The recent flood that overtook the Gulf region of the United states revealed a lot more than just the black poor in America to the rest of the world. Ignorance to how government actually works was also very telling during the past two weeks and counting.
As the drama of suffering Americans played out on TV screens across America, unfortunately many had a knee-jerk response to the devastation by asking “Where is the Federal government?” Although the Federal response was somewhat unsatisfactory, very few people stopped to ask the question “What is the state and local government doing?” As I began to do a little probing myself for some sort of explanation behind this reason, I discovered that for many people, it is the role of the Federal government to act as a first responder, not local. For many of these individuals, the role of local government in situations such as natural disasters is insignificant in comparison to the role of Federal government (this despite the fact that local/state government had laid out a very elaborate evacuation plan for hurricanes. Where could this information be found? On the city’s own website).
It is the last sentence above that deserves our further attention (“On the city’s own website”).
I will return to this point in a moment.
If you have not noticed by now, there is a much greater emphasis on presidential elections in this country than local elections. Just recently in Los Angeles, the voter turnout for the mayoral election was close to half of the voting constituency. This pattern can be seen in many local districts across America as well. It is also safe to assume here that the turnout amongst blacks in local elections is especially low. Part of this is due to the fact that most media tend to place a greater emphasis on government on a national level rather than local government (media is a factor because blacks have a much higher TV viewership than non-blacks). People tend to know more about the White House than city hall. But the greatest culprit I believe is that people are not willing to take the initiative to learn more about local government.
Information regarding local government activities, events, public meetings, etc. are all readily available in most libraries and government buildings throughout towns and cities.
This reflects an even deeper problem–a general lack of interest of reading. Once again, unfortunately blacks make up the lower end of this trend.
I wrote about the findings of the recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts entitled “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America“. I will provide you with a excerpt to that post which also has a link to the actual post:
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Ask the typical Black student in one of our public schools anything about Black history beyond Martin Luther King Jr., and all you will get in most cases is just a black stare. We live in a time now that unless Hollywood produces a film on a significant Black person in history, our children will never know about that person as well as the impact they made on history. The days of slavery is the mental picture that most blacks have of their history past the 1950′s. Isn’t it something that if you look at most films that feature Blacks in a historical setting, they all center around the days of slavery? Further proof that the textbook of today’s black youth is the theater screen.
Some time ago, I mentioned the recent study on reading conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts entitled “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America“. Here are the conclusions of that study:
Reading at Risk presents a distressing but objective overview of national trends. The accelerating declines in literary reading among all demographic groups of American adults indicate an imminent cultural crisis. The trends among younger adults warrant special concern, suggesting that – unless some effective solution is found – literary culture, and literacy in general, will continue to worsen. Indeed, at the current rate of loss, literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century.
And of course, Black folk came out near the bottom again. Below, I have included some graphics of this study:
This first chart reveals that out of all the Blacks included in this study, only 37.1% have actually taken the time for a literary reading within a 12-month period. Twelve (12) months! This chart also shows a significant decline between the years of 1982, 1992, and 2002.
This chart breaks down the 37.1% in further detail for us. Here you can see that out of that 37.1%, only 29.8% of Black males did any kind of significant reading within the same 12-month period. If our kings are not reading, then how in the world can they lead?
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Here is a link to an audio file I was able to locate a while ago. This approximately 10-minute interview was conducted by Sean Hannity with random people of color on the street regarding the presidential election of 2004. He fielded some very basic questions and sadly these individuals could not answer most of them. [link]
Now for those out there who feel like I am concluding that ALL black people do not read or are not knowledgeable about politics, please do not insert something into this piece that is not there. Whites have proven to be just as un-knowledgeable about politics, however, the high rate of illiteracy amongst blacks (who make up just 13% of the population) is very alarming.
There are those that will quickly blame our ignorance to politics to racism. Before you toss the blame in that bottomless category, Forrester Research did a study and based on their results they found that blacks are more likely than whites to be both causal and hardcore gamers (video). There are plenty other statistics that I can provide that show how we as a people excel in things that do not contribute to an increase of knowledge about the world around us, but I will not bore you at this time.
Ilya Somin of George Mason School of Law did a report on political ignorance entitled Political Ignorance and the Countermajoritarian Difficulty: A New Perspective on the “Central Obsession†of Constitutional Theory (pdf file). Here is a small excerpt:
What previous studies have not generally considered is the fact that group inequalities in political knowledge go beyond differences in average knowledge levels.322 Table 6 notes that 31 percent of women and 39 percent of African-Americans can be categorized as political information “know-nothings,†that is they possess little or no usable political knowledge at all.323 This compares with a 17 percent “knownothing†rate among men and 23 percent among whites.324 Thus, women and African-Americans are almost twice as likely as whites and men respectively to suffer from a near-total absence of political knowledge.
Conclusion
Although I have spent a great deal of time dealing with political knowledge, the same can be said about our knowledge of international issues that go beyond Africa and the Carribean. Most black American websites and print medial deal more with domestic issues and not enough emphais on the international issues that affect all of us. Opinions on issues are largely based on the opinions of a “leader” and not by personal investigation. Unfortunately these “leaders” will use the prism of race to analyze issues across the board.
When Mexico decided to issue a series of stamps that were very stereotypical in nature, only then was the knowledge of blacks in Mexico heightened in this country. There are plenty other similar examples that underscore this point.
In the eighties, the phrase “knowledge is power” was something that was very common (especially on t-shirts accompanied with an image of Malcolm X). As a people, we must begin using this power, otherwise we will continue to be nothing more than sheep in need of a shepherd in the political and international spectrum.
