Hobbs Hump Day Hot Topic (Defining African-American in a Racist Post Racial America) Two days ago, I, like many Americans, was both proud of and impressed by the academic feats of Kwasi Enin, a high school senior from New York who gained accceptance into all eight Ivy League schools for next fall. Enins picture was posted on the walls of many of my Facebook friends and I am sure to his parents delight, he was featured in several newspaper articles that heralded his feats and more crucially, contained an interview with college admissions expert Katherine Cohen, CEO of IvyWise, a company that counsels students, who said Being a first-generation American from Ghana also helps him stand out...because he’s not a typical African-American kid.” Beg pardon, but what in the Hell does not a typical African-American kid mean Ms. Cohen? For the purposes of this blog, such is a rhetorical question and my immediate response is a take on a cruel Jim Crow era joke that in some quarters, still exists in varying forms which goes: what do you call a black student from Africa or the Caribbean? Answer---a Nigger! The parsing of African-Americans as typical or not, and the idea that to the racist, a black from Ghana is no more gifted or any less shiftless or lazy than one from Gainesville, Florida, are but two reasons that since its rise as a group appellation in the late 80s, I have been reticent to embrace the term African-American and when asked my race, I typically respond black because to me, the same covers the entirety of Africa and the Diaspora better than the ability for someone white who was born in South Africa to claim African-American should they gain citizenship status. While my answer is personal and clearly subject to differences among other blacks, the issue that still is raised periodically is who are we, the descendants of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, both in the eyes of many recent arrivals from Africa but of equal if not greater importance as far as seeking to root out and destroy the often secretive vestiges of racism that still remain albeit concealed, to challenge the notions as espoused by Ms. Cohen as to what is typical or not. In analyzing the same, it is crucial to note that for some recent black immigrants, both from Africa and even among some hailing from the Caribbean, there is a distancing of themselves from typical African-Americans that can be hurtful, and the hurt is only exacerbated when some whites like Ms. Cohen, inveigh similarly. But honestly, let us reverse this and ask what is atypical about young Master Enin and his desire to attend one of the Ivy League Schools? Typical blacks, if typical is to mean those who experienced or descended from enslaved men and women, have been attending Harvard for over a century and a half, including but not limited to such black historical luminaries like Dr. W.E.B. Dubois, who attended Harvard for several advanced degrees after graduating from Fisk University, an HBCU; Charles Hamilton Houston, a Harvard Law grad who was the architect of the NAACP legal strategy that eventually dismantled Jim Crow laws that previously would not have even allowed Master Enins family to immigrate to America; and Reginald Lewis, who after graduating from HBCU Virginia State University attended Harvard Law and later formed a company, TLC Beatrice, that became the first to become a billion dollar company helmed by a black man. As Master Enin has indicated that Yale University is his school of preference, there will be nothing atypical about his attending there, either, as countless thousands of blacks have matriculated and thrived on that campus including descendants of the American slave legacy such as US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and longtime Washington DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, to name a few. And the reason that I note few is that, again, over the past 150 years, a number of otherwise typical blacks, men and women who understood the typical conditions of white racism, segregation, and racist innuendo regarding black intelligence and the like, have matriculated as undergraduates or graduate students at these prestigious schools and by so doing, have shattered the typically racist stereotypes of the intellectually unsound, work averse black man or woman. Now, some may suggest well Hobbs, poor Ms. Cohen did not mean to ignite any race war in her comments---she probably meant nothing by it. Therein lies my true beef, which is that stereotypes are so commonplace, even within this supposedly post-racial era, that neither Ms. Cohen nor perhaps even other Americans can see how very dangerous such a comment is as far as cementing stereotypes about typical blacks or, in seeming to elevate certain blacks, like recent immigrants, to some type of higher degree of exaltation from the same, that such limits the achievements of blacks who descend from those who have struggled beneath the yoke of white supremacy. Mr. Enins achievements are truly remarkable and worthy of all of the praise that he has coming to him for his hard work, but the fact remains that it is highly insulting and deeply racist for anyone to believe that his enrollment next fall at Yale will be anything but typical for not only the other black classmates who will enroll who can trace their lineage to slavery and through Jim Crow, but for other black immigrants, too, who seek enlightenment at the university. In that form, typical is good because the more young black men and women who attend college, including the Ivys, the merrier in that college, still, is a ticket to financial advancement and more importantly, an incubator for the next generation of business leaders, politicians and social activists who will be needed to chip away at the core of racism that continues to impede certain levels of progress for so many people of color.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 13:03:49 +0000
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