A little background information for the
following story:
I could not accept the explanations about blacks' inherent
inferiority which all white Americans carry in their innermost hearts. "Our
ancestors came over dirt poor and made it. Why can't they?" A veil was however
lifted for me when I came close to two such "poor" immigrants: Lidy Manselles
from Haiti and Mrs. Pabst from Russia. It is not at all a coincidence that Lidy
became my first black girlfriend. At first, American-born black women seemed to
me like untouchables locked up behind an invisible barrier. Lidy clearly
belonged to another, freer world. Never did that strike me so much as one day
when we stood talking to an alcoholic on a doorstep in Harlem when all of a
sudden Lidy burst out with contempt and condescension: "Why don't you get a job?" - an insensitivity which immediately
destroyed the conversation. Later she even said something like "I hate them. I
hate these lazy animals." I immediately felt that this was a clash far deeper
than between two nationalities: it was the disdain of a free culture towards a
deeply immured slave culture. For Lidy - although jet black and catholic -
represented better than anyone the "white protestant work ethic." And she was
no exception among those blacks who have arrived without chains. Through Lidy I
gained access to the tightly knit West Indian community in Brooklyn. Like
earlier immigrants, they work fanatically hard, save money, take pride in
education and owning their own home, and universally speak of the importance of
a strong family. With their sacrifice and fierce determination they are
staunchly opposed to welfare in total contrast to the surrounding black
communities where 40% are on welfare. Their neighborhoods are as clean and
racist toward native blacks as Italian and Irish neighborhoods. In less than
one generation - faster than most white immigrants - their income has reached a
staggering 94% of the average American family income even including the many
poor still arriving. Since 1% of the American population own or control more
than 30%, of the wealth, we may find that the West Indian immigrants are doing
better than the majority of whites, even though they come from much poorer and
more illiterate countries than most Europeans came from. In contrast, native
blacks make only 56% of white income. Under Kennedy and Johnson they were
allowed a rate of progress which perhaps in 500 years would have given them
equality, but with the conservative policies of Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan
they are today rapidly slipping backwards. Until the 1960's one third of all
black professionals were in fact immigrants. Some of these were skilled when
they arrived, but it is at any rate a tremendous indictment of American racism
that these dirt poor islands, with far fewer blacks than America, can produce
such a wealth of talent. Their chattel slavery was basically similar to the
American and they are descended from the same tribes in Africa. So what makes
the black immigrants twice as successful as native blacks? Why do travelers to
post-slavery countries usually conclude that West Indian and Latin American
blacks seem "proud and fiercely independent" in comparison with the "crushed,"
"broken," and "dependent" blacks in the American underclass? Why is fear and
hatred still the basic ingredient of the relationship between blacks and whites
in America while lynchings, cross burnings and race riots as well as defense
organizations such as the NAACP and the Panthers are totally unknown in Brazil? There is no
satisfactory answer other than once again concluding that slavery has not ended
in America. The black immigrants have in other words become the new "free
Negroes" that existed during chattel slavery. Their initiative and
resourcefulness is not broken by slavery's psychologically devastating
two-edged sword of liberal condescending benevolence and conservative racist
cruelty - the dangerously intertwined
paternalism and infernalism which define effective slavery. They are too proud
to take the first and have not been trained for a century to be defeated by the
second. Their psychology, unshaped by American racism, thus encourages them to
resist, much the same way Jews in Europe often succeeded in spite of
anti-Semitism.
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