I spent Christmas day entertaining, and enjoying the intimate company of very close friends. An unlikely trio, really, economically speaking:
One—female, mid-thirties, wealthy family background (like millionaire-range: parents were owners of a mega-multinational advertising firm), currently not exactly “rich” (because the economy has taken its toll on her family’s business, and because she’s in the final throes of a graduate program, and presently applying for jobs in the $70,000 range—obviously, not in the US), but still, a bona-fide member of the “upper” class.
Another: male, pushing 50, stable middle-class background (father was a professor, mother an elementary school English teacher), current income approaching 6 figures, has been in the same job for 25 years; solidly (upper) middle class.
The third: female, pushing 50, born into the welfare class; former ward of the state with no “family background” to speak of, but with the trappings of middle-classness, hard-won from years of tugging at non-existent bootstraps; over-educated, over-qualified, underemployed, with current income hovering near poverty level, but clearly able to “pass”, economically, for a member of the middle to upper class.
Two of these human beings are black. One of them is not. We’ve been friends for a long time, and know just about everything there is to know about one another. One thing we know is that we all voted for Obama, enthusiastically, (not just because he’s black, but, also for that reason: we also know we’re not supposed to admit that, especially not in mixed company); we know that we continue to support him and would probably still support him even if he held a press conference in which he swallowed three live kittens and a partridge in a pear tree whole; we are not blind worshippers, of any one or any thing, but we are on the same page about this: anything but Sarah Palin would have been better than Bush, and we are damn glad Democrats chose the horse that could win, not the old gray mare because if they hadn’t, we’d have been stuck watching press conferences filmed against the backdrop of a live turkey slaughter or a reality TV-show based on the fiction of being able to see Russia right from your own backyard. If it came down to it, yes, we would rather watch a president of the United States eat pussy—last time we had a Democrat in office, we didn’t even get to watch!
So we’re free to talk about politics—even over Christmas dinner. We know our conversations will be free of Obama-bashing, there will be no race-baiting, no roasting of anything but the turkey and sweet potatoes, no ad homs, no identity politics, no personality contests (political or personal), no straw men, no logical fallacies lined up like ducks in the sights of Dick Cheney’s rifle, just straight-up exchange of ideas. Talking about the issues. Will there be some degree of Hillary-hating? You betcha. What we do in the privacy of our own home is our business.
Since all of us live in a severely economically distressed community that is 99.9% Black, black poverty and Blackness in general aren’t exactly “issues”—it’s our reality, and so is presumed to be the underlying, foundational love-issue that need not speak its name, because it is self-evident.
All of us know how fortunate we are, and none of us needs any statistics to confirm one thing we know about poverty—that it’s all around us, and that in our immediate surroundings the people most affected by it are almost all Black. The statistics confirm this, of course, but since we live in that community, we don’t need the statistics. (Not surprisingly, only one of us actually works in this community—where jobs in the $70,000—$100,000 range are not exactly plentiful). In that sense, we aren’t unlike most Americans—we focus on the issues closest to home, the ones that affect our friends and loved ones most immediately. So if anyone were to ask, or imply, that we are more concerned with Black poverty than white poverty—yeah, we’d have to concede: we are more concerned with black poverty than white.
After dinner, our conversation turned to Obama-bashing—because it’s certainly not a phenomenon unique to DailyKos. None of us was blindsided by the backlash—we all knew it would come as a consequence of Obama’s blackness, no matter what he did in office. But we were all somewhat taken aback by the extremes it has taken—by the meteoric rise of the Tea Party voice (and I say “voice” because Tea Partiers are greater in decibel level than they are in actual number) and, even moreso, by the sometimes vicious, mostly hyperbolic (bordering on hysterical) “criticism” he has gotten from folks on the Left. Unreal.
Of the three people seated at my table, only one of us posts on or reads DailyKos; another has never heard of it, and the third knows what it is, but neither reads nor posts here. Between turkey bastings, before carmelizing the pearl onions and just after jumping out of the shower, I had checked in here—and walked away feeling like I needed another shower. So I had the DailyKos goings-on in the back of my mind at dinner, and I got to thinking about some of the issues at stake in these discussions: segregation, poverty and the blackness deficit.
From what I can see from years of reading and posting on political blogs, most posters don’t spend a lot of time in the company of poor people (and I don’t mean “broke” or temporarily economically indisposed: I mean poor. Dirt poor. Living in poverty, some of it extremely extreme, and increasingly so). On this particular blog, aside from the few Kossacks of color and those few who are either allied by virtue of marriage or partnership with people of color, or who work in positions where they—as non-Black/Brown/Red people—most left-wing and progressive bloggers do not appear to have regular real-life contact with majority people of color populations, or with populations and people living in extreme poverty.
I presume—rightly or wrongly—that most people posting on blogs who do work in “service” to these communities do not live in the communities they serve, and serve those communities in positions of relative “privilege”—as educators, social workers, in HR departments, etc. This is the “people of poverty”-deficit I see in those parts of the blogosphere I frequent most--and that includes DKos. There just are not that many authentic voices of the extremely poor on this site.
And the Blackness deficit? Is it the same as the people-of-poverty deficit? Not quite, but similar in dynamic.
For anyone who doesn’t actually live and/or work in these communities, it’s probably pretty easy to ignore the degree to which our major cities are de facto segregated along racial and economic lines. If you don’t have to drive through the streets of the Hood daily and see, with your own eyes, the level of economic devastation paired with the fact that seeing a white person on these streets is rare, you probably don’t know. In my neck of the hood, you can go for days, weeks, months without seeing one. If you know where to shop, get gas, hang out, whatever, you can actually avoid having any form of interaction with white people for weeks on end. You can, if you so choose. What you cannot do, however, is avoid having any interaction with poor people, from the working class poor to the homeless. Statistics bear this out—and I’m not going to dig them up. I don’t need them to know.
Even if “some of your best friends” are black—all the “best friends” in the world are not going to be able to supply you with the surplus insight you need to understand how inordinately black people have suffered and continue to suffer in this country.
Because there are 40 million Blacks in this country ; and, according to this source,
Twenty-three percent (23%) of ALL African Americans are living at 100% below the poverty level. A further breakdown of the numbers calculates that, 12.7% are Black men, between the ages of 18 and 64. While, Black women between the same demographic stands at, 21.5%. The percentage of all African Americans, in a family of two, living at 300% below the poverty level, between 18 and 64, stands at a staggering 57.5%.
With the staggering statistics, what is actually being done to alleviate poverty? It is hard to walk through many Black communities without noticing the vast differences in the living conditions, and the schools, with that of White communities. Education has often been key to turning around the decline of a neighborhood. Yet, armed with all the data and research, the tools necessary to make the changes have not made its way to the many people in need of the services. There continues to be division, and a breakdown in communication between the people with the means to help, and those that are in need of help. There needs to be a bridge between the two, in order to start seeing an effective change.
There needs to be a bridge between the two, in order to start seeing an effective change.
For some people, statistics may be enough to elicit action on this front. For most people, they aren’t.
Maybe I’m just naive, but whenever I see someone (anyone) on Dkos talking about either one of these issues: poverty and/or race, I assume that they understand this need for a bridge, and are attempting to build that bridge, either in their own minds or in the real worlds in which they live.
Apparently, I’m wrong. But whatever.
Those who are sincere in their engagement with issues of race and poverty even though these issues rarely effect them directly might try to fill this glaring gap in their lives by latching on to every shred of native informancy they can get without actually desegregating their own lives—economically and racially. So when someone comes along who claims to have this native informancy or “street cred”—it’s not surprising that people who are sincere listen more carefully.
And it’s a damn shame to see them get slammed for it because seeking out that native informancy is a start.
We who are sincere about addressing issues of race, especially as these relate to poverty and wealth in this country, also know this:
There continues to be division, and a breakdown in communication between the people with the means to help, and those that are in need of help.
The drive to compensate for what I am calling the “blackness deficit” by privileging voices of native informancy can be seen as an attempt to overcome this breakdown in communication between people with the means to help and those in need of it. And that is a good thing.
But it can’t work in this environment—that is, in the virtual world of political blogs because, well, there are 40 million black people in this country. The 23% of those who live at 100% below the poverty level are not likely to be posting on blogs, and the 57 percent of them living at 300% below the poverty level, even less likely. So we are not likely to be able to address the breakdown in communication between those with the means to help and those who need it in an online environment.
Anyone who lives and works in a majority-white environment and who is at the same time concerned with dismantling the structures of institutional racism and systemic poverty must know, on some level, that the only way to overcome this breakdown in communication between black/white, rich/poor is going to include a dismantling of the segregation that marks most of our lives.
“Some of my best friends are black”—is never going to do it.
“Most of my best friends are black”? Maybe.
But, “most of my interaction with black people happens online” or “most of my interaction with poor people happens online” or “all of my interaction with poor black people happens either at my job in a social service agency or some other position of ‘privilege’ in a black majority environment” is never going to be enough to fix this breakdown in communication.
This real world of segregation is what makes us susceptible to the kinds of games that are going on here. And I mean all of the games. There are a lot of them.
I don’t know how else to put it: If you’ve got to go around hugging strangers, or if the only way for you to celebrate Hug A Negro Day is by exchanging group hugs in the blogosphere or tripling the hugs you give your significant other or the three black colleagues in your department/office/agency that day, then, yeah, you probably suffer from a some degree of “blackness deficit” that's likely to be a hindrance in your ability to make meaningful contributions to building the bridges that need to be built and to overcoming the communications breakdowns that so often stand in the way of our collective efforts to put an end to poverty, and to racism, or any combination thereof.
And maybe I’m just letting my own personal experience—in the real world, and in online communities—color my perception of the problems, but it is what it is. Take it fwiw.