A LOOK AT
THE STATE OF
RACE RELATIONS TODAY
RACE RELATIONS TODAY
ONE STEP
FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK
LBJ MEETING
WITH MLK IN THE WHITE HOUSE IN 1964
(PHOTO COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS)
TAGS:
PRESIDENT LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON, LBJ, GREAT SOCIETY INITIATIVES,
CIVIL
RIGHTS ACT, VOTERS RIGHTS ACT, MEDICAID, MEDICARE, RACE RELATIONS,
PRESIDENT
BARACK OBAMA, WAR ON POVERTY, VIET NAM, SOCIAL UNREST,
THE
1960’S, INEQUALITY, LEGACY OF SEGREGATION, RESURGENCE OF INSTITUTIONAL
RACISM,
LAWS TO RESTRICT AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTERS
(Sunday February 23, 2014
NYC) Race in America remains as thorny
and divisive an issue today as it has ever been. In some respects it appears that there has
been a sometimes subtle, sometimes overt retrograde backslide. It is difficult to argue that we live in
anything approaching a “post-racial America”, a garbage term in and of
itself. Issues of race and inequality
have become more pronounced paradoxically since the ascendance of the former
freshman Senator from Illinois; Barack Obama has been twice elected as our
country’s first African
American President. Many naively
believed that the presence of an African American in the White House would
automatically douse the insidious burning embers of our most racist past. They could not have been more wrong. If anything in many parts of the United
States we live behind a contrived façade of racial harmony; Democrats,
Progressives, Liberals as well as earnest people of good conscience do believe
that our country has turned the corner when it comes to race. Look, they say, we have elected an African
American President. They are proud about
this feat and, once President Obama took the Oath of Office for the first time in
January 2009, they were content to walk away back into the comfortable confines
of their own lives confidently self-righteous that they had done their part to
mend America, to move it forward, and to relegate the racial divide and our untidy
history of slavery, segregation, bias, bigotry and disparity to history.
But that has clearly not been
the case. Actually the exact opposite
has occurred. One need only to listen to
or read in the news the political rhetoric in Washington, DC, State Houses and Legislatures
across the country to see the depth of the resistance to moving towards a more
equitably welcoming society when it comes to African Americans and
Latinos. Perhaps we should have expected
this to some degree; maybe we could have been more alert to the potential of
what President Obama would represent to different people. Aside from the aesthetics of an African
American First Family in the White House and the fact that children of color could
see a President and his family that looks more like them, the Obama Presidency
has torn open barely healed wounds and has inflicted some new ones, at least in
the eyes of those who had never imagined a “Black” President in their
lifetimes.
THE DREAM OF THE “GREAT SOCIETY”
This is the 50th
anniversary of the body of law and legislation, policy and initiatives crafted
by our 37th President, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ). An old time Democrat from Texas, Johnson
found himself suddenly thrust into the Presidency from his post as Vice
President after President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was assassinated in November
1963.
A master of the Senate LBJ
inherited a Presidency that was on the cusp of one of the most tumultuous
periods of time in American history. Fairly
or not LBJ and all his accomplishments are often lost in the shadows cast by
the myth of what JFK might have done had he lived and the war in Viet Nam. The nation was soon to be torn asunder by
issues of race and rights, war and conscience that
strained the mortar of virtually every institution of government and law in the
land.
Anyone born after the late
1950’s likely has no personal memories of what was transpiring in the
world. Those of us of a certain age
might recall watching the news broadcasts and the grainy black and white images
made possible by the old cathode ray tubes.
We saw our fellow Americans who happened to be “Negro” being beaten,
assaulted with powerful water hoses as the police and dogs fought with them. We saw
brutal bloody clashes in places like Alabama, Mississippi and other locales in
the Deep South. Just 51 years ago systemic segregation was
the law in a large swathe of America.
There were public facilities designated for “Whites” and “Coloreds” and
in the most racist parts of the South that distinction was unimpeachable and
often enforced lethally. There were
places were lynching
was still a means of “punishment” and a spectator sport often conducted in the
town square in a carnival-like atmosphere of deep seated hatred that may be
hard for some to imagine today. Yes, these barbaric tactics were employed
across Dixie into the 1960’s. This was the toxic state of affairs 100 years
after the conclusion of the “War between the States”, as they say down South,
known more commonly as our Civil War.
As a expanding organized Civil
Rights movement took shape across the country and the horrors of Jim Crow’s South were broadcast
to the wider nation and the world, it became increasing obvious that without
federal protections afforded by new federal legislation, the notion of “Civil
Rights” would remain an unachievable goal.
African Americans did not even have the right to vote; they were
excluded from participation in the most basic aspects of life in society. Into the increasingly violent and widening
breech LBJ bravely waded in and convinced of the responsibility to end systemic
endemic segregation, managed after mighty efforts to pass the Civil Rights
Bill, The Voter’s Rights Act as the first of what would become a hefty
portfolio of law designed to alter the social fabric and some of the other
vexing realities of poverty
and inequality for people of every race.
While LBJ exerted a Herculean
effort to pass and enact his Great Society programs he found himself having to
spend more and more time addressing our growing involvement in Viet Nam. Though JFK had initially sent American “advisors”
and a limited number of troops to Viet Nam, it would become LBJ’s war and come
to dominate the national debate and anti-war movement for the ensuing five years
of his Presidency.
THE NOT SO GREAT SOCIETY
The body of legislation and
initiatives LBJ had designated as the “Great Society” came to be seen by many
as a failed experiment at “social engineering”.
Well intended but wildly ill-conceived, certain aspects of “Urban
Renewal”, for example, only exacerbated the very same conditions LBJ had hoped
to correct. Housing “projects”, those congested
complexes of concrete and brick that to those of us living in New York City
became known simply as “The Projects”, created conditions that only served to
perpetuate some of the social pathologies they had been designed to
address. There were no commercial zones
in the Projects which meant that the residents living there had to walk long
distances to purchase groceries and goods; their children had to walk further
to bus and subway stops and the stark landscape of these “vertical”
neighborhoods bred an environment where the residents felt ostracized in a way;
they were certainly apart from and separate from the surrounding neighborhoods
in very high density housing.
Significant components of
LBJ’s Great Society were measures directed to alleviate the underlying
causations of economic disparity and all that comes with it. Johnson boldly declared his “War on Poverty” and it
turned out to be as big a quagmire as was the ever expanding mess in Viet
Nam. “Public Assistance” programs backfired
horribly and resulted in a pattern of publically subsidized poverty until
President Bill Clinton made the efforts to “reform
welfare as we know it”.
Several other components of the
Great Society remain intact today and have proven to be effective and essential
for many Americans over the last 50 years.
Medicare and Medicaid have provided health care insurance for older
Americans as well as the indigent. They
rank among the greatest successes of LBJ’s tenure. Some of his other signature
economic/employment measures have also stood the test of time and looking back
over these past 50 years; they stand out for their lasting efficacy and
positive impact.
THE GREAT BACKSLIDE
Putting partisan politics aside
and looking away from the perpetual gridlock and ineptitude of Congress, the
topic of race in America seemingly still grows like amoral weeds in the fields
and ditches, sprouts through cracks in sidewalks and avenues of our great
country. All our Congress is good for is
fomenting and tapping into the basest sentiments of their constituents. The widespread practice of gerrymandering of
Congressional districts virtually assures that seats that are currently held by
one Party or the other will most assuredly remain in their current and
respective side of the aisle. The
unrestrained millions of private single-minded special interest dollars
contributed on both sides of the Party divide from unknown sources cement the
fact that extreme partisanship will continue to reign supreme over the
political and social horizon for as far as the eye can see.
Caught in this ideological
vise pitting Left versus Right is the mass of our populace White, African
American, Latino and all of the other ethnicities that are the woven tapestry
of our society today are just trying to keep their heads above the roiling
waters of debt, un - and sub-standard employment. The last vestiges of those facets of LBJ’s
Great Society that proved to be more social engineering than Democratic
governance have been dismantled and abandoned; crudely tossed into the landfill
of antiquated solutions aimed at endemic ailments not remedially solved by the
federal government.
Today economics is almost as
great a divide as race once was. While
racial issues are being more aggressively used by the Right wing,
ultra-Conservative, Tea Partyers, and virulent anti-Obama factions the growing disparity
in income, the chasm between the “haves” and “have nots”, is being exploited by
the Right with not very subtle undertones to stoke the fires of residual
racism. Claiming the income gap represents
an innate inability of African Americans to work and lift themselves out of
poverty denies the real reasons that African Americans are more likely to live
in poverty cloistered in seedy neighborhoods with high crime rates, few
convenient amenities like grocery stores, pharmacies and businesses that
service their communities.
The Republican Party which
controls the Governorship and State Legislatures in 37 states have introduced
more bills to limit, restrict or otherwise make it more difficult for African
Americans to vote. Such initiatives are yet another abhorrent form
of social engineering just as egregious as the gerrymandering of Congressional
districts. Racism is alive and well;
actually flourishing in many states across the land.
For their part, much of the
onus for their current and seemingly perpetual plight is rightfully placed on the
African American community themselves. In
a perverse twist the ascendance of some African Americans has created a greater
sense of apartness from those still struggling to improve their lot. We have an African American President and
African Americans working in professions of every type from physicians and
lawyers to engineers, academics, upper management level position across the
entire spectrum of our economic and industrial base. That cannot be denied. But what had been once considered a corollary
effect of this upward mobility of some to help more gain entry into what was
called a “Black middle class” has simply not happened or, in places where it
has it is not as robust and widespread as had been hoped.
In many ways the hope and
promise of LBJ’s Great Society have boomeranged; they allowed for some forward impetus
towards racial equality yet, just as a rubber band can be stretched it will
stretch only so far before returning to its original dimensions or breaking. Taking stock of our society today there is
evidence that the racial rubber band has been drawn several degrees back closer
to its original 1964 dimensions. Racism
today is more insidious, more disguised and instead of the overt Jim Crow laws
Statehouses utilize the legislative process as the modern day tools of that
racism. A majority of those states have
introduced Bills that are just modern day versions of the old “Poll Taxes”
crafted to make it more difficult for African Americans to vote.
VILE RHETORIC
If there are any people who
are more aware of the power of words than writers they are politicians. They have big staffs of aides and advisors
and speechwriters. They know the power of their words and now
employee an array of euphemisms and metaphors, some “dog whistle” terms known
to incite their audience and invoke very specific emotions and attitudes. Much of the rhetoric employed by the Right is
incendiary and many of the most out front racist politicians use a slimy cast
of surrogates to appeal to their constituents. From the “Birthers” who vociferously
proclaim President Obama is not a “legitimate” President, that he was born in
Kenya, is a communist/socialist, anti-American charlatan destined to march the
United States down some twisted gravel road towards alliance in a “New World
Order”, to those convinced our President is an “apologist” for America more
inclined to side with other nations than represent “true” American interests,
the Obama Presidency has been the catalyst igniting long simmering anti-government
and racist sentiment. Some of it is
embarrassing and the rest of the world looks askance at what passes for our “politics”
today.
Last week at a political rally
for the Republican candidate for Governor of the State of Texas, the aging one
time rock and roller, gun enthusiast and outspoken opponent of everything
democratic or Obama, Ted Nugent, referred to our President as a “sub-human
mongrel”. When did such terminology
become acceptable in political discourse?
When did questioning the very nature of a twice elected President stop
raising eyebrows before more reasonable politicians would step in and repudiate
hate speech? It had become vogue to use
vulgar language when President Bill Clinton invited sexually scandalous behavior
into the Oval Office but has grown exponentially since Barack Obama first
announced his candidacy for the Office of the President.
SADLY, FULL CIRCLE
And so it goes; the circle
will be unbroken. Our brief tour of race
relations in America 50 years after the Great Society that LBJ envisioned and
sacrificed all his political capital for remains an elusive reality. Despite the great strides forward, new
realities continually jab us back into a corner. The Hydra headed reptile of racism,
ignorance, intolerance and even hatred is a patient presence in our
society. It exists in dormancy for
lengths of time only to come out of its cave to resurface in our
political-social-cultural landscape as poisonous as ever.
There are no real victims here
because both sides of the political divide, each side in any debate regarding
race in America has a proliferation of loud mouth carnival barkers spewing
unconstructive, divisive arguments that offer nothing of substance to the
matters at hand. Thanks to the 24/7 “infotainment”
cycle, there are enough bully pulpits for all to be heard from. For every point there is a counterpoint; for
every Right-winger there is a Left-winger willing to engage in the battle no
matter how useless and senseless it may be.
Arguments need not have merits in today’s discourse; all that seems to
matter is if you can talk over your opponent, speak with sufficient volume and
feigned fury to satisfy like-minded citizens.
When all is said and done one is left to wonder if anything worthy, any
objectively valid point was expressed and the conclusion is usually no.
We as a country and as a
people have a long way to go in many aspects as a society and culture. Perhaps, the first steps could be towards a
more civil style of debate and discussion, an acknowledgment that “all are
created equally” and, as such, ought to be treated similarly.
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Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved
