In a previous column, Schools Fail Black Students, So Why Are We Silent? (Nov. 2008), I described barriers in LAUSD that contributed to a failure of the district to properly educate Black students. Substantially
A charade going on at the Los Angeles Police Commission meeting every Tuesday. It goes like this: The public, mostly Black Lives Matter members, are chastised and even arrested for allegedly violating house rules and protocol. The ritual involves the presence of hordes of cops, presumably to “control” boisterous, “irreverent” members of the public. Has the Commission and LAPD changed appreciably over the past decade? No, given continuing police brutality, ongoing refusal to respect the right of the public to be heard, lack of transparency and widespread community distrust, respectively. On January 26, 2007, this column was titled, “Devon Brown
“We got what we wanted, but lost what we had,” (An Eastside boy)
Older Blacks often compare conditions under lawful segregation with post-civil rights de-facto segregation that legally afforded them greater opportunities but did not eliminate the barriers that still block such opportunities.
Black Lives Matter. The name itself tends to debunk the myth that America is race-neutral. Similarly, the Black Lives Matter Movement is s helping to expose the nation’s refusal to acknowledge racism and white privilege that is reflected in the fabric of this country from its inception. There has always been talk among liberals, human relations specialists and others about the damaging effect of “identity politics” on inter-ethnic cooperation. Even though identity politics, racial politics and ethnic politics are never clearly defined, they are nonetheless characterized as a negative to be universally shunned. Proponents of ethnic neutrality tend to minimize
Racism is as real as ever and Black lives have always mattered. However, most people, including many Blacks, deny or minimize the devastating effect of racism and tend to act as though somehow, Black lives are less valuable, even less sacred than white lives. The Black Lives Matter movement has the potential for strengthening sustainable unified Black leadership which would distinguish it from the many failed attempts to build a Black united front since the civil rights era. Hopefully, it will succeed, but remaining unapologetically Black is a daunting challenge and time will tell.
Public education continues to fail African American children with little public outcry and those who do protest strongly are often ostracized by the education establishment. Meanwhile, as has been the case for at least the past fifty years, there are no effective, sustained protests of the pervasive miseducation of Black children. This speaks volumes about Black leadership, in general, and educational leadership in particular.
The racial consciousness and discourse of the West was forged on slave ships carrying human cargos into the Caribbean and the Americas. The search for agricultural commodities and profits from the extreme exploitation of Black people, deemed as less than human, gave birth to the notion of racial inequality.
Demographic changes in California and throughout the nation are profoundly altering the political landscape. Not the least of such changes is the impact of the huge increase in the Latino population. Cleary, Latinos are already asserting their new found political strength. This threatens many African Americans, who rather than work to strengthen relations with Latinos, for mutual benefit, seem determined to cling to their own highly limited past political and economic gains, real and imagined.
Improving Black/Latino relations was never really a major political priority in Los Angeles but should have been. Why? Sustainable collaboration between the two groups, based on mutual respect and an explicit commitment to honor the terms of any agreement to work together, is really the only way to strengthen their relationship and respective goals.
This analysis presumes the city’s “Senior Black leadership,” whoever they were, were ordained to exercise awesome political power, apparently so entrenched and so unquestioned, that the group’s choice for the 10th District seat would have been elected to succeed Tom Bradley.
The negative implications of disunity are clear though largely ignored, even though now, more than ever, Black unity on political, economic and public policy issues is crucial-not just for forward progress, but our very survival. Today’s column takes a closer look at Black disunity and the need to come together to develop strategic alternatives for concrete sustainable change.
The institutionalization of racial difference codified white peoples’ refusal to grant Blacks such basic democratic rights as citizenship, access to the legal system and the right to vote.
She shared her life to the fullest and we too are blessed that she passed our way
Race matters in the United States, and virtually throughout the world. Throughout U.S. history, race and racial conflict shaped and reshaped the categories into which all identities were classified. Since its beginning, the racial struggles at the heart of U.S. society created the nation’s politics and culture. Winnant argues that although race matters, it is as problematic a concept today as ever. He calls the current period one of “universal racial dualism.”
Many Blacks, perhaps most, initially considered challenging Obama’s decisions sacrilegious, and more than a few continued to regard him as an icon to be neither properly critiqued nor criticized. Although increasingly concerned with his decisions, Blacks also needed to be concerned about ineffective Black leadership in general, especially in light of the daunting challenges in the 21st century.