Racial discrimination has declined. African-Americans are gaining power and prominence in areas of American life where we could not even have gotten a job 30 years ago. Has the time come for us to stop viewing ourselves as “outsiders”?
The question stunned my audience, a well-tailored, intelligent-looking group of young black professionals–“buppies,” in today’s parlance–from up and down the East Coast. I had been asked to speak at the weekend conference, convened by the regional chapter of the National Urban League, on the future of black professionals at the dawn of a new century. I delivered, but the question I raised was more than some had bargained for.
“I seriously question your premise that racial discrimination has declined,” said a young lawyer in a dark blue pinstriped suit. “I don’t think we’ve made progress,” he said. “Discrimination has only become more subtle.”
He went on to describe how his law firm, a major one in the nation’s capital, has only four black lawyers, who don’t get enough respect from the rest.
“If I was white, I’d probably be a partner by now,” he said.
“Shoot, if I was white, I’d probably be a publisher by now,” I said.
That broke the ice. Everyone, including the young lawyer, got a laugh.
My point was that, no, discrimination has not disappeared and it probably never will. But four lawyers in his firm is a lot better than zero and, moreover, the overall trajectory of history is pushing ahead, despite occasional setbacks, toward more progress.
“Who knows?,” I said. “You’re a young man. I have faith that you’re going to be a partner, yet.” Either at his current firm or someplace else.
But first, he’s got to have faith, a commodity that is shockingly lacking in black America today, even among members of the new black middle class who obviously had to have a lot of it to get where they are.
More than half of African-Americans feel conditions are getting worse for them, according to a survey Yankelovich Partners, Inc., conducted for a special “Blacks in America” issue of New Yorker magazine, which released the results the same day I spoke to the Urban League group.
Broken down along class lines, the survey (conducted among a sampling of 1,200 black American adults and with a margin of error of 2 1/2 percent) found that 66 percent of the “lower class,” 57 percent of the “working class,” 58 percent of the “middle class” and 50 percent of “upper-middle and above” said they felt things are getting worse.
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Half of them believed that race relations will “never be better than they are” and 59 percent (including 58 percent of the middle class and 49 percent of the upper-middle and above) agreed that the American dream has become impossible for most Americans to achieve.
Obviously, in the age of Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell and Black Entertainment Television, black folks on the whole have done well. So, why do we feel so bad?
For one, we’re looking balefully at how far we have to go. While more black Americans are moving up than ever before, one-third remain below the government’s poverty line (including half of black children) and the bottom 10 percent live in what Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson calls “an advanced stage of social, economic and moral disintegration.”
As one who escaped that poverty, I look with despair on the obstacles facing the kids growing up there now. I grew up in a more optimistic and generous period than today, an era of conservative backlash.
Second, ironically, recent studies tend to confirm that we, the members of the new black middle class, actually feel the sting of racism more acutely than poor blacks do. This is partly because we face it more often in our daily efforts to swim in America’s predominantly white mainstream and partly because poor blacks have more pressing concerns on their minds–like jobs, schools, crime, housing and survival, just for starters.
I think they’ll make it. Pessimistic as many blacks may be, we also tend to realize, as Jesse Jackson once said, that “no one can save us for us but us.” Racism continues to be a problem, the respondents to the survey agreed, but 48 percent believed (and only 32 percent disagreed) that “the failure of blacks to take full advantage of the opportunities available to them constitutes a greater problem than discrimination by whites.”
To take advantage of new opportunities, one must be optimistic about one’s ability to succeed. Perhaps my optimism is a sign of my age. As one who struggled through college at the end of the 1960s, I marvel at how far African-Americans have come in a short time. When opportunities opened up, my generation was happy to get a boarding pass. Today’s younger generation is looking for an upgrade. Good for them. More power to them.
No matter how wide the doors to opportunity open, black Americans are reluctant to think of ourselves as “insiders” in a system that has rejected us for so long. But if we’re going to do any good for ourselves or our children, we had better start thinking about thinking about it.