Strivers Row

There was—or is—in Harlem a few blocks of brownstone homes called “Strivers’ Row”. It was (and perhaps is) a term laced with irony and contempt. For here lived the black millionaires and successful businessmen who had tried to make it in the white world.
Fellow blacks, embittered by long centuries of discrimination and white distain, jeered at the strivers as men who lived in a fantasy world. Equality with whites would never, they firmly believed, be granted to black men, no matter what their wealth or achievements.
Sammy Davis Jr. (the black member of Sinatra’s Rat Pack), in his autobiography, “Yes I Can”, tells the story of being in a barracks adjacent to a white barracks during World War II. One large white Texan kept making snide remarks about “niggers” who did not belong.
Finally, Davis—a physically small man—had had enough. He assaulted the sneering , much bigger white man and beat him until he could not get back up. Bloodied and floored, the Texan looked up at Davis and spoke a terrible truth, “You’re still a nigger”.
The larger black population of Harlem—who had either striven and failed or not bothered to attempt what they saw as impossible by striving at all—lived and believed the Texan’s line all their lives. They poured out their contempt on those who did strive—and whom they saw as deluded fools.
Unfortunately that belief remains strong in our black ghettoes today. If I were asked to identify the single greatest curse besetting American black men and women, it would say it was the pervasive belief on the part of so many that they could not succeed. There was no point in trying.
Centuries of slavery and Jim Crow laws (Grand Rapids, where I was raised had its “realty covenants” and kept blacks penned up on Henry, James and Charles streets for decades) had done their work well. Call it “Stockholm Syndrome” or whatever, blacks had made themselves believe the cant of the most racist of their white oppressors.
I have substitute taught in a variety of predominantly black schools—K through 12. The kids do under-perform their white contemporaries. No doubt. But there is something much worse going on. So many of them have a completely cynical attitude toward education.
“Why should we do this assignment? What’s it going to get us? What has this white man to tell us that is going to benefit us in any way?” They sneer. They leave assignments lying unfinished on their desks. They laugh out loud.
There are always a few strivers. They keep their heads down and try not to let anyone else know they are actually doing their school work. It’s not a pleasant life for them. (I remember a small eighth grade girl whom I noticed was always working, no matter what chaos was going on around her. After seeing her several times, I asked her what she planned on doing.
“I want to be a cardiologist”, she replied instantly. I would have given anything to be able to move her out of that school. All I can do is pray she keeps her head down, keeps working and makes it to medical school.)
Most of the rest of that room had given up by the time they were old enough to drink from a sippy cup. Now, what scares me very much, is that I see more and more of the same cynicism and hopelessness in our predominantly white schools as well.
The malaise seems to be spreading. Things seem to bear out what I was told back in the 1960s—“What you see in black neighborhoods/schools today will be true of white schools tomorrow.” That would be a terrible vengeance on all of us.
Martin Luther King, Jr., his father and mother, Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama were (and are) all strivers—the way so many white Americans have been. They did not fight through Birmingham, Selma and prison for what I see today.
We can change laws; we may even change bad attitudes—but how do we remove centuries of hopeless cynicism? And, if we don’t, God help us. That is my message for The Reverend Mr. King’s birthday.