Earlier today, I met a young woman of conviction. From a conservative Catholic family in the Bay Area, she grew up as the Black Sheep in her family. She lived in curiosity while caught up in the madness of Antifa. Her introspection and intuition led the young truth seeker to pattern recognition and self awareness about cult behavior. Today, she exists outside the world of dogma and slogan words.
My most intriguing ideas have come from thought in solitude. I withdraw into myself and sus out interesting vibes, angles, in conforming times. This evening, it occurred to me that dogma and slogan words are particularly limiting for mainstream Black Americans. Consider a normal person who grew up in middle America. One lived on a safe street surrounded by two-parent neighbors. Was there anyone who did not have a mom and dad at home? At one’s predominately white suburban school, half of black students came from smart and gifted black American families. Families were on the ball, not wards of the state. The zeitgeist was the American Dream.
About 45 IQ points separated the people I am thinking of from the mean IQ85 level of black Americans. The difference is comparable to the difference between 100IQ and 55IQ.
Dogma of racial solidarity means my imagined black individuals are linked by fate with those who may be less curious about life. Those who lived examined lives are supposed to live in affinity with those who live unexamined lives. It is impolitic to speak directly to these differences, so differences are suppressed and unacknowledged in the interest of preventing a united racial front to the larger world. Indeed, the virtue signaling can become very intense which is why the most “privileged” black Americans can be the most captured by dogma and slogan words. Old Black American families are trained to speak in tongues about Blackness. Blackness is Oppression. Nothing Else Matters.
The most authentic black individuals in black American families may be those who grew up most distant from their racial group. See Mary Twilight Scott in Gotterdammerung for support of this idea. It is a different world for those who are mainstream.
It is late and my ideas are inchoate. Might there be unprocessed shame in living an inauthentic life? Suppose one gains from the narrative that black Americans are poor and oppressed? I have a cousin who is probably a millionaire due to minority set aside contracts. He did not grow up as a slave or sharecropper but he profited from the narrative of black oppression. Should my relative feel shame? Thomas Sowell has written that affirmative action benefits the most elite “…the upper crust of preferred groups reaped the lion’s share of benefits. Affirmative action is never rejected, however, because it is evaluated in terms of its rationales and goals rather than its actual consequences.”
My relative has a big suburban home and unprocessed black shame, I suggest.
Conclusion: More intellectuals and scholars and writers should delve into unprocessed shame. When black American individuals far removed from the race narrative in cognitive ability and childhood memories reap the harvest of dogma and slogan words, how does the fortunate cousin process the disconnect? How does a young Old American Black Family scion squeeze her pleasant upbringing into an oppressed black group narrative? Is there shame and, if so, how does the shame manifest?
Upon upon a time, I only understood Blackness as enterprise, high achievement, striving, two-parent homes, tradition. Those were better days before dogma and slogan words suitable for lesser minds. Here is a story of a normal black American student back in the day:
I recall interviewing Aleta Payne for my honors thesis about public school desegregation in Chesterfield County. Aleta had never known a day of public school segregation. When I asked Aleta about her race consciousness as a high school senior at Loyd C. Bird in 1983, Aleta replied she never thought about race except when it came to college admissions and dating. Aleta was second in her class in her 92% white suburban small-town school.
Consider the tremendous growth wrought between the Brown decision in 1954 and Aleta’s racial mindset in 1983, her generation having only known desegregation unlike ancestors.
Aleta would later attend the University of Virginia. Not Virginia State College or Howard or Spelman but the same college her peers were applying to. Isn’t this the harvest of Brown, that a smart black senior who never knew school segregation would apply to the same top colleges and universities as her peers?
Today, Bird High School is 40% black and ranks below average. Student life is troubled with a loaded gun at school incident, a threat of violence called in, and a loaded magazine found in a locker. AP course participation is noticeably below the state average.
Once again you have given me a LOT to think about…
I am always curious about people and things!