African Americans are not immigrants.
Unlike those who ran here chasing dreams or escaping nightmares we did not come of our own volition. African Americans were brought to the US. We did not get the cushion of a Little Lagos or Togo Town to ease our transition into a new and alien world. The people enslaving Africans knew the power of community, of family, and with deliberation they set about destroying these bonds within and between the peoples they chose to enslave.
Upon arrival our myriad cultures and languages were oppressed and suppressed. The destruction was deliberate if not total. The result is that African Americans have had to create our own culture and do so under centuries of relentless oppression. This oppression dates back to before the institution of race-based chattel slavery stained these hallowed shores. Black and white indentured servants worked side by side and side by side they began agitating, together, for change. People in power realized that the quickest way to undermine the movement was to pit the people in it against each other. A tactic proven successful to this day.
As indentured servitude of Africans evolved into race-based hereditary slavery it became even more imperative to dehumanize and tear down African descended peoples. There was no other way to justify large scale chattel slavery in the land of the free. During the era of race-based chattel slavery enslaved African Americans were denied our humanity. Our bodies routinely and brutally violated we were forbidden education, families were deliberately split apart, and arbitrary rules were put in place regulating the behavior of both free and enslaved Black people. This was done because the American people knew the race-based chattel slavery powering their economy was wrong.
Because people knew they were wrong there was a collective feeling of guilt. When people feel guilty, especially when we know we are right to feel guilty, but we also know that we are not going to stop doing the thing we know to be wrong, we become defensive. Then we become angry. We may even start to project our own culpability onto others in a most egregious form of victim-blaming. We see it today every time an unarmed Black person is killed by the state. He was a thug. She shouldn’t have been so hostile. We also see it in rape culture. She shouldn’t have been out that late or wearing that dress.
Back then it became they, these people whom we have deemed less than we are, deserve to be enslaved. And because people knew they were wrong they lived in constant fear of reprisal. They were right to fear. Revolts against slavery, by enslaved persons, are an unacknowledged constant during the entire history of slavery. This guilt fueled rage continued even after African American people were able to claim the freedom that was our right all along. I could link every word in this sentence, in this paragraph, hell, in this essay, to a heinous and grotesque act of racial discrimination against African Americans, from redlining to lynching to the destruction of entire towns. All since the dawn of the end of the Civil War.
This denigration and focus on the negative goes back centuries and continues today. When modern media speak of the African American community it is usually in two ways. They speak of the worst of us: the poorest, the most desperate, the uneducated and imprisoned. Using the results of a prejudicial system to justify the prejudicial system they speak as though that were all of us. Or they pit us against immigrant or Black communities. It is rare to see a headline about the poor without the phrase “and minorities” positioned next to it. The photographs accompanying those articles invariably contain people of color. Usually Black people. It’s easy to infer from this that all the poor are minorities. It’s only a short step from that to thinking all minorities, particularly all Black people, are poor. Especially if you live the segregated life of the average white American.
According to the FBI’s uniform crime-reporting data for 2016, the most recent data available at the time I wrote this, 90.1 percent of black victims of homicide were killed by other black people, while 83.5 percent of whites were killed by other whites. This is because most victims of crime personally know their assailants. In the US society is heavily segregated by race (and class) meaning that most crime is intraracial, within races. Black on Black crime is no more a thing than white on white crime, yet one rarely, if ever, hears the phrase “white on white” crime buzzed about by talking heads on the news.
Though it’s difficult to parse out the achievements of the African American community from the Black community, Black women currently have the highest levels of formal education of any demographic in the country. According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2017 90% of Americans, including 87% of Black Americans, ages 25 and older had a high school diploma or equivalent. This is the highest level on record. As of 2014 the rate of Black high school graduates enrolled in college increased to 70.9%. Between 1993 and 2017 the share of Black Americans completing four years or more of college or university has almost doubled. Black Americans who already enjoyed upper level incomes are experiencing growth rates outpacing those of whites.
Merchant’s study of the Census Bureau study clearly illustrates that in the US: “Even if you control for class, race still affects how much money you make.” Yet, today over 70% of the Black community lives above the poverty line with many of us in the middle class or above. Last year, in 2018, minority ethnic groups claimed ownership of 45% of small businesses in the United States. Compare this to a mere 15% in 2015. Leading this increase was the dramatic jump in entrepreneurship among Black Americans. A survey by Guidant Financial shows that in just one year small business ownership by Black Americans has increased by 400%. Black Americans continue to push against the obstacles placed before us. If we build it, we will continue to overcome.
Since being allowed the freedom always owed us African Americans have continued to build the physical and economic foundations of the country. We have also built its cultural foundations. Much of what are now thought of as quintessentially American forms of art, music, dance, and more were born in African American communities. The arts, sport, increasingly business, and more continue to have a strong Black American presence. This, despite the fact that every single African American started out with less than nothing. This despite fighting centuries of entrenched, systemic racism. This, despite decades of (#notall) white people, up to and including a federal government that is supposed to represent us, maliciously and with violence actively working to prevent any and all progress we have made. The story of African Americans is one of continual triumph against a system designed to destroy us. We have gone from being untouchable to being Untouchable. Yet, that is not the narrative you read about in the media.
Black Americans are people worthy of respect and dignity. The deep and pervasive anti-Black racism that underpins the decades of exclusion structures set up by government and society since the end of the Civil War have become less obvious but remain endemic. The South fought a war to maintain the abomination of slavery. It took the combined efforts, including the sacrifice of the lives of many men and women whom we are still learning about, to finally conquer Jim Crow. The battle African Americans have fought for literal centuries to be accepted and recognized as full human beings is still raging. But, now, Black consumers are recognizing our power. We have the power to influence and even control the products and services that come into our communities, into our lives. The resistant defiance of generations has finally given us some room to breathe. As always, we look to each other and rise together. The impact is being felt across industry and societal and political structures.
Sources
https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/civil-rights-movement-virginia/rising-black
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/02/22/5-facts-about-blacks-in-the-u-s/
https://www.blackenterprise.com/blacks-in-the-u-s-gaining-wealth-and-education-faster-than-other-groups/
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-progress-how-far-weve-come-and-how-far-we-have-to-go/https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/08/african-american-small-business-statistics-2018.html
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-acthttps://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=47
I use African American to differentiate between Black Americans and those of us descended from those enslaved on the soil of what would become the United States of America. Because this usage continues to be controversial I’ve come up with a new term I will now be using: Descendants of Enslaved American Persons: DEAP (pronounced deep).