Philosophia Africana, Vol. 5, No. 2, August 2002Reflections on 9/11: Why Race, Class,Gender, and Religion MatterJulian BondDepartment of HistoryUniversity of VirginiaCharlottesville, VirginiaChair, Board of DirectorsNational Association for the Advancement of Colored PeopleLong before the world changed on September 11, 2001, there were those whorejected any mention of race in the political discourse as \"divisive\" or \"playing therace card,\" as if complaints about discrimination were only slick tricks in a side-walk game of three-card monte. Such claims have become more common now, andwe must be prepared to counter them. Our democracy was built on dissent. We can-not sacrifice the right to protest, especially now, when it is most at risk. We knowour Constitution is strong enough to protect Americans security and America'sfreedom.More than 3,500 people died in that unspeakable tragedy. Most were Ameri-cans, but they died with people from more than 50 other countries: 200 from GreatBritain; 250 from Chile; 200 from Columbia; 130 from Turkey; 115 from thePhilippines; 110 from Israel; more than 100 from Germany; more than 20 eachfrom Austria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, China,the Czech Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Egypt, France, Ghana, Guatemala, HongKong, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mex-ico, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Russia, South Africa,Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Taiwan, Ukraine, Uruguay,Venezuela, and Zimbabwe are missing.That is why they called it the World Trade Center. Among the Americans wereblacks, whites. Latinos, Asians, Christians, Muslims, and Jews - as diverse in deathas we are in life.One of those who escaped from the World Trade Center said, \"If you had seenwhat it was like in that stairway, you'd be proud. There was no gender, no race, noreligion. It was everyone, unequivocally, helping each other, \"iBut away from that stairway, in America's streets, there is gender, there is race.Philosophia Africanathere is religion. Since the attacks, people who look like Arabs or Muslims havebeen harassed, assaulted, and killed.Eour days after the attack, in Mesa, Arizona, a gunman shot to death the Sikhowner of a gas station and fired on a Lebanese clerk at work and an Afghan fami-ly at home. When he was arrested, the suspect said, \"I'm a patriot. I'm a damnAmerican all the way.\"^What he is really is a damned fool.As Jordan's King Abdullah wisely observed, \"The terrorists are trying to breakdown the fabric of the U.S. They want to break down what America stands for. ...[I]f the American communities start going after each other, if we see America frag-ment, then you destroy that special thing that America stands for. That's what theterrorists want.\"^With the events of September\"If you had seen what it was i*L • .if .1 J. • •^ -^ 3j \\^' ^^ '^^^'^^ ^^ '^^^^ \"°^ achieved avictory against tyranny abroad norlike tn that stairway, youd be proud. There was no gen- der, no race, no religion. It was everyone, unequivocally, . ^. ,' ^, ^agamst racism here at home. Just asthis enemy is more difficult to identi-fy and punish, so is discrimination a\"^°'^ elusive target today. No morehelping each other.\" t ^^f ^ ''^^ \"\"'^•^^\". ^^^ y^\"''^-\"open for everyone. No longer are they closed to those whose skins are black.The law now requires the votingBut despite impressive increases in the numbers of black people holding publicbooth and schoolhouse door to swingoffices and wearing white collars, despite our ability to sit and eat and ride and voteand go to school in places that used to bar black faces, in some important ways non-white Americans face problems more difficult to attack today than in the years thatwent before.Eor those African Americans for whom the nineties were more economic bustthan boom, the economic ramifications of our national tragedy will be particularlypainful. As the economy continues to slide and layoffs mount, the last hired becomethe first fired, joining unemployment rolls already populated by twice the percent-age of blacks than whites.In the summer of 1918, on the eve of America's entry into World War I, one ofthe NAACP's founders, W. E. B. DuBois, urged blacks to \"forget our special griev-ances and close ranks shoulder to shoulder with our fellow citizens and the alliednations that are fighting for democracy.\" He faced a strong barrage of criticism andsoon began to regard his statement as a colossal blunder. It soon taught the lessonthat democracy is often a casualty in wars fought to save democracy.Even while we close ranks, we cannot put aside our right to dissent and to peti-tion our government for a redress of our grievances. To do otherwise would be adenial of the democracy we are defending. When we succeed, America succeeds.America is strongest when it is just. She is strongest when her people are free.Let us remember the words of the poet Langston Hughes, who wrote thatblack AmericansReflections on 9/11 3want what \"so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.\"We want \"my country 'tis of thee sweet land of liberty.\" We wanteverything we ever heard about in all the Eourth of July speechesever spoken.''We are reminded here of freedom and justice. Let us talk about them now.We have recently witnessed what almost no other living Americans have everseen: the death of an old century and the birth of a new one.The passage of a century - 100 years - is a grand old age for a woman or aman; it is only a fraction of the lifetime of a nation. We are such a young nation, sorecently removed from slavery, that only my father's generation stands betweenJulian Bond and human bondage.Like many others in this nation, I am the grandson of a slave. My grandfatherwas born in 1863, in Kentucky. Ereedom didn't come for him until after the 13thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1865. He and his mother wereproperty, like a horse or a chair. As a young girl, she had been given away as a wed-ding present to a new bride, and when that bride became pregnant, her husband -that's my great-grandmother's owner and master - exercised his right to take hiswife's slaves as his mistress. That union produced two children, one of them mygrandfather.At age 15, barely able to read and write, he hitched his tuition, a steer, to a ropeand walked 100 miles across Kentucky to Berea College, and Berea took him in. Ittook him 16 years, but he graduated. When he did, the college asked him to deliv-er the commencement address. He said then:The pessimist from his corner looks out on the world of wicked-ness and sin and blinded by all that is good or hopeful in the con-dition and progress of the human race, bewails the present state ofaffairs and predicts woeful things for the future. In every cloud hebeholds a destructive storm, in every flash of lightning an omen ofevil, and in every shadow that falls across his path a lurking foe.He forgets that the clouds also bring life and hope, that lightningpurifies the atmosphere, that shadow and darkness prepare sun-shine and growth, and that hardships and adversity nerve the race,as the individual, for greater efforts and grander victories.^\"Greater efforts and grander victories.\" That was the promise the generationborn into slavery made more than 100 years ago. That was the promise made by thegeneration that won the great world war for democracy more than five decades ago.That was the promise made by those who brought democracy to America's darkestcorners three-and-a-half decades ago. That is the promise we must all seek to honortoday.The Civil War that freed my grandfather was fought over whether blacks andwhites shared a common humanity. Less than 10 years after it ended, the nationchose sides with the losers and agreed to continue black repression for almost 1004 Philosophia Africanayears.When the twentieth century began, black people were slaves in every way butlegally. Most could not vote. Most went to inadequate, segregated schools. Mostattended for only a few months each year, and most seldom went beyond highschool. Most worked as farmers or semi-skilled laborers. Few owned the land theyfarmed or even the homes in which they lived.DuBois described life then and the world a black man might see:He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land,tools or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed,skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor racein a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt theweight of his ignorance - not simply of letters but of life, of busi-ness, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking andawkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and hisfeet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stainof bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement ofNegro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the lossof ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a massof corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the oblit-eration of the Negro home.^This was the world in which three people met during the first week of 1909 toform what would become the NAACP. All were white, one the descendent of abol-ishionists, another Jewish, the third a Southerner, a Southerner whose mother's peo-ple were Kentucky slaveholders, as my father's people were Kentucky slaves.That meeting resulted in a call, issued on the 100th anniversary of AbrahamLincoln's birth, which asked as we ask today, how far has the nation come in guar-anteeing \"to each and every citizen, irrespective of color, the equality of opportuni-ty and equality before the law?\"Now that slave's grandson is chairman of the NAACP and teaches at the Uni-versity of Virginia, founded by slaveowner Thomas Jefferson, teaching young Amer-icans about the modern-day struggle for human liberty. That struggle has its rootsin Jefferson's words more than his deeds, and its parallels in my grandfather's mem-bership in a transcendent generation: the body of women and men born in the nine-teenth century in servitude, freed from slavery by the Civil War, determined to maketheir way as free women and men.One of my tasks as a teacher is to demonstrate the democratic and optimisticnature of the movement. By aiming a microscope at the mass, I help my students dis-cover unknown heroes and heroines. I hope to demonstrate the confidence and senseof possibility that was the movement's energy. By giving voice to the hopefulness ofearlier generations that faced resistance and oppression, which my students havenever known, and will never know, I hope to make heroism more available, moreattainable to a generation inclined to see through a glass darkly.Most of those who made the movement were not famous; they were faceless.Reflections on 9/11 5They were the nameless: the marchers with tired feet, the protesters beaten back, theunknown women and men who risked job and home and life.These women and men did not live in the so-called \"good old days.\" The truthis that black Americans then faced a borderline genocidal regime. Their lives werecheap and subject to extinction at any white person's whim.The movement succeeded. It succeeded in spite of what Martin Luther King, Jr.called the brutality of a dying order shrieking across the land. In its successes, it hasmuch to teach us now.Today, the United States looks back at Vietnam to discover what went wrong.We can look back at yesterday's civil rights movement to discover what went right.Yesterday's movement succeeded because the victims became their own best cham-pions. When Rosa Parks refused to ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^\"••~~~stand up, and when Martin LutherKing stood up to speak, mass partici- _^ j^ ,pation came to the movement for civil Greater effoHS andrights. Today, too many of my stu- grander victoHeS.\" ... Thatdents and too many others - young ^5 fhe promise We mUSt alland old, black and white - believethey are impotent, unable to influencethe society in which they live. Three-and-a-half decades ago, a mass move-ment marched, picketed, protested, organized, and brought state-sanctioned segre-gation to its knees.One message from the movement is that people move forward fastest whenthey move forward together. King did not march from Selma to Montgomery byhimself. He didn't speak to an empty field at the March on Washington. There werethousands marching with him, and before him, and thousands more who did thenecessary work that preceded the triumphant march.Black Americans did not really march to freedom. They worked their way tocivil rights through the difficult business of organizing a community, block by blockand creating a black-led, interracial movement in which 100 parts made up the suc-cessful whole. The civil rights movement provides a history of aggressive self-helpand volunteerism in churches and civic clubs, assisting the needy and financing thecause of social justice, and an equally honorable tradition of struggle and resistance.But the struggle continues.Two hundred and forty-six years of American slavery were followed by 100years of state-sanctioned discrimination, reinforced by public and private terror,ending only in 1965.Thus it has been only 37 years since all black Americans were promised the fullrights of citizens, only 37 years since legal segregation was ended nationwide, only37 years since the right to register and vote was universally guaranteed, only 37years since the protections of the law and Constitution were officially extended toall. And now we are told those short years have been enough. We are told to believethat is the victory of hope over experience, to believe that is the victory of self-delu-sion over common sense. Those who declare today that yesterday's movement was6 Philosophia Africanaexcessive or went too far ignore our past. And they do not understand the present.As John Hope Franklin writes:All whites ... benefited from American slavery. All blacks had norights they could claim as their own. All whites, including the vastmajority who owned no slaves, were not only encouraged butauthorized to exercise dominion over all slaves, thereby adding tothe system of control. ... Even poor whites benefited from the legaladvantage they enjoyed over all blacks as well as from the psycho-logical advantage of having a group beneath them. Most livingAmericans do have a connection with slavery. They have inheritedthe preferential advantage, if they are white, or the loathsome dis-advantage, if they are black, and those positions are virtually asalive today as they were in the nineteenth century.^In other words, there is only one racial preference in America, and it is not forblack people. The only place black comes before white is in the dictionary - and theNational Basketball Association.Considering our history, the job done so far has been remarkable, no matterhow great the task that remains undone, no matter how long our journey has been.By the middle of the last century, when mass participation came to the movementfor civil rights, everyone - student, homemaker, minister, every woman and everyman - could become an agent of her or his own deliverance. This was our democ-racy's finest hour.The removal, over the decades since the 1960s, of the more blatant forms ofAmerican Apartheid has made it too easy for too many to believe today that allforms of discrimination have disappeared. Opinion polls reveal that a majority ofwhites believe that racial discrimination is no longer a major impediment for peo-ple of color. In one study, 75 percent of whites said that blacks face no discrimina-tion in obtaining jobs or housing even as housing discrimination becomes moresevere. Polls show that most white Americans believe equal educational opportuni-ty exists right now, even as schools become more, not less, segregated across thecountry.^Despite the death of Jim Crow, race remains the central fact of life for everynon-white American, eclipsing income, position, gender, and education. Racetrumps them all. The evidence is everywhere:• A study of workplace discrimination found that blacks and whites withequal qualifications were treated equally barely one-quarter of the time.^• A nationwide study of home-buyers found that minorities face increaseddiscrimination from mortgage lending institutions.^^• A sweeping five-year study concluded that race still determines success ineverything from job opportunities to education to housing.^^Reflections on 9/11And just two years ago, 40 percent of Alabama voters, more than half-millionpeople, voted to keep the state's statute prohibiting interracial marriage. Last year,Mississippians voted by a 2-1 margin to keep the Confederate swastika as theirstate's flag. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^mtmmmm^^^mtwhile the nation as a whole ismore racially and ethnically diverse While the nation as a wholethan at any time in its history, white -^ ^^^^ radalfy andAmericans still live largely segregated i . n .. i •lives. The 2000 census shows that the ethutcally dtverse ... whtteaverage white city- or suburb-dweller Americans Still Uve largelylives in a neighborhood that is 80 per- segregated liveS.cent white and seven percent black.Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians all livein more integrated neighborhoods than whites do.Most American whites have little contact with minorities. More than one-halfof all minorities live in just five states: California, Texas, New York, Florida, andIllinois. Fifty-five percent of blacks live in the South. Sixty-one percent of Hispanicslive in five southwestern states. Among Asians and Pacific Islanders, half live in theWest, as do almost half of Native Americans, Eskimos, and Aleuts.The 2000 presidential election confirmed our deep national divisions. Not onlydid Al Gore receive 90 percent of the black vote and George W. Bush a majority ofwhite votes, whites made up 95 percent of Bush's total vote. Although 57 percent ofvoters with incomes under $15,000 voted for Gore, even poor whites cast a major-ity of their votes for Bush. Similarly, 54 percent of women voted for Gore, but whitewomen slightly favored Bush. In politics, as in life, race trumps class and racetrumps gender.The election revealed a cultural, as well as racial, divide. Gore won every majorcity and almost all suburbs, while Bush took every small town on a straight linefrom Redding, California, to Springfield, Illinois, giving new meaning to WoodyGuthrie's song, \"This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land.\"The only demographic groups that cast a unified vote were blacks. Latinos,Jews, union members, and residents of large cities, all of whom voted 60 percent ormore for Gore, and white males, who voted 60 percent for Bush. Having votedalong racial lines, not surprisingly blacks and white divided also on the post-elec-tion fight, with blacks far more alienated from the process and the results.The NAACP's unprecedented voter registration and education drive for Elec-tion 2000 was an unparalleled success. Two million more black voters cast ballotsin 2000 than in 1996. The African American share of the total vote increased 25percent or more in four states. Turnout in Texas increased 50 percent, in Florida 60percent, and in Missouri, a whopping 124 percent! In the Sunshine State, which casta long shadow over Election 2000, more than a million African Americans voted,accounting for more than 15 percent of the total vote, a state record.But we know that the black share of the vote — in Florida and elsewhere —should have been higher, the consequences of which could not be greater. The sorry8 Philosophia Africanastory of voter suppression and nullification in Florida was told by witness after wit-ness at NAACP hearings after the election. They described police stops near pollingplaces, racially motivated voter purges, demands for multiple forms of identificationfrom people who had voted for decades, longtime voters' names missing from therolls, and other examples of black votes prevented from being counted.What is not as well-known is that these tactics were not restricted to Floridaand were not restricted to black precincts. Other minority voters in other places suf-fered as well. Our offices were flooded with calls and complaints from across thecountry - from New York, Virginia, Texas, South Carolina, New Jersey, Michigan,Ohio — state after state where impermissible barriers kept away people who onlywanted to be good citizens.The NAACP, through lawsuits in Florida and elsewhere, has sought to ensurethat these outrageous events never, ever happen again. We are committed to guar-anteeing that every voter across the country has equal access to the polls and thatevery vote is honestly and fairly counted.We heard before the election, \"Your vote counts!\" We learned after the elec-tion that your vote might not be counted. This is unacceptable. This is un-Ameri-can.We're not going to \"get over it\" until we have guarantees that every vote willcount.Race is a socio-political, not a biological, construct; there are more genetic dif-ferences within races than among them. But if race has only socio-political, not bio-logical, significance, it is not just a pigment of our imagination; it colors all our lives,and it has consequences that can be deadly in the lives of many.What does it mean to be a racial minority in America? It means a history, andlike all history, the past informs and shapes the present. It is a history of disadvan-tage, and it is disingenuous to claim that disadvantage has magically disappeared.And it is a history of difference - not simply of skin color and hair texture, but along history of different treatment that produces different and disturbing outcomes.If you are a member of the minority, these different outcomes set your groupapart from the majority. Some of these differences, like skin color, are meaningless.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Yet, despite their neutrality, they serve...^j. , I /• f I • for your fellow citizens as badges ofWe learned after the election ^nworthiness. As a member of athat your vote might not be minority, you have a higher birth rate,counted... We are not going lower life expectancy, and higherto \"get over if until we have mortality rates. Your risk of death by^, ^ HIV/AIDS, heart disease, and homi-guarantees that every vote A w u . v* _ -^ cide will be greater. Your group isunder 18 are minorities; by 2025 they will approach majority status. Minorities overWtll count. younger than majority Americans.^______^^^^____^_^_^^^^^_^^^^^_ Thirty-five percent of all children18 and under are already 27 percent of the population; by 2050 they will be anear majority. Today, nearly half of the nation's 100 largest cities are home to moreminorities - blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and others - than whites. Non-HispanicReflections on 9/11 9whites are a minority in the 100 largest urban centers.The youthful profile of minorities and the comparatively older profile ofwhites means a graying, aging white manager class is supervising a workforcethat grows more multiracial and multicultural every year.Most Americans celebrate this diversity, and this is good news.^^ But goodnews is not enough. All of us are implicated in the continuation of inequality, justas all of us would benefit from its end. Discrimination against black Americansalone is estimated to bleed about $240 billion annually from the economy in lostproductivity.^^ If black and Hispanic students attended college at the same rateas whites, the national economy would grow by about $230 billion a year.i'*For as long as the NAACP has existed, whether Democrats or Republicansoccupied the White House, we have spoken truth to power.During the last administration. Bill Clinton was president, and his yearsreflected both the unusual empathy he exhibited for black people and they forhim and his inability to fight harder for racial justice, either because of hisunwillingness to risk or because of the distractions he brought upon himself.Now another President, the eighteenth the NAACP has confronted in its his-tory, has taken office. But remember, we have been down this road before. As wehave done with the 17 before him, we intend to applaud him when he is right andto take him to task when he is wrong. Ralph Nader was wrong when he saidthere was little difference between candidates Bush and Gore; he was right whenhe said a Bush victory would give the progressives the impetus to mobilize,organize, and become more effective.We know a convincing majority of voters - all but a majority of theSupreme Court - repudiated extremism on Election Day and voted convincinglyfor justice and fair play. The two major candidates aimed centrist messages at theelectorate. The selected winner promised throughout his campaign to unite, notdivide, the nation. But it was not to be. Instead of uniting us, the new adminis-tration, even after September 11, almost daily separates and divides.They selected nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics,appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing, and chose Cabinetofficials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncriticalaffection.The president who promised to unite, not divide, chose as secretary of theinterior a woman who opposed racially-equitable scholarships and who regard-ed slavery as a set of \"bad facts\" that carried too great a loss for states' rights.She refused to defend her state's support of a business fairness program. She andthe new attorney general have opposed legally sanctioned remedies for discrimi-nation.The president who promised to unite us chose as director of the office ofFaith-Based and Community Initiatives a man who wrote, \"all that's left of theblack community in some pockets of urban America is deviant, delinquent, andcriminal adults surrounded by severely abused and neglected children, virtuallyall of whom were born out of wedlock.\"10 Philosophia AfricanaAnd the president who promised to unite, not divide, America selected asthe nation's top law enforcement office a man who doesn't believe in many of thecivil rights laws his office is required to enforce - affirmative action, votingrights, laws against racial profiling and hate crimes - notwithstanding his \"con-firmation conversion\" when he repudiated everything he believed in yesterdayand promised to support the very laws he had previously fought so hard todestroy.They divide, but they will not conquer. We have survived presidents in thepast. We will survive presidents in the present and the future. But, of course, weintend to do more than just survive; we intend to persevere and prevail.In the movement, we used to say, \"we'll wear them down or we'll win themover - the choice is up to them.\" We'll fight until hell freezes over, and then we'llfight on the ice. A civil rights agenda for the beginning of the new century mustinclude continuing to litigate, organize, mobilize, form coalitions of the caringand concerned, and join ranks against the comfortable, the callous, and thesmug. We must fight discrimination wherever it raises its ugly head - in the hallsof government, in corporate suites or in the streets. We have work to do. It is noteasy work, but we have hope and history on our siNOTES1. 2. The New York Times (September 16, 2001), 2.Laurie Goldstein and Tamar Lewin, \"Victims of Mistaken Identity, Sikhs Pay a Price forTurbans,\" The New York Times (September 19, 2001), 1.3. Thomas Friedman, \"The Big Terrible,\" The New York Times (September 18, 2001),A31.4. Langston Hughes, Fight for Freedom, ed. Christopher C. De Santis. Missouri: Univer-sity of Missouri Press, 1962, 205.5. Commencement address by James Bond, Berea College Reporter (June, 12).6. DuBois, W.E.B., \"Of Our Spiritual Strivings,\" in The Souls of Black Folk. New York:Penguin U.S.A., 2002 (1903).7. Franklin, John Hope, letter to Duke University student nevifspaper. The Chronicle (May,2000).8. Bronner, Ethan, \"After 45 Years, Resegregation Emerges in Schools, Report Finds,\" TheNew York Times (June 13, 1999).9. \"Study Finds Job Agency Race Bias,\" The Los Angeles Times (July 29, 1999).10. \"Mortgage Study Finds Rise in Racial Bias,\" The Washington Post (September 16,1999).11. \"Study - Races Has a Povi^erful Role in US,\" Associated Press (October 1, 1999).12. In one recent survey, eight out of 10 said it was important said it was important to havepersons of different races, cultures, and backgrounds in the workforce. Even more, 85percent, thought diversity important to the future of the economy. Ninety percentthought diversity important to the quality of higher education. Business Higher Educa-tion Forum (February 17, 2000).Reflections on 9/11 1113. Andrew Brimmer (July 1, 2000).14. Educational Testing Service Study (May 24, 2000).15. This text is an edited version of a paper given by Julian Bond at DePaul University onOctober 31, 2001.
