by Marsha
Coleman-Adebayo
Twenty-seven
years later, with a black president in office his words have the insistence of
a drum roll. We see President Barack Obama battered by the harsh racism of a
Republican right in Congress that is prepared to paralyze government and harm
the nation if it means defying his attempts at reform. Insolence has never been
more insulting.
And while the
black community certainly does not have the blithe unconcern that completes the
meaning of insouciant, they certainly are not doing much to interrogate their
own conditions. We hear pastors of African American church congregations across
the south still tell parishioners that Barack "is the chosen one.' The
parishioners repeat it to each other, any criticism of such a deified man would
surely be treason?
And yet the
prisons bulge with African American men, the Washington Post told us as the
year ended that in the Washington area, African American students were
suspended and expelled two to five times as often as whites. "Last year, for example," the Post's writer
reported, "one in seven black students in St.
Mary's County were
suspended from school, compared with one in 20 white students. In Alexandria,
black students were nearly six times as likely to be suspended as their white
peers"Nearly 6 percent of black students were suspended or expelled from school
last year, compared with 1.2 percent of white students."
In August the
White House reported that unemployment among young African Americans was 32%,
by December it had leapt to 41.3% - the national average for all races is nine
percent.
The role of the
African American intellectual is even more important now than it was 40 or 50
years ago, propaganda has become more virulent. Obama may be the chosen one,
but what needs to be defined is "chosen by whom'? We the voters certainly voted
for him but he has failed to live up to the promises that could have helped
stop African Americans still being systematically disadvantaged.
It can be little
surprise that African American children think it is better to have the pale
skin and blonde hair of a Beyonce, the whole notion of black is beautiful has
gone the way of jobs and opportunity.
When African
Americans elected Barack Obama they assumed he would understand what it meant
to be black and oppressed, to be insulted, to be hazed, to have churches refuse
to marry you because of your skin color, to be quizzed more often by cops
because of your skin color or given a harsher sentence because it is believed
that it is within your DNA to be criminal.
At this stage in
our history, with the first term of the first black president nearing its end
we have more African Americans in prison than in college.
The role of the
black intellectual has never been to be an ivory tower scribbler and despite
what one sees in Washington D.C. or Atlanta it is not our role to sweep by the
poor in black limousines and to smile from behind cut glass, whether diamonds
or Waterford.
In 1986 at
Harvard University during a discussion commemorating the life and work of
W.E.B. du Bois, Harold Cruse, then Professor of History Emeritus at the
University of Michigan, and author of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual said
a resurgence of black intellectualism would require a "conscious community
of intellectuals who are committed at an institutional level to create new
lines of communication." But he said this was not happening because the
black elites coming out of the major universities like Harvard and Yale were
isolated from the general Black population.
Jeffrey
Howard, a Harvard social psychologist, at the same conference said challenges
facing African Americans was because we failed to coach our children
adequately, it was we as parents who did not do enough. "The distribution
of knowledge, skills, and exposure to an aggressive and competitive spirit is
fundamental to any group's success in society."
I believe
it goes beyond that, it requires that we get out of our limousines and onto the
sidewalks to engage in protest, we need to get onto the committees and school
boards in our communities, we complain but we do not do enough to steer the
ship. This is an election year, there is
an African American president in power who on New Year's Eve signed into effect
legislation that will allow detention without trial of American citizens at
home, on whose authority was that decision made I wonder? Not on mine.
But as an
African American intellectual if I hope to have an authoritative voice I cannot
sit back and complain, I dare not be complacent, this is the year you and I
need to lift ourselves out of our chairs, become involved in our communities
and take ownership of the future we believe we, and our children, deserve.
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