(Part I) Killing me softlyThe slow death of the black community

If there were independent media actually available to the masses of
Black Atlanta, it would be possible to run candidates for office in black
constituencies who placed at the center of their campaigns frank opposition to
mass incarceration. Such candidates might find it relatively easy to popularize
and win support for subsidized family visits for prisoners, an end to
privatization of inmate health care, mandatory minimum sentences, to the
prosecution and incarceration of juveniles as adults. Candidates who promise to
try to roll back the wholesale and piecemeal privatization of corrections, to
cease the onerous fees levied by private contractors on families and friends who
call or send money to their loved ones behind bars would quickly find themselves
at the head of a broad, trans-generational black civic movement the like of
which has not been seen since the 1960s. The possibilities for coalitions,
alliances and partnerships would abound, as churches all sizes and
denominations, youth groups, fraternities and sororities and formations of all
kinds would flock to such a banner. And there is no reason such a movement, once
begun would not proliferate nationwide.

Black Agenda Report, "Looking Beyond Black Mecca and the Failure of the Black Misleadership Class: 2/24/2010 - 12:24 by Bruce A. Dixon"

I should first off like to reiterate that one of the best things to come along at this point in my personal evolution is being able to sponsor a blog. I am able to speak freely and openly about some of the things that I believe are very large challenges in the world today. These challenges just didn't come along overnight, but they had an origin. Discovering the origin of some of the most stupefying issues that we come against is the gist of of this blog. Another way to put it is that this is a black-centered blog--it's about black issues spoken and unspoken.

BREAKING NEWS!

White team’s ‘stepping’ win sparks uproar. ATLANTA - A white Arkansas team’s win in a national “stepping” contest has sparked a fierce controversy over whether the integration of a once exclusively black college tradition constitutes a form of cultural theft...

Yet the bottom line is that black people just didn't appear overnight in the American landscape. They've been hear for a long time. Their existence has been affected by their unique American experience, as well as world experience. And what they have become from within and without is cause for critical investigation and discussion.

If black people are to become more than a weak link in a landscape that has mostly been devised by white supremacy, then someone needs to start talking--talking and challenging things that seem to make them powerless and doomed. If blacks don't regain their capacity to speak and to affect positive change, we are indeed doomed to find that our cultural imprint will become an infinitesimal pimple in the pages of history.

Once again, black history is not just a process collecting factual information about what blacks did and accomplished many years ago, but true black history is a dynamic that should always be 'in motion'. This universal law that if some is dormant long enough, it becomes obsolete.



In the case of black history, there's a lot to be proud of. People have done things that uplifts the status of all people. This is not the place to attempt to enumerate the many past achievements of black people. However, what I would say is that blacks as a collective has been in a "what have you done for me lately" funk.



Lately doesn't mean that black individuals are not achieving and making some noise.We have our share of celebrities. We even have a black President. Yet it appears that the black community as a whole has been losing ground in solidifying the foundation of achievements that are made so explicit in our Afro-American Studies. Have becoming full circle as a people been short circuited by integration?



The case for Assimilation



We live in an integrated society. But has this integration brought about a social and just society? The answers are not that simple. What can be said that over the last 4 decades as integration has taken hold, we've seen the law of power slowly nibble away at the cultural roots of the black community. Becoming more photogenic--making the news in everything from corporate leadership to education scholars has upgraded our entertainment value and magazines like Ebony and Jet continue to highlight black pictures. But there is a difference between 'still' photos and 'moving' photos. The still photo let's the world know that there are black faces in the crowd. Yet in real policy and social decisions, those faces boils on to photo opts.

The Voting Rights Act is commonly seen "for
Blacks"--but the changes it inspired helped heal the whole society. White women
could not serve on juries in much of the South; farmers couldn't vote unless
they paid poll taxes. 18-year olds couldn't vote yet--that came five years
later. Bilingual voting came five years after that. College students won the
right to vote where they went to school, which allowed the Obama campaign to
organize dormitories as precincts. (Excerpt from article on Huffington Press with Jesse
Jackson writing about human justice and equal rights and how rights won by
blacks benefit others.)

However, probably the most dramatic (if not traumatic) phenomenon to obliterate the core of the black community collective is the the mercurial rise of a individuals blacks who want to become stage stars, whose life's mission is to get into the spotlight for the sake of the spotlight. Their desire to be seen is challenged only by the illusion of 'seen' equals becoming rich.

And if indeed as many black individuals have become rich, why do the negative statistics continue to be so pervasive in nuking the status of the black community as a whole?


Integration has demanded that black people abide by preset social policies that are often antithetic to its livelihood. Hence, integration may be a way to get people on the same playing field, but what it has failed to do is to dislodge AN acceptable powerful oligarchy that has been in place since slavery known as white supremacy. Everything that is anything in our society is not colored by a collective and integrated society but instead is dictated by the latter.



So the question is not of blacks isn't simply blacks integration into the mainstream, but it is if they have the potential to become 'nothingness' when there? Has our precious energy in focusing on spearheading social justice an equality for black people been effectively siphoned off by other interest groups and other minorities? While we have been vigilant in taking the cause of others into our delicate movement, including gays, white women, illegal immigrants and others who may share some of our pain, what is there left of a pure black community?

In Bruce Dixon's article that laments the 'black misleadership' it is clear that the black community is being displaced by other people' interests. However, it is also clear that blacks appear to have a Achilles heel in wanting to integrate its interest with the mainstream interest, or the need to expend its resources in helping other people causes. The problem with that is that black people did not start with many resources in the first place. Most of our God-given abilities to love others unconditionally can backfire. Love does not mean to let others suck you dry.

So, have we yet discovered whether the black community is strong enough to survive integration? Or, is there such a thing as a black community as those in power continues to dictate who and what we are and what we can do?

Most of the famous and important leaders have opted out of collective pride thing and have opted instead for individual glory and black material depression syndrome.

Basically speaking, if we can't stand along as a distinct community, how can we stand as a distinct option in a society that is historically and unapologetically steeped in its roots of cultural genocidal tendencies and an instinctual need to dominate others?

"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the 16th century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population." (MLK-1964: Why We Can't Wait).

A QUOTE FOR THE AGES

"I believe we should pay for it," Bunning said. "I'm trying to
make a point to the people of the United States."
(3/1/10-U.S. Republican Senator Jim Bunning whose blocking extended employment benefits for millions!). Meanwhile, debt financing for wars--no problem?