Race Problems
In May 1997, The Atlantic Monthly published an article by Randall Kennedy titled, "My Race Problem -- And Ours." In it he sought to explain why he feels the entire idea of racial solidarity is absurd.
WHAT is the proper role of race in determining how I, an American black, should feel toward others? One response is that although I should not dislike people because of their race, there is nothing wrong with having a special -- a racial -- affection for other black people. Indeed, many would go further and maintain that something would be wrong with me if I did not sense and express racial pride, racial kinship, racial patriotism, racial loyalty, racial solidarity -- synonyms for that amalgam of belief, intuition, and commitment that manifests itself when blacks treat blacks with more solicitude than they do those who are not black.Some conduct animated by these sentiments has blended into the background of daily routine, as when blacks who are strangers nonetheless speak to each other -- "Hello," "Hey," "Yo" -- or hug or give each other a soul handshake or refer to each other as "brother" or "sister." Other manifestations are more dramatic. For example, the Million Man March, which brought at least 500,000 black men to Washington, D.C., in 1995, was a demonstration predicated on the notion that blackness gives rise to racial obligation and that black people should have a special, closer, more affectionate relationship with their fellow blacks than with others in America's diverse society.
At the time I was active on their discussion board, and the article generated quite a bit of talk. Professor Kennedy was to join the forum. I posted the following in response to his article and he never showed up…can't say whether or not there's a connection there.
Your Race Problem - And Mine
Copyright 1997 Earl Dunovant
I am a Black partisan--one of those people that actively choose to accept racial kinship. My position is simple and straightforward-every event that affects Black people affects me. Therefore there is a connection between myself and other Black people that I must respond to in some fashion. What the mainstream thinks of Black people in general becomes my starting point in any new situation. My feelings of kinship with Black folks represents my recognition that my fate is linked to that of everyone else of visible African descent and my feelings of loyalty represents my recognition that the fate of everyone else of visible African descent is linked to mine.
In mainstream examinations of African-American issues, I expect to see the "-American" part acknowledged and the "African" part downplayed, or given a curt nod at best. This is a distinct improvement from the days where Black people lost their lives for trying to claim a small part of the "-American," but still frustrating at times. So when I saw Randall Kennedy's article "My Race Problem-And Ours", I approached it with what I hope was an open mind. I hoped a Yale law professor would be able, at last, to coherently explain to the mainstream the what and why of Black people's recent tendency to aggregate.
In a way I was impressed with the article. The message of the article, far more than the weak justification for his position, demonstrated in an almost self-referential way that he does indeed eschew pride in, and reject kinship with Black people. Unfortunately, for the Black people under discussion he misses the point entirely. Also, I don't find his argument rigorous enough.
The first problem is the critical one. Mr. Kennedy says:
"Neither racial pride nor racial kinship offers guidance that is intellectually, morally or politically satisfactory."I grant that. They are not guides. They are platforms to stand on. Consider Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of motivations:
1. physiological
2. security and safety
3. love and feelings of belonging
4. competence, prestige, and esteem
5. self-fulfillment
According to Maslow, one must be substantially secure in each stage in order to successfully begin work on the next because each stage builds on the previous one. I submit that the quest for intellectual, moral or political satisfaction is a stage four motivation that one can only indulge in after achieving a certain amount of physical and psychological security. Getting past level three is difficult for everyone, but Black people get stuck more frequently due to the emotional impact of environmental factors. When you're the Black person everyone is surprised to see, when your mere presence makes folks nervous, each startled expression can chip away at your feelings of belonging.
The current social attitude toward Black people, translated into Maslow's terms, seems to be "If you embrace America as it is, you'll have your stage three needs satisfied and can move on to stage four." The problem with this is that feelings of belonging are not self generated-America would have to embrace Black people back. Until America is ready to do this, it is fruitless at best and foolish at worst to expect Black people to release the things that do embrace them. At any rate, this missing of the point was the first strike against my personally accepting his argument as valid.
Mr. Kennedy also says:
"I eschew racial pride because of my conception of what should properly be the object of pride for an individual"Had it rested here, I would have accepted his statement as a postulate of his system of thought. However, he invoked a historical Black leader by scissoring a few words out of the context of his life (common practice since it was so effective using Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 's words).
I confess that my reaction to his invoking Frederick Douglass in this way was a bit emotional, as Douglass is among my personal heroes. Still, it is as difficult for me to imagine someone familiar with his life and work doubting Frederick Douglass' pride in what and who he was, as it is to imagine Dr. King as a mere dreamer of peace.
His next point, that inherited status is often a substitute for personal achievement, is unfortunately positioned--in the midst of an article about the attitude that Black people should take toward each other, the jibe strikes one as specifically targeting Black people. However, judicious reading shows that he makes reference to "people" without racial delimiters. Therefore the implied insult to those that "made inherited group status an honorific credential" applies as well to The Daughters of the Confederacy, B'nai B'rith, the snobby country club set, everyone who ever wanted their daughter to marry someone of the same religion and/or ethnic background, any college admission board that gives any benefit whatsoever to children of alumni, every participant in a St. Patrick's Day or Columbus Day parade, and everyone survives off inherited wealth. At any rate, I enjoyed reading the paragraph, even though as an unnecessary aside it did nothing to advance to point of the article. It showed the brother can still play the dozens.
Unfortunately, by attempting in the last paragraph of the section to justify his eschewal of racial pride, Mr. Kennedy returns it to the realm of things one must judge rather than simply accept. He says he recognizes "an important virtue in this assertion of the value of black life," but cannot support it because:
"within some of the forms this assertiveness has taken are important vices-including the belief that because of racial kinship blacks ought to value blacks more highly than others."Even assuming, as Mr. Kennedy does, this belief to be a vice, the possibility of the vice developing is not reason to abandon racial pride but merely those forms of it that are subject to the problem.
I must also weigh vice against virtue, and let me be clear that it will be a partisan judgment. America is, and always has been, a pastiche of cultures. Assuming Black people's pride, kinship and loyalty caused them to aggregate in the fashion of other ethnics, America should survive. Black people are dealt with in that fashion now anyway. For Black people in particular, it makes it simpler to resolve stage four issues (competence, prestige, and esteem) if positive ideas are associated with the group through which they resolve our stage three issues. Though my judgment will change if conditions change, on balance I must judge racial pride to be less damaging to Black people, and therefore to America, than the lack of it. Strike two.
Mr. Kennedy begins the section "Racial Kinship" with:
"I reject the notion of racial kinship. I do so in order to avoid its burdens and to be free to claim… the unencumbered self."He then quotes Michael Sandel's description of unencumbered self as "unencumbered by aims and attachments it does not choose for itself," and "[f]reed from the sanctions of custom and tradition and inherited status, unbound by moral ties antecedent to choice… installed as sovereign, cast as the author of the only obligations that constrain."
As a Black man I can certainly feel the attraction of this unencumbered self. It is a goal in keeping with the American worship of the individual. However, as a rational man, I must question the possibility of the self so described. Humans… or at least the bodies we live in… are social animals. As such, we must have socially defined aims and attractions, no matter what our personal desires on the issue. And as a practical matter as long as one lives in a society, what one chooses, not to mention what one chooses from, is largely determined by culture and tradition. Sadly, I must relegate the unencumbered self to the same category as the unicorn-a fabulous beast with magical powers that looks like it ought to be able to exist.
It is true that often we receive unexpected gain from attempting the impossible, so perhaps pursuit of the unencumbered self could result in some benefit. I find it difficult, however, to be sanguine about freedom from "moral ties antecedent to choice." When you choose your morality, on what is the choice based? If choice is made based on desire (which it must be, as needs are not optional and therefore not a choice) and given freedom from "moral ties antecedent to choice," I can see no way of avoiding the conclusion that fulfilling one's desire is the highest moral act possible. All your morals will be bent to that end. That idea flies in the face of almost every religious and philosophical teaching in human history… though it's totally in keeping with the market philosophy at the heart of American (hence, world) culture.
Therefore, I do not need to further defend my feelings of racial kinship because of Mr. Kennedy's analysis. Instead, I find on rational grounds that rejecting racial kinship does not achieve the goal Mr. Kennedy set forth. Only one of Mr. Kennedy's two stated requirements (personal absolution from the burdens such kinship brings) is achieved, as the other goal (the unencumbered self) is impossible for a social animal to attain. I also reject it on visceral grounds: my distaste for the necessary elevation of desire over morality to which the unencumbered self must lead. Strike three.
I will not, however, comment on the moral judgments Mr. Kennedy uses to rout the subsequent array of straw men without knowing the nature of the desire that led him to this morality. I am willing to suspend moral judgment on those conclusions because in the end Mr. Kennedy seems quite the reasonable man. He makes a number of fair observations. For instance, the fact that "black problems" are actually "our problems" is a message that needs to be heard correctly by everyone who suddenly found themselves included when we changed "black" to "our". The behaviors he models based on his principles are quite acceptable in their net effect, so far as they go. The problem is that a person that rejects morality antecedent to choice cannot logically object to any choice on moral grounds.
I suspect Mr. Kennedy, a self-avowed liberal intellectual, of noble intentions in writing the article. I believe he intended to build a case for a viewpoint that does not specify race yet renders racial justice. But to suggest Black people should actually hold these positions is, I believe, a bad idea… telling people that Black folks need to do something no other ethnic group has been called on to do, i.e., become a nation of unencumbered selves, is not the way to convince them Black people are just like them, only darker.
In the final section of the article, "Beyond Racial Loyalty," Mr. Kennedy anticipates in response to his position a statement that Black people must stand together because all the other ethnic groups are doing so. And rightly so, as he conceded earlier in the article:
"currently the dominant form of racial kinship in American life, the racial kinship that has been the best organized and most destructive, is the racial kinship mobilized in behalf of whites"it is difficult to dispute the idea. Such a concession begs the question, is it not just to assist those who are victim of this irrational condition? In the end, Mr. Kennedy responds to the challenge he foresees to his thesis with a simple statement of faith, justified by
- his fear of a stultifying effect within the race (as, by his observation, racial pride tends to stunt intellectual development). The calls for loyalty made by Black nationalists (and he names Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan) implies to him a threat of punishment against those Blacks who don't toe the line. Yet I don't think a single case of either these men or their organizations initiating violence can be documented. And the hyperbole of Mr. Kennedy's phrasing not withstanding, all groups have the concept of group loyalty. Though one may object to the reason these groups assembled, logically one can not object to their acting like all other groups once they have assembled. Finally, as a point of personal curiosity, I would like to know which white purveyors of racial pride he would point out as stunted intellects.
- his observation that the most admirable efforts to overcome racial oppression in the United States did not "merely" seek the advancement of a particular group. Assuming he is correct, that does not mean that the most effective efforts to overcome racial oppression in the United States did not "merely" seek the advancement of a particular group. By way of example, I direct your attention to the Irish, the Jewish and Chinese peoples. It also disregards the tremendous efforts of Black people before the Civil War to secure their own freedom, to buy the freedom of their spouses and relatives, to escape, to write and teach and explain the evils of slavery, often at the risk of identifying themselves well enough that they could legally be pressed back into slavery.
Since the response Mr. Kennedy anticipates is the starting point from which his argument was unable to dissuade me, I too will close with a simple statement of faith based on several observations. He made two observations and one statement of faith; I will make four observations and two statements of faith:
- In the USofA, one has power to the extent that one has a constituency (Ralph Reed has discovered both edges of that particular sword).
- Among self-identified social groups, only Black people have inoffensiveness and support of other social groups as a requirement for official representatives of the group.
- As long as Africans and their descendants have been on this continent, all they have ever sought was freedom to join the cultural and political body of the mainstream. They have never sought to take that which others claimed, but merely to participate in decisions that affect their property and seek their own destiny unobstructed.
- So far, every time an identifiable group of Black people has made significant progress toward that goal, there was a backlash from some other group.
