I have a thought that I am not sure is original, but is at least something I haven't heard discussed much. I was listening to NPR and there was an interview with a fellow who recently wrote a biography of Condoleeza Rice. He was saying that Rice's family was from Birmingham, AL and that she grew up during the Civil Rights movement, but that she was seperated from it. That her parents had a different structure and belief about how it ought to work. They were relatively well off, and had been successful, even under Jim Crow. They felt that working hard, being educated and achieving through normal, systemic, means was the way to go. They encouraged CR to work twice as hard, as she could work twice as hard and no one would be able to say she was not equal. They felt the MLK et. al. were using up time, effort and money that could have been better spent on things that were more necessary. The writer said that the NAACP felt the same way, the MLK was setting up straw men for them, when there were more important things to do in the meantime.
My point, and how this comes to be in this particular comments section, is that I was thinking that the archetype for black-male success is that of a rabble-rouser. It is an MLK-type, lots of splash, lots of noise kind of archetype. In the same way that Condoleeza seems to get very little credit for being who she is, both her race and her sex, that educated, well-to-do, hard-working archetype seems to be at best a niche less-explored.
This then leads to the POV that todays black-youth culture is a direct result of that more powerful archetype. Make a splash with a gang, with a video, with what-have-you. That seems to be the way to succeed. Any thoughts on this? Am I just another racist white-guy? I am genuinely moved by the plight of the community and am just trying to see it correctly.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
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3 comments:
This is not an uncommon topic with black conservatives, so race might not be an issue. When was young and involved in the Women's Movement, I attended a conference at Evergreen College on discrimination against women in various types of employment. Most of the women involved were academics, but one was a lawyer who also taught law. She said that, yes, she had to work twice as hard as any man to prove herself (this was 1972) but that there was nothing wrong in this. The essence of her argument was that everyone, even men, knew she had to work twice as hard to achieve par, which proved that she was better than the men she was competing with. Thus she proved her equality with MEN in general and her superiority to most men, in her filed. She was generally booed. I liked the argument. If you know you are equal or superior, it ought not be any big deal to prove it in what you do. People who insist that they are equal, but behave as if there were no standard for equality to which they ought or must aspire, rightly fail in life.
field, not filed
I feel it doesn't make you racist at all, much like the trouble I am currently having understanding hate crimes. There was a story recently on Rover's Morning Glory, sad place to get my news, about a black woman in West Virgina; who was held captive, raped and tortured by six white people. She lived and all six people are being charged. Apparently, racist slurs were used during the attacks and time she was held. So now, America is waiting to see if these six individuals will be charged with "hate crimes." I say punish the crime, not the color. Does charging them with a hate crime mean that if the woman was white it would have not been as serious and discusting?
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