We celebrated Black History Month in 1968 and in 2018. We Celebrated Martin Luther King Junior Day on January 20, 1986, and in 2018.
Yet, in 2018, a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that there had been “no progress” for African Americans on homeownership, unemployment, incarceration/criminal Justice and poverty in 50 years, e.g., since 1968. I add “education” because it is related to one’s socio-economic well-being and because current data about Black high school graduates’ readiness for life and college are dreadful.
The celebrations fall under the rubric of Culture; and the goals of a People’s culture are to ensure that they survive, thrive, achieve freedom, and pass freedom on to future generations.
Great harm ensues when people forget the primary goals they set out to accomplish. –Lessing
Freedom was the primary goal for American citizens encompassed in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Freedom was the primary goal for descendants of slaves with: Carter G. Woodson’s Black History Week designation in 1926;
the Brown Decision; the Civil Rights Acts of the mid-sixties; Adams vs. Richardson; Goals 2000; and, No Child Left Behind.
However, late in their lives, Carter G. Woodson, John Hope Franklin, Kenneth Clark and Martin Luther King expressed great disappointment at what had been achieved for descendants of slaves.
Carter G. Woodson: “The so-called modern education, with all its defects does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker Peoples.”
John Hope Franklin suggested that we couldn’t solve the racial problem because a truly color-blind society scares all of us, Blacks as well as whites; that to be judged strictly on our contributions to society is too much for us to take.
Kenneth Clark stated: “Reluctantly I am forced to face the likely possibility that the United States will never rid itself of racism and reach true integration. I look back and shudder at how naive we all were in our belief in the steady progress of racial equity, through programs of litigation and education. I am forced to recognize that my life has, in fact, been a series of glorious defeats.”
In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. bemoaned: “Where Do We Go From Here — Chaos or Community. This is no time for empty debates about freedom, but a time for action, a strategy for change, for a tactical program that will bring us into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. If not, we will end up with solutions that don’t solve, answers that don’t answer and explanations that don’t explain.” In 1963, in his I Have a Dream speech, he told us to go back to our local communities and get to work. Instead, we relied on traditional national party politics – a grievous error.
Oppressors gain power over the people because of their blindness. Americans cannot believe that they are about to be destroyed. Their optimism – dreaming, hoping, praying, toxic positivity — as they stand on the edge of the grave is astounding. (From Vasily Grossman)
Both oppressors and oppressed play their parts in the subjugation equation — the Dance of Unequals.
The Dance of Unequals is an encounter between a killer of spirits and a component of society – e.g., descendants of slaves. The dance consists of the psychologically, spiritually and emotionally wounded, having been deceived and oppressed for many generations, unwittingly become coconspirators, dancing along to their metaphorical grave following the dictates of the despots who subjugated them.
The most effective way to destroy a People is to deny and obliterate their history. Destroy or falsify every record, rewrite every book, repaint every picture, rename or destroy every school, statue and building, and alter every important date. Their past will be erased, the erasure will be forgotten, and the lie will become the truth for those telling it and those hearing it. Nothing will exist except the endless present in which the PARTY is always right. (From George Orwell)
While Orwell was on the mark long before Eminent Domain and Urban Renewal became major instruments of White Supremacists, these enemies have twisted the obfuscation of Black culture and made the opposite a weapon for them.
Oppressed people seek visible attainments, e.g., named holidays, streets, statues, and buildings, to which the powers often acquiesce. Admittedly, these are positive cultural artifacts. Although they inspire cultural pride, symbolic accoutrements alone, no matter how apropos, will not redistribute useable power to powerless people and rectify wrongs unless they are part of plans to make fundamental changes in institutions, policy-makers, and policies. All too often, victories have been Pyrrhic – triumphs that inflict such a devastating toll on the victors that they are indistinguishable from defeat, nullify real achievements, and obstruct long-term, durable progress.
