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.