That Mr. Miah, a Black man, thinks race is the most important issue of our time is perhaps not surprising. I think he has a better understanding of Black folks than he does of us whites, so let me start there.
Surprisingly, I agree with him on many points.
He writes:
Blacks would be happy to drop the hyphenated “African-American” and redefine the term “American” as meaning all of its peoples. Most whites, however, don’t support that change if it means seriously coming to grips with the legacy of slavery, genocide and persistent racism.I certainly agree with that first sentence--if any group is American it's Black people. They've been on these shores far longer than any of my ancestors, or those who came later through Ellis Island. Blacks' impact on our national culture is disproportionately large. They deserve to be called Americans.
By the way, that's what Mr. Trump wants to call them.
But I don't know what Mr. Miah means by the second sentence. How can he put such conditions on the use of a label? What's he gonna do: interview us to discover if we're sufficiently "woke" to call Black people Americans?
Mr. Miah quotes a New Yorker article, saying that a FBI report
...coins the category “black-identity extremist,” which is poorly defined but features the three-word rhythm of other usefully ambiguous terms, such as “radical Islamic terrorist.” The authors argue that people sympathetic to the Sovereign Citizens movement and to the Moorish Science Temple of America, both of which reject the authority of the federal government, warrant vigilance, even though violence conducted by any such sympathizers “has been rare over the past twenty years.” To ground their conclusions in history, the authors point to radical organizations of the nineteen-seventies, such as the Black Liberation Army, which has been defunct for longer than Johnson had been alive, and for which they offer scant connection to the B.I.E. cause.Mr. Miah maintains that such radical Black extremism is hopelessly rare and is not a political threat. I think he is absolutely correct, and beyond some ill-chosen rhetoric from groups like Black Lives Matter, there's no evidence for "black-identity extremism." (It is a criminal threat to police officers--it only takes one crackpot to start shooting at people. In that sense the FBI's interest might be justified.)
Indeed, I'll go further and suggest that racial tensions are diminishing since Trump's election. It's not that we like each other more; it's just that we're better able to live together. Mr. Miah cherry-picks some examples to illustrate the contrary (e.g., a white Georgia woman stopped for a traffic violation was told by a cop that her fear was unfounded because they only shoot Blacks). So I'll give a counter-anecdote of my own.
I live in a neighborhood that is about 50% Black (many of whom are Jamaican immigrants). I didn't know that before I moved here. Yes, I drove around the neighborhood and saw well-tended yards, newish SUVs in the driveways, no abandoned homes, and no grafitti. Looked like a middle class neighborhood to me, and so I moved in. Indeed, it IS a middle class, American neighborhood. If we're on the verge of a race war, nobody has told my neighbors about that.
I think Mr. Miah exaggerates "voter suppression" efforts by Republicans. He attributes it to racial animus, though I think it's more likely partisan. But he is understandably mistrustful. So I suggest that Trump and Republicans abandon such efforts save for egregious fraud. It makes very little difference in electoral outcomes, and dropping it will remove a needless thorn from racial politics.
Further, I'll second a suggestion from Scott Adams and recommend that voting rights be restored to felons--even while they're still in prison. Mr. Adams makes a convincing case that election results won't change by much, and it's a small act of generosity toward both prisoners and (by perception at least) Black people. I hope Mr. Miah will approve of this idea.
The last half of Mr. Miah's essay on Black people is about Black nationhood, or lack thereof. He quotes from Trotsky, of course, who sounds like he knew very little about the subject. To me it seems incontrovertible that Blacks are an ethnic group--certainly no longer African, but yet distinct from other Americans. They make up about 12% of the population, and by themselves will never have national political power. They currently are a big part of the Democrat's coalition.
Mr. Miah seems to think that Blacks are going to lead a demographic coalition of non-whites against whites. I think he's wrong there. There are too many differences between non-whites for them to cohere into a single political movement. And indeed, there is no coherent "white" coalition, either.
If Mr. Miah's description of Black people makes some sense, his view of white folks is completely bonkers, as this quote indicates.
If you are not completely opposed to white supremacy, you are quietly supporting it. If you continue to draw equivalencies between white supremacists and the people who oppose them — as Trump did once again last week — you have crossed the racial Rubicon and moved beyond quiet support to vocal support. You have made an allegiance and dug a trench in the war of racial hostilities.
Either Trump is himself a white supremacist or he is a fan and defender of white supremacists, and I quite honestly am unable to separate the two designations.The ubiquity of "white supremacy" is new to our discourse--before people were just called "racist." But that word has lost its sting. Everybody--George Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, etc.--was labeled "racist," and nobody takes it seriously anymore. It no longer distinguishes between the KKK and Paul Ryan, and so the term is rendered useless.
Thus the drive to replace it with the supposedly more horrific "white supremacist." But Mr. Miah is now including everybody under that umbrella, too. Not just Trump (who by no reasonable definition is anything close to being a white supremacist) but also anybody who voted for him (48% of the electorate, and a majority of all white people). Mr. Miah's explanation for this is that "white supremacy" has gone undercover. While its substance has supposedly remained the same, it disguises itself today much better than any KKK hood.
Thus "white supremacy" is reduced to being an epithet and it will lose its punch very quickly. Indeed, it probably already has.
So here is the difference between Trump and Obama. For Obama, race was an important issue, just as it is for Mr. Miah. Trump, on the other hand, is completely indifferent--his remarks following Charlottesville indicate as much. (See my comments here.) This comes as a shock to people like Mr. Miah who think about race every single day--how can somebody not care?
Not only does Trump not care, but neither do most of his supporters. Take, for example, Chicago, where I lived when I was Mr. Miah's comrade, and where my son lives today. The North side of town is the global city, headquarters of Fortune 500 companies. The South side is the murder capital of America. The two parts are completely distinct--they have almost no connection to each other. For just as Mr. Miah doesn't wake up in the morning worrying about children in Yemen, North side Chicagoans don't spend any part of their day thinking about West Englewood.
That's not good. Mr. Miah really should care more about Yemen's youngsters. And global-city Chicagoans should worry about their South side neighbors. But that's not human nature. We're all wrapped up in our own lives.
Further Reading:
- Book Review: Eleven Nations of North America
- If You Really Care About the Poor
- 8 Reasons to Like President Obama
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