Wednesday, March 09, 2005
A Nation Within a Nation
Rhetoric expressing that African Americans are “a nation within a nation” is nothing new. However, those who usually take this rhetorical stance seldom situate this sentiment as fact. I see no other way to view people of African descent in the U.S., except as a nation within a nation, based on our population, literacy, and economics.
Annual population is one of the indices gauged when speaking about nations. Most statistics indicate the minority status of African Americans, being 12% of the U.S. population. Others like to invert the statistics and to establish at 10.3% the minority status of the so-called developed world, which includes the U.S., Japan, Germany, U.K., and France. In reality, there is another way to view our African American presence. With a population of over 34 million, African Americans comprise a population larger than many nations of the world, as well as our neighbor to the north, Canada.
It will be a new day when African Americans recognize the rate of literacy we have gained in spite of our struggle for quality education. Voiced by African Americans, “Get an education,” is a too often expressed platitude. However, literacy rate is the measurement engaged in compiling data about nations. In terms of literacy, African Americans have attained a level that could be the envy of the rest of the world. Most nations will probably never achieve our level of attainment. Pakistan has an overall literacy rate of 39%. Many African nations such as Nigeria have a rate approximating 57%. According to the Bureau of the Census, 82% of African Americans 25-34 years of age hold at least a high school diploma, up from 75% in 1980. Our platitude suggests the unrealistic goal of college degrees being the only barometer to use. Yet only 25% of whites in the same age group are college graduates.
Moreover, it is in regards to economic power that African Americans should revel the most. Although determining our Gross Domestic Product, the index used to determine the value of goods and services produced within a country, is difficult to project for African Americans. I direct you to a survey by the Selig Center for Economic Growth, which can be located on-line at http://www. Selig.uga.edu. This study speaks of black buying power projecting a 72.9 percent rise over the last decade. In monetary terms, by 1999, our buying power stood to improve to $533 billion. We tend to speak of ourselves as consumers in such negative terms without regard to the necessities that we must acquire: housing, utilities, and food eaten at home. We should not denigrate our “buying power” since, for us, it is the one of the few contexts in which the word power appears. The objective needs to be to place what we have attained within a global reality.
We too often think of politics in only electoral terms. Politics is the ability to gain, to use, and to maintain power. As I see it, our power is available for us to claim. Within the greater scheme of things, based on our per capita income, African American are twelfth in a world ranking of nations (ahead of Finland, United Kingdom, and Italy).
Too often, we can be our own worse critics. Perhaps, a great deal of this criticism is the result of the “litany of tears” that we often bring to our own historical past. However, in essence, we are more than the summation of our oppression. In this column, I will be exploring nationhood based on fifteen years of qualitative research in both the urban North and rural South. To further substantiate our nationhood status, I will provide insight into African American life, history and culture. I plan to end each column with a signature: “And this is how we are a nation within a nation,” speaking to a mental change.
Annual population is one of the indices gauged when speaking about nations. Most statistics indicate the minority status of African Americans, being 12% of the U.S. population. Others like to invert the statistics and to establish at 10.3% the minority status of the so-called developed world, which includes the U.S., Japan, Germany, U.K., and France. In reality, there is another way to view our African American presence. With a population of over 34 million, African Americans comprise a population larger than many nations of the world, as well as our neighbor to the north, Canada.
It will be a new day when African Americans recognize the rate of literacy we have gained in spite of our struggle for quality education. Voiced by African Americans, “Get an education,” is a too often expressed platitude. However, literacy rate is the measurement engaged in compiling data about nations. In terms of literacy, African Americans have attained a level that could be the envy of the rest of the world. Most nations will probably never achieve our level of attainment. Pakistan has an overall literacy rate of 39%. Many African nations such as Nigeria have a rate approximating 57%. According to the Bureau of the Census, 82% of African Americans 25-34 years of age hold at least a high school diploma, up from 75% in 1980. Our platitude suggests the unrealistic goal of college degrees being the only barometer to use. Yet only 25% of whites in the same age group are college graduates.
Moreover, it is in regards to economic power that African Americans should revel the most. Although determining our Gross Domestic Product, the index used to determine the value of goods and services produced within a country, is difficult to project for African Americans. I direct you to a survey by the Selig Center for Economic Growth, which can be located on-line at http://www. Selig.uga.edu. This study speaks of black buying power projecting a 72.9 percent rise over the last decade. In monetary terms, by 1999, our buying power stood to improve to $533 billion. We tend to speak of ourselves as consumers in such negative terms without regard to the necessities that we must acquire: housing, utilities, and food eaten at home. We should not denigrate our “buying power” since, for us, it is the one of the few contexts in which the word power appears. The objective needs to be to place what we have attained within a global reality.
We too often think of politics in only electoral terms. Politics is the ability to gain, to use, and to maintain power. As I see it, our power is available for us to claim. Within the greater scheme of things, based on our per capita income, African American are twelfth in a world ranking of nations (ahead of Finland, United Kingdom, and Italy).
Too often, we can be our own worse critics. Perhaps, a great deal of this criticism is the result of the “litany of tears” that we often bring to our own historical past. However, in essence, we are more than the summation of our oppression. In this column, I will be exploring nationhood based on fifteen years of qualitative research in both the urban North and rural South. To further substantiate our nationhood status, I will provide insight into African American life, history and culture. I plan to end each column with a signature: “And this is how we are a nation within a nation,” speaking to a mental change.
