Leon Modeste
The End of Anger: A New Generation’s Take on Race and Rage is a very exciting, thought-provoking book covering contemporary America through black, brown and white relations. It is an authoritative account of the American dilemma in the aftermath of President Obama’s election.
The author, Ellis Cose, does extensive research with countless interviews and in-depth aggressive surveys of two groups; the black Harvard MBAs and the alumni of A Better Chance (ABC), a program offering an elite education to thousands of poverty-stricken youth.
However, I was particularly interested in his comments and observations concerning the diminishing of black anger with the increase optimisms as more of them enter into the mainstream of middle-class America. In contrast, anger is increasing in the white community as they feel threatened with the demographics shifting and they see their world turned upside down and a feeling of alienation taking place. Also, the marked increase immigration of the Latino population raises the question: will white America’s condition be worst in the future.
The Tea Party is a self-styled grassroots movement fueled by anger and resentment. In fact, their motto is to “Take Back America”. They want to recapture the past when racial minorities were not in charge; a time when Negroes knew their place. In addition, the changing demographics show a larger number of Latinos, especially the dark skinned coming into this country. Having a black president is further evidence to this group of Americans that their world is changing. Cose’s observation is that the Tea Party position in this society is that they are going to be worst off in the future than they are today and they are angry. They are desperate to recapture the past and they are quick to demonize their opponents. They do not intend to govern, but to disrupt and destroy.
Here lately, the Georgia Farmers are stressed because they lack the workers to harvest their crops. Immigration laws have stopped the easy flow of Latinos from coming over to pick the crops. There was a time that all the pickings such as; Carolina’s tobacco, Mississippi and Georgia’s cotton, was a job for the American “Colored”; a time of Jim Crow, oppression and segregation. The history of plantations, free labor, cruelty, rape, all of these practices, yet has a stench in the black man’s nostrils. The Tea Party prefers to go back to the America that made them very comfortable. Really, is it morally right to be comfortable at the expense of the dehumanization of your fellow man.?
Benjamin Jealous, the NAACP CEO, was outraged by the signs that had appeared at various Tea Party protests depicting President Obama as a monkey and that he be lynched. He was also troubled that blatant racist hate groups such as Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens had aligned themselves with the Tea Party. Even David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, has embraced the Tea Party. Nevertheless, Cose is hopeful that thinking people will see beyond the current cloud of anger to an America, in the future instead of the past, that will embrace all of us.
Wake up, people. America is not an island unto itself; instead, it is a bowl full of all kinds of races, cultures, religions, and a purely diverse nation. No one group can alienate itself within America and claim ownership. May be, once upon a time, white Americans were 99.9 percent in control and felt superior to all the other groups certainly the people of color. Now, according to Mr. Cose’s research, some whites are angry and uneasy. Consequently, the Tea Party and other hate groups are forming to maintain the status quo of the white race in an effort to combat the change that is inevitable.
Here is a man running for president, Gov. Rick Perry, whose family had a particular sign that clearly indicated insensitivity and lack of respect for a black man’s life, but that was clearly fashionable in his part of America. No longer is it acceptable that the governor of Texas or anyone else can have a “N—– Hunt” sign. The same way you would have a sign for a deer hunt or a quail hunt. N—– hunts were real. History shows black men were actually hunted as a sport and murdered. Why in this day and time does Rick Perry continue to hold on to this horrible memorabilia that’s been in his family since the 1980 or even before? Wake, up America.
