anshuka p
Answer
Ok, who said that plus size women cannot wear patterns??? ARE you nuts!You can wear a pattern but make sure that it is worn with a solid, and that it isn't a god-awful one (small, subtle patterns) Me and you need to go shopping. I can say this DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT wear any clothes that hug the body in areas that you are not comfortable with, cotton is good but it also shrinks or streches out. You can wear jeans with pockets just make sure that there arent any emblishments on them but if there are that they a subtle. You want to wear shirts that have a layered look to them or you may just want to layer but not too much. What i mean by that is, you have your basic outfit (lets say going out with the girls) jeans and a nice shirt well you want that to look damn good if your single so you would add a few accessories a necklace (if the shirt has NO emblishments and rule of thumb when it comes to necklaces...round colar round necklace, v-neck something that dangles, square go for something that is choker like), earrings (depending on how the hair is worn, dangles if it is up to elongate the neck, studs if hair is worn down. You can add a belt to the bottom and im not talkin about your average belt, i talking a scarf something that adds flair to the outfit and last but not least your feet!!!!! make sure that the shoe brings the outfit together. Also what you can do is if you have a printed shirt pick out one of the colors that dont stand out to you as much and work with it. Dont be upset that the blacks dont match exactly or the browns wont match exactly it is ok, you can offset colors by wearing on shade lighter or darker. I dont know what size you are or where you are but if you are in the northern virginia area hit the Lane Bryant Store in Reston any one of my girls there will help you out if im not there.....this is one thing that i love..dressing other people....BTW black is sexy if worn right and at the right time...ITS TOO DAMN HOT NOW TO BE WEARING BLACK!!!!!
Ok, who said that plus size women cannot wear patterns??? ARE you nuts!You can wear a pattern but make sure that it is worn with a solid, and that it isn't a god-awful one (small, subtle patterns) Me and you need to go shopping. I can say this DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT wear any clothes that hug the body in areas that you are not comfortable with, cotton is good but it also shrinks or streches out. You can wear jeans with pockets just make sure that there arent any emblishments on them but if there are that they a subtle. You want to wear shirts that have a layered look to them or you may just want to layer but not too much. What i mean by that is, you have your basic outfit (lets say going out with the girls) jeans and a nice shirt well you want that to look damn good if your single so you would add a few accessories a necklace (if the shirt has NO emblishments and rule of thumb when it comes to necklaces...round colar round necklace, v-neck something that dangles, square go for something that is choker like), earrings (depending on how the hair is worn, dangles if it is up to elongate the neck, studs if hair is worn down. You can add a belt to the bottom and im not talkin about your average belt, i talking a scarf something that adds flair to the outfit and last but not least your feet!!!!! make sure that the shoe brings the outfit together. Also what you can do is if you have a printed shirt pick out one of the colors that dont stand out to you as much and work with it. Dont be upset that the blacks dont match exactly or the browns wont match exactly it is ok, you can offset colors by wearing on shade lighter or darker. I dont know what size you are or where you are but if you are in the northern virginia area hit the Lane Bryant Store in Reston any one of my girls there will help you out if im not there.....this is one thing that i love..dressing other people....BTW black is sexy if worn right and at the right time...ITS TOO DAMN HOT NOW TO BE WEARING BLACK!!!!!
Does anyone know why the African Americans felt excluded from the four the freedoms?
shystar200
I've read my book over and over and I just can't get it... if you know that would be lots of help...even if its just a little bit.
I just noticed that this question is totally in the wrong category! So sorry for that! I thought it was in the Society and Culture category....oops.
I just noticed that this question is totally in the wrong category! So sorry for that! I thought it was in the Society and Culture category....oops.
Answer
The term "African American" (aka Afro-American, Black American, or black) refers to approximately 33 million people who make up 13% of the U.S. population with predominantly African ancestral backgrounds. Although most are descendants of families that have been in this country for generations, others are recent immigrants from the West Indies, South America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Malcolm X is generally credited with popularizing and favoring the term "African-American" over the term "Negro," and in the 1960s and 1970s, there was some confusion over this term and the one called "Afro-American" because of the latter's allusion to hair style. In the 1980s, Jesse Jackson pretty much settled language on the "African-American" preference because it alluded to the experience of hyphenated Americans as much, if not more, than a geographic point of origin. Today, terms like "Negro," colored, and black are considered derogatory in many quarters, although "Black" still has some currency, although all terms have political overtones.
There are certain residential and economic patterns associated with Blacks who live in America. Residentially, their population density is quite heavy in the so-called "Black Belt" -- an area stretching down the East Coast from Baltimore towards Northern Florida, and filling in much of Virginia, the Carolinas, almost all of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and parts of East Texas. Economically, Blacks who immigrate to America do better than blacks who were born and raised in the U.S. A commonly thrown-out number is that the median income of African-Americans is approximately 55% that of Whites, or European Americans. Racially, many American blacks have Native American, white, or Latino ancestors. 87% of African Americans live in urban areas, and they are a young population, with a median age of 27, compared to the white median age of 34. Oppressed for over 300 years, discrimination in many forms is also a central part of the African American experience. It's estimated that every African American experiences about 200 incidents a year, from slurs hurled at them by passing motorists to cashiers who won't put change in their hand, to a whole variety of other unclassifiable events.
This is not the place to go into black history (see lecture: 10 Most Important Events in Black History), although it's important to realize that centuries of oppression cannot be quickly eradicated by individual initiative and drive. It's unrealistic to blame African Americans for failing to overcome most barriers because so many of those barriers are deeply rooted in our society. The weight of the past may be the biggest barrier to the future.
About 10 million (or 33% of) African Americans fit the Census Dept. definition of "poor." These poverty rates are extremely stable, and are the same as they were thirty years ago, same as they were fifty years ago, etc. They show no signs of budging, although there are slight yearly fluctuations. One of the problems may be a prevalence of female-headed single parents in the black community, at a time when white families have increasingly become dual-income units, but this is essentially the same observation as the Moynihan Report (1965) which has been widely criticized. Another problem may be employment insecurity. Blacks are overrepresented in service sector jobs ("McJobs"), where employment is less secure. Blacks are also overrepresented on unemployment and welfare rolls.
African Americans are the most segregated group in U.S. society. There are many ways to measure segregation, but the most common way is to look at housing and residential areas, calculating the amount of ethnic concentration in geographical areas. Blacks are also extremely overrepresented in city public housing developments. One concern about this problem has to do with health issues. The infant mortality rate for blacks in America is one of the highest in the world, higher than any industrialized country, and higher even than some third world countries. Black children in the 1-4 age range have mortality rates twice that of white children. Black teenagers have mortality rates 10 times that of whites, and homicide is a leading cause of death. Black adults have a mortality rate 30 to 40% more than whites. The death rates may have something to do with the fact that, percentage-wise, there are fewer blacks now in America than during slavery.
It may be useful at this point to take a side journey and explore the IDEOLOGIES of the black liberation struggle. Many people, blacks included, are often confused about the exact nature of these struggles. Most of the older leaders were assassinated before they could really articulate their plans, and there have been numerous splits and divisions since then. The most divisive issue has been the question of whether to establish a separate existence or integrate into the dominant culture. Separatism is further divided between tactical separatism and ultimate separatism, with the latter desiring a strictly black state. A concise summary is provided below with hyperlinks to selected figures that are considered revolutionaries (or criminals to the white establishment):
Malcolm X (1925-1965) started the separatist line, the creation of all-black communities, all-black institutions, and internationalization of the struggle. Martin Luther King (1929-1968) stressed the integrationist line, speaking of a time when little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) stressed acculturation and adaptation to existing realities. W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) stressed the need for more government involvement in changing economic conditions which exploited blacks. Marcus Garvey (1880-1940) endorsed the "Back to Africa" movement. Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and Angela Davis (circa 1964) led the "Black Power" movement, which was basically socialist and saw capitalism as the major problem. The "Black Muslim" movement, led by Elijah Muhammed and his more moderate son, W.D. Muhammed, also about this time desired racial separatism, and came to believe that white people were devils created by a black scientist named Yakub, and Allah was so upset with Yakub, Allah ordained that white people shall rule blacks for a fixed amount of time, although this ideology is more closely associated with a splinter group called the "Five Percenters". The "Black Panther" movement (circa 1966) was led by Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Fred Hampton as a paramilitary, self-defense group which included the goal of overthrowing capitalism, but the Party split in 1971 under Eldredge Cleaver who advocated providing services to black communities. The modern Black Panthers aim to expose blacks who sell-out. The NAACP is a justice organization basically pursuing an assimilationist approach, patterning routes to success after more model minorities (Asians). The National Urban League is basically a government watchdog group that supports the idea of more rational government programs. Jesse Jackson Jr. (not his father who is settling into life as a Presidential Special Envoy) basically embraces the unified people of color movement and its fight against neo-colonialism. The modern Black Muslim movement, called the Nation of Islam, is led by Louis Farrakan and is basically a racial superiority group for self-betterment, but has also been involved in anti-Zionism. The modern revolutionary struggle, with its Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalist thrusts, is called Kammaasi, and includes groups such as the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) and the Africa Reparations Movement (ARM) which reach out to all diaspora groups deprived of land, such as the Native Americans, Palestinians, and the Irish. Some of these groups are affiliated with the Communist Party, but some are not. The contemporary struggle primarily takes place on college campuses with black student associations. Also of contemporary and historical note is the holiday of Kwanzaa, a week-long celebration created by Ron Karenga in 1966. This person was the leader of a group called the United Slaves in the 1960s and 1970s, a radical spinoff group from the Black Panthers. After his release from prison in the mid-1970s, he became a Marxist academic (professor of Black Studies) and has been involved in other things, like the Million Man March.
SOCIAL CLASS DISCRIMINATION
African Americans exist at all levels of the American class structure, even the upper-upper class (the "black elite"). There are about 500 incredibly wealthy and politically influential blacks in this country, almost all of them coming from wealthy families that have been so since receiving inheritances from the days of slavery. Persons such as Senator Edward Brooke and Justice Thurgood Marshall are examples. This group does not tend to associate with other blacks. Their only ties may be through the NAACP or the Urban League. At the lower-upper level (the new rich), about 1500 black entertainers or athletes have achieved wealth and prestige by being lucky or talented. Persons such as Bill Cosby and Michael Jordan are examples. What is unique about this group is that they have done it in one generation. They have faced difficult white stereotyping and insensitivity.
The black middle class (the "black bourgeoisie") is growing. Families in this group are usually small, stable, and well-planned. In most respects, they are like white middle class families. Studies on this group have shown that they compensate for financial insecurity at times with conspicuous consumption, but that is also something that whites do. Like whites, this group is stuck in the middle; too well-off to qualify for most tax breaks, and too far in debt to ever get out of it on their own. At this level, you also begin to notice the shortage of black males able to support a nuclear family, and there have been numerous examples of one-parent households making it to middle-class status.
An estimated two-thirds of all African Americans fall into the lower classes, and as indicated previously, one-third are below the poverty line. The majority, then, are in the upper-lower ("working" or "proletariat") class. Typical occupations include truck driving, industrial jobs, construction, or auto mechanics. They value hard work, a college education, and a better life for their children. They have faced color barriers preventing them from getting ahead. Blacks at the lower-lower level are completely powerless, alienated, disorganized, segregated, in despair, and have no hopes of getting ahead. They have a disproportionate number of contacts with social workers and police officers. They have become society's scapegoat for the taxpayer's frustrations. The most important point in understanding discrimination against African Americans is to realize that the lower-lower class black has become the stereotype of all blacks in America. Failure to recognize this is what I have called social class discrimination.
LIFESTYLE DISCRIMINATION
The origin of blacks in America is the only continent in the world with practices that are completely dissimilar to anything Eurocentric. It's not that they didn't develop any law, science, or social institutions; it's just that they developed completely different ones that few anthropologists could understand. Further, each one came from a different tribe, with their own language, genetics, and customs. Therefore, when we talk about the existence of a popular "black culture", like the one portrayed by hip-hop music, it's just amazing that anything could cohere these diverse peoples around a common culture. Yet it is well recognized that a black culture exists, with unique demeanor, speech, clothing, and food. Lifestyle discrimination is based on the idea that black culture is somehow inferior, which is impossible since cultures are neither inferior nor superior, but rather, functional in terms of survival value for its people. The history of this idea may very well be as a fall-back position from the discredited idea of biological inferiority. Alternatively, it may be envy at how well some elements of black culture have penetrated white culture.
Much has been made of the legacy of slavery as a central element in black culture. The phrase "legacy of slavery" means neo-colonialism, which means modern or new forms of dominating paternalism. In criminal justice, the equivalent phrase is "seeing the police as an occupying army". The thinking operates on the basis of analogy; e.g., most blacks are kept in slum dwellings, usually owned by white absentee landlords; there are no community services unless they serve the needs of the community with cheap labor; and specially trained police are ready to seal off the area and quell any disturbance. The situation is analogous to: the colonists are provided the means for rudimentary shelter and they will get more when they start contributing to the commonwealth but meanwhile, our army stands ready to crackdown on the slightest sign of insurrection. It's not called colonialism because the people involved are citizens, not colonists. It's called neo-colonialism and it's built into our institutional structure.
SKIN COLOR DISCRIMINATION
As the most visible minority group in America, African Americans stand out. Although skin color is genetic, in a sociological sense it's a master status. The prejudice comes easy because black and white are instantly perceived as opposite colors. The problem comes in when characteristics like visible skin color are taken as indicators of quality, quality of housing, quality of service, quality of product, etc. Whether we're talking about neighborhoods, restaurants, swimming pools, or department stores, there's always the suspicion that "the grass is greener on the other side". Whites automatically suspect inferior quality wherever black-skinned faces are found, and blacks automatically suspect superior quality wherever white-skinned faces are found. It's more than just product placement, marketing, and consumer habit. It's our common law.
The most important legal case in African American history is Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of a Louisiana statute requiring white and "colored" persons to be furnished "separate but equal" accomodations on railway trains. Now, most people know that the "separate but equal" doctrine was overturned in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, but Plessy is instructive in the sense that it dealt with the whole matter of race relations while Brown is mainly about education only. Let's take a short look at the reasoning behind the majority opinion in this case:
(Justice Henry Billings Brown speaking) "Facilities need not be identical to be equal, and if blacks see what they are provided with as inferior, it's not by reason of anything found in what they are provided with, but solely because they have chosen to put that construction on it." (Plessy v. Ferguson 1896)
What do you think this means? I think it means, despite the overturning in Brown, that blacks are forever deprived of their right to exercise intuition and preference about the quality of things that whites are provided with. This is nothing less than the worst kind of apartheid, a policy of racial discrimination that denies one group the whole freedom to choose what is good and what is bad. We have a similar tradition in criminal justice with our domestic violence problem. Feminists have argued for years that the victims of domestic violence can tell when its about to happen, but courts, scientists, and police tell them there's no such thing as woman's intuition, and nobody can do anything until the perpetrator makes a move. The point I'm trying to make is that skin color discrimination is very subtle.
ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION
African Americans throughout most of the 20th Century have been discriminated against in housing, education, employment, and politics. The FHA, up until just a couple of decades ago, affirmed and supported the placing of restrictive covenants in trust deeds, and the practice of redlining is still suspected of being engaged in by some home mortgage lenders. Separate, inferior school buildings existed for most of the century, and even today, the issue of adequate state support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is couched in Proposition 209-type terms that such support will be a drain on public resources. In the industrial job market, which is the primary target for most blacks, the unions either had rules forbidding black membership or leadership. The political parties and political organizations always had less powerful "auxiliaries" they shuffled their black members off to, even today with "black caucuses". Nowhere and by no one are these past discriminations even recognized or redressed. The sad condition of poverty among most of the black population is attributed, instead, to a lack of motivation and effort. Affirmative action, which is the only redress that has been offered, is rapidly becoming dismantled due to its unpopularity and charges of reverse discrimination. Indeed, when politicians say that the proper role of government is not to fix all of America's socio-economic problems, what they really mean is that there will be no redress for past discriminations against African Americans. Bills to award slavery reparations (sponsored by people like U.S. Representative John Conyers) have been soundly defeated in Congress. On the other hand, there are those blacks (like radio talk show host, Alan Keyes, who are conservative and want to dismantle affirmative action.
The glass ceiling for blacks is worthy of mention. In the corporate world, they are usually appointed or promoted to human resources or public relations positions, where they serve a "showcase" function to the outside world and can't do any harm internally. The real production, sales, and marketing (revenue stream) positions go to whites, which are "fast tracks" to top management. Black executives also rarely have mentors or networks to support them on a day-to-day basis.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE DISCRIMINATION
Over time, the African American community has formed certain perceptions about police behavior that represent an overall lack of trust in the criminal justice system. For example, most blacks see racial profiling as rampant and widespread. This level of magnitude may or may not be true, but Amnesty International (2004) estimates that blacks constitute 47% of the victims of racial profiling (Hispanics follow with a 23% rate, Asians at 11%, multiracial people at 19%, and whites at only 3%). If racial profiling is indeed widespread, then this reflects some serious misunderstandings about race relations and can only lead to increased alienation of minority communities from the police. Racial profiling basically undercuts law enforcement efforts. See my agency racism page for an overview of other forms of criminal justice discrimination. What follows is a table of some black perceptions of common police action.
The term "African American" (aka Afro-American, Black American, or black) refers to approximately 33 million people who make up 13% of the U.S. population with predominantly African ancestral backgrounds. Although most are descendants of families that have been in this country for generations, others are recent immigrants from the West Indies, South America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Malcolm X is generally credited with popularizing and favoring the term "African-American" over the term "Negro," and in the 1960s and 1970s, there was some confusion over this term and the one called "Afro-American" because of the latter's allusion to hair style. In the 1980s, Jesse Jackson pretty much settled language on the "African-American" preference because it alluded to the experience of hyphenated Americans as much, if not more, than a geographic point of origin. Today, terms like "Negro," colored, and black are considered derogatory in many quarters, although "Black" still has some currency, although all terms have political overtones.
There are certain residential and economic patterns associated with Blacks who live in America. Residentially, their population density is quite heavy in the so-called "Black Belt" -- an area stretching down the East Coast from Baltimore towards Northern Florida, and filling in much of Virginia, the Carolinas, almost all of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and parts of East Texas. Economically, Blacks who immigrate to America do better than blacks who were born and raised in the U.S. A commonly thrown-out number is that the median income of African-Americans is approximately 55% that of Whites, or European Americans. Racially, many American blacks have Native American, white, or Latino ancestors. 87% of African Americans live in urban areas, and they are a young population, with a median age of 27, compared to the white median age of 34. Oppressed for over 300 years, discrimination in many forms is also a central part of the African American experience. It's estimated that every African American experiences about 200 incidents a year, from slurs hurled at them by passing motorists to cashiers who won't put change in their hand, to a whole variety of other unclassifiable events.
This is not the place to go into black history (see lecture: 10 Most Important Events in Black History), although it's important to realize that centuries of oppression cannot be quickly eradicated by individual initiative and drive. It's unrealistic to blame African Americans for failing to overcome most barriers because so many of those barriers are deeply rooted in our society. The weight of the past may be the biggest barrier to the future.
About 10 million (or 33% of) African Americans fit the Census Dept. definition of "poor." These poverty rates are extremely stable, and are the same as they were thirty years ago, same as they were fifty years ago, etc. They show no signs of budging, although there are slight yearly fluctuations. One of the problems may be a prevalence of female-headed single parents in the black community, at a time when white families have increasingly become dual-income units, but this is essentially the same observation as the Moynihan Report (1965) which has been widely criticized. Another problem may be employment insecurity. Blacks are overrepresented in service sector jobs ("McJobs"), where employment is less secure. Blacks are also overrepresented on unemployment and welfare rolls.
African Americans are the most segregated group in U.S. society. There are many ways to measure segregation, but the most common way is to look at housing and residential areas, calculating the amount of ethnic concentration in geographical areas. Blacks are also extremely overrepresented in city public housing developments. One concern about this problem has to do with health issues. The infant mortality rate for blacks in America is one of the highest in the world, higher than any industrialized country, and higher even than some third world countries. Black children in the 1-4 age range have mortality rates twice that of white children. Black teenagers have mortality rates 10 times that of whites, and homicide is a leading cause of death. Black adults have a mortality rate 30 to 40% more than whites. The death rates may have something to do with the fact that, percentage-wise, there are fewer blacks now in America than during slavery.
It may be useful at this point to take a side journey and explore the IDEOLOGIES of the black liberation struggle. Many people, blacks included, are often confused about the exact nature of these struggles. Most of the older leaders were assassinated before they could really articulate their plans, and there have been numerous splits and divisions since then. The most divisive issue has been the question of whether to establish a separate existence or integrate into the dominant culture. Separatism is further divided between tactical separatism and ultimate separatism, with the latter desiring a strictly black state. A concise summary is provided below with hyperlinks to selected figures that are considered revolutionaries (or criminals to the white establishment):
Malcolm X (1925-1965) started the separatist line, the creation of all-black communities, all-black institutions, and internationalization of the struggle. Martin Luther King (1929-1968) stressed the integrationist line, speaking of a time when little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) stressed acculturation and adaptation to existing realities. W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) stressed the need for more government involvement in changing economic conditions which exploited blacks. Marcus Garvey (1880-1940) endorsed the "Back to Africa" movement. Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and Angela Davis (circa 1964) led the "Black Power" movement, which was basically socialist and saw capitalism as the major problem. The "Black Muslim" movement, led by Elijah Muhammed and his more moderate son, W.D. Muhammed, also about this time desired racial separatism, and came to believe that white people were devils created by a black scientist named Yakub, and Allah was so upset with Yakub, Allah ordained that white people shall rule blacks for a fixed amount of time, although this ideology is more closely associated with a splinter group called the "Five Percenters". The "Black Panther" movement (circa 1966) was led by Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Fred Hampton as a paramilitary, self-defense group which included the goal of overthrowing capitalism, but the Party split in 1971 under Eldredge Cleaver who advocated providing services to black communities. The modern Black Panthers aim to expose blacks who sell-out. The NAACP is a justice organization basically pursuing an assimilationist approach, patterning routes to success after more model minorities (Asians). The National Urban League is basically a government watchdog group that supports the idea of more rational government programs. Jesse Jackson Jr. (not his father who is settling into life as a Presidential Special Envoy) basically embraces the unified people of color movement and its fight against neo-colonialism. The modern Black Muslim movement, called the Nation of Islam, is led by Louis Farrakan and is basically a racial superiority group for self-betterment, but has also been involved in anti-Zionism. The modern revolutionary struggle, with its Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalist thrusts, is called Kammaasi, and includes groups such as the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) and the Africa Reparations Movement (ARM) which reach out to all diaspora groups deprived of land, such as the Native Americans, Palestinians, and the Irish. Some of these groups are affiliated with the Communist Party, but some are not. The contemporary struggle primarily takes place on college campuses with black student associations. Also of contemporary and historical note is the holiday of Kwanzaa, a week-long celebration created by Ron Karenga in 1966. This person was the leader of a group called the United Slaves in the 1960s and 1970s, a radical spinoff group from the Black Panthers. After his release from prison in the mid-1970s, he became a Marxist academic (professor of Black Studies) and has been involved in other things, like the Million Man March.
SOCIAL CLASS DISCRIMINATION
African Americans exist at all levels of the American class structure, even the upper-upper class (the "black elite"). There are about 500 incredibly wealthy and politically influential blacks in this country, almost all of them coming from wealthy families that have been so since receiving inheritances from the days of slavery. Persons such as Senator Edward Brooke and Justice Thurgood Marshall are examples. This group does not tend to associate with other blacks. Their only ties may be through the NAACP or the Urban League. At the lower-upper level (the new rich), about 1500 black entertainers or athletes have achieved wealth and prestige by being lucky or talented. Persons such as Bill Cosby and Michael Jordan are examples. What is unique about this group is that they have done it in one generation. They have faced difficult white stereotyping and insensitivity.
The black middle class (the "black bourgeoisie") is growing. Families in this group are usually small, stable, and well-planned. In most respects, they are like white middle class families. Studies on this group have shown that they compensate for financial insecurity at times with conspicuous consumption, but that is also something that whites do. Like whites, this group is stuck in the middle; too well-off to qualify for most tax breaks, and too far in debt to ever get out of it on their own. At this level, you also begin to notice the shortage of black males able to support a nuclear family, and there have been numerous examples of one-parent households making it to middle-class status.
An estimated two-thirds of all African Americans fall into the lower classes, and as indicated previously, one-third are below the poverty line. The majority, then, are in the upper-lower ("working" or "proletariat") class. Typical occupations include truck driving, industrial jobs, construction, or auto mechanics. They value hard work, a college education, and a better life for their children. They have faced color barriers preventing them from getting ahead. Blacks at the lower-lower level are completely powerless, alienated, disorganized, segregated, in despair, and have no hopes of getting ahead. They have a disproportionate number of contacts with social workers and police officers. They have become society's scapegoat for the taxpayer's frustrations. The most important point in understanding discrimination against African Americans is to realize that the lower-lower class black has become the stereotype of all blacks in America. Failure to recognize this is what I have called social class discrimination.
LIFESTYLE DISCRIMINATION
The origin of blacks in America is the only continent in the world with practices that are completely dissimilar to anything Eurocentric. It's not that they didn't develop any law, science, or social institutions; it's just that they developed completely different ones that few anthropologists could understand. Further, each one came from a different tribe, with their own language, genetics, and customs. Therefore, when we talk about the existence of a popular "black culture", like the one portrayed by hip-hop music, it's just amazing that anything could cohere these diverse peoples around a common culture. Yet it is well recognized that a black culture exists, with unique demeanor, speech, clothing, and food. Lifestyle discrimination is based on the idea that black culture is somehow inferior, which is impossible since cultures are neither inferior nor superior, but rather, functional in terms of survival value for its people. The history of this idea may very well be as a fall-back position from the discredited idea of biological inferiority. Alternatively, it may be envy at how well some elements of black culture have penetrated white culture.
Much has been made of the legacy of slavery as a central element in black culture. The phrase "legacy of slavery" means neo-colonialism, which means modern or new forms of dominating paternalism. In criminal justice, the equivalent phrase is "seeing the police as an occupying army". The thinking operates on the basis of analogy; e.g., most blacks are kept in slum dwellings, usually owned by white absentee landlords; there are no community services unless they serve the needs of the community with cheap labor; and specially trained police are ready to seal off the area and quell any disturbance. The situation is analogous to: the colonists are provided the means for rudimentary shelter and they will get more when they start contributing to the commonwealth but meanwhile, our army stands ready to crackdown on the slightest sign of insurrection. It's not called colonialism because the people involved are citizens, not colonists. It's called neo-colonialism and it's built into our institutional structure.
SKIN COLOR DISCRIMINATION
As the most visible minority group in America, African Americans stand out. Although skin color is genetic, in a sociological sense it's a master status. The prejudice comes easy because black and white are instantly perceived as opposite colors. The problem comes in when characteristics like visible skin color are taken as indicators of quality, quality of housing, quality of service, quality of product, etc. Whether we're talking about neighborhoods, restaurants, swimming pools, or department stores, there's always the suspicion that "the grass is greener on the other side". Whites automatically suspect inferior quality wherever black-skinned faces are found, and blacks automatically suspect superior quality wherever white-skinned faces are found. It's more than just product placement, marketing, and consumer habit. It's our common law.
The most important legal case in African American history is Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of a Louisiana statute requiring white and "colored" persons to be furnished "separate but equal" accomodations on railway trains. Now, most people know that the "separate but equal" doctrine was overturned in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, but Plessy is instructive in the sense that it dealt with the whole matter of race relations while Brown is mainly about education only. Let's take a short look at the reasoning behind the majority opinion in this case:
(Justice Henry Billings Brown speaking) "Facilities need not be identical to be equal, and if blacks see what they are provided with as inferior, it's not by reason of anything found in what they are provided with, but solely because they have chosen to put that construction on it." (Plessy v. Ferguson 1896)
What do you think this means? I think it means, despite the overturning in Brown, that blacks are forever deprived of their right to exercise intuition and preference about the quality of things that whites are provided with. This is nothing less than the worst kind of apartheid, a policy of racial discrimination that denies one group the whole freedom to choose what is good and what is bad. We have a similar tradition in criminal justice with our domestic violence problem. Feminists have argued for years that the victims of domestic violence can tell when its about to happen, but courts, scientists, and police tell them there's no such thing as woman's intuition, and nobody can do anything until the perpetrator makes a move. The point I'm trying to make is that skin color discrimination is very subtle.
ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION
African Americans throughout most of the 20th Century have been discriminated against in housing, education, employment, and politics. The FHA, up until just a couple of decades ago, affirmed and supported the placing of restrictive covenants in trust deeds, and the practice of redlining is still suspected of being engaged in by some home mortgage lenders. Separate, inferior school buildings existed for most of the century, and even today, the issue of adequate state support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is couched in Proposition 209-type terms that such support will be a drain on public resources. In the industrial job market, which is the primary target for most blacks, the unions either had rules forbidding black membership or leadership. The political parties and political organizations always had less powerful "auxiliaries" they shuffled their black members off to, even today with "black caucuses". Nowhere and by no one are these past discriminations even recognized or redressed. The sad condition of poverty among most of the black population is attributed, instead, to a lack of motivation and effort. Affirmative action, which is the only redress that has been offered, is rapidly becoming dismantled due to its unpopularity and charges of reverse discrimination. Indeed, when politicians say that the proper role of government is not to fix all of America's socio-economic problems, what they really mean is that there will be no redress for past discriminations against African Americans. Bills to award slavery reparations (sponsored by people like U.S. Representative John Conyers) have been soundly defeated in Congress. On the other hand, there are those blacks (like radio talk show host, Alan Keyes, who are conservative and want to dismantle affirmative action.
The glass ceiling for blacks is worthy of mention. In the corporate world, they are usually appointed or promoted to human resources or public relations positions, where they serve a "showcase" function to the outside world and can't do any harm internally. The real production, sales, and marketing (revenue stream) positions go to whites, which are "fast tracks" to top management. Black executives also rarely have mentors or networks to support them on a day-to-day basis.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE DISCRIMINATION
Over time, the African American community has formed certain perceptions about police behavior that represent an overall lack of trust in the criminal justice system. For example, most blacks see racial profiling as rampant and widespread. This level of magnitude may or may not be true, but Amnesty International (2004) estimates that blacks constitute 47% of the victims of racial profiling (Hispanics follow with a 23% rate, Asians at 11%, multiracial people at 19%, and whites at only 3%). If racial profiling is indeed widespread, then this reflects some serious misunderstandings about race relations and can only lead to increased alienation of minority communities from the police. Racial profiling basically undercuts law enforcement efforts. See my agency racism page for an overview of other forms of criminal justice discrimination. What follows is a table of some black perceptions of common police action.
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