A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 22, 1997 | by Robert S Woodson

David Shipler's A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America (Knopf, 607 pp) brings to mind my experience of participating in Ted Koppel's televised "town meeting" on racism. As the invited audience took their seats, it soon became clear that blacks were expected to focus on their experience as victims of economic disadvantage and racism and were not welcome to suggest solutions to the problems of their communities. As the cameras prepared to roll, we were prepped for our appearance and urged to think of our best "lynching story."

Shipler's book is, in essence, the unabridged version of that ineffective grievance session. It's not surprising that Shipler can fill hundreds of pages with evidence of racism, given that the majority of commentators he seeks out are individuals whose careers and paychecks rest on the existence of the problem -- corporate trainers on racial sensitivity, instructors of college courses on diversity and the directors of minority-affairs departments within the halls of academia. For those who are less proficient in detecting such grievances, the author devotes an entire chapter to "decoding racism."

The myopic search for evidence of racism perpetrated by whites leads Shipler to hold contradictory stands throughout his book. He criticizes teachers who don't hold black students to the highest standards: "They did not expect the kids to do well, and the kids didn't do well, and so they didn't demand it of them." He continues: "The teachers in question did not burn crosses or wear white sheets.... They stood instead at the center of mainstream America, where racist thoughts and images are quieter, subtler, insidious."

But then, in a sharp turnabout, the author defends the practice of lowering college entrance requirements on the basis of race. "How shameful can it be," he writes, "after generations of imprisonment in inferior educational systems, to score lower on a standardized test? How unfair can it be, after 300 years of white advantage, to spend 30 years redressing the imbalance?"

While it certainly is true that racism exists in this nation, not every case of disparity is evidence of racism. in fact, many of the schools that have failed to educate our children, like many of the agencies that have failed to protect our citizens from criminal activity or to provide them with adequate health care, have operated under the direction of black administrators.

The District of Columbia is a case in point. It has the highest per capita expenditures in the nation yet ranks the lowest in more than 21 quality-of-life indicators. The election and appointment of minority officials has not improved the conditions of low-income blacks because it is not the race of the ruler but the rules of the game that must be changed to make a difference.

To attempt to show that all disadvantage is rooted in racism is to overlook the failures of many individuals within the inner circle of black leadership who have embraced an agenda of victimhood. Shipler decries the dearth of accounts of black achievement in what he sees as a history dominated by white racism, yet the victimization mentality that many black "spokespersons" have used to demand racial preferences also has brought about its own versions of revisionist history.

Sociologist John Sibley Butler points out the shift away from documenting black success in literature: "After slavery, most of the research on black Americans was in a category called `racial uplift.' This research was designed to show the progress of black Americans in the area of education, institutional building, the creation of societies, and business enterprise.... Around the late 1970s, research on black Americans made a complete shift to the study of failure within a hostile racial society. Like a city covered after an earthquake, most of the success of black America was buried and forgotten."

In short, A Country of Strangers is myopic in its mind-set, focused on injuries to be avoided rather than victories to be achieved. Shipler is preoccupied with taking the blood pressure of racist sentiments while the emergency room is overwhelmed with victims of a much more devastating affliction: spiritual and moral disintegration. This disease of spirit recognizes no boundaries of race or income level. Racism, in fact, is but a small part of this larger problem.

Throughout the nation, there are hundreds of men and women, many of whom are low-income and black, who have committed themselves to addressing problems related to this larger moral crisis. Though racial reconciliation was never a goal of these grassroots healers, it became a by-product of their efforts. A restored heart has no room for racism, and transformed individuals respond to the needs of others beyond the boundaries of race and ethnicity.

Granted, racism exists. But the true champions of racial reconciliation are those whose vision goes beyond that problem, instead of dwelling on it.

Robert L. Woodson Sr. is the founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise and author of the forthcoming Triumphs of Joseph: How Today's Community Healers Are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods.