Forty-five years ago this week, in a hot, crowded ballroom, a black boy sat atop his father's shoulders, peering above hundreds of others waiting to hear the newly elected African American senator from Massachusetts give his acceptance speech. Edward Brooke's win that night made him the first African American to serve in the Senate since Hiram Revels' brief term nearly a century earlier. As the boy strained to see Brooke, a white man leaned over to the boy and told him what he already intuitively knew: "you are witnessing history."
My husband vividly remembers this moment atop his father's shoulders, as does his father, the Honorable Judge Harry J. Elam -- himself a black "first" when he became Chief Justice of the Boston Municipal Court of Massachusetts in 1978. Across generations and races in that room and across the country, Brooke's victory represented nothing less than a paradigm shift, a tilt in the political universe that had previously seemed impossible.
Some may argue that this anniversary is especially relevant during this campaign season because Brooke was not just a black senator but a black Republican senator, representative of an emerging but powerful club of black conservatives, from Clarence Thomas to Herman Cain. But before Brooke gets recruited as proof that the Republican party has long been diverse, it is essential to note that "Republican" in his time was equated with "Lincoln's party" and, moreover, Brooke's progressive policies, including his advocacy for fair housing and low-income safety nets, make him look almost left-of-center Democrat by today's standards.
So then why continue to tally these "firsts"? Wikipedia may keep a running tab on "African American firsts" but apart from maintaining a historical record, why should they really matter at all in this so-called post-Civil Rights, post-race era?
Certainly, there are legitimate criticisms of our tendency to break out the champagne each time someone breaches the color barrier. Some may rightfully complain, for instance, that this emphasis on racial "firsts" risks reinforcing the notion of history as a series of "great men," individuals who just appear on the scene, sui generis, their noteworthiness sometimes unintentionally erasing the names and contributions of all those before who made their "first" possible.
Others might claim that "firsts" don't matter at all: they are purely token, or worse, serve to pacify those agitating for broader institutional or systemic change. In fact, some argue that firsts are no proof that social progress is inexorable: after all, Revels, the first black senator, stayed the first for a very, very long time. The political climate following the end of Reconstruction became increasingly repressive: the turn of the century into the early 20th is often considered a nadir in black life in the U.S., with the rise in lynching, the political mainstreaming of the Ku Klux Klan, the federal institutionalization of repressive legislation ensuring separate and unequal treatment of black people.
The 96 years between these two firsts is a stark reminder of the fitfulness of beginnings. Whatever metaphors we might choose to explain history's arc, it is not an inevitable march forward nor a cyclical spiral upwards. Sometimes history is a möbius strip, a changing-same continuously looping back on itself.
This is not to say that firsts can never represent progress; it just means that we cannot take for granted that change necessarily happens on its own or that any first -- even as important and remarkable as the election of Edward Brooke or, for that matter, Barack Obama -- will provide the momentum for change.
It turns out that the social change we ask firsts to spearhead does not come easy, and not simply because of political resistance. We now know that firsts also face psychological barriers to fully realizing their potential. As social psychologist, Claude Steele, suggests, "stereotype threat," the mere recognition that your presence is unlikely and possibly unwelcome, is enough to lower ability and performance, negatively impacting physical and mental abilities -- and Steele's studies document that this effect holds true not just for black people but for all racial groups, including whites, if they perceive they might be stereotyped in a particular situation.
This revelation that we must understand the subtler psychological as well as institutional challenges to change is nowhere more important than in these days of global uprisings and Occupy movements. It may seem that these collective expressions of a desire for change are the antithesis of celebrations of individual "firsts." But in fact they are two sides of the same coin because firsts represent more than individual success. Firsts signify both personal and collective achievement; they inspire generational and communal uplift. They hoist the boy onto his father's shoulders.
So it is important, even perhaps urgent, that we mark inaugural firsts like Brooke's, not only so we of the new millennium don't take for granted that such cracks in the status quo happen inevitably or easily. But also so we continue to learn better how to make that hard-won change keep -- so these firsts can move us forward to the nexts.
Claiming data could not disappoint;
Its plain now to see
In is his rambling for free
He knows only the term ‘data point’.
correction: An Edward Lear snob.
While I take liberty to post here, I do not make claim to be an African-American. What I do make claim to as an American (who's ancestry predates the late 1700s), is that all Americans must be historically represented. And if there is any doubt that one group is more represented, then simply pick up any history book to date. We are a nation of many, not one kind. It is difficult to understand why any individual of any group would advocate their group being left out for any reason.
Black traders and their progeny have been in the Americas for thousands of years were also spread in the Mississippi Valley, the Eastern US, Mexico and the Caribbean. Among these groups were the Washitaw, the Yamassee, Guale, Califunami, Chuarras of Brazil, Afro-Dariente of Panama, Choco of Colombia, Olmec (Mende-Shi) of Mexico, Guanini of South America and others.
Every time I see a 'they came before Columbus' documnetary there is always a pointed absence of the obvious African influx on these shores which predates even the Bering Strait crossing of the neolithic inhabitants. This much has been acknowledged by decree in the United Nations for the Washitaw - http://tinyurl.com/cqop6hz .
To this day, there are untold millions of African Americans who are oblivious to their true indigenous history and the miscegentaion that occured between the Black natives and the slaves and their descendants...For too long we have let other people define us, and confine us by telling us who/what we are and where we come from..
You gave a perfect example - the Black trans-Atlantic traders and Latin American Afro-community who had just as much depth as their African-American counterparts. Do we speak of them or do we speak only of African-Americans?
I decided that the "Black firsts" is too corrupted by self-serving elitists to be taken seriously and determined it is best to move on with data points to progress.
We must keep up our historic 'chronology,' the who, when and where, of the African American experiences. I think ego boost out of it is the least important matter.
First the first makes us aware of two things, One, what field/area that it's in, and Two that their is discrimination and oppression there. We don't look for cheep thrills, or ego boost and no Black wants to be the token, the only black member of an all White Private Club. Our knowledge of our chronology can be helped with this.
Black American Classics: B&R Samizdat Express edition with active table of contents, linking to every chapter and every poem This file includes: "Up From Slavery" by Booker T. Washington, "The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. DuBois, "The Conjure Woman" by Charles Chesnutt, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man"
http://astore.amazon.com/memandrec-20/detail/B001XUS328
First is not about being elite, it is about inspiring. This is important when being in second place can make a people the first loser in a nation.
Like technology or in business, it matters less if you are first if you are not relevant. U.S. Blacks legally and socially were not relevant. When things changed for this group and firsts begin to emerge (become documented), it spawned copy-cats and those copy-cats generally were improved versions of the first. This is much like technology or a product.
When flaws were discovered, it was easier to review the datum or the first / previous product to make change, corrections or improvements. The background (history) of the first / previous product was important. These products evolved
Maybe it is just easier to relate to something you know and thus the starting point. To this day, we are all works in progress and progress requires knowledge. Without it, the data becomes meaningless!
The "first" do not matter in the Information Age. What matters is having data points that are relevant and can be use to help us progress further. Looking back on the first is exactly what we are doing - looking back.
Sorry, but I'm one of those African-Americans that cleansed all of that "first Black to..." stuff out of my pysche and is actively programming that propaganda out of every other African-American I meet. The only ones who object are those elitists that care more about nostalgia than making true progress in our community.
where M>dP=3,1. And yes. However, I'm not sure you would fully agree.
Hiram Revels was the first African American elected to the US Senate from Mississippi, but only for a partial term. He served out the final year of Jefferson Davis's term from February 1870 to March 1871. He was born a free black man in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Blanche Kelso Bruce was the first African American to serve a full six-year term as US Senator from Mississippi, where he had been born a slave. He attended Oberlin College in Ohio and he served as a United States Senator from Mississippi from March 1875 to March 1881. Reconstruction was violently overturned during his term in office.
He and his family are the subjects of a 2006 biography by Lawrence Otis Graham called "The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty." Despite their very human flaws, they did achieve some "firsts."
For instance, his daughter-n-law, Clara Washington Burrill Bruce attended Radcliffe College and Boston University Law School where she became president of the law review, the first woman of any color to serve as president of a law review and the first black woman to pass the Massachusetts bar.