As the politics of
progressivism becomes more an examination of social engineering
whereby segments of society seek to establish a social pecking
order based on achievement of the collective, the progress of
Black America still represents the most suspect proposition.
While there are more examples of black achievement on an individual
basis, there is a decline in wages, jobs and wealth among African
Americans in the collective. Yes, more individual
blacks are doing better, but the race is regressing in an era
of “progress.” No
matter how you look at it, whether as individuals or in the aggregate,
the exception is not the rule when it comes to measuring black
progress. But how do we know the difference, and how do we know
who's contributing to black progress and who's not?
We talk about Blacks, and black progress, as if
they are a monolith functioning in America's Eurocentric hegemonic
society, but it's just not true. Asian communities function as
a monolith within the Eurocentric hegemony. The Jewish community
function as a monolith despite the politics of America's hegemony.
Monoliths move toward a collective goal, in spite of individual
interests, the outcome of which is progress. The African American
community's pursuit of individual interests, many of which go against
the interest of the collective, and the absence of a collective
goal produces little, if any, progress. So how is it that we can
have so many Blacks doing well, yet have communities that are not
progressing? Largely because we don't recognize who we are, and
what many of us do, to counteract progress.
A critical part of this “dysfunction” goes
to the very notion of self identity – how we see ourselves. Many
see themselves as contributing but what are they contributing
to, our progress, or our regress? Are they tearing down the wall
of inequality, or are they helping build the wall higher making
it more difficult for the next generation to achieve equality.
Many African Americans
are products of their environment, others are products of their
time. Either
way, they may not be products of progress. Progress, particularly
community progress, is a product of conscious behavior on the
part of Blacks who understand that personal respect is tied to
how others perceive the race. None of us can separate ourselves
from the realities of the conditions associated with the race.
Yet, many of us try to. Others even try to reinforce the realities
by exploiting the situation, meaning using the condition of black
people's suppression as a way “to keep it real” that offers a
distortion as to what black poverty, black economic deprivation,
black oppression is really about.
These are not “a way of life,” they
are “a product of social circumstances” and “a fact of racial
hegemony.” The goal should be to change, or progress, the circumstance,
not glorify, or reinforce, the circumstance. That is the difference
between someone who is a conscious Black, versus someone who
is a Negro who accepts the circumstance, or a Ni**a who exploits
the circumstance.
That takes us to the question, what
is the differentiation between the Negro and a Ni**a? The Negro
is an American invention whereby his origin is disconnected from
his identity, and his new identity is a reflection of the social
standing assigned to him by the hegemon, which in this case is
American society. Not only does the Negro have no past, his present
is marginalized in a way that offers little ability to change
the reality of the race. Because the Negro is a product of his
socialization, he (and she) does not willfully try to hurt the
race, but their ignorance and their acceptance of the social
construct does not allow them to force meaningful change beyond
socially acceptable forms of advocacy.
The Ni**a is an outbirth
of the social engineering imposed on the American Black, whereby
they offer
no solutions, and react to socio-economic conditions in ways
that will only reinforce the most negative perceptions of the
race. For instance, social engineers know that, irrespective
of race, lack of commerce and/or business will produce “survival
of the fittest” conditions whereby people will prey on others
to survive. Ni**as feed into, and buy into, it as an excuse for
not having what others have. Instead of changing the circumstance,
they seek to exploit the circumstance. So they rob, steal and
kill their own for the sake of surviving. Or they take money
to promote a lifestyle that is nothing more than one of deprivation,
and use it to degrade women, promote “slanging” and “dealing” and
destabilizing relationships between black men and women, or black
families and black communities.
Ni**as are always quick
to tell you what you haven't done for them, but can't tell you
what they've
done to change themselves, and the destruction is perpetuated
until progress is overwhelmed by regressive behaviors. Ni**as
make a conscious decision to engage in activities that degrade
the race and destroy the community, turning progress for a community
into a near impossible proposition. Ni**as are the biggest detriment
to the race today – and there are more of them than you think,
because everybody “gotta get theirs.”
Progress will only come
about when there are more Blacks of conscious positive behavior
acting in
the interest of the collective than there are Negroes, or Ni**as,
acting against the collective interests of Blacks. That should
be the goal for Black America – raising conscious Blacks, marginalizing
Negroes and eradicating, at all costs, Ni**as.
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. |