One of the reasons why I needed to take a break last week from writing was because of my mounting frustration with the people I love so dearly. I cannot tell you the amount of discussions that I have both heard and read from us that showed just how little we know about the world around us outside of those issues that deal with race.
I know, I know, whites and other races are just as guilty. But for now, I do not want to talk about them—I want to talk about us.
I was not at all surprised with the recent findings of Washington Post columist Eugene Robinson…
Was the levee break that precipitated the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina the result of some government conspiracy against blacks?
A Washington Post columnist says he’s amazed by the large number who believe such a notion.
“I was stunned in New Orleans at how many black New Orleanians would tell me with real conviction that somehow the levee breaks had been engineered in order to save the French Quarter and the Garden District at the expense of the Lower Ninth Ward, which is almost all black,” the Post’s Eugene Robinson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“These are not wild-eyed people. These are reasonable, sober people who really believe that. (more…)
Nope, not surprised at all.
Hey let’s face it. Just as whites have a history of mistreating us as a people, we have a long history of not trusting them. That is why we will give credence to such a claim. What is disturbing to me is the amount of “intelligent” black folk that will give credence to such a claim without caring about or wanting to see the evidence to back the claim. This isn’t the only conspiracy regarding whites we have embraced without a demand for solid evidence and proof. Claiming “racism” has become our convenient replacement for critical thinking and reasoning.
In 1999 the U.S. Department of Education put together a report entitled National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This report provides an exhaustive assesment of the educational performance of American school age children. There was one particular part of this report that stuck out to me…
==========
The ability to read and understand complicated information is important to success in college and, increasingly in the workplace. An analysis of the NAEP long-term trend reading assessments reveals that only half of all White 17 year olds, less than one-quarter of Latino 17 year olds, and less than one-fifth of African American 17 year olds can read at this level.
By age 17, only about 1 in seventeen 17 year olds can read and gain information from specialized text, for example the science section in the local newspaper. This includes:
* 1 in 12 White 17 year olds,
* 1 in 50 Latino 17 year olds, and
* 1 in 100 African American 17 year olds.
=========
Because most lifetime habits are formulated in our pre-teen/teen years, this is not only bad news for the nation as a whole, but specifically very alarming to the black American population. Combine this with the fact that TV viewership among blacks is much higher than that of non-blacks in this country and you have a population that is heavily influenced not by critical thinking, but by emotion fueled by audio/visual media.
Critical thinking is a skill that involves taking all the pieces of an issue into consideration so that a solid opinion can be reached. Thanks to self-appointed “leaders” and politicians, much of the “critical thinking” that takes place in the black community can be sadly divided and minimized into two groups: Democratic (the larger of the two) and Republican. This leaves very little room for objective thought. What makes this especially dangerous is that loyalty to race is blended in the discourse between the two groups (because black Democrats overwhelmingly outnumber black Republicans/Conservatives, most of the “dis-loyalty to race” accusations tend to come from the Democratic school of thought (some black Conservatives have been known to play this game as well) . Because black Americans tend to vote a Democratic ticket, much of our outlook of the world around us is formulated by the Democratic ideology. A blaring example of this can be seen in much of our news media.
Black print media: Echo Chamber of the Democratic party
I have been particularly saddened about black news media lately. Instead of providing insightful, well-researched coverage on national/international issues, the black press has reduced itself to a rag that gives headline coverage to anything that demonstrates violations against race or class. Because of this, it should not be a great mystery that members of the black press are not asked to participate on Sunday morning political talk shows. Although these things are very important, the world around us should not be viewed through these two lenses. By using these “lenses” we inadvertently filter out other national and global events that require much greater attention.
Here are some examples of how this “Democratic” perspective permeates our news media:
Hurricane Katrina coverage
Many news agencies and even blogs were quick to provide readers with information that exposed the kinks in the chain of command that hampered the relief effort. If you were a person that really wanted to know the truth without the spin, you would have been open to the fact that it was both Democratic and Republican politicians that dropped the ball on this issue. You would not have known that if you paid close attention to black print media. Instead of taking the road to inform readers of all the pieces that made up this situation, many in the black press decided to side with the prevailing party in our community and use the whole incident as yet another example that Republican=racist. I found no mention of Mayor Nagin’s mistake for not following his own hurricane evacuation plan or any mention of Governor Kathleen Blanco’s failure to deploy the state’s own resources to save the lives of many New Orleanians. History tells us that this would not have been true if both the mayor and governor had been Republicans. Dismissing the whole incident as another case of racism make it extremely difficult to inspire critical thinking that may lead to a much different conclusion.
Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele
Another case where our media allows politics to dictate what our community should and should not know is the recent scandal involving aides under Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) who lifted the Social Security number of Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (R-MD) and fraudulently accessed his credit report. Again, history tells us that if Steele had been a Democrat and Schumer had been a Republican that the black press along with groups like the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP would have raised pure hell over the incident.
You will also see the damaging effects of viewing the world strictly through the lenses of race, class, and political stripe in areas like the public school system and local government.
For years the public school system in many densely black populated areas has underperformed in comparison to “other” school districts. While many would be quick to point out that the problem is a lack of black teachers, what is rarely discussed is the quality of both the teaching and administrative staff. Although a black teacher can teach from a perspective that is familiar to black students, if the teacher himself/herself barely made it out of college due to grades, it would be almost impractical to expect students to make great strides academically. A critical thinker would realize that having a black face in front of the class is only a small part of the issue.
The same applies to how we pick our local government officials. Just because a person is a Democrat and/or black does not automatically mean that the person is qualified to do the job they have been elected to do. The evidence of this can be seen in many large cities across America as a good percentage of them are governed by mostly black administrations who are of the Democratic persuasion. If being black and a Democrat are the only meaningful qualifications that determine weather or not someone is fit serve in public office, we would not see the levels of crime, poverty, local government scandals, etc. that we see today in many of these cities. A critical thinker would look beyond the party line rehtoric and ask probing questions of potential candidates for public office. But in order to ask probing questions, one has to be familiar with the duties and responsibilities of local government.
If you were to ask most black Americans who they would consider as the greatest president in recent history, in most cases the response would be Bill Clinton. Follow up that question by asking “Name 10 reasons why you consider him as the greatest president in recent history?” and you will be lucky if many could name at least 2 things that are not related to race.
We have allowed self-appointed leaders, activist groups, politicians, and mainstream media to dupe us into believing that we are a bunch of helpless individuals who are in need of a leader that will speak on our behalf. We are not animals, this is not the jungle, and we do not need a Tarzan! Many of the people that we celebrate in black history had to be critical thinkers in order to make history. How dare we shun individuals within our race who choose to think outside the realm of political affiliation, race, and class. This has less to do with political pursuesion and more to do with giving ourselves and our children the license to view the world without the filters of failed tradition.
