A Dangling Social Contract: The New Slavery, the New Lynching of African-Americans, the Rebirth of Step-n-Fetchit: The Benefit and Shame of a Smile

This posting is motivated by Marion Wright Edelman's recent article in the online HuffingtonPost (August 7, 2015), "Helping Black Boys Survive: What a Difference a Smile Makes." Although Pericles21 sees merit in Ms. Edelman's 'Smile Fix' ('wear a smile, save your life'), it is actually a 'quick fix', a patch-job' of 'The Problem' (the too-frequent police shootings of unarmed African-Americans). Pericles21 sees 'The Problem' of police shootings as one of the faces of endemic, cultural racism against African-Americans and especially African-American males. Going further, Pericles21 sees a dangerous, longer term negative value of teaching this survival device to African-American youth (without 'Fixing' the larger scope cultural Problem of racism) because 'The Smile' fix, as it has always been, is an artifice, a deliberately self-disguising mask that 'pretends'... and interferes with 'normal' maturing.

The 'Smile Fix' has always been in the survival-repertoire of African-Americans and it has not solved The Problem' of endemic societal racism.

The 'Smile Fix' regresses African-American progress (especially for males) back 90 years to the era of an iconic (though negative image) early movie role of 'Step'n Fetchit' (acted by William Perry), of which it is said:

Perry's typical film persona and stage name have long been controversial, and seen as illustrative of negative stereotypes of African-Americans. Seen through a modern lens, Perry's character [Step'n Fetchit] has been described as "painfully racist" but also "subversive".[4][Wikepedia]

Pericles21 suggests a question:

Has 'Trayvon', 'Ferguson', 'Charleston', 'Sandra Bland', et al forced African-Americans to regress and once again seek to disguise themselves behind the mask of the'Step-n-Fetchit'smile to help in the literal life-and-death daily survival gauntlet for a minority in America? Has the smile once again become a solution to the recent years' police shootings of unarmed minorities, especially of African-Americans? And, is there in current America a 'dangling', incomplete social contract in play that is a barrier to America becoming 'post-racial, i.e., achieving a democratic goal of harmonious race relations?

Pericles21 has a broader view of 'The Problem' that led Ms. Edeleman to propose the 'Smile Fix'. This is not a rejection of Ms. Edelman's 'Smile Fix' but an expansion of her analysis. In this broader view, Pericles21 proposes that Ms. Edelman and others who have endorsed the 'Smile Fix' have overlooked an essential perspective on 'The Problem' (the appearance of disregard for the law agents by African-American males who are shot by police: 'The Problem' as defined does not recognize that the American Social Contract, the quid pro quo contained in the Bill of Rights that are assured to all of us by the American Constitution, is not fully extended in real life to African-American males. Instead full coverage of the American Social Contract has been excused away by endemic social stereotyping of the African-American and replaced by endemic negative attitudes towards African Americans.

This undercurrent of hate and negative attitudes towards African-Americans, and in turn the revealing of the unbalanced American Social Contract, was underscored for Greater America by the recent Charleston (South Carolina) Church shootings committed by Dylan Roof (June 17, 2015) that re-awakened America to the scary significance of the Confederate flag, i.e., the Confederate flag is not a harmless heritage icon but a frightening reminder that the American Civil War has not ended.

For African-Americans especially, the Civil War has never ended as they, unlike the rest of America, have never been allowed to sleep peacefully because that flag has continuously and deliberately been thrust in their faces as a symbol of intimidation. On the contrary, African-Americans have always been aware of the threatening significance of that flag as a symbol of preserving slavery status because they have never been permitted to live in peace from the physical and psychological threats carried out under that flag.

Although the South 'lost' the Civil War and lost the legal right to hold slaves, the South has fought a 150 year post-war insurgency against the former slave themselves, designed to keep the African-American in slave status by impeding open voting through gerrymandering voting districts, imposing poll taxes and poll exams, and by outright intimidation (lynching, rape, church-burning, etc). To this end, the South and its allies have relied on some sectors of the media to bombard the public with negative stereotypes and used legislative leverage to enact 'False Flag' operations like the War on Drugs that imposed unduly large sentences in privatized (self-aggrandizing) prisons on un-balancedly African-american and other males of color.

For this reason, Pericles21 has defended Dylan Roof as a sacrificial lamb (June 25, 2015, 'The Charleston SC Shootings:... About the Shooter at the Emanuel AME Church, About America's Abandonment of It's Children and of the Common Weal'). Pericles21 cautions Americans not to buy into the demonizing of Dylan Roof as if he and his hate appeared out of a vacuum because Dylan's young mind was captured, warped and guided by extremist, racist media to murder the 9 African-Americans who had invited him into their church to pray with them. To repeat that post, Pericles21 asks that the media voices who motivated Dylan be put on trial with him... or asked to defend his thoughts, beliefs, prejudices and actions...because they made Dylan.

African-Americans are too often made general fault-bearers for a disappointed and frustrated society at large. This 'legacy' of being the 'blame bearer' describes a social 'unbalance' that has existed since the end of the Civil War - through the wrecking of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, the dilution of the Voting Rights Act and now the flood of shootings of unarmed african-Americans. The American Social Contract, guaranteed by the Constitution, was long ago broken and is still 'dangling':

Pericles21:
The Problem is really one of a 'dangling, incomplete, social contract' between a citizen group (African-American)(assumed fully vested in rights as well as obligations) and society. Especially for African-American males, the social contract of reciprocated rewards has been abrogated with the total focus on, and excuse given as justification of breaking the contract, 'impropriety' of tone of voice, dress, music, skin color, etc (all superficial labeling of physical and behavioral APPEARANCES which have been used as excuses to disenfranchise and to shoot

And what is the American Social Contract that is not complete (broken)?

The broken American Social Contract is the failure by America to uphold its end of the social 'deal' to minorities, and specifically to African-Americans, and more specifically to African-American males. The Deal is that 'good' behavior as marked by complete conformity to standards of behavior and appearance that make White-America comfortable with the presence of minorities of color, will be reciprocated by full and fair acceptance and treatment of the buying-in minorities as first class citizens. The dangling contract clause not present for minorities and especially for African-American males translates to equal access to the common good, to uncomplicated/unimpeded voting rights, housing, education, social movement and relationships, legal and law enforcement respect, etc., ...all those 'equalities' that make for a life of ease with the social environment so casually and automatically assumed by White Americans.

A central part of the dangling social contract is the 'fix' that one frequently hears these days in the haze of too-frequent police shootings of unarmed African-American males whose 'threat countenance' seems nothing more than 'improper' attire (hoodies), and especially a 'improper' countenance (no smile and no soft voice). The 'Fix'is to emphasize to African-American males not to wear hoodies and to always keep a smile.

This 'Fix' can be equated to a modern lynching of the psychological sort.

Teaching an African-American male youth to show a smile during his day will, in brutal reality, help save his life even if he doesn't change his normal, legal behavior.

But while the smile'Fix' will ease his way and help assure he will not be shot by an offended or pathologically xenophobic policeman, there might be a longer term disadvantage that in later, adult, life this smiling face will still be regarded as a 'boy' even at 25, 35 or 55 years old, and he will not be regarded as worthy of adult status, i.e., he will not merit serious consideration for job advancement, positions of significance and adult responsibility. Focusing on always smiling, the youthful boy will not have 'allowed' himself to mature into a serious-minded adult. In society's eyes (majority, white society) his darkness of skin may be compensated for by the smile but the person underneath will remain stamped down and insignificant, just a pleasant-faced boy, a superficial background 'extra'. The boy will not have gained full self-esteem and respect as an adult.

Teaching 'The Smile' is the new 'Talk' that African-American parents (and no doubt, many other minority parents) are asked to give to their sons (like The Talk given to them by their own parents and in generations-to-generations before) in the current era of police shootings of unarmed African-American youth.

Sure, this should remove the impetus by police to shoot but we have learned, and are relearning, The Talk and The Smile aren't as effective as much as we think it should be. Is this ongoing tradition of 'The Talk', even in post-civil rights, really become now 'The New Lynching'?

Is 'The New Lynching' a psychological lynching of the spirit and the soul: the almost daily psychological castration-and-lynching of the African-American male to mold (lion train him) him to voluntarily take to the guilt-created, guilt-projected harnessing needs of white America?

White America has a guilt stemming from their own acknowledgement that they themselves would be very angry if they were in the position of African-Americans without knowing the barriers that they (white) know are erected and maintained to rope in minorities and African-American males in particular.

The need of White America to escape the burden of shared accountability for the 'Dangling American Social Contract', White America projects onto the minority target both White instigation and minority confusion (and conformity failures) about how to assimilate to the majority culture.

Only in this current 'lynching' era, White America doesn't have to bloody their hands:

Pericles21: the African-American male is persuaded to bring his own rope, loop it over the tree limb and string himself up. Plus, he must feel bad about it all by accepting the irrational fear of White America of his skin color. White America goes on discriminating, hating, shoot-first-by-police and is now totally guilt-free because of this new 'framing'. The African-American male who, in the erms of the new, popularized psychology, has become convinced to own and administer his self-oppression and lynching.

The African-American male must 'own' unfair treatment by others and thereby take ownership of White America's continuing prejudice, discrimination, guilt and hate. What a good deal for White America. What a social failure in working because what kind of thinking human could long keep all that rationalizing and self-delusion intact without succumbing to extreme fear, confusion, self-submerging and in cases 'acting out'on self, family and society?

The cultural disparity of race and appearance still remains - Black women are still trying to disguise their natural healthy hair by pressing it into 'unnatural', greased shapes - and it is unfair to African-American males: a concentrated face on a white male is a positive , i.e., praised as 'manly', 'warrior like', 'leadership focus', 'a Thinker', 'protective father' ...while the same countenance on an African-American male is labeled automatically as 'angry and threatening' and something to be afraid of, to nip-in-the-bud (shoot) before it gets out of control.

This too-quick labeling of anything on a Black male face, except a smile, as negative and a sign of potential, though not-explicitly-showing, anger to fear is another projection from white society of its guilt about knowlingly benefitting almost every day from some privilege, great or small, that comes with having white skin. In slavery times, the great fear (and anger) was slave rebellion...attributed to a 'negative' tendency of the slave (blackmale) to have a naturally rebellious, angry soul. White sinfulness was thereby 'whitewashed' away and the sin of slavery placed on the slave. The clock keeps going round, the tune keeps repeating.

Dylann Roof's Sister Pulls GoFundMe Site: Now Let's Build a Yellow Brick Road to America's Future

Amber Roof removed her GoFundMe page that was raising money for her honeymoon. Roof started the site after her brother, Dylann, allegedly murdered nine people inside Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church on JUne 17. On a page called “A Fresh Start for Michael and Amber,” Amber Roof writes that her dream wedding day “was full of sorrow, pain, and shame, tainted by the actions of one man.” The couple requested $5,000 “to cover lost wedding costs, to pay bills, and to send us on our dream honeymoon.” Ten percent of what they raise was to be donated to Mother Emanuel. 

Pericles21 commented at 'The Daily Beast' news zine:

Give. Start something good behind her brother's deed. Give to the Mother Emanuel AME Church to fund a multi-racial Sunday Bible study group. Come from across the country and Show up Sundays at 'Mother E' in all finery looking like a flower gift to the Higher Power. Walk the Path to the higher Good. Show respect for the innocent and mercy for those in sin. Add a brick to the golden road to the future. Name a child after one of the Nine. Have to start somewhere.

Hmmmm

World Affairs and American Public Education: Why We All Should Be Concerned (Charleston, South Carolina, is 'Proof')

June 25, 2015. Post Script. In the Shadow of Charleston, SC shootings. [ref., Perched Eye, June 25, 2015]
This postscript deals with a recent terrible shooting murders in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. That event that is not something to be proud of as a human, but it bears out this writer's warning..in a sad, gothic-surreal way.

It seems that much of the sentiment in this original post was made real by the mass shootings (and killings) of 9 African -American church goers on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Pericles21 emphasizes his shock (and concern) that 'anyone' with an ounce of analytical ability and common sense should not have seen 'Charleston' coming and should not have been surprised by the identity and profile of the shooter, a recently-turned 21, white 'man-child'- poor, a school drop-out and societal castoff, an abandoned and innocent soul set adrift by defunded public services (notably, public education) in a sea of right-wing media sharks without the mental acuity equipment to swim away from danger, falsehood and the deliberate distortions voiced by the extremist media stars (Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter,the Fox News crews, the KKK, the Conservative Citizens Councils, etc.).

Finally, Pericles21 sees the Charleston shootings as 10 innocent persons (the 9 murdered church goers and the shooter) caught up in the modern american whirlpool of ignorance, profiteering and loss of a regard for the 'Common Weal' which could have prevented the mental erosion and vulnerability of the shooter, Dylann Roof.

Dylann's story and Charleston's tragedy is a modern American tragedy that could have been prevented but wasn't because a trail of persons (politicians, profiteers, extortionists, etc) chose the easy 'Way of the 7 Deadly Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

The 'shooter' was/is Dylann Roof, a recently-turned-21 white youth, by looks a 'man-child',...poor, very much undereducated, ...then abandoned by 'society' to be netted by the fact-distorting, extreme right-wing hate mongers one finds freely wandering the radio and TV airwaves...claiming the wondrous ability to make complicated issues (especially race in America)'simple'. What makes this event surreal (in the true American tradition of gory surrealness, ala Natural Born Killers) is that the shot-at victims invited the shooter to first sit with them at Bible study, not knowing his intent to shoot them. To add to this Hollywood-like script, the shooter described to police later that this act of open kindness almost convinced him not to carry out his macabre plan...but his 'resolve' won out. So, no modern 'Amazing Grace' to bring down the curtain.

The message is reinforced by the terrible picture in Charleston June 17 - What has happened to America's concern for the Public Weal, most notably in the form of public education and family services?

A final comment: 'WHEN IS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR GOING TO END?'


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America has its 'good' and 'faults', and the rest of the planet is critically affected by both aspects of America. America operates by a democratic election process that leads to a legislative-leadership structure that formulates national policy. Consequently, America's foreign policy - international interests, international friends and allies, willingness to militarily intervene in other countries affairs - is at its roots, dependent on the intelligence and awareness of the American public about world affairs as well as 'at-home' problems and needs.

In turn, the general intelligence and awareness of the American public is strongly shaped by the American education system which leads to the final point - can the rest of the world (and no doubt America itself) sleep easily knowing that the most powerful and influential culture on the planet has a significant number of its population who believe in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian 'Bible' wherein the world was 'created' only 7,000 years ago and who believe that fossil records showing dinosaurs lived millions of years ago are deliberately falsified lies perpetrated by political progressives intent on (1) destroying fundamentalist Christianity and (2) along the way to destroying Christianity, destroying America's the euro-racial (i.e., 'white' population).

This logic makes the problems within America's public education system a concern not only for America but for the entire planet.

First, education is perhaps the most important aspect of a developed nation today. Life is complex and requires insightful and trained minds to comprehend global issues and then, to resolve them.

Second, America is still the dominant nation economically and is arguably THE major influence shaping global culture ...and values.

Third, with all the above influence-factors, plus by virtue of it's armies and defense budget, America is too powerful a determining factor to the physical safety and sanity of the globe to have major issues in the education of Americans. Yet, America is failing to educate itself with the result that American beliefs are erroneous and are increasingly simplistic, isolationist, and xenophobic (race, nations, geographic regions).

Fourth, America has problems with its public education system. IMHO, America began to abandon and defund its public education system beginning with the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s with the racial integration of public schools. America showed it could not adjust to a diverse population reality as compared with the unreality of enforced (and forced) racial segregation after the Civil War followed by the Jim Crow era which operated to unofficially but effectively restore the pre-war racial separation under slavery, especially in the 'public' service sectors that includes 'public' education. This issue has not been resolved. Moreover, in some ways, much of America has managed to re-verse itself from the Civil Rights era and resurrect old segregation patterns in the public schools. This reversing trend has been aided and made quicker by the added devices of school 'vouchers' and 'charter schools' which operate much like private schools yet receive public funding.

Along with the increase in charter and school voucher programs has come the most dangerous kind of academic 'freedom' - new opportunities for special-belief charter schools to receive funding for erroneous beliefs that would not have been taught in the days of strong, professionally rigorous public school systems with synchronization from the Department of Education in Washington, DC.

It is as if American education threw up its hands and gave up on the challenges and needs of diversity and open desegregation, and said, 'OK, you local neighborhoods, fix things yourselves. We (Wash, DC) only want some nominal bow to national education goals ..about which we don't know a solution.'

America needs to solve this. But, overall, it appears to me the biggest problem with American education is the lack of a national perspective on what is the purpose and content of its school teaching, and the interference (or local dominance) from religion and regional 'prejudice'.

The gaps and faults in our lacking a consistent national education program seems a 'down side' of the American version of democracy which opens up the formatting of school curriculums to states and cities and towns with distinctly different 'beliefs' that can over-reach into curricula taught in the classrooms of America.

An example of the consequences from the lack of a national consensus on education is the morass America currently experiences with creationism vs evolution. There are varying, and hotly debated, school philosophies in America on that subject and in some parts of Americat 'Creationism' is winning, or has won, over evolution. One fears how detrimental the supremacy of Creationism will be to the children who are receive an susch an education.

And these differences in education emphases seem to arrange around geographic 'poles' in America.

These poles are first, geo-political, i.e., 'Red (Republican Party, conservative, southern and formerly rural, rebel states that lost the Civil War)' vs 'Blue (Democratic Party, progressive, coastal and more northern, urban-industrialized winners of the Civil War)' states. Then there are divisions by race, economics, religion, gender tolerance, etc.

America suffers from a 'relativity dissonance' in that there is no national ethic or agreed-on scientific principle set that unites the country on just about any of these subjects. This is maybe the downside of a democratic society where 'laissez faire' marketism (so called 'free market') dominates almost al thinking about just about all topics, including education.

This 'laissez faire' replacement of science and logic seems to be the current substitution in America for a national ethic. Until this 'laissez faire' creed is tempered or is replaced by a more considered, real policy/ 'philosophy of state' the American education system will continue to be fragmented and drift.