How the Boys in Blue Betray Our Trust

Perhaps this could be considered late news, but it appeared just today on the cached-news Web site Reddit. It's a nice article about police brutality under the then-elected Mayor of New York, Rudy Guliani. He let slide plenty of police brutality complaints. I love it when bloggers and forum members dig up dirt on a rotten politician. And if you didn't think this guy was rotten before--what with using his office and other public rooms for sex with his mistress and having her use the NYPD as her personal taxi service--maybe this will finally penetrate your dense skull.

Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. These kinds of brutalities happen pretty regularly, and it's just one more reminder of the disintegration of state support that minorities face. I can't recall the last time I heard a story about a white man who was relaxing in a club and was subsequently arrested and raped by police officers after a fight broke out.

Come Together or Come Apart

This is a paper I wrote for my Race and Social Change class. I think it makes one important point about the struggle for complete equality: we have to form coalitions. Unfortunately, in any given civil rights organization, there are several different groups that have other alterior goals. If we want to find an effective way to create a group large enough to affect socail change, we need to reconcile our various agendas.

Black Female Participation in the Fight for Civil Rights

Social identities do not exist in a vacuum. While individuals can share a characteristic that binds them to a common cause, the intersection of various socially constructed identities still dictates—and limits—how certain members of a group can participate. Such was the case with black female involvement in the fight for civil rights. While black women and men share their “blackness” and are thus exposed to many race issues that blanket both sexes, historically, black rights movements have adhered to the patriarchal tenets of dominant American culture that advocate strict limits on female participation. Robnet’s How long? How long? and Abu-Jamal’s A Life in the Party discuss black women’s roles in the Montgomery bus boycott and the Black Panther Party, respectively. In this paper, I will examine the different forms of restriction and limitation under which black women operated in each movement, using excerpts from each author to flesh out my analysis.

While Robnet’s article adequately chronicles the resourcefulness and determination of the black women involved in the Montgomery bus boycott, it also illustrates the crippling male-oriented bureaucracy in which the women operated. Even the inception of the boycott was strategically planned to foolproof it from attacks that utilized the power of male hierarchy. At least two women refused to give up their seats before Parks’ famous stand and went unsupported during their trials; one woman’s legitimacy as a symbol for integration would have been attacked by proponents of male hierarchy because she was not only “an immature teenager but pregnant as well” (Robnet, 217). Even with the struggle underway, women were no less subject to patriarchy. While women argued that it was “mostly women who were affected by the conditions on the buses” (Robnet, 219), they realized that they would not achieve enough support without the aide of some other “‘legitimate,’ well-respected leader in the black community” (Robnet, 218), such as male ministers or politicians. Robnet concludes that women were important “bridge” leaders, and that their leadership was no less responsible for the movement’s success than that of men. But while women may have performed aptly, they would not have been relegated to strictly secondary leadership roles without our society’s innate male-oriented bias.

While Robnet concedes that women did what they could for the Montgomery bus boycott while adhering to gender roles, Abu-Jamal’s article attempts to debunk the “supposedly” wide-ranging chauvinism that scholars (particularly Pearson) say women endured in the Black Panther Party. While actual physical abuse of women may have been rare, Abu-Jamal’s argument in regards to chauvinism seems tenuous; he is prone to misinterpreting primary sources to “debunk” the accusations of misogyny. For example, his iteration of Frankye Malika Adams’ assertion that “Women pretty much ran the BPP” fails to correctly analyze the quote in its context. Adams states that she believes women were integral to the implementation of street-level operations, such as “taking care of the sick and uh, so” (Abu-Jamal, 231). But she does not base her conclusion of female importance in the Party on women’s attainment of leadership positions. Abu-Jamal refuses to view the community leadership roles described by Adams in the same way that Robnet viewed similar roles held by women in Montgomery: crucial, but secondary. Male BPP leaders still made most of the decisions and represented the Party on a national level. Unlike Robnet’s conciliatory stance that women at least made an influence even with limitations, Abu-Jamal’s conclusion leads him to unrealistically claim that we should not seek to promote a “macrocosm” where groups with different interests, i.e. women, will always make organizations inherently fissiparous.

While Abu-Jamal’s article fails to legitimize the limited leadership mobility that plagued women in the BPP, championing Robnet’s ambivalent acceptance of the limited roles presented to women would also perpetuate the current patriarchal structure that plagues black rights movements. Abu-Jamal’s conclusion is inherently flawed in that it posits the incapability of people to completely unify under one cause. I believe that this argument seriously undermines the effort that would be needed to bargain for equal economic and educational rights by denying the importance of coalition. And while Robnet at least agrees that there are limited group roles given to women, she praises female resourcefulness despite women’s limited leadership instead of criticizing the patriarchal structure that keeps them in lower leadership positions. This passive acceptance is no less detrimental to progress of black equality—and ultimately, neither author discusses the gender inequality that must be bridged before black rights movements can move forward as a strengthened, unified front.

Yesterday's News Is Old Today

I'm pretty disappointed. A professor in one of my classes just gave us a lecture on race based entirely on statistics from 1973. THAT'S 34-YEAR-OLD DATA. As I sat there listening to him talk about how the statistics reflected recent trends in racist lending practices, I couldn't help but feel a bit embarrassed for him.

Folks, if you're gonna use data to persuade others, make sure it's new data. There's nothing more annoying than listening to an entire lecture under the explicit disclaimer of "Well, this isn't new data, but it's still happening, I assure you." If it is still happening (and I have no doubt that it is), then go out and find the data. It might ake you a few hours, but your point will be much more believable.

Two Years Ago, but Today, too

It's really odd that we talk about Katrina as if we've actually overcome the problems with FEMA and getting a reliable means of transportation back to people so that they can eventually re-inhabit New Orleans.

Look at this article in the New York Times.

I want to share with you a short story to give you an idea of how bad the problems for the black New Orleans diaspora really are.

A week ago, I was getting into my car after coming out of Jimmy John's Sandwiches off of 32nd Street and Red River at about 9 p. m., when a lean black man about 100 yards wearing a buttoned-down shirt and tie shouteded something at me. I turned to look at him, and as soon as he realized I was going to wait for him to approach, he jogged up to me.

He explained the situation. He was a victim of Katrina, and after the house he owned in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans was destroyed in the flood, he was relocated to Houston with other unfortunate people from his neighborhood. He told me that he moved here to stay in a family friend's house until he found some work; he had spent all day searching for jobs in West Austin, he was out of luck and out of cash, and he needed two dollars to get himself and his son home. He motioned to a frail boy sitting at the bus stop across the street who raised a hand and waved as soon as the man gestured.

I took out my wallet and handed him the only cash I had left--exactly two dollars. "Thank God!" he said. "You're the first dude who didn't run away when I asked for two dollars." He took the money, thanked me and walked across the street. When he got to the bus stop, he sat down and hugged his son.

This is unacceptable. If something like this were happening to rich white people on Staton Island, Long Island, or somewhere in Florida, the government would pull out all stops to make sure that those "viable" people had every opportunity to stay in the same place and rebuild their houses.

Telling poor black people from the Lower Ninth Ward that they can't stay in or go back to New Orleans is the same as telling them that everything they've got--everything they've worked for--is gone and will never be replaced. Asking them to move doesn't solve the problem, it just takes away their only property and gives them no money and no housing. And since many of the families in the Lower Ninth Ward cannot afford new property values, when they're left without a home and told that there's no way to rebuild it, that's the end of the only financial stability that many of them have. It's devasating; it's like cutting the roots off of a tree.

This is despicable.