A Rescue Plan for Black America: Charles Blow's Case for Reverse Migration

[Miles Davis]

Listened to a podcast w this dude as guests. He makes some convincing arguments.

Got a link?

 

[Ezra]

Got a link?

I’m trying to remember which podcast it was. I listen to too many podcasts

 

[Mr swag]

I’m already in VA so y’all need to do your part

 

[88m3]

seems like a laudable goal

 

[Pressure]

I’m already in VA so y’all need to do your part

Moved from Cali back to NC

 

[Professor Emeritus]

This is an idea that’s been bandied about here for a while now.

He’s not necessarily wrong.

I would however ask why Black voter participation is so depressed in the South and if this same phenomenon would happen on this situation.

How much of a super majority would we need to turn Mississippi blue?

I would think tho that Black voter participation is depressed in part due to the White supermajorities. If you had motivated Black citizens moving back to the region with purpose, I doubt you would need a supermajority at all, because you would not only add voters but also invigorate local participation at the same time once actual political control became possible. Considering that you'll have at least some white and hispanic allies, I think a bare majority would easily be enough. Look at Georgia, they're at about 30% Black right now and already got a Black senator and are borderline with a Black governor, I think 50% Black would easily give them the legislature.

Personally, I've never lived in the south, but since last summer I've been plotting moving there. Gonna still take some serious consideration but at the moment it's my top option.

 

[Red Shield]

BLOW: I simply cannot accept the progress argument, because the progress argument is premised on this: “You should be happy with and applaud the fact that I am inching my way out of oppressing you. And it has only taken 400 years so far and soon, maybe another 100 years or so, we may be finished. My growth may be complete. I may come out of my coc00n and be a butterfly.” That’s crazy to me. I was born into it, it is very likely I will die with these bodycam videos of Black people being killed, because nothing about that architecture has changed. My liberation cannot be contingent on your evolution. I can’t wait for you to grow. It is such a passive position for me to have to take. And I won’t take it.

Blow argues that too many Black Americans have been abused for too long in too many ways, and that too many white Americans pay nothing but lip service to anti-racism. He writes that the Black Lives Matter protests last summer were “a social-justice Coachella” for those “deprived” by the pandemic “of rites of passage, parties, and proms.” He also argues that too many Black Americans have been blinded by personal ambition or co-opted by a Democratic Party that cares about them only during elections. He finds the status quo grotesque, and not worth preserving.

BLOW: For 150 years, Black Americans have been hoping and waiting. We have marched and resisted. Many of our most prominent leaders have appeased and kowtowed. We have seen our hard-earned gains eroded by an evolving, refining white supremacy, while at the same time we are told that true and full equality is in the offing. But, there is no more guarantee of that today than there was a century ago.

the whole interview is great

 

[Althalucian]

the whole interview is great

He did it. He really nailed it.

 

[Consigliere]

I would think tho that Black voter participation is depressed in part due to the White supermajorities. If you had motivated Black citizens moving back to the region with purpose, I doubt you would need a supermajority at all, because you would not only add voters but also invigorate local participation at the same time once actual political control became possible. Considering that you'll have at least some white and hispanic allies, I think a bare majority would easily be enough. Look at Georgia, they're at about 30% Black right now and already got a Black senator and are borderline with a Black governor, I think 50% Black would easily give them the legislature.

Personally, I've never lived in the south, but since last summer I've been plotting moving there. Gonna still take some serious consideration but at the moment it's my top option.

If ever get work from home privileges I’m going to move to Mississippi. Which historically had some or one of the earliest Black senators coming out of reconstruction and has been unable to have any meaningful Black political representation since then.

I think it’d be prudent to understand why and how that’s possible before running back to the south en mass.

Georgia is starting to make progress. And it took a Herculean effort. I would guess part of the reason the Black vote is suppressed so easily in the south is due to gerrymandering and location. Black people live in cities or packed into one Black county. While white people live in the counties (multiple) and are in the process of retaking cities.

Taking it back to Charles’ strategy I could see this being effective for Black Americans if there was a way to drain public housing and relocate the residents into different Black opportunity zones in southern states.

 

[Miles Davis]

Grabbed the book, can’t wait to read it.

 

[mastermind]

UBNER: I’m curious, were you lost in that, ever? Were you seduced by that?

BLOW: I was in it. If you are what Holly Peterson calls the “accomplisher’s class” in New York, you’re part of this. A successful cocktail party has, you know, a newspaper man and an artist and that becomes your social life. And it is artificial.

DUBNER: Did you enjoy it in the beginning?

BLOW: You can enjoy it. A lovely glass of wine with a beautifully-made crudité is wonderful. And you go home comfortable and buzzing from the adrenaline and the aura of it all. And yet the masses of Black people have not been helped by that one bit. And you see your own success, this becomes the talented-tenth fallacy. “If I just succeed, that will be the shining light for everybody else, my coattails will drag other people into prosperity.” That’s not true. The reason they’re not prospering is not because they don’t have an avenue, it’s because they’re being actively suppressed. And someone has to actively start fighting that oppression and it needs to be our most talented people, our strongest fighters, our best writers and artists have to get down in the trenches. Release the martini glass, get down in the mud and help fight.

 

[ogc163]

UBNER: I’m curious, were you lost in that, ever? Were you seduced by that?

BLOW: I was in it. If you are what Holly Peterson calls the “accomplisher’s class” in New York, you’re part of this. A successful cocktail party has, you know, a newspaper man and an artist and that becomes your social life. And it is artificial.

DUBNER: Did you enjoy it in the beginning?

BLOW: You can enjoy it. A lovely glass of wine with a beautifully-made crudité is wonderful. And you go home comfortable and buzzing from the adrenaline and the aura of it all. And yet the masses of Black people have not been helped by that one bit. And you see your own success, this becomes the talented-tenth fallacy. “If I just succeed, that will be the shining light for everybody else, my coattails will drag other people into prosperity.” That’s not true. The reason they’re not prospering is not because they don’t have an avenue, it’s because they’re being actively suppressed. And someone has to actively start fighting that oppression and it needs to be our most talented people, our strongest fighters, our best writers and artists have to get down in the trenches. Release the martini glass, get down in the mud and help fight.

Do you feel like the talented tenth fallacy is prevalent in the DMV?

 

[mastermind]

Do you feel like the talented tenth fallacy is prevalent in the DMV?

Without a doubt. It's weird because it was the new people who moved after Obama became president. PG County was one of the hardest hit by the housing crash in 2008, and those new people had no idea.

PG County is a county that has black political power, economic power, etc yet spent 25 years trying to attract anchor department stores to open up in the county and have one of the most corrupt and violent police departments in the nation.

DC is in the process of booting poor and middle-class black people out of the city.

The talented-tenth theory doesn't work. Even DuBois died a communist.

 

[Althalucian]

Without a doubt. It's weird because it was the new people who moved after Obama became president. PG County was one of the hardest hit by the housing crash in 2008, and those new people had no idea.


The talented-tenth theory doesn't work. Even DuBois died a communist.

 

[Voice of Reason]

Watching Charles Blows HBO Documentary now.