Essay 317

The following appeared in The Chicago Sun-Times. Seemed like an appropriate essay to close out the year…

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Who will replace black history makers?

December 31, 2005

BY JEREMY LEVITT

As 2005 meets her inevitable end, I cannot remember any other year when so many African-American history makers have made their transition. From internationally recognized political activists, businessmen and entertainers to famous lawyers, in 2005 the world has lost some of its most precious human gems.

The list is long and includes, among others, Shirley Chisholm, Johnnie Cochran, Ossie Davis, John H. Johnson, Constance Baker Motley, Rosa Parks, Richard Pryor, C. Delores Tucker, August Wilson and Luther Vandross. With the passing of these irreplaceable great men and women pioneers one wonders whether the strong and dignified black pioneers of yesteryear can be replaced by today’s young black baby boomers (i.e., those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s) and indelibly unconscious Generations X (mid-1960s to mid-1970s) and Y (mid-1970s to 1990s). If you do not know who these great Americans are I encourage you to educate yourself.

My concerns lie not only in the fact that there are few replacements for these history makers, particularly in the political and business realms, but that very few of the small number of possible replacements cherish the values and commitment to black advancement to which these path breakers were so dedicated. This may in part be because the often-quoted cliche, “There is no progress without struggle,” has proved itself all so true among today’s young “Negroes.”

African Americans rank the lowest in nearly all social and health indicators yet consume more depreciable products than any other group in America and perhaps the world. Black Generation Yers, part of a population of about 70 million and an exuberant consumer spending base unlike any generations before them, have been mollycoddled and systematically programmed by baby boomers to embrace and value a culture of materialism, self-centeredness and entitlement rather than the long-held African-American values of hard work, self-sufficiency, excellence in education and black unity.

What is more disconcerting is that young African Americans are becoming more ignorant about their history and culture and seemingly have no concept of civic responsibility and duty. In fact, it is not far-fetched to assert that more Black Generation Yers than not can more accurately recite the lyrics of rap artist 50 Cent than the names of African-American history makers. Ironically, America’s proliferation of Eminem-type Yers seemingly have a greater grasp of black history than their black homeys.

Still worse, many Xers and Yers seem to have fallen victim to a strategic state of subliminal fiction that places a premium on ignorance and a phony and derogatory “gangsta pimp” lifestyle that is demeaning to black existence and propagated by far too many rappers and their corporate sponsors. For your information, Tookie Williams was gangster and Young Buck and Keith Murray are presumably gangsta; but none of them are “black history makers.”

We can attribute the troubled state of black Xers and Yers to numerous phenomena including the crumbling of black family structures; inept public school systems; America’s trashy culture of reality TV that promotes immoral and unproductive thinking and living, and yes, even classic poverty rationale.

The plight of African-American ignorance is, from my experiences, not specific to poor African Americans, but blacks as a whole irrespective of their economic status or educational levels. Ignorance is a state of mind, not a status. More than anything else, black America’s “knowledge gap of self” is changing America for the worse. As a group, African Americans historically have been America’s moral compass, championing the cause of freedom and equality for all Americans, thereby freeing it from the shackles of a slavocratic heritage. Unknown to the younger generation, the contributions of the aforementioned pioneers actually made America a more hospitable place to exist for all, particularly, for black Xers and Yers.

As African-American history makers continue to make their transition to the promised land, black America becomes weaker and more vulnerable to allowing history to repeat itself, though not with apartheid laws and bloody-jawed dogs or lynching ropes and broken hopes, but with a self-perpetuated culture of indiscretion leading to destruction.

Jeremy I. Levitt is a professor of law at Florida International University College of Law and a Distinguished Scholar at Northern Illinois University College of Law.