The collapse of liberal hope
A generation after the civil rights movement, Americans are once again engaged in a radical rethinking of their attitudes towards race, and major changes in public policies are imminent. The choice is whether to preserve the existing structure of race-based policies or opt for a completely different approach. Yet before adopting a course that will determine the future of race relations in the 21st century, Americans must step back from the sound and fury long enough to ask some fundamental questions about race and racism.
Black Rage <<<
The public mood is not conducive to such prudent statesmanship. Indeed the crisis of American race relations is evident from the volatile combination of confusion and anger that characterises the public debate. Both sentiments arise from a deep chasm of understanding that now separates blacks and white. Many whites have become increasingly scornful of black demands, and vehemently reject racial preferences. Most blacks, by contrast, support affirmative action as indispensible to fighting the enduring effects of white racism. On other racial issues as well, from the Los Angeles riots to the O.J. Simpson case, blacks and whites seem to view each other across a hostile divide. There is a political chasm as well : increasingly, the Republican party is becoming the party of whites, while the Democratic party is beholden to its African American voting base. If these political and racial divisions are exacerbated, we are likely to witness a further decomposition of the bonds that hold the country together. This America’s historically unprecedented attempt to construct a truly multiracial society may be doomed to failure. Is America a racist society? Deeply distressed by the continuing failure of blacks as a group to succeed in america, many scholars and social activists allege that all talk of racial progress is only a mirage. The three main features of the nations racial crisis are the phenomena of black rage and white backlash. In 1992, a white congresssional aide was shot to death in his home in Washington, D.C.. A young black man, Edward Evans was arrested because two friends of Evans said they witnessed the shooting and testified that Evans harboured strong anti-white sentiments and promised to kill a white man. The material evidence was overwhelming and eleven jurors, of which 5 were black, initially agreed that Evans was guilty of murder. However, one African American Woman, Velma McNeil, refused to convict. A frustrated white jury foreman claimed that ‘one juror’ was simply unwilling to give credence to the prosecution’s evidence against Evans. He also later stated that, during jury deliberations, McNeil told fellow jurors that the exoneration of LA police officers who beat black motorist Rodney King showed the systematic bias of the judicial system against blacks. Juro McNeil denied that her refusal to find the defendant guilty was based on race, pointing instead to possible contradictions in the state and the judge was forced to call a mistrial. A Washington Post photo shows McNeil emerging from the courtroom, smiling, chatting and embracing a relative of the accused.
If juror McNeil’s reluctance to convict a fellow African American was at least in part motivated by race, the incident is striking in that it reveals two paradigmatic cases of black rage : a poor black man, consumed with racial resentment, seeking to vent his hostility on a white man; and a middle class black woman, perhaps equally alienated from society, using the system to settle a score against whites as a group. Black rage is also part of the undertow of the O.J. Simpson trial, where the defense seems to capitalise on the antagonism of black jurors toward white policemen in order to win a hung jury or and acquittal. Both cases point to the judiciary’s vulnerability to racial politics. This is hardly a new problem : during the first half of this century in the segregated South, blacks were routinely victimised by racist policemen, prosecutors and judges, and juries. What is new is that, for the first time, whites may find it difficult to receive justice in many inner cities such as Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, which are fertile grounds of black rage.
Another well-known example of black anger was the ravage beating administered to white truckdriver Reginald Denny in the aftermath of the Rodney King case. The LA riots themselves showcased the resentment of poor blacks and Hispanics who burned and looted without a hint of embarrassment or remorse. African American scholar Cornel West termed the riots which caused claimed 50 lives and 4000 casualties a ‘display of justified social rage’. Black rapper and activist Ice-T struck an even more defiant note.
" The most peaceful time I ever experienced in the South Central was during the riots. While everybody were looking for fires, we walked through the streets. Kids were setting on fire, people were smiling. Everybody was shaking each others hands, feeling a camaraderie. It was as if the people has taken the city back ."
Black rage is a response to black suffering and failure, and reflects the irresistible temptation to attribute African American problems to a history of white racist oppression. Despite substantial progress over the past decades African Americans continue to show conspicuous evidence of failure - failure in the workplace, failure in schools and failure to maintain intact families and secured communities. Taken together, these hardships and inadequacies virtually assure that blacks will not receive equality of earnings and status with other groups in the foreseeable future. Even more seriously, they threaten to destroy some poor black communities and endanger the economic and physical integrity of society as a whole.
· The annual income of African Americans who are employed in full-time jobs amounts to 60% of that of whites. · The black unemployment rate is nearly double that of whites.
· 33% of blacks are poor, compared to just over 10% of whites.
· Half of all black children live in poverty. · Infant mortality rate for blacks is more than double that of white.
· The proportion of black male high school graduates who go on to college is lower today than in 1975.
· More young black males are in prison than in college.
· Homicide is the leading cause of death of black males between the ages of 15 to 34.
· Although African Americans make up 12% of the population, they account for more than 35% of all AIDS cases.
· The life expectancy of black men is 65 years, a rate lower than any other group in America and comparable to some Third World countries.
· Nearly 50% of all African Americans families are headed by single women.
· More than 65% of black children born each year are illegitimate
What if, not racism, has caused all these terrible problems? Black afflictions can be attributed to enforced victimisation of a nation with a record of ‘flagrant racial prejudice’. The case for holding white racism and its historical legacy responsible for the contemporary hardships of blacks is a strong one. Film producer Spike Lee argues that " When you are told every single day for 400 years that you are subhuman, when you rob people of their self-worth, knowledge and history, there’s nothing worse you can do." As Lee suggests, African Americans did not come to the country voluntarily, they were brought there in chains. Slavery lasted for more than 250 years, during which most blacks found their lives largely bent to the wills of their masters. African American scholar Gerald Early writes that "every single black life today is tied inextricably to the tragedy of slavery.
Others go beyond slavery to attribute African Americans problems to the residual effects of segregation and discrimination during the early years of the 20th century. Bush Wilson, former chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, views segregation as an American form of apartheid, which imposed indescribable deprivation and humiliation on blacks. For much of this century, black men were forced to do menial jobs, such as janitoring or field jobs. Black women had few occupations open to them other than cooking and cleaning in white households. Historian John Hope Franklin says, "Many young blacks today are angry because they do not believe that we have come very far. And there are times when I have to agree with them. These remarks imply that many blacks view racism not as a thing of the past, but as a continuing force that brutally limits the aspirations of African Americans today.
White Backlash <<<
For many white, in contrast, America does not have a race problem but rather a black problem. Most whites acknowledge historical oppression inflicted on blacks, but some raise questions about its contemporary significance. A response to this issue from a college student came in the form of "Slavery ended a long time ago. My ancestors were in Palermo at that time, and I’m tired of being lectured about how I should be responsible for slavery." Similarly, while many people concede the injustice of segregation, surveys show that most whites believe systematic oppression came to a halt with the civil rights era of a generation ago, when major laws were passed to guarantee legal equality by outlawing discrimination in schools, housing and the workplace. Many whites seem convinced that racism is flourishing today, not in American Society but in the imaginations of black activists. The appropriate remedy for existing discrimination, most whites seem to believe, is for the government to enforce the principle of race neutrality. Preferences based on colour or ancestry are now strongly opposed by majority of whites. Such preferences, as critics of affirmative action argue, compound the evil of discrimination by multiplying it. Conservative columnists have taken up the cause of white backlash. :Are we willing to permit ourselves to become a country with permanently coddled minorities?" Tony Snow writes that racial preferences are a "divisive nuisance and that charges of racism amount to nothing more than "playing the race card".
The Bell Curve <<<
In 1994, white backlash found scholarly support in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s controversial book The Bell Curve. By asserting that blacks and Hispanics were on the average less intelligent that Caucasians and Asians - deficiencies alleged to be possible inherited - Herrnstein and Murray supplied what to many angry whites must have sounded like and appealing explanation for why groups differ in academic performance and economic development. Although The Bell Curve met with furious denunciation --- "dishonest", "creepy", "shabby", "politically ugly" and "Nazi" were some of the labels used, the book was a runaway bestseller, attracting hundreds and thousands of readers. Could it be that Herrnstein and Murray were articulating truths many whites privately believe? After all the liberal insistence that the races are identical in ability seems to conflict with commonsense observation and must be accompanied by an elaborate rationale for why blacks are not doing well in America, for why black crime rates and illegitimacy rates are much higher than those of whites and Asians, for why Asia and Latin America are in a state of rapid economic expansion while most of Africa are remains in a state of economic and political chaos. Herrnstein and Murray’s view seems to succeed by the logic of Occam’s razor : a natural hierarchy of racial abilities would predict and fully account for such phenomena.
If Herrnstein and Murray are right, the hope for a society in which all races compete on equal terms is indeed a mirage. The possibility of such intrinsic differences raises old and ugly prospects : eugenic schemes to ensure survival of the fittest, millions of black boys and girls stigmatized as incapable of learning, orphanages for children from broken or impoverished families, a revival of certain forms of segregation and discrimination. Conservative columnist Samuel Francis in an recent article urged that whites begin a ‘reconquest of the US by deporting all illegal aliens and perhaps many recent legal immigrants." Repealing all civil rights protections for mothers, providing incentives for whites to have more children and minorities to stop reproducing. Although these sentiments cannot be taken as a representative of whites in general, certainly few would express themselves this way - nevertheless discontentment over affirmative action and Third World immigration appears to be solidifying what sociologist Robert Blauner terms a "dominant white racial identity." White backlash is now a political juggernaut that threatens to reverse the liberal immigration and civil rights policies of the past generation and to further polarise the races in the country. An American Dilemma :
Was Slavery a racist institution ? Although slavery ended in the United States more than a century ago, its legacy continues to be disputed among scholars and to underlie contemporary debates about public policies. The reason for this controversy is that slavery is considered the classic expression of American racism, and its effects are still viewed as central to the problems faced by blacks in the US today.
The effect of slavery, African American scholar Michael Eric Dyson writes, "continues to exert its brutal influence in the untold sufferings of millions of everyday folk." He also expressed that residues of racism would continue to exist even at the close of the 20th century. For Dyson, slavery is responsible for the high levels of black residential separation from whites today. Stephen Steinberg writes in the The Ethnic Myth that "ghettos are nothing less than the shameful residue of slavery.". Many other African American scholars also assert that slavery is responsible for many of the social pathologies in the black community such as chronic homelessness, single-parent households and youth violence. They also argue that slavery has undermined contemporary black identity, causing many African Americans to internalise racist stereotypes invented by slave-owners, that slavery has produced in African Americans "an airborne people" still consumed with self-contempt, self-hatred, self-affliction, and self-flagellation. Adopting a more extreme stand, they claim that "Slavery is a constant reminder of what whites in America might do."