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The old expression “numbers never lie” and many other
malicious myths concerning the public portrayal of African
Americans were dispelled last week in a public lecture at
The University of Toledo by esteemed historian Khalil Gibran
Muhammad, Ph.D.
This community enlightenment took place on the heels of the
racially-charged discourse of black pathology spewed by
Congressman Paul Ryan (R. WI) and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News.
“We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities
in particular, of men not working and just generations of
men not even thinking about working or learning the value
and the culture of work,” said Ryan in a radio broadcast and
citing the work of Charles Murray – a conservative who
argues that black intelligence is genetically inferior to
that of whites.
Muhammad is the executive director of the Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture in New York City and author of
The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Criminality and the
Making of Modern Urban America.
In Condemnation of Blackness, Muhammad traces the
seeds of today’s misinterpreted statistics-based racial
analysis back to the turn of the century.
While preaching personal responsibility and ignoring
socioeconomic conditions such as discriminatory laws, the
overrepresentation of blacks in the prison system was
interpreted as definitive proof of blacks’ inferior nature
and pathology (p. 34). Conversely, Muhammad notes, white
scientists and government experts sympathetically portrayed
white criminality and self-destructive behavior as “a
symptom of industrial capitalism and urban life that could
be ameliorated through greater public and private investment
in education, social services, social programs, and public
infrastructure.” Rather than acknowledging problems with the
societal system itself, interpretations pointed the blame
solely at black individuals.
Southerners, used the data to justify “lynching, convict
leasing, and political disenfranchisement” while Northerners
used the statistics to “justify black joblessness,
residential segregation and municipal government neglect of
black neighborhoods “(p. 153).
“The sad part,” Muhammad stressed to the guileless audience,
“is that the wiring of black inferiority is also inside of
black people because we have bought into this misleading
story. When Bill O’Reilly asked President Obama: ‘How come
you don’t shame the gangsta rappers to stop encouraging
black women into having babies out of wedlock?’ The
president responded: ‘Every speech I’ve ever given to black
audiences is exactly what you’re calling for.’ So Obama,
O’Reilly and Paul Ryan are on the same page and that’s
uncomfortable for most of us to accept,” said Muhammad.
Despite the trend in public castigation of poor blacks for
their alleged cultural failures by self-serving and
moralizing blacks attempting to protect their “privileged
status as gatekeepers of the race,” the truth is that the
out-of-marriage births for single white women are now at
exactly the same rate as when Daniel Moynihan’s jaw-dropping
research on the black family mislabeled single black mothers
“the bane of black America’s pathology.”
White unwed birth rates have increased 10 times since the
Moynihan report while black unwed birth rates have but
doubled. “But have you seen anybody on TV saying ‘What’s
wrong with white women having all these babies out of
wedlock?’ You will not hear it discussed in this country
because it doesn’t square with the ideology of white
superiority,” he adds.
Muhammad also pointed out the fact that there are large
numbers of black children who outperform white children in
educational settings yet it is missing from public
discourse.
“Why do we insist on comparing black youth to white youth?
As long as we compare blacks to whites, blacks are going to
lose because it is tied to historic inequality,” he
asserted. “Why don’t we look at black kids as low, middle
and high achievers and study what works when black youth
succeed and excel in school? The answer is that we don’t
have that kind of data. We don’t collect black vs. black
data. We only collect data versus whites, which was designed
as a losing proposition from the beginning.”
Of the performance gap that exists between Asians and
whites, he said: “We don’t view that gap as an indicator of
white failure, only as a commentary on our national lack of
educational achievement. It is because the problem of public
education is narrated through a lens of black
underachievement.
“The reality is that there is also a huge failure rate on
the part of our white children that cuts to the core the
story that we tell about ourselves and our destiny. And
until we own the counter narratives and articulate them,
that’s not going to change.”
The question is: How can we “bust” the malicious rumors and
conservative trafficking in myths of black pathology?
Several challenges greet any attempt to change the public
narrative or implement quality programming that is not based
on the black deficit model.
Like Muhammad, black scholars, social workers and activists
before him such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells used
statistics and cutting-edge social research to defend blacks
against popular racist assumptions by identifying white
supremacy and discrimination as mediating factors. More
black scholarship, although often not taken seriously until
validated by respected white scholars, is needed.
As are vital but scarce financial resources.
“This work cannot be done on the cheap,” Muhammad insisted.
“The work done by the sympathetic advocates for white
criminals and their families was not free work but white
philanthropy and government keep telling black people to pay
for your own uplift because society can’t afford it. That’s
the game we’re playing right now to obtain the type of
critical programs that get inside the heads of our young
people so their identities are strengthened and so they can
speak truth to power.”
Finally, noted Muhammad: “Every civil rights leader and all
of the first generation of anti-colonial leaders of free
African nations were educated people. The Black Panther
movement began on college campuses and in study groups. You
have to be informed. The only way you’re going to
authentically engage and create change is with more study
and more analysis.”
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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