Dr. West's eloquent words, "The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope, there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle." (p. 15).
Nihilism is not new to African American culture. The soul-quenching ordeal of slavery provided little personal meaning or value. Again, Dr. West's words: "The genius of our black foremothers and forefathers was to create powerful buffers to ward off the nihilistic threat, to equip black folk with cultural armor to beat back the demons of hopelessness, meaninglessness and lovelessness. These buffers consisted of cultural structures of meaning and feeling that created sustained communities; this armor constituted ways of life and struggle that embodied values of service and sacrifice, love and care, discipline and excellence" (p.15). Traditionally, the black religious and civic institutions have been that anchor and source of sanity.
The seventies demarcate the beginning of the decline of these institutions, which he attributes to what he calls "a saturation of the market forces and market moralities in black life and the present crisis in black leadership". The same forces at work throughout America - distrust of leaders and politicians, self-interested pursuit of the bluebird of happiness, and retreat from the public sphere of concern - take an even heavier toll on black institutions. As individuals retreat from advocating for their collective concerns, their leaders lose power to influence social policy.
As a boiling kettle raises the lid, so the continuing heat of injustice turns into rage. The Reginald Denny beating revealed the intensity of these feelings waiting for some event to cause the pot to boil over. Today we see a resurgence of black nationalism and a trend toward segregation as a form of self-protection. Louis Farrakan's leadership is an example of what Dr. West calls "racial reasoning".
Dr. West explains the concept of racial reasoning by looking at the Senate confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas. Dr. West sees his nomination as the worst example of tokenism. President Bush chose a less-qualified black man and held him up as the best choice, overlooking many better qualified candidates. Many in the black community were loath to publicly speak against him because of his race - a kind of reverse racism. Dr. West is also critical of Thomas for playing the race card himself when confronted by Anita Hill. Dr. West sees this "black makes right" reasoning as morally bankrupt white supremacy.
He also has criticism for the black conservatives who join with the white status-quo denouncing the lack of moral character and industry in the inner city youth. In the quest for white acceptance, many in the black middle class feel the need to distance themselves from their less fortunate brethren. The black conservative view does legitimately criticize black liberal "adherence to the victim-status conception" and the "debilitating racial loyalty...that blinds them to the pathological and dysfunctional aspects of black behavior."
What is lacking in the black conservative posture bemoaning the "decline of values such as patience, deferred gratification and self-reliance" is the compassionate engagement with the realities of the inner-city and their soul- destroying effects, a posture that ignores "the innumerable cases in which black people do act on the Protestant ethic and still remain at the bottom of the social ladder." The black community, Dr. West argues, is too weak politically to be factionalized and still retain a powerful voice in the political arena.
Dr. West sees a third way, not following the path of black nationalism, nor black conservative assimilation. Inspired by his strong Baptist heritage from his grandfather, Rev. Clifton West, he advocates what he calls a politics of conversion. He sees the crisis of values, vision and hope as the primary concern, even more than the economic inequities. Nihilism is a disease of the soul. "This nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care." Critical to this "conversion" of meaning is the affirmation of one's worth. "A love ethic [rather than a passion of hate] must be at the center of a politics of conversion." "Self-love and love of others are both modes toward increasing self-valuation and encouraging political resistance [to the forces of degradation] in one's community."
This is work which has a moral base and power rather than a racial one. It opens the doors to all people of moral courage to walk together for justice rather than closing ranks based on skin color. The black leaders in such a movement, Dr. West envisions, are "to be race-transcending prophets who critique the powers that be (including the black component of the Establishment) and who put forward a vision of moral regeneration and political insurgency for the purpose of fundamental social change for all who suffer from socially induced misery." These politics occur primarily on the local level, building up black social institutions which promote self-worth and self-determination.
Being the bleeding heart liberal that I am, I was very inspired by Dr. West's words and inclusive vision of racial progress. He makes me want to be black so I can be one of those leaders. Yet the kind of leadership of which he speaks cannot come nor should come from this white face.
Such leadership already exists in the black community here. Ida and Abe Kaufman invited me to the youth awards dinner hosted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Charlotte chapter. I was quite impressed with the number of youth involved. This program focusses on youth at risk, encouraging them to stay in school and attend college. A woman by the name of Margaret Spann is the bulwark of that program. I thought of her when I read Dr. West's words about leadership on the local level. We won't ever likely see her on CNN, but the work she does is just a noble as the high and mighty.
Those of us in the white community cannot and should not be these leaders. Yet we have an important affirmative role. We can pay attention to what's going on in the black community. We can recognize the leaders. We can ask tough questions of our political leaders. We can demand that laws written to protect minorities be enforced. We can publicize acts of injustice. We can support efforts of moral agency which unite all oppressed peoples struggling for equity. We can engage in dialogue when we differ, so we can know each other better as equals, together seeking a more humane world.
We must respect and honor the rage and the pain that may arise in these encounters by not denying it or brushing it off. We may not personally have lynched or lashed or slandered but racism is part of our culture, part of our heritage, part of each of us, black and white, red and yellow. We can not stand outside it all and claim innocence or victimization.
Our concern, attention and love make a very big difference toward welcoming African Americans into this community and serving the cause of social justice in our community, this nation, and the world. In this way we can help build the self-respect and self-esteem of the black man, woman and child. We shall do this by a genuine respect and recognition of what we affirm in the black community. We will find much to affirm if we dare to look.
My challenge to this congregation is to dare to be in relationship to individual black men, women and youth, one soul to another. Go to the Martin Luther King Parade tomorrow and show your support. We are different from each other, with different histories and experiences of America. Both sides will experience pre-judging of the other. But our common humanity can also be recognized as we touch and engage each other if we are honest and authentic. In the process, we can all grow bigger hearts and chart the way for a better world with more love and hope for all.
Copyright (c)1995 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.