"RACIAL CONSCIOUSNESS"

"RACIAL CONSCIOUSNESS " Similar suffering should conduce to substantially similar sentiments, but they have not always done so, rigidly, in American history, in either the blacks nor, especially, in the whites. Here, classes of poorer "whites" possess privileges of "whiteness" to protect them from the usual brutal burdens borne exclusively by non-whites. All they need to do is to accept uncritically the creed, the practice and perquisites, of white supremacy; should they choose to accept their 'whiteness' privileges. Fortunately, not all whites have chosen to be constrained by the carrot and stick contradictions, in that pervasive cultural syndrome. Some have chosen or succumbed to martyrdom like John Brown or Viola Liuzzo or Rev. Elijah Lovejoy. Others have less dramatically, less traumatically, helped out in myriad other ways, quietly, individually. White supremacists are violent and belligerent liars, who will kill anyone and subvert anything in opposition. Among the blacks, some of the most heavily burdened have been traitors or informants, while some of the least burdened have been leaders, and vice-versa, judging from history's friends, foes, foibles. Therefore neither the classic 'class' nor 'racial' analyses enjoy exclusive currency in analyzing the American dilemma. More, much more, is at play within our paradoxical political and economic paradigm, than merely race or class, though both are historically predominant, surely! These thoughts occur to me as I read the words of early 20th century, editor Hubert Henry Harrison's essay entitled, "The Negro's Own Radicalism, " published in 1919 in "The New Negro," his own newspaper. Therein he wrote: "In the first place, the cause of 'radicalism' among American Negroes is international. But it is necessary to draw clear distinctions at the outset. The function of the Christian church is international. So is art, war, the family, rum and the exploitation of labor. But none of these is entitled to the mantle of its own peculiar 'internationalism' to cover the present case of the Negro discontent--although this has been attempted. The international Fact to which Negroes in America are now reacting is not the exploitation of laborers by capitalists; but the social, political and economic subjection of colored peoples by white. It is not the Class Line, but the Color Line , which is the incorrect but accepted expression for the Dead Line of racial inferiority. This fact is a fact of Negro consciousness as well as a fact of externals. The international color line is the practice and theory of that doctrine which holds that the best stocks of Africa, China, Egypt, and the West Indies are inferior to the worst stocks of Belgium, England and Italy, and must hold their lives, lands and liberties upon such terms and conditions as the white races may choose to grant them. "On the part of the whites , the motive was originally economic; but it is no longer purely so. All the available facts go to prove that, whether in the United States or in Africa or China, the economic subjection is without exception keener and more brutal when the exploited are black, brown and yellow, than when they are white. And the fact that black, brown and yellow also exploit each other brutally whenever Capitalism has created the economic classes of plutocrat and proletarian should suffice to put purely economic subjection out of court as the prime cause of racial unrest. For the similarity of suffering has produced in all lands where whites ruled colored races a similarity of sentiment, viz.: a revulsion of racial feeling. The peoples of these lands begin to feel and realize that they are so subjected because they are members of races condemned as 'inferior ' by their Caucasian overlords. The fact presented to their minds is one of race, and in terms of race do they react to it. Put the case to any Negro by way of test and the answer will make this clear ." P.77-78, "Race-Consciousness," WHEN AFRICA AWAKES by Hubert Henry Harrison (1920, 1998)