7:01 P.M.
Yesterday, the nation-in part- paused, reflected with a somewhat reverent solemnity to mark 50 years to the day that an assassin's bullet silenced the arbiter of peace, the drum major for justice whose eloquent, muscular prose and Gandhian inspired non-violent protest called out a nation's hypocrisy when it came to the inalienable rights for all of its citizens espoused in its venerated parchments known as the Constitution.
I couldn't help but reflect on the similitude of 1968 and 2018, a full half century of glacial progress on some issues and tectonic shifts in others. The nation's report card, the bounced check that Dr. King noted during the tumultuous era of the Civil Rights movement needs to be updated, critiqued, reviewed and digitized. The algorithm often referenced to denote the progress of blacks in this country is a comparative analysis of their collective socioeconomic position to that of whites. I have always found that metric inherently flawed and contextually problematic. The 260 years of arrested development of survivors of the Diaspora make evaluations of economic, social, and political currency difficult to extrapolate. The collective net worth of all African Americans is still less than two percent of the nation's overall wealth even though we comprise 12 percent of the population. A microcosm of this wealth inequality is found in a glimpse at the list of American billionaires (563) and the wealth they control ( 2.8 TRILLION). According to Forbes most recent publication, only 3 on that list are black. In fact, the top 3 men on the list's combined net worth exceeds that of all 42 million blacks COMBINED!
The past 50 years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of blacks holding office at the local, state and federal level, including the highest office in the land. However, this political capital has for the most part only served to enrich the lives of those holding office because the collective socioeconomic status of their constituents has at best seen marginal improvements mostly in the form of services rendered versus material gains in employment and the amassing of wealth. The carceral state-the American prison system-has become a robust private enterprise generating billions in revenue for private shareholders. It has re-purposed itself from the old Jim Crow era peonage model into a convict labor leasing supply chain producing products consumed globally. The population driving this business model is disproportionately black men who as products of economically distressed communities ( read-hood) replete with under funded schools and marginal, substantive employment opportunities, represent the de facto raw material for this targeted labor class.
The ascension of a political dilettante effusively spewing race-tinged demagoguery exposed the myth that the state of race relations in the post-millennial age, especially after having Barack Obama as POTUS- dismantled the racist shackles that besmirched this nation's history. This country has waged wars on: poverty, crime, and drugs. The one demographic caught in the cross hairs of ALL three have been primarily people of color with overwhelmingly negative outcomes. Are blacks in this country better off than the day Dr. King was murdered? Unequivocally, yes! We are better off financially, educationally, socially and politically. But the metrics to evaluate this amelioration is at times fuzzy. You have to measure the progress of blacks in the aggregate, not just point out that black females are the most well educated group when conversely their average net worth is a micro fraction of white women. We have a presence in every industrial and economic sector of this great nation but the tribalism that has spawned over the past year is a reminder that in the mind of some "Amuricans" we will always be seen as visitors, infringers, and parasitic agitators of the anachronistic status quo.
Yet, I still dream!
