South of the James

by Conaway B. Haskins III

This article is an adaptation of a speech presented to the Low Country & Chesapeake Society in February 2005.

After talking with academics, activists in the Black left and right, community leaders, and even Black professional athletes, I have gained a greater insight about what the critical issues are relating to community rebuilding in Black America. At the same time, I reviewed quite a bit of literature and research to see what the latest state of the art was on the issues that consistently come to the forefront of such activities. As a result, I feel that the best way for me to serve this issue of community rebuilding is to offer a framework for discussion that should eventually translate into specific actions. While much of this ground has been covered by other, more illustrious figures, the information presented is a distillation of key ideas.

As such, several caveats must be acknowledged in terms of the framework that this paper lays out. Because the purpose is to rebuild from the inside out, the focus is on what the Black community can do for themselves, not about actions that can be taken through political and business solutions. While our communities do have recognized community leaders in the form of educators, pastors, agency heads, activists, and the like, the vexing problem of this model is that they often default to political (read: government programs) solutions instead of building communities from the grassroots and developing assets. It is far easier to organize a protest than to roll out a viable, strong organization that serves people.

While partnering with those external to the community is a necessary and useful enterprise, setting the parameters for rebuilding Black communities should first zero in on actions that Black people can take to help themselves. Without getting into a debate about the legitimacy of affirmative action, reparations, or special poverty programs, the mindset proposed here reflects a deviation away from the government-dependent mentality that plagues the contemporary civil rights establishment and the Black left. Essentially, what is first required is for Black Americans is a true abandonment of the tendency toward perpetual self-victimization.

This “woe is me” approach is prevailing among the so-called black leadership and has trickled down to the people. The beacons of this ideology – mainstream media outlets, the civil rights establishment, and the Black liberal intelligentsia – play up social and economic conditions as if they are reaching epically desperate proportions. The overwhelming attention on the black poor – such as the epidemic of African American male unemployment in major urban areas – and their problems has essentially created an environment whereby Black America is defined by its weakest links. Granted, crime still plagues many urban black communities, and there are those who claim that black voters have been discriminated against at the polls. However, the rush to establish depravity and despair among our people as given creates an environment of desperation that leaves the reality of the diversity of Black life often unexamined.

I want to posit a different viewpoint to address the issue of rebuilding Black America by focusing on our assets, and looking toward our collective and individual futures with a sense of hope and optimism. While many so-called leaders of Black America lead with a sense of threatened survival, we have the opportunity to shift from a paradigm of abject scarcity and eternal victim-hood that threatens to swallow Black American whole. By reflecting on the strengths of our community and looking to works, we can address our weaknesses that hinder the progress of our people.

Black America Today: Behind the Numbers
A discussion of community rebuilding with a large scale focus would be incomplete without a quantitative assessment of Black America. The facts and figures that are available provide some level of insight into where Black America is currently situated and are necessary to construct a roadmap to the future. Nonetheless, experience has shown that often, research can only paint a picture of a particular time in place, and it very well misses the critical interactions that occur on a human level. As such, we should take care to put any statistics that are offered in their proper light, knowing that where the rubber meets the road, the numbers can fall by the wayside.

Economically speaking, Black America’s disposable income was pegged at $600 million in 2000 and $750 million in 2004. It is projected to reach $1 billion by 2009, representing nearly 10% of the nation’s buying power in coming years. This resource base can serve as a source of real power for and change in our communities. If we focus our time, energy and capital toward the development of our communities, we can ensure greater prosperity and opportunity for our people.

In terms of human capital, African Americans have seen a steady increase their educational attainment in the years since Brown v. Board. However, it must be acknowledged that Black high school dropout rates are alarmingly high, and the rates of college attendance need must improvement. Despite this, Black America has seen high school degree attainment reach 80% for adults. This places us ahead of Latinos and only slightly behind Whites and Asians in terms of finishing our grade school education, often the most basic point of entry for the mainstream employment market. At present, 18% of African Americans have earned a bachelors degree, compared to 30% of Whites, 50% of Asians, and 13% of Latinos. At the same time, less than 1% of Blacks hold graduate degrees. Undoubtedly, we have much more work to do in terms of Black higher education because no amount of reframing can disguise the fact that our kids are not graduating from college at a competitive rate, and the numbers of those who seek advanced degrees is paltry. However, just as the disparities between Black and White high school students have been chipped away, there is hope that we can attack the higher education issue with just as much vigor and success.

It is widely accepted that work is the most critical element to economic success in this country and that it is basis from which wealth and income flow. As it currently stands, black unemployment has hovered around 10-11% for quite some time, nearly equal for men and women. While, this rate is higher than the 6-8% marks in the late 1990’s, in general, unemployment in America has increased with the echoes of the Internet bust and 9-11. Rates for White are between 4-5%, and rates for Latinos are typically from 6-8%. Conventional wisdom considers this comparative disadvantage to be a disturbing sign, and on the surface, it is troubling that our folks are out of work at higher rates that other ethnic groups. However, if we look at this from another angle, the glass is a bit more than half-full. Even though Black unemployment is double the rate of whites and higher than Latinos, when we shift our framework from the perspective of employment rates, the gaps diminish. Thus, the chasm of Black unemployment falls always when we consider that, on average, 90% of Blacks, 94% of Latinos, and 95% of Whites are employed. Taking a strengths-based approach, so to speak, starts to paint a more promising picture for our future.

More so that any other statistic, economic poverty is a good proxy for class stratification as it is linked to many of the problems that persist in Black America, such as educational deficiencies, poor health, crime pandemics, and widespread joblessness. As both a cause and effect factor in American life, alleviating and reducing poverty has been the centerpiece of numerous public policy and social reform efforts inside and outside Black America. Merely mentioning and discussing poverty and those who live in it is not enough – if we accept that class distinctions are a key fact of life in Black America, we must examine those who are also in the working class or are “working poor.”

In 2004, it was estimated that 24% of Black people and 33% of Black children lived below the poverty line. 24% of all Black people and 27% of all Black children live between poverty and twice the poverty line. This means that at least half of all Black people live well above impoverished conditions in terms of income, and could legitimately be considered middle class. Again, the issue of geography is important as income and wealth has different connotations and interacts differently with opportunity, in different sections of the country. Compared to ten years ago – 1994 – these numbers have improved somewhat. Ten years ago, 31% of Black people and 43 % of Black children lived under the poverty line. 24% of Black people and 25% of Black children lived between poverty and twice the poverty line. On the surface, this shows that we are generally doing much better than we did in the past.

If we dig a bit deeper, we start to see trends that are at once confounding and hopeful. The issue of single parenthood, especially for our women and girls, is one that has been debated for years, with good reason. Single African American mothers face a 40% poverty rate and almost 30% of Black single moms live between poverty and twice the poverty rate. In 1994, half of Black single mothers lived below the poverty rate and another 25% lived between poverty and twice the poverty rate. While these figures to illustrate that Black single moms had a slight bit of improvement in terms of their economic condition, the fact that over 70% of them persistently subsist at poverty or working poor levels is stunning statistic. It is understandable that much ado has been made over this, but, harkening back the notion that we cannot define ourselves so completely by our weakest links, we must continue to provide context for such discussions.

On the other side of the coin is the fact that only 8.6% of married Black couples live under the poverty line, and only 20% live between poverty and twice the poverty rate. Going back to 1994 shows that a shade over 10% of married Blacks lived in poverty and 23% lived between poverty and twice the poverty rate. The continuing decrease in the number of married Blacks who live in poverty should be of great interest to all of us, but it is premature to announce causative relationships around family stability, wealth and income in the Black America. Still, anecdotally, this hypothesis seems to hold some promise. However we choose look at it these numbers, we can safely assert that, on balance, Black America is doing better today that it was in the past.

The Trouble With Black Culture
The overall decrease in concentration of poverty and the stabilization of employment among African Americas is something that should give us cause for hope. If we merely go by the numbers, contrary to conventional wisdom regarding racial dynamics in this country, things are not nearly as bad as some make them out to be. To that end we should consider more qualitative aspects of our culture and community that don’t necessarily lend themselves to data collection. On balance, Black America is doing better today than in the past by any number of statistical measures, but beyond what the numbers say, all we have stunning moral failures and social pathologies that are not easily captured by statistics. We must seek to cut off the roots of the socio-cultural deficiencies that impede Black America’s progress and threaten the survival of our communities.

Today, calls for “Black Unity” as the first order of business allow us to excuse destructive Black behaviors. It is our responsibility to speak out against this tendency to “define deviance downward” in Black America in search of lowest common denominators that link us all. We must refuse to lift up those negative elements of Blackness that are currently deemed culturally acceptable, and develop a higher moral compass for the community. We must not be afraid of engaging in honest discussion and criticism that causes discomfort in many quarters of the community because the price for maintaining the status quo is too high.

Black popular culture is bombarded with self-destructive images that continuously chip away at the fabric of our society. The notion of hard work and incrementally building toward a goal has been dismantled and replaced with an “anything goes” moral relativism. Our celebrity-obsessed pop culture has openly abdicated responsibility for being a role model, as Charles Barkley so ineloquently voiced. This focus on quick-fixes and celebrities contributed to the overall lack of productive social conditions among Black folk. This situation is exacerbated by the lack of morally upright leadership in the community. The elevation of self-proclaimed and media-anointed Black leaders focuses on charismatic figures with entertaining sound bites. This illusion of leadership contributes mightily to the waywardness of Black culture and impedes true community-building – it is vapid and unsustainable and must be resisted. Black cultural leadership has defaulted to always looking for the “next big thing” to show up as spokespeople for 35 million. This model is broken, and should be abandoned.

While generational poverty has contributed to our moral shortcomings, such bad behaviors also fester dangerously among the black middle class. These families are subject to a Black popular culture defined by hedonistic rap music, written literature tending toward sexual prurience (i.e. the obsession with “Down Low” brothers), and television and film buffoonery. Previous generations had negative black images forced upon them by the White-controlled institutions in this country, but today, Blacks are the leading purveyors of Black exploitation and degradation. If we do not act to correct this now, we will essentially be consigning ourselves to another form of slavery, only this time, we will be the slave masters.

If our path is to be different, it makes sense for us to self-impose standards of decency in the community. There will be those who opposed this, and although it sounds harsh, we must be willing to abandon them for they care nothing for our true culture and treat character-building values with contempt. Our penchant for Christian forgiveness has given away to a culture of permissiveness that continues to define deviance downward and raise self-destructive behavior upward. This must stop if we are to rebuild and renew. We must hone in the positive side of our cultural and social capital, our heritage and history to construct a new asset base from which to affect positive change. We can take our strengths from our community’s grassroots – the everyday people who, by simply living good lives, provide a foundation of leadership upon which our view of Black America is built.

Pitching Black Responsibility
A cornerstone of our effort must be to take on a greater sense of personal & community responsibility. This is not simply to recycle Booker T. Washington, nor is it inflammatory Right-wing “victim-blaming.” As politically incorrect as it may sound, Black Americans must take control of their lives, families, and communities. Our own actions and reactions – collectively and individually – truly do play the most determinant role in our welfare, and we have to move beyond expecting others to help us first because they do not know our culture and our people as well as we do. We can, and should, practice collective and individual self-help in our mental, physical and emotion realms. We must assert more responsibility for those things that we can control, while working collectively to fight those external forces that work against us. At the same time, we need to develop mutually reinforcing networks, starting with each individual and each family, to help each other reach our fullest potential.

The negative emotional and mental well-being of many in our community is a leading cause of what can be deemed moral weaknesses. Research indicates that many of our intergenerational social pathologies stem from poor mental and physical health outcomes, a number of which have roots in personal behaviors. From a health perspective, African Americans are disproportionately afflicted with hypertension, obesity, low birth rate & high infant mortality, asthma, diabetes, cancer, AIDS and a host of other illnesses. This emotional deficit manifests itself in a number of ways: fractured family structures, alarmingly high teen pregnancy rates, outsized propensities toward male violence, and the self-degradation of Black women. While genetics, heredity and economics do play influence these conditions, a number of them are also related to lifestyle choices. The actions that we take upon ourselves can outweigh environmental factors such as pollution, exposure to hazards, and lack of health care. Eliminating those negative aspects of our behaviors, and engaging in more productive enterprises – for example more physical activity, improved personal hygiene, safer sexual behaviors, and smart food choices – are all within our own individual and familial locus of control.

Moving Forward: What We Can Do
Given the present state of Black America, new leaders must emerge to create and sustain institutions that can clearly articulate and serve our interests. New voices are needed on the horizons. Black America has a history of using such efforts to our advantage. As far back as the antebellum period, we traveled the Underground Railroad (admittedly, with assistance), we developed Black mutual aid societies and governing institutions (such as profiled on the Low Country website), and following the Civil War, we established Black colleges. In the early 1900’s Black folk developed social and civic groups such as the Black Greek fraternities and sororities, Jack & Jill, the Boule, etc.

The greatest example of this is the Civil Rights Movement of the 1910’s to 1960’s. This movement spawned from the heart of African American social capital. This effort was very good at identifying critical stakeholders and generating an emerging crop of leaders who had the moral credibility to speak to the hearts and minds of Black America and the country at-large. While the Movement did have its share of leaders from privileged and powerful backgrounds, people such as John Lewis and Medgar Evers cut their teeth at the community level and rose to prominence nationally through their hard work and dedication.

History indicates is that our culture is adaptive and our people are resilient. Anecdotally and from the perspective of research, communities of color tend to have well-defined social networks and community capital. Thus, even in working class and poor families and neighborhoods, the stage is set for strategic responses to pressing problems. The key impediment is that these networks are not always used productively and they are highly informal. Among our community institutions, there is a critical lack of structure – for example formal 501c status for nonprofits, registered corporations for businesses, etc. – in the provision of goods and services beyond the public sector safety net and the mainstream market.

Because our lives are lived locally, we should not rely on the practice of seeking “national fathers and mothers” to shepherd us along the way. National voices are still necessary; however, they must be rooted in something beyond the cult of personality that can often envelop a movement. Because of their prominence and advancement, these types rarely touch the lives of the average Black person. In contrast, there are community leaders who we can look to serve not as “role models,” per se, but as key contributors to the welfare of Black America. These leaders include the local black business owners and professionals who can provide vital commercial resources in the communities, as well as, mid and senior-level executives in corporate America who live among us. In the least, these entrepreneurs and managers are a conduit to the capitalist economy that drives this country. New leaders with this orientation can drive the debates and implement the projects that can truly have an impact on our communities, thus moving all of our people to a higher station in life.

Conclusion
In sum, we can truly rebuild Black communities from the inside out if we focus our eyes on the future with a sense of hope and optimism. Because our proverbial glasses are more than half-full, it is time for us to facilitate the shift in our community ethos from a paradigm of constant deficit and despair to one that provides a rubric of progress for all of our people. In offering this different lens, let us recall that there was little mention of the role of White people and governmental solutions vis-à-vis the ultimate fate of Black America. The basic principle at play is to renew Black America by letting go of the notion that our salvation rests external to the community. Again, this is not to suggest that there is no role for non-Blacks and larger institutions in the success of Black people. Rather, it suggests that it is primarily the responsibility of Black people to seek solutions among themselves, solutions that will inevitably involve others at some point but avoids reliance on those others and most points. The actions of the Black individual reigns supreme, the role of the Black family is critical, building self-sufficiency in the Black community is what we must strive toward. No less than our lives, and the lives of generations to come, are at stake.