{"id":1736,"date":"2011-01-02T10:58:19","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T15:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1736"},"modified":"2011-02-06T11:14:52","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T16:14:52","slug":"because-they-had-no-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1736","title":{"rendered":"Because They Had No Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Because They Had No Choice<\/h2>\n

Published in the Maryland Daily Record January 3, 2011<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The history of white and black in this country has largely been marked by separateness.\u00a0 Whites in the manse, blacks in the slave quarters; whites on the paved streets, blacks on the dirt roads; whites in the pleasant neighborhoods, blacks in the ghettos.\u00a0 My recent reading has given me new insight into how this all happened \u2013 and what the future may hold.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The law had a lot to do with it.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s book, The Warmth of Other Suns<\/a><\/em>, by Isabel Wilkerson, retells the history of the great African American migration from South to North and West in the early-to-mid-20th Century, and brings back to vivid life the realities of the South, where the majority of the nation\u2019s African-American citizenry lived after slavery.\u00a0 Through thousands of decisions not to investigate or prosecute, for instance, the justice system there ratified the lynching and violence[1] employed to prevent blacks from intruding on whatever was viewed as white turf, which of course included neighborhoods.\u00a0 Blacks were systematically frustrated in efforts to obtain education, jobs, and the economic leverage these might have bestowed, which might in turn have enabled (among other things) choices to live where whites did.\u00a0 Many blacks felt they had no choice but to leave, but that was hard and risky.\u00a0 In fact, as Wilkerson recounts with many examples, it generally had to be done in clandestine fashion, telling almost no one.\u00a0 And, unsurprisingly, the refugees had to ride in segregated trains.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The North and the West were better in lots of ways, but not in terms of separateness, and this was directly enforced by the laws.\u00a0 Wilkerson describes how the places where the internal immigrants had to settle would inevitably be nonwhite neighborhoods.\u00a0 Another recent book, Not in My Neighborhood<\/a><\/em>, by journalist Antero Pietila, focuses on the mechanisms that created these segregated outcomes, by examining just one city, Baltimore.\u00a0 There were two great stages in residential segregation in Baltimore.\u00a0 First, local ordinances explicitly created residential segregation, by forbidding owners of homes occupied by white people to rent or sell to black purchasers.\u00a0 Baltimore was a pioneer in this regard, and its ordinances were copied in Northern and Southern cities alike.[2]\u00a0 Then, after such ordinances were struck down, genteeler means were used: restrictive covenants to forbid the residential mingling of the races as a matter of private contract, mortgage redlining (largely brought about by federal agencies charged with stimulating home loans), and blatant racial segregation in public housing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Baltimore\u2019s staunch defense of its geographical color bar produced unimaginable inconvenience, not to say suffering, for the black residents who flooded in during the Great Migration, as they were cooped up in portions of the city that were far too small reasonably to accommodate them.\u00a0 Overcrowding was endemic, yet there was nowhere else to turn.\u00a0 As Pietila carefully reconstructs, generations of politicians tried in vain to alleviate the pressure of too much humanity in the ghettos, but with every area, old or new, they tried to open up, they were checkmated by intransigent white interests.\u00a0 Hence when barriers eventually fell despite the intransigence, they fell in the worst, least planned way, to blockbusters and shoddy landlords and financiers who engineered abusive mortgages that only African Americans, desperate enough to settle for such terms, would be offered or pay.\u00a0 As a result, while racial boundaries moved, racial boundaries persisted.\u00a0 Blacks had, again, no choice but to continue living in black neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Times have changed.\u00a0 The old segregationist residential boundaries now grow more blurred with each year.\u00a0 And society has likewise made some concerted efforts to achieve integration in some of our schools.\u00a0 In many of them, the races now rub shoulders.\u00a0 One might expect that nonwhites, who have been the disadvantaged parties in most earlier arrangements, would welcome the opportunity to mingle freely.\u00a0 But it proves not to be that simple.\u00a0 And here I refer to an older book: \u201cWhy Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?\u201d <\/a><\/em>by Beverly Tatum now president of Spelman College (1997, second edition 2003).\u00a0 Her topic remains current (I understand the \u201cblack table\u201d is a still fixture at most integrated schools), and she has important things to say about it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We should recall that the original desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education<\/a><\/em>, was premised on the notion that black students benefit from contact with white ones.\u00a0 The \u201cblack table\u201d discounts that notion, at least to some extent.\u00a0 Tatum, a developmental psychologist, says that adolescents need to forge an identity, which has to include race.\u00a0 And in a world where white is the unexamined norm, in diction, in style, and in cultural institutions, and where white individuals reap, often unthinkingly, the benefits of earlier legally-sanctioned privilege, adolescents of color have no choice but to do a lot of extra work.\u00a0 The \u201cblack table\u201d becomes a clearing-house of information relevant to that task and a source of support in facing a difficult situation.\u00a0 At later stages of development, Tatum suggests, identity gels, and the need for this self-segregation passes to some degree.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But not entirely.\u00a0 Tatum posits that black space and white space may remain desirable even after adolescence; the process of placing oneself relative to the racial checkerboard takes less work later on, but never entirely ends.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is discouraging.\u00a0 It would be more in keeping with the policy of Brown<\/em> if everyone would school and work and live side-by-side and not think about race anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t we be insisting on that right now?\u00a0 For another thing, as Tatum acknowledges, the \u201cblack table\u201d often tends to foster \u201can oppositional identity that disdains academic achievement.\u201d\u00a0 Moreover, the whole notion of forming an identity around race is strange, given that race, which has zero biological significance, imparts no traits that are more profound than skin deep.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Must we go on this way?<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think the question comes down, in part, to whether human nature can progress.\u00a0 Face it: humans always have forged their sense of self by the tribes they belong to and live among.\u00a0 Tribes, whether we call them nations or races or faiths, share the just-mentioned lack of biological significance.\u00a0 Now that people can mingle without legal interference \u2013 now that they do<\/em> have a choice \u2013 will tribalism keep them apart anyway?<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To me, proof exists that the future can be different.\u00a0 The Emancipation Proclamation<\/a>, Brown<\/em>, the Civil Rights Acts<\/a>, and the creation of a society that could elect a mixed-race president are not just American achievements; they are major human achievements.\u00a0 They themselves embody but also point further down the path we as a species are following: gradually reconfiguring our psyches to recognize but one race and one tribe: human.\u00a0 And in this reconfiguration, we Americans lead the world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is a long way to go, however.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Changing our very nature is hard, and only a work in progress.\u00a0 Key to continuing that progress, too, will be ending white privilege without passing it on to some other group.\u00a0 In that regard, the changing demographics ahead, in which no race predominates numerically<\/a>, pose both promise and threat.\u00a0 Let us therefore embrace the one and defeat the other.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We do have and must take that choice.<\/p>\n

[1].\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wilkerson quotes a 1933 book, The Tragedy of Lynching<\/em>, for the statement that \u201csomeone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

[2].\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pietila<\/em> at 22-23.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0| Next Big Picture Column<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To me, proof exists that the future can be different. The Emancipation Proclamation, Brown, the Civil Rights Acts, and the creation of a society that could elect a mixed-race president are not just American achievements; they are major human achievements. They themselves embody but also point further down the path we as a species are following: gradually reconfiguring our psyches to recognize but one race and one tribe: human.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1996,2004,2005,1987,1988,2000,2006,2002,1997,1062,2009,1994,2011,1978,2059,2012,1979,1982,1983,1981,1392,1975,2010,1993,1998,1986,1990,1995,1977,2014,1973,1992,1989,1991,1984,1985,1974,1976,2001,2013,1980,2007,2003,1999],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigpicture","tag-abusive-mortgages","tag-adolescent-identity","tag-adolescent-identity-formation","tag-antero-pietila","tag-baltimore","tag-beverly-tatum","tag-biological-significance-of-race","tag-black-table","tag-blockbusters","tag-brown-v-board-of-education","tag-civil-rights-acts","tag-color-bar","tag-demographics","tag-dirt-roads","tag-emancipation-proclamation","tag-future-demographics-of-united-states","tag-ghettos","tag-grat-migration","tag-great-african-american-migration","tag-isabel-wilkerson","tag-lynching","tag-manse","tag-mixed-race-president","tag-mortgage-redlining","tag-nonwhites","tag-not-in-my-neighborhood","tag-ordinances","tag-overcrowding","tag-paved-streets","tag-prevalence-of-lynching","tag-race-relations","tag-redlining","tag-residential-segregation","tag-restrictive-covenants","tag-segregated-neighborhoods","tag-segregated-trains","tag-segregation","tag-slave-quarters","tag-spelman-college","tag-the-tragedy-of-lynching","tag-the-warmth-of-other-sunds","tag-tribalism","tag-white-privilege","tag-why-are-all-the-black-kids-sitting-together-in-the-cafeteria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1810,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/1810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}