NEWS ANALYSIS : Black Attitudes Shift Away From Goal of Inclusion : Race: Increasing numbers distance themselves from white America. Frustration, indignities spur reassessment.
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of black Americans, their patience worn thin by the lingering indignities of racism, are turning away from the centuries-old quest for inclusion in the mainstream of white society.
Like an ocean tide swelling and ebbing in reaction to gravitational forces, black Americans’ commitment to the ideas of integration and a colorblind America has historically risen and fallen in tandem with their perception of whether the struggle against racism was making progress.
And today, a growing body of evidence suggests that in the wake a series of tense incidents that have highlighted racial disparities, the willingness of large numbers of African Americans to work as hard as they once did for a colorblind society is receding.
An increasing number of middle-class blacks, for example, have the financial wherewithal to live almost anyplace, but many are choosing to create predominantly black residential neighborhoods instead of settling in white communities. Further, while nearly all black Americans support the idea of racially diverse public education, increasing numbers are losing faith in local schools. They are especially turning away from busing plans that require their children to travel across metropolitan areas to sit next to white children.
And though most employed blacks share work spaces with whites, large numbers say their greatest frustration stems from what they believe is lack of commitment on the part of America’s corporate and political leaders to provide jobs for black people.
In these and other ways, large numbers of middle-class blacks are putting distance between themselves and the cultural, social, economic and political norms of white America in order to insulate themselves from the uncertainties of interracial pioneering, said Michael Dawson, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
“There is substantial support among all African Americans for building independent black institutions--from schools to political parties to businesses that would favor the hiring of black people,†Dawson said. “The data seems to suggest that African Americans are responding to a racial hostility as they experience it, not necessarily as they truly want it to be.â€
For the most part, this shift of attitudes within black communities across the nation occurs so far outside the influence of white Americans as to be imperceptible to them--except when a high-profile figure such as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who espouses racial separation, calls for and gets half a million or more black men to demonstrate their connection to each other.
Indeed, the widespread fascination with the Farrakhan-led “Million Man March†and the divergent reactions to the not-guilty verdicts in the O.J. Simpson double murder case reflect a belated recognition by predominantly white institutions--from the news media to political leaders--of black nationalist feelings that have long coursed through black America like an underground stream.
It is a recognition tinged with concern:
“Black nationalism scares white people because among their worst fears is not only of blacks being separate, but also that they might go off on their own in hatred of white people,†said Mary Waters, a sociology professor at Harvard University.
Waters, who is white, added that ignorance about black life combined with a sense of guilt and fear regarding African Americans makes the idea of blacks moving off into a separate camp scary to many whites.
“Black people are used to thinking about black people in all their heterogeneity, but whites tend to see blacks as homogenous,†she said. “So, I guess, it is big news to whites when some blacks, like Farrakhan, who doesn’t have a widespread following among the majority of black people, start talking in public about issues or causes that provoke concern among whites. Blacks can sort through all that, accept some and reject some. But whites see it as reflecting the totality of black attitudes.â€
That view was supported by David Dent, a journalism and history professor at New York University who is writing a book about what he calls “the secluded spaces of black culture†that go unnoticed by white Americans.
“This nationalist or separatist feeling comes and then it goes away and it comes back again and it will go away again,†Dent said. “But through it all, a part of black nationalism within the African American psyche doesn’t ever go completely away. It exposes itself in the strangest ways--in the ways some [black] people live, in where they work, in whom they choose to go out and drink with.â€
Some ardent integrationists, including historian John Hope Franklin, reject separatism discussions as nothing more than media musings over their newfound awareness of Farrakhan and his relationship with some blacks. Most African Americans reject the Nation of Islam’s separatist theology because blacks have wanted inclusion into the nation since before the American Revolution, he said.
“All this talk about a black separatist movement is associated with Farrakhan and is overemphasized,†said Franklin, who is the James B. Duke professor of history at Duke University. “Not any considerable number of blacks have ever been separatist. Stop all this talk about blacks being separatist. I want to talk about whites, who still don’t want [blacks] in their neighborhoods. They’re the ones being separatist, which is what they’ve always been.â€
Most blacks would probably endorse Franklin’s sentiment, but in their own lives many are voting to go it on their own.
In nearly every city with a sizable black population, notably Atlanta, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles, middle-class African Americans are moving into suburban enclaves.
Rather than feel alone in largely white communities, “they want to find a comfortable space for their family, themselves and their children,†Dent said. “They’re saying to themselves: ‘I’m not going to set myself up in a hostile world for the sake of integration.’ Black people are aggressively looking for comfortable spaces to breathe and be themselves.â€
Similar trends are visible in public education.
Driven in large measure by complaints from black parents, several urban school systems--including those in Denver, Louisville, Ky., Oklahoma City, St. Louis and Cleveland--have attempted recently to reduce or eliminate desegregation plans requiring the busing of black children past neighborhood schools to predominantly white schools miles away.
Often these efforts have come over the legal objections of NAACP attorneys, who have pioneered court-ordered desegregation plans since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision. “There was always the view that we need our own schools based on an appeal to racial pride and solidarity,†said Ed Hailes, an attorney in the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People’s Washington office. “The pragmatists in the civil rights community have prevailed by stressing the argument that if you have racially integrated schools the white parents wouldn’t keep the resources from their children that they would deny to black children.â€
But that argument is losing its potency in areas where blacks control the levers of local government, such as Maryland’s Prince George’s County, a Washington suburb whose schools have gone from being 75% white in 1973 to about 70% black in the 22 years since court-ordered desegregation began.
Feeling its black elected officials would protect their schools, black parents persuaded the school board last year to return to a system of countywide neighborhood schools. The plan, which would have begun with the 1996-97 school year, was abandoned earlier this year because taxpayers balked at paying $350 million for improvements to neighborhood schools.
Nevertheless, the idea of ending busing remains popular. “The school busing suit has outlived its usefulness,†said Reggie Parks, a spokesman in the county executive’s office. “With our educational system that is predominantly minority, we need to get back to community-based schools.â€
History suggests blacks have recurrently wavered between seeking inclusion and opting for independence from white America.
Long before Farrakhan and the “Million Man March,†Marcus Garvey and his “Back to Africa†movement in the 1920s attracted huge crowds in cities with significant black populations.
Earlier still, stretching back to Richard Allen and Absolom Jones in the 1780s and Martin Delany and Bishop Henry McNeal Turner in the late 19th Century, black separatist leaders have called for blacks in the United States to move to Africa or the Caribbean to escape from white institutions.
“The separatist appeal is obviously one that has powerful emotional force for the marginalized people in any society,†said Orlando Patterson, a sociologist at Harvard University.
More recently, separatist movements among black Americans have been subordinated by the upward progress of an expanding black middle class, which tends to be more focused on moving up in the mainstream of political and economic life.
“One of those stripes on that [American] flag belongs to African Americans,†said Max Rodriguez, publisher of QBR--The Black Book Review, a New York-based literary magazine. He said he founded the magazine in 1993 because white-run review publications excluded many of the books he wanted to see critiqued. “We are building institutions not to separate ourselves from America, but to fully integrate ourselves in her,†he said. “We are acknowledging ourselves and that is good for everyone in the country.â€
Dawson said he has tested recent black nationalist sentiments by asking whether African Americans supported the formation of an independent black political party. He said he was surprised by the wide swings between the late 1970s and early 1990s. In 1976, about 40% of the respondents supported the idea. The figure fell to about 30% in 1984 and dropped to 24% in 1988.
But over the next five years, coinciding with the end of the George Bush Administration and the beginning of the Clinton Administration, black Americans grew increasingly dissatisfied with both the Democrats and Republicans. By early 1994, support for a black political party had jumped to 50%, a historic high point in his surveys, Dawson said.
Also, in his 1993-94 polling data, 70% of respondents said they believed that they should control the political and economic institutions in their communities and a record 57% believed that African Americans should join exclusively black organizations to improve their status in American society.
Yet Dawson said an overwhelming majority of black people remain primarily wedded to the idea of being assimilated into the American majority, with only a small fraction of those surveyed endorsing an independent and autonomous black nation within the United States or elsewhere. “Fifteen percent of blacks support a separate state or nation, but that’s more than those who support the Republican Party,†he said, adding that 10% said they were registered Republicans.
Even within traditional civil rights organizations, which remain the most forceful advocates of racial integration, strains of black autonomy are mixed with pro-inclusion arguments.
“We African Americans must be obsessed with our own development,†Hugh B. Price, president of the National Urban League, said at a recent news conference to discuss race relations in the aftermath of the “Million Man March.†“We must grow and support our businesses, whether they operate in the mainstream economy or serve our own markets, so that we create even more jobs and wealth.â€
* CALLING FOR ACTION: An L.A. rally seeks to harness spirit of the march. B1
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