Black youth: repression and resistance
By
LeiLani Dowell
Published Feb 23, 2006 8:07 PM
Following are excerpts of a talk on
“The State of Black Youth” by LeiLani Dowell at a Feb. 17 Workers
World meeting in New York City.
LeiLani Dowell, far left, marches with FIST contingent in anti-war protest.
WW photo: Pat Chin
|
According to a report by the
Census Bureau entitled “The Black Popu lation in the United States: March
2002” Blacks make up 13 percent of the “civilian
noninstitutionalized population”—meaning people not in nursing homes
or correctional institutions. That they use these figures is interesting to me,
because we all know the deplorable numbers of Black men and women in prison
today.
Of that 13 percent, 33 percent, according to the Bureau, were under
18. So, that’s roughly a third of our population. I want us to remember
when we talk about Black youth that we’re talking about a third of the
Black population.
Blacks accounted for about one quarter of the population
in poverty in 2001, with the poverty rate for Black children at 30 percent,
compared with 16 percent among all children and 10 percent for white
children.
One in three Black men will serve time in prison. In 2000,
nearly 30 percent of African Americans aged 18-24 had not completed high school.
Black women account for 60 percent of women living with AIDS among women ages 13
to 24. Advocates for Youth says, “Urban minority female adolescents
reported high levels of worry about AIDS, but they reported equal or greater
concerns about having enough money to live on, general health, doing well in
school, getting pregnant, and getting hurt in a street fight. For these women,
HIV risk reduction could be secondary to basic needs, such as housing, food,
transportation, and child care.”
And we can’t have this
conversation without mentioning the added hardship Black lesbian, gay, bi and
trans (LGBT) youth face, as we mark the one-year anniversary of the death of
Rashawn Brazell, a 19-year old bisexual man who was brutally murdered here in
New York City. The Working Group on Police and State Violence at the Audre Lorde
Project has noted a marked increase in hate crimes against LGBT people of
color.
So, here we have it. These statistics translate into real-life
hardship for Black youth. And meanwhile, Black youth remain one of the most
demonized groups of people in the United States. The blame is always placed on
the shoulders of those youth—and their parents—for the plethora of
problems that they face, as opposed to governmental policies and
institutionalized racism that began during slavery and continue to this
day.
Demonization starts early
When Hurricane Katrina struck,
and the world saw every level of government doing nothing to help the mostly
Black people in the region, who did the media use as a diversion first? Black
youth, specifically young Black men, who were derided for
“looting.”
And the demonization starts as early as grammar
school. In March of last year, two police officers entered an elementary school
in St. Petersburg, Florida after school officials called them to deal with a
5-year-old Black girl who was being disruptive and punched a school official.
Video footage shows her calm down before the officers approached, pinned her
arms behind her back and put her in handcuffs. She was put in the back of a
police car and had her feet restrained as well after, cops say, she tried to
kick out the window. Police officials later said that the officers had committed
an error of judgment but that they did not violate policy.
Two days after
the incident in Florida, the assistant principal at P.S. 34 in Queens, N.Y.,
made her 13 Haitian students sit on the floor and eat their rice and beans with
their hands. She screamed at them, in front of the rest of the students in the
lunchroom, “In Haiti they treat you like animals and I will treat you the
same way here.” Later the principal pulled the students out of class,
tried to convince them it never happened, and offered some of them ice cream if
they changed their stories.
Most recently, in January officials in the
Brockton Public School District in Massachusetts suspended a six-year-old
Haitian boy from an elementary school for the outrageous charge of “sexual
harassment.” [See Feb. 28 issue of Workers World]
I know the last
three examples are focused on children, and not technically youth. These are
just the reported and most outrageous cases, who knows how much psychological
trauma is inflicted on Black youth, considered a “lost cause” by
many authorities in schools across the country. The psychological wounds from
incidents like these will stick with a person throughout their youth, if not
longer, especially when we consider the lack of health care, including
counseling, for many Black children. This demonization continues throughout
their lives, with “zero tolerance” policies, police brutality,
attacks on affirmative action, discrimination, and so
on.
Resistance
In spite of all the very real hardships that
Black youth face, and the demonization on top of that, Black youth are still
resistant. Let’s state for the record, that just surviving in a system
that has placed all the odds against you is resisting. Often even the most
well-meaning will overlook the resistance that Black youth undertake every day.
An article by researcher Cathy Cohen points out, “young African
Americans ... have been ... active and instrumental in ... movements and
politics. Whether it is the Black Power movement, the anti-apartheid movement,
or the organized mobilization against mass incarceration, African American youth
have been and continue to be at the center of these efforts, providing
leadership, analysis, and energy.”
She continues, “Many
African American young people find themselves at the center of many national
political struggles and are, therefore, politicized at a much earlier age than
more privileged youth. Increased access to information through the internet,
television, and popular culture, as well as the constant presence of the
state... means that the age of political engagement... is spiraling downward....
Many African American youth engage with the state on a regular basis through
state-run health care policies... through their own experiences or their
children’s experience in the public schools ... and through encounters
with the police. Thus, [we] are sorely mistaken if we proceed as if young
people, who are often the targets of institutional and state campaigns, programs
and policies, do not have strong opinions about and take action to better their
position in society, their life chances, and the distribution of power in their
communities and the country.”
And doesn’t this make perfect
sense? It’s absurd to think that Black youth aren’t politically
active. Many don’t have a choice. They are propelled into activism by the
attack of the state on their lives. I’m remind ed of the Somerville 5 in
Massa chu setts as a case in point—five young Black men who have had to
become activists around their own lives after they were brutally assaulted by
police officers in an unprovoked attack, and then expelled from school before
their cases were even heard.
Music is also used by many Black youth as a
form of resistance. It’s a regular occurrence in my life that I’m
approached by some young brother on the subway, selling their own political,
conscious music, music they tell me they created to educate and inspire others
to action.
But the activism among Black youth isn’t isolated from a
connection to the global struggle for justice. In the past two years, I’ve
been on delegations to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, and Vene zuela for the
World Youth Festival. And each time I was pleasantly surprised by the number of
Black youth that were on these delegations—not because I thought that
youth of color wouldn’t be in solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela, or
revolutionary youth from around the world. I was surprised because we all know
that it’s not exactly cheap to travel to another part of the world. To do
so takes real dedication, fundraising, taking time off jobs or school, etc. With
Cuba there’s the added pressure that one can face huge fines or even jail
time upon returning to the United States.
In Venezuela one of the most
moving things to me was the reception of the United States delegation by the
other youth delegations. We were told time and time again, “We do not
consider you to be your country. You are under the gun yourselves, and you are
resisting, and you are our sisters and brothers.” And I just think about
how energizing that was for me, and how energizing it must have been for some of
these youth who have probably been demonized most of their lives.
So
what’s the state of Black youth? Well, it’s not a pretty
state—there’s hardship, and brutality, and sorrow at every
turn—from the most subtle to the most institutionalized racism, sexism,
homophobia, and violence. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,
and that’s those youth themselves, making change and taking their lives
back.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email:
[email protected]
Subscribe
[email protected]
Support independent news
DONATE