A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Our senior American Literature is probably going to be reading A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry next year. Since I've never read it, I thought it would be a good time to dive in.

It's a play, so it's short. I read it in a few hours.

It tells the story of a working-class black family with the four adults, a matriarch, her son and daughter-in-law, and her college-aged daughter, and one child of the Younger family living in a small two-bedroom apartment. 

They are tired and world-wary, but the promise of a $10,000 life insurance pay out holds out hope. 

Walter is the "man of the home" denied that role by his proud mother. Although it's her money (the settlement is from the death of her husband), Walter has big plans to quit his chauffeur job and buy a liquor store. Mama, wants nothing to do with that. Walter's sister, Beneatha, needs the money for college. She wants to be a doctor. Ruth, the daughter-in-law, and Mama would love a house, with a yard and more living space.

Similar to The Jungle, this family on the edge experiences heartbreak after heartbreak. Once I noticed this similarity, I almost gave up on the book.

Fortunately, little of the book deals with race. It's post-war America and so they are subject to the obvious racism prevalent at the time, but that is not the source of their troubles. Hansberry makes clear that the family has it within their power to better their lives. 

The book ends in dignity and the promise of a better tomorrow. Of course they are not out of the woods and the a reader 50 years in the future knows the outcome could still be bleak. But I really loved the human dignity displayed at the end. 

The title comes from a Langston Hughs poem, "What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ Like a raisin in the sun?" All the Youngers, including the deceased Mr. Younger, have dreams. Those dreams are often frustrated, sometimes thought their choices and sometimes through bad luck. Yet the dream of a dream survives in this book, even when it looks the bleakest.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates by Abraham Lincoln

Although I've read most, if not all, of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in the past, this small (58 pgs.) excerpted form was a perfect encapsulation of the arguments made by Lincoln and Douglas. The rapidity with which the reader can encounter each argument creates an easy-to-follow flow from one debate to the next. It is so much more of an extended conversation than a series of long speeches.

Interestingly, Lincoln is clearly on his heals throughout most of the debates. Although today his argument about the immorality of slavery and its incompatibility with the Founding ideal rings obviously true, it was one he sought to promulgate over enormous obstacles. 

Douglas perfectly captures the zeitgeist by pointing out that the Founders actually left slavery in place. It was Lincoln who sought to upend the delicate balance procured by Jefferson, et. al. Repeatedly Douglas accuses Lincoln of believing that blacks were equal to whites in every way, including as voters and marriage partners. This "bridge too far" kept Lincoln in the unfortunate position of arguing that is not what he meant by saying slavery is incompatible with "All men are created equal." Douglas' rejoinder that the Founders clearly meant "All white men are created equal" seemed an adequate refutation. 

Not until the seventh and final debate is Lincoln finally able to free himself of the web Douglas has wove about him. Lincon shifts gears to say that slavery is morally wrong: 

The real issue in this controversy--the one pressing upon every mind--is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as a wrong...[The Republicans] look upon it as being a moral, social and political wrong; and while they contemplate it as such, they nevertheless have due regard for its actual existence among us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way and to all the constitutional obligations thrown about it...They insist that it should as far as may be, be treated as a wrong, and one of the methods of treating it as a wrong is to make provision that it shall grow no larger...

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles--right and wrong--throughout the world...The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings... It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principal...And whenever we can get rid of the fog which obscures the real question...we can get out from among them that class of men and bring them to the side of those who treat it as a wrong. Then there will soon be an end of it, and that end will be its 'ultimate extinction.' (p. 54)

As Lincoln makes clear, there is no room for someone like Douglas who "doesn't care" whether slavery is voted up or down. If something is wrong, it is wrong. And any moral person must oppose it. To stand by and let it continue or expand is to concur with its basic morality. 

Interestingly, Douglas, after Lincoln's devastating take-down of the "don't care" mindset, reverts to his strongest ground: Lincoln seeks equality in every way. This distasteful ignoring of the real issue suddenly reveals Douglas to be a cowardly racist afraid to state what is plainly true and in full alignment with the Founding of the country.

This book resonated with me greatly and will be a go-to defense of all attacks on Lincoln. 

 

Acting White by Stuart Buck

I heard about Acting White by Stuart Buck a long time ago and always wanted to get around to reading it. It's worth a read. It's interesting, I would not say it was earth-shattering. Mostly it was just heart-breaking.

Buck traces the phenomenon to desperation in the 50s and 60s. "Black schoolchildren, now dispersed into formerly all-white schools, suddenly had to deal with unfriendly classmates on a day-to-day basis. School was no longer a place where black children could avoid interacting with racist people." (p. 4) Therefore, in order to maintain solidarity with their few black classmates, smart black students learned to slow down and regress in their grades lest they be accused of siding up to the enemy and "acting white." 

While this theory sounds plausible on its face, Buck spends most of the book documenting its existence. Early on he states, "The evidence supporting the 'acting white' these is fairly robust: We have over a dozen scholarly studies from the 1970s to 2008 confining that the 'acting white phenomenon does happen, while the studies that are supposed to disprove the 'acting white' are fewer and less reliable." (p. 25) Apparently there has been backlash to this theory contending that it seems to have as its premise that black students don't care about academic achievement. That the gap between black and white students is more properly, in fact, only, explained by the presence of racism, not by social choices students make. 

While Buck does not discount other explanation of the black/white academic gap, he plainly states, "We know that there is a large achievement gap that does not fully disappear even when you look at the most advantaged and wealthy black students being taught by good teachers in good schools. We know that 'acting white' exists to some extent. And we know the peers have a strong effect on how adolescents behave, both in school and elsewhere." (p. 40) Therefore Buck sets out to prove its existence, determine just how large the effect is, and where it came from. 

Buck does extensive research into black attitudes towards education prior to legal desecration and fails to find even one example of the accusation of "acting white" when a black student succeeds. In fact it was the contrary. Black people, having been deprived so long of good education with slavery and Jim Crow, actually placed a very high value on education. The smartest students tended to be the most popular. Teacher and Principals were highly respected. In fact, scholars "are careful to note that [while] they do not romanticize segregation itself, they point out that there were many black segregated schools that offered a good education, that made black children feel at home, and that encouraged black children to pursue education with passion." (p. 56) No one argues that we should return to segregation, however, it appears that under that system, blacks were able to create some well-run, tight-knit schools that served the community well. In fact, some of these school offered Classical Education of the type offered to the Founding Fathers. And many black families and students sought out that kind of rigorous education.

With official desegregation policies in place, "black schools all across America were closed or drastically redesigned... As a result, the safe and sheltering environment of black schools—once the center of the black community—disappeared. In their place was the integrated school, which was more unfriendly to black students, and less likely to feature black role models of academic success. As a result, black students become alienated from the world of school. The began to think of the school as a 'white' institution." (p. 74) This is a heart-breaking tragedy in which well-meaning policies were put in place with disastrous affects. Black students were ripped from their safe, nurturing school, full of loving teachers, mentors, and supporters, to a place where rabid racists make it more than clear that the students were not welcome and didn't belong. Is it any wonder that black students believed what they were being told? These black students largely did not feel part of the new schools, where they no longer felt at home, and began to withdraw into themselves.

Unfortunately desegregation was put into place in a fashion almost designed to hurt black students, parents, teachers, and principals. While some areas postponed it as long as possible, they would occasionally build brand new black schools to show that separate could, in fact, be equal. These new schools were a source of pride and community to the blacks they served. Yet when finally forced to integrate, no whites wanted to attend a black school. The integration only went one direction. Some of the brand new schools were demolished or decommissioned. The black teachers and principals were often fired. Few white schools wanted or needed the black teachers. And while sometimes there was an effort to include black principals in the new system, often they were passed over and demoted over time. The black students were sent to multiple schools, well outside of their neighborhoods in many cases. Seeing few familiar faces, and facing daily harassment from teachers as well as students, the ostracized new students had to stick together. It was social survival. Black role models, mentors, and counselors simply disappeared. 

From the white teachers and administrators perspective, they had a very hard needle to thread. The fact was that often the black schools were inferior. Understandably, the black students often arrived on campus behind their peers. Black schools often did not receive quality materials or the best teachers. Their buildings were often dilapidated. They simply did not have the resources the white schools had. When the black students arrived, significantly behind, they were grouped into remedial classes. This painted a stark picture of what the white parents and educators feared. The blacks couldn't keep up. If a black student happened to be particularly bright and was able to compete at a high level, she would often be one of only one or two black students in the class. This further stigmatized and isolated the student, who felt cut off from everything familiar. A teacher who may have been sympathetic to the new black students could also compound the problem by patronizing the black students and fail to hold them to the same high standards to which she held the others. 

One black educator remarked, "Black kids are not hungry now... They don't hunger and thirst for education. And the reason they don't hunger is because nobody tells them that they need to hunger and thirst for education. Once they went into the integrated situation there was no one pushing them." (p. 111)

Furthermore, discipline became an issue. If a black student was punished for misbehaving, the student could always point to racism as the cause. In an all black school, parents backed up teachers and administrators because they knew them and they knew the school was doing what was best for their child. In the integrated schools, this trust was destroyed. It hardly mattered if the black student was actually guilty, too often racism played a role in discipline and having that as an easy excuse affected both blacks and whites. 

The heart of Buck's book is stories told by those that lived it. One woman said, "In our segregated neighborhoods and schools we didn't feel deprived, we didn't even know that we lacked self-esteem, we were happy and secure in our all-black neighborhoods and our all-black schools. We felt that we belonged, hell, we did belong. There was no fear of trying to join the band or the drill team, or of trying out for cheerleader." (p. 129) Story after story tells the same narrative. Desegregation introduced a destabilizing effect on black students that reverberates until today. Although Buck makes clear that he not arguing for a return to segregation, the people he talks to express a painful nostalgia for a time gone by when black communities experienced real pride in their educational achievements. For many of these students, being black became a burden. For the first time, they didn't look like their classmates, teachers, and administrators. Being black became an important identity. Acting in a way, that is "acting white," directly undercut this new identity. In heart-breaking story after heart-breaking story adults recall a lost world full of high hopes and dashed dreams. 

The critics of Buck's theory believe that it cannot be true. If black students intentionally forgo educational opportunities, that would indicate an inexcusable form of stupidity. However, Buck shows repeatedly that it is not stupidity that causes a student to fear the "acting white" label. It is a form of rational self-preservation. However, despite schools returning to largely segregated schools with the end of forced segregation, the attitude has been born and bred and remains in the water, so to speak. Gifted black students have internalized the idea that to act in a way different from the majority of their peers is to reject their peers and have their peers in turn reject them. That is simply too high a hurdle for most students. In fact, the more the black community feels beleaguered and oppressed, but more important it becomes to stick together. Therefore any outlier has to be punished with social ostracism a the least. 

Buck finishes up with the most unsatisfying part of the book: What Can Be Done. Honestly, he offers a feeble "not much." He believes sex-segregated schooling might help. Possibly competition between schools instead of individual grades. These would help for more community within the school leading the black identity to take on a less pronounced role. No matter what, it's a mess and we are currently heading in the wrong direction. 

White Guilt by Shelby Steele

I had been wanting to read White Guilt by Shelby Steele for some time. The racial unrest of 2020 provided an opportunity for me to revisit this desire. 

I am so glad I read this book. Originally written in 2006, its thesis had aged well and therefore has the authority of truth. 

Steele argues that after whites acknowledged their horrific wrongs vis-a-vis treatment of black fellow citizens, an implicit agreement was made: in exchange for a chance to regain the moral authority lost, whites would work to level the playing field for blacks as well as the outcomes, while blacks need only wait for whites to serve them. This explosive concept, that white guilt motivates whites and indulges and infantilizes blacks, is so radically different from the current narrative that it shocks the conscious. Yet it hold up well as an explanation for our current situation. 

Steele weaves his own autobiography of growing up in segregated Chicago into the broader narrative of what went wrong. He saw first-hand his parents struggle in the non-violent protests of Martin Luther King, their stunning victory, the legal reforms, and the inability of many blacks to take their winnings and create successful lives for themselves. The rapidity of whites acknowledgement of their failure simply stunned blacks into a place of not exactly knowing what to do. After you have vanquished the foe, then what? Steele argues that is the time for blacks to take responsibility for their own lives and for whites to treat blacks as autonomous fellow citizens. 

The opposite happened. 

Steele is a perfect example. In college, after seeing his parents model famously succeed, he turned to radical black power movements. As he analyzes his inappropriate anger, he comes to the conclusion that blacks, fearful of the prospective of finally being able to live free, lashed out. "Anger is acted out by the oppressed only when real weakness is perceived in the oppressor. So anger is never automatic or even inevitable for the oppressed; it is chosen when weakness in the oppressor means it will be effective in winning freedom or justice or spoils of some kind. Anger in the oppressed is a response to perceived opportunity, not injustice. And expressions of anger escalate not with more injustice but with less injustice." (p. 21) It's too much; Freedom is overwhelming. Worried about not being able to succeed on their own merits, black decided to demand more and more from a guilty nation. When more did not prove enough, rage resulted. 

After college, Steele went to work administering the very plans he and his fellow blacks had demanded. It was this experience that convinced him that black success did not lie in whites' hands. You cannot give a person success. He must earn it. He noticed black rejected the help, instead preferring riots and destruction. He saw an almost direct correlation between the amount of white guilt and black's demands. The more white guilt, the less blacks demanded of themselves. This explains why so much of the protests centered on college campuses. The white guilt displayed by the university administration invited protests. 

Steele sums up his thesis: "Black America faced two options. We could seize on the great freedom we had just won in the civil rights victories and advance through education, skill development, and entrepreneurialism combined with an unbending assault on any continuing discrimination; or we could go after these things indirectly by pressuring the society that it wronged us into taking the lion's share of responsibility in resurrecting us. The new black militancy that exploded everywhere in the late 60s – and that came to the find a strategy for black advancement for the next four decades — grew out of black America‘s complete embrace of the latter option." (p. 58)

Steele tells a hypothetical and yet heart-breaking story of a young black boy. As a student, he is pardoned for poor grades. White racism after all explains his failure. His education is dumbed down and expectations on him plummet. Yet outside the schoolroom window is a basketball court. He knows his failure to prove his bona fides on the court will provoke ridicule and estrangement. Therefore, given the choice between homework or free throw practice, he knows where to put his efforts. He is expected to prove himself through his efforts on the court. He is not expected to prove himself through his efforts in the classroom. As an interesting aside, we can see that where blacks are given the least amounts of hand outs and the most expectation of meritocratic behavior, they will succeed in a dramatic fashion. The black community has proven time and again, that unleashed from white, debilitating "help" they are capable of amazing achievement.

"The greatest black problem in America today is freedom. All underdeveloped, formally oppressed groups first experience new freedom as a shock and humiliation because freedom shows them they’re underdevelopment and their inability to compete as equals. Freedom seems to confirm all the ugly stereotypes about the group – especially the charge of inferiority – and yet the group no longer has the excuse of oppression. Without oppression – and it must be acknowledged the blacks are no longer oppressed in America – the group itself becomes automatically responsible for its inferiority and non-competitiveness. So freedom not only comes as a humiliation but also as an overwhelming burden of responsibility. Thus, inevitably, there is a retreat from freedom." (p. 67)

With crushing accuracy, Steele states, "How could a people that has survived centuries of slavery and segregation — through ingenuity, imagination, and great courage — get this confused, this alienated from man’s most elemental power: responsibility? Because freedom scared the hell out of us – our first true fall, our first true loss of innocence – and because there was nothing less than a locomotive of white guilt coming our way and hungering to prop us up in our every illusion. White guilt has wanted nothing more than to confuse our relationship to responsibility, to have us feel responsibility as an injustice, a continuation of our oppression. It exploited our tear of freedom and precisely the same way that plantation owners once exploited our labor. Whites needed responsibility for our problems in order to gain their own moral authority and legitimacy. So they set about — once again – to exploit us, to encourage and even nurture our illusions, to steal responsibility from us, to take advantage of our backwardness just as slave traders had once done on the west coast of Africa. Suddenly, in the age of white guilt, we were gold again." (p. 69)

Steele analogizes his own coming of age as a teenager to the surrounding cultural circumstances. Like most teenagers, he rebelled against his parents. Although he believes that most rebellious children are secretly safe in the knowledge that their parents are actually right and actually know the best way forward, blacks "came of age" when the "parents" (whites) were actually wrong. When a teenager confronts an actually guilty parent, that will likely result in more teenaged rebellion. After all, by what moral authority does a guilty parent tell a youngster what to do? And not only does the guilt of the parent seem to absolve the child of any moral responsibility for his own life, when the guilty parent indulges the child's rage and entitlement mentality, the teenager will never learn to be responsible. In order to assuage their own guilt, whites were perfectly willing to indulge a recalcitrant black population. 

Not only did whites lose the moral authority granted them by the idea of white supremacy, whites lost the authority to promote any values that might be heralded by whites in general. "Whites also lost a degree of they authority to stand proudly for the values and ideas the had made the West a great civilization despite its many evils." (p. 109) Whites could not demand of blacks the same things they would demand of their own children. It seemed too white to demand responsibility and hard work. Even the Smithsonian has recently stated these timeless values that lead to successful people are vestiges of white supremacy. Therefore blacks were denied the very tools that would help them succeed. And when they failed, as many inevitably did, that was seen a further failure of whites to provide for blacks. Therefore the cycle of poverty began. Whites refused to provide blacks with the tools necessary for success and provided material resources instead. Blacks failed. Whites beat themselves up for their failure and provided more material resources and fewer tools. Not once did whites stop to think that maybe their "help" was actually hurting, because the "help" provided did double duty: it avoided "blaming the victim" and it assuaged white guilt. Win-win.

Yet it is not a win for blacks. It keeps them perpetually at the mercy of the very people said to be oppressing them. Never are blacks told to use their freedom to achieve their own success. Through the exploitation of, and desire to alleviate, white guilt, blacks are kept in a perpetually inferior condition. 

"So post 60s American liberalism preserves the old racist hierarchy of whites over blacks as virtue itself; and it grants all white who identify with it a new superiority. In effect, it says you are morally superior to other whites and intellectually superior to blacks. The white liberals reward is this feeling that because he is heir to the knowledge of the West, yet morally enlightened beyond the West's former bigotry, he is really a 'new man,' a better man than the world has seen before." (p. 148) This perfectly aligns with C.S. Lewis' observation, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

The tragedy of this new focus on alleviating white guilt produced an obsession with "disassociation." No longer could whites defend time-honored principles because these were now associated with racism. The "good" white must disassociate himself from all vestiges of the past no matter how proven or principled. We see this today in the tearing down of statues, even of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. We joke they are not sufficiently "woke." In reality, they represent a world of insufficient white guilt. They, in their own fallen and flawed ways, advocated principles, that however virtuous, are tainted by the vices of their spokesmen. Therefore the principles must be thrown out with the people. The more a white person "disassociates" from the past the more virtuous. The actual virtuosity of this "new man" is completely meaningless. 

What is Steele's recommendation now? He advocates the hard work of reclaiming timeless values for all men despite the taint given them by imperfect humans. He says we must see each other as individuals and not members of a group. We, in fact, must see each other, really see each other. For too long we have treated each other as means to an end. Whether it's more spoils or more virtue, we have used each other for our own gain. It must end. 

However, with the recent spate of racial unrest, the country is moving in exactly the opposite direction. When "Top CEOs Vow to Hire 1 million Black Americans" screams from the headlines, we can see we are treating humans as things to me manipulated. Objects to be moved around at the will of white Americans. 

Some, who agree with Steele, see hope for pushback against this mentality. Steele himself says it puts the Right in the enviable position of defending equality and liberty, easy sells. However, I think the forces that push fallen humans to "prove" they are good people apart from Jesus' sacrifice are simply too strong. As long as people can buy cheap grace by offering blacks crumbs, they will jump at the chance. The fact that it keeps blacks infantilized and will never end the "virtue" cycle is irrelevant. As long as whites can convince themselves that they are the good guys, they will continue to oppress and lord over blacks, in the name of helping. The impulses of racism remain. It is just dressed in fancier finery.