Tuesday, February 24, 1998
The two nations of classist America
RACE: Analysts too quick to examine wrong parts of African
American life
By Kevin Powell
Watching Henry Louis Gates Jr.¹s recent PBS documentary on
the class division among African Americans was akin to watching
tribal warfare in 3-D.
By that I mean to say I expected a thoughtful and serious
analysis of the class crisis afflicting African American America,
but was left feeling that the African American underclass was
mercilessly battered, only this time by members of the African
American middle class or, more precisely, the African American
intellectual elite.
As someone who is both a product of the African American
underclass and, through an incredible amount of effort, a African
American professional, I have been fortunate enough to view class
problems in African American America from both sides. Moreover, my
experiences as a ³successful² young African American
person  the numerous high-profile, rhetoric-driven panels
I¹ve attended on the state of the race, and, yes, all those
invitations to Martha¹s Vineyard  have left me wondering
what is wrong, intellectually and spiritually, with the African
American middle class.
For my reading of history tells me that Booker T. Washington,
W.E.B. DuBois, and Martin Luther King Jr., among others, were
forever concerned with, and had an understanding of, the plight of
the folks at the bottom, in spite of their individual attainments
and the accolades they received from the mainstream. Have we
forgotten so quickly, for example, that middle class born-and-bred
King planned a poor people¹s march just prior to his
assassination?
As a beneficiary of the civil rights movement, I am completely
perplexed by many of today¹s African American politicians,
leaders, ministers, and intellectuals. That sense of doing for self
as one does for the community has evaporated and has been replaced
by a gigantic ³I,² as in a self-serving individualism.
Why else would we be subjected to a mini-autobiography of Gates
inside a documentary ostensibly about African American class
issues? And do we really care if Gates was terrified of the African
American Panther Party, or that he seems to have been,
miraculously, a part of every civil rights organization?
Those points aside, the bigger piece missing from both the
documentary and contemporary African American criticism of the
African American underclass is an honest assessment of the real
victories and losses of the civil rights movement, and how that
movement, in more ways than we dare to acknowledge, helped to draw
a solid line between the African American middle class and the
African American poor.
For how many of these pundits, Gates included, have ever sat
down and really asked who benefited from the movement and why? And
who did not benefit, and why not? And, was integration and its
manifestations really the best thing for African American America?
Particularly when it virtually eliminated African American-operated
facilities and resources and caused the African American underclass
to swell out of control?
I submit that in our rush to integrate into America, many
African Americans simultaneously abandoned our institutions, our
communities, and whatever sense of collectivity we once had. (Or,
imagine, if you will, Harvard¹s cerebral ³Dream
Team² at a historically African American college like Howard
or Hampton instead. What would that have done for the prestige of
one of those schools?)
Even if one argues that Washington and DuBois  or Marcus
Garvey and DuBois, or Malcolm and Martin  never agreed, I
think we can certainly say they were concerned about the standing
of African American America. I don¹t know if I can say that
about the current crop of African American spokespersons. Class
interest has supplanted the race question, which remains, at least
where I come from and where I live in Harlem, as acute as it has
ever been.
And those class interests held onto tightly by the African
American elite seem to blind them (as in ³they,² which
was used again and again in the documentary in reference to the
African American underclass) to a very hard fact: when African
Americans jumped ship for integration a generation ago, they also
left behind poor African Americans to wallow in despair and
powerlessness.
I feel strongly that many urban youth embrace rap culture the
way we do, and feel there are little or no possibilities beyond
being a rapper, a basketball player, or a street hustler, because
that is what we see on a regular basis. Sorry, but we are simply
not engaged by many ³intellectuals² in Harlem. Not in the
way that DuBois once lived and worked here, nor the way Garvey led
African American- pride caravans here, nor the way Langston Hughes
penned ghettocentric poetry here, nor the way Malcolm X strolled,
carefree, through these gritty streets. Those sort of genuine
connections don¹t seem to exist any longer.
Indeed, visit any American inner city and note how few African
Americans  young or old  actually know who Gates or
William Julius Wilson or Cornel West are. But this African American
intellectual sect, under the guise of examining African American
America¹s class divisions, self-righteously give their take
anyway, as Gates admits ³I find it hard to concede that these
young hoodlums are part of the same community I belong
to.²
The challenge for Gates and the others is this: If you are
serious about examining the two nations of African American
America, you must also be serious about examining yourselves and
your class actions. Otherwise, we are left, again, with armchair
quarterbacks who appear to have no vision, and no hope for the
whole of African American America.Powell is the author of
³Keepin¹ it Real  Post-MTV Reflections On Race,
Sex, and Politics.² He was an original cast member on
MTV¹s ³The Real World.² E-mail him at
[email protected].