The Costs Of Racial Integration For Black America

The Costs Of Racial Integration For Black America

The phrase Make America Great Again as applied by president #45 really should not have the word again included. Why, because America’s greatness is more about it earning that label than by default.  Before America’s revolutionary war the white elite 2% effectively worked to manipulate the narrative of America to control communities that are black and poor. This blog will use five short examples to support this viewpoint.

*Statue of Liberty, America's symbol of acceptance of refugees and migrants for over 150 years. Not true!  The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France in the mid 19th century as a gift for the emancipation of African slaves in America and had nothing to do with immigration. 

*Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball in 1947 setting the stage for other blacks and Afro-Latinos to play in the big leagues of American baseball. However, it also destroyed the Negro Leagues of the United States and the many businesses that were connected to them, hotels, transportation facilities, restaurants, etc. In the name of de-segregation, I would submit that it would have been more equitable to have the negro league champion play the world series champion of white baseball.

*MLK Jr. I Have a Dream speech and philosophy. I’m certain that through his Christian belief Dr. King felt that all races in American could get along. Yet running through the political filter to pass laws that would counter previous laws against black and poor people demanded compromise, that’s how bipartisanship works. The back rooms of the legislature during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations constantly and acceptably called all the civil rights bills the “Nigger Bills.” The result was that black and poor people were allowed to cross the tracks into white businesses, schools, neighborhoods, etc. White people didn’t have to move from their position of control, remember the definition of integration is to fit something small into something bigger.

*Collective doubt in African America. After ten generations or more of white oppression nonwhites often live life “not to lose” than to be all that we can be as Americans. The progressiveness of the (primarily) youth involved in harnessing the power of the vote in the mid to late 1960s was first pushed back on by elder blacks. Born and raised in deep Jim Crow America caused much older blacks not to want to make the white system angry. Agitation of Freedom Riders and local southern blacks was eventually met with mutual understanding of the work that still needed to be done post-slavery.  Yet currently we collectively fear the meanness and power of white supremacy, though black women are stepping up to live out what’s needed in the 21st century. 

*Millennial impact, giving youth guided voice. Abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass once wrote “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” History in America shows that racial justice movements that have moved the dial away from oppression over skin color have been led mainly by people under 40 whose ideas were nurtured in their teens.  

Aside from gun violence but violence in general against black people (by whites and blacks), and women; America can be great for humanity. I feel that this country (my country) is a good place for most people in the world to live, having many advantages, resources, and assets (both in monetary wealth and social wealth).

By Ben Mchie