legacies of slavery 2

The Legacy of slavery: We Must Save our Young from White Noise

by
Frank A. Jones





In spite of the Ward Connerly, Shelby Steele, et al., and their seeming disclaimers, slavery in America has a legacy that remains and must be acknowledged as a first step to its eradication. That legacy is racial discrimination and the negative psychological effects it has on young blacks.

When rereading a column of Lovemore Mataire's column [Inside of Africa] I was struck by his concept of reclaiming a past heritage overlooked and devalued by western civilizations and some of African blood who would themselves fail to see their own significance in the structure and construction of the global social order. There are parallel lines in the conditions of Africans and African Americans.

Although Americans talk about diversity often, there is great homogenization of American "independence of thought," especially as it concerns Black America. It is true that this nation has over-powered most of its people into becoming monolithic in their views concerning most world issues. That has been done through its media and myth-making machine--Hollywood, the embedded news media that carries the administration's line most of the time, American schools, and American aggressive and single-voiced media that screams at the world in seductive and non-seductive ways to be American, be white or as close to white as possible because that's where the fun is. But in propagating such an idea, we look upon other peoples and customs in diminished or demeaned ways, as we extol the virtues of being American or being white (they are both projected as one).

Consequently, too many African Americans have bought the drug of how wonderful being American is and taken it totally, without any idea that it has made them sick, even blind, and that seems to be the intent. Being at the frontlines of sampling the attitudes of our young, I see how effective or ineffective the American distortion machine is on them. My report is not too encouraging, but it varies.

There is a clear process to slavery's death and the death of its legacy, and be assured, I repeat, slavery, regardless of the location, always has a legacy that remains after its death that must be thrown off if a people are to actually discover and experience who they are. George Orwell cited that process in his autobiographical sketch, "Shooting An Elephant." In that work he showed that slavery--whether the actual enslavement of a people is within a larger people or the enslavement of a people by a smaller people within their own country--has a process of eradication and aspects that linger after eradication.

In destroying slavery or any type of opportunistic enterprise, there is always friction and pain because such enterprises attempt to establish their own perpetuity. After slavery is destroyed, there is always a caste system with euphemistic rationalizations and justifications for its existence. The caste system functions in a number of ways for former slave owners: it is a legacy of remembrance and a type of slave-owners' refusal to acknowledge that it's over; it also functions to allow the slave-owner a period of adjustment to life on the lam, as it were. They have to adjust to the fact that they have no special standing with God, no special intelligence, no special anything; they are merely human beings who took advantage of a bad situation and did not have the moral conviction or fortitude to end it before they were forced to do so! (1)

In all societies where colonialism or slavery has existed and is no more, its legacy of special privileges remains. It is a strange legacy indeed for those who were privileged during the time of oppression to still want their privileges to exist, even after the institution of slavery is extinct. In the new structure of things, past oppressors always try to advantage themselves as in their past status, they extol themselves above all others, codify systems of privileged injustices they engaged in the past, they depict themselves as worthy, noble and good, and they demean and devalue others, while rationalizing their present state. Seldom do they see their desired privileges are untoward or that they even exist. And, of course, that type of blindness may allow a person to think that he/she has special talents that have raised him/her to the top of the human heap.

Demanded privileges usually single out a defining concept of oppression and its legacy, which is often overlooked: oppression is not of the strength of a people but actually of the weakness of that people. James Baldwin characterized it somewhat, when he said, "The man who dehumanizes another doesn't know it, but when he dehumanizes another, he actually dehumanizes himself." (2) More clearly stated, the weakness of the dehumanizer, which is an oppressor, is this: he has an inability to be guided by a moral or spiritual compass that is peculiar to all human beings; he marches to a different drummer--a drummer of greed, insecurity, hedonism, and the acquisition of things of comfort by any means and at great cost to others and at as little cost as possible to him.

That weakness is seen most vividly after the oppressed people have cast off their oppressors. Those same oppressors, unable to function successfully among those whom they once oppressed, but now on equal footing, demand special ground for their feet. Hence, the privileges they demand are almost and sometimes are codified into law and customs. Of course, many who are not fair minded will not admit they seek special privileges because that would admit to weaknesses and inability to compete fairly. They will not even admit they want those privileges. Instead, they pretend that their special privileges do not exist, or, at the most, they are minimal, not widespread, or engaged in by a very few whom they cannot control. All of these verbal concoctions are to portray a skewed contest as if it does not significantly handicap some and privilege for others, hence, competition is unaffected and the outcome is fair.

In today's America, our discussion turns on current racial discrimination against nonwhites. Racial discrimination is a widespread custom that advantages whites and disadvantages nonwhites. Its widespread nature is documented by every scientific survey taken within the last 20-years; those surveys show that racism is woven throughout every institution of our society.

Racial discrimination occurs when there is the selection of a white for a position, a granting of a right, a privilege, a situation, etc., simply because that person has skin color that is what America defines as white and not selecting a nonwhite person simply because his/her skin is not white. This behavior has no basis in logic, commonsense, religion, morality, ethics, health, etc. It is simply without merit and antebellum in thought. And in many cases it is illegal.

To give special privileges undeserved, un-worked for, etc., is outlawed when those privileges are against constitutional assurances; still this behavior is practiced in this nation. They are a legacy of slavery that has been customized into society and allowed by the majority in America.

When a people pay equal taxes for an institution to be built and maintained for the education of their children, and that institution erects barriers--whether those barriers are a George Wallace standing in the doorway, slanted intelligence tests (3) or other clever means--for the purpose of allowing their children in and barring other children, that is not only unfair, unethical, immoral, but that is also a theft from the people barred. Thievery and unfairness are morally reprehensible to most clear thinking individuals, even if they can concoct rationales that will assuage their guilt.

When this behavior is repeated so much that it is commonplace, there is a deceptive tendency to think it is normal and to argue that it is fair and others need to come up to the white standard. But there is no upward motion needed; the standard touted as up is not up at all--it is just slanted!. The real problem is that America needs to standardize the universal standard of fairness that civilized people normally adhere to. While Americans widely tout their love for competition, they usually mean slanted-competition that favors Americans. But slanted competition is no competition at all.

And with this slanted competition, we have erected aggressive methods of disguising it: 1.) Hidden trade barriers and business and farm subsidies, 2.) Our movies and storytelling often distort reality and substitute fiction for facts, 3.) We have histories that memories and not reality, 4.) Our news reporting is slanted because the media has embedded itself with this administration, 5.) We have biased tests that favor some and disfavor others, and 6.) We have a cottage industry of Black Conservatives who mindlessly buy into white privilege and nonwhite discrimination for a price.

Black intellectuals need not address the issues of slavery as pointing to these past complaints; that is the past and must be left to our Black historians to objectify. Our focus today is of today--extant discrimination and white affirmative action--and how that slavery's legacy attempts to disguise its existence for purposes of self-serving morality and continuity.

Most Black Americans have been able to dismiss white propaganda about their legacy for what it is--rationalization to assuage a not-so-abstract but denied guilt. Today, however, too many of our young black people and many of our young whites have failed to see that propaganda as little more than white chatter they talk among and for themselves.

There is a small and heartrending segment of our young who are first generation educated and some who are becoming first generation educated who have no discerning abilities to read through the ever-present white noise, as it is labeled in the black community. Many buy the American pie and eat it totally, not even stopping to belch. This group we have discussed elsewhere. But this segment must be reached before we permeate an underclass of mis-educated blacks who hate themselves, who buy into white noise about the absence of discrimination. These young and blind do not see white affirmative action at all, as it seeks to disguise itself and continue into perpetuity.

Often these are those who come from the 27% underclass and see the whole of black America through the lens of that 27% and have not been schooled to the fact that if there is a 27% underclass, the other 73% must not be underclass--they are doctors, lawyers, etc.-- and that group represents black Americans more correctly.

This is a problematic segment of our society that must be reached and trained, but not with the harshness of a Bill Cosby's rhetoric; for they pose a vulnerability to us all, but they must be brought along, not kicked, pushed and/or demeaned. We must get them to harness, even as Mataire argues of Africans; their rich history goes beyond the ghettos and beyond America. We have a legacy of scholars and leaders that live on today, as Roger, Frazier, Madhubuti, Nobles, Dyson, and a thousand other black thinkers have rightly shown in their works. (4) This is unparalleled by any people enmeshed in the convulsive quagmire we have experienced in this nation for far too many years.(5)

We must get this troubled segment of our young blacks to see that the legacy of slavery exists today maybe because there is a subconscious shudder within the secret of this majority culture telling them they still need special privileges to succeed, Would the leveling of this playing field to all may really mean an NBA'ing of America? That fear, however, is unrealizable; there aren't that many blacks to go around; furthermore, Black History has shown that blacks are as moral and fair a people as all others.

In the midst of the slow death of slavery's legacy, and while there is still a need to give white America a leg up in this social game, our young should not see America's rationalizations of unfair and unequal treatment as anything more than white noise talked among themselves for their own medication.