美国黑人社会地位研究paper

全世界很多人都将美国看作是黄金梦想之地，梦想、野心和目标都能够实现，充满着成功。这个国家之外的人们，对于在美国的生活描绘出了无比美妙的画面。然而不幸的是，并不是每个人的生活都如此。几百年来，非裔美国人一直在为歧视和种族主义而挣扎。

很其他种族不同，非洲人，是通过中央航道被迫带入到美国的，经受着严酷的奴隶制度折磨。几百年来，非裔美国人挣扎着希望得到自己的身份，，却还是被美国非洲民族主义所压迫。美国的生活意味着要从别人的眼睛里看自己，对自己究竟是谁没有了解，也不知道自己的历史。

黑人身份是如何定义的？黑人被认为是一个种族群体。如今的种族总体来说是社会构建起的种类，在不同的社会历史背景下会发生变化。康奈尔和哈特曼将种族定义为拥有共同的物理特征，共有历史、祖先和象征的群体。将黑人看作是“社会构造的”，就意味着它是主观种类，随着社会关系和社会结构而成长。个体并不是生来为黑人种族。相反，他们在社会互动中变成了黑人。

Throughout the world many people perceive America as the land of golden opportunity where dreams, ambitions, and goals can come true and a place of success. People outside of this great country have been painted a very glossy picture of what life in this country can become. Unfortunately, this is not true for everyone. African Americans have struggled with acceptance, discrimination and racism in this country for hundreds of years.

Unlike any other ethnic or racial group, Africans, by way of the Middle Passage were brought to this country by involuntary migration, which is an extremely repulsive and harsh form of slavery. For hundreds of years, African Americans have struggled to identity themselves and they are repressed by the structures of American Africanism. Life in American has been one in which they see themselves through the eyes of another, void of understanding of who they are and lacking the knowledge of their history.

How is the black identity defined? Blacks are considered a racial and ethnic group. Race and ethnicity are now generally understood as socially constructed categories whose meanings vary in different sociohistorical context. Cornell and Hartmann define race as a groups understanding of shared physical characteristics and ethnicity as shared history, ancestry and symbols (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). To say that black is “socially constructed” means that it is a subjective category that grows out of social relations and structures. Individuals are not born black. Instead, they become black through social interaction. How blacks are defined collectively, and how an individual define themselves as black, changes over time and is a response to factors such as power, socialization, religion, and socioeconomic status (1998).

Theory and Framework

W.E.B. Du Bois, a well known African-American, Sociologist, historian, scholar, and activist; developed the theory of “Double Consciousness” in an attempt to understand what was limiting the progress of the African-American people. As a result of an extensive sociological study Du Bois’ theory noted a problem in the development of the identity of the African-American or as they were referred to in his writings the “American Negro” (Du Bois, 1953). The African-American’s lack of a known history and lack of identity produced the state of double consciousness. Double consciousness as defined by Du Bois (1953) is felt contradiction between social values and daily experiences for blacks in the Unites States.” In his writings, Du Bois explains a feeling of double consciousness has resulted from African-Americans attempting to situate themselves within American society. Even after emancipation from slavery, Blacks were still denied meaningful citizenship rights by the “veil” of race and racism though they contributed with the ‘gifts” of their souls (Du Bois, 1953).

American racism imposed an identity dilemma upon African-Americans and affected their expression of patriotism. On the one hand, moments of crisis and racial opportunity have led leaders such as Frederick Douglass during the Civil War, Du Bois before World War 1, and Al Sharpton after 9/11 to embrace a faith that the Black gifts of labor, loyalty, and culture might one day be rewarded with full racial equality. Sharpton (2003) calls it invested patriotism. However, on the other hand, moments of racial retrenchment have led leaders such as Paul Roberson and Du Bois during the 1950s and Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Vietnam War to believe that Blacks must reject traditional forms of patriotism and instead display devotion by fundamentally challenging American racism.

Racism, as controversial as the subject may be, is very much alive in America as well as in American schools. Racism can be defined as an assumed mindset that include an acrimony created on the belief of superiority over a perceived inferiority group, “solely based on the color” (ERIC Digest,1990) of one’s skin. Jokes by White people about an African American person’s skin color, physical features, or the texture of their hair are obvious examples of racism and discriminatory insults. Such deliberate and mean comments are hurtful and could cause a person to become fearful and insecure and they could have a negative impact on the self-image and self-esteem of the bearer of the joke. Racism may also be defined as the willful and deliberate mistreatment of a group of people on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, place of origin, or ancestry. Cose, 1993 states, racism is something made up by one group to devalue another group. In 2010, in America, faulty thinking by racist continues to have a strong impact on society. In spite the many efforts to have an open and honest discussion about racism and its impact on the progress of African American people toward liberation, African Americans are continually challenged with mistreatment and unfounded hatred. Racism is very much alive in America, although many are realizing the negative effects of racism and some are ever trying to put an end to it, there is still much work to be done.

The relationship between whites and blacks in America can be thought of as improving. There are times when it appears to be getting better then the media takes a story and blows it way out of proportion. This can cause a strain, once again between the two groups. America has had a very long racist history. For people of color, it is often shocking to see white people even thinking about race, let alone challenging racism. America does not spend much time contemplating the subject and historically white people have made something of a pastime out of ignoring racism (Wise, 2008), or at least refusing to call it out as a social problem to be remedied.

Although white Americans often think they have had very few experiences or little exposure with race issues, because most of them are so isolated from African Americans in their daily lives, the reality is that this isolation is their experience with race. In one way or another, we are all experiencing race, because most of us from the beginning of our lives we have been living in a racially divided America. Even race, as we know it, remains largely a matter of biological and genetic (Sleeter, 2001) irrelevance. Race may be a scientific untruth, but it is a social fact that none of us can escape. No matter how much or how little we try to separate ourselves from it. Just as there were no actual vampires from Transylvania, but seems frighteningly real, so too race can be a falsehood even as racism continues to destroy lives or kill, the flipside is it is often used to the advantage of those who it rarely targets.

So then, how is being white perceived as being better? “To be white is to be born into an environment where one’s legitimacy is far less likely to be questioned than would be the legitimacy of a person of color, be it in terms of where one lives, works, or goes to school” (Wise, 2008). To be white is, even more; to some it means be born among the so-called privileged that has set a system up for the benefit of people of European descent, and as such provides a very nice head start to those who are fortunate enough to have inclusion in this dominant club. Because of this professed dominant position, White perceptions and assumptions are often projected as truth into a larger world. Personal reality is assumed to be actual reality.

The assumption of rightness is often reinforced by the fact that dominant groups tend to know very little about the one’s whom they define as “those people.” Individuals from the dominant group are usually unaware of their own power and can carry on the daily activities of their lives without any substantial knowledge about, or meaningful interaction with, those people who are not a part of the dominant group (Howard, 2004).

During the early 1980’s, America appeared to be on the verge of equal opportunities being granted to minorities. African Americans and whites seemed to be coming together. Interracial marriages gained social acceptance and there was more open dialogue in the issue of racism, but there were still roadblocks preventing these two groups from total acceptance in American society. Perhaps, the stereotypical views about the violent behavior of blacks had some effect on the deterioration of the relationship between whites and blacks in society because “white people are fearful in the presence of blacks” (Kuykendall, 2004). The African American has assimilated the principal way of thinking like his white counterparts. In many situations the African American seeks acceptance by whites while at the same time, and in some cases, distances himself from other African Americans.

An example, of this is Spike Lee’s movie, Bamboozled (2000). The lead character, Pierre Delacroix, a Black television writer is a psychologically split character who takes on a French name in favor of his birth name and takes on an unnatural European accent. Delacroix is viewed by other characters in the movie, including his boss, as “acting white.”

When Delacroix’s effort at depicting the Black middle class are rebuffed by the network, he counters their narrow constructions of race by creating a program that is racially provocative and exploitive as possible. He comes up with “Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show,” a variety program in which the African-American characters wear minstrel-style blackface and live in a watermelon patch. The show becomes a hit, suggesting we are numb to the contemporary minstrel shows throughout our present day media. The film contextualizes stereotypical constructions of race within a historical continuum of ideological and political oppression. While watching the movie it’s interesting to note the number of times the large cast of characters struggle with the gap between how they see themselves and how others see them.

Yet, a preferred medium for continually degrading African Americans, especially women and children is through the use of television and other media. Local and national news programs continually to exploit African American neighborhoods as filled with violence, drugs and gangs. They continuously play on these reports as if it is easier to defame the urban areas than to report stories of hope and change. Sometimes it easier to give a person some tools to work and see what kind of changes the person would make to his or her own environment than to place greater burdens and criticisms upon them. For example, the Detroit Newspaper continually reports on the thefts, shootings, and homicides in Detroit, Michigan, but does not devote equal time to show how residents are working together looking for solutions to improve these situations. The day a local newspaper was scheduled to report on how the residents of an eastside neighborhood pulled their resources together and came to the aid of a local church to replace the badly needed roof. The story was pre-empted to report on the opening of a new superstore in the suburbs. As a result, instead of wanting to move out of the community, most people did not realize they have the power to change the community. They have become psychological prisoners who have bought into the notion that their situation or circumstances will never change. Local newspapers and news programs are not the only ones to blame for image making; documentaries have played a part in the negative images of African-Americans. Malcolm X made the claim that the “negative images of communities in America are just a small part of the image making process”.

Documentary film makers have done the same for Africa. They projected Africa in a negative image, a hateful image. They make the viewers “think that Africa was a land of jungles, a land of animals, a land of cannibals and savages. It was a hateful image” (Wilson, 1999). Current documentaries of Africa are still about their jungles and their tribes. Although they do not have a racist tone, the idea that African people are still uncivilized continues. The result is: “Black people here in America who hated everything about us that was African...it was you who taught us to hate ourselves simply by shrewdly maneuvering us into hating the land of our forefathers and the people on that continent” (Malcolm X, 1965). The larger problem that Malcolm X did not discuss in his speech is the result of the image making. The effectiveness of today’s media on young minds is great.

According to Sleeter (2001) it is the African-American comedian who is more accepted in today’s society because they are able to laugh about the negative black images. The white man, as Malcolm X might agree, would favor the comedian over the serious actor because “white men do not want to be reminded about their crime”. The comedian often supports the negative black images that the media has created: large lips, large buttocks, the criminal and the slave.

Television is not all to blame. The media has made many efforts to create a more positive image of Black America. There are several cable stations, BET, TBS and others targeted at African American programming. The commercials shown on these stations feature both black and white actors rather than the white actors on the large network stations. African American TV has been introduced to mainstream TV. Most programs are outrageous, such as The Mo’Nique Show, which is filled with profanity and sexual references. However, the introduction into network TV provides an open door for more quality programming and more positive images in the future. Malcolm X concluded his speech with “make the world see that our problem was no longer a Black problem or an Americanproblem but a human problem; a problem for humanity; a problem which should be attacked by all elements of humanity” (Malcolm X). Americans must attack this problem as a hate issue and not a race issue. Massey (2000) “ we must stop blaming each other for the problem.” We live in a media dominant world. The owners of today’s media conglomerates are white males, who influence what is being shown on their networks, in magazines, and film. It is time that America takes control of what influences its society and take responsibility for creating positive images of humanity.

Conclusion

By allowing white America to remain in a bubble of unreality, white privilege ultimately misrepresents the U. S. Constitution, the people of in the land of the free, and makes it difficult for America to function as fully rational beings. It protects the dominant group from some of life’s cruelties, and allows them to wander around, largely oblivious to the fires that, for others, burn all around them. We must learn to help others move beyond fear, beyond anger, and beyond denial to a “new understanding of what racism is how it impacts all of us” (Wise, 2008), and ultimately what we can do about it.

I read a story the other day from the Unexpected Universe (1969) and adapted from The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley (1907-1977). It read like this:

“A young girl was walking along a beach. To her amazement, she came upon thousands of starfish. Washed ashore by a storm, they were dying in the hot sun. The girl began to toss starfish back into the sea, one by one. After a while, a man approached her. “Little girl,” he asked, “Why are you doing this? There are thousands of starfish on the beach. You cannot possibly hope to make a difference!” The girl was discouraged, and dropped the starfish in her hand. But a moment later, she bent down, picked up the starfish again, and tossed it as far as she could into the sea. She turned back to the man. Smiling brightly, she said, “I made a difference to that one!” Inspired, he joined her. A crowd had gathered, and soon others joined in. Before long, there were hundreds of people tossing starfish back into the sea and calling out, “I made a difference it that one!” After a while, their calls subsided. The girl looked up. To her amazement, she saw no starfish on the beach. Each one had been tossed back into the sea.” (The Unexpected Universe, 1969).

As this story so beautifully illustrates, each of us has the power to make a difference. Collectively we can create a more just and peaceful society. We can lead by our own example and begin to erase the effects of racism in our communities if that is what we choose to do.