Black Children and the American Dilemma: The Invisible Tears of Invisible Children
2006; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1930-5648
Autores Tópico(s)Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
ResumoThis article invokes the theme of invisibility as a metaphorical way of demonstrating the conditions of Black children in America. The theme of invisibility is examined during the period of slavery, and in the context of various social issues and movements such as school desegregation, the civil rights movement and transracial adoption. In each instance the true needs of Black children are sacriaced in exchange for other social goals that adults deemed more important. Though the needs of Black children were offered as the reason for policy changes, the children were never the beneaciaries of the change. The article argues for a new social policy that will make the needs of children of color and poor children a national priority. Unless this occurs, the dreams of Black children will continue to be deferred, and the nightmares that have governed their lives will continue to haunt them and this nation. Despite the enormous scholarly energy that has been devoted to the phenomenon of racism in American society, there still exist various groups of individuals who suffer from the past and present consequences of this dreaded social disease. One of the subtle consequences of racism is its ability to render individuals and groups invisible.1 This status of invisibility can operate on a physical dimen* Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law. I would like to thank my excellent research assistant, Corey Himrod, for his dedicated work on this project. Shalanda Baker also contributed to the footnotes in this article. 1 Ralph Ellison sets out his notion of invisibility at the very beginning of his landmark work, Invisible Man, when the novel’s hero states: I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of oesh and bone, aber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you sometimes see in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or agments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 3 (1952); see also Kerry McSweeney, Invisible Man: Race and Identity 16–18 (1988). In McSweeny’s critique of Ellison’s Invisible Man, she recounts
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