|American Renaissance magazine| |Vol. 17, No. 9||September 2006|
Black Racial Consciousness, Blacks celebrate what whites must
deny. What do blacks think about race? How do they experience
race? How are they expected to think about and experience race?
The contrast with whites in this respect could not be greater.
For whites, race is not a permissible criterion either for
personal decisions or public policy. Whites have no legitimate
aspirations as a group, and do not usually think of themselves
as a group unless they are called upon to apologize for past and
present sins (see “The Racial Revolution,” AR, May 1999). For
most blacks, on the other hand, race is a central part of their
identity. Their view of politics, history, government, or
culture is intimately bound up in a racial consciousness that
sets them apart from other groups. They take it for granted, for
example, that the job of a black leader is to work for the
benefit of blacks, without much regard for others. They have, in
other words, a deeply-r