For months I’ve been following the “Occupy” mobilizations and pondering what –- quite frankly –- felt “wrong” about something that -– on the face of it -– seems oh, so right.
Then I read an article by journalist Stacey Patton ("Occupy isn't black America's fight", The Washington Post Outlook section, 11.27.2011), who oh-so-brilliantly provides the context and sheds light on what seems to be Black America’s relationship with this overwhelmingly white mobilization.
In her article, “Occupy isn’t Black America’s Fight”, Ms. Patton serves up an October 2011 Fast Company survey finding that African Descendants, who are 12.6% of the population in America, make up only 1.6% (!!!!!!!!) of the Occupy Wall Street mobilizations. As New York WBAI radio host and producer Nathalie Thandiwe summed up in the Patton interview: “Occupy Wall Street was started by whites and is about their concern with their plight. Now that capitalism isn’t working for ‘everybody’ some are protesting.”
Talk about speaking Truth!
There has not been a time in this country’s history when income inequality, unemployment, disparate economic opportunity, and America’s capitalist system have not been racialized. Yet –- all of a sudden -– these things are JUST NOW coming into the public consciousness of “everybody” else –- enough for them to start mobilizations? Although few say this publicly, there is much chatter and questioning regarding where “they” have been for all the years that communities of color have been organizing around these very same issues. And it is not going un-noticed how -- instead of joining mobilizations of color that have structure, clear messages, actual strategies, and organizing experience -- “Occupy” mobilizers are instead perpetuating historical plantation dynamics when they insist that people of color join THEM in agendas developed according to THEIR racialized interests, experiences, and goals.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it seems as though the offer being made to people of color by Occupiers is the offer of cleaving to an agenda of THEIR making, choosing, experiences and suffering, while being allocated segregated “safe spaces” to discuss their own concerns in return.
And they are expressing surprise that many activists of color are declining their urgent invitations.
In Patton’s article, a New Jersey comedian says “high joblessness and social disenfranchisement is new to most of the Wall Street protesters. It has been a fact of life for African Americans since the beginning.”
And he is not joking.
“Black America’s fight for income inequality is not on Wall Street, but is a matter of day-to-day survival. The more pressing battles are against tenant evictions, police brutality and street crime. This group doesn’t see a reason to join the amorphous Occupiers,” Stacey Patton affirms.
And it is that crucial difference in focus, history, and “lived experience” –- along with the (I’m sure) unconscious but palatable plantation dynamics –- which is keeping the “Occupy” mobilizations majority white.
Patton states “Beyond a lack of leaders to inspire them to join the Occupy fold,
[B]lacks are not seeing anything new for themselves in the movement. Why should they ally with whites who are just now experiencing the hardships that [B]lacks have known for generations? Perhaps white Americans are now paying the psychic price for not answering the basic questions that [B]lacks have long raised about income inequality.”
Perhaps. Or perhaps “Occupy” mobilizers will stay in the game as long as it takes for THEIR interests to be met. And organizers and communities of color will once again be left in the dust of their “safe spaces.”
Moving Forward,
Adar
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
CELEBRATING "THE DREAM" OR LIVING "A NIGHTMARE"?
Today is the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and, of course, the only thing that too many Americans seem to know about this great man – his “I Have a Dream” speech –- is on full display as the national narrative for this event is being woven by media and participants.
Looking at and listening to the dedications and speeches and remembrances, I admit that, rather than feeling pleasure and pride, I am feeling sadness and pure panic:
• Panic that this dedication will be yet another reason -- for Americans who are always looking for reasons -– to say “okay, let’s now ignore racial disparities! This is more proof that we are ‘post racial’! And anyone who says otherwise is a race-baiter and a racist!”;
• Panic that we will forget the economic realities of living Black in America: that the unemployment rate for African Americans is the highest that it has been in 27 years at 16.2% (when the total national unemployment rate stands at 9.1%);
• Panic that as a country we continue to demonize African Americans as thugs and criminals – even those as young as 8 years old! -- instead of correcting a system that encourages gross disparities in the sentencing and imprisonment of Black men, and increasingly Black women, and that feels no shame or remorse about their state-sanctioned killing even when there is reasonable doubt supporting their innocence;
• Panic that we live in a country that is okay with disparities that disproportionately impact African Americans, whether economic, legal, educational, health and well-being, and in just about every systemic indicator of health and life in America.
How can this country –- who now professes to love the Reverend Doctor King as a great man, a great AMERICAN, for all they tormented and demonized him when he was alive – not know any of his other writings that so clearly address the economic disparities and other issues that we are so tragically facing now?
How can this country ignore with clear conscious the increasing and racialized gap between rich and poor? And how can we say that we adhere to the great man’s message when the two most media-prominent mobilizations –- the tea party and the “occupy” movements –- are majority white and acting out of all the privileges of that whiteness?
As much as my heart might want, celebrating today as progress for “The Dream” seems more of a matter of celebrating symbol over substance. But too many Americans are living in this on-going racialized nightmare, which this country seems determined to ignore, for that to happen.
In Dr. King’s last book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos to Community” (New York: Harper and Row, 1967) he said:
“Let us take a look at the size of the problem through the lens of the Negro’s status in 1967. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was 60% of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare that he is 50% of a person. Of the good things in life he has approximately one-half those of whites; of the bad he has twice those of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard housing, and Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality (widely accepted as an accurate index of general health) among Negroes is double that of whites.”
Forty-four (44) years later, for all that we acknowledge changes, let’s at least have the courage to admit that not much has changed on that score. And for all the symbolism of his memorial now being on the National Mall, neither has the following (which Dr. King also noted in 1967):
"Depressed living standards for Negroes are not simply the consequences of neglect. Nor can they be explained by the myth of the Negro's innate incapacities, or by the more sophisticated rationalization of his acquired infirmities. They are a structural part of the economic system in the United States."
Now why don’t we hear more about THOSE Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quotes?
And most importantly, why are we not doing anything about these structural issues?
If Americans are REALLY interested in achieving “The Dream”, they first need to acquire the will to address our on-going national, racialized nightmare.
Moving Forward,
Adar
Looking at and listening to the dedications and speeches and remembrances, I admit that, rather than feeling pleasure and pride, I am feeling sadness and pure panic:
• Panic that this dedication will be yet another reason -- for Americans who are always looking for reasons -– to say “okay, let’s now ignore racial disparities! This is more proof that we are ‘post racial’! And anyone who says otherwise is a race-baiter and a racist!”;
• Panic that we will forget the economic realities of living Black in America: that the unemployment rate for African Americans is the highest that it has been in 27 years at 16.2% (when the total national unemployment rate stands at 9.1%);
• Panic that as a country we continue to demonize African Americans as thugs and criminals – even those as young as 8 years old! -- instead of correcting a system that encourages gross disparities in the sentencing and imprisonment of Black men, and increasingly Black women, and that feels no shame or remorse about their state-sanctioned killing even when there is reasonable doubt supporting their innocence;
• Panic that we live in a country that is okay with disparities that disproportionately impact African Americans, whether economic, legal, educational, health and well-being, and in just about every systemic indicator of health and life in America.
How can this country –- who now professes to love the Reverend Doctor King as a great man, a great AMERICAN, for all they tormented and demonized him when he was alive – not know any of his other writings that so clearly address the economic disparities and other issues that we are so tragically facing now?
How can this country ignore with clear conscious the increasing and racialized gap between rich and poor? And how can we say that we adhere to the great man’s message when the two most media-prominent mobilizations –- the tea party and the “occupy” movements –- are majority white and acting out of all the privileges of that whiteness?
As much as my heart might want, celebrating today as progress for “The Dream” seems more of a matter of celebrating symbol over substance. But too many Americans are living in this on-going racialized nightmare, which this country seems determined to ignore, for that to happen.
In Dr. King’s last book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos to Community” (New York: Harper and Row, 1967) he said:
“Let us take a look at the size of the problem through the lens of the Negro’s status in 1967. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was 60% of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare that he is 50% of a person. Of the good things in life he has approximately one-half those of whites; of the bad he has twice those of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard housing, and Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality (widely accepted as an accurate index of general health) among Negroes is double that of whites.”
Forty-four (44) years later, for all that we acknowledge changes, let’s at least have the courage to admit that not much has changed on that score. And for all the symbolism of his memorial now being on the National Mall, neither has the following (which Dr. King also noted in 1967):
"Depressed living standards for Negroes are not simply the consequences of neglect. Nor can they be explained by the myth of the Negro's innate incapacities, or by the more sophisticated rationalization of his acquired infirmities. They are a structural part of the economic system in the United States."
Now why don’t we hear more about THOSE Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quotes?
And most importantly, why are we not doing anything about these structural issues?
If Americans are REALLY interested in achieving “The Dream”, they first need to acquire the will to address our on-going national, racialized nightmare.
Moving Forward,
Adar
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