Black Folks Be Gone! Conspiracy? No, Reality

By Walter L. Hilliard III

The conscious and unconscious effort to kill off Blacks and divide Black families became less obvious after segregation started being dismantled (including the desegregation of the schools with Brown vs. Board of Education) and the Civil Rights Movement (including the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965) came and went.  Before desegregation the Black family unit was strong and intact; we had our own businesses and banks.  There was no such thing as 43 percent of Black women having never been married.  Post segregation, the trouble for Black people, Black families, gradually escalated.  Also, a key contemporary indicator of our negative Black condition is revealed by the fact that about 27.4 percent of Blacks were in poverty in 2010 (compared to 26.6% of Hispanics and 9.9% of non-Hispanic Whites), according to the National Poverty Center.  And consider that according to one 2011 study conducted by Princeton University researcher Daniel Schneider, those who are less likely to have accumulated assets like a car, home and money in the bank, or those who are poor, particularly poor and Black, are less likely to marry, especially earlier in their marriageable years.

But Blacks have become so consumed with fear and delusion, they now refuse to acknowledge their dire circumstances because the reality, in their minds, is just too much to fathom, particularly since 2008 with the tanking of the economy, a period, and thereafter, in which we lost untold amounts of wealth, particularly through the loss of our homes.  The reality of our demise is like a boogie man that lingers in the back of our minds like the impending specter of a bad dream coming true.  Black folks are hyper sensitive or full of fear: act up, and you could lose your job – or even your life, like Martin, Malcolm.  You could even be murdered by the FBI like many members of the Black Panther Party.  You could be beaten like Rodney King or murdered like Trayvon Martin, any day, anytime by the police, like thousands of Black men, and even women, every year.

The crack cocaine epidemic of the mid-to-late 1980s, whereby the CIA allowed the contras and drug traffickers to bring drugs into the United States, thus, allowing cocaine/crack cocaine to spread across the country like wildfire, leading to mass crime and incarceration, drug addiction, parent-less children, and other issues.

Adding to the aforementioned problems, consider that if Black women wanted to receive their miniscule welfare benefits, they could not allow their Black men, the fathers of their children, to live in the home.  This also caused divisiveness because many of these Black women became the power brokers in the family for the first time and, truth be told, the power went to many of their their heads and created yet another “system”-created, divide-and-conquer chasm between Black men and women.  Not to mention that the image of the Black man, as being less than a man or not a provider, continued to take root.

Additionally, with the reality of a declining Black populace, in comparison to, say, Hispanics, and because about a million Black men are locked up, it is obvious, but almost always overlooked, that these men cannot reproduce and are also being exposed to homosexuality and prison rape, as well as are incarcerated Black women.  But nobody talks about this.

So incarceration produces fatherless, sometimes motherless — or even parent-less — Black households headed by grandparents, usually grandmothers, raising their children’s children.  And add to this the fact that Black men don’t live as long, particularly because of violence and health issues (lack of healthcare or sufficient treatment); thus, so many Black men just aren’t around.

Is this why we now see young Black girls, a relatively new Black phenomena, cutting their hair, wearing baggy clothes, calling themselves studs and acting like men.  The paradigm of the Black male-headed household, with a man and woman, has changed to a large degree.  How can one not consider the fact that this is partly a result of so many Black homes, nearly 70 percent, being single parent homes, homes mostly headed by women?  Many of these young girl studs even “act” like pimps, using and abusing feminine young Black girls, who call themselves Fems.

Adding to this problematic, largely unnoticed, redefining of Black gender roles is the fact that the gay White movement has sought out Black advocates, as well as bullied Black leadership, athletes and entertainers into doing anti-gay commercials and apologizing for even a hint of anti-gay rhetoric.  Kobe Bryant has apologized for a gay comment during a game; Jay Z has come out in support of Barack Obama stating he supports gay marriage; Black pastors, addicted to the power of their affiliation with the Democratic Party Political Machine, are now saying they support Obama’s stance on gay marriage.  Black TV personality Roland Martin was even punished by CNN for “perceived” anti-gay comments.  He said:   “Ain’t no real bruhs going to H&M to buy some damn David Beckham underwear! . . . If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! . . . I bet soccer fan Piers Morgan will be in line at H&M in the morning to get his hands on David Bechman’s (sic) underwear line!”  The gay group GLAAD tried to get CNN to fire Martin and even made a petition available for people to sign.   Martin’s comments weren’t an issue of homophobia, but GLAAD’s behavior was a definite example of Blackaphobia and heterophobia.

How Ridiculous!

The bottom line is that – and the media doesn’t talk about it – Black people, and especially Black men, generate fear in other races, particularly Whites, in general, whether it be a cab in NY refusing to pick up a Black man, or a White women clutching her purse on an elevator.  Even when the OJ trial was going on, magazines like Time were darkening the skin color of OJ.

Add to these issues, the fact that half – that’s half – of Black kids in large and midsized cities are dropping out of high school, which renders them largely unemployable, unable to provide for their families.

Yes, even our future, our Black kids, are going to have it as hard as we did when it comes to racism.  Maybe things are even worse now because at least Black folks were willing to riot, and did so, in the 1960s.  And Black athletes and entertainers back then were socially conscious and held one another accountable.  Today – nobody cares.  The police still murder Black men, the prisons lock us up, and we’re more afraid than ever to speak up.   Even Obama (he doesn’t deserve to be called president) says nothing about Black kids dying everyday to violence.

And this is inexcusable.