Black America not 'feeling it' for #OWS

I'd noted before that, per its own polling at the Occupy Wall Street website, OWS is ... very ... white!. The fully-crunched numbers/data from the poll are here, in PDF.

And now, other reports confirm that black Americans simply aren't connecting to OWS.

“Occupy Wall Street was started by whites and is about their concern with their plight,” Nathalie Thandiwe, a radio host and producer for WBAI in New York, said in an interview. “Now that capitalism isn’t working for ‘everybody,’ some are protesting.”

This gets back to comments I've made before. Black Americans, by and large, have seen capitalism work less well for them for longer, including being the prime targets of subprime mortgages.

Beyond a lack of leaders to inspire them to join the Occupy fold, blacks are not seeing anything new for themselves in the movement. Why should they ally with whites who are just now experiencing the hardships that blacks have known for generations?

The story also notes that black churches were key to the civil rights movement, but aren't part of any clarion call right now, as far as the lack of leadership. It adds that A-list black civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus are co-opted, if you will, by the amount of money they've received in the recent past from Big Tobacco and other hypercapitalists.

So, will more blacks get involved? Possibly not:

Leslie Wilson, a professor of African American history at Montclair State University, is not optimistic.

“Occupy Wall Street cannot produce enough change to encourage certain types of black participation,” Wilson said in an interview. “The church cannot get enough blacks out on the streets. Some students will go, but not the masses. Black folks, particularly older ones, do not think that this is going to lead to change. . . . This generation has already been beaten down and is hurting. They are not willing to risk what little they have for change. Those who are wealthier are not willing to risk and lose.”

Black America’s fight for income equality is not on Wall Street, but is a matter of day-to-day survival. The more pressing battles are against tenant evictions, police brutality and street crime. This group doesn’t see a reason to join the amorphous Occupiers.

It wouldn't surprise me, either, if many blacks, from old-line civil rightsers through "new black" politicians like Newark mayor Cory Booker on to young black entertainers, remain more on the sidelines.

And, that's not to mention that the man who received even more hypercapitalist money than the NAACP, Dear Leader, America's first black president, has already effectively washed his hands of OWS and has had the federal government advise local governments on how to respond.

is the black church dead?

If by black church, we mean its traditional, more social gospel, more politically liberally oriented version, then, yes, as discussed here, that's quite arguably the case.

If not dead, it's at least ailing and infirm.

Why?

Well, as the story notes, one big issue is the rise of black megachurches, more conservative in political tone and more focused on the prosperity gospel rather than social gospel. This became clear in the last decade when some pastors and other leaders at such churches even worked hand-in-glove with banks and other lenders to peddle toxic subprime mortgages to their flocks.

Not all black megachurches are quite that bad; T.J. Jakes, for example, seems to have a bit of the older sensibilities side by side with the social gospel. But many younger black ministers are indeed naked capitalists.

Related to that has been more blacks going to multicultural or even white-majority megachurches.

Along with this has been both the newer megachurches and many of the older black churches being openly illiberal on gay rights. From clandestine sex on the down low and its attendant AIDS fallout to the loss of Prop. 8 in California and what degree of effect black voters had on that (it may not have been a lot, but I reject some apologists, whether black and gay or not, who claim the effect was minimal to near-zero), it's also clear that on one major issue, the traditional and new black church are both losing relevance with one slice of black voters.

And, among a certain segment of the black underclass, black churches of any political bent are surely losing ground.

That said, none of this is bad.

While I'm certainly not a Republican or a generic political conservative, growing black political diversity would prevent their votes from being taken for granted.

Lessening political power of traditional black churches would lead to liberal push for black votes becoming less religiously focused, in turn.

Gary Kamiya speaks well on Obama and race

Kamiya has several good talking points in his article about Obama and American racial issues.

First, because of his mixed parentage, he may indeed be helping to put paid to the “one drop” idea. Related to that, Kamiya is right that, a Barack Obama with two black parents might not have gotten the nomination.

The next big thing is an honest look at the nexus of race and culture within the African-American umbrella:

A 2007 Pew Poll showed that 37 percent of blacks no longer regard black people as constituting a single race, and that 70 percent of college-educated blacks said that the “values gap” between middle-class and poor blacks had widened over the past 10 years. These remarkable findings clearly reflect a growing rejection by middle-class blacks of the crime and other pathologies so often associated, rightly or wrongly, with the black underclass.

I don’t doubt that’s true. In suburbs of major American cities, such as here in Dallas, that clearly plays out on a regular basis. For a further Kamiya take on that Pew poll, go here; that includes the fact that identity politicians are the ones who appear to most bemoan the black cultural values gap, the rise of multiethnic identity, etc.

Anyway, Kamiya ties that thread together with the first one, and comes out on the optimistic side about long-term discussion of racial issues in America, without ignoring specific downsides such as the black underclass.