The Rhetoric Of Racial Harmony

AMERICA'S SOCIETY IS more thoroughly integrated today in terms of race relations than at any point in its entire history. Since 1964, the number of black elected officials has increased from hardy 100 to 7,000. The number of African Americans enrolled in colleges and universities has quadrupled; the number of black-owned banks and financial institutions has increased tenfold; the percentage of African Americans in the middle class and professions has significantly expanded.

Perhaps the most striking changes in public perceptions of race have occurred in popular culture, social institutions, and the media. American music, theater, public education, sports, and the arts are now heavily influenced by the rhythms and patterns of African-American life. Black images in commercial advertisements are commonplace. Blacks remain underrepresented in the ownership and management of cultural and social institutions, but are nearly omnipresent, its employees and prominent public representatives, particularly in the state sector.

Despite these symbols of racial advancement, in recent years incidents of racist harassment, vigilante violence, and social disruption have escalated. Hundreds of African-American students have been victimized by intimidation or outright threats on university campuses across the country. White youth are forming "while student unions" at several institutions to push back affirmative action and the preferential recruitment of minorities as faculty and students.

Civil rights organizations point to a disturbing pattern of legal indictments and political harassment of black elected officials, and to the growth of violent incidents aimed against black-owned property and individuals in urban areas. Racial tensions in cities such as New York have culminated in a series of massive public demonstrations by both blacks and whites, with both sides accusing the other of "racism." A quarter century removed from the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, which abolished legal racial discrimination in public accommodations, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which extended the electoral franchise to all Americans regardless of race, the goal of racial harmony and integration seems more distant than ever before.

What explains the racial paradox, the emergence of a black middle class and acceptance of black cultural achievements within the context of a deepening crisis of race relations in the society as a whole? Any analysis of the contemporary status of African Americans in the United States must begin with analysis of the accomplishments and the contradictions of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The leaders of the desegregation social protest movement a generation ago mobilized millions with one simple demand—"freedom." In the context of the "Jim Crow" or racially segregated society of the South in the post-World War II period, freedom meant the elimination of all social, political, legal, and economic barriers that forced black Americans into a subordinate status.

Implicit in the demand for desegregation were several assumptions. Desegregation would increase opportunities for blacks in business, government, and society overall. Desegregated educational institutions would promote greater racial harmony and understanding between young people from different ethnic communities, which in turn would promote residential integration. Affirmative action policies, the strategy of compensating for past discrimination against minorities, would gradually increase the numbers of African Americans, Hispanics, and other people of color in administrative and managerial positions.

It was assumed that as African Americans escaped the ghetto and were more broadly distributed across the social class structure and institutions of society, racial tensions and bigotry would decline in significance. As blacks were more thoroughly integrated into the economic system, it was thought, the basis for racial confrontation would diminish.

The thesis above was fundamentally flawed in several key respects. First, desegregation did not benefit the entire black community uniformly. Black professionals and managers, those who had attended colleges and technical schools, were the principal beneficiaries. Working-class African Americans also benefited: Incomes increased as new opportunities were created in upper-income levels of the labor force, and their children for the first time had access to higher education.

But opportunity in a capitalist society is always a function of social class position, which means ownership of capital, material resources, education. and access to power. For the unemployed, the poor, and those without marketable skills or resources; for those whose lives were circumscribed by illiteracy, disease, and desperation, "race" continued to occupy a central place as a factor in their marginal existence.

Legal desegregation contributed to the popular illusion that the basis for racial discrimination and conflict no longer existed. The abolition of racially separate residential districts, hotels, schools, and other public institutions convinced many white Americans that the "Negro question" had finally been firmly resolved. Black American leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. had always insisted upon the achievement of a "colorblind society. " The passage of anti-discriminatory legislation had eliminated all basic impediments to the socioeconomic and cultural advancement of African Americans, according to this view.

Thus, as many black leaders continued to speak out against current social injustices, or pointed to the growing economic disparities between blacks and the majority of middle-class whites, their complaints were easily dismissed as anachronistic, self-serving rhetoric. By raising the issue of racism, many whites now believed, blacks themselves must be "racist."

The American civil rights leadership and the black political establishment now find themselves in a quandary largely of their own making. Their failure to develop a body of politics representing a qualitative step beyond the discourse and strategies of the civil rights movement of a generation ago is directly linked to the poverty of their theoretical outlook.

THE CENTRAL THEORETICAL and conceptual weakness of this largely middle-class, African-American leadership is its inability to distinguish between ethnicity and race, and to apply both terms to the realities of American capital, power, and the state. African-American people are both an ethnic group (or more precisely, a national minority) and a racial group. Our ethnicity is derived from the cultural synthesis of our African heritage and our experiences in American society, first as slaves and subsequently as share-croppers, industrial laborers, the unemployed, and now as the core of the post-industrial urban underclass in the semi-destroyed central cities of North America.

As black scholar W. E. B. DuBois observed nearly a century ago, black Americans are both African and American, "two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." This central duality is at the core of our ethnic consciousness, forming the fundamental matrix for all expressions of African-American music, art, language patterns, folklore, religious rituals, belief systems, the structure of our families, and other culture manifestations and social institutions. Blackness in the cultural context is the expression and affirmation of a set of traditional values, beliefs, rituals, and social patterns, rather than physical appearance or social class position.

Race is a totally different dynamic, rooted in the structures of exploitation, power, and privilege. "Race" is an artificial social construction that was deliberately imposed on various subordinated groups of people at the outset of the expansion of European capitalism into the Western Hemisphere five centuries ago. The "racial" consciousness and discourse of the West was forged above the bowels of slave ships, as they carted their human cargoes into the slave depots of the Caribbean and the Americas. The search for agricultural commodities and profits from the extreme exploitation of involuntary workers deemed less than human gave birth to the notion of racial inequality.

In the United States, a race is frequently defined as a group of individuals who share certain physical or biological traits, particularly phenotype (skin color), body structure, and facial features. But race has no scientific validity as a meaningful biological or genetic concept. Beyond this, the meaning of race shifts according to the power relations between the racial groups.

For instance, in apartheid South Africa, Japanese people were considered by the regime as "white," whereas Chinese were classified as being "colored." In Brazil, a person of color could be "white," "mulatto," or "black," depending upon the individual's vocation, income, family connections, and level of education.

Even in rigidly segregated societies such as the American South before the modern civil rights movement, race was frequently situational—a function not just of physical appearance, but also of the explicit or implied power relations that connect the individual of color to local or external constituencies. In many segregated cities such as Washington, DC, Arab and African diplomats and foreign representatives were permitted to stay in "whites only" hotels, which were strictly off-limits to local blacks. African Americans who owned property or who were well-respected professionals, university professors, or ministers were occasionally granted social privileges extended solely to whites.

RACE, THEREFORE, IS NOT an abstract thing, but an unequal relationship between social aggregates, which is also historically specific. The subordinated racial group finds itself divorced from the levers of power and authority within the socioeconomic order. The oppressed racial group's labor power, its ability to produce commodities, is systematically exploited, chiefly through abnormally low wage rates. It is denied ownership of the major means of production. It lacks full access to sources of capital and credit. The racial group's political status is marginal or peripheral, as full participation and legislative representation are blocked.

Finally, dominant and subordinate racial categories are constantly reinforced in the behaviors and social expectations of all groups by the manipulation of social stereotypes and through the utilization of the legal system to carry out methods of coercion. The popular American myth of the Negro's sexual promiscuity, prowess, and great physical attributes, for example, was designed to desecrate the intellectual abilities and the scientific and cultural accomplishments of blacks.

The racist stereotype of the black race's inclination toward anti-social behavior, criminality, and violence reinforces the series of discriminatory codes, employment patterns, and legal harassment aimed at non-whites. Institutional and vigilante violence, including lynching, the death penalty, and the disproportionately large number of African Americans arrested for crimes that whites also commit, help to justify and reinforce the stereotypes.

To be white in the United States says nothing directly about an individual's culture, ethnic heritage, or biological background. A society created to preserve "white culture" either would be very confused or tremendously disappointed. White culture does not exist. White power, privileges, and prerogatives within capitalist society do exist.

Whiteness is fundamentally a statement of the continued patterns of exploitation of subordinated racial groups which create economic surpluses for privileged groups. To be white means that one's "life chances," in the lexicon of American sociologists, improve dramatically. Any white person, regardless of personal appearance, income, or education, usually finds it much easier to establish credit, purchase better homes, and initiate businesses than the average non-white person.

To be white in the United States statistically means that police officers rarely harass you, that your life expectancy is significantly longer than non-whites, and that your children will probably inherit property and social position. Blackness in American racial terms has meant a hundred different insults, harassments, and liabilities experienced daily; living with the reality that a black university graduate will make less money in his or her lifetime than the average white graduate of secondary school; experiencing higher death rates due to the absence of adequate health care facilities in one's neighborhood; accepting the grim fact that, in 1990, a young white American male's statistical likelihood of becoming a victim of homicide is roughly one chance in 186, while a young black male's statistical chances are one in 20.

THE AMBIGUITY AND CONFUSION concerning the crucial differences between race and ethnicity within the United States are directly attributable to the uneven merger of the two concepts as they related to black Americans. People of African-American nationality, whose cultural patterns and social traditions were derived in part from Africa, were overdetermined externally as the subordinate racial category. Physical appearance and phenotype were convenient, if not always predictable, measures for isolating the members of the oppressed racial group, "the blacks."

For white Americans this racial-ethnic overdetermination did not occur for several reasons. White Americans originated from many different countries and cultures, ethnic intermarriage was frequent, and the rigid economic and legal barriers that confined blacks behind the walls of the ghetto usually did not exist. By the mid-20th century, millions of white Americans had no clear ethnic or cultural identity beyond vague generalizations. Their sense of aesthetics was derived largely from the lowest cultural common denominator—the mass media and the entertainment industry.

Whites' racial identity was ruptured from ethnicity, and was only politically or socially relevant as it affected issues of direct personal interest—such as whether a Hispanic or African-American family intended to purchase a home in their neighborhood, or whether their employer planned to initiate an affirmative-action hiring program for minorities. Whiteness was fundamentally a measure of personal privilege and power, not a cultural statement.

White capitalist America's cultural vacuity, its historical inability to nurture or sustain a vibrant "national culture," drawing upon the most creative elements of its various ethnic constituencies, help to explain the present paradox of desegregation. Millions of white Americans, devoid of their own cultural compass, have absorbed critical elements of African-American music, dance, literature, and language. They now accept black participation in professional athletics and extend acclaim to African-American film stars and entertainers. In a desperate search for collective identity, whites have mimicked blacks in countless ways, from the black-faced minstrels of the 19th century to the contemporary white musical groups singing reggae and rap.

But whites' affinity and tolerance for blackness are largely cultural, not racial. Many whites have learned to appreciate African-derived elements of music, dance, and religious rituals, but would not endorse the sharing of power or material privileges, which would undermine the stratification of race.

For example, the current director of the Republican Party's National Committee, Lee Atwater, was the architect of a viciously racist media campaign that was largely responsible for electing President Bush. Atwater's infamous television advertisement of convicted felon Willie Horton linked the specter of the black rapist to the Democrats' supposed weakness on law-and-order issues. Yet Atwater's much beloved personal hobby is playing the blues on his guitar, weakly imitating African-American blues artist B. B. King.

The central characteristic of race relations in the 1990s is "interaction without understanding. " White students purchase the latest taped recordings of black singers and cheer the latest exploits of black athletes, while they bitterly reject the imposition of course requirements mandating classes in African-American politics, history, or literature. White employers encourage the recruitment of black junior executives in their firms, but would shudder at the prospect of minorities moving into their exclusive neighborhoods or joining their elite private clubs. White religious leaders espouse pious platitudes about ethnic understanding and racial reconciliation, while doing relatively little to bring their white, upper-class congregations into close contact with the gritty problems of the ghetto. Racial integration, within the framework of capitalism, has produced the symbols of progress and the rhetoric of racial harmony without the substance of empowerment for the oppressed.

PERHAPS THE GREATEST irony in this post-civil rights situation is that African Americans born after 1960 frequently have great difficulty identifying the realities of contemporary oppressive race and class structures because of the transformation of white racial etiquette. No white politician, corporate executive, or religious leader now uses the term "nigger" in public. African Americans coming to maturity in the 1980s and 1990s have never personally experienced Jim Crow segregation. They cannot express how they feel to be denied the right to vote because their electoral rights are guaranteed by law. They have never personally participated in street demonstrations, boycotts, picket lines, and seizures of government and academic buildings. Few have tasted the pungent fumes of tear gas or felt the fiery hatred of racist mobs. The absence of a personal background of struggle casts a troubled shadow over the current generation of black Americans who are poorly equipped to grapple with the current complexities of racial and class domination.

Integration also crippled African Americans in the context of their "cultural literacy." Under traditional racial segregation, the strict barriers that were established forced a wide variety of professions and social classes into intimate interaction. Black physicians had to look for patients in the black community. African-American attorneys depended upon black clients. Black storeowners looked to blacks for patronage.

Black social organizations, civic associations, and religious institutions reflected the broad spectrum of social class, from custodians and sanitation workers to school teachers and civil servants. The sense of shared suffering and collective cooperation provided the basis for an appreciation of the community's racial identity and heritage. African-American history was taught in segregated schools and churches, and pictures of prominent black leaders were frequently displayed.

Denied access to the white media, blacks established their own network of race-oriented publications. A separate cultural and artistic underground developed in the cities, creative enclaves that produced the classical legacy of modern jazz and the urban blues.

But as the racial boundaries were liberalized and as white public discourse became largely race-neutral, the terrain for black cultural awareness diminished. Young African Americans no longer were forced to confront their ethnicity or cultural history. In effect, we are witnessing the development of a substantial segment of the African-American population which is "post-black"—without any cultural awareness, historical appreciation, or political commitment to the traditions, customs, values, and networks that have been the basis for black identity in America.

IN ALL RACIALLY BIFURCATED societies, the government, legal system, major political parties, and other institutions of state power are generally designed—explicitly or implicitly—to preserve white power and perpetuate non-white domination. In the United States, the concept of racial superiority and prerogatives still retains tremendous influence within the actual power relations and public policies of governmental structures and political parties.

By the decade of the 1980s, the racial polarization in America's political system had crystallized and hardened into an apartheid-type, two-tiered political system. Blacks, as a racial group, frequently will vote for white liberal candidates over black office-seekers, if in their judgment the former's agenda is progressive.

But most whites, taken as a racial group, find it difficult if not impossible to vote in large numbers for any African-American candidate, regardless of his or her qualifications, experience, or education. When white Democrats are confronted at the polling booth with a choice between a black Democrat who clearly articulates their class and political interests versus a white Republican, the vast majority will consistently defect to the white candidate.

Under the leadership of former President Ronald Reagan, who had vigorously opposed civil rights legislation, affirmative action, and other racial reforms of the 1960s, the Republican Party was transformed into a multiclass, white united front, dedicated largely to the ideology of conservatism, anti-communism abroad, and the preservation of the hegemony of corporate capital over labor.

This electoral drift to the ideological Right has influenced the behavior of a growing number of black politicians, who seek to further their own careers outside of the boundaries of traditional civil rights politics. Positioning themselves further to the Right to capture the support of upper-class white voters, they are increasingly advancing positions that are alien to the black freedom struggle. A prime example of this nascent trend is Douglas Wilder, recently elected governor of Virginia, the Southern state that was the home of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Wilder's 1989 electoral campaign largely ignored the state's black electorate and concentrated exclusively on winning one third of the state's white vote. This percentage, combined with a strong black turnout, would guarantee victory over his Republican opponent. To achieve this goal, Wilder reversed himself on many liberal policy positions he had taken previously. During the campaign, he embraced the death penalty, opposed the extension of statehood status to the District of Columbia, and supported anti-union right-to-work laws.

Wilder's case illustrates two political realities of the post-civil rights period. First, with the demise of racial segregation, the black community ironically lacks structures of accountability to modify or effectively check the public or political behavior of its own elected officials. And second, growing numbers of African Americans in government, the legal system, and political parties will attempt to transcend their own racial designation as black for the purpose of furthering their own careers.

This creates an ever-growing sense of alienation and frustration for the millions of African-American poor, working class, and unemployed, still trapped in the ghetto, who see little real significance in the elevation of a Wilder to high office. Black representation in government rarely improves the quality of their lives, and their actual material conditions have become worse overall since 1980. The "post-black politicians" are irrelevant to the problems of the oppressed.

The challenges of race, class, and power confronting black Americans are far more complicated than Martin Luther King Jr. ever anticipated when he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the August 1963 March on Washington, D.C., delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech. The objective should not be the realization of a Utopian, colorblind society, but a democratic social order that seeks to achieve several goals.

First, democratic principles must be extended from the electoral system into the structures of the economy and social order, making a job or guaranteed income a human right. Also, public health-care facilities, housing, and access to transportation must be available to all. Finally, ethnicity must be distinctly separated from race, which would preserve America's diverse cultural and ethnic heritages while abolishing all forms of institutional discrimination that are justified by the perpetuation of racial categories. We must destroy "race" without uprooting culture and ethnicity.

WILL WHITES BE WILLING to give up their centuries of power and privilege over oppressed African Americans, Hispanics, and other people defined by racial categories of subordination? Will the white elites who control the banks and financial institutions, the factories and corporations, the exclusive real estate and country clubs, recognize that a truly multicultural democracy can only exist with the fundamental redistribution of power within the economic system and the government?

This could require a radical restructuring of capitalism itself, as those most disadvantaged groups generate new social protest movements for a more equitable division of resources. It is also possible that white American politicians, corporate leaders, educators, and the intelligentsia will attempt to follow what might become the post-apartheid South African model for race relations: non-white domination of the government and public institutions, and the concomitant expansion of the black middle class, with the preservation of white domination over the legal system, private property, and the economy.

What is the role of the religious community in addressing America's crisis of race and class inequality? It is relatively easy to stand before one's congregation and solicit funds for a Hispanic or African-American vocational training center, or to request canned goods and second-hand clothing for minority women on AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children). It is a very different question to challenge one's peers and associates to question the preferential status and material benefits they possess simply by the fact of being white.

There will be no racial peace in America until millions of whites come to terms with the uncomfortable truth that black oppression, poverty, and high unemployment rates are hardly accidental, or symptoms of an absence of the work ethic among blacks. Institutional racism and class domination are structural and elaborate, benefiting certain privileged classes at the expense of common misery of others.

Religious institutions' major contribution to human relations should be a commitment to the achievement of the deconstruction of white racial privilege within society as a whole. More succinctly, this would mean a commitment to "racial suicide" for the social category "white."

So long as millions of white Americans confuse race with ethnicity and perceive their world in immutably racial terms, tied to an eclectic mixture of biological myths, racist stereotypes, and IQ tests, they will be unable to fully overcome their own crippled consciousness. And without a cultural metamorphosis among middle-class whites, who are forced to confront the terrible social and economic consequences of institutional racism, no racial dialogue or peace with the ghetto will be possible. Without social justice, there will be no peace.