For
those of us who maintain some constant involvement in the many,
many conflicts
that face Blacks in the 21st Century, individually and in the
collective, what one fights for and who one is fighting for,
seems to always be a point of contention for some people. While
some understand the complexities of black struggle – that racism
manifests itself on many levels and thus has to be fought on
many levels – others see the “struggle” on the one level that
they deal with, and think that fight is the only battle black
people are facing. Thus, if you’re not in that particular fight,
you’re not fighting at all. This unsophisticated
approach to black advocacy has added another layer of conflict
to the already
contentious inter-generational conflicts that sometimes consume
black struggle. Trying to address “black struggle” these days
is more the myopic focus of the civil rights or the pro-black
radical movements of four generations ago. “Black struggle” in
the post-Civil Rights Era has been as hard to fight as it has
been to find, given the shift in overt to covert racism and the
politics of race-neutrality that allow passive-aggressive attitudes
to find cover in this new social construct.
Black people know
that things are happening to them that they can’t explain, and systems are compromising
them in ways that they never imagined (until they get caught
up in the system). Just like during “separate but equal,” Blacks
always knew that equal was never equal, but separate was definitely
separate. Today, there is no legal “separate” (but there is a
separate), and equal is still not equal, but the real problem
is that the black community, in the collective, haven’t figured
out how to fight “colorblindness,” which is the new Jim Crow.
Blacks are conflicted as to where the struggle is, and who is
on the frontline, and they constantly ask each other, “What are
you doing to help the struggle?” It’s hard to fight when most
don’t know where the fights are, and which fronts to fight on.
And those who are fighting, see “the frontline” based on where
they are.
The redefinition of “black struggle,” and
the stratification of “frontlines” that require Blacks to battle
on many fronts, has come about as there has been a redefinition
of the “black community’s” collective interests that has come
with the stratification of black income and wealth. Class and
wage separation within the race is something that Blacks don’t
talk about as much as they should, but there is much evidence
to conclude that the burgeoning black “underclass” has issues
that are separate and distinct from the shrinking black middle
class, and the thinning black middle-upper class. While each
share some common issues on the racial front like racial profiling,
the issues of the poor are not the issues of the middle class.
For instance, the employment issues facing poor Blacks are different
from the promotion issues facing Blacks with jobs. Police and
fire academies are graduating fewer and fewer black cadets.
Both groups are facing
massive discrimination, but not on the same front. The crime
issues that
both the poor and middle class face from shared geography impact
each differently – the poor, out of desperation, the middle class,
out of victimization. Then when they leave the community, they’re
accused of giving up on the community. The remediation issues
facing poor Blacks make it impossible to let go of the public
school system, while the black middle class is having problems
finding quality schools that would allow their children to be
able to compete for college admission, which has become highly
discriminatory on another front. The access to capital issues
facing both poor and middle class Blacks, discriminate differently – one
on housing, the other on business loans. We can go on and on,
but the point is that the struggle is on many fronts, the battle
on many levels.
The biggest problem
is we expect all of us to fight on all fronts, but that is not
even a feasibility,
given that we all bring something different to the table: experiences,
knowledge, energy and ideas. If we’re all fighting on the same
front, it means only one thing is being done at one time and
the other fronts are being left unaddressed. Until we acknowledge
that the struggle has been redefined, respect what others bring
to the table and that the fight is on many fronts, we’ll be fighting
about where the frontline is and who is fighting for a particular
struggle. The argument should be about, why aren’t more people
fighting in the struggle, period. That’s where we are now – not
enough in the struggle to cover all fronts. That’s the bigger
problem, and should be the focus of our solution.
Anthony Asadullah
Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban
Issues Forum
and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality In America (Kabili
Press, 2005). He can be reached at www.AnthonySamad.com. |