Q: A reader commented on our article ‘You Must Have Voted for Obama’: 5 Things NEVER to Say to Blacks. He quoted a portion of that article and made an observation that makes for a good teachable moment. 

“Don’t assume all Blacks are African-American; there also are people who are African, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Caribbean, etc.”
Thank you for posting that. One of my best friends in high school was Black but traced his ancestry back to France. It bothered him whenever someone referred to him as “African-American.”

On the flip side, one of my son’s best friends in high school was born in America, but both of his parents were born and raised in Africa. He could legitimately be called “African-American” but probably never will be since all of them are Caucasian.

Just goes to show, you can’t judge a book by its cover … or a person by his/her color.

A: Yes and no. I acknowledge that you posted your comment with positive sincerity; however, I agree with your first point, but not the second.

“African-American” refers to descendants of enslaved Black people who are from the United States. The reason we use an entire continent (Africa) instead of a country (e.g., “Italian-American”) is because slave masters purposefully obliterated tribal ancestry, language and family units in order to destroy the spirit of the people they enslaved, thereby making it impossible for their descendants to trace their history prior to being born into slavery. This was all in an effort to prevent enslaved people from organizing and revolting their bondage (look up Nat Turner).

Enforcing illiteracy of enslaved people (by law, with severe penalties—including death in some cases—for teaching an enslaved person to write) and obliterating any sense of history or familial ties was a tradition in our country starting in 1619 (before the Revolution) and ending after the Civil War. (One can argue that this practice continued into the 20th century.) This is why our African-American fellow citizens cannot trace their heritage past the continent of Africa. I’ll re-emphasize this point: Their personal and family history was purposefully obliterated by people who enslaved other people.

For purposes of respect, as well as providing context to current-day events and economic realities, it is important to acknowledge and understand this part of American history. America is unique in having people who are African-American. For a personal insight into what all this means, I suggest you read Frederick Douglass’ autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom. In addition to learning history in a very real and first-person way, you‘ll also learn things about our language—for example, the bone-chilling origin of the common phrase “sold down the river.” For an outstanding overview of the repercussions of slavery in the modern-day era, I most strongly recommend Michelle Alexander’s recent book The New Jim Crow. She will be speaking at our next DiversityInc event.

In the case of your son’s friend, post-slavery immigrants from a country in Africa can readily identify themselves by where they came from—it’s on their passports. Black immigrants from Africa can identify themselves by country and tribe (keep in mind that country boundaries in Africa are chiefly colonial constructs). A modern-day immigrant from Africa may refer to him- or herself by a hyphenated identity—“Sudanese-American,” for example.

A special note for the people who email me about their white ancestors who were enslaved: Virginia codified slave laws to be exclusive to Black people in 1705 (establishing white supremacy), and indentured servitude was ended by the early 1800s. Comparing indentured servitude of white people to the history of African-Americans is insulting, in my opinion, and I won’t entertain it in this publication.

The post Ask the White Guy: Is a White Person From Africa an African-American? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Wagner made his initial comments in the President’s Letter in the latest issue of Emory Magazine. (Note that the page has been edited to include the apology at the top in italics; the original letter is below.) Wagner stated that the Constitutional compromise, in which each slave was counted as three-fifths of a person for determining taxes and representation apportioned to states, was “a good thing in itself.” Wagner wrote: “The two sides [North and South] compromised on this immediate issue of how to count slaves in the new nation. Pragmatic half-victories kept in view the higher aspiration of drawing the country more closely together.”

What’s missing from Wagner’s original comment and his apology is the recognition that either counting enslaved people or counting three-fifths of them was a horrible injustice as those counted would only count toward apportioning more representatives for the slave holders! This was NOT a “Constitutional compromise about slavery,” as Wagner describes it. This was NOT a lessening of the practice of slavery at all. This was a compromise on the power of Southern plantation owners versus Northerners—and the Southerners clearly won. (The point was made at the time: It made no sense to count enslaved people at all as they had no legal standing as human beings.) Wagner discounts this moral abdication of the Northern states as “working towards the highest aspiration they both shared”; that’s an amazing lapse of judgment and terribly offensive.

In praising the “compromise,” Wagner was referencing the current fiscal debate and the GOP threat of sequestration, dramatic automatic budget cuts that will virtually cripple the federal government. But his likening of successful compromise to this horrific piece of American history in which humans were valued as less than human spawned an outcry on social media.

Hashtags on Twitter expressing outrage included #racism and #noi’mnotkidding. Among the hundreds of comments on Facebook and in blogs was this one in response to a story on Gawker.com: “Cool story, bro. Personally, I use the 3/5’s compromise to illustrate to my students precisely why compromise should not be viewed as a de facto good. More often than not, those who extol the virtues of political compromise do so to excuse or conceal moral compromise. Of course, this kind of social and political analysis occurs in the social sciences and humanities, but whatevs dude. If you cut fast enough, soon no one will be able to call you on your bulls—.”

And this comment on the same page also illustrates the anger at Wagner’s extolling this as an “acceptable” compromise: “The Three-Fifths Compromise is a great example of the insidious consciousness of the pro-slavery class. They wanted it both ways: to think of Africans as chattel, like pack animals or workhorses or what have you, incapable of rational intelligence; but then they wanted them counted as people. Some may call it a great example of government at work. I see in it a condemnation of this whole they-were-just-people-of-their-times sentiment. They knew slavery was an injustice. They just didn’t give a f—.”

The Apology

After the storm of criticism, Wagner published a lengthy apology on top of his letter and referenced it on Emory’s Facebook page. He said he considers slavery “heinous, repulsive, repugnant and inhuman,” but that his initial point was that “compromise pointed to a higher truth for both sides of the debate, though they did not recognize it at the time. For the states supporting slavery, the higher truth was that persons denied a vote, denied even their freedom, did not constitute part of the body politic—not even three-fifths of it—and therefore should not be used as a means to political power. For those opposed to slavery, the clearer truth was that if persons were counted as even a fraction of the body politic, their personhood demanded the full rights and privileges of citizens.”

His point, and his “lesson” to the current factions fighting in Washington, is that sometimes we must compromise in order to eventually get to an equitable solution. He also referenced Emory’s own current financial situation and the university’s plan to cut academic offerings. An article on Inside Higher Ed notes, however, that during Wagner’s tenure as president of the Atlanta-based university, its board has acknowledged and apologized for the school’s use of slaves in its early history, and in 2011 it organized a conference on “Slavery and the University.”

Wagner’s apology isn’t winning a lot of converts. Inside Higher Ed reports that faculty and students at the school and at other universities continue to be appalled that the president of a major university doesn’t understand how deeply offensive this analogy is. Roopika Risam, a Ph.D. student in English at Emory, blogged that Wagner’s greatest misstep was suggesting that his comment was merely a gaffe. “To invoke a narrative of gaffe by way of ‘clumsiness’ is to claim ultimate deniability and to abdicate responsibility for one’s words,” she wrote.

See more university president gaffes: It’s a Good Thing That Women Don’t Think Like Men

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Question:
Call me whatever you like, but please elaborate on how slavery DIRECTLY benefits me today.

This line of reasoning does not appear to be logically sound without further explanation.

Your answer makes me want to scream as no argument was made to convince me of anything except as a white person, I am either ignorant or bigoted.

Answer:
Please don’t scream; I can personally testify that ignorance is curable.

The legacy of slavery has benefited every white person in this country–directly and personally. In a very gross analogy, if you run a series of foot races over 300 years but prevent 13 percent of the participants from learning how to run for 180 years and then give them concrete sneakers for another 80 years–but allow them full access for 40 years, it will take the 13 percent quite a few races to be competitive because the other 87 percent advanced their skills by practice and repetition.

Life is not a foot race, but it is a fact that the average white person would not economically benefit from switching places with an average black person (black households average one-tenth the household wealth of white households). If you believe all people are created equal, there has to be a reason for this–and there is: racism.

The first slaves were brought to this country in the 1600s. After slavery ended in 1865 (the Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the North) and until the 1960s, African Americans lived under laws that overtly discriminated against them. In 1960, most African Americans could not vote and had practically no access to higher education. Although the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts (1964 and 1965, respectively) addressed the legal issues, and legislation like the CRA opened banking to red-lined areas, programs to eliminate disparities have proved to not be adequate.

Before somebody e-mails me with the old canard of “Nobody in my family ever owned a slave,” I’d like to retire that excuse with a personal example: Generations ago, my ancestors fled the horrible conditions in their home countries to establish families in the United States. It was never much of a question as to whether or not we could pick wherever we wanted to live, have access to college or get a mortgage. If my family suffered under generations of knowing that those doors were closed, it would take generations more to overcome that lack of family know-how. In essence, my family zipped right past people whose families were here long before mine. I never even questioned that Rutgers would be open to accepting my application, that the Navy would send me to flight school or that McGraw-Hill or Time Warner would hire me–and that when I was there I would be in the vast majority (there were less than 3 percent people of color in both publications I worked for). I never doubted my ability to start a company and had plenty of friends to mentor me along the way.

If you go back to people being created equally, it is just math that a percentage of our country’s greatest minds were eliminated from the competition simply by fact of skin color, and by extension their families were denied the head-start of their accomplishments. Every white person benefits from this–even people who arrived to the United States yesterday.
 
Unfortunately, this has hurt our country dramatically. If you caught black households up to white household wealth, it would be the equivalent of injecting the entire GDP of Japan into our economy. Who would benefit? Mostly white people, as the majority would manufacture the goods and services purchased with the “new” wealth.

The good news is that many white people remembered and unremembered have done their duty and fought for freedom. White guys can take pride in fellow white guys like Washington, Franklin, Garrison, Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson (among others). Our country may be imperfect, but our human rights are still the guiding beacon of opportunity for most of the rest of the planet..

The post How Does Slavery Benefit White People Today? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:
Why do you think white Americans ignore their “white privilege” that is a direct result of the history of slavery in this country? For example, I often hear whites comment, “I didn’t own any slaves … so why do I owe an apology/money/etc?” I just want to scream, “Yeah, but you ALL directly benefit from it.”

Answer:

Most people do not think of “history” beyond their own experience. I would also say that my enlightenment has also led me to understand that the history I was taught was “whitewashed.”

Although you’re absolutely right about all white people benefiting from white privilege, most white people have never given it a thought.

Although there are bigots out there, the underpinnings of comments like “I didn’t own any slaves” are almost always ignorance, not bigotry.

The post Why Do White Americans Ignore Their ‘White Privilege’? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:
A woman called into a radio talk show and asked, “Why is it OK for a black person to tell a joke about a white person, but it’s not OK the other way around?” I’ve had employees ask, “Why is it OK to have executive incentives or mentor programs in place to help minorities and women, but none for the rest of us?”

The questions go on and on from why do we celebrate Black History Month, Women’s Heritage Month, etc. but never White History month. There seems to be a ground swell of people who believe that in our efforts to become an equal society, we are using double standards which are not promoting equality. What is your take?

Answer:
I’ve grown to realize that it’s not OK for anyone to tell a racial joke.

The other points in your question relate to profound ignorance on why these programs exist. There have been “double standards” throughout human history (slavery, misogyny, bigotry, homophobia, etc.) Addressing past injustices is how we move our society ahead … especially economically.

Human rights and freedom are the foundation principles of our country’s disproportionate success. Despite being imperfectly applied … our Constitution has resulted in the best meritocracy that the world has seen. Extending rights to everyone cannot help but forge a stronger and more successful society.

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