Reflections on February’s Black History Month

As I write this column, Black History Month has just concluded. That even mainstream media acknowledge at least by implication grave historic injustices to blacks represents a triumph. Yet the black history today’s media present amounts to little more than a self-congratulatory narrative about how far the United States has come. That narrative is devoid of any sense of the struggles involved in the quest for equality and of the long-standing debates that divided not only whites but African American reformers themselves.

Consider those public service spots that air on NBA basketball games. Grant Hill reverentially quotes Martin Luther King’s earnest plea that the young “make a career of humanity.” Not a word is said about King’s controversial efforts during the Memphis garbage worker strike to unite workers across racial lines against the economic oppression both faced. King’s genius and ongoing relevance lie not merely in the powerful rhetoric but in the evolution of his own positions within a civil rights community that was itself a center of vibrant politics.

The official Black History Month tells us in effect that African Americans are now full members of the American community. Their future prosperity will be assured by working hard in school. “Read to achieve,” as the National Basketball Association’s much heralded campaign urges us.

The NBA has lots of help in presenting a sanitized black history. Chicago Tribune columnist Salim Muwakkil reminded us recently that during the 2004 campaign John Kerry hardly even managed to mention the issue of injustices to African Americans. The revolution, it seems, is over. Its joyous accomplishments are captured in a few memorable moments in TV images from the ’60s.

But do African Americans have an equal chance today? Are any inequalities they still face merely a function of economics, of the lack of jobs, transportation, or adequate housing in their particular communities?

Clearly economic factors matter and progressives would always do well to emphasize job creation, public transit and housing reforms that would extend opportunities to both poor whites and African Americans and therefore ease resentments. Nonetheless, even in the area of economic reform, the politics of race cuts both ways. As far back as Populism, one potent argument of upper-class whites against radical economic reforms is that reforms would benefit the former slaves.

The burdens that many African Americans still face are more than economic. African Americans are no long subject to lynching, but justice in America is hardly even-handed. Northwestern University sociologist Devah Pager recently sent white and black men with and without prison records to job interviews. Whites without records fared the best, but most surprisingly, even white applicants with prison records were more likely to be hired than black men with clean records.

It is also far more difficult for African Americans to escape brushes with the legal system that would mar any resume. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics projects that if current incarceration rates stay constant 30 percent of African American boys who turn 12 this year will spend time in jail in their lifetimes. These statistics, however, hardly reflect some special criminal propensity on the part of African Americans, a theme constantly suggested in mainstream media.

A 2000 study by Human Rights Watch found that although there are five times as many white drug users as blacks, far more blacks are doing time for drugs. Comparable studies of racial profiling by urban police departments have discovered similar disparities in patterns of apprehension and arrest for actual and purported traffic violations.

Black History Month does have something to celebrate and surely should not be an exercise in demonizing the whole white community. Black history also has included commendable resistance, from the slave rebellions to the underground railroad. A forthcoming book by H.H. Price and Gerald Talbot, “Maine’s Visible Black History” (Tilbury House, September 2005), chronicles the role that Mainers – black, white and Native American – played in helping runaways from slavery reach Canada or safe places in Maine.

An honest history would portray major debate and conflict. That debate goes on. Bill Cosby suggests that African Americans need to apply themselves more in school, put aside the NBA superstar or rock musician image. As I hear his remarks, I consider the vast disparities between Chicago’s lake- front schools and those of East St. Louis, Ill., and wonder if studying hard can even begin to make up the difference for poorly trained teachers, leaky buildings and decaying housing.

My fantasy is a black history moment where Grant Hill will remind us of the conflict within the turn of the 19th century African American community between Booker T. Washington and WEB DuBois. Perhaps Hill could cite DuBois’ stirring – yet problematic in its own way – rebuke to Washington from “The Souls of Black Folk”: “By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men…”

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail messages to jbuell@acadia.net