Beyond Black and White
Saturday November 17, 2007
According to a recent Pew study, 37 percent of African Americans and 44 percent of African Americans aged 18-29 believe that there is no single "black" race--and 61 percent of African Americans believe that the cultural gulf between low-income blacks and the black middle class has widened. Tami of What Tami Said asks: Is this the end of the black race as we know it?
I believe it is an accident of history that we think of European Americans as "white" and African Americans as "black" in the first place. With respect to every factor but skin color there is far more ethnic diversity within the two continents than there is between them. Men among the Maasai people of Kenya, for example, have an average height of more than six feet, while men among the Aka people of the Central African Republic have a median height of less than five feet. The cultural, artistic, religious, and valuational differences among African ethnic groups are also considerable--only in Asia will you find more diversity among viable native languages and religions.
So certainly there is nothing particularly special about the West's clear-cut distinction on the basis of dark skin, or pale skin, that is not an artifact of institutional racism. Black became a race for the same reason white became a race: the Western caste system needed to distinguish "normal" citizens of European descent from the dark-skinned worker caste of African descent. Skin tone is the most immediately obvious net physical difference between those two groups--hence "white" and "black." As time goes on, as black and non-black social and family networks increasingly overlap, words like "white" and "black" will lose most of their significance. As Tami puts it:
Today, there are perhaps more ways than ever to be black. While most black people continue to share some cultural similarities, our values, needs and beliefs are increasingly influenced by class, geography, education and other factors, not unlike the values, needs and beliefs of people of other races.If the objective is an integrated society in which everyone has roughly the same opportunities, then it's hard not to see, in statistics like these and posts like Tami's, a culture where all Americans--not just black Americans--are concerned about issues affecting low-income blacks. But there's a danger implicit in statistics like these, too: Without the political and cultural force of racial solidarity, will there be anyone left to stand up for low-income blacks? Will more members of other ethnic groups be willing to stand up and become advocates, too? Or will whites continue to see issues primarily affecting low-income blacks as "black problems" that somehow fall outside of their moral jurisdiction? If racial solidarity is fading, then it is up to us--all of us, regardless of ethnic background--to find within ourselves, and to live by, a deeper human solidarity. Nobody should be left behind.
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Comments
There is definitely a problem with people seeing the plight of low income African-Americans as a ‘black problem’, and not one shared by people of other races and ethnicities.
Unfortunately, part of this comes from the African-American community itself. There are some very vocal people who won’t accept support from other minority groups because they’re not ‘black’.
This was a common problem I faced recently in college. Clubs and groups tried to organize joint initiatives in order to address and alleviate challenges faced by local low-income families, but there would be a lot of problems with the African-American student leaders, who insisted that because the majority of low-income families were African-American, they were the only ones qualified to help them.
Also, there seemed to be a lack of openness of sharing culture between African-Americans and people of other heritages. Where the groups I belonged to (the Native American Student Association, and the Asian American Student Association) were very open to having people who were not necessarily Native Americans or Asian Americans be involved in cultural activities we put together, it was very difficult for us to be involved in activities arranged by the African-American Student Association, or those of affiliated groups.
To be honest, it was hurtful to many members of the groups I belonged to, especially since the university we attended was predominately ‘white’, and we were looking for a sort of solidarity between all minority groups in order to support each other. Our exclusion, and even some down right rude remarks towards some people because they were not ‘dark enough’, ‘as being undeserving of minority status’, and ‘not understanding the plight of blacks and the poor’, were all things that led to tensions between our organizations and students. Instead of squabbling, we should have been being open-minded towards each other and could have been productive and helpful towards members in the community our school was in.
As a Ottawa tribal member, I continue to face some of these same problems even now, while trying to work in a predominately African-American city.