A
Loss of Way
(Some reflections on young
African Americans)
I remember writing an essay some years ago on the factors that have diffused the Black Revolution. I saw then the confusion that was coming upon Black people as America worked its traditional magic on those who would defy. That magic was worked on the Free Love movement, the Free Speech movement, and individual radicals who went contrary to the mainstream of society, and surely on Black Americans.
Black radicals who were vocal obstacles to White America have been neutralized through a system of placing them into positions that are financially rewarding and they have been silenced that way. But besides that type of individual neutralization, America has almost neutralized Black cultural identity and our understanding of what this society is doing to us.
A Ward Connelly represents the individual neutralization of Blacks (he does not represent a Black voice that has ever been in opposition to society's injustice, other than for White people) and our cultural neutralization as well. He has been enriched by White society--money and notoriety--and as a result, he has paid them back by trumpeting their philosophy and touting their cultural values as proper for African Americans. His rallying call is against Affirmative Action for minorities. His reasoning is ostensibly sound. But it is only sound to those who cannot see beyond the superficial boundaries of its facade.
Of course he does not rally against the historical and present discriminatory treatment experienced by Black Americans daily. He doesn't rally against White Privilege that is alive and well in America. Yes, there are mild words he lips that discrimination of any type is wrong, but he is identified as the voice of White America against Black Affirmative Action programs.
Connelly's ostensible argument against Affirmative Action does not see that the racial discrimination Blacks face is actually Affirmative Action for Whites. This is a historical construct as well as a present reality that is invisible to Connelly. That is why there is a need for Affirmative Action.
But the idea that there is no need for Affirmative Action--a process simply of getting Blacks on the playing field--has become so ingrained in America that young Blacks are saying they do not think that discrimination is much of a problem, and there is no need for Affirmative Action. Yet this leaves White racial discrimination standing, untouched and alive. Furthermore, it gives Whites an unreasonable exuberance to claim reversed discrimination--that is, that the standard, historical discrimination does not seem extant to them.
There has always been the need for White discrimination in this society because of the latent, but always present, fear that if Blacks were allowed to compete equally, they would, even at their 35 million strength, dominate, as they do in sports. In recent articles on Black domination of sports, this fear was unearthed and talked about by Whites with the rationalization that the reason it has not been talked about openly, although it has been talked about by them, is the possible racial implication that Blacks dominate in sports and that shows their animalistic nature. That type of rationalization is like Ward Connelly's stance against discrimination: it is ostensible to the blind, but seriously flawed to the sighted.
If this concern were merely about sports, there would not be systems of discrimination set up against Blacks in all other non-sports areas. But from housing to jobs, education to insurance, you name it and White America has a system that gives them a discriminatory edge. They know their needs, but competition is supposed to strengthen the weak; no amount of tortured reasoning or Black front-men can disguise the real reason for this society's contorted allocation of its privilege system.
The problem with the continuity of discrimination is that continuity of anything gives it a sense of normality and acceptance. And when an anomaly is accepted as normal, it becomes invisible. Racial discrimination and White Privilege are wrong and unfair systems that have existed in this society too long. They are visible anomalies to those with their eyes open.
The tragedy for too many young Blacks is that they have bought into a Ward Connelly notion of a color-blind society before it has arrived. There is nothing colorblind about America's system of fairness. Fairness in America is two-tiered--one system for Whites and another for non-Whites. Such a system can only indicate the nature of the people who developed it, maintain it and who justify it--not the people who are abused by it.
Another tragedy of young Blacks is that they have fallen into the trap of the above thinking; they actually believe that being the recipients of a vicious system makes them somehow less than they should be or less than those who play the vicious game. And they, to their own harm, say they do not think discrimination is a problem and do not want to be accepted in schools, on jobs, etc., through an Affirmative Action program, but on their own merits. Well, their own merits have existed for years without those merits being recognized. It may be surprising to some, but merit has never been the system by which America works. It has always functioned by preferences and backroom deals as a rule; merit is the exception.
It is not time for Blacks to perfect the system of meritocracy in America when we are the only ones in that game. First, let's take out the shadow system that has been the rule, White America's racial discrimination, and stop it from being ubiquitous in America, then we can perfect a system of meritocracy.
It is because of the philosophies of a Ward Connelly and the American system that propagates him and allows other Blacks to have their light in the sun (but note, that light is usually pejorative to them and other Blacks) that many young Blacks have lost their way, this is especially true in California, and they think discrimination does not exist and that fairness has been born in America. They desire to be a part of the American landscape, uncolored by race.That is just not today's reality.
Because Tiger Woods wants to be accepted as American, he will not allow the press to describe him as Black, and when he sees no discrimination, it is because of his social status and notoriety, not his appearance--and appearance is curiously important in this society. Although rich, were Tiger Woods without money and without fame, he would face what millions of other Black youths without his status face--old fashioned American discrimination, prejudice, and racism.
When the Connerly's, the Woods, and other Blacks are in the public eyes, be assured that their voices do not echo the defiance of an unjust system of racial preference that Whites have had, continue to have, and protect and guard jealously. Malcolm X was vilified by the White Press because he spoke the truth of this harsh society, and they depicted him as if he were harsh. Yet he was a mild man; a man Ossie Davis characterized as our Black manhood. When the truth is harsh, the bearer of that truth is labeled by its contents.
Those Blacks who fail to voice the system's problems paint the unreal picture that meritocracy has come to America. Sometimes, because of them some young Blacks lose their way . These young people do not have or see a need to have the philosophy Blacks have used to propel them and progress through the systematic harshness of this society, viz., to be equal and get the jobs that are discriminatorily reserved for the White privileged, Blacks have to be better, stronger, and smarter than them.
This credo has assisted Blacks to march through the systems of aggression which Martin Luther King, Jr., said have been set up against us, and it has helped us keep our way. Too many young Blacks do not have this philosophy, and they are falling by the way, having lost their way.[]
Frank A. Jones
