"RAND PAUL GOES TO HOWARD ..."

...To LEARN about RACE?? 

Our 'green' senator from Kentucky traipsed off to Howard University to learn about blacks in this country.  That should be the punch line in some joke, but; welcome to 'Amurika' in 2013!

 

In my master's research in the early 70's, I came across the data of EmoryBogardus,  (see my earlier blogs) and his Social Distance Scale.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogardus_social_distance_scale.

 

You have to know by now that 'Race' in the United States is inextricably bound with our history of immigration.  "Pecking Order"  forms the cake, so to speak, and racial characteristics like skin color, language, hair and eye color, etc., make up the "icing" on the cake.  Bogardus shows in his data from the 1920's through the early 1950's how the pecking order shifted as white immigrants were "digested" in our social fabric.  His measurement in 1939, the year I was born, was taken on college campuses; to include one that was "Negro";  Howard University.  Its the same Historically Black college that master Rand attended this week for his lessons.  In 1939, the Howard students ranked all whites ahead of themselves!  These students represented  the best and brightest of "Negro" elites in the year I was born.  Some would say that very little has changed on that measurement over these past 73 years.

 

If you look at the rankings over the years they were made, you would be astounded to see how whites ranked themselves (British, or English, versus Canadian, or, simply, "white").  Those distinctions have been "dissolved" over the years.

 

So, what was going on on the black side of the tracks during this time period?  Segregation, mainly.  The most powerful political party was the Ku Klux Klan.   The New Negro Movement 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Negro,  the UNIA, of Marcus Garvey, and the Pullman Porter's Union of A. Phillip Randolph    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_porter ,  were all active  among black citizens in the United States between the World Wars.  My grandparents and their generation were beneficiaries of these movements and they formed larged financial holdings that were later "confiscated" through political shenanigans of poorer whites.  Without these earlier movements, there would have never been a Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King.  Malcolm X was more in line with these earlier movements; leaving aside the religious influences on all of them.

Hope this helps, Rand.  Now how about getting some "edikation" for your "Batista-Cuban" sidekicks?  My favorite Cuban was Celia Cruz!

Stay Vigilant!  Learn, Baby, Learn!

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