Saturday April 17, 2021
The Illusion of Racial Progress
In this picture, the shadow of 12-year-old Ruby Bridges integrating public schools in New Orleans leads Kamala Harris as she strides toward the White House as the first Black female Vice President. The picture represents the progress of Black Americans from the 1960s until today. The reality is very different.
Racial Progress: An Oxymoron
“We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.”
This is the mantra often offered when discussing race relations in America today.
The idea is that conditions for Black Americans have greatly improved since the Civil Rights Movement, producing significant new opportunities, and improvements in living conditions.
The rise of Blacks into positions of success, visibility and leadership sends a signal that the progress is real. From Barack Obama and Kamala Harris to Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James, Beyonce and Amanda Gordon and so many others, Black folk are everywhere, doing all sorts of things that were impossible not so long ago.
The talent was always there, but today Blacks seem to have arrived. Sure, there's lots of work to be done, but look at all the progress already made.
In this framework, our current divisions are a temporary obstacle to continued forward movement. When enough whites wake up and enough Blacks put their talents forward, the idea that “the moral arc of the universe is long but leads toward justice” will prove true for all of us.
This is certainly how I thought about the state of race relations when I began this Blog. I had some reservations --- Massive incarceration of Black men; Black women with twice the rate of infant mortality, etc. --- but the message of progress was compelling.
I have a personal interest in Black progress. My mom and dad, Edith and Edward Rollins, born and raised in Boston, were among the millions of Black people who worked all their lives to make things better for future generations. My great great grand parents, Susan and Charles Rollins overcame the brutality of slavery in Tallahassee to raise a successful family.
Their son, Noah Rollins, my great grandpa, worked hard to fit in at Jacksonville’s St. James Hotel, before moving to Boston where he also worked hard. My dad served in the Army in WWII, including with the ground crew for the Tuskegee Airmen.
They all strove to advance the cause. They set me up to do my best as a Black person, and to look for progress of Black folk. My parents believed believed, as do I, that progress for African Americans has always resulted in progress for all.
This explains my lifelong involvement in race relations work, from journalism to the Civil Rights Movement and racial reconciliation activities today. I've worked for progress for Black people with the expectation this would result in progress for all.
Overwhelming Evidence
I’m still learning as I write. And, what I’ve discovered is this: The overwhelming evidence shows that, while some Black people have moved to the top of their fields, Black people as a whole have made little progress since the Civil Rights Movement.
In some instances, we have experienced collective retrogression, a situation that dates back to slavery itself.
Our lack of collective progress stands in contrast to the outstanding, and highly visible, successes of some. The reality is often hidden from view. As a group, Black folk put on a good front, reminding me of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "We Wear the Mask."
Movement in Jacksonville
In Jacksonville, we’re experiencing a rise in efforts focused on racial equity. Many new vehicles for racial reconciliation are being created. These efforts need to have the force of energy and commitment equal to the true nature of the problems, or they will fail.
If approaches of the last 50 years have produced little to no real progress for Blacks as a group, continuing along our current path will not move us forward, and our society as a whole will continue to pay the price.We must all step up by replacing our hesitancy and reluctance to engage with efforts characterized by intention and courage.
Here’s some revealing data that has led me to re-examine my views.
As of 2020 white families in America have a median net worth of $142,500 while Black families have a net worth of $24,000. (For Latinx as a group, the number is $36,100.) This is from a study by the Federal Reserve.
The Color of Wealth
In 2015, The Boston Federal Reserve published "The Color of Wealth in Boston." Among its many startling findings: White households in Boston had a median net worth of $247,500. Black households had a median net worth approaching zero.
Is that what, after 402 years of hard labor, Black families are left with — zero net worth? Even with 246 years of unpaid labor during slavery, the progress since Emancipation must have been worth something. The headwinds against Black progress must be strong indeed. Stronger than we thought. Stronger, certainly, than our efforts to counteract racial bias have been.
“The Upswing”
Powerful data about the lack of progress is also contained in “The Upswing,” the best-selling book by Robert D. Putnam and Shaylin Romney Garrett. Here are some of their findings, laid out in a December 2020 article in The New York Times:
In 2018, the income disparity between Black and white Americans was the same as it was in 1968. In 50 years there’s been no progress in income equality.
Black Americans on the whole have experienced flat or downward [financial] mobility in recent decades.
The emergence of a Black middle class has not significantly affected this disparity.
The closest Blacks and whites came to equal income was in the period between 1940 and 1970, before the Civil Rights Movement.
The gap in life expectancy between Black and white Americans narrowed most rapidly between about 1905 and 1947. By 1995 the life expectancy ratio was the same as it had been in 1961. (This trend has produced dramatic results illustrated by the disparity in life expectancy in which African Americans born in 2020 have a life expectancy nearly eight years lower than Hispanics and six years lower than whites.)
The Black/white ratio in rates of high school completion improved dramatically between the 1940s and the early 1970s, after which it slowed, never reaching parity. College completion followed the same trajectory until 1970, then sharply reversed.
Racial integration in K-12 education at the national level … accelerated sharply in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education. But this trend leveled off in the early 1970s, followed by the trend toward resegregation we see today.
Racial disparities in home ownership narrowed between 1900 and 1970, then stagnated, then reversed. The racial wealth gap is now growing. Black home ownership is now plummeting.
The South saw an increase in Black voter registration between 1940 and 1970, followed by decline and stagnation. What data we have on national Black voter turnout indicates nearly all of the gains toward equality with white voter turnout occurred between 1952 and 1964 , before the Voting Rights Act passed, then almost entirely halted for the rest of the century.
These are simple facts, ungarnished and raw. Putnam and Garrett conclude that the slow “climb toward parity throughout most of the century … begins to flatline around 1970,” just after the Civil Rights Movement.
Most striking to me is the fact that the emergence of a Black middle class has not made a difference in overall numbers.
A Bipartisan Consensus
The lack of progress for Blacks goes beyond political affiliation. Analysts on the left and right are coming to that conclusion.
In “The Quiet Death of Racial Progress,” a New York Times column, conservative commentator David Brooks notes while Black women as a whole “now out-earn their white counterparts, the same is not true for Black men. "If you look at poverty data since 1980, there’s been little progress, either in Black men moving out of poverty or into the middle class … much less likely to climb out [of poverty] than their counterparts in other races,” and “those born into affluence are more likely to fall down the income scale over the course of their lives”
The reality that Blacks have not progressed following the Civil Rights Movement is also at the core of Michele Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.” She writes from a progressive's point of view.
“America’s institutions continue to create nearly as much racial inequality as existed during Jim Crow. … Affirmative Action masks the severity of racial inequality in America, leading to greatly exaggerated claims of racial progress and overly optimistic assessments of the future for African Americans … as recent data shows … much of Black progress is a myth.” We can and must do more.
Douglas Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Slavery by Another Name,” documents the various methods through which slavery continued to function after Emancipation. Government-run forced labor camps “leased” tens of thousands of falsely-arrested Black men to private companies.
Well into the 20thcentury Black men were forced to labor without compensation in steel mills, coal mines, lumber camps, farm plantations, etc.. Blackmon, who writes for the conservative Wall Street Journal, suggests this system led to the absence of family wealth and other economic disparities today.
We are better than this as a nation; we are capable of doing better with job equity today.
Conservative David Brooks and progressive Michelle Alexander agree that the first step is to end the illusion of progress. If they can agree on the possibility of change, we in Jacksonville can come together to offset our history of imposed inequality and create a new story for our city.
That Black progress is an illusion is also implied by Dr. Joy DeGruy, whose 30 years of research, published in her book “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome,” lays out the results of intergenerational trauma from slavery to today.
Her studies show that racial disparities in health, for example, are driven by long term exposure among Black people to recurring racial trauma in their everyday lives. This trauma impacts genetic expression from birth to death. Blacks experience disparate health outcomes --- twice the rate of infant mortality on the one end and lower rates of longevity on the other.
Again, once such realities of Black life today are fully appreciated we can reverse this national tragedy.
The Power of Denial
When presented with this information, Blacks and whites alike tend to deny or dismiss it. Ibram Kendi, author of the best-selling book, “How to be an Antiracist,” reports on a study about perceptions of wealth. Kendi's emphasis on perceptions is important. It suggests our nation has lacked the courage, daring and will to face up to its "original sin," even when the common good of the country is at stake.
The study reports that white people hold onto the belief that Blacks are doing far better than they actually are, even when presented with information to the contrary. Notably, their estimates become more distorted over time. In 1963, whites estimated that Black families had about 50 percent the income of whites; the reality was 5 percent. In 2016, whites estimated Blacks earned 90 percent as much as whites; the reality was 10 percent.
Kendi proposes there are actually two tracks of progress: Racial progress is real, but so is racist progress.
He adds,“Both racist and antiracist groups have made progress. Both forces — the racist force of inequality, and the antiracist force of equality — have progressed in rhetoric, in tactics, in policies … the threat racism poses to the contemporary United States is more insidious for being more diffuse and more veiled.
Kendi goes on to say, “We can no longer parade the exceptional twin, and try to hide away the other history. If we do, Americans will continue to be stunned when they behold voter restriction policies, the millions in prisons, the police shootings of innocent human beings, and the election of someone like Mr. Trump. Americans will not expect, let alone have the wherewithal to combat, the progression of racism that historically has come after racial progress.”
In “Caste,” author Isabel Wilkerson cites the persistence of a system of race and class. “We have seen in the years since the civil rights era that the laws, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, can be weakened if there is not the collective will to maintain them.”
These and other researchers disagree about the reasons for the lack of progress.
However there is an implied consensus on one thing that must happen next. It seems we’ve been looking in the wrong direction. We’ve been looking outside ourselves for the answer when the answers may lie within.
Good News: The Spiritual Power in a Circle
It’s time to try something completely new. Something daring. Something transformative. Once the proper conditions are set, we as a nation are capable of choosing to change, of choosing racial equity.
James Baldwin wrote about the "collision between one;'s image of oneself and what one actually is." He suggested that we "meet the collision head-on and ... become what [we] really are." At our core, we are a people capable of addressing the racial inequities we've inherited from our past. It will take each of one of us doing the work of engagement and change.
Our lack of progress may be due to a failure to mount a campaign that engages the country in deep conversation and reflection. Perhaps, in our pursuit of material ends, we have failed to develop a consensus, as a community based on a common understanding of the problem, and a common ground on which to stand moving forward. Perhaps we've traded a spirit of redemption for material achievements. We can balance this, together and now.
We now know more about the psychology of personal change than ever before. The power of group process, such as 12-step programs and group processes for healing addictions, have a history dating back 70 years or more. The transformational capacity of small groups of people sitting in circles engaged in reflection and sharing has great power. Our racism is like a national addiction, we can heal within as we continue to move forward in society creating healing, balanced order in our communities.
There’s something magical that happens when a small group of people from different backgrounds sit together in a circle and share stories in safety and with honesty. Racial walls crumble. Deep emotions tumble out. Misperceptions, stereotypes and confusion melt. Something profoundly spiritual enters the circle. When that energy ripples outward into our communities, transformation happens.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead was correct when she wrote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. It’s the only thing that ever has.” She proved that in her work just as we can prove it in our communities.
A coordinated effort of small groups on a massive scale will provide opportunities for the thousands of citizens who hunger for community to engage deeply.
Michelle Alexander: “Perhaps the time has come to give up the racial bribes and begin an honest conversation about race in America. The topic of the conversation should be how us can come to include all of us … to cultivate an ethic of genuine care, compassion and concern for every human being … join hands with people of all colors who are not content to wait for change to trickle down. A spirit arises to say to those who would stand in the way: Accept all of us now.
Cornel West: “Martin Luther King called for us to be lovestruck with each other, … to be lovestruck is to care, to have deep compassion, and to be concerned for each and every individual.”
Putnam and Garrett: “Americans have gotten ourselves out of a mess remarkably similar to the one we’re in now by rediscovering the spirit of community that has defined our nation … we made more rapid progress toward real parity during the communitarian epoch [of the Progressive Era in the early 1900s] than during the period of increasing individualism that followed. Putnam and Garrett advocate a shift from an “I” culture to a “we” culture. Jacksonville is primed for this shift.
Isabel Wilkerson: “The devastating truth is that, without the intervention of humanitarian impulses, a reconstituted caste system could divide those at the bottom and those in the middle, pick off those closest to white and thus isolate the darkest Americans even further. It would be a crisis of spirit, a defeat of the American soul.”
Opportunity in Jacksonville
In recent months, Jacksonville has experienced a resurgence in programs focused on racial equity and racial reconciliation. By my count, more than 15 initiatives are beginning or underway – some modest efforts and several major. Participation by ordinary citizens and coordinated engagement by leaders will help insure these efforts are sustained.
Jacksonville has an opportunity to create new models, by mounting a citywide campaign around these issues. In many ways, our city is 30-40 years behind many other comparable cities in its work on racial inclusion. We do not have to reinvent the the wheel; we just need to get it turning here.
This means the situation here may be more severe than in other cities. But our city doesn’t really know the depth and extent of the inequities. In 2012, the Jacksonville Community Council, Inc, (JCCI) issued its final Race Relations Progress Report. The organization which for years was a forum for community engagement, went out of business, largely due to the withdrawal of financial support by powerful leaders who were embarrassed by some of the findings.
With the second highest crime rate in the state, Jacksonville's Black infant mortality rates was once compared to Third World countries. Two decades ago we were designated by the Federal EEOC as “the most racist city in Florida.” We are ripe for change. The stage is set for citizen engagement and leadership change that will redeem Jacksonville past failures.
Jacksonville has a rich, if hidden, multicultural history on which to build. It is building a group of talented, committed individuals poised to facilitate processes of reflection and change. And as the demonstrations following the George Floyd murder showed, a multicultural cadre of young activists is ready to engage in a movement toward a shared commitment that will heighten our sense of personal responsibility and accelerate progress.
Small Groups on a Massive Scale
Many Jacksonville citizens have sat in these circles the last 23 years. Many through the city’s Study Circles; others in churches, corporations, nonprofits, universities and agencies of the City Government. Your engagement planted seeds for change. Your effort moving forward requires a strategy and scale that raises our city to be known for its fairness and equity. For many this is a deep, spiritual desire.
Under the right conditions, Jacksonville is entirely capable of mobilizing a coalition of the willing, engaging people from all parts of the city in circles of compassion, healing, reconciliation, redemption and forgiveness. Jacksonville can resurrect the soul of our divided city. Jacksonville can transform the wounds history has left us into gifts for healing and redemption.
Let's make this Jacksonville's new legacy!