Going It Alone: The Case for Black American Independence (Part 7)

Solutions to Impediments

Harnessing Migration

Movement is perhaps the single most powerful conveyor of change throughout world history. Movement of the earth’s lithosphere has changed entire continental landscapes and climates, allowing for animals and plants to span immeasurable distances, which led to their domestication and the advent of human civilization. Movement of goods and resources has fostered prosperity and wealth among nations; as well as the increase in understanding of not just our planet but of the universe as a whole. More than any of these, however, it has been human movement and its proliferation that has irrevocably shaped the planet. Whether it be the carbon emission from our travel and its climatic effects, or urbanization and its effects on ecosystems and planetary species or the spreading of human borne diseases across the planet, human movement has, and continues to matter in all aspects of life. 

What gains much documentation yet little substantive academic study in the Black American community, is human movement for political means and its viability as an agent of sociopolitical transformation. While emigrationism has more than proven its effectiveness at gaining stateless people statehood, it is hardly ever posited as a cogent avenue towards independence for nations within a nation. 

The Aliyah or the Nakba, depending on where one’s political dispositions lie, denotes the systematic and politically backed emigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Europe to Palestine which culminated in the formation of the State of Israel. Similarly in Taiwan after 1949 the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China, under Chiang Kai-Shek evacuated roughly two million supporters from the mainland, onto the island of Taiwan pending their imminent defeat at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong. One need not look so far as Asia and the Middle-East to uncover the successes of political migration as a tool for nation-building. The United States of America itself is perhaps the most storied example of government sanctioned migration leading to nationhood for the emigrated peoples. Britain’s overseas empire would have been an impossibility without large numbers of emigrants traversing miles of ocean to face down an unknown future in an equally foreign land. Emigration of all the unwanted, criminal, and vagrant elements of British society became so crucial to the perpetuation of empire that not only did the British government subsidize the willing passage of their undesirables to the new world, they often subsidized the forceful displacement of their undesirables from Britain to her colonies, in a series of acts that began to vaguely mirror the transatlantic slave trade. Private citizens, governors of orphanages and even charitable organizations like the Salvation Army all received funds from the British government for all those they could capture in an effort to, ‘relieve ratepayers of people who would have been a burden for many years to come.’ Many of those people settled in what became the United States. So much so, that it caused Benjamin Franklin in 1759 to lament it as “an insult and contempt, the cruelest perhaps that one people offered another.” Yet this infusion of British emigrants into the Thirteen Colonies gradually led to them adopting a distinction of identity away from that of Great Britain’s and ultimately to their independence. 

Black Americans can harness their migration in order to carve out a distinct territorial homeland within the United States in order to achieve, first devolution and then outright political autonomy. In many ways the borderlines for the surge of Black bodies and resources have already been drawn. The Black-Belt has long been the ancestral homeland for descendants of the enslaved Africans brought to America. The argument for an independent state in this specific region in America is strongest because of the deep connection this region has had in the subjugation of Black Americans for centuries. Although slavery as an institution was pervasive in all aspects of American society, it is from here the majority of Black suffering occurred. The call for justice is strongest for Black Americans when heard from the Black-Belt. Slavery in America is often deceptively portrayed as a period where white Americans were able to extract from Blacks their labor at zero cost but reality speaks to the contrary. The enslaved Blacks were not toiling for naught, rather, they were sowing in the very soil the moral claim from which their descendants would be able to cling. The enslaved Africans in America were issuing to whites a debt from which their descendants, once properly situated, would be able to collect. The question then arises, what does 400 plus years of slavery and several more decades of Jim Crow and segregation buy a people? Political autonomy in the Black-Belt is perhaps the most plausible and befitting starting concession.

The moral basis for an Black American homeland is not the only resident of the Black-Belt, the largest contiguous group of Black Americans in the United States also call the Black-Belt home which creates the practical impetus for that place to be the designated homeland of the Black nation in America. The only missing element for the consolidation of the Black community is a logistical plan for relocating roughly 16.3 million Black Americans from Periphery Population Zones (PPZ) into Designated Target Zones (DTZ) in order to bolster the Black-Belt and create a condition of de facto autonomy for Black Americans in the region. This process could be expedited exponentially if it were afforded official government support, but U.S. history has shown far too often that when the wider American population is given the choice between doing what is right and what they perceive in their interest, the latter choice always prevails, so no U.S. government subsidized options will be discussed in this study. 

If Blacks could relocate 16.5 million of the 19.3 million Blacks living in PPZs to the Black belt, the swell of new Black residents would bring the territory’s Black population to 42.1 million and create a contiguous Black majority territory, where the Black population could dominate the sociopolitical and economic aspects of their lives. This state of de facto independence, would bolster the argument for devolution which would almost certainly lead to full Black independence by giving proponents of independence a geographic territory to point to, as well as inking out political leaders and a unique political culture outside that of the wider multicultural American democracy. 

Perhaps many academics will view such a prescription as an impossibility, failing to note that with history, “nothing is more imminent than the impossible”. Many would gawk at any effort to literally relocate an overwhelming majority of Black Americans to one contiguous geographic space within the United States as an oversimplified solution to the problem. These skeptics would, however, be derelict in their duty as academics to have missed the ubiquitous evidence pointing to the fact that such movement in American history is not only with precedent but common to this very day. 

Groups in the United States have continuously used migration and movement as a means to generate political power. Some cases such as the Cubans in Miami; the Irish, Jews and Italians in New York City; or Mexicans in Texas and California are both relatively recent and evident examples. But there are more subtle cases as well, such as poor unlanded whites and their westward expansion between 1807-1912; poor working class whites who left the rural South for the industrial centers of the North during slavery in order to evade the competition for labor that an enslaved Black population presented. Blacks themselves have proven any detractors to harnessing migration wrong, with their flight from the south in the face of Jim Crow and American domestic terrorism between 1910-1970. In fact, a return of Black Americans to the Black-Belt is in many ways underway today in what has been dubbed “The New Great Migration” or “The Great Reverse Migration”.  The primary challenge is how does one facilitate, sustain and accelerate this new pattern in Black migration. To promulgate this objective would require a great deal of organizational and institutional infrastructure, which brings us to the second solution of neofunctionalist institution building.

Going It Alone: The Case for Black American Independence (Part 6)

Solutions to Impediments

The methodology for navigating the roadblocks to what has long been for Black Americans their ultimate goal of universal freedom, presents itself unhesitatingly, as both obvious and untechnical. Obvious in the sense that the problems, along with their respective solutions, are neither unique nor unprecedented per se; and untechnical for the fact that they are to a great extent practical, with instances of infeasibility being brought about only in the nation’s resolve to execute them. The struggles that Black Americans face in the United States today are typical of those which every other nation in history has encountered when forcibly incorporated into the power structure of another. The Irish, the Palestinians, Jews and Kurds are but a few examples of people who are experiencing or have experienced the indignity and abuse that the absence of unconditional freedom can attract. The 40 million plus Black Americans in the United States are but another party in this impassioned human dialogue. Luckily for Blacks in America, both history and the future have almost always found themselves in the hands of those who seek to gain unfettered freedom. 

Going It Alone: The Case for Black American Independence (Part 5)

Roadblocks to Independence

Economic Incentives

The roadblock of economic incentive subsumes the element of self-interest. An element that is largely responsible for the deep cleavages within the Black community. The economic incentive factor is a double edged sword, swinging both for and against the realization of black political autonomy. This quasi-roadblock status is brought about based on ones perception of the issue, which is often colored by one’s economic outlook. If one perceives Black Americans as the richest set of black people in history, enjoying more economic prospects for upward mobility and a higher quality of life than any other and that the United States through its paternal guidance has fostered such a condition, logically the economic incentive for unfettered freedom would be diminished. Under this perception economically all is well in the black community and the motivation to upset the economic order is removed if not weakened. However, if one is under the impression that the economic outlook for Blacks would increase exponentially, in comparison to the economic outlook they enjoy now, when exposed to a condition of political independence, then the economic incentive for unconditional freedom would appear most pressing. 

 

This perspective dichotomy is largely responsible for the fact that many proponents of Black American independence sprout from lower income backgrounds or backgrounds deeply riddled with economic glass-doors and ceilings for Blacks. What immediately comes to mind, as a key exhibition of this economic dichotomy and the dialogue it has had within Black American history as it pertains to autonomy, is the ideological rivalry between Marcus Garvey and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. 

Dr. DuBois dedicated his life to achieving betterment for Blacks through economic integration, a commitment that was undeniably colored from his economic perspective of a Black person educated in prestigious mainstream institutions and deemed financially well-off for the time. Marcus Garvey extolled the virtues of Black development through full autonomy from the wider American community, which was also undeniably colored by his experience of not being able to advance economically in a society dominated by whites. Black political ideology could, for the most part, be categorized along these two economic perspectives. The divergence in viewpoints had, until the early 1960s, been widely accepted in the Black community, each point of view coexisting with the other serving as an almost temperance for Black Americans and their dealings with others. What changed this relationship was the overwhelming success that integrationist rhetoric had in affecting immediate, though marginal, changes in the quality of life of Blacks in America. This ability to galvanize the attention of wider America through traditional political channels brought the voices for autonomy to a whisper, and all but removed full autonomy, as a viable political solution from the minds of Black Americans entirely. 

Many proponents for Black autonomy lament this historical reality, but that would be an unfortunately limited outlook on the matter. At a time of ‘separate and [un]equal,’ where lynching and desecration of Black bodies by wider America and its terrorist organizations were commonplace, and Blacks were blatantly denied the protection of the law, the emphasis had to be placed on effecting immediate change. The strategy in combating oppression had to be one of solving the most pressing issues now, through the temporary surrender of the Black ambition for universal freedom and gathering strength from minor victories in order to position oneself to fight what has traditionally been for Blacks the ultimate fight: universal freedom. 

The perception that integration itself was the strategy and not merely a tactic within the fight for universal freedom reduces the economic incentive for Black autonomy. When the call is for more jobs for the Black community rather than more support for job creators within the Black community the economic incentives for Black autonomy is reduced. The emphasis on integrating Black markets deeper within the wider multicultural economy without protections or redress for the disparities of American historical realities reduces the incentive for Black American autonomy. While the economic incentive for Black American independence is, once properly explained, an overpowering one, the notion will never occur to the Black American who lacks the foresight to forego the current marginal profits they may enjoy from the economic status quo to seek something far more illimitable.

Going It Alone: The Case for Black American Independence (Part 4)

 

Roadblocks to Independence

Institutional Deficiencies

Another pressing hindrance to the realization of Black independence is the group’s extensive institutional deficiencies. The dearth of black institutions, though chronicled in many other respects have scarcely been discussed as a hamper to Black self-determination. While there exist many institutions inclined towards burying the traditional Black ambition deeper into that of the wider American democracy, those that seek to liberate Blacks from it are rare. 

Neofunctionalism is a theory of international relations as well as a stratagem for regional integration by which nation-states engage in piecemeal problem solving through institutions in order to foment spillover effects that lead to further integration. The theory was coined by the German-born American political scientist Ernst B. Haas in his work, “The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social and Economic Forces 1950-1957.” Neofunctionalism is best exhibited through European integration which ultimately produced the success of the European Union. Europe was able to unify many of its independent state actors by creating a series of institutions on a problem-by-problem basis, to bind the separate nations to achieve economic and political prosperity. 

Black Americans lack the institutions necessary to integrate the groups divergent interests and cultivate economic and political prosperity; which is ultimately for Blacks, independence.  For instance, the American Independence struggle between 1765-1789 was largely facilitated through the high level of institutional development in the colonies at the time, and a neofunctionalist approach to integration through those institutions. The Continental Congress’ between 1774-1789, are shining examples of how the development of institutions on a problem-by-problem basis can integrate a group and facilitate its economic and political prosperity. The First Continental Congress, was a largely reactionary institution raised to address the issue of Great Britain’s blockade of Boston and the Intolerable Acts it levied on the colony of Massachusetts for its destruction of a shipment of British tea. From this one institution, geared towards the resolution of a narrowly-tailored problem, all the subsequent institutions necessary for the facilitation of American Independence from Great Britain were born. If Black Americans can identify problems in their community, from which their exists a plethora, and then develop narrowly-tailored institution to address them, these institutions upon their successes, however limited, will engender more institutions to resolve more problems until a critical mass or tipping point is reached from which the community will possess the infrastructure necessary to meet their aims of universal freedom. 

Some might assert that the Congressional Black Caucus is such an institution. Surely the Congressional Black Caucus is the most salient of Black institutions, as far as legitimacy and official capacity is concerned. It is perceived as a formal and legitimate representative institution within the Black community, despite the fact that the Caucus neither wholly represents nor legislates for the Black community. But it is comprised of Black elected representatives which does warrant significant consideration. Again, some political thinkers might assert that the Congressional Black Caucus is a neofunctionalist institution geared towards integrating the diversity of Black interests, in order to foster economic and political prosperity in the form of self-determination. An assertion of this kind would be solely inaccurate. The Congressional Black Caucus is wanting as an institution in three key elements that disqualify it as a meaningful institution of the neofunctionalist vein. Those three elements are the: (1) Reactionary element, (2) Narrowly-tailored element, and (3) Spillover element. 

Firstly, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), does not possess the reactionary element of neofunctionalist institutions because it was not explicitly developed in reaction to a problem of integration. The predecessor to the CBC was the ‘Democratic Select Committee’ founded in 1969, as Black representation in the U.S. House of Representatives increased. The CBC was formed to formalize the association of Black elected representatives in the House, not so much as a reaction to a problem in the Black community but as a way to orient newly elected delegates. For an institution to be considered reactionary from a neofunctionalist perspective it would need to be developed in reaction to a pressing problem of integration and the facilitation of economic and political prosperity. For instance, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), initially adopted by most of continental Western Europe, is a demonstrative example of a reactionary institution. The ECSC was created as a common market for coal and steel between its member states, in order to neutralize the fierce competition between European nations over the natural resources that often led to war. This common market for coal and steel that the ECSC created removed the impetus for war between its member states and increased trade between the nations tenfold. The emphasis on cooperation rather than pure competition allowed for peace in what had previously been considered a volatile region. The CBC, while surely serving some purpose, is not reactionary in neofunctionalist terms.

Secondly, the CBC and its mission is not narrowly-tailored to address any one particular issue. The CBC describes its mission as being “to empower America’s neglected citizens and to address their legislative concerns.” A logical response to that mission would be what kind of empowerment? Which neglected citizens? What legislative concerns? The CBC’s mission is entirely too general to meet the standard set by neofunctionalist institutions. In order to meet the narrowly-tailored element of neofunctionalist institutions, an institution would require a measurable mandate or one that possesses a ‘mission accomplished’ point. The CBC’s mission is so ambiguous that it could never definitively reach a point where it could declare its mission accomplished. Clearly, in the United States and all other polities, there will exist in perpetuity some elements of its citizenry that believe they are experiencing some level of neglect, seeking some form of empowerment and having varying legislative concerns. This lack of specificity would give the CBC an indefinite mission rendering it incapable of being used as an instrument of integration under principles of neofunctionalism. The ECSC, again, is most instructive of what a narrowly-tailored institution ought to look like. The ECSC as an institution had a lifespan, meaning it was adopted, evolved, expanded and then expired. All throughout its lifespan it existed solely to remove the impetus for war over natural resources (coal and steel) in western Europe and to foster economic integration and prosperity in the same. The CBC was adopted, it has done little in the way of evolving, even less in the way of expanding and due to its all encompassing mission has no expiration in sight; it cannot qualify as an narrowly-tailored institution for the purpose of neofunctionalism. 

Thirdly, the CBC has very little to show as it pertains to spillover. A key aspect of neofunctionalist institutions is their spillover capabilities or their ability to beget other neofunctionalist institutions in reaction to other pressing problems plaguing the community. The CBC, in this regard has been rather impotent. The closest the CBC has come to a spillover is the TransAfrica institution which was, if one is inclined to be generous, vaguely conceived through the CBC. But besides TransAfrica, an institution designed to advocate for Black diasporas and their advancement in U.S. foreign policy which was largely the brainchild of Randall Robinson, the CBC has done little to foster the development of other institutions. Perhaps this truth arises from the fact that although the members of the CBC are legislators within the realm of the U.S. Congress, they lack all official capacity to legislate solely as CBC members. The ECSC, however, was able to engender enough success among its member states that they came to the negotiating table twelve more times, giving life to several other institutions such as the European Atomic Energy Committee, the European Economic Community, and ultimately the European Union, which were all developed out of slight adjustments to the ECSC itself. The CBC does not possess any comparable track record of spillover. Based on the above, this author would argue that the Black community, as it exists today, is totally void of a neofunctionalist institution capable of integrating the often incongruous interests of its members in order to achieve economic and political prosperity, which is undoubtedly for Black people in America: universal freedom or independence. 

Going It Alone: The Case for Black American Independence (Part 3)

 

Roadblocks to Independence

Geographic Constraints

The biggest hindrance to Black American independence is the spatial distribution of the Black population within America. The United States’ brand of democracy, despite all its regarded virtues, is not so much ‘majority rule, minority rights’ as it is ‘demographic might makes right, minorities may exist’. Black American’s lacking any contiguous demographic might, must be content with merely existing all throughout the United States. Due to the group’s lack of demographic concentration anywhere, they lack overwhelming authority everywhere, and as a result must pander to other groups in order to gain the least of political concessions. Black Americans have attempted to concentrate in urban enclaves in hopes to dominate their own lives from the municipal or local level. This strategy has largely failed as the policies Black Americans require to permanently transform and control their sociopolitical and economic lives are largely made at the state and federal levels.  

Examples of demographic fractionalization and its disparate effects on groups in democratic societies are bounteous. One analogous case is that of the Jewish population in Europe, particularly Germany and to a lesser extent the U.K. and France, where through democratic means a scattered population of Jewish ancestry experienced government sanctioned persecution and often outright expulsion. Another instance is that of the Chinese American experience in the 1820’s-1880’s. While the Chinese were instrumental in building the railroads and infrastructure that connected the continental United States, because of their inability to concentrate their population in order to generate demographic favor over any contiguous geographic territory, they were subject to institutionalized racism from both private institutions and the government alike.

Minorities experiencing institutionalized persecution from the democratic process is not the rule however. The phenomena just manifests itself with more probability to those minorities that disperse upon arrival to democratic societies. For instance, Cuban-American immigrants serve as a quintessential example of how minority populations can gain political power in democratic societies in order to safeguard themselves from the pernicious whims of the majority. Rather than fanning out into the wider continental America, Cubans have concentrated the overwhelming majority of their numbers in the city of Miami, where they exercise much control over local politics and to a disproportionate extent state and federal politics through the lobbying machine they have cultivated there. 

Just over half of the roughly forty-two million Black Americans live inside an area where the group enjoys its highest level of demographic concentration. The contiguous geographic areas where the majority of Blacks currently reside, and from which Blacks possess the most historical rights in America, encompass a crescent like swath of territory from East Texas to Maryland touching Alabama, Mississippi, The District of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Louisiana, dubbed the black-belt. 57% of all Black Americans reside in this black-belt. 

The other half of the Black population exist in states and city centers where their prospects for ever becoming a demographic majority are slim. States like California, Florida and Texas; cities like Detroit, Chicago, and New York City, not only pull vital votes and capital away from the black-belt but because Blacks lack real demographic importance in those zones, they field some of the most socio-politically and economically inhospitable areas for Blacks in the nation.  Black Americans lack political significance due to their demographic weakness and are thus disproportionately exposed to abuse and exploitation in these areas.

 

 

 

Going It Alone: The Case for Black American Independence (Part 2)

Roadblocks to Independence

Roadblocks defined, are factors that hinder progress and independence denotes, a state of freedom from outside control or support. That being said, the factors hindering Black American political progress towards complete sociopolitical and economic independence are both, favorably for Blacks, obvious and untechnical. The main trouble with understanding Black people and their plight, as it pertains to their political development, and arguably all other aspect of Black development, is that the subject is often viewed through the lens of the wider American multicultural democracy, as opposed to one wholly geared toward Black interests.  

Black political theory, since around the year 1964, has deviated, as it would seem, from its traditional objective of unqualified freedom or autonomy. Contemporary Black political thought seeks to foster Black American political growth within the confines of the wider American multicultural democracy. This newfound mission of containment was undoubtedly adopted due to the successes such a rhetorical change garnered, in the way of gaining the fundamental elevations in rights and quality of life most Black Americans have experienced post-slavery. While successful in gaining Blacks legal recognition, in the minds of the wider American multicultural democracy as humans, this new found political aim has failed desperately in procuring for Blacks the sociopolitical and economic parity from which the group is entitled. A realignment in Black political thought, to what has been the traditional pursuit of Africans in the Americas–universal freedom–would aid in understanding and articulating the roadblocks that Black Americans face, which would in turn assist in properly devising the means to navigate them. 

This theoretical realignment is in many ways the cornerstone of the overall discussion. Realigning Black political thought towards unconditional freedom i.e. self-determination is evidently the biggest roadblock to independence itself, because once unconditional freedom is the objective, the means by which to attain it manifest themselves in the manner earlier stated: as obvious and untechnical. The discussion of realigning Black political thought, while crucial in providing a background from which to develop this study, is by definition theoretical and this study is focused mainly on the empirical roadblocks to Black autonomy. Those empirical roadblocks are: (1) geographic constraints, (2) institutional deficiencies, and (3) the quasi-roadblock of economic incentive. 

Going It Alone: The Case for Black American Independence (Part 1)

 

Introduction

Black American history, as it pertains to the issue of statehood and self-determination, can be aptly characterized as a patchwork of missed opportunities, dashed hopes and incredible promise. Black Americans exist in the US, in multiple ways, as the loudest living contradiction to the American narrative. A narrative that tells of distal peoples voluntarily traversing both ocean and sea to lay their claim to a hitherto unbeknownst world. A world where equality and liberty, if not immediately granted, could be had with the right mix of diligence and determination. All groups in America possess this common narrative, which aids in forming the American multicultural identity. This identity in turn binds each, otherwise fragmented group into a nation giving impetuous to the creation of the nation-state we know today as the United States of America.

One can easily argue, that Black Americans have been, from the very outset of the American adventure, excluded from this crucial narrative. This fact serves to permanently relegate Black Americans as a group, to a field of distinction apart from its other supposedly co-equal counterparts. Black Americans did not come to America of their own accord in order to seek their fortunes as most Americans at one point have. Black Americans were brought to the United States and the Americas at large, against their own volition, to bolster the power structure of another independent actor. This fact creates a pervasive schism in the historical ties between Black Americans and the wider multicultural America. This schism has served to keep the interests of Black America and the wider multicultural democracy largely separate and along divergent tracks. One need only look at the disparate social indicators to find already present in America, a polarization between the Black American population and that of the dominant racial demographic.

Though united in name and polity—social statistics, culture, and history give credence to the concept of Black divergence in identity from the wider American discourse. History stands replete with examples of nations who have sought removal from political power structures as a consequence of the breakdown in legitimacy that results from pervasive disparities in identification with the larger political community of which they exist. For the purpose of this study, comparative analysis will be confined to four instances of political dissolution: The Irish Republican Revolution of 1912-1923, the American independence struggle between 1765-1789, the semi-autonomous state of Taiwan from 1947-1949 and lastly, but largely, Zionism between 1933-1948.

This study contends to identify the empirical roadblocks to Black American independence, and put forth equally pragmatic solutions to negotiate those obstacles. It will also underline the compelling tradition of Black American pursuit of autonomy, rather than inclusion, which has falsely and suspiciously emerged as the traditional political mission of Black Americans. This paper is in many ways a continuation of Lee Harris’s work, Political Autonomy As A Form Of Reparations To Black Americans, 29 S.U.L. Rev. 25 (2001), which exists as one exception to the serious attention deficit the Black American community exhibits in regards to the topic of self-determination and independence. Where the author in that work makes a case for the narrow question of reparations with a general prescription of political autonomy, this work seeks to unearth the mechanics from which political autonomy can be achieved. It will field both established international relations concepts as well as novel answers to the unique political challenges that Black Americans face in achieving political independence. It will also convey the clear socioeconomic basis for the pursuit of independence and why Black Americans, now in the year 2016, should consider going it alone, as the surest path towards their age-old quest for autonomy and universal freedom.