Prometheus 6   

Hard work

I've said I would explain why it's so difficult to engage young Black folks in the political process, and I didn't realize when I made that promise how difficult it would be.

What makes it difficult is the fact that I'm aware of how varied the readership is here. I don't have the numbers of a Volokh or Demosthenes or Calpundit, much less a Kos or Atrios. But there's enough of you, and if there's any stupid people among you they've all been silent. This means that all of you will be capable of coming to some understanding of whatever I may write.

Yet all of you fall in your own individual spot on the political compass. And the two axises, as we saw the other day, are only two of a multiplicity of tendencies and traits that will actively shape what I say into what you understand. And the topics I've been most serious about…race and race relations, civil and human rights, the debt owned to and by society…are fractious in the extreme because of the way the topics were created by society. We are all shaped at least in part by these things because our society is shaped by them and we, in turn by the society.

There's no escaping it. As intelligent as you all are, society presents possibilities that must be examined through the lens of race, insubstantial though it be.

At any rate, it's hard, explaining this stuff. You'd think it wouldn't need explaining, as deep in it as we all are.

Sometimes I get full of myself, feeling I can show the roots of what I've seen. I just wiped out a considerable amount of work because it was just too much…how's using analytical geometry to build a metaphor for non-willful ignorance?

It's got to be said simpler than that.

Will you take my word that, because we have a different balance of forces working on us, most Black people don't see politics as applicable to the most important issues in their lives?

How about because humans as social animals need, on a biological level, to belong to an in-group? And that since it's obvious we don't belong to the mainstream in-group, we group among ourselves…and that the mainstream calling this self-segregation not only misses the point but amounts to an attack on our well-being?

Suppose I told you many Black people feel Black Republicans and Black Democrats represent Democrats and Republicans instead of Black folks… that "Black" is an adjective to them both (if you're really down, Black is a noun)? Would that help you understand the problem both parties have?

Would you believe me if I told you that much of what is seen as anger is just the natural energy of growth that has been restrained by circumstances, compressed like a spring until it rebounds irresistibly?

When we read in the news how Black people have this preference and that unfair advantage one day, and how white studies is just an effort to make white people feel guilty and we should just concentrate on what we have in common, can you understand how hypocritical that sounds? And when the DLC says they must concentrate on the needs and desires of white people or all is lost, what impact do you think that has? Because most Black people have the same damn fifth grade reading skills that most white people have, and most of us get the same news white people do. Just sit around a Black barber shop for a day, or play chess in the park with a brother that just got out of jail, you'll see (but that chess game will cost you ten bucks…).

And if a Black person tells you that democracy in this country means accepting that 13 men playing against 65-70 men is a level playing field, how are you going to argue against his point?

posted by Prometheus 6 at 8/9/2003 08:35:46 PM |