Because You Never Asked

     (This essay is the last in a series starting with the titles “Welfare” and “The EPR”. It was written in the early 90’s.)

     Up until now I’ve been playing clean and fighting with the gloves on. It’s time to get bare knuckled and not hold back. There are no simple solutions to these problems. Like Joe Frazier stalking Mohammed Ali, we must come right at them with purpose and courage.

     It is very difficult to discuss these things without casting a wary eye at the black community in this country. Oh sure, there’s a substantial amount of trash out there of all shades and colors, from white to black and everything in between. No one group has a monopoly on anti-social behavior, but for sheer concentration, repetition and institutionalization of such behavior, nothing compares to what is happening on the Afro-American-black-negro-nigger streets of this nation. If we are talking homicide, violence, drugs, illiteracy, family breakdown, etc., we are talking, to an unbalanced, over bloated extent, about the hip-hop snarl of fried chicken mayhem on the mean streets of black America. Either we stare it down and confront it, both blacks and whites, or we continue to agonize.

     Having read what’s just been said above, no doubt Rush and the boys would be smirking and nodding agreement, good naturedly slapping each other on the back and hollering “damn right!”, “soooeeyy!”, “let’s have another beer”, or whatever they might do when somebody else can be blamed for our collective problems. “Yee haw!”

     Unlike these vindictive lard brains, I don’t point demagogic fingers at others. We are all responsible for this state of affairs. Nobody lives in a vacuum. Historical context is always relevant.

     The black community’s experience in this country has been so overwhelmingly negative that I marvel more at its survival and progression than deride it for its failures. Of all the races, creeds and ethnic groups calling the United States home, only the Afro-American did not come here of their own free will with a vision for the future and a dream to fulfill. For them there is no romantic Ellis Island legacy, no immigrant pride to look back upon. Even Colin Powell, who could be considered black America’s poster boy, is not a truly representative sample of his race in this country because his parents were immigrants from Trinidad in search of a new life.

     Black America’s true legacy is etched in 250 years of dehumanizing slavery, and, just to rub it in, a century more of the de-facto continuance of this condition. For people like myself, who’s heritage is not stained in such a way, it is virtually impossible to relate to or feel what might be the effects of such an historical inheritance. The black people of the New World must bear this past like a form of DNA only they carry. I can only thank such great scholar-artists like William Styron and Toni Morrison for giving me at least a skeletal indoctrination into the black experience in America. They’ve made me realize that the last forty years of steady progress is still not nearly enough to erase almost half a millennium of neglect and deprivation.

     If Rush and the boys consider this a candy coated, bleeding heart way to look at this, I suggest the following hypothesis: Rush is taken from his silver spooned cradle and dumped into the welfare environment we’ve been discussing. Most likely, the man’s intelligence and ambition would manifest itself here too, but instead of the silky smooth, middle American pundit currently shaping our politics, he’d probably be the baddest hood in the hood, pimping the most girls, selling the most drugs, and eating the most barbecue ribs (some things stay the same in all environments).

     But mitigating the black person’s responsibility for their current plight does not erase the problem. Realistically speaking, there is no back to Africa or separatist solution. There is only assimilation into the mainstream American ethic; family, education, work. This does not mean James Brown starts singing like Frank Sinatra, but it does mean one is to become a good citizen. A sincere person genuinely concerned for our collective future can only look on in dismay as we try to grapple with this problem, one that may have, by now, passed some kind of point of no return. Perhaps it is no longer a question of rehabilitating this environment, and more a question of eradicating it. By applying the birth control measures suggested in this essay, we could combine the elements of both.

     (There is an interesting irony here with regard to conservative acceptance of these birth control suggestions. On the one hand, it’s the kind of get tough solution most Limbaughnians would cheer for, but it flies in the face of their stance on abortion. It must be asked --- would the Operation Rescue types show up in the “hood” and fight for that unwed, welfare mother’s black fetus with the same zeal they’d show for a white, middle class fetus? Scratch your head on that one.)

     Relevant Material: Coincidentally, as I was preparing this essay for the web in 2007, I heard a story on National Public Radio chronicling a nefarious incident in our recent history that has always been covered up. It seems that some counties in the deep south were purged (“ethnic cleansing” would be the proper term today) of all its black population as late as the 1940’s. This was done unofficially under the threat of death by night riding Klan types allowed to have their way. As a result, blacks who had lived in these counties for centuries were forced to leave (if my memory serves me, I believe one was called Chatham county in Georgia). I bring this up for the following reason: we live in a more enlightened time, but there is a danger that goes along with that. It is very easy for the brute perversions of the past to fade from consciousness. As the rusted gear works of history slowly creeps along and more is uncovered, I consistently find that I had underestimated the sad story of the black experience in America. This should not be forgotten as we wrestle with the problems of today.)