Which Way to the Promised Land? : Part 3

Yet A Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel at Home
By Deborah Mathis

(Page 3 of 3)

For inspiration, they may turn to Glayde Whitney, a psychology professor at Florida State University. In an interview with the Associated Press, Whitney bewailed the country's attempts to install and uphold equality because, he said, biology defies it. Black people, he said, are "mentally not very smart" and should just give up on the quest for parity.

Within mainstream society, there has been an astonishing lack of resistance to proclamations like Whitney's or those of another academic, Charles Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Far from being spurned, Murray's book floated on the New York Times best-seller list for weeks, with the author lapping up acclaim and fat fees on the lecture and talk show circuits. (Murray's coauthor, Richard J. Hernstein, died before the book was published in 1994.)

The popularity of literature and so-called science that are degrading to people of color keeps faith with a timeless American tradition. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, written in 1781-82, Thomas Jefferson attached a litany of stereotypes, myths, and lies to black people, providing an ideological boilerplate for modern prejudices:

The first difference which strikes us is that of color. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable to that external monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race?

"Confounding father" that he was, Jefferson concluded that "the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." He attributed an array of behaviors and proclivities to blackness, including inordinate perspiration, little need for sleep, bravery and adventuresomeness, an ability to quickly get over affliction and grief, an intolerance for cold temperatures, and sexual intensity - though "love seems with them to be more an eager desire than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation." Perhaps that is why Jefferson repeatedly had sex with his slave, the lovely Sally Hemmings, but failed to behave lovingly toward her or the children they allegedly produced together, not even enough to set them free.

Most white Americans today might reject Jefferson's assertions, but in some cases, it would be for their particulars, not the overarching point of Jefferson's dissertation on race. The sense of white superiority, if not supremacy - of entitlement, of preference, of ownership, of priority - remains whole and prosperous. It is deeply occulted in the American mind, a mind that, according to Alain Locke, regards the black American as "more of a formula than a human being - a 'something' to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be 'kept down' or 'in his place' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden." Often, even the most conscientious whites think of themselves as reaching down rather than reaching out when they come to the aid of their black countrymen.

Verily, the nation is well along in mastering the rituals and trappings of equality. But it has yet to embrace its genuine, or spiritual, objective, which is the equalization of opportunity and stature, regardless of color. Despite measurable, even monumental, gains in categories like income, education, and the enlargement of the black middle class, life for the multitude of black Americans is not much different from the way it was in 1944 when Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal wrote his groundbreaking book, An American Dilemma. "The Negroes do not by far have anything approaching a tenth of the things worth having in America," wrote Myrdal. Today millions of black Americans can see no way out of the destitution described by Myrdal six decades ago.

In fact, most black American children remain confined to re-segregated, poorly equipped schools that have been drained of financial and moral support. Millions of black Americans are quarantined in decrepit public housing projects, consigned to minimum wage jobs at the end of a broom or a drive-through window. One of every three young black males is, or has been, in prison. The New Age, the Communications Age, the Information Age are not accessible to many black Americans. Overall, the ranks of black Americans who are cut off from the mainstream are, as ever, legion. They are all but doomed to languish and waste away in a world where only producers and "haves" count. Escape is possible, but it usually requires exceptional fortitude, a stroke of good luck, uncommon patience, and soul-sapping perseverance - all admirable and good but such exceptional and inordinate requirements, compared to what other Americans expend for the same prize, the same destination.

Americans may be accustomed to the disparities and double standards that color American life, but they are detestable and, truth be told, inexcusable. Good intentions do not suffice, nor does moralizing. The popular refrain that "personal responsibility" alone can undo the damage or level the playing field is born of high arrogance and ignorance. So is the "Super Negro" factor, which offers a shot at the American Dream after a black man, woman, or child has invested more talent, wit, and will than is ordinarily or rightly required. Furthermore, we are offended by suggestions that we should be meek and grateful that things are not as bad as they once were. Given the gaping differences between the prospects for a white American child and a black American child, we take no comfort in comparisons to how it used to be or how it might be still. Our sights are set on how it should be and how it should have been all along.

Copyright © 2002 by Deborah Mathis

About the Author

Deborah Mathis is a nationally syndicated columnist who has appeared on Frontline, Inside Washington, America's Black Forum, and many other discussion programs. The former White House correspondent for Gannett News Service, she recently completed a stint as a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University, where she authored a paper on race and the media.