After a weekend of Pat Buchanan and the Ku Klux Klan on the History channel, I've started to consider an interesting question in light of the "United We Stand" catch phrase, "Will Integration Ever Work?"
With MLK Jr. Day celebrations on the horizon and rhetoric about "The Dream" begins its perennial blossom, some might argue that it has. However, after watching Pattie B debate the merits of closing our borders to illegal aliens for the sake of national security (What, to the aboriginal North American is an "illegal alien?"), I think we should reconsider what integration has meant for those for whom the bell first tolled - African Americans.
I would argue that integration, in its current form, will never work. Ideologically, yes - grant everyone some form of liberties, rights, "freedoms," and ambivalent "Rights Acts" will lead the way. Integration, however, has evolved into a three-headed monster of cancerous Proposition 209-like legislation, trite "handout" comments and paradoxical claims of reverse discrimination.
Ironically, it has been the university and my pending departure from it that has made this realization exponentially clear. It seems most 20th Century African-American leaders disagreed on this issue at some point.
What I have noticed as I prepare to enter the "real world" is exactly the point of friction upon many of their disagreements lie. Integration to most African Americans can be loosely tied to King's "Dream" (happy world, hand in hand). Unfortunately, and I fear, maybe the majority of white Americans in the Midwest see integration as African Americans, Latinos and everyone else simply assimilating into some homogeneous culture.
In saying so, I take several liberties. It is safe to say most Americans speak English (for now at least), know who Oprah is, and enjoy a good soft bake pretzel (just ask "Dubya"). Since its imperialist beginnings, however, the diversity of people working together has made America what it is, for better or for worse.
In exploring this issue further, I realize that, standing alone, assimilation isn't such a dirty word; everyone has contributed in some way to "Americanitis." When used synonymously with "integration," however, stinging memories of Post-Reconstruction America come to mind, a time when the identity of many people where called in question and ties to the Old World were cut, or simply renamed (Anglicized).
"My own search for an identity began ... when I looked at the world around me and tried to understand what it was all about." John Henrik Clarke, May 1970.
Much like Clarke, the "Champion of Blackness," I began a similar search for my identity as a freshman during the fall of 1997. It was then during my first days in Muncie I realized I was black. It wasn't my magical box of talking crayons that revealed this elusive concept to me but instead a much simpler scenario. When one of my "excuse mes" in a local Elder Beerman was met with a retort that began with a disparagingly applied "black kid" and ended in a mumbled "n"-word. It was then I was baptized by the American concept of blackness.
During the next five years, blackness would not only be an identity in which I relished, but one I would come to share with this campus. Unlike W.E. B. Du Bois' "veil" or Paul Laurence Dunbar's "mask," I find the "armor" of platinum jewelry, gaudy logo-embroidered clothing, and hyper masculinity shamefully ineffective. Instead I embraced a heritage that, in its essence, is the means by which people like me have used their talents to create a history that bequeaths to their posterity a legacy one can respect. Clarke taught that the ultimate purpose of learning of one's heritage is to develop awareness and pride in oneself so they can achieve and develop good relationships with others.
It is lessons like these that have reinforced the idea that the unique talents of many have made this country what it is. By embracing what people bring to the "pot" as unique entities, we inherently embrace the concept "out of many: one." This is what makes "integration by assimilation," by any game one may play with semantics, a foul concept.
Write to Anthony at neonegro@blackplanet.com
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
