Black people have come a long way from past oppression in the West, at the hands of Westerners, whether through slavery, Jim Crow laws, colonization, imperialism, systematic discrimination or the like. However that progression is not enough. The standard of living of the great majority of black people living in the world today has not reached a level it should be at after decades of enfranchisement and independence.
Of course the perpetual negative perceptions of black people that prevail may be culturally constructed and media-based, the remnants of a pervasive form of racism that used to socially acceptable, state sanctioned and less subtle. And of course there are a great number of black people and black families all over the world, particularly in the West, who are members of the hard-working upper-middle class and send their kids to good colleges, or black people who may be even better-off. However the fact remains that Africa is the "sick man" of the world at large.
Asia is seen by many as the next frontier of new markets, with nations like China and India intent on pulling their populations out of Third World poverty. Africa should and needs to become a new frontier of foreign investments, yet its nations' GDPs seem to always remain an eyesore and an embarrassment on the world stage, prompting more global pity, foreign aid and dependence on that foreign aid. Similar predicaments face the black population in the U.S which is generally seen in comparison to other ethnic groups as the most troubled, the most conflicted, the most "at risk" and the most underrepresented in professional fields.
Of course, to be fully post-race, one must understand that there is only one human species, only one human race: the human race. The idea of race and the signification and attributes we attached to race are all subjective, possibly stereotypical and socially constructed. Many people in the post modern world would say "race doesn't matter," or say, especially after the election of President Obama, that we've moved "beyond racism." Yet the fact that this discussion on the state of the black people remains relevant means that we still haven't moved beyond race or that the particular predicaments of the black "race" need to be addressed for the betterment of the human race.
Is it not tiresome to constantly hear of one group of people being the underdogs, the victims, the oppressed? The only solution is for black people to become more empowered and reverse this historic rut. Black people in general cannot remain on the lowest rung of history's ladder, at the lowest tier of economic progression, at the bottom of the world's pecking order, forever. Things must change because it must be simply humiliating and painful to be a member of that group of people that other peoples look down on to make themselves feel proud of themselves or better about themselves. In his book on humane warfare, Christopher Coker elaborates on this state of affairs:
"The culture of poverty placed in a class of their own those whose behavior and values converted their poverty into a self-perpetuating world of dependence...the term has come to be used of the poor in America's inner cities, and the black poor at that, who are the chief victims of crime as well as its chief agents. Africa too has come to represent an underclass in recent years. If the association of urban poverty and race in the United States is relatively recent, a product of the migration of African-Americans into the northern cities after the Second World War, Africa too did not emerge into the world's consciousness as its most troubled continent until the 1980s when it produced three out of the world's four major famines. Today, the continent accounts for two-thirds of the world's refugees.By the end of the twentieth century, Africa had been reduced to the status of a victim in its own imagination as well as that of the outside world. Television images of refugee camps in Ethiopia and southern Sudan appeared to show a people beyond hope or even despair, a people beyond redemption. There is an echo here of Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness...In Conrad's tale, at least they [the people of Africa] represented disease, abandonment, despair and starvation, the legacy not so much of the continent itself as the darkness of colonial rule. Today in a continent that is supposedly independent and sovereign, they [the people of Africa] have become the products of the African condition. The problem is not that the European powers have done so much but their African successors have done so little."
Coker is describing how Africa and other areas of the world such as poor neighborhoods in the West known as "ghettos" have become pockets of pre-modernity, alienated from post modernity, alienated from modernization and globalization: "the people of an entire continent have become 'local,' trapped in a time that is outside universal history."
Finishing his analysis on history, time, systematic poverty and Western humanitarian military interventions, Coker says "When we think of Africa...we think of a continent in which millions of people are sleep-walking into destruction...That explains the demoralization of Western forces when they finally intervene in societies such as Somalia...If one has to limit the occasions on which one intervenes it is better to fight for those with a future."
Coker's assessment is realist and may sound a little harsh or overly conservative to some, but it is, for the most part, accurate. Racism and oppression still exist but not to the extent that it should reduce black populations to perpetual poverty. There have been a multitude of efforts by the Western world to help Africa or blacks living in the United States, whether in the form of programs or monetary aid. But there comes a point where aid can only do so much and people must help themselves. Marked improvement in the general condition of black people around the world will not require more help so much as a change in attitude, a change in widely-held perceptions on black dispositions and identity.
The first thing that has to change is how black people, as a whole, view themselves. Black people must stop telling themselves oppression narratives - slavery is long over; so is Jim Crow, there is no excuse not to thrive. They must stop allowing themselves to be defined by adversity in the media and otherwise. When one thinks of the daily lives of black people, the film "Precious" should not come to mind. If hip hop and rap are to be primarily about drugs, gangsters, dealers, pimps, prostitutes and the like, both genres of music should not be embraced or seen as the highlights of contemporary black musical taste.
Black people should stop focusing on what they've overcome (the past) and focus more on what needs be done and is yet to be accomplished (the future). Martin Luther King Jr. will always be important as a liberator, but today, black people need more everyday heroes and role models, especial outside of entertainment and sports. Today black people need inventors, innovators, investors, professionals and politicians not liberators. The age of liberation is over; the age of edification has begun.
Black people should stop focusing on what they've overcome (the past) and focus more on what needs be done and is yet to be accomplished (the future). Martin Luther King Jr. will always be important as a liberator, but today, black people need more everyday heroes and role models, especial outside of entertainment and sports. Today black people need inventors, innovators, investors, professionals and politicians not liberators. The age of liberation is over; the age of edification has begun.
More black people need debunk the stereotypes of obesity, aggressiveness, boisterousness and such leveled against them in their daily lives instead of embodying these stereotypes and giving them power. Black people need to stop playing up there minority card - just because one is black doesn't mean one knows everything or wants to know everything about Africa, for example. Related, and most importantly, black people must stop victimizing themselves - the "white man" or any other man, is not always trying to bring one down. Instead of being paranoid and overly sensitive, black people must rise above troubles and push ahead. Instead of accepting and internalizing all the negative ways the rest of the world may or may not see them, black people must forge ahead and change the way the world sees them.
Black people are not being asked to do anything special - everyone has to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" in order to succeed. Abraham Lincoln - the Great Emancipator - taught himself to read in a log cabin. Yes liberals will argue that self-help is impossible if one is poor or went to a bad school. But it's not where one begins but where one ends up that really matters. One can receive all sorts of help and opportunities and still not put them to use in the right way. Black people must seize upon self-help as empowerment instead of letting uncontrollable circumstances bring them down. It is empowering black people to help themselves that should be the liberal, progressive ideal, not greater dependence on handouts.
Black people need to surround themselves with people, black and non-black, who are successful, people who are going somewhere in life. The company one keeps says a lot about a person. Too many young black people get locked into the community surrounding their "hood" where they are surrounded by harmful people and harmful habits and eventual assume a less-than-ideal lifestyle which ties them to that neighborhood either through drugs, or early, unwanted pregnancy, lost chances at higher education or generational unemployment and welfare. If there is going to be a black neighborhood, it should be in the suburbs because one of the first goals for black people is to escape the "bad" neighborhoods in the inner city and form communities of greater affluence and prestige which will attract others and motivate others to do the same.
Black people need to venture outside of their comfort zones and meet new people who can offer new opportunities, new investments, new opportunities and new ways of looking at the world instead of just isolating themselves to insular communities with insular tastes in books, music, films, food, etc. Black people need to be seen more in places where they are stereotypically not seen - in Ivy League schools, in pop or rock music, in Wall Street, in the suburbs - so that the stigma of "minority" might be reversed.
Black people in America should stop calling themselves "African American" or answering to the term "African American." Black people, like most of their white counterparts, should identify as American. Black people in the West shouldn't see themselves as "others" or outsiders but as Westerners. This is not a message of assimilation or erasure of culture but a message of integration and empowerment. A change in perception can do wonders for how one thinks of oneself and how one looks at the world.
Most so-called African Americans have never been to Africa, will never go to Africa and have little they can relate to with actual Africans. The black people in the United States and the West are effectively Westernized, Christianized and Anglicized (English is their mother-tongue and usually the only language they speak) in fact but not yet in spirit. The black people in American need to effectively take hold of their American heritage, see themselves as American and identify with the American dream - a dream of social mobility. Otherwise black people will continue to languish in poor self esteem, oppression narratives and self-victimization wrought of "othering" themselves or allowing themselves to be "othered," while isolating themselves within insular communities and a grid-locked state of mind. Black people need to stop being seen as an "other," as strangers and aliens in their own land.
Blacks all over the world must embrace the power and strength of the American and/or Western identity within themselves instead of seeing America or the West as "the man," or as an outside entity oppressing them. Only then will black people be able to stand up and seize the socioeconomic stability that is theirs, that is their birthright, the birthright of every American citizen, black and non-black.
It is only when blacks actively seek to change how they appear and how they are seen by others through self-help, and empowerment, that the global state of conditions for black people will change and their overall standard of living will improve. Black people shouldn't victimize themselves or tell each other oppression narratives but should encourage each other to work hard and get ahead. Black people shouldn't be afraid of the West or other non-black Westerners but should embrace the Western and/or American norms and ideals within themselves.
Post modernity touts multiculturalism and tries to limit the influence of the West or at least put the West in perspective alongside non-Western, usually non-white modes of thinking. However telling blacks to Westernize is not telling them to erase their culture or history. As stressed earlier, for the most part, black people's culture is Western. This may not be the same for other ethnicities whose history has had a different trajectory within American history. But so-called "African American" culture is simply a means by which blacks and non-blacks attempt to differentiate and separate black and non-black Westerners and Americans. This often involves conjuring up artificial cultural artifacts from stereotypes such as black people automatically having "rhythm" or being overly sexual or being naturally "closer to the earth." These artificial differences simply serve as a means to further alienate and "other" black people by placing them in a box and limiting their appeal to a niche audience, genre or circle.
If black people are Westerners, this does not erase their race; black people will always be black. But that does not mean they have to "act black" or refuse to subscribe to the mainstream American and/or Western culture to which they rightfully belong. Alternatively, when black people progress and succeed, they are not "acting white" or "selling out" or becoming "Uncle Toms." They are simply doing what every American, every Westerner, and every human being should be doing - thriving instead of simply surviving.
As a whole, black people have been frozen in time for too long and have suffered for it, for failing to progress with the rest of the world into the future. It is time to move forward; it is time to move on. This is a psychological thing, a question of taking on the characteristics of a new and improved identity, an identity that offers more than just the promise of material gain but the recreation of black history from the ground up, a transformation of negative attitudes and views into positive perceptions of self and of a people.
- Ryu
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