Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs

African Americans should be congratulated for their yeoman service in pushing the boundaries of rights extended to minorities in America. Just about every group of minorities have jumped on the Civil Rights bandwagon and in some cases received more benefits from Civil Rights legislation than African Americans. This has led to a number of Afro-centric thinkers wonder aloud whether Civil Rights have not in fact led to civil wrongs being committed against African Americans in general.

After being beaten, bitten, and berated by foul mouthed racists who proved to be equal opportunity sadists in their apportioning of terror tactics, African Americans have watched White feminists, members of the LGBTQ community, Asians, Hispanics, and other minorities leapfrog over the heads of African Americans to cash in on the Civil Rights bonanza negotiated by Black blood and bodies.

Black people in America forced the American state to enter into a deepener state of introspection that challenged the old notion of who or what was an American. The 1965 amendment to the immigration act brought an end to the quotas system based on nationality. This amendment led to a shift in immigration patterns to the US as more non-white people were allowed into the US. Chinese, Indians, West Indians and others minorities are therefore indebted to African Americans who forced the American state to have a much-needed racial reckoning.

Regrettably, to a large extent African Americans have been forced on to the sidelines at the Civil Rights banquet as non-Black minorities gorge themselves with benefits available to minorities. After doing most of the bleeding and dying, African Americans must now struggle tooth, nail, and claw for a share of the Civil Rights benefits pie. A non-Black, female, LGBTQ minority member potentially can benefit more from Civil Rights than a Black male or female who happens to be heterosexual.

This has naturally led to a backlash against the Civil Rights orientation of the Dr King era. Black Americans due to their history of oppression at the hands of the American state needed legislation that was very race specific to help remedy the centuries of disenfranchisement and discrimination. Americas’ debt to its African American citizens cannot be best served by legislation that treats all minorities similarly. Black Americans need all the affirmative action given to them to help bring them on par with other ethnic groups whose history and experience in America is radically different.

The Biden Administration reneged on many of the promises made to the Black community. The John Lewis Bill and the tuition debt forgiveness proposed but not actualized by the Biden administration would have served as an act of good faith towards the African American community. The inroads Trump made into the Black electorate should not have come as a surprise to the politically astute. African Americans in Chicago and other cities with large Black populations were feeling the same immigration burn that Trump supporters were feeling.

Dr King’s legacy and his place among the Black luminaries of the world can never be questioned. His tactics can be criticized but what he achieved was still monumental. Dr King went toe to toe with American style apartheid and turned that system on its head. The Civil Rights Bill of 1965 was a major milestone in the history of African Americans. African Americans on recognizing from history that there would be a White counter-offensive to the Civil Rights Bill should have transitioned away from Civil Rights and focused more on African American Rights.

There is always an inevitable backlash against any efforts to dismantled states that are rooted in racial prejudice. Dr Carol Anderson in her book White Rage shows how this backlash manifested itself in American history. The continuation of state violence against America’s Black population and the astronomically high rate of incarceration suffered by Black Americans speaks eloquently to the reality that America is nowhere near to becoming a post racial society.

A civil wrong is committed against African Americans when the American state decides to abandon programs like affirmative action for African Americans. A civil wrong is committed when benefits that African Americans bled and died for are apportioned to other non-Black minorities at the expense of African Americans. A civil wrong is committed when immigrants who just arrived in the US are prioritized over African Americans simply because of their color, demographic size, or religion. Finally, a civil wrong is committed when non-Black Americans insist that African Americans need to stop living in the past and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro- Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Black Paradigm: New Thinking for a New Age.