Newspaper Page Text
_JANUARY 13,1998 ___AUGUSTA FOCUS
8A
FOCUSIN SOUTH CAROLINABy Lawrence Harrison
A proper celebration
hat is the t way to
note the bu-r:fiv of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.?
Good question. Is it a
time of joyous noise or quiet reflec
tion, to get off work or to get to
know your neighbor better in a
quest to understand true equal
ity? A unique holiday, in human
quality and much more. If that is
our focus, we are better for it.
Time does measure a person’s
contribution to this world. We
constantly look to words and deeds
from our past for guidance and
strength. The most worthy are
beyond skin color or creed. They
are spiritual, a central core of our
humanity. We do glorify our mili
tary leaders, heroes of vanity and
style over substance, but those of
lasting quality had deeper mean
ing and deeper purpose. What
could be more noble than to ad
dress and recognize the universal
nature of humankind? It is, after
all, the foundation of our religious
and divine possibilities. Human
beings, being what they are, have
trouble with such a thought.
America of 50s and 60s had
trouble with such a thought, and
far too many still do. The philoso
phy and callings of Martin Luther
King Jr. were not of just one man
or of one time. That is why they
are beyond silencing or even de
struction; for light, one candle or
many, does illuminate darkness.
Racism and bigotry were and are
America’s darkness. We can be so
much better. There was never a
lesson greater than that. It is a
lesson we are still learning
throughout the whole world. One
of the voices that taught it to us
had atoneandrichnessasnoother.
Thetone and richness was forged
part African and part American,
but that was not the uniqueness,
Uit FOCUSS
Give your favorite
non-profit organization
a unique gift; buy it ad
space in the Augusta
. Focus. Promote car
.washes, bake sales and
other fund raisers. Call
724-7855 to arrange
your purchases.
Qs oY ¢l
Since 1981
'A Walker Group Publication
1143 Laney Walker Blvd.
for such had spellbound a many in
b s vy b
, not e way
he lpohm: A people, so long
in need m and voice now had
both. one was the most
important at the time can be an
swered in light of where we would
be now if we had neither. Forall of
the worries of African-Americans
as we head into the twenty-first
century, that is something to pon
deralso. It would appear that they
were of equal importance.
Times of economic prosperity
doesbringout human beings’ good
will to each other more than other
times. We label it “volunterism”
or some such in 1998. Any phi
losophy of brotherhood is not com
plete without it, and in reality does
not exist without it. Helping our
selves and helping our neighbors.
African Americans have done and
will continue to do both.
A peoplein a hostile society must
doall it can in the way of self-help,
economically and socially. Sur
vival has no greater priority. It is
in our history, it is in our legacy.
Recognizing the situation for what
it is, that’s often the most difficult
part. It’s the first step. Moving
beyond that is what Dr. King had
inmind. No “Promised Land” will
be given to African Americans,
except that we make for ourselves.
In this America and the one to
come, we are finding out that our
“neighbor” often do not look as we
do. We are stronger, however,
because of the diversity. A helping
hand or those hand-in-hand should
be of many kinds of Americans,
whether some may be difficult to
deal with or not. Anything less
would degrade Dr. King’s beliefs,
andit degradeusall aswell. Happy
birthday, Dr. King, and to us all.
Charles W. Walker
Publisher
.Frederick Benjamin
Managing Editor
. Dot T. Ealy
Marketing Director
Sheila Jones
Office Manager
; Lillian Wan
Copy Editor
Debby Rivera
Advertising Production
Christy Allen
News Correspondent
Loretta LaGrone
Account Representative
Nicole Collins
Account Representative
Kditorial
k \ ‘ /(l " =
= . '
. i | ’ : iy
£ iR ) i
A ' il " ) “""lr
i _ AN R e A<
el 7 000 z- R
o SRI W — _\47 Lk
ROV o £ m ’ YY N N x"‘ v,
Y Q" (" "' r;e‘ q:zSh
g ‘;\‘\Q Ny 11 W \ ‘l‘f . e e (\'//;;i’\\\
"]A“ W =, L ';:Elfl~ :
Y - 5?\2/// ooA‘l \‘ (T
« 4 <:- y o B - i 771,{' = :7.\ Ve
- /_{’/«"15‘2// ' i
X 7 0. 75 .98
TO BE EQUAL By Hugh B. Price
The legacy of Levittown
t was a visionary’s dream—
mass-produced, single-family
tract housing that, at a cost of
$7,000, or S6O per month, or
dinary working people could af
ford. And when in 1947 the vision
ary, William J. Levitt, buoyed by
substantial federal monies, opened
the first Levittown on a vast ex
panse of flat Long Island farmland
20 miles from Manhattan, he
helped intensify not just the del
uge of suburbanization which was
to re-shape America’s residential
housing pattern, but the huge ex
pansion of the American middle
classthatisone of America’s great
post-war achievements.
Last month, when Levittown
marked its 50th anniversary, I
couldn’t help but place it aside two
othersignificant 50th anniversary
‘events now within our vision. One
‘wasthe breaking of baseball’s color
barrier by Jackie Robinson and
Larry Dobyin the summer of 1947.
.Theother was President Truman’s
executive order of 1948 desegre
gating the military.
Inthat comparison, Levittown’s
anniversary is a bittersweet one,
to say the least.
The reason is that from the be
ginning, Levitt’s vision and
achievement were besmirched.
Levittown, built just outside the
country’s most racially diversecity,
was for whites only. So too, would
be the Levittowns he subsequently
built near Philadelphiaand in New
Jersey.
THIS WAY FO.R BLACK EMPOWERMENT By Dr. Leonora Fulani
Dr. King’s legacy and the
consequences of racism - Part 1
hecivil rights movement of
the 1950 s and 1960 s ended
structural racism in
America. That movement
was an independent movement, a
grassroots movement led by Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. and enliv
ened by thousands of activists, at
torneys, and students. Dr. King
was not a Democrat— with a capi
tal “D” —and it was not a Demo
cratic Party movement, though the
Democratic Party did succeed in
cooptingit and taking credit for its
achievements.
Throughout the struggles which
led tothe passage of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 (which were propelled
through Congress by Lyndon
Baines Johnson—not by the lib
eral establishment) the Democratic
Party was ambivalent. The Demo
crats, after all, had constructed an
electoral coalition that relied
heavily on Southern white voters.
But once the civil rights move
ment—independently led—galva
nized the country, the Democratic
Party figured out how to consoli
date it and opportunize off of it.
The success of Dr. King and the
civil right movement meant that
There were no “whites only”
signs on the properties. But the
exclusion of blacks from what was
for many white families the open
ing of the door to the American
Dream was ironclad. That point
was clearly made in a recent ar
ticle about Levittown in the New
York Times, as it was in David
Halberstam’s recent book, The
Fifties.
Yes, Levittown has changed.
Blacks have lived there since the
late 19508, and all evidence sug
geststhey find it a welcomingplace
to live—though it is worth noting
that even today Levittown is more
than 97 percent white. Blacks
make up just one-quarter of one
percent of its nearly 53,000 resi
dents.
But, recalling Levittown’s dis
criminatory beginnings isn’t
merely a matter of a particular
historical interest.
In fact, its past, in and of itself,
and, writ large, bring into sharp
reliefthe devastatingand continu
ing impact discrimination has had
on the ability of African Ameri
cans (and others) to pursue the
American dream.
In that way, recalling
Levittown’s past is vitally impor
tant tothe current “conversation”
we're having about affirmative
action and whether a preferential
treatment that seeks to expand
opportunity is worth pursuing.
Levittown’s history underscores
how much many white families
structural racism had been elimi
nated. Race discrimination was
outlawed and participation in the
political process was secured for
Black America.
With racism ended, the issue for
the country became what to do
about the consequences of racism.
We had lived for 300 years with
racism as an institutionalized ele
ment of everyday life. Slavery had
been abolished only 100 years ear
lier. The social fabric of our soci
ety was deeply corroded by this
social/political/cultural experience.
America needed to go through a
healing process to deal with the
residual anger and outrage of Black
America and to create a unified
country that could move forward
in the national interest.
But the 30 years that followed
the elimination of structural rac
ism were years—not of healing—
but of wheeling and dealing. The
Democratic Party was eager to
translate all of the social move
ments of the 1960 s intoits political
subsidiaries and so it nurtured
identity politics—the elevation of
and competition among fractured
segments of the populal:m based
on racial, cultural gender, ideo
benefited in material, traceable
ways over the past two and three
generations from the most exclu
sionary kind of preferential treat
ment in jobs, housing and school
ing. Itis not a matter of conjecture
or mere assertion. It isevident in
a substantial number of demo
graphic facts that stretch far be
yond Levittown.
It is starkly apparent in the dif
ferent housing profiles of blacks
and whites, as economist
Wilhelmina Leigh, of the Joint
Center for Political and Economic
Studies, wrote in the 1996 issue of
The State of Black America. Her
comparing the sharp differences
in home ownership and home eq
uity for blacks and whites, and the
still-serious barriers tohome own
ership blacks (and Hispanics as a
group) face underscore the enor
mous continuing impact of many
practices—good and bad—of the
past.
As she wrote, “Today’s en
trenched patterns of racial segre
gation and the associated lessened
access to opportunities for school
ing and employment by Black
Americansare thecontinued legacy
of ‘separatebut unequal treatment’
in both the private sector and fed
eral housing assistance programs
that made such developments as
Levittown possible.
Despite significant gainsin home
ownership among blacks—now at
45 percent of black households,
the highest ever (72 percent of
logical and sexual identity—in or
der to do so.
This modus operandi served the
interests of the Democrats—and
the Republicans as well who
quickly learned how to play this
game on the “right”—but not the
interests of the country. As the
Democrats promoted various op
pressed grouping for their own
political purposes, the Republicans
organized the backlash against it,
playing on the incomplete social/
cultural process left in the wake of
the structural elimination of rac
ism and elevating their own iden
tity groupings, e.g. Christian fun
damentalists, veterans, pro-lifers,
etc. The country needed to have
spent the last 30 years creating a
new post-racist political culture
that could bring the country to
gether. Instead, the two parties
spent the last 30 years tearing the
country apart, while taking ex
treme measures to preserve and
institutional their own political
power and that of the corporate
and special interests which run
America.
This 30-year bipartisan gambit,
however, is losing its grip on the
American public. There is still
white households own their home)
—the disparities in the housing
fortunes of blacks and whites re
main striking.
And, as sociologists Melvin L.
Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro
write in their brilliant 1995 book,
Black Wealth/White Wealth, the
discrimination blacks have en
dured and continue to suffer in
seeking housing and in pursuing
capital to buy and maintain hous
ing is a crucial component in the
huge gap between the wealth of
whites and blacks at every income
level. “Reducing that gap,” they
write, “is the challenge for Ameri
can society in the new century.”
“Levittown was an opportunity
tragically lost,” history professor
Kenneth T. Jackson told theTimes.
“There was such a demand for
houses—they had people waiting
inlines—that even ifthey had said
there will be some blacks living
there, white people still would have
moved in.”
If that’s true, William J. Levitt,
the master builder, could have left
the nation an even greater legacy,
suburban mass-produced inte
grated housing. That hedid notis,
unfortunately, what makes
Levittown—in its capacity to ex
pand opportunity and willingness
to include more and more people,
while denying that same opportu
nity to people of color—truly a
symbol of America.
much unresolved outrage on the
part of Black America which,
though still loyal to the Demo
cratic Party, is showing signs of
breaking out of its monolithicalle
giance. In 1997, Black voters
stayed home from the polls in
record numbers and sought out
Republican and independent op
tions in discernible numbers.
There is also a new generation of
young Black adults without the
civil rights era experience to tie
them to the Democratic Party.
Black America is communicating
anew message, aquestion that has
remained unanswered for 30 years.
What do we do now? Where do we
go next?
(See Part II next week.)
Dr. Lenora B. Fulani twice ran
for President of the U.S. as an
independent, making history in
1988 when she became the first
woman and African American to
getontheballotin all 50 states. Dr.
Fulaniiscurrentlyaleading activ
ist in the Reform Party and chairs
the Committee for a Unified Inde
pendent Party. She can be reached
at 800-288-3201 or at
www.Fulani.org.