California dreamin'

Last update: Thursday 2/27/18

In my youth California was the Golden State wherein good government produced what seemed like an endless stream of great innovations that became models for the nation's other states. But as I grew older, Black Americans were increasingly excluded from that golden bounty. 

California became the state that delivered the first and most devastating blow to affirmative action, and never made an effort to develop a more judicially acceptable substitute, leaving it to Texas to assume that leadership role. It became the state of Rodney King, police brutality, O.J. Simpson trials, and Compton riots. 

In other words, California became the New Old South. Its small but powerful de facto capitals, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, promote twin stereotypes about Black Americans that are as debilitating as the stereotypes of the Old Old South, stereotypes of denial and distraction.

A. Silicon Valley stereotypes

• Silicon Valley denies employment to qualified Black techs by denying that they exist. Why? Because the Valley's leaders want everyone to believe that the Valley employs the brightest, most creative techs in the world.
   
• In reality the Valley recruits most of its American software engineers from California, a reasonable strategy given the relatively small employment requirements of the Valley's leading corporations vs. the huge enrollments in California's universities, some of which are the among the best universities in the world. Unfortunately, California has a small Black population and an even smaller percentage of Black enrollment in its leading universities. (See the report on this blog: "The California Pipelines of Silicon Valley")
   
• Rather than admit that their low Black employment reflected their commitment to local recruiting, the Valley's leaders loudly proclaimed Trump-sized lies that qualified Black Americans didn't exist anywhere. To be specific: they claimed that there were very few Black Americans in the "pipelines" from the STEM programs in America's universities to America's tech recruiters. In other words, they denied the existence of the hundreds of qualified Black Americans who graduate every year from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) mostly located in the South, and they denied the existence of the thousands of Black Americans who graduate every year from the nation's preeminent universities mostly located outside of California. (See the report on this blog: "Black STEM Pipelines from top U.S. Universities")
   
• Some of the Valley's leaders then doubled down on their Trumpian alternative facts that Black America's Talented Tenth had been too stupid to take advantage of the high paying tech opportunities provided by the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s that outlawed discrimination in the nation's schools and employment centers. Valley moguls have donated millions of dollars to support various innovative K-12 STEM programs that provide learning opportunities for Black youngsters, programs that will ... eventually ... someday ... make Black America ... great ... again ... because the hundreds of thousands of Black techs who are gainfully employed in the information technology sector outside of California are just payroll fantasies; they really don't exist.
  
  They can't exist because if they did exist their existence would be a major development in U.S. Black History, something worth noting and celebrating. But we all know that U.S. Black History ended when Dr. King was shot, right? (See the report on this blog: "Best States for American Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Female Tech")

B. Hollywood stereotypes
Speaking of fantasies, here's my version of an imaginary conversation with a White Hollywood producer.

Me: By now one might hope that Hollywood could have found a way to produce entertaining films and TV shows that showcased the progress of American Black techs in employment centers outside of California

Producer: Nah ... too boring ... not unless they zapped each other with lasers every week in race riots ... :-)

Me: Not funny. Perhaps a Black American tech could be a superhero who was really an ordinary human who derived his powers from his super tech innovations.

Producer: We tried something like that back in the 1990s with a TV show called M.A.N.T.I.S. In the show's pilot, aired during the Spring, the whole team was Black. But by the time the series began its regular run in the Fall, only the leader was Black; none of the techs on his team were Black. Indeed, the hero was no longer a super tech; he was just another Black guy with a good body, but no tech. It seems that some White viewers who saw the pilot found the concept of a Black American with a great brain for tech a tad bit disturbing. 

Me: I remember that show. I remember how excited I was by the pilot, and how disappointed I was by the radical reorg they did before the regular season began. And I also remember that it was cancelled after that first season. So is the idea of Black tech dead forever in Hollywood?

Producer: You must be a hermit living on the dark side of the moon. Haven't you heard about Black Panther?

Me: Yes, but the hero is ...

Producer: ...not a Black American, a/k/a African American. Of course not. We don't repeat our mistakes. The superhero in this flick has a good body and a great brain, but he is an African African; so that finesses the biggest problem that some White viewers had with M.A.N.T.I.S. The film is about African African tech, not African American tech. Better still, he's from a fictitious African country. So White viewers won't have nightmares about a real African African with real tech super powers. Panther is a very safe fantasy.

Me: Yeah, I see your point. Even if he somehow managed to pop off the screen, he would just be another illegal immigrant from a shit hole country. He wouldn't worry White people because they would know that he wouldn't be able to climb over "That Wall" because his technology wouldn't be strong enough ... :-)

Producer: Huh???

Me: Just another bad Trump joke. Painful, and not funny.

As I said, California has become the New Old South wherein, as Rhett Butler declared so many years ago, frankly Scarlett, it does not give a damn.

Roy L Beasley, PhD
DLL Editor


P.S. 2/27/18 ... Consider the following tweet from the NY Times

1. The New York Times‏Verified account @nytimes Feb 27
   

   Disney is donating $1 million of its "Black Panther" proceeds to STEM programs, in a nod to one of the movie's key themes ... https://t.co/h8P340NR9C ... DLL Editor's note -- This movie grossed over $700 million at the box office in its first two weeks; yet Disney only donated $1 million to programs that might offer future tech opportunities for Black youth, i.e., far less than one percent of this bounty. California ... really ... does ... not ... give ... a ... damn.