Clock is turning back on race relations
By James H. Buford
Guest Columnist
The Rev. Joseph Lowry, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, once said, “Black folks are sick of racism, and white folks are sick of black folks.” This statement couldn’t be more true today.
African Americans are witnessing a dramatic increase in public disrespect as tens of thousands of blacks were left to fend for themselves in a destroyed city with no food or water for nearly a week, a former U.S. Secretary of Education declared that crime rates would go down if all black babies were aborted and an elderly teacher was beaten by New Orleans police for no apparent reason.
It seems that blacks can’t get respect in this country anymore. It appears that the generational clock is turning backward as the era of political correctness is going away and some whites are beginning to publicly voice their adverse opinions of African Americans.
As a nation, only 32 percent of whites think that the government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina was racially motivated while 71 percent of blacks feel that way. Locally, a survey done by the East West Gateway Council of Governments disclosed that more than 50 percent of Caucasians feel that racism is not a problem in the racially divided St. Louis metropolitan area.
The backlash against the African-American community is even taking place within our presidential First Family. While trying to defend her son against Kanye West’s remark that he “doesn’t care about black people,” former First Lady Barbara Bush stated that many of the stranded Katrina victims were already underprivileged, so living in the Houston Astrodome was working well for them.
If this wasn’t bad enough, when asked about his plans to fix racial problems in this country, President George W. Bush said he was disappointed that blacks didn’t support him in the last election after he hired so many blacks to prominent positions in his administration. Bush’s comment was woefully out-of-touch with an African-American community that wants him to embrace our issues and not just a few token blacks. It also forewarns that we have little to expect from the Bush administration because we did not support him.
We, as African Americans, have reason for alarm because we have so few supporters in powerful positions. We have yet to see a Congressional renewal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yesterday’s term for “separate but equal” facilities has given way to racial disparities in the 21st century. Since so-called separate but equal facilities were struck down in 1954 by the Supreme Court, “racial disparity” has become the term of choice.
Each year the National Urban League publishes an Equality Index in its State of Black America book that measures the equity levels between whites and blacks in the United States. To date, the overall status of blacks to their white counterparts is 73 percent. Statistical data has also shown the median income for African American households is $30,000 compared with $48,000 for white households.
A report published by the United States Census Bureau has shown that the media income of African Americans is $2,000 less since Bush took office; that approximately 7.4 million blacks lack health insurance, an increase of almost 770,000 people since 2000; and that nearly 25 percent (9 million) of all African Americans lived in poverty in 2004, an increase of over 250,000 over the past two years. These numbers should serve as a wake-up call to members of the black community that we need to make an effort to save ourselves.
One of the lessons that we, as a people, must learn from the response to Hurricane Katrina is to build the infrastructure of our own African-American social service, religious, political and economic organizations so that we can protect our own people. It was obvious that protecting blacks was not a priority with Hurricane Katrina and, unfortunately, African Americans will never be a priority in this country. Family, it’s time for us to wake up and once again take a stand against discrimination.