We feud about the fires in Ferguson, Mo., and we can agree only that racial divisions remain raw. So let’s borrow a page from South Africa and impanel a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to examine race in America.
The model should be the 9/11 commission or the Warren Commission on President Kennedy’s assassination, and it should hold televised hearings and issue a report to help us understand ourselves. Perhaps it could be led by the likes of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and Oprah Winfrey.
We as a nation need to grapple with race because the evidence is overwhelming that racial bias remains deeply embedded in American life. Two economists, Joseph Price and Justin Wolfers, found that white N.B.A. referees disproportionally call fouls on black players, while black refs call more fouls on white players. “These biases are sufficiently large that they affect the outcome of an appreciable number of games,” Price and Wolfers wrote.
WHEN I write about racial inequality in America, one common response from whites is eye-rolling and an emphatic: It’s time to move on.
“As whites, are we doomed to an eternity of apology?” Neil tweeted at me. “When does individual responsibility kick in?”
Terry asked on my Facebook page: “Why are we still being held to actions that took place long ago?”
“How long am I supposed to feel guilty about being white? I bust my hump at work and refrain from living a thug life,” Bradley chimed in. “America is about personal responsibility. ... And really, get past the slavery issue.”
I haven't been able to write about the results of the election until now.
Frankly, the outcome is so overwhelming to me personally that I haven't been able to type a word. More on that below.
And then, it seemed to me that I needed to remain quiet and listen to my friends--black, white and brown--and their emotional, thankful and celebratory reactions.
My feelings here really have nothing to do with politics or political party or philosophy.
My response emerges from my own life, my experiences and my own journey as it relates to race, community, love and hate, division and unity.
The election of Senator Barack Obama is historic for the nation. And, it is historic for me, a white man.
It is also somehow redemptive, or so it seems and feels to me.
I grew up in a segregated community.
I lived a thoroughly segregated childhood in Jim Crow Dallas.
I enjoyed and had the benefit of virtually no exposure to African Americans as a child. Though, I do remember attending a fundraiser for some local organization when I was 9 or 10 that involved a black-face minstrel performance
I attended completely segregated public schools.
My first "real job" I worked at a Sinclair service station--8th and 9th grade summers, so much for child labor laws! My boss was the owner of the station, a former law enforcement officer and about the most racist person I've ever encountered in my life. He represented to the extreme the prevailing thought and worldview of most of the people I knew.
My first real experience of and exposure to black youth came during the summer prior to my junior year in high school when I landed a job with the school district mowing football fields and working as a custodial assistant. Two of my young workmates were black, Carl and Leotis. I have never forgotten them or that summer. They attended the Hamilton Park schools, the campus where African American students went to school, their only choice back then.
That first experience was extremely positive and, thus, very confusing to me. These young men were just like me, except they couldn't go into all the places I could enter during that summer. I remember clearly a hot summer afternoon when we were taking a break. They were asked to leave a convenience store where we had all entered to buy a cold drink. Until then, it had never occurred to me that such treatment took place in my hometown.
They were just like me, but I'd been schooled by my environment, and the people I trusted, who dominated and informed it, to believe that black people were not like me at all. This was undoubtedly the most significant and crippling lie of my childhood.
I remember playing in a football game during my junior year at Richardson High School against South Oak Cliff High School, an all black public school in Dallas. I remember how nervous we were before that game--the first time any of us had competed against black students. Frankly, we were afraid. We won the game, but I remember once again feeling confused and relieved by my experience.
To be blunt, I wasn't prepared for life in my own country--my upbringing, my education, my experiences in the church, nothing had really provided me what I needed to negotiate the American racial reality.
These experiences caused me to recall images and experiences from earlier in my life. The real nature of my community and of its unspoken, but clearly normative values were coming into focus for me. I remembered hearing classmates shouting and celebrating as they ran down the halls and out of school on that terrible day--November 22, 1963--when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated here in Dallas.
I heard children shouting, "Thank God, he's dead, the Catholic is dead!"
When I arrived at home that day, my mother was crying. But, for the first time I had encountered the amazing capacity my community possessed for terrible hatred. There was no confusion on that awful day.
I also remembered the hatred that was directed toward President Lyndon Johnson, mostly around issues related to civil rights, voting rights and segregation.
Then, I went off to Harding College (1968-1972).
During road trips as a member of the football team, I remember confronting the racism that greeted my black teammates. We staged a mass walkout in Jackson, Mississippi when black members of the team were asked to leave a restaurant. Painful, embarrassing, but not unusual at all to these African American friends.
But, it was on campus as well, and from the top.
I recall sitting in chapel one day listening to President Cliff Ganus arguing against interracial dating on campus. He said, I can hear him as if it were yesterday, "Dating across racial lines would be like my daughter bringing home a boy with a fourth grade education."
At that almost all of the black students walked out.
Why didn't I?
After college, I spent a year in Memphis, Tennessee doing graduate work. Less than four years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We moved from there to Shreveport, Louisiana where I served my first church full-time.
My church was located on a boundary line between a relatively affluent, historic area and a very low-income community. Across the street from the church, really adjacent to the parking lot was a row of slum housing, owned by an absentee slumlord. A small, struggling black community occupied the substandard housing.
Early on I met a little boy who lived in that housing. His name was Wayne. He came to church with us and we became good friends. He lived with his Granny. He was a sweet, wonderful little boy. He loved to wag Jennifer, our first child around on his hip! I can still see him at our church.
Church members took exception to my inviting Wayne and other African Americans to church services, as well as to membership. I have many stories I could tell.
I suppose the most revealing involved a meeting with one of my deacons. He called me to his office at Louisiana Bank and Trust located at the time in the tallest building in downtown Shreveport. He served as one of the Vice-Presidents of the bank, a very successful, well-placed young guy who had attended a Christian university.
"Larry, are you telling me that I could go to hell because I don't like n_________?" he asked with real aggression.
"It is something you should consider," I replied.
I tell people we were in Shreveport for two years and 45 minutes for good reason!
My experiences while living in New Orleans for five years were much better. But the segregation, the classism, the barriers remained, as they do still in Dallas and across the nation today.
I'm not wise enough to weave even my own story together with much insight. But, one thing I do know: the election of Senator Barack Obama as our 44th President is a national accomplishment, a moment of great significance.
It would be a mistake to assume now that race doesn't matter or that we now live in a post-racial nation.
But the ascendancy and success of Barack Obama represents a redemption of sorts, a crossing over, a sorting out, a clarifying experience. The pain, the suffering, and the endurance in the face of great injustice and national evil has been vindicated in a very necessary manner.
I am a white man.
I, too, have been crying since November 4. Tears of joy, even though there is much yet to do.
John E. Stapleford's essay, "A Torturous Journey: The Condition of Black America," (Christian Scholar's Review, XXXVII:2, Winter 2008, pages 231-251) is very important work that deserves our serious attention. If you've been following his page, you've seen my attempts to summarize his extensive research. I've put it up here in hopes that it would further a conversation beyond this space out in the real world we all occupy.
Much of the research is downright depressing. A number who have taken the time to comment have asked questions about what to do and how to respond.
Stapleford ends his essay with a short section he calls "What Might Be Done." He writes from the perspective of a churchman, so his suggestions relate to communities of faith and their possible responses to the unique challenges facing African Americans in the United States.
Here's part of what he suggests as possible responses for the church:
1) Be a prophetic voice by making congregations aware of the reality facing black Americans and by speaking this truth into the larger society. People and institutions of faith should use their human capital to invest in and work for social and systemic change. Blacks and whites should be working together, side by side in efforts to create new partnerships, drive forward funding reform and by engaging in initiatives to work for real change.
2) Whites should support the efforts of blacks to build a better future. Commitment to working together to see improvements in public education, housing, health care, wage levels, employment skill enhancement and access to equal opportunity.
3) The 21st century should be the century of multiracial congregations. Work must be done to change the fact that 90% of blacks attend predominately black congregations and at least 95% of whites attend predominately white churches. All sorts of obstacles exist, but a change in behavior and mindset is called for here.
4) Whites should work hard with blacks to see significant human, social and educational capital growth in our national community.
I would add that whites simply need to open their minds and eyes to the unique and challenging positions that African Americans occupy in the United States. Listening with a new set of ears, learning the benefit of arriving at new understandings by simply hearing people out no matter how frustrating, challenging or new the ideas may sound. Seeking first to understand, rather than to be understood will be a key principle for achieving authentic community and informed attitudes.
Honesty and candor will be essential to any progress. Patronizing attitudes, flights of white guilt and continuing adversarial postures share the same debilitating character and should be avoided.
We must keep talking. We must learn new skills grounded in patience and a long-term commitment to breakthroughs, progress, community and reconciliation.
God help us to never give up. The cost of doing so will only continue to add to a national tab that we simply cannot afford to pay. Much work remains to be done.
I'd love to hear about your experiences. I'd appreciate your responses.
I’ve been breaking down the research of John E. Stapleford that is reported out in his very insightful essay, “A Torturous Journey: The Condition of Black America,” (Christian Scholar’s Review, XXXVII, No. 2, Winter 2008, pages 240ff). You can read my previous posts on his work by backtracking a bit (April 15, 18, 24, 2008).
Our nation is involved in a new and serious conversation about race as we head for the general election in November. Stapleford’s work is important for any meaningful conversation based on hard data and genuine understanding of the issues facing the nation and, more particularly, African Americans.
To conserve space, I have summarized much of what he presents, but all of what follows comes from his work.
The way out of the economic hole facing blacks in the United States was found in access to “the job growth centers and quality education available in the suburbs of our older metropolitan areas. But their wealth deficit, among other factors, prevented ordinary black families from participating in the wave of suburbanization. As sons and daughters of sharecroppers, small farmers and laborers in the South as late as the 1940s, blacks not only had a human capital deficit but had little opportunity to accumulate wealth. Sharecropping and farm labor continued a post-slavery version of white supremacy over blacks. . . .There was little or no opportunity for the accumulation of wealth” (242).
Other key factors that excluded our African American neighbors from the wealth and progress of the nation include:
During the 1950s and 1960s, blacks were excluded from both Veterans Administration (VA) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage products.
Numerous (“a wave”) of discriminatory deed restrictions.
The removal of these roadblocks did not offset the lost opportunity for the accumulation of wealth via the rapid appreciation of suburban housing values from which blacks were systematically excluded.
Fact: during the 1990s, nearly 50% of all white families who bought homes got their down payment from family or sources other than their own savings, whereas only one out of 8 African Americans enjoyed such positive options.
Each year a $225 billion intergenerational transfer of wealth occurs in the U. S. For every $1 available for transfer among whites, there is only 10 cents available for transfer among blacks.
The median inheritance of white households is almost 13 times that of black households.
Less than half of black households are homeowners, for whites the number is ¾. Empirical research indicates that renter-dominated urban neighborhoods have a negative impact on health, personal development and school outcomes.
Blacks lack needed transportation to outlying job centers—24% of blacks own no car (7% for whites); this number rises to 70% in high-poverty, inner city neighborhoods; the median value of black-owned vehicles is 42% that of white-owed cars.
From 1960 to the late 1970s, over 22 million whites moved into suburban communities and the white population in central cities declined by 4 million. During the same time frame, black population rose by 6 million in the central cities and the suburbs gained only 500,000 blacks.
Key factors in the creation of the reality we all face today.
[Next: the impact of the decline of urban communities]
The significant research of John E. Stapleford provides content for a meaningful conversation about race in America. As in previous posts (April 15 and 18, 2008), what follows is taken from his important paper, “A Torturous Journey: The Condition of Black America,” (Christian Scholar’s Review, XXXVII, No. 2, Winter 2008, pages 240ff).
Stapleford argues that African Americans entered the 20th century with both human capital and wealth deficits created by their experience of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.
Human capital is measured in part by educational benchmarks.
In 1910, 3% of white adults were illiterate, compared to 30% of black adults. By 1920, illiteracy rates had dropped to 2% and 23% respectively for the two groups. However, “black illiteracy was concentrated spatially, ranging in 1920 from 26% in the South to 7% in the Northeast and Midwest. By 1940, 63% of black adults had a sixth grade education or less, in contrast to 17% of white adults. Seven percent of black adults had a high school education or better in contrast to 29% of white adults” (240).
“Southern black children received. . .fewer days of schooling than southern white children. In Mississippi in 1940, for example, white children spent 136 days in school while black children, in inferior facilities, spent only 96 days in school. Per-pupil spending that year in Mississippi was $513 per white child and $89 per black child. This was the human capital that black migrants brought to the industrial Northeast and Midwest” (240).
“By the 1950s, in spite of these educational deficiencies, African Americans were finding manufacturing jobs in urban centers that allowed them to support their families. The black middle class grew as a result. Then came major shifts in the American economy producing market forces that 'whipsawed' black labor (See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, Vintage Books 1997), including:
*The decline in manufacturing in the U. S. economy. Manufacturing dropped from 31% of non-farm labor in 1950 to 11% in 2005.
*The suburbanization of manufacturing and low skill service jobs. Between 1967 and 1987, Philadelphia lost 64% of its manufacturing jobs; Chicago lost 60%; New York City, 58%; and Detroit, 51%, a disappearance of over 1.1 million jobs, Similarly, between 1970 and 1985, the total jobs requiring less than a high school degree declined 33% in New York City and 44% in Philadelphia.
*The globalization of new manufacturing jobs.
*The structural shift of employment growth into services where education was the major determinant of the level of earnings.
*Changes in technology produced occupation bifurcation, separating service workers by education into the haves and have nots.
*The surge of married (and educated) females into the labor force. The labor force participation rate for married women jumped from 25% in 1950 to 61% today. . . .
*The decline of unions. In the 1950s, unions included 32% of all wage and salary workers and today include only 13%. Typically, unions raise the wages of less skilled workers.
*The second Great Wave of immigration. . . .
“The result of all this was a decline in the real wages of low-skill workers that began with the recession of 1973-75 and still exists today. . . .In today’s service economy, formal education is the path to an income that can support a family, to health care coverage (most particularly preventive care), and to the accumulation of retirement benefits. The working poor have none of these things, and a disproportionate share of American blacks is confined by a deficit in human capital to the ranks of the working poor” (241-42).
Reactions?
[Next: Race in America, Part 4—the way out, no way]
So, how are we doing when it comes to race in America?
Consider these facts:
Black household median income is 65% of white household median income, and given the rate of closure over the past 40 years, it will take 150 more years for the nation to reach parity.
One of 4 African Americans lives in poverty--for white Americans the ratio is 1 of 12.
Over any 4-year period 54% of blacks will have a run of poverty, while in the white community 28% will have the run of bad luck.
One-third of black children are poor, compared to 10% of white kids.
Black families possess 10 cents of wealth for every dollar of wealth held by whites families.
Median inheritance for whites is $10,000, compared to $798 for blacks.
A person is considered "asset poor" if his/her access to resources is inadequate to meet basic needs for 90 days. The asset poverty rate for white families was 19.7% in 1999. For blacks it was 57.6%.
To arrive at residential racial integration, about 2/3 of black households would need to relocate.
Blacks make up about 13% of the U. S. population, but own only 5% of all businesses and receive less than one-half of 1% of business sales.
Unemployment rates for blacks is twice that of whites.
[from John E. Stapleford, "A Torturous Journey: The Condition of Black America," Christian Scholar's Review, XXXVII:2, Winter 2008, pages 232-233]
I've referenced Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, NJ, here in the past. His personal story and his vision for urban America captured my attention when I first read about his work. The fact that he chose to live in public housing was what initially caused me to take a closer look at this young leader.
Last Friday evening, Booker appeared on Bill Moyers Journal, a PBS program that aired on KERA Channel 13 here in Dallas.
You can catch his interview with Moyers, as well as find your way to a informative segment on the 40th anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report on race relations in the U. S.
Over the weekend, I sawJim Wallison a CNN interview talking about the speechSenator Barack Obamadelivered last week in Philadelphia dealing with race relations in the United States.
Wallis made an important comment that stood out from the other participants who were being interviewed. He suggested that every parent in the nation should sit down with their children and watch the speech together and talk about it. Wallis, and many others, believe that the speech's importance transcends the current political battle going on in the Democratic primary process.
I think Wallis is correct. The speech should be watched and read. Then, we should find ways to reflect on it with others. The subject of race and reconciliation across our nation's racial divides is an important one. It relates directly to the work we are doing in the inner city here and it transcends partisan politics.
Just for the record, here's what the Senator said in a speech he titled,“A More Perfect Union."
_________________________
Constitution Center Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Gerald Britt serves as Vice-President of Public Policy and Community Program Development at Central Dallas Ministries.
The Dallas Morning News published his editorial essay on the "Dream Act" in yesterday's edition of the paper. I knew you'd want to read it. So, here it is:
I want to go on the public record as a supporter of the Dream Act. You may have never heard of it and, like me, would not have thought a great deal about it if you had. My support is provoked by two incidents that force me to confront an issue that finds me somewhat conflicted.
Two young Hispanic people, Monica and José, were picked up in Greenville at a senior skip day gathering earlier this year. However you feel about kids skipping school, senior skip day is an unofficial tradition that goes back to my ancient day.
The problem is, this brother and sister are not citizens. Their parents are undocumented, even though they have been in this country since Monica was 5. Now two young people – who have done nothing but go to school, prepare for a bright future and make their community proud – could be deported.
Similarly, young Victoria Chiwara is an immigrant from Zimbabwe. She and her family came to America seeking asylum. Her attorney missed a filing deadline, and this young lady, enrolled in community college in Tarrant County, with a scholarship to Baylor University, was threatened with deportation, until her friends and the media intervened.
The Dream Act legislation would provide temporary legal status to any child of undocumented immigrants who has no record of criminal activity and completes high school, enrolls in a two- or four-year institution of higher education or enlists in the armed forces. As I see it, this is legislation in the best interest of the children of undocumented immigrants and our country.
I understand anxiety among African-Americans that a focus on immigration reform comes at the expense of our own struggle for justice. The National Urban League's audit of black America's progress is a torrent of statistical social inequities showing that when it comes to poverty, employment, education, housing and incarceration, black people are not doing well.
But a commitment to total justice for black Americans cannot mean hatefulness toward others. The African-American legacy has always been the championing of human rights for all. Brown vs. Board of Education (1954), the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the door to equality for all citizens. The hope inspired by these august achievements makes our country attractive to people from all across the globe.
We and our allies have challenged America to make room for all people. This cannot apply only to the sons and daughters of former slaves and slave owners; it must also apply to immigrants.
The rhetoric of some in our post-9/11 world suggests the "illegal" presence of immigrants represents a security threat. We must not be swayed by 9/11 paranoia and xenophobia that scapegoats the foreign born and those of foreign ancestry. Forgotten is the fact that the 19 hijackers who caused the devastation in New York entered the country legally. And the most horrible terrorist act prior to 9/11 wasn't committed by an undocumented alien but by an American named Timothy McVeigh.
The challenge of immigration is rooted in America's failure to deal with race. Thomas Jefferson, another conflicted American, said that dealing with race is "like holding a wolf by the ears, you did not like it much, but you dare not let it go." We must deal with racial injustice, class inequity and immigration.
The Dream Act isn't the total answer. It is, however, a meaningful start.
The National Urban League released its annual report a couple of weeks ago, The State of Black America 2007: Portrait of the Black Male.
You can find the Executive Summary at http://www.nul.org/. You can purchase a copy from their website or via Amazon.com right here on my page (see thumbnail in column to the right that benefits CDM).
The Urban League does the nation a service every year by tracking and evaluating the progress, or lack thereof, among African Americans, as compared to whites, along six "weighted index values," including Total Equality, Economic, Health, Education, Social Justice, and Civic Engagement.
The 2007 report notes that African Americans status stands at 73.3% of whites status in the cumulative index. Economically they are doing 57% as well as whites; 78% as well in terms of health; 79% as well in the area of education; 66% in overall social justice concerns and 105% in the arena of civic engagement, the one category in which they out distance the white experience in America today.
Here are some of the noteworthy facts of life for black Americas in 2007:
++African American men are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as white males (9.5% compared to 4% for whites).
++Among young men (20 to 24-years-old) 76.5 of whites were employed, compared to 68.8% of blacks.
++For blacks over 25-years-old with less than a high school education 60% are unemployed, as compared to 53% of whites.
++African American men earn only 75% as much as their white counterparts.
++For African Americans under 18-years-old, 33.5% live in poverty, compared to 10% of white youths.
++Among black Americans, 47.9% own their homes, whereas 75.8% of whites own homes. In addition, blacks are three times more likely to obtain high-priced mortgages than whites.
++Black men are more than 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. Average jail sentences for African American males are 10 months longer than for white men.
++Young black men between 15 and 34-years-old are nine times more likely to die of homicide than white men the same age and they are almost seven times as likely to contract HIV/AIDS.
++Black children do well in early childhood--over two-thirds are enrolled in early childhood education programs, such as Head Start, compared to 64% of white children. However, black children, especially males, begin to drop out in middle school and high school at alarming rates.
++Twenty-one percent of teachers in majority black schools had less than three years experience, compared to 10 percent in majority white schools.
++Dollars spent per black student was 82% of those spent per white student.
The Urban League report goes on to suggest a number of steps to improve the lives of African Americans, and black males in particular. The report would be well worth reading.
There is much to do for all of us who seek a nation of opportunity and equal access for everyone.
Thanks to the National Urban League for this important, ongoing research.
The United States has never enjoyed the leadership of an African American President, not because there have been no qualified African Americans, but because of our society's prevailing racist assumptions.
On the very day that he was kicking off his own run for the White House, Senator Joseph Biden, Jr. (D-Delaware) stumbled badly. Speaking of Senator BarackObama (D-Illinois) and his potential candidacy for President and his prospects of being the first African American to hold the office, Biden told reporters that Obama was, "the first mainstream, African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy." I have no idea what Mr. Biden meant. I do know where he was coming from, and that scene is not all goodness and light.
It is true that Senator Obama, elected by a wide cross section of Illinois voters to the U. S. Senate with a large majority, rises from the mainstream of the American political process. Thankfully, his emergence is a sign of improving racial attitudes in the nation. Previous African American Presidential candidates have stepped forward from the margins of our political process. (Although, Jesse Jackson won my precinct caucus vote in the 1984 Democratic Primary when we lived in Richardson, Texas!)
Where Biden slipped up, and actually revealed an insight into the struggling soul of the nation, was in the remainder of his statement.
Articulate.
Bright.
Clean.
Nice looking.
Did he mean or imply that no candidate before Obama possessed any of these characteristics? In his apologies that went on the rest of the day on Wednesday, he seemed to deny that he meant his words to be taken in that way. I have no doubt that he didn't mean for us to take his statement this way, but what informed his observation in the first place?:
Actually, Biden may have done us all a great service. In fact, Senator Obama's almost instant popularity may be a reflection of the same beliefs and ideas that Senator Biden expressed yesterday without much thought.
Over the course of our history, countless African Americans have possessed the qualities necessary to serve as effective leaders of this nation. Unfortunately, the expressed and unexpressed biases of our national community have stood squarely in the way.
As we move toward the 2008 election, it seems more than realistic to think that we may finally elect a black President.
Ironically, if we do, for many people like Mr. Biden it may be because this particular African American is "acceptable" as judged by traditional, and largely mythical, white standards and categories.
Race matters in this nation. Race and racism are still very large issues.
Vanderbilt University law and economics professor, Joni Hersch recently completed research on the impact of skin color on earning power among immigrants to the United States ("Study of Immigrants Links Lighter Skin And Higher Income,"The New York Times, Sunday, January 28, 2007, A19).
Her findings are compelling and concerning.
In short, light-skinned persons earn more money on average than those with darker complexions.
The reason?
Simple discrimination on that basis.
Professor Hersch studied government surveys for 2,084 legal immigrants to the U. S. from around the world. She discovered that those with the lightest skin earned on average 8 to 15% more than similar immigrants who were born with darker skin.
"On average," Dr. Hersch said, "being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education."
Interestingly, the study considered other factors in the analysis such as English language proficiency, education, occupation, and racial or national background. Even after controlling for race, it was clear that skin color mattered.
For example, for two immigrants from Bangladesh with the same abilities, occupations and backgrounds, the lighter-skinned person would make more money than the darker-skinned individual.
The last paragraph of the article seems telling:
"Although many cultures show a bias toward lighter skin, she [Dr. Hersch] said her analysis showed that the skin-color advantage was not based on preferential treatment for light-skinned people in their country of origin. The bias, she said, occurs in the United States."
A group of Clemson University students--white students--threw a "gangsta" theme party the weekend prior to the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday.
The party invited participants to dress and behave in a manner that could politely be described as a night of parody of African American racial stereotypes. Dress and behavior poked fun at blacks who were not present for the event.
A similar party took place at Tarleton State University here in Texas. Another convened at the University of Connecticut School of Law.
On each campus the events in question set off a backlash of disgust, disappointment and hurt feelings. In addition, on each campus formal talks and forums have been organized to discuss race, racism and the nature and current condition of America's racial psyche.
To a person the students involved in the parties claim they meant no harm or disrespect. And, above all, they denied any suggestion that racism was involved. I must admit I have a hard time with that claim.
Further, it is the ease with which the group uses this sort of disclaimer as an easily accessible, default "fall back" position, when caught in an act of blatant racism, that continues to really bug, irritate and anger me. University students with, at a minimum, no more sensitivity than this is a phenomenon that I find preposterous.
We should not be fooled.
Racism and all that goes with it is very much alive and well in this nation.
