African Americans and a new world order
Bert Dorsey Hammond
Bert Dorsey Hammond, a professor at the California Polytechnic State University who has written extensively on the Black American experience and today may be described as one of the staunchest Pan-Africanists provides a thought- provoking analysis of American blacks in a new world order.Ronald Reagan has repeatedly asserted that the quality of life for the average U.S. citizen has improved during the past four years. This is certainly true if you are White and earn over $50,000 per year. If you are an African American, regardless of your income, the answer should be No.
There are, undoubtedly, some Negroes who delude themselves into believing otherwise. Nonetheless, as they play with their materialistic "toys" and "snort" the latest and most fashionable dope, even they must recognize the silly game of bourgeois individualism they are playing. E. Franklin Frazier, at an earlier time, in his book, Black Bourgeoisie, describes the marginality, pretentions, and shallowness of the Black bourgeois experience. Slavery comes in many forms; the most obvious is physical. The less obvious and more insidious forms of slavery are psychological and economical in nature.
In 1984 the African American experience is not much better than what Frazier described earlier. Mired in a consumer and materialistic quagmire, we have become a pauper race despite the $150 billion plus which passes through our hands annually. As part of the labouring consumer class, we produce nothing of significance of our own, and the fruit of our labour is lost in dandified pursuits.
For some African Americans, less prone to the fashionable corruptions, the measure of success has been the economic and political distance which separate them from their Black brothers and sisters. This group of Negroes, imbued with a peculiar form of social conservatism, voice an individualistic "bootstrap' philosophy of personal success and careerism. Ironically tragic is their refusal to admit that their "successes" were made possible only because of the greater sacrifice of the African American masses. As a result, they absolve themselves of their responsibility to their people. Puffed up with their professional and advanced academic degrees, this self-congratulatory group have become the gatekeepers of exclusion and the agents of oppression to their own people.
In his book, God the Black Man and Truth, Ben Ammi describes this process: "Inwardly the Black man had been made into an extension of the slave master, always waiting for the opportunity to prove to the boss that he knew how to handle Black folks. When he was allowed to perform before the master, he was at his cruel best; he was no longer a liberator of his people, only an oppressor. His evaluation of Black people was the exact same as that of the White oppressor; a vessel prone for abuse and misuse." In their drone-like existence they are more concerned with the petty intrigue of corporate and government bureaucracies than they are with their people's, or for that matter their own, freedom.
What has been written here is an immense indictment, but the culpability arising out of this indictment is even greater. Certainly it needs to be remembered that while our communities have become little more than a conglomerate of dispirited individuals, African American leadership seems more concerned with its own personal aggrandizement. Today, at this very moment, teen-age gangsters, with the tacit approval of law enforcement agencies, prowl our streets and callously rob, kill and maim African American men, women and children. In a recent New York Times article Claude Brown, author of Man Child in the Promised Land, wrote: "Manchild 1984 is the product of a society so rife with violence that the killing, mugging or robbery of a victim is now fashionable.
While the total African American community suffers from the impact of this violent insanity, the leading contender for species endangerment is the Black male. Walter Leavy in an August 1983 Ebony article wrote: "Since Black males are in a continuing state of subordination, there is a steady rate of endangerment for him. And he will continue to be endangered until the social structure changes and the Black male is no longer in the position of being subordinate."
The leading cause of death of Black males between the ages of 15-24 is homicide. The rate of homicide for Black males is higher than that of White males, White females and Black females combined. This, coupled with unemployment, imprisonment, suicide (more than doubled in the past 10 years), inadequate health care, enlistment in the military, and drugs and alcoholism, sets the stage for early mortality for a large percentage of African American males.
We African people, as the major recipients of Western civilisations destructive tendencies, must concern ourselves with the establishment of a new world order not based on race but on equity and justice
Obviously the same factors assail the quality of life of African American females and contributes to what some have described as the "rage" which exists between African American males and females. The fragility of the male-female relations among our people is reflected in a recent report that indicated that over 50% of all African American children are born to unwed mothers. In some urban areas this figure reaches a staggering 90%. Even more appalling is the "feminization of poverty." Of the 12 million American children living in families headed by women, over half live in families classified as poor. In African American families headed by women, over 70% are impoverished.
The solutions to our problems are not easy. Some very hard and pragmatic programmes must be instituted. Perhaps the most difficult of such programs will be the one which will extricate us from the intellectual and psychological morass we are in. For example, some of us spend an inordinate amount of time and energy hating White people. Frankly, this is a counterproductive and senseless preoccupation. To blame White people solely for our problems makes many of us the ready recipients and supporters of all sorts of intellectual and psychological nonsense.
We are not a stupid people who are so easily manipulated by White racists. While we are not stupid, we have been unwilling to critically analyze the contradictory postures which African American leadership has taken, Manning Marable, in his book, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, warns about racist violence in what he calls late capitalism: "The genocidal logic of the situation could demand, in the not too distant future, the rejection of the ghetto's right to survival in the new capitalist order. Without gas chambers or pogroms, the dark ghetto's economic and social institutions might be destroyed, and many of its residents would simply cease to exist."
Not only does contemporary African American leadership need to address the possibilities of genocide within this country, but it needs to look critically at the historic direction which African American leadership has taken.
Despite this bleak outlook there has been emerging a new stream of dynamic and well-trained African American leadership. For example, Claude Brown in describing the work of Elijah Muhammad and his Minister, Malcolm X, wrote: "The Muslims became the most positive socio- economic force ever to captivate and stimulate the consciousness of Black Americans in this country; even more so than Jesus Christ and Christianity. It is much more easy and more practical to be a Black Muslim than a Black Christian." Their students and philosophical allies are now emerging into leadership positions. The Original Hebrew Israelites see expatriation and the establishment of a new social order as a fundamental step in the right direction. As a result, 3,000 African Americans have been successfully resettled in Israel and Africa.
Finally, we need to understand those internal forces which militate against our own unification as a people and the rapacious nature civilization which was instrumental in of Western spawning much of our own self contempt. Langston Hughes in a small poem called Justice" describes the injustices which many African Americans face:
"That justice is blind goddess isWe African people, as the major recipients of Western civilization's destructive tendencies, must concern ourselves with the establishment of a new world order not based on race but on equity and justice
A thing to which we Blacks are wise
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes."
