Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation - Softcover

Asante, Molefi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1591027659 ISBN 13: 9781591027652

Verlag: G38-Prometheus, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Did the election of Barack Obama to be President of the United States signal real progress in bridging America’s longstanding racial divide? In this profound study of systemic racism, Molefi Kete Asante, one of our leading scholars of African American history and culture, discusses the greatest source of frustration and anger among African Americans in recent decades: what he calls "the wall of ignorance" that attempts to hide the long history of racial injustice from public consciousness. This is most evident in each race’s differing perspectives on racial matters. Though most whites view racism as a thing of the past, a social problem largely solved by the civil rights movement, blacks continue to experience racism in many areas of social life: encounters with the police; the practice of red lining in housing; difficulties in getting bank loans, mortgages, and insurance policies; and glaring disparities in health care, educational opportunities, unemployment levels, and incarceration rates. Though such problems are not expressions of the overt racism of legal segregation and lynch mobs—what most whites probably think of when they hear the word "racism"—their negative effect on black Americans is almost as pernicious. Such daily experiences create a lingering feeling of resentment that percolates in a slow boil till some event triggers an outburst of rage.
Asante argues that America cannot long continue as a cohesive society under these conditions. As we embark upon new leadership under America’s first African American president, he urges more public focus on redressing the wrongs of the past and their continuing legacy. Above all, he thinks that Americans must seriously consider some system of reparations to deal with both past and present injustices, an apology, and our own truth-and-reconciliation committee that addresses both the history of slavery and present-day racism. Only in this way, he feels, can we ever hope to heal the racial divide that never seems to be erased. This is a powerful, deeply perceptive analysis of a crucial social problem by one of America’s leading thinkers on race.

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Molefi Kete Asante (Philadelphia, PA) is professor of African American Studies at Temple University, where he created the first doctoral program in African American Studies. He is the author of more than 65 books, including 100 Greatest African Americans and Race, Rhetoric, and Identity. Nationally recognized as one of the ten most widely cited African Americans, Asante has appeared on Nightline, Night Talk, BET, the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour, Today, the Tony Brown’s Journal, Night Watch, Like It Is, and 60 Minutes, among other programs. For more on the author see www.asante.net.

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ERASING RACISM

The Survival of the American Nation By MOLEFI KETE ASANTE

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2009 Molefi Kete Asante
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59102-765-2

Contents

Introduction: Expanding the Dream.....................................7Chapter One: The Tortured Dream.......................................27Chapter Two: The Political Memory.....................................53Chapter Three: The Mythic Condition...................................81Chapter Four: The Wilderness of Racial Discontent.....................117Chapter Five: The Disorientation......................................135Chapter Six: Race and the Religion Situation..........................209Chapter Seven: The Furious Passage....................................227Chapter Eight: The Drama of Racism....................................263Chapter Nine: The National Survival...................................301Notes.................................................................343Bibliography..........................................................365

Chapter One

THE TORTURED DREAM

Since September 11, 2001, there has been a general impression, maintained by media surveys, that the United States is more united than ever. People from every ethnic group, all social classes, and many religions were impacted by the spearing planes launched against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The national reaction, like that of the international community, was one of horror mixed with solidarity. There was cohesion in the national spirit that was marked by outpourings of assistance and expressions of the "national will." Yet clearly, unity around a common tragedy is not patriotism—nor is it as simple as it seems.

A reporter called me soon after the attack to ask if I would comment about the loyalty and true patriotism of the African American people. I told him that the common expression of horror and patriotism had little to do with each other. The terror that befell New York City; Washington, D.C.; and the Pennsylvania countryside did not trigger the loyalty of African Americans. Indeed, African Americans are not only patriotic but willing to defend their homeland against any external or internal threat.

There has never been a credible question about the willingness of African Americans to defend the interests of their country, even while being attacked by their fellow Americans. We have participated in every war against those defined as enemies of the nation, yet we have an abiding issue that sits at the table during every discussion of national unity. Justice, for the descendants of the millions of Africans enslaved during that terrible period of American history, has eluded our society, and discussion of it creates unusually harsh reactions from many Americans. The lingering effects of the enslavement are current and immediate in almost all sectors of American life: health, education, employment, housing, and law. Our patriotism as African Americans does not lessen our criticism of the way our nation has treated us.

The implementation of justice is the most difficult of all national tasks. How do you bring about real equality except, as the ancient Egyptian priests said, to do maat, justice? Through the numerous protests and calls for political and racial justice, we have seen how fully denial is entrenched in American society. Even before September 11, many Americans, black and white, knew that something more must be done.

I have always been convinced that the nation could resolve the remaining issues of injustice and advance society through a philosophy of fairness. African Americans are not a beggar people; we simply want the nation to confront its own history and do justice. Sitting in the Birmingham Church of the Advent, the Episcopal cathedral in Birmingham, Alabama, waiting to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu deliver a message of hope for humanity on April 19, 2002, I noticed an anonymous African American man making his way to the front of the church. He was wearing a white T-shirt with the word "ERACISM" on the front and back. No more fitting message could have been brought by any speaker than that delivered by the young man who braved the large, mostly white audience to take his seat in the third pew. No orator could have spoken any more clearly about what the national mission ought to be at this time.

In his provocative book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, Randall Robinson speaks eloquently about the crimes against Africans in America, stuttering only when he discusses payment for the debt. I believe that reparations can be paid in a variety of ways, which I will explain in this book. However, Robinson raises the issues that must be placed squarely before the American people if we are to truly come together in the spirit of unity: African Americans live inside a fog of accumulated abuses. Until we understand the nature of that fog we will never be able to resolve adequately our national crisis. From political elections to international conferences against racism, African Americans have a number of grievances that further add to centuries of abuse.

In the 2000 presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the most startling allegations of abuse occurred among African American districts in Florida. Kwesi Mfume of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) charged that in Broward, Duval, Palm Beach, and Miami counties, African Americans were prevented from voting, blocked by police from going to the polls, given false information regarding their registration status, and had to contend with misplaced ballot boxes. To say the least, there was anger, outrage, and distrust within the African American community to a degree that had rarely been seen after a contemporary election. Many African Americans, among others, still believe that the 2000 election was stolen.

On a Philadelphia radio talk show the morning after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the counting of ballots in Florida had to stop, black callers raised the question of a conspiracy. Some claimed that had a similar situation—where the brother of the presidential candidate was the governor of the province that would decide the election and the candidate's father had been a previous president as well as a former national intelligence director—occurred in another, less democratic country, there would be no question in the minds of the public that the election was stolen. Others opined that the majority of the justices had ties to the Bush camp, either having sons or relatives working in law firms supporting Bush or being beholden to former president George H.W. Bush for their judgeships.

The vilest and most severe criticism from the African American community was leveled at Justice Clarence Thomas, whom some callers thought appeared to be the proverbial Uncle Tom. Thomas's style of not asking any questions of the lawyers arguing in the Court angered some blacks, who believed that he was appointed by former president George H.W. Bush because he had no depth in the African American community and would support white, often racist, interests against his own people. The late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, they said, would not have sat on the bench without opening his mouth. Of course, Thomas, as always, voted with the conservative side in the 5-4 decision that gave the election to Bush.

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In August 2001 the Bush administration refused to send...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G38-Prometheus
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1591027659
• ISBN 13: 9781591027652
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar