I figured this discussion might be appropos considering it’s Black History Month. I’m watching the State of the Black Union on C-SPAN. This is an annual event, hosted by Tavis Smiley, in which prominent speakers (like Cornel West, Louis Farrakhan, Joycelyn Elders, Al Sharpton, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Donna Brazile, Jesse Jackson, etc.) discuss the state of Black America and the changes that need to be made. It will re-air tonight at 8pm if anyone is interested in watching it.
The speakers brilliantly articulated many of the problems that exist in the Black community, however few offered any concrete suggestions or solutions. To be fair, many people on the panel didn’t have a chance to speak in depth about issues.
I was wondering what you guys think are the more pressing issues facing the Black community, and how should they be addressed. I think one of the major problems is too much religion. While I don’t mind religion per se, I think it’s a problem for the following reasons:
The Black community seems to have a disproportionate number of religious leaders who exploit their congregations and do little to promote Christian behavior.
I think religious people are more readily exploitable.
Black religiosity has put us on the wrong side of gay rights issues and has exacerbated intolerance of homosexuality (which has led to many other problems).
There are many other reasons, but I think those are a few that really bother me. What do you guys see as the problems within/facing the black community?
The biggeat problem, in my opinion, is the fact that people insist on seeing a black community rather than a whole bunch of individuals, all different from each other, who happen to be black.
I’m half Italian and half American redneck, and absolutely nobody seems to give a damn about any community I might belong to.
If people had a similar view of benign neglect toward the “black community” everyone might be better off.
Surely the biggest focus of the black community should be fixing the lousy education system in poor, inner-city areas. One problem, and one that’s frequently mentioned, is that our entire society has allowed educational standards to slip in poor areas. But a much larger cause of the problem is lack of qualified and dedicated teachers. There are many root causes for that, unfortunately. First, public school teachers get paid $40,000 to do an $80,000 job. Secondly, working in an inner city school is just a very depressing experience. And thirdly the best teachers can usually get jobs in wealthier suburban districts where the pay and support is better.
But in the final analysis, you can’t successfully educate a child unless a child will make some effort. And that only happens if the child’s parents work to convince them that making the effort at school every day. So another focus must be on convincing parents in inner-city districts to value a good education and instill that value in their children.
I think fostering a sense of community is what brings positive changes.
Many of the solutions people propose for fighting poverty are community-based. Replace street gangs with community recreational centers. Replace absentee parents with mentors. Use the church to hold Stop-the-Violence rallies and gun exchange programs. Form non-profits that aid pregnant teens and foster self-esteem in young girls so that they don’t want to get pregnant. Bolster charities so that poor people don’t have to rely on government hand-outs. Support scholarship programs so that the bright and gifted can escape poverty through college.
Remove the “community” and you get none of these things.
Now, you may say that white people–the group that maintains the “standard” of success that the rest of us have to constantly compare ourselves to–do not have a special community and yet have achieved. But this has not always been the case. Every immigrant group that came here had some network that they could rely on. They formed (or took advange of pre-existing) settlement houses. They opened banks and social fraternities devoted to their “own”. They had strong, ethnic-centered places of worship. They lived in the same neighborhoods. They were a community. And some people in these groups still consider themselves as such.
I think the problem of black Americans today stems from a lack of community awareness and respect.
I do not subscribe to the “hivemind” mentality that many black people do. I do not think we all have to be Democrats or liberals, or that we all have to speak a certain way, worship a certain way, or raise our children in a certain way.
But I do think that black Americans had a lot going for them “back in the day”, before integration dispersed many of us all over the place. The ghetto of the 1930s and 1940s was much different than it was today. It was more economically and “values” mixed. The children of doctors, preachers, and teachers attended the same schools as the janitors, maids, and bus drivers. This was how Auburn Ave. in Atlanta, GA was, “back in the day”. Sweet Auburn was a nice place to live. I still remember touring Herndon House when I was in high school and thinking it was just as nice as any mansion in Buckhead.
If you are living in abject poverty, you need some help tugging on those bootstraps. Not even the people who cite themselves as evidence that you can do it alone really have done it alone.
Girls Scouts and Boy Scouts, Boys and Girls Club, church youth groups, community rec centers, etc. are COMMUNITY. So are strong local schools, places of worship, friendly, successful businesses; law-abiding neighbors, and competent civic leaders. These are what black people need to work on. And since it’s hard to do anything when you’re poor, I think this presents an obligation for those who have escaped. It’s the “giving back” aspect of the black community that is really lacking.
My parents bussed all four of their children because they didn’t trust the local schools. My parents both have advanced degrees and have good social standing; with some effort, they could have organized other parents in the neighborhood to fix our own schools. Instead, they arranged for the school bus to pick us up right in front of our house so we didn’t have to stray far from the porch.* How convenient. Who suffered? The neighborhood did. Most of the middle-class kids in our neighborhood took that same schoolbus my parents had arranged for. We left behind the poor kids, or the kids who had parents who didn’t know or care about the bussing program.
I think all of us bussed kids suffered too, if only because we had to endure a long two hour commute each day. But there were other things. In middle school, I was accidently placed on the remedial track two years in a row–TWICE–even though my grades and test scores were way above average. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I know that kind of stuff didn’t happen to the white kids who I went to school with. The remedial track–it wasn’t called that, but everyone knew what it was–was full of black and Hispanic kids. Kids who were bussed and lived in zip codes that were outside of the school’s district (our addresses and race(!?) were on our schedules, so the registrar had easy access to this info). These were kids who may have been on the student council or on the honor roll if they had attended the schools closest to them, where they wouldn’t have been members of stigmatized minority groups or automatically pegged as poor and thus uneducable. But now that they were in a “good” school, they were given the worst education and led down the worst paths. They were not benefited by integration.
There’s another motive for caring about how the people who look like you “turn out”: They reflect on you. This is perhaps my own self-hatred coming out, but I’m tired of being embarrassed. I’m tired of people lumping me in with a bad element just because I’m black. I’m tired of it being assumed that I’m lazy or incompetent or crimimal, at worse; poor, slow, inarticulate, and helpless at best. Racists don’t need an excuse to be racist, but everyone is prejudiced. A white guy doesn’t have to worry about perpetuating a stereotype and ruining it for the next white guy who comes along. A black person shouldn’t have to suffer from this concern, but many do. We always have, but the care used to be greater. Although I think the attitude–we gotta look good in front of white folk!–is deplorable, I also think a similar attitude–we gotta look good in front of ourselves and others!–is not. This is what community provides. Pride and responsibility.
*[sub]I understand why my parents did what they did, and I suppose I would have done the same thing if I had been in their shoes.[/sub]
There was a discussion with a similar theme (that, for the most part, avoided the facile stupidity that often accompanies these discussions) about a month ago: What went wrong with Black Americans?
brickbacon, I suspect that your answer is driven by a personal hostility to religion that might result in the abandonment of religion being a one-size-fits-all solution to nearly all the problems you see in society.
Consider that of your three points, the first two are based on assertions for which you have provided no support, (either as to their accuracy or to the conclusions you draw from them), and the third does not even demonstrate a clear connection to troubles of the black community.
I suspect that black religious leaders are no more likely to be money-grubbing charlatans than white religious leaders.
I see no reason to believe that religious people are “more exploitable” than non-religious people.
You have not established just what problems proceed from a homophobic attitude within the black community. (As to the anti-gay stance of the black comunity, I will grant that as the only assertion you have made for which I have ever seen any evidence–but you still have not shown just how that is harming the black community, per se.)
Well, there is the “down low”, for instance. This is a subculture of black men who have sex with men in secret, but identify publicly as heterosexual. Do I really need to spell out how having anonymous sex with men and lying about it to your primary partner is problematic? Maybe if it weren’t for homophobia in the black community, these men wouldn’t have to hide their sexual proclivities, or marry women to use as beards.
#hoo my heaad’‘sspinginnn. Lessee. I don’ttttt think the problemss is relgion becauwses that’s where llllots of blackkkk protest historically was centered. I think that black folks need to undesrtsand they historyry. If you nkow wehre you comeeeer from, yyyyou ikknwo where you goin’’,. Elllse yyoujustt goin’ in circlers. Couuurse thiss thought ain’t new. WEBbb DDuBois saaid it fiiiiirst.
While “down low” has a name in the black community, are you sure it does not occur among whites, as well? And while I agree that such activities probably factor in creating a problem with the transmission of STDs and similar issues, do you really think that they are a significant factor regarding poverty, poor education, including an attitude that disparages education, single parent homes, kids born out of wedlock, and crime?
My point is not that homophobia is not an issue within the black community. (And I do think it is an issue that should be addressed.) I just do not see that as being an issue that is significantly contributing to the failure of many blacks to achieve the American Dream.
As a white guy, any time a white man says we have to do something for ourselves, and is referring to his race, I consider him a racist. I don’t see any difference when a black guy says it. If you define yourself as black, and as those not being black different than you, then that breeds racism. There are plenty of white kids that were brought up in the poorer neighborhoods that got the same treatment as you. Not because the color of their skin, but who their parents were. They should be part of what you call ‘ourselves[’.
With me saying that, I have no doubt that you would get treated differently because of the color of your skin. Especially if you told me the same story of how your people need to change. Mainly because, regardless of my background or experiences, you do not consider me part of your group because of the color of my skin. What *we[/] need to do as an American community is stop perpetuating the myth that color of skin matters. That we belong to a certain group because of our pigmentation or who our parents were. Black and white people need to do something about the destitute people in this country. This catch-22 that “I treat people different because I was treated different” is getting us nowhere. This country has finally passed the hard part when realizing that institutional racism was bad no matter how benign the intentions. So we made laws against it. But the country can’t change what individuals think no matter how many laws they pass. We have to do that ourselves.
And as long as the “black community” chooses to identify itself as different, then they will be. And I don’t think they can fix what they think is wrong about this country by themselves. They need white folk too. I have had it told me many times that I would never know what a poor black kid goes through in this country. Probably true. But I do know what a poor kid goes through, I was one.
They could unanimously decide to never mention their “identity” again and they would continue to be seen as (and often treated as) different.
I spent August through December overseeing a project in a primarily black community that has been engulphed by expanding white suburbia. I ran into exactly one person in that entire time who made any mention of their own race, but I encountered all sorts of comments from the workers (and even passersby) about the neighborhood being “black” or “colored.”
I think that there are, indeed, issues that need to be addressed by the black community, but pretending that they will be seen and accepted by everyone else just by pretending that there are no visible differences is not going to do it.
'Course it does. But does it have its own name and everything? My impression from what I’ve read, is that this is a behaviour that is entrenched among black men in a way that it isn’t among white men. I could be completely wrong, of course.
The gay community shares the blame, natch. It is still lamentably segregated along racial lines, and it seems to be more so among gays than lesbians.
You are, of course, absolutely right. Since homophobia is a particular bugaboo of mine, I chose that to jump on, even though it isn’t really relevant to the OP’s point except tangentially. Sorry for the near-hijack.
If you have to pretend there are no visible differences in order to treat them as you would anyone else, then that is your problem. If the black community sees the visible difference as the main difference, then they will be treated accordingly. How can you fight something if you practice it yourself?
And what is a “black community”? I did not say that white people do not see them as different. I said the opposite. And that difference is being perpetuated by our own self identities. If there is an “Us”, then there usually is a “them”. And that goes for both sides. I have no use for the “black community”. But I would sacrifice alot for my close friend who happens to be black.
In this case, the black community is a neighborhood of approximately 70 homes that is populated by 65 black families, two white families, and three vacant houses. The subdivision was built in the 1960s when most of the people moved in. The residents are a mix of skilled trade workers, construction workers, and professionals, many of them retired. The houses range from not-quite-perfectly-maintained to showcases, depending on the income and the age and health of the occupants.
In recent years, the land surrounding the development, (originally a single tract out in the boonies), has been surrounded by yupscale subdivisions, making that neighborhood appear less wealthy by comparison, but there is nothing “run down” about the neighborhood.
The crew doing the work constantly referred to the color of the residents. Supervisors, inspectors, and delivery people to the project constantly referred to the color of the residents. One (white) guy driving a trash truck through the neighborhood remarked that rather than the infrasrtucture improvements underway, we should just bulldoze the whole place and let white people build nice houses there.
.
I treated them the way I treat anyone in any development. However, contrary to your claim, there were a lot of people who could not refrain from making all kinds of observations about the residents based solely on a perception that they were not white.
The black community identifies itself as not white. I identify the black community as not white. And it is not because I am part of the “white community”. I never made the claim that whites do not see blacks as different. You keep bringing that up but you miss my point entirely. I said the black community perpetuates that identity difference when they preach it themselves.
And by the way. Have you ever been around a group of black guys that did not make a reference to white people that did not allude to them not being black?
Nothing in my post would indicate that I don’t identify myself in multiple ways. I’m a black person. I’m a woman. I’m an American. I’m a scientist. I have no problem talking about the “scientific community”. I don’t have a problem talking about American society. I don’t have a problem using the pronouns “us” and “we” when talking about women. I have a feeling you would have no problem with these identities either.
And yet suddenly I’m a racist because I acknowledge I’m black and share an identity with other black people?
Oh my lord.
As a matter of a fact, there were poor white kids who got shafted in my school. As unfortunate as that fact is, their plight is NOT the subject of this thread. I am not required to provide a full dissertation on poverty and all those affected by poverty before I can talk about black people.
[quote]
With me saying that, I have no doubt that you would get treated differently because of the color of your skin. Especially if you told me the same story of how your people need to change. Mainly because, regardless of my background or experiences, you do not consider me part of your group because of the color of my skin.
[/quote[
No, if you aren’t black then I can’t put in the “black community”. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t share other groups. If you live in my geographic area, you are in my geographic community. If you are a Christian of a progressive persuasion, then we are in the same moral/spiritual community. If you a human, I consider you a fellow human, entitled to all the respect and kindness deserving of all humans.
And I don’t consider all of my “skinfolk to be kinfolk” (sensu Zora Neal Hurston) either.
Do not ever assume you know what I think or “consider” again.
Skin color does matter. Racedoes matter. To say it doesn’t matter is to say that racism and prejudice went extinct back in the 60s. It didn’t.
As long as racism exists in this country, it benefits stigmitized minorities groups to organize themselves. The power differential in this country necessitates this.
How is this a “catch 22”
Who is treating people different because they were treated different? And how are they treating people different?
We haven’t made laws against it. There are still laws in our books that are racist.
And you say “we have to do that ourselves”. How are we going to change what groups of individuals believe if we can’t acknowledge the presence of those groups? If the country can’t do it and the only community that we’re supposed to belong in is the “country”, then who is the “we”?
People decry the attitude a lot of black youths have regarding education and work ethic (i.e., black = stupid and lazy). How do you fix this attitude when 1) you have to pretend this is a universal problem rather than a cultural one? 2) you will be deemed a racist for even targeting your efforts towards this one group? Explain this one to me, Well.
As tomndebb astutely remarked, black people don’t need to do anything for others to see us (us, dammit!) as different. We can drop the dialect. We can drop the FUBU garb. We can stop enrolling in historically black colleges and universities. We can stop going to predominately black churches. If real estate agents will allow it, we can spread out randomly throughout the country and break up all those black neighborhoods. We can do all of these things and we will still be “different”. And you know what? We will lose what’s good about our (our, dammit!) heritage and culture in the process. Everyone will lose.
I love your argument, though. Whites can choose to identify themselves any way they want. They can speak in a non-standard yet “white” accent and be described as “charming and colorful”. They can sit together in the lunchroom and talk about NASCAR and NHL. They can live in the lily white suburbs and join exclusive country clubs. They can feel pride in their predominately white universities, churches and synagogues, and community organizations. They can elect white people all day long. Their bookshelves can be filled with books written by all the white people in the world. They can have paintings of white ballerinas on their walls. Their knowledge base can be 100% western civ. Their childhood heros can all be white. On St. Patty’s Day, they can march with the other white, non-Irish folk and talk about how proud they are to be “Irish”. The unsurprising thing is they won’t see all of these things as being white. They will see what they do and like as being 100% American and “normal”.
And absolutely NO ONE will bat an eye or call them racists for simply doing what they are comfortable doing, things they were raised to do and enjoy. And yet black people who want to do “black” things are racist or “trying to be different”. We are even asked to question whether “black” things exist in the first place? How fucked up is that?
Please don’t lecture me on “blacks choosing to be different” or “blacks sticking to their own”. Not when white people have been islanding themselves off for centuries, and most do not show any desire to change.
I’m tired of black people needing white people, quite frankly. I’m actually sick of it. There is a sizable black middle class in the US. We have some straight-up rich black folk as well. We have all the manpower and brainpower we need to do it for ourselves. If a neighborhood school is in physical shambles, a neighborhood shouldn’t have to wait for the lazy-ass beauracracy to get it fixed. They can take care of it on their own. Trash on the street? Pick it up! Crime-infested vacant lots? Let’s organize a neighborhood watch, and get some of the big fellas at the church to take turns walking a beat. Children are getting pregnant? Let’s get some mentors involved. Let’s build us a rec center so the kids don’t have to play b-ball in crossfire. Let’s organize a petition to city council to get more police on this street. Let’s get people to volunteer in our schools and get these kids the quality of education they deserve. Let’s, let’s, let’s…
Yes, there are white people who black people need. There are white people who would be happy to help. However, the majority of white people do not care about black people and their problems. Just like the majority of Americans do not care about poor people and their problems. My mother organizes poor people–whites and blacks–to be their own caretakers. Independence and self-reliance do great things for the self-esteem, and personal effort is often more effective than external assistance. If your house is burning, call the fire department but don’t just stand there. Pull out the garden hose!
Conservatives think poor people rely way too much on the government. I think this is often a load of bull, but I also happen to believe that it is unfortunate that black people–particularly urban blacks mired in poverty–have all their hopes hanging on the government. The government will never be able to do all the things it should do. So the slack falls on strong individuals in the community to do something. It’s a recommendation that works for everyone, but given the history of blacks waiting for government intervention, I think black people would benefit the most from this “take charge” kind of mentality.