Freedom MM: Chapter 15
Eugene Robinson
In October 2007, he wrote for the Washington Post an op-ed piece proclaiming that *"*if there were ever a monolithic 'black America'-absolutely uniformly deprived and aggrieved, with invariant values and attitudes-there certainly isn't one now*"* He called for a "new language, a new vocabulary and syntax," because he claimed, "'black America' is an increasingly meaningless concept". Called a few blacks the "Transcendent"
Black Church
In its size and theology, the 21st century black megachurch was different from the denominationally based neighborhood congregations of the 20th century. These new churches departed from the social justice model. Most of these churches encouraged individual internal reflection and promoted an individualistic theology of self-empowerment. They were often nondenominational, led by pastors with college and advanced degrees, and located in suburbs inaccessible by public transportation.
Carceral State
Indicates the extensive surveillance and penalties employed to restrict the movement of black people and control thier behavior.
Barack Obama
Left his high-paying job at Manhattan consulting firm to become a community organizer. He worked aong the residents of Altgeld Gardens for 3 years before deciding that he would be more effective with a law degree. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1991 and beginning a political career, he lost his 2000 bid for the U.S. House of Representatives to the Democratic incumbent, Bobby Rush, a former Black panther who beat Obama decisively in an election nicknamed "The Black Panther against the professor". He was a lecturer at the University of Chicago who lived in the posh Hyde Park section of the South Side, connected with his district's white constituency but failed to do so with the black working-class residents of the predominantly black community. The environment fueled his successful run for president in 2008 but also the harsh realities that made "change" the enduring slogan of his campaign.
PUSH
People United to Save Humanity, was headed by Reverend Jesse Jackson at the Chicago Base. Jackson was trained and mentored by Dr. MLK.
Stanley Crouch
Proclaimed that Obama was not "black like me" because he "did not--does not-- share a heritage with majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves."
Black Conservatives
Said that blacks had a 'victimization mentality'. Protested Affirmation programs and Welfare programs because it was believed to facilitate laziness. This was/is a small group, however.
Mandatory Sentencing Laws (Zero Tolerance Effect)
Stipulated minimum sentences for certain crimes and disallowed discretionary sentencing by judges and juries who could weigh the facts of a case when imposing penalties, and mandatory *3 Strike Laws*, which could and did condemn nonviolent offenders to extremely long and sometimes life sentences, also accounted for the high imprisonment rate. One scholar has called the mass incarceration of blacks *"The New Jim Crow"* (Michele Alexander) because, like legal segregation, it is a system of racialized social control that maintains the racial hierarchy and "locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy"
Talented Tenth
Th 20th century *black upper class* was depended on to speak for, indeed represent, the race. But in the 21st century, the best-educated, wealthiest, and most prominent African Americans could not be counted on to do that.
Myth of Meritocracy
The idea that everyone can achieve whatever goals he or she desires by virtue of hard work and perseverance. There was a 'buy in' to this idea by the black middle class in the 21st Century.
T.D. Jakes
The nondenominational Potter's House was representative of the new black church with Jakes as chief executive officer. TDJ Enterprises produced television and radio shows, films, and records. Appealed to all Americans. Appealed to middle and working class blacks who increasingly believed that personal autonomy was the best counter to racism and that those who accepted personal responsibility for their actions would reap God's reward of grace and a comfortable life.
Law and Order agenda
These disproportionate incarceration rates can be traced, in general, back to the "*law and order*" agenda that conservatives adopted in the wake of the black freedom movement, and specifically to the Reagan administration's war on drugs. State and federal laws criminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs and condemned not only those individuals who possessed drugs but also anyone who was in the company of someone with drugs. These laws and court decisions eliminated protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and allowed police to use traffic violations, however minor, to conduct drug searches. They also gave police permission to stop and frisk anyone who looked suspicious.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse Report
They reported in 2000 that "White students use cocaine at 7x the rate of black students, use crack cocaine 8x the rate of black students, and use heroin at 7x the rate of black students." and that whites between the ages of 12 and 17 were "more than 1/3 likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth," black juveniles were punished more severely than white juveniles. Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nation wide were white, 3/4 of all people imprisoned for drug offenses were Black or Hispanic. Young, black offenders were more likely to be transferred to adult courts and to receive longer sentences. Whereas white juveniles were more likely to be sentenced to serve time in jails, small local lockups that could easily be visited by friends and family, blacks were more likely to be sent to prisons, large facilities far from home.
Hurricane Katrina Era
This period was marked by widespread surveillance that gave rise to the highest incarceration rates black America had ever experienced. It was also marked by the irony exposed when black citizens in New Orleans and the Gulf coast region were abandoned during this catastrophic natural event by a government whose secretary of state was African American. It was a period that saw those who came of age during the civil rights and black power movements hand over leadership and culture to a new generation that venerated individualism and diversity.
Debra Dickerson
Told middle and working class blacks to *"Surrender themselves to America" and "give themselves permission to be happy Yanks and well-adjusted Westerners" As the Author of *The End of Blackness*, she said "Black, in our political and social reality, means that those descending from West African Salves" and that did not include Obama.
Jena Six Case
When 6 black teenagers in Jena, Louisiana, were indicted as adults on a charge of attempted murder after a schoolyard fight in December 2006 left a white teen, Justin Barker, *with bruises and a mild concussion*. Many blacks were again exposed to the unequal treatment blacks receive in the justice system. Earlier in the school year, 3 white students at Jena High had been recommended for suspension by the principal when school officials found them guilty of hanging nooses from a tree they wanted to reserve for whites only, but the school board overruled him, claiming *the nooses were just a childish prank*.
2000 Census
created separate categories for race and ethnicity and for the first time allowed people to *check off more than one box* for racial identity. This is where Eugene Robinson got the idea of "*transcendent*"
Bill Cosby (The Pound Cake Speech)
"The lower economic and lower middle economic people are [not] holding their end in this deal in a 2004 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court Decision. Known as the *Pound Cake Speech* "These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting sot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake!" Exposing the generational divide, nearly 67 year old, he blamed not drug laws put poor parenting. Of people who "cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit [the color of prison fatigues]" He asked, "Where were you when he was two? Where were you when we was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you don't know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why don't you know where he is? And why doesn't the father show up to talk to his boy?"
Jesse Jackson
(Read Push) Ads a young, African American minister, he suggested that younger blacks faced different problems and needed their on set of leaders: "The reality is most of our traditional civil rights leaders don't have a clue about the hip-hop community. It's not a part of their understanding". s
New Categories of Difference
-The Black American Identity -Income Gap -Increasing Wealth -Optimism among African Americans: because we don't have these overt forms of racism, people forget and feel more secure. However, it was a political strategy into this transition.
Mandatory Sentencing Laws (Zero Tolerance Effect) 2.0
2.0 -Incarcerated blacks have no social mobility, not just because they are locked behind bars but also because once they have served their time and are released, they are burdened with disabilities that make it *probable that they will be reimprisoned*. -Drug felons are barred by law from public housing, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, and forced to disclose their felony status on employment applications. They are declined licenses for a wide range of professions, subjected to regular surveillance by police and parole personnel, and denied basic citizenship rights such as voting or serving on juries.
21st Century Black America 2.0
2.0 Blacks were victims of the most intense police surveillance, poor blacks attended the worst schools in the nation, lived in the most dilapidated housing, had the least access to hospitals, were the most likely victims of crimes, and were the most likely to be exposed to the illicit drug and sex trade economy. Many felt *unworthy*. It was said that "we hate ourselves...We have been programmed that it's something that's wrong with us." -Researchers found that compared to native-born blacks, *more black immigrants went to college*, and they were also more likely to come from households where both parents were highly educated. In the last decade, the sheer numbers of black immigrants have enabled the creation of *distinct communities* apart form African Americans. Like most immigrants, whatever their race or ethnicity, many biracials wanted to be American more than they wanted to be black or white. -In 2007 and 2010, more than 1/2 of all black people believed that "blacks who cannot get ahead in this country are mainly responsible for their own situation."
Black Tax
21st Century Black Americans still paid this. Meaning that they needed to work 2x as hard as whites to achieve the same outcomes and were held responsible for the negative actions of other blacks.
Altgeld Gardens
A public housing project on Chicago's South Side, where 5,300 African Americans eked out an existence amid an abandoned steel mill, a toxic landfill, and a rancid sewage plant. This area presented the kinds of problems Obama wanted to address.
Charles Johnson
An award-winning black novelist, screenwriter, and scholar that published an article provocatively titled "The End of the Black American Narrative". In it, he argued that the narrative of victimization: of slavery, segregation, and legal disfranchisement, needed revision. He stated that *"we need new and better stories, new concepts, and new vocabularies and grammar based not on the past but on the dangerous exciting, and unexplored present"*. He argued that for better or worse, this was what Dr. MLK Jr. had dreamed of when he hoped a day would come when men and women were judged not by the color of their skin, but by their individual deeds and the content of their character. He was pleased that the new stories would be "narratives of individuals, not groups"
Post-Black Concept
An exhibit presented this desire to not be labeled as a 'Black Artist'. Michael Harris opposed this, and said that Black artist need a cultural rootlessness.
Pew Research Center
An independent, nonpartisan public opinion research organization, found that 37% of African Americans agreed with Robinson, believing that "because of the diversity within their community, blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race"
Transendent
Coined by Robinson, were blacks who managed to escape racial identification altogether. Although wealth was not their only asset--education and talent were important too--the color green influenced their lives more than their brown skin did. An example of this person is Oprah Winfrey. The 7 million viewers who watched her daily talk show did not associate her with Reagan's welfare queen or the poor woman heading up a single-parent household. For all purposes, Winfrey and these other African Americans transcended race. They were quintessentially American and recognized as such at home and abroad.
Tea Party Movement
Created after Barack Obama's election, a political movement that advocates lower government spending, lower taxes, and limited government. Reacted negatively to the *American Recovery and Reinvestment Act*. Said Obama was born outside the U.S., it revolved around personal attack.
Freestyle
Debuted at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001, announced a new direction for black art. According to *Thelma Golden*, the museum's chief curator, the exhibition embodied a new *post-black* art in that it "was characterized by artists who were adamant about not being labeled as 'black' artists, though their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex notions of blackness. Ironically, the unifying force of this exhibition was "individuality" which gave birth to the title Freestyle. *Michael Harris* argued that "an African American artist needs a cultural rootlessness as a foundation". There were "forty million" ways to be black, he argued.
The Black Arts Movement
Had been founded on the ideas that black art had to mirror the black experience, advance the politics of freedom, and boost the psychological morale of African Americans, and it emphasized the notion that black and white art were fundamentally different.
21st Century Black America
Had come to be characterized by class, gender, sexuality, and generational diversity. Another way to characterize the difference in Black America was by the way various groups related to American institutions. Spoke to Black America's perception of racial progress and its sense of racial and national belonging. The Black Tax was still present, but the middle and working class blacks felt freer, and were freer, than any previous generation of African Americans. Many of them accepted the Advice of Debra Dickerson. Almost 1/2 (48%) of all black families were single-parent. Female-headed households, an astonishingly large proportion of those below the poverty line were women and children.
