Authors: Eugene Robinson
Race is a human invention, a social construct, and its parameters shift over time. Racial identity has always been fluid, based not on objective reality but on perception and
self-image. Europeans once held the notion that the Irish were a separate “race” with distinctive characteristics, as were the Germans, the Slavs, and of course the oft-persecuted Jews; now we think of all these peoples as “white.” The San people of South Africa have a different genetic and cultural history from that of the Bantu people of the Congo, but both are now considered “black.” There is no valid way to divide people into racial categories—which means that the important thing, where race is concerned, is how people are seen and how they see themselves.
Some of the most interesting recent data about African Americans’ self-image comes from that stunning 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center, in which 37 percent of black Americans said that black people in this country could no longer “be thought of as a single race.” There was no follow-up question to explore just what those people—an incredible four out of ten—had in mind when they made that judgment. But there are powerful suggestions that the separation perceived by so many African Americans is both economic and cultural.
The Pew survey asked African American respondents which of two statements was closer to their own views: “Racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days,” or “Blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition.” When the question was asked in 1994, a majority—56 percent—blamed discrimination; only 34 percent held the black poor responsible for their failure to “get ahead.” But in the 2007 survey, those attitudes were reversed: A full 53 percent of African American respondents blamed poor black people for their plight, while just 30 percent said that racial discrimination
was making it impossible for poor African Americans to better themselves. This says nothing about racial identity, but perhaps it does tell us something about racial solidarity.
Another set of questions inquired about values. Asked whether “the values held by middle-class black people and the values held by poor black people” had become more similar or more different in the past decade, 61 percent said values had diverged; 31 percent said the values of poor and middle-class African Americans now have “only a little” or “almost nothing” in common.
2
To put it in the terms of this book, it seems that most African Americans now blame the Abandoned for their own poverty and dysfunction. Most black Americans see a widening gap between the values held by the Mainstream and the Abandoned. And almost a third of African Americans describe the chasm as so wide that it is hard to imagine how it could be bridged.
* * *
Solidarity has been one of black Americans’ most powerful weapons in the struggle for freedom, justice, and opportunity. There was often sharp disagreement about how to get from where we were to where we needed to go—the argument between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, for example, or the many differences in approach among such titans of the civil rights movement as Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Whitney Young of the National Urban League, and Martin Luther King. I once interviewed Julian Bond about his time with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and I asked
which was the most passionate argument he could recall from those heady days. He thought for a moment, then a moment longer. “Wow, there were so many,” he said.
Finally he settled on a two-day, yelling-and-screaming row over whether the SNCC would participate in the first Selma-to-Montgomery march on March 7, 1965. Most SNCC leaders believed the march would be a distraction from the group’s primary mission: grassroots organizing. Some even thought it was a made-for-television stunt, with clear potential for violence that could get out of hand. Others believed that at a moment so fraught with both peril and potential, an organization like the SNCC simply could not remain on the sidelines. The executive committee eventually voted not to join the march officially, but to tell members they could participate as individuals if they chose. The marchers were met by state-sponsored mob violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a bloody confrontation that is remembered as one of the most galvanizing moments of the whole civil rights era. Ironically, an SNCC leader, Congressman John Lewis, was one of the day’s great heroes.
Yet despite clashes over methods back then, there was no real dispute about what the agenda for black Americans should include: the right to vote, the right to a better education, the right to use public accommodations, the right to live beyond the confines of assigned ghettos, the right to live without fear of oppression by police, the right to live without fear of violent attack by hooded, cross-burning terrorists. Those were the short-term goals. Longer term, there was political empowerment, economic development, and full incorporation of African Americans into the worlds of business, academia, the media, and so forth. It was clear where black Americans
needed to go, and there was not really much of an argument about the kinds of policies we should advocate and support.
Crudely put, what was good for poor people was good for black people, since so many black people were poor. Conversely, what was good for rich people was bad for black people, since so few black people were rich. The economic theories of John Maynard Keynes were good for black people because expensive government programs were necessary for the project of uplift; if deficit spending led to inflation, that was no great disaster because black people had so little capital to protect. The economic theories of Milton Friedman, which saw inflation as a scourge and advocated tight control over the money supply, were bad for black people. In the larger sense, it was generally true that what was good for the established order was bad for black people, who didn’t belong to the Establishment; and what was upsetting to the established order was good for black people because it created new opportunities for outsiders like us.
That was then.
Today, black Americans’ fundamental rights are secure. To be sure, these rights are not always and universally observed. A year into the administration of the first African American president, federal authorities accused a Mississippi school district of deliberately enforcing a policy of segregation by transferring students to designated schools according to race. Postmortems on the subprime mortgage crisis unearthed evidence that worrisome numbers of black home buyers were steered by agents and brokers into riskier loans, at higher interest rates, than whites with similar incomes and credit ratings. African Americans are tremendously overrepresented in the prison population nationwide, and much of the disparity
would be eliminated if the law did not treat crack cocaine, which is mostly bought and sold in Abandoned black communities, so much more harshly than it treats the identical drug in powder form, which is the way whites tend to buy and sell it. When presented with obvious examples of unequal treatment such as these, it is easy for the four black Americas to agree: Here is an injustice, here is how to fix it.
There also is no real dispute about issues that involve symbolism. When a white entertainer utters a phrase like “nappy-headed ho’s” or uses the word “nigger,” all four black Americas concur in outrage. It would be wrong to trivialize these kinds of incidents; symbolic is not a synonym for insignificant. Dignity and respect matter. And given the arc of African American history, they matter a lot.
But far more important than symbols are the big, concrete, urgent concerns that some black Americans now face—issues on which consensus has been elusive and momentum has stalled.
Earlier in these pages, I proposed that our most urgent priority should be an all-out assault on the stubborn, self-perpetuating poverty and dysfunction of the Abandoned, channeling into this effort the affirmative action preferences and resources that currently go mostly to the Mainstream. I am confident that many in the Mainstream would support such an effort—philosophically, at least.
But African Americans who have only recently managed to attain middle-class status would complain, understandably, that they need all the support they can get just to keep from falling back. And even some in what might be called the upper Mainstream—professionals with six-figure incomes—find themselves handcuffed by the ten-to-one wealth ratio
between whites and blacks. An illustration: Acquaintances of mine, a couple about my age, wanted a better education for their two children than the District of Columbia public schools could offer. So they sent them to an excellent private school where tuition has climbed to nearly $30,000 a year. The couple makes a combined $230,000 a year, which is a lot. But like most successful African Americans (and many other Americans, of course, regardless of race), they built their whole lives essentially from scratch. There was no trust fund to help pay for the children’s schooling, no fat and timely checks from grandma and grandpa. The couple ended up draining the equity in their house to pay those education costs and maintain a comfortable lifestyle. When their son got accepted by an expensive private college, they were already tapped out. For parents in that situation, it would be easy to believe, on an intellectual level, that affirmative action scholarships should go to those with the most critical need, the Abandoned. Yet it would be hard not to accept one of those scholarships if it were offered.
The economic interests of the Mainstream and those of the Abandoned coincide in the long run; ultimately, the goal is for the Abandoned to become Mainstream. But those interests diverge along the way. Two obvious goals for African Americans are consolidating decades of impressive gains into solid, multigenerational wealth; and doing whatever it takes to uplift the millions still trapped in desperate, multigenerational poverty. One project benefits the Mainstream; the other benefits the Abandoned. There is no obvious reason for universal agreement on which should have first claim on finite government resources and attention.
This is a moment when the Transcendent are in an unprecedented position to lead. I refer not just to political leaders like
President Obama and House majority whip James Clyburn but also to the black men and women who have risen to great power in business, entertainment, communications, and other fields. They have more authority than earlier generations could have imagined, greater resources at their disposal than ever before, and powerful influence not just among African Americans but throughout the larger society. Polls show that traditional leadership groups like the NAACP and the National Urban League have lost much, if not most, of their standing among black Americans; these venerable institutions are still respected, but it is safe to say that no one hangs on every word uttered by Benjamin Jealous or Marc Morial, who are their current leaders. Both men are smart, creative, and dynamic, but neither they nor their successors will ever be able to speak to and for black America the way that Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young once did. Today’s Transcendent black Americans have far more clout as individuals—when Oprah Winfrey says jump, legions ask how high—but there are no leaders who can claim to represent all four black Americas.
What the Transcendents can do, at a minimum, is make a difference in their own areas of power and influence. To take one example, I made clear earlier that I didn’t care for the movie
Precious
. But by giving it their backing, Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry provided a platform for a host of talented African Americans who otherwise might never have been noticed. Lee Daniels now joins the select group of Hollywood directors who can have their choice of projects. Geoffrey Fletcher, who won an Oscar for the screenplay, now will have his scripts read with interest rather than tossed into some pile. The stories that these artists go on to tell may provoke, uplift, inspire—or they may not. But at least they will be told.
In a similar manner, Transcendent CEOs can’t rescue the Abandoned, but they can serve as localized engines of economic development for the Mainstream by making certain that their companies actually practice diversity rather than just preach it. If they ensure that qualified and capable African Americans are represented among their executive teams, suppliers, and outside bankers, lawyers, and accountants, they will leave behind a far greater legacy than whatever the final numbers say on the balance sheet.
There is Barack Obama, of course, who technically does represent all four black Americas—and belongs to two of them, as a Transcendent and a double Emergent. But Obama represents the whole color wheel of America—white, brown, yellow, indeterminate, whatever. It is inconceivable that the president of the United States could see himself, or have others see him, as a “black leader.”
It’s time, in any event, to retire the term “black leader” for good. At this point in our progress, it sounds patronizing. Given the achievements of African Americans over the past four decades, we are hardly a bunch of followers who need to be told what to think and do. More important, leadership implies coordinated movement in a specified direction. It implies an agenda, and African Americans don’t have one. We have many. At times they overlap, and at times they conflict.
Politically it is likely that all four black Americas will remain loyal to the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future—not only because of Obama, whom African Americans are unlikely to desert, but because the modern Republican Party has made so little effort to attract black voters, or even to stop doing their best to drive them away. (Naming Michael Steele as the first African American chairman of the party doesn’t count, its
tokenism was so apparent.) In 2009, the Transcendent businesswoman Sheila Johnson, a Democrat, made headlines when she publicly supported Republican Bob McDonnell for governor of Virginia—but she was embarrassed when he promptly declared Confederate History Month with a proclamation that neglected to mention the tiny little detail known as slavery. This strikes me as typical. I have always believed that it would be good if Republicans made a genuine attempt to win African American votes—which would make Democrats have to work harder to keep them—but the reality is that this doesn’t seem likely anytime soon.