Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.
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The Pew Research Center report Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class raised many issues but did little to get to the root of them. One of the most intriguing was the finding that 37 percent of blacks say that blacks cannot be thought of as a single race because of the diversity of population. This finding could cut against many common and long-held assumptions about race and collective identity among blacks. The question raises many possible startling interpretations, but ultimately the wording is too ambiguous to be certain what the respondents who agreed were agreeing to.
I argue in Achieving Blackness that people define race in a variety of ways including culturally. Slaveholders in the eighteenth century knew about race, but nothing about DNA. Culture was an important part of their understanding of racial difference. The “Asiatic” racial category used by the Nation of Islam is a good example of an early twentieth century cultural definition. Cultural definitions of race were more common in earlier historical periods, but they have never gone out of existence.
When blacks agree that “Blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race because the black community is so diverse” it is not completely clear what they are endorsing. If we knew what their definition of race is and what they meant by “diverse,” this response would be much more meaningful. If blacks are agreeing because they are seeing more Northeast African immigrants, who can often be distinguished by physical appearance from multigenerational black Americans, that would be a distinction within a biological conception of race. If the diversity referred to a perceived values diversity among multigenerational black Americans then that would be a cultural definition of race.
If we assume that the distinction is based on cultural values then that would suggest a weakening of the sense of collective identity and linked fate among blacks. Collective identity and linked fate have historically been strong among blacks.
On related but different issue, Juan Williams accused blacks of engaging in “self-defeating black politics” because, in November last year, they supported Hillary Clinton more than Barack Obama. I am still trying to figure out how supporting a white woman is “self-defeating black politics,” but I guess this made sense to somebody. Now black voters are overwhelmingly in support of Obama.
Will Williams declare that the era of “self-defeating black politics” is over because blacks are voting for a black man? We'll see?
Blacks’ support for Obama is likely due in part—in part—to feelings of collective identity and a sense of linked fate. If this is the case then, again, we need more information to understand what is going on with black collective identity. Is it weakening generally or are blacks just distancing themselves from blacks who they see as having bad values. Is blacks' collective racial identity becoming more selective or just weaker? Further research is necessary.
On another related but different issue, the media needs to stop trying to foster black-Hispanic conflict. As I mentioned above, just a few months ago most blacks were for Hillary Clinton. If large numbers of Hispanics are for Clinton, it is mainly because they like Clinton. These folks in the media see race everywhere except when the issue of institutional racial discrimination is raised. Then we are told we live in a color-blind society, and that we need to give up our “self-defeating black politics.”
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
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