Star-Spangled White Supremacy: Josh Howard and Race in America

Maybe Josh Howard’s remarks can help some of you get to the bottom of race relations in America.

Does he speak on behalf of the entire black community? I say no.

But his remarks about being black and not celebrating The Star-Spangled Banner most definitely relate to the black experience in America.

The first and only event that people bring up is slavery, and, yes, forced labor for a few hundred years would set any community back quite a bit, not to mention the head start it gave whites for those few hundred years.

But what happened after slavery was abolished in the United States?

From the late 1860s until 1900, Reconstruction failed and African Americans continued to be disenfranchised, taken advantage of, and lynched.

The Ku Klux Klan rose to power for the first time as a major terrorist organization. In 1896, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision ruled that separate facilities were equal. Jim Crow segregationist policies continued right up to the Civil Rights Movement that started to gain momentum in the 1950s.

Schooling was and has been unequal, African Americans were barred from homesteading in the western states until the late 1800s, and African American children could not attend public schools until the 1950s.

Later in the 1900s, home loans provided by the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation and the Veteran’s Administration were disproportionately channeled to white families—out of about $120 billion that went to home loans, only a few percent went to non-white families.

Home loans, in addition to the federal funding provided for freeway construction, paved the way for white flight to the suburbs.

America’s urban centers began to decay in the 1950s. Places such as Compton and Watts in Southern California were all white and had racial restrictions to keep non-whites out, but this all changed at mid-century.

The suburbs provided jobs that paid better, schools that were supported by parents who had the time and energy to help make the place that their children learned better in a time of tax revolts, and safer streets and neighborhoods.

The point is that white flight was federally funded and urban decay was the result of a shift of funding to the suburbs. Money and jobs followed whites out of America’s urban centers.

Meanwhile, the urban center became a drug infested, crime ridden police-state. This is when the urban center started to become infested with, as Ron Artest calls it, “ghetto culture.”

Before the 1950s, urban centers that are now referred to as ghettos were all white.   

Overall, too many African Americans and other non-white peoples have faced too many barriers when it comes to personal advancement.

Josh Howard is speaking, whether he knows it or not, about a legacy of white supremacy.

Are there African-American millionaires? Of course. Is Howard a millionaire? Yes. Is it possible that we might have a black president? Yes.

But does Howard speak for all African Americans? Is he a representative of his “community” just because he said that he didn’t believe in The Star-Spangled Banner because he is black?

Do white people speak for all white folks when they make remarks that deal with race?

If you’re going to say that Howard speaks for all black folks, than you have to acknowledge the history of oppression and white supremacy I brought up. That is precisely what he is speaking about.  

Lastly, what is wealth and why is there such drastic differences between white, black, and Hispanic median wealth? On the 2000 US Census, white median wealth was $79,400, black median wealth was $7,500, and Hispanic median wealth was $9,750.

Do these differences only account for intelligence and the ability to achieve, or do you think there’s something else going on in the United States?

Saying that Howard is un-American is more un-American than his remarks, because he was referencing, whether he knew it or not, part of the African-American experience in the United States.

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