The Black Hole of Legacy: Cultural Capital and the Cost of Enslavement

Commentary by Salim Muwakkil, host of the "Salim Muwakkil Show" on WVON 1690 AM, journalist, and community activist.

For the descendants of enslaved Africans the legacy of slavery is manifold and easily discernible in patterns of poverty and community dysfunction; we've been America's bottom caste since our ignominious arrival. Not only has this legacy erected racial barriers to our socio/economic inclusion, it's also socialized us for subservience.

That is, it's not just racist obstructionism that stagnates and destabilizes our communities, it's also the lack of access to cultural capital, which provides the currency for civic wherewithal. We ignore this damage, afflicted by a 'John Henry Syndrome' that boastfully overemphasizes our capacities (in a system engineered for our failure) even as we continue to lose in the resource game.

Many of us fail to realize that just as the white American middle-class required massive governmental intervention (the alphabet programs of the New Deal) to come into existence, so must the empowerment of the progeny of enslaved Americans.

Enslavement's legacy has deprived us of the cultural capital necessary to resist the gravitational pull of the black hole (disproportionate poverty, excessive criminality, academic mediocrity, community dysfunction, etc.)  -- despite our best intentions. Indeed, even BPP co-founder Huey Newton failed to resist the pull of that black hole.

I define cultural capital as culturally induced behavior patterns (i.e., deferring gratification, aligning patterns of concentration, establishing friendship parameters, etc.) that encourage success in any social venue. This wealth is common in cultures forged through centuries of autonomous social interactions or bound by powerful religious beliefs, and is readily bequeathed to their progeny.

This wealth is hard to accumulate on the edge of survival, which is where the descendants of enslavement have been camped-out for the majority of their tenure in this land. As I noted earlier, even those white Americans who faced few barriers required extensive governmental assistance for their arrival into middle-class prosperity. Assessing our requirements as less is a failure of proportionality.