‘A dream as old as the American dream’: Embrace black patriotism over victimization

1776 Unites-

By Clarence Page:

In 2019, marking 400 years since the first known Africans arrived on these shores from West Africa as slaves, the New York Times launched its ambitious 1619 Project. It aimed to reexamine U.S. history through the lens of black history — as if American history began with the arrival of the first black folks.

The concept was well-intended, and the execution of its first episode well-documented. Yet, it left me feeling that the New York Times missed at least half of the story. By looking through the lens of black victimization, it paid too little attention to what I call “black overcoming” — our victories over adversity and achievements of success, sometimes in conflict but also often in cooperation with people from other races and ethnic groups.

The New York Times incorrectly assumes that the challenges facing particularly inner-city blacks are related to a legacy of slavery and discrimination. This is patently untrue. Let’s look at the issue of poverty and how we’re treated.

Our perceptions are distorted by the “colorization of poverty” in the mid-1960s. Media images of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty” focused mostly on poor whites in Appalachia, where LBJ announced his initiative — and where I later would work with mostly white teens in the Upward Bound program as a college student in 1967. But with the outbreak of riots in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, and other urban centers, news media images of rural poverty were replaced by images from the “ghetto.”

Colorization has had a profound impact on other issues too. In the 1980s, for example, crack cocaine was perceived as a mostly black problem and a law enforcement issue. In the 1990s, opioid addiction was perceived as a mostly rural white problem and a public health issue. read more