What a dispiriting article.
The experience of modern Africans in today’s America is a classic study in half-full/half-empty thinking. Barack Obama was not the descendant of slaves, nor did he grow up in racist America. His father was African, and he spent his formative years in Indonesia. The result? It’s right there on the poster: Hope.
For decades, people have tried to blame Black Americans’ failure to thrive on their failure to strive. “What about the Jews?” “What about the Chinese?” These other minorities faced and still face hostility in White America. Members of these minorities are harassed and attacked, sometimes violently and sometimes fatally. Gay-bashing is still a thing. Yet, without minimizing any of these depredations, these groups, as groups, still manage to find their way to prosperity.
In response to these arguments, Black activists rightly point to the unique nature and history of Anti-Black racism in America. But the activists’ argument is essentially synergistic: on-going discrimination and a history of oppression together present an especially stymieing circumstance. This combination of influences makes the experience of other minorities, especially those who came here voluntarily to seek a better life, if not irrelevant, at least not dispositive of the argument that anyone can make it in America.
To this rebuttal, valid as it may be as an explanation, one can say “But things have changed. If you ‘use those diversity quotas to your advantage, that Goldman Sachs internship is yours.’” But even that argument (perhaps because it is a paraphrase supplied by Mr. Rwabuhemba to make a point against it) is too cynical. There are real opportunities out there where the only assistance is the same financial aid available to poor Whites. We read every day of kids from the ‘Hood who are accepted at a zillion colleges because they worked hard and did well in school. Some of these acceptances may be driven by affirmative action, but that’s really beside the point; if even one acceptance to one mostly White college is in fact the product of a demonstrated probability of success there, something is different from what was before.
We see Blacks elected to mayoralties, Congressional seats, and, of course, the Presidency. The Africans who come here see these things, and they see their peers’ success, and they unpack the synergy. They see that the ongoing discrimination against Black people can be overcome. But the residue of oppression, the hopelessness cannot. The African privilege in racist America is the privilege of hope. African-American Barack Obama saw that and had the audacity to live it. His great failure, I think, lies in this irony: much of White America was ready to elect a Black president, and damn near all of Black America was, too. But Black America was not ready for HOPE.
The attitude of African Blacks should not be rejected as arrogant and ignorant, even if it is arrogant and ignorant. To do so is to commit a genetic fallacy, to confuse the messenger with the message. Don’t do as the Africans say, but learn from what they do. The color of their skin is not keeping them from succeeding. Black Americans can ignore everything Black Africans say and just look at the lives they lead, and ask why they cannot lead the same life. The question has answers, and those answers go beyond simple bootstrapping. But the first answer, I think, is “Hope.” Progress starts with hope and then moves to community action based on hope. The rest will be history.