Blacks, African Americans – are residents of the United States and are of full or partial origin from Africans belonging to the Negroid race . The word entered the English language of the United States after the opinion of the negroes’ name was prevalent in the official circles of the country ( Negro – black ). In the US, the word “Black” is also used as the neutral designation.
As a rule, “African-Americans” means immigrants from Africa (descendants of slaves of the 17th-19th centuries), who have lived in the United States for generations. The main social problems of black Americans [2] – low level of education, high crime, family crisis and, as a result, weak competitiveness in the US labor market.
History of euphemisms
The social euphemism of African American , literally translated into Russian as an African American [3] , deals with integration issues and the dual identity of the black population in the United States. In the era of slavery, the US Bureau of Censuses used the terms “slaves” and “free colored” in censuses. After the abolition of slavery in the last third of the nineteenth century , the terms Colored , Negro (the word appeared in the census in 1900 [4] ) and the mulatto were used [5] .
In the 1920s, the Negroes of the United States usually called themselves “colored”, in the 1960s – “black” ( English Black ), later – African American ( English Afro-American , African American ) [K 1] [5] . With some delay, the change of self-names was reflected in the official statistics of the US Bureau of Censuses [5] . In 1970, the Bureau changed the item “Negro” to “Negro or Black” [6] . Since 1977, there has been legislation with a new official categorization: ” Black or African American” is a person “coming from any black racial group in Africa” ( English having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa ). The Office of the Federal Policy on Statistics and Standards [K 2] officially published this definition in 1978 [7] . In 2000, the Bureau added a modified “Black, African Am., Or Negro” to the “race” column, which was merged in a report called “Black or African American”, with a free count towards Nigerians , Kenyans or Haitians [K 3] [8] . In 2010, this item remained, however, according to the director of the Bureau, since the last census complaints have been received from people who are offended by the presence of the term “Negro”. In all, about 56,000 respondents identified themselves with “Negroes” [9] . In statistical reports of the Bureau this term was not used [10] .
As far back as 1897, William Dubois wrote about the problems of the Negroes’ self-identification in the United States:
The history of the American Negro is the history of this confrontation, this passionate striving to reach mature self-consciousness and to merge its dual self into a better and more complete personality. But in this rafting he does not want to lose any of his former personalities. He does not seek to Africanize America, for she can teach peace and Africa much. He is not going to whitewash his Negro soul in the stream of white Americanism, because he believes that she also has something to say to the world. He simply wants to make it possible for a person to be both a Negro and an American, without incurring curses and contempt. [11]
The parade in Washington , 1911.The poster is “Afro-Americans” in the foreground.
Negro figures of the late XIX – early XX century used the terms “race”, “color people”, “nation”, “nationality”, confirming the recognition of themselves as a special group. Moreover, the meaning of these terms (often used equivalently) was understood vaguely. A feature of Negro nationalism was that it arose on a racial basis. Even such diverse figures as Booker Washington and William Dubois, speaking at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries about the Negroes of the United States, used the word “nation” [12] . Negro nationalism is also known in the form of a racist “anti-white” movement among the blacks of the United States. Under their influence, similar ideas of negritude were perceived by Negro groups in Europe [13] .
Some modern Russian linguists , analyzing the euphemisms of political correctness in American culture, note that if Negro and Black can be attributed to a certain temporal and historical continuum, the newest formation of African American is artificial, and does not have the form worked out in the course of the historical process, changes in language, culture . This makes it “indefinite”, which is unacceptable for the term [7] .
Historically, in the Russian language, euphemisms for the word “Negro” were not used [14] . In the opinion of Doctor of Philology Georgy Khazagerov , when in the USSR the racism was condemned, “Negroes everywhere were called negroes … We use euphemisms regarding the word” Negro “sounds ridiculous” [14] .From the point of view of Doctor of Philology Maxim Krongauz , the substitution of a neutral word in the Russian language by a politically correct euphemism has no reason: these expressions, unlike the changes in the English language , are introduced by power structures, that is, they are perceived as a political indication, therefore, from political correctness there is a completely opposite effect [15] .
The euphemism of African Americans has also become widespread in some works of Russian researchers in recent history . For example, a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Eduard Nitoburg used it in his scientific works since the 1980s [16] . In some modern Russian encyclopedias and dictionaries, articles “African Americans” [17] and “American Blacks” appeared [18] [19] . In 2005, the newest Great Russian Encyclopedia published an article entitled “African-Americans”, with the specification in brackets for “Negroes USA” [20] . There is also the term “African-Americans” [21] , however, according to the rules of the Russian language, hyphenation refers to the relations between Africa and America, and is incorrect in relation to the ethnos group [22] [23]
History
White men and a black slave.Picture van Kuvenberga, 1632
For the first time African slaves were brought to Virginia in 1619 by the British government. As of 1860, out of a 12 million population of 15 US states where slavery persisted, 4 million were slaves. [24] Of the 1.5 million families living in these states, more than 390 thousand families were slaves. (see Slavery in the US )
The labor of slaves was widely used in the plantation economy, allowing the American slave owners to obtain high profits. In the first half of the 19th century, the national wealth of the United States was largely based on the exploitation of slave labor [25] . During the period from the XVI century to the XIX century, about 12 million Africans were brought to the countries of America, of which about 645,000 were imported to the territory of the modern USA. [26] [27] [28]
Although Congress banned the importation of new slaves from Africa in 1808 , this practice has existed for at least another half-century.Slavery was abolished during the American Civil War in 1863 by the proclamation of US President Abraham Lincoln , which was confirmed by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution , which was adopted in 1865 . In 1863 a crowd of white residents of New York , who were dissatisfied with the introduction of universal military service, organized a large-scale Negro pogrom .
In the southern states of the United States, the ages of slavery and the segregation decades created a legal and political system that was characterized by white supremacy. Blacks were not allowed to participate in elections by various means. There were laws ( Jim Crow Laws ) that blacks could not study in schools and universities together with whites, they had to take special places reserved for them in public transport, etc. Many shops, restaurants, hotels refused to serve blacks. Blacks always called white “Mr.” or “Mrs.”, although whites rarely honored blacks so polite treatment. Since 1865 in the South, the Ku Klux Klan and several other racist terrorist organizations have pursued a policy of intimidating African Americans in order to reduce their political activity. As a means, the demonstrative murders of African American political activists were used (the latter in 1981). Since the abolition of slavery in the South, ” Lynch courts ” have been practiced – extrajudicial executions of blacks accused of an offense that ended with the hanging of the victim (the latter in 1946). In the northern, mid-western and western states, where African-Americans migrated massively in the 1900s and 1960s, there was a policy of creating black neighborhoods (ghettos). Many white quarters and towns were banned for blacks.
Significant progress in overcoming racism in the United States began in the 1950s and 1960s, when, as a result of the successes of the federal government and the civil rights movement , racial discrimination was banned, although de facto segregation is still widespread in society (although not in such strict forms, as before).
But in the United States at the same time as a kind of defensive reaction to the centuries-old oppression and oppression of blacks there was “black racism”. He clearly manifested itself in the sermons of Fard Mohammed , and his follower, the founder of the ” Nation of Islam ” Elijah Mohammad . The ” Afrocentric Egyptology”, which has been widely spread in the USA, is associated with it, the adherents of which say that the ancient Egyptians were blacks, the ancient Egyptian culture was the source of the ancient Greek and thus the whole of European culture, and there was and still exists a conspiracy of white racists, in order that all this is to hide [29] .
In 2005, during the violence in New Orleans associated with the hurricane and flood , there were outbreaks of violence motivated by racial hatred.
Demography
Today, about 42 million African Americans live in the United States, some (10-15%) [the source is not indicated 278 days ] of which are mulattoes with some admixture of white (about 17-18%), Indian (about 3-5%), and Asian and Latin American blood (about 1-2%). Due to a rather significant natural increase, their share in the population of the country is gradually increasing and currently makes up about 13% of the total population. During the first census of the population (1790) almost one in five US citizens (19% of the population) was considered a Negro , then this share was reduced to 9% in 1930 due to a mass influx of white immigrants from Europe, and until the middle and the end of the 19th century and the fertility in the white environment was higher than the African American. In the future, the proportion of African Americans has grown to the modern 13%.
As the quality of life improves, and especially after the prohibition of the slave trade (but not slavery itself) at the beginning of the 19th century, planters had an initiative to “breed” Negroes by selecting the most hardy of them for the “arch”. The number of African Americans also increased significantly due to the rule of one drop of blood , which allowed all people of mixed descent ( mulatto , sambo , quarteron , quinteron , etc.) to be included in the blacks. The number of blacks began to grow, although their percentage, in percentage terms, continued to fall until the middle of the XX century due to intensive white immigration. Baby boom of 1940-60’s. in the Negro environment was more pronounced than in the white. In the 1950s, one black woman accounted for 4.5 children (3.5 for a white woman), a strong gap in fertility was formed in the 1970s (1 black – 3.0, 1 white – 1.8 ), but in the early 1990s these indicators became closer. So at present, with 1.8 children on average for a white woman, for a black woman this figure is slightly more than 2.1. Other problems that have affected the demography of the black population are the AIDS epidemic , criminalization (especially young men), drug abuse. The average age of a black man is 34 years, compared to 42 years for whites. The immigration of blacks from Africa (mainly from English-speaking countries of West Africa – Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and immigrants from the countries of the Horn of Africa – Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya), Latin America (Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia) and the Caribbean (Haiti, Jamaica).
Concentration [ edit ] edit the code ]
The traditional area of residence of American blacks is the south of the USA where they made a significant contribution to the formation of a unique image of the region and in particular music, cooking, and art. Mass immigration of white Europeans after the Civil War was directed mainly to the north of the country, as well as to the Great Plains region.Therefore, with the onset of the natural growth of the black and colored population, it was the majority in a number of states in the south. Thus, at the end of the 19th century blacks accounted for 75% of the population of South Carolina , over half (about 60%) of the population of the Mississippi , 55% of the population in Louisiana , one third to half of the population in Texas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia etc. The region in the southeastern United States, which historically is characterized by a high percentage of the African-American population, is called the ” black belt “. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority (90-95%) of African Americans lived in the former slave states, until the 1960s this figure was constantly decreasing, after 1965, because of the return migration of African Americans to the large cities of the New South (Atlanta, etc.), it stabilized at the level of 50-55%.
The situation of black in the traditional regions of the south was very difficult due to the violence of the Ku Klux Klan and the rule of law of Jim Crow. In the 1910s-1960s, the so-called Great Migration of African Americans took place, when hundreds of thousands of them massively went to work in factories and factories of large cities in the north ( Chicago , New York , etc.).
A place Share,%
Washington, DC
55
Mississippi
38
Louisiana
32
Georgia
thirty
South Carolina
29
Alabama
27th
North Carolina
21
New York
16
Florida
16
Arkansas
16
Tennessee
16
Texas
10
California
6th
In a number of cities and counties, African Americans are absolutely dominant.
Year Number of African Americans
in the US , people
Share,%
1790 757 208 19.3
1800 1 002 037 18.9
1810 1 377 808 19.0
1820 1 771 656 18.4
1830 2 328 642 18.1
1840 2 873 648 16.8
1850 3 638 808 15.7
1860 4,441,830 14.1
1870 4,880,009 12.7
1880 6 580 793 13.1
1890 7 488 788 11.9
1900 8 833 994 11.6
1910 9 827 763 10.7
1920 ~ 10.5 million 9.9
1930 ~ 11.9 million 9.7
1940 ~ 12.9 million 9.8
1950 ~ 15,000,000 10.0
1960 ~ 18,900,000 10.5
1970 ~ 22,600,000 11.1
1980 ~ 26,500,000 11.7
1990 ~ 30 000 000 12.1
2000 ~ 34 600 000 12.3
2005 ~ 35,000,000 12.6
Internal migration
Currently, the Negro population is widely represented in many US states. But if in the south a significant part of blacks (up to a third) still live in rural areas, then in the north of the USA – in large cities, where some traditionally live in special areas with a comparatively low standard of living – the ghetto . The Negro population is characterized by higher employment in industry, mass services (trade, etc.). At the beginning of the 20th century, many black Americans in search of better work moved from the South to the industrial states of Lakes and the Midwest, large cities. Since the late 1970s, the opposite trend has been observed: more migrants to the north and their descendants again return to their small homeland – the southern states. The reason for this is the removal of labor-intensive industries in these areas and, as a consequence, jobs for African Americans.
External migration
Moreover, the number of African-Americans is growing due to external migration: a significant number of black people from Africa and the Caribbean re-emigrate to the country. The “new” African-American descendants of immigrants from independent Africa (and not descendants of slaves) are the previous US President Barack Obama (his father comes from Kenya ).
Social problems in the African American environment
Martin Luther King
Most of the social problems of blacks in the United States are related to each other and reproduce each other. Among the most important:
• Low access to quality education
• Employment in relatively low-paid jobs (blue collars), low competitiveness in the labor market and high unemployment rates (for 2006, the unemployment rate among blacks is more than 3 times higher than among white citizens of the United States [30] ), dependence on social assistance state
• The crisis of family values: a high level of divorce, extramarital births, a large number of single-parent families
• A high crime rate, a large percentage of prisoners, a massive spread of drug addiction
• Relatively high percentage of HIV-infected people, increased mortality from external causes (including violent ones), low availability of quality medical care, lower average life expectancy
Economic aspects
In the second half of the 20th century, the living standard of the black population of the United States grew slightly, and there was also a certain growth of the black middle class.Nevertheless, a common place is the standard of living, much lower than the average for the US:
• As of 2010, 45% of African Americans owned their homes, while the average for the country was 67%;
• Under the poverty line in 1998 there were 26.5% of blacks, in 2010 there was a decrease to 24.7%. At the same time, the average for the US below the poverty line is 12.7%;
• For 2002, out of 23 million of all businesses in the country, 1.2 million belonged to African Americans, and to 2 million in 2010. In 2002-2011, the growth of black businesses was the largest among all businesses owned by minorities;
• For 2004, African Americans were the third-earner among minorities, after Asians and Latinos;
• 25% of blacks had specialties of “white-collar workers” for 2000, on average in the country – 33.6%;
• The median earnings of blacks make up 76% of the median earnings of Americans of European descent;
• A large employer for African Americans is the public sector. For 2008-2010, 21.2% of all black workers were employed in the public sector (for the rest of the US population – 16.3%). Salaries for black in the public sector are significantly higher than in other industries;
• In times of crisis, Blacks are more likely to fall under the cuts, and unemployment is higher for them. As of October 2008, it was 6.5% on average in the country and 11.1% for African Americans;
• Whereas for 1975, black workers received 82% of white wages, in 2005 – only 65%;
• In 2011, 72% of black children were born by single mothers. Above the poverty line are 29.5% of these families, and 9.9% of complete black families. For white families, the figures are 26.4% and 6%, respectively.
Health
The life expectancy for black men was 70.8 years for 2008 and for women 77.5, and for 5-7 years less than for Americans of European descent. Life expectancy of blacks first began to be calculated in 1900, and was 32.5 and 33.5 years for men and women, respectively; At the same time, it was 46.3 and 48.3 for white men and women, respectively.
Blacks more often suffer from obesity, diabetes and hypertension. In 2010, among adult black men, obesity was 31.6%, for women – 41.2%. Cancer occurs 10% more frequently than Americans of European descent.
AIDS is among the top three causes of black deaths. While African Americans make up only 12.6% of the population, they also make up 48% of AIDS patients. In Washington DC,AIDS infection is the highest in the US, and reaches 3%, which is comparable to the level of West Africa, and is seen as an epidemic.
Religion
Most blacks are Protestants . Usually they are parishioners of separate black congregations, some of which were formed by still liberated slaves in the 17th century. Subsequently, African American Christianity absorbed African spiritual traditions.
For 2007, more than half of African Americans are parishioners of historically black churches . The largest denominations are Baptists , Methodists and Pentecostals . Up to 5% of African Americans are Catholics ; Among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the proportion of blacks reaches 22%.
A certain number of African Americans are Muslims . Among the slaves brought to America by Muslims was from 15 to 30%, however, most of them were converted to Christianity. In the 20th century, however, some of the blacks turned to Islam, largely under the influence of groups of black nationalists. The largest such organization is the Nation of Islam .
Language
African-Americans speak English and in the language of ebonyx (black English, Afro-American English). Some African-Americans speak the Creole language of a ghoul that retains many unique features (for example, the pronoun system), resulting from the confusion of the languages of West and Central Africa with English, and in which linguists number more than 4,000 African roots.
Culture
The slaves brought into the US were from African peoples. Their joint life has led to a mixture of many cultures and the emergence of a common culture of African Americans.
At first, Christianized slaves with black skin attended churches and participated in the singing of church hymns along with everyone. Then, however, they were expelled to separate churches, where they began to sing hymns in their own, African, manner. So appeared spirituals . Music became the language by which one could express their protest against slavery, and after the abolition of slavery against discrimination and poverty. Music helped overcome adversity, embodied the hopes of success in the struggle for freedom.
Later, on the basis of spirituals and ” work-song ” (working songs), blues appeared, and at the beginning of the 20th century, ragtime (dance music based on African rhythms) and jazz appeared .
African American culture became an integral part of all American reality, music created by American blacks – spirituals, blues, jazz – was accepted by all Americans as their own. [31][32]
In the 1970s , among the blacks of the New York area of the Bronx , the rap style came from Jamaica . It was simple rhymed couplets, addressed to the audience. The performance of rhymed speeches right on the streets to this day remains a tradition of black quarters. Rap appeared as part of the subculture of hip-hop . Then rap and hip-hop became popular not only among Afro-Americans and not only in the USA.
In 1879, Joel Chandler Harris published “The History of Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox, as Uncle Remus told her.” Tales of Uncle Remus , in the sum of 185, became very popular both among blacks and among white readers. The stories, mostly collected directly from African American folklore, were revolutionary in the use of dialects, animal characters and descriptions of landscapes. James Weldon Johnson (English) Russian. called them “the greatest product of folklore, which produced America.” [33]
The Black Life of Black America. Racial implication of social inequality in the US
October 11, 2016
Presidential candidate Donald Trump in one of his next speeches touched on the social status of the African American population. For example, he stressed that African Americans live in poverty, and schools that teach African-American children “are of no use”. Hillary Clinton, in the event of her victory in the presidential election, would provide workplaces for refugees from the Middle East more than African Americans who “became refugees in their own country.”
Of course, Donald Trump’s words are just words. In an attempt to gain the support of African-American voters, Trump will continue to promise to improve their lives if they win elections. But, as for the social status of the African-American population, there is no doubt about the truth of Mr. Trump’s words. African Americans are indeed a socially disadvantaged group of the American population – and this is despite the fact that they are not immigrants, non-migrants and refugees.
The Black Life of Black America. Racial implication of social inequality in the US
Despite the fact that in the United States the equality of white and black people is declared in every possible way, the social and economic situation of African Americans from this practically does not change. Moreover, measures to “eliminate discrimination” are almost exclusively of an informational and propaganda nature. For example, the use of the word “Negro” in the United States was interpreted almost as a crime, as discrimination against blacks, but at the same time, millions of African Americans live in total poverty and no steps are taken by the American authorities to get them out of this state. You can shoot thousands of films with a positive black hero, introduce special tolerance courses into school programs, even make a black president of the country – but in the absence of real measures to eliminate unemployment, raise the level of education, increase wages, all these propaganda steps turn out to be just a shaking of air. There is no correlation between the black President Barack Obama and the millions of the socially deprived population of American cities. Some experts talk about modern American policy towards the Negro population as “positive discrimination”. Now, they prefer not to talk about discrimination against the Negroes in the US, ignoring the very fact of the deepest social and economic problems that are associated with the situation of the African-American population of the country.
One of the most important manifestations of the true social status of African Americans in the United States is economic inequality. Until now, African Americans are on average much poorer than representatives of other ethnic and racial groups of the American population. This is due to the persistence of poverty in African-American communities. Poverty is inherited, poverty is dragging out, becoming the most important obstacle to social mobility. Many African Americans have achieved success in the US – they are present in politics, in business, in sports, in culture. But most African Americans in the country still remain much poorer than whites. And the poverty of the African-American population is growing, not decreasing. This is facilitated by the specifics of the development of the American economy. As the demand for the market in the unskilled labor force declines, more and more African Americans who do not have a normal education remain in the category of perpetual unemployed. If in 2000 the median income of an African-American household was 64% of the income of a white American household, then eleven years later, in 2011, it was 58% of the median income of a white household. That is, the income of the African-American population decreased by an average of 6%. For four years, from 2005 to 2009, the gap in the financial well-being of African Americans and whites has also increased. If in 2005, African Americans had eleven times less assets than whites, in 2009 – already twenty times smaller assets.
Total poverty forces many African Americans to depend on social assistance from the state and charitable organizations. At the same time, it is worth to dispel the illusions of some Russians who believe that the amount of social assistance in the US is very significant, and most African Americans live precisely “on benefits.” It’s nothing more than speculation. Ultimately, it is beneficial for the American leadership, since all the responsibility for the social and economic status of the black population in this case is shifted from the state to the African Americans themselves – they say, the state does everything that it can, pays benefits, and the blacks themselves are lazy and do not want work. In fact, about 14 million people receive gratuitous social assistance in the United States. Of these, 65% are children and adolescents. That is, two-thirds of social assistance falls to help children from low-income families. Strictly speaking, what else can children live on, how not to benefit if their parents are either absent or unable to earn money? The majority of the remaining 35% of beneficiaries of social assistance are women. And this is not only African American, but also white. White even more – 38% against 37% of African Americans. The remaining recipients of social assistance are representatives of other racial and ethnic groups, including Hispanics, Asians, and Indians.
The economic inequality of African Americans is aggravated by social inequality. At one time the famous French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote about three types of capital – economic, social and cultural. Social and cultural capitals are no less important, since it is their possession that allows families to provide education and careers to their children. The African American population of the United States, with rare exceptions, social and cultural capital is minimal. Today, over 70% of African American children are born outside of official marriage. It is clear that most of them are then raised in single-parent families, where the only breadwinner is the mother. For comparison, only 25% of white children are born outside of official marriage. Naturally, this alone has a huge impact on the social status of the African-American population, determining the future of most children at the bottom of the social hierarchy of American society.
The social inequality of blacks and whites is a natural consequence of discriminatory policies implemented in the first half of the twentieth century. After all, the abolition of segregation in the United States occurred only in the 1960s, and this, thanks to the active social movement on the one hand, and the complex international situation on the other hand. In a country that today is trying to impersonate the world democracy, a few decades ago there was officially confirmed inequality of rights of representatives of different races. Until now, white and black Americans consider themselves to be representatives of different social groups. African Americans have their own identity, which in some respects not only does not intersect with the common American identity, but also contradicts it. What is, for example, the mass distribution among the black Americans of Islam. To some extent, the acceptance of Islam was viewed by many blacks as a way to emphasize its “otherness”, belonging not to the world of European culture associated with Christianity, but to the Afro-Arab world. However, most blacks still profess Christianity, although many of them belong to strictly African-American church communities, which also almost do not intersect with the “white” world.
For African-American culture, it is characteristic to emphasize the differences between blacks and whites. To a certain extent, we are dealing with “racism on the contrary.” The ideologists of African-American socio-political movements in the first half – the middle of the twentieth century. tried to develop their own concepts, explaining the differences between black and white and even some superiority of black over white. Africans were prescribed great sensuality, intuition, in contrast to representatives of the European race. During the decolonization of the African continent, the ideas of “African exclusiveness” were raised on the shield by many politicians who came to power in African countries. These ideas, in particular, presuppose a critical attitude towards the achievements of European civilization, which is considered less humane than the civilizations of the African continent. Of course, the inhabitants of African-American “ghettos” in the United States do not think about such high matters, but they draw a line of distinction from whites quite clearly. For example, in the midst of African American teenagers, the image of a school honors pupil, a guy or a girl who is nursing textbooks and linking his further activity with mental labor, is not popular.
African American teenagers are more popular with another model of success in life, associated at best with a sports or musical career, and at worst – just with crime. Many African American children, even those who are capable of birth, intentionally do not show diligence in their studies, so as not to stand out from the general African-American environment and not come into conflict with other blacks. This was, in particular, written by George Akerlof in his work “The Economy of Identity”. But if White Akerlof could still be blamed for tendentiousness, what about the conclusions of another researcher – the Nigerian sociologist John Ogbu, who moved to the United States and got a job teaching at the University of Berkeley in California? Ogbu even introduced the term – “bad diligence syndrome”, which he describes the attitude of African-American children to learning. And even children from status and wealthy African-American families who are attending prestigious schools that are attended by representatives of a wide variety of racial and ethnic groups are not eager to learn. “Positive discrimination” played a role in consolidating this attitude to learning – these children expect to enter colleges and universities on the benefits that exist for African Americans without making any special efforts. It turns out that if so argue the children of African American intelligentsia, then what about the children of the slums?
Economic and social inequalities are combined with the social deprivation of the African-American population of the country. As is known, the percentage of the Negro population in the southern states, once the strongholds of plantational slavery, is the highest. There are still very many African American populations in states such as South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, which are considered the most “black” states of the United States. But an impressive number of African Americans live in major cities, primarily in New York. In places of compact residence of African Americans, sociologists note a much worse standard of living than in areas where white Americans live. “Negro quarters” are, in fact, social ghettos, in which total poverty is caused by unemployment, street crime, drug addiction and drug trafficking, alcoholism, prostitution.
At one time, the US government tried to solve the problems of slums in which African Americans lived, and began building new housing estates. However, multi-story areas inhabited by African Americans have turned into even worse ghettos than old slums. Sociologist Sadhir Venkatesh notes that plans to improve the standard of living of the African-American population have actually failed. In residential areas where African Americans live, the main problems are: overcrowding of apartments, poor and disruptive communal infrastructure, massive poverty on the verge of poverty. Of course, in new areas there is also a high level of crime and drug addiction.
The social inequality of the African American population is also evident in the health sector. Since most blacks belong to the lower social strata, they simply do not have the money to take care of their health. Plus, the lifestyle that African Americans lead is not conducive to improving health indicators. The average life expectancy of African American men and women is lower by 5-7 years than the average life expectancy of white Americans. Among African Americans, diseases such as diabetes and hypertension are much more common. Over 30% of African-American men and over 41% of women suffer from obesity, which indicates poor quality and malnutrition. As for the level of AIDS spread among the African-American population, it is approaching the level of African countries. African Americans make up 48% of AIDS patients, while the share of African Americans in the overall US population is 12.6%. Needless to say, quality medical services for the vast majority of African Americans are simply not available due to their high cost, and the culture of taking care of their health has not been developed in the African-American ghettos. Despite the fact that African families have a high birth rate, the crisis of family values in “black” America is much more evident. A huge number of children, as we noted above, are born out of wedlock, in fact a typical African-American family is a mother and children or a grandmother, a mother and children.
Periodically, real uprisings of African Americans are flashing up in the US, the reason for which, as a rule, is the cruelty shown by the police. As a rule, the state solves the issues of suppressing such speeches harshly and swiftly, without disdaining to use military force, including the entry of tanks into the streets of rebellious cities. At the same time, of course, the US authorities forget about pseudo-democratic demagogy, applied to other countries, in such situations. However, the power suppression of protest protests does not mean that the problem of social and economic inequality of African Americans can be solved in this way. On the contrary, the situation of the African-American population has an obvious tendency to gradual deterioration, which will be especially noticeable after years, given the higher birth rate.
