The Status of Africana Studies - Part 3

(Dr. Janice Collins). And let me ask you this, two things then, when you talk about a racialized society and culture, you're going further than, you're extending it past the individual, it's institutionalized so a person may not carry out racial or racist, racist agendas but because of the institution, because of the system, it's systemic, that you're extending it to that word, that is racist and that supports the foundations. Well let me ask you this then, or both, then what about this whole theory, I'm going to throw out the word theory about we're post-racial [unclear audio] I want to ask a two-parter, I'm going to throw this out and then open it up to the floor okay, everybody can respond. I'm going to throw it out there because I want us to be able to address questions that I've heard, and seen, and read and that sort of thing, okay. That's number one about the post-racial, why then, because we are postal this whole assertion, why do we need this type of study and the second part to that question is, will the effects be different depending on your race? Will a black student pull something from Africana studies that a white student will not, will a white student pull something from Africana studies, because again you're talking about point of origin and perspective from whatever margin that it is from. (Dr. Cha-Jua). Okay, I thank you for the question, the quality of the questions are far superior to what I normally get. [audience laughter]. [unclear audio]. (Dr. Cha-Jua). Okay, so complex question right, it may take some time. (Dr. Collins). And this is where we're going to open the floor too so both gentlemen can answer and then we're just going to open up to the floor. (Dr. Cha-Jua). So look, let's take the situation of the Tea Party and let's assume that they are acting on good will. So I don't want to talk about the racist element of the Tea Party in terms of that racist element that's explicit. I just want to talk about the philosophical goals that they will in fact admit to, and that's to say that they believe in limited government, right? Their goal is to starve the beast, the right-winged conservative political economist, Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago said that if you want to empower the free-market, you have to starve the beast. The beast being government, the anti-status, anti-government, so starve the beast, deny the beast money through taxes, so what you want to do is limit taxes and then you want limited government involvement in people's lives. So the goal has been to shrink the activities of the U.S state. Barack Obama being a neo-liberal of the Clintonian version, meaning that he's a Democrat but he shares many of the same goals of the Republicans, they want to go in the same direction Obama just wants to go slower so that the effects are less stark. But make no mistake, the train is going in the same direction, but if it's going slow we had time to plot and plan and you know, jump off, change the, that kind of thing. Okay now, to the question, about post-racial, so we take the Tea Party around limited government, well what would it mean, what does it mean to limit the government, to shrink the revenue that the government gets and that the government spends in the society? Well here's what it means, it means that obviously poor people are going to be affected in a very negative way. So then if we turn the poverty figures, we find that black people disproportionately constitute that group in society. Let's talk about those of us in this room, all the students here aspire to a professional job, you intend to wear a suit and dress nice and go to work and work with your mind and not with your hands, middle class. So, middle class folk, black middle class, 50% of all African-American lawyers work for government, probably less than 12% of black lawyers work for white law firms, most black lawyers work for government agencies. So if you shrink the federal government, shrink the public sector, you're shrinking government funded jobs, be they local, state or federal government. The impact on every occupational category of black folks would be severely disproportionate because private industry, they talk about diversity but all you have to do is look through the roster of employment and it's very, very clear, they don't hire black folks, they simply don't. I don't know what the size of the black community is in Charleston, but I can assure you that the percentage of black people employed in local industry, local business is going to be far less than the percentage of black folks in this town. And you can do that for any sector of the economy. So if you follow that logic, and this is in a post-racial America, where people if they're not thinking race, they're just thinking limited government, the disproportionate impact on black folks is so great that we can't even begin to conceptualize something as silly as a post-racial society when you're living in a society built on racial hierarchy. Last point and then I'll turn it over to Father Brown. The one thing that we know is that things are inheritable, social things are transferred, intergenerationally, so not only is poverty transferred, right. You see a lot of writings about, you know the 4th generation of poverty and this cultural deprivation that gets passed on from, well wealth is also transferred intergenerationally. Okay, critical point, black people came out of slavery after 246 years of unremunerated labor, and we're not even talking about the brutality that they experienced, we're just talking about they walked out of slavery with nothing, nothing. And this is at the precise same moment that Abraham Lincoln passes the act that gives land freed to European immigrants, $10 for 150 acres, the Homestead Act of 1862. At that precise moment we're coming out of slavery three years later, we come out with nothing, but European immigrants and native whites and that's in quotation marks, "native whites", let's just say the white invaders who came in, they get for $10 they get 150 acres out west. You go through and you look at every piece of social legislation prior to the great society legislations, transferred wealth into the hands of the white working class, and the white middle class, and the white capitalist class. And so over time these people become at least stable, black folks start with nothing. Think of it as, and I'm out of here, think of it as a Monopoly game, you play Monopoly and we take black people in the game and we give them nothing, we give all the white folks, we divide it by class, you get $2,000 if you're in the elite class, you get $1,000 if you're in the working class, if you're poor we'll give you $100. And we start the game, no black person gets anything, and we start the game, now after three or four rolls, black folks are out of the game. That's the society we live in and so if you have that as the historic structure and then you turn around one day and say we're all equal, and y'all got a black President even though he takes up issues of immigration, i.e issues concerning latinos, takes up issues concerning Jewish people, takes up issues for every ethnic group and category but when it comes to black folks it's a lecture. You need to raise your kids, you follow, and yet they put out this notion of post-racial, no, America has become more intensely racial, they simply won't discuss it. Denial doesn't eliminate the fact that the society has a deep racial problem.