By Danny R. Johnson
White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals. This, in its turn, gives support to White prejudice.
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 1944
This is our basic conclusion: Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one White — separate and unequal.
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Report), 1968
The status of Black Americans today can be characterized as a glass that is half full — if measured by progress since 1939 — or as a glass that is half empty — if measured by the persisting disparities between Black and White Americans since the early 1970s.
A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society, 1989
WASHINGTON – The Transatlantic Slave Trade produced one of the largest forced migrations in history. From the early 16th century to the mid-19th century, between 10 and 11 million Africans were torn from their homes, herded onto ships where they were sometimes so tightly packed that they could barely move, and deposited in a strange new land. (Since others died in transit, Africa’s loss of population was greater still.) By far the largest importers of slaves were Brazil and the Caribbean sugar colonies; together, they received well over three-quarters of all Africans brought to the New World. About 6 percent of the total (600,000 to 650,000 persons) came to the area of the present United States.
Slavery spread quickly in the American colonies. At first the legal status of Africans in America was poorly defined, and some—like European indentured servants—managed to become free after several years of service. From the 1660s, however, the colonies began enacting laws that defined and regulated slave relations; central to these laws was the provision that Black slaves, and the children of slave women, would serve for life. By the eve of the American Revolution, slaves constituted about 40 percent of the population of the southern mainland colonies, with the highest concentration in South Carolina, where well over half the population were slaves.
Throughout most of the colonial period, opposition to slavery among White Americans was virtually nonexistent. Settlers in the 17th and early 18th centuries came from a sharply stratified society in which the upper classes savagely exploited members of the “lower orders”; lacking a later generation’s belief in natural human equality, they saw little reason to question the enslavement of Africans. As they sought to mold a docile labor force, these planters resorted to harshly repressive measures that included liberal use of whippings and brandings.
Gradually, as slavery became more entrenched, changes occurred in the way masters looked on their slaves (and themselves). Many second-generation masters, who unlike their parents had grown up with slaves, came to regard them as inferior members of their extended families, and to look upon themselves as kindly patriarchs who, like benevolent despots, ruled their “people” firmly but fairly and looked after their needs. Such slave owners continued to rely heavily on the lash (and other forms of punishment) for discipline, and few slaves saw their owners as the kindly guardians that they proclaimed themselves to be. Still, the most extreme forms of physical abuse became less common over the course the 18th century, at the same time that many slave owners accepted the idea that they should treat their slaves humanely as long as the slaves behave and are obedient.
White masters intervened continuously in the lives of their slaves, from directing their labor to approving (and disapproving) marriages. Some masters made elaborate written “rules” and most engaged in constant meddling—directing, nagging, threatening, and punishing. Many took advantage of their position to exploit slave women sexually. What slaves hated most about slavery was not the hard work to which they were subjected (most people in the rural United States expected to engage in hard physical labor), but the lack of control over their lives—their lack of freedom. Masters may have prided themselves on the care they provided for their “people”; the slaves, however, had a different idea of that care. They resented the constant interference in their lives and struggled to achieve whatever autonomy they could.
History Validates White Americans Fear of Addressing Racial Inequality
How beguilingly easy it has been for most White Americans to forget. How tempting to ignore the evidence that discrimination endures. How alluring is the myth that all those willing to work have shared in the surface prosperity of the past two centuries. How glib are the assumptions that civil rights legislation, affirmative action and Black political participation inevitably lead to an integrated society. How self-satisfying to conclude that the U.S. has already done enough to tear down the barriers of segregation. “Behold,” some say – “look we have the first Black president, Barack Obama.”
Such delusions are an inevitable consequence — and a cause — of decades of willful denial of the realities of White-Black relations. Race remains near the surface of American life, but it is almost always publicly viewed through narrow prisms: a legal wrangle over affirmative action, a political campaign, an isolated incident of racial violence as sparked by the recent incidents of alleged and overt police brutality. Sharp disagreements about the origins and implications of the alarming growth of the Black underclass and fears of drug-related crime have widened a gulf of mutual incomprehension between the races. Even in private discourse, Whites and Blacks have lost the capacity to talk to each other honestly about the subject that divides them more than any other.
“I have as many White friends as Black, but my White friends and I don’t talk about race, because when we do, we get testy,” says Franklin Bellows, a Black New York City foundation executive. Daniel Schwarzschild, a White southern third-generation German, and long active in national civil rights causes, remains equally pessimistic: “My sense is that on both sides of the racial divide, society has given up on this problem.”
Only in this context is it possible to appreciate fully the importance of the 1989 past publication A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society, a landmark 588-page study by the National Research Council that strived to update reports by the 1968 Kerner Commission and Gunnar Myrdal. Edited by Black economist Gerald David Jaynes and White sociologist Robin M. Williams Jr., A Common Destiny represented at that time the nation’s most definitive report card on race relations in 20 years up to that point. And America flunked then as it has flunked in 2014.
Though such a pessimistic assessment is implied throughout A Common Destiny, it is never stated with such sweeping clarity. Instead, the authors preferred to present their findings in the numbing language of social science. “Since the early 1970s,” the study states, “the economic status of Blacks relative to Whites has, on average, stagnated or deteriorated.” Consider what that single sentence reveals about White America’s smug belief in the healing virtues of progress and prosperity. After nearly two decades, five Presidents, periods of both activism and apathy, largesse and laissez-faire, the result has been at best stagnation.
In theory, it is laudable that A Common Destiny resisted the easy summary that leads to TV-style sound bites. But there is also the danger that the report would be unjustly ignored. And it was. The enduring value of A Common Destiny can be found in the mountain of evidence it marshals to rebut a series of debilitating myths about the true state of contemporary race relations then and the stinging indictments it presents for us today:
Myth: Affirmative action and a buoyant economy have provided working Blacks with a level playing field. The book stated that White resentment over affirmative action had become a powerful undercurrent in race relations. “Whites think most discrimination is ancient history,” says sociologist and human rights advocate Dr. Cornell West, the author of numerous books on race relations. “They see things like affirmative action, and some people even think Blacks have an advantage.”
But aside from a few well-publicized anecdotal examples, virtually all the evidence contradicts this common White stereotype. Take Black male college graduates, likely beneficiaries of affirmative action. In 1984 their average yearly earnings were just 74% of their White counterparts. Popular misperceptions also exaggerate the rate at which the Black middle class is growing. Between 1970 and 1986, the proportion of Black families with inflation-adjusted incomes over $35,000 merely increased from 18% to 22%.
Sadly, what makes this growth rate seem impressive is the economic difficulties of less affluent Black workers. Beginning in the early 1970s, Blacks disproportionately bore the brunt of the decline of smokestack America. Since then, not only has there been a widening gap between Black and White unemployment rates, but the real incomes of some categories of low-skill Black workers have plummeted 20% as well. Small wonder that Blacks’ per capita income was 57% of Whites’ in 1984, the same percentage as in 1971. So much for the Reagan-era vision of Morning in America.
In 2014, a typical Black household has accumulated less than one-tenth of the wealth of a typical White one. And it’s only getting worse. Over the past 25 years, the wealth gap between Blacks and Whites has nearly tripled, according to a 2014 research study by Brandeis University. That’s in large part because home ownership among Blacks is so much lower. Housing is often Americans’ greatest asset and a major component of their overall wealth. Unemployment is also a major problem. The jobless rate for Blacks is twice that of whites. The gap has been at least that large for years. All of these factors combine to push many blacks into poverty. America’s 15% poverty rate masks the underlying racial differences. More than one in four Blacks live in poverty, while fewer than one in 10 Whites do.
Myth: Overt discrimination has virtually vanished in the past 20 years. Only in terms of the voting booth and the lunch-counter stool is there much truth to support this common White view. As A Common Destiny made clear, “a considerable amount of remaining Black-White inequality is due to continuing discriminatory treatment of Blacks. The clearest evidence is in housing.”
Since the 1960s, there has been almost no measurable progress in housing integration. In 1980 housing in the 16 metropolitan areas with the largest Black populations was rated 80 on a 0-to-100 scale on which 100 meant total segregation. These discriminatory patterns cannot be explained only by Black-White economic differences. In New York, Chicago and Detroit, Black college graduates are about as likely to live in segregated neighborhoods as Black high school dropouts.
What this means in real life is that as soon as the workday ends, the U.S. reverts to a largely segregated nation. Middle-income Whites can, if they choose, literally buy their way into a world of racially homogeneous schools, shopping areas and recreational facilities. “These attitudes don’t change as we increase the socioeconomic status of the respondent,” says Dr. West. “The higher the White respondents’ income, the less they wanted to be in an integrated neighborhood.”
Myth: As prejudice recedes, the U.S. will gradually move toward integration without governmental compulsion. Since Myrdal, social scientists who study race relations have wrestled with the sometimes tenuous connection between expressed attitudes and personal behavior. As A Common Destiny puts it, “Blacks and Whites share a substantial consensus, in the abstract, on the broad goal of achieving an integrated and egalitarian society.” But surveys also show that Whites are much more likely to support integration in theory than specific governmental steps to achieve it. A Common Destiny viewed discrepancies like these as “important signs of continuing resistance to full equality of Black Americans: principles of equality are endorsed less when social contact is close, of long duration, or frequent.” Put colloquially, the prevalent White attitude is “Yeah, I’m for integration, but not in my neighborhood.”
The result of the past decades stagnation is that many Whites and Blacks have given up on integration as a goal that can be achieved or that is even entirely desirable. “To the extent that White folks had a notion of integration, it meant that more and more Black folks would become more like us,” said historian David Garrow, a biographer of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This political climate has left many Black leaders disheartened. “We don’t have a clue on how to proceed,” says Eleanor Holmes Norton, former top civil rights official in the Carter Administration, and current DC delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives. “I would never have said that in 1978 or 1968.”
Realignment of the Old Confederacy Has Begun
U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) recent loss to Rep. Bill Cassidy (R) means that come January 2015, there will be no Democratic senators from the Deep South when the new Congress is sworn in. It also means there will be no Democratic statewide elected officials in Louisiana beginning next year. Landrieu’s seat will be held by a Republican for the first time in 132 years. That tells you about all you need to know about how much the Democratic Party once dominated power in the South — and how that power has disappeared.
Half of the senators who voted for the federal health-care law will be gone come the 114th Congress. Sixty — all Democrats — voted for the bill. Thirty will be back next year. Expect to hear that stat trotted out by conservative opponents of the law in the next few months. But also keep in mind of the 39 Republicans who voted against the law, just 24 — 60 percent — will be returning in 2015. Republicans gained more than 60 state legislative seats in the South in the 2014 elections (with the exception of Kentucky), strengthening their dominance in the region’s state-level politics.
It appears that America is currently in a Cold Civil War. The parties, of course, have switched sides since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The party of the Union and Lincoln is now the Democratic Party. The party of the Confederacy is now the GOP. And racial polarization is at record levels, with Whites entirely responsible for reversing Obama’s 2008 inroads into the old Confederacy in three Southern states.
But as in past decades, the only workable answer remains renewed governmental pressure on behalf of a desegregated America, as politically unpopular as it may be will be met with resistance as history has shown. The implicit message of A Common Destiny is that White America, left to its own devices, will never complete the unfinished task of creating racial equality. That will take bold leadership of the likes of a President Abraham Lincoln and a President Lyndon Johnson, who used their southern charm and powerful persuasiveness to get the various opposing sides to do what was right for the country.
Danny R. Johnson is San Diego County News’ Washington, DC National News Correspondent
