Several years, some prominent folks began rethinking the fundamental question established by the Brown decision. Is separate but equal wrong? I'm fairly sure we covered this fairly well at Vision Circle. Here are some citations:
As part and parcel of the Black Endgame question, we should periodically examine the extent to which various of King's benchmarks, the only ones taken largely seriously by blacks and non-blacks alike, have or have not been achieved. The primary difference between the Civil Rights and Black Power movement was whether or not whitefolks (and consequently mainstream politics and government) should be responsible for the direction of African American progress. For the Civil Rights Movement the answer was yes, for Black Power the answer was no. From the no, came a great deal of creativity banking on the differences between black and white society codified up to that point. A lot of that creativity has made a permanent mark on American culture and politics and been accepted and reabsorbed. From this continuing trend of crossover, some blacks have gone further afield into Afrocentricity and Gangsta as aesthetics which continue to differentiate the experiences of African Americans from the mainstream. As those effects are felt and reflected in the mainstream, blacks will have to go to different extremes for the aims of Black Power. It is the tension between accepting the social capital of difference past and potential capital of difference future that generates the controversy over blackness today.
At Cobb I have cast my die not so much with the capital of difference past, but of the strength of emergence and the underscoring of the ennobling impulse to liberty. I am not so interested in matters of difference but of the strength of that pure impulse as it continues to refine and redefine class in America. There are dangers, and these are the dangers I am on the lookout for. The movie Dreamgirls shows an excellent example of such dangers of emergence. In the early part of the story, we are all aghast at the blatant ripoff of the 'Cadillac Car' song watered down to 50s pop by unscrupulous white producers who stole black music and made more money. Later, the same hustle that brought black producers success used the very same device to make a Disco hit out of a Soul song 'One Night Only'. I am concerned with the ethics of black emergence. Will what works for a car dealer work for a record company executive? Will what works for blacks in the 40s when the high school graduation rate was 14% work for blacks in the 21st century at parity? How much of black flavor is an authentic expression of the impulse to and defense of civil liberty? How much of black flavor is a self-serving overproduction of ethnic pride and arrogance? I think a lot of that depends on the exploitation of difference for its own sake.
Such questions are pregnant when we look at the status of Integration today. To what extent is the impulse to liberty served by the controversial question of 'self-segregation'?
I am oriented at looking at the question of integration from the standpoint of the extent to which it serves the aims of Black Power. This is to say that if whitefolks have reserved for themselves objectively superior public accommodations and private facilities over the course of Jim Crow, integration means making those resources available to blacks in order to further their own interests. I take it for granted that there will be both meritocratic and social hurdles for 'first blacks' to overcome in taking those opportunities. The proof of such black achievements stand as testament to the falsification of racist essentialism and provide existential support to other blacks who might follow, but the primary benefit goes to those who make use of the superior resources.
I think too much is made of the secondary benefits. These are mental blocks that could be overcome without role models. I find it very disappointing to find the material primary benefits to blacks themselves dismissed when the symbolic benefits are not present to everyone's satisfaction. For example, the achievement of Dr. Rice as a black Secretary of State is dismissed because some might still find a racist reason to mock her abilities. The achievement of the first black male opera singer is dismissed because most blacks don't care for opera. Someone can always invent some excuse to dismiss black achievement because it's not popular or doesn't symbolize something lionized by some political point of view. I say none of this should diminish the achievement itself - which is the fulfillment of some black person's dream.
We also find ironies in the reality that black ambition is not uniformly held across black populations. What's meaningful to some blacks is irrelevant to others. This only become problematic when assessments are done on measures the broadly appeal to all blacks or at least a sizable majority of blackfolks at one particular point in time. This is the case with integration. It's certainly less important today than 50 years ago. That is partially because for some blacks it's already done, with respect to their jobs, or their education, or their housing, or their churching or their military service, or their cultural productions. It is also partially because for some blacks it's simply not a consideration. They don't care to integrate. I can only speak for those like myself on the more integrated side. I presume that those who want to integrate can and will.
I would not suggest that such integration for the purposes of acquiring objectively superior resources is a simple task. As I said before there are certain meritocratic and social hurdles. But I would assert that those who find that the only solution to their problem is integration must find their way around those hurdles as a task of Black Struggle. I'll not hear any whining from them nor their apologists. Nobody said it was easy to be black in America, but if you cannot find the strength to climb... well...I know what to say but it wouldn't be gracious. There is a certain amount of enmity if not contempt I hold for those who would gripe about such matters, especially if they would claim black pride. It seems to me that if you are too proud to compete against the white man on his own turf, then you don't deserve to call your retreat blackness. I cannot conceive of blackness as the default of defeat. That's when I start talking derisively about Negroes. Enough said.
There is another angle, which is the organic power of the pro-black. There remains ample samples of black nationalistic fervor and honor which are worthy of respect. I tend to see their achievements as meager with respect to the net achievements gained by blackfolks in the Post Civil Rights Era, however I would not dismiss or discount them. In particular, cultural nationalist ideas which don't go for the okeydoke layups of Afrocentricm, PC multiculturalism or the Hiphop aesthetic are fine by me. Such matters tend to be scholarly and highbrow and mostly to my liking. I think of Julie Dash, Gina Dent. But by their very refined nature, such artifacts are sold to the world beyond the middling clashes of black and white in America. Consequently, they're very cool, very personal and very broadly ineffective vis a vis those things which raise the race in the spirit of the ideas behind the Movement.
So we are left with the value of integration itself. Primarily that of working and educating and living. My position is that this remains a significant task of the hypersegregated as Dr Spence sees them. I am not sure to what extent such matters can be adjudicated by The Sound of the Drum, as the historically righteous uplift of black mental liberation vis a vis Carter G. Woodson. I am sometimes as skeptical of this power as Progressives are of Family Values. I certainly acknowledge it, but I don't know that it will make the critical difference. Which is to say if hypersegregated blackfolks make use of black conciousness of a more substantial and uplifting quality than Hiphop or PC, it won't necessarily deliver. It can't be wrong, but it may not be enough. The same counts if they abstain from pre-marital sex and marry their man or woman. It can't be wrong, but it may not be enough.
I assume that those who have passed the Progressive and Conservative sniff tests and remain segregated have enough pride not be feel displaced from America. Rather they are living the lives they want in the part of America they want. This is a controversial assertion, but I cannot bring myself to second-guess blacks who live where they live. It is presumptuous to assume that integration brings anything more to blacks than what Jim Crow denied them. Blacks had righteous lives that stood with only the law and God above them before the Great Depression. They have that now. The rest, it seems to me, is only a part of the American tradition of keeping up with the Joneses.
What else is there to want that we don't give ourselves or get from God?
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