Recently, I heard Christian Maxwell, the Republican nominee for Illinois’ 1st Congressional District, say something that I’ve been thinking about ever since.She argued that the minute Black women start seeing themselves as Americans, as fully part of the American story, the entire progressive coalition built on grievances will begin to fall apart.Her point was that Black women have been trained, indoctrinated and propagandized to see themselves as victims of America, and that’s why progress has been stifled.
They’ve been rallying around sinister influences, especially false narratives about what a Black woman is, and that’s kept them locked in a culture of poverty and resentment instead of possibility and opportunity.She’s right.
And I’ve spent the past 20 years on the South Side of Chicago watching how this has happened.In plain words, what has happened has been nothing less than a divorce.I’m not talking about marriage, but the divorce between the Black woman and the American Dream.I say Black woman here, not to single her out, but because it is a fact.
Black women have been targeted by the United States government and nonprofits over the last 60 years in ways that no other race has been.BOB WOODSON TAUGHT ME AMERICA’S WOUNDS HEAL ONLY THROUGH TRUTH AND COURAGEAll of this happened slowly and by design.The War on Poverty promised that we would be helped, and that government programs would lift us up.
But, as Shelby Steele said in "What Killed Michael Brown?" the government that had oppressed us only yesterday would now become the agent of our own uplift.There was something sinister in what he said, and he was right.
Why would we expect our former oppressor to lead us to the Promised Land? Isn’t it the oppressor’s main goal to alleviate his own guilt, and would we be used in that regard?One of the bad ideas to come out of that war was the set of rules that punished a mother for keeping a man in the house and rewarded her financially for ha...