Race in March of 2010,

Race

In March of 2010, a teenage employee of a Pennsylvania Wal-Mart used the store's PA system to deliver a shockingly racist message: "All blacks must leave the store." The incident at the Gloucester County Wal-Mart proves that racism is still alive in the United States. Whites continue to harbor hatred towards blacks, their fellow Americans. Because Wal-Mart is a quintessentially American store, the incident underscores what W.E.B. DuBois called the "double consciousness" of African-Americans. In fact, the term "African-American" symbolizes the double consciousness. Embedded in the moniker "African-American" is the clear birthright of all citizens to equal social and political status. Yet because of the "African" portion of that collective identity, African-Americans have been stigmatized, intimidated, and victimized in countless race-based crimes.

Abolition after the Civil War ended slavery, but sharecropping and the Ku Klux Klan ensured that blacks were still not able to participate fully in American society. The Civil Rights movement ended decades of systematic oppression and lynching in the American South, but discrimination continued to plague black communities. The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president in 2008 shattered the ultimate glass ceiling but incidents like the one at Wal-Mart shows that America still has a lot of growing up to do.

Incidents like the one at Wal-Mart may be isolated ones but they illustrate the perpetuation of racism and of the double-consciousness sustained by African-Americans. African-Americans should be able to walk into the most American of department stores and not hear racial slurs on the public address system. Even if the announcement was just a prank, the fact that someone even considered to speak those words shows that racism continues to lurk in the consciousness of white Americans. The fact that the racist comment was delivered by a sixteen-year-old boy proves that racism is not only alive but is propagating itself, being passed on from generation to generation decades after the Civil Rights movement. The sixteen-year-old who said, "All blacks must leave the store" inherited his racist beliefs and misanthropic values from his parents, his community, and/or his peers. If the teenager were to claim that the announcement was just a "joke," then incident becomes even more troublesome because it proves that blacks are taught to measure "one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity," (DuBois). Being able to laugh at something like the Wal-Mart incidence is alone cause for alarm. In any case, the incident was most likely not a joke but rather, the expression of genuinely racist sentiments within the white American community. The sentiments may or may not be a direct reaction to the election of the country's first African-American president.

The election of Barack Obama is meaningful to the country and proves that some progress has been made in terms of social justice and race relations. However, racism most certainly did not come to an end when Barack Obama was elected as the President of the United States. Nor did the election of Barack Obama symbolize the end of racism in America. African-Americans continue to feel like hyphenated citizens because incidents like the one at Wal-Mart continue to happen.

The Wal-mart incident seems trivial when compared with violent crimes that target African-Americans. However, the potential for violence does lurk behind the words "All blacks must leave the store." For one, the statement assumes a position of power on the part of the white speaker. The simple act of using a PA system implies power over those who are listening. Moreover, the phrase is in the form of a command, which echoes slavery too well. The white speaker assumes that he can tell blacks what to do and monitor their movements. Thus, the Wal-Mart event emphasizes how African-Americans are made to feel inferior to whites systematically.

The Wal-Mart incidence also demonstrates an us-versus-them mentality that separates white from black Americans, creating and perpetuating the double consciousness that DuBois refers to. The racist Wal-Mart announcement may also be viewed as an act of domestic terrorism, because it is designed to invoke fear among the black community. Because of the announcement, African-Americans may be afraid that the incidence is only a harbinger of things to come. Within that same community lurks other racists just like the sixteen-year-old who issued the announcement. If a teenage boy was able to make the statement in a "a clear, official-sounding male voice," then that voice must have been carefully honed over the course of that young life (Nark). The Wal-Mart event emphasizes that systematic racism creates a climate of fear and confusion among African-Americans and indeed all Americans. If African-Americans cannot feel safe in America -- in the most American of stores -- then African-Americans are not truly embraced as part of the fabric of the nation. If African-Americans were embraced as integral to the fabric of the nation then incidents like the one at Wal-Mart would not and could not occur.

Marcus Garvey represents an African voice wholly different from that of W.E.B. DuBois. While DuBois remained committed to the reconciliation of what it means to be both African and American at the same time, Marcus Garvey urged all blacks to return to the land of their ancestors. Calling not just for black nationalism in America but of the severance of ties with America, Garvey did not feel the double consciousness that DuBois did. Garvey believed it would be impossible for African-Americans to resolve the double consciousness that DuBois referred to because the white man will continue to play the role of oppressor as the teenager did at Wal-Mart. Garvey said, "For man to know himself is for him to feel that for him there is no human master," (cited by Marcus Garvey Web site).

Garvey would therefore point to the Wal-Mart incidence as a perfect example of how persons of African descent cannot hope to live as equals in the United States -- even with a black president. Garvey believed that the only way to achieve a unified consciousness was to return to African roots in Africa. "We have no animus against the white man. All that we have as a race desired is a place in the sun... If sixty million Anglo-Saxons can have a place in the sun...I cannot see why... four-hundred-million black folks cannot," (cited by American Experience). Racism had become so ensconced in the American consciousness that Garvey believed the only way to achieve dignity, independence, and empowerment was by radical means -- leaving the United States on the Black Star Line bound for Africa. In fact, Garvey disagreed so strongly with W.E.B. DuBois that he called him one of the "greatest enemies the black people have in the world," (cited by American Experience). These two positions each proposed radically different means to achieve the same goal of black power.

The difficulty with maintaining a double consciousness is that the social hierarchies are so strongly in place that even with a black president, racism still exists. W.E.B. DuBois urged African-Americans to reconsider their identities in light of basic truths. Their heritage and culture had been wiped away by the white oppressor, creating a gap in African-American narratives. The gap in African-American narratives fostered the double consciousness. African-Americans are no longer African, and DuBois understood that after hundreds of years of living in the New World that Garvey's ideas were not realistic. On the other hand, African-Americans have not been treated like Americans or embraced into the mainstream society. To become a part of the mainstream society has often meant sacrificing what makes black culture or identity unique. African-Americans have had to assimilate into the dominant culture, which has perpetuated the problem of the double consciousness.