It came to me that rather than fight for emigration to a country in Africa, or for a few southern states, that the best move black people interested in their own state could really make would be to emigrate en masse to Rhode Island. Looks like the Libertarians are trying to do something very similar. Doubt it'll work...but it should be a very interesting failure to say the least.
So maybe they're all selling drugs? Pulled by the lure of easy loot, (more money than they could make at McDonalds!), fine women, and phat rides, maybe the brothers are simply being pulled (by the lure of money, rides, chicks) pushed (by the lack of other jobs) into the black market (pun intended)?
If you're black or Latino and grow up in the seventies and eighties in working class urban environments, you know drug dealers. At least I did. And if you know drug dealers...REALLY know drug dealers, you know this can't explain the gap.
I heard about Steven Levitt over the summer. A young economist (well, not so young anymore) at Chicago, Levitt has become known for asking unique questions. Like "What does the Weakest Link tell us about Discrimination?" Or "What can we learn by tracking the business patterns of a drug gang?" Or "Do black people with 'black names' lose on the market?" (The answer to this last question he gave at Washington University at a talk, but I was out of my mind and missed it.)
To be honest I think his willingness to pursue these questions really tells us more about the genius of everyday folk when applied to the academy, than about HIS genius. That is, if Economics as a discipline weren't filled with white (and some asian) men of middle to upper class backgrounds, someone would've asked these questions before. But yet and still everytime I try to think about what is possible in political science, I check out Levitt's page, and Christian Davenport's.
I remember some time during the late eighties early nineties the bottom of the crack market fell out. From what I understand the supply of crack grew so fast that the profit margins became very very small...and the product became very very cheap (and crack is already pretty cheap). It was when I heard about this dynamic (which I think led to a return to drugs such as marijuana and heroin), that I really began to think about the economics of the drug trade. How can everyone get paid selling crack, if the product is being sold at a price that is just a shade above the price it's being MADE at? Better yet, if everyone is making massive loot...why do "drug-infested" neighborhoods look the way they do?
Levitt was able to track the activities of a dealer over the course of a few years, starting off with the fundamental question "if everyone in drugs gets paid, why do so many of them stay with their mothers?" He finds that dealers in upper-management positions do make loot, the ones on the ground make something closer to the money they'd make at McDonalds or at the plant (probably a little less than they'd make at the plant).
Now for economists and perhaps black public intellectuals this finding may come as a surprise. For those in the game, or for those who know the game, it shouldn't. Which brings us back to the question...where are they? They can't all be selling drugs, not only because you don't make that much loot selling drugs, if everyone did it....if drug dealers had an infinite supply of labor, low level cats would be making even less than what they make now.
So this isn't it. Can't be.
Since I've been a professor at Washington University, I've taught about a couple of hundred kids. Of the black students? Whereas I've taught approximately 30 or more black women, I can remember the men (David, Quinton, Nelson, Akil, Marques, Christopher B., Trumaine, Derrick, Christopher W., and Fred) by name their numbers are so small. Where are they? Part one of a series.
Jill Leovy notes that black men are walking bullseyes. In St. Louis and other cities like it cells of organizers are fighting a losing battle against police brutality, largely because of twin realities:
1. Black men now represent the largest prison population (both absolutely and relatively).
2. Black men have historically been depicted as public enemy #1
So in response to their organizing efforts, these individuals routinely have to grapple with sidesplitting counterarguments like WHAT ABOUT THE VICTIMS? Now I've said before...I don't believe Mike Tyson was a political prisoner. A lot of the kids I grew up with spent time in the joint for crimes they DID commit. But there are two sets of victims here right? There are the victims who either were hit by crime personally, or get hit just by living in the context. Then there are victims who are hit by the panoptic sort. Because they fit a profile.
Fact. Every (black) friend that I have has been harassed by the police.
Not some of them.
Not most of them.
All of them.
If all the police see are weeds (because of the prism through which they sort people into "victims" and "perps") how the hell can we seed?
Paraphrasing.
"I knew we would win because my God was bigger than his God."
Pretty phallic.
Magic Johnson has expressed an interest in developing projects in the St. Louis area. A group of activists concerned with police brutality have contacted Johnson and suggested that St. Louis might not be the right place to do business given the climate. While some may ask why in the hell black activists would supposedly shoot themselves in the foot, I'm thinking it is pretty unfortunate that it has to come to this.
Returning to the idea of the old school, what is the old school stance on law and order? I remember when Chuck D. got up at the MTV Music Awards in the early nineties and before he gave out the award he was on stage for said the following: "Free all political prisoners. Free Geronimo Pratt. Free Mumia Abu Jamal. Free Mike Tyson."
Now the old school would hold that some people NEED to be in the joint. Both Pratt and Abu Jamal were activists who were basically jacked because of their political line. COINTELPRO looms large with both Pratt and Jamal though to be fair they may have actually railroaded the right guy in Jamal's case. But Tyson? Hell no. If Tyson's a political prisoner, them I'm Reggie Miller. White supremacy is pernicious, but it should in no way absolve us of our responsibility to act righteously. It's a hard line to hoe in many ways, especially given the stark statistics in places like Chicago, but it is what it is.
The rub here is that we take this stance not just in regards to black criminals...BUT TO POLICE OFFICERS. As the police are actually given the authority by the state to use violence, they should be held to a much higher standard. If a police officer is caught violating the law, the book should be thrown at him. Period.
Now since I've moved to St. Louis, there have been a number of incidents in which youth were killed by police. In one case a young boy was shot in the back by a cop as he was running away. Though a pop gun was found on the child's person, it hadn't been fired. The relationship between the police and black communities in St. Louis are so poor, that when I talked to high school classes (about 50 of them) about public opinion and used attitudes about the police as an example, all I got out of the black kids was laughs when I asked whether they felt they could trust the police.
I've talked about accountability as it relates to black leadership...in order for the police to properly serve and protect black citizens need to be able to hold them accountable. A citizens' review board is the appropriate institution for this task. The activists are right to call for one. But how are we to understand their communique to Magic?
The mayor's first response echoes that of a number of white citizens and probably some black ones, noting that black citizens would be hurt if Magic pulled out.
I understand that response. But it seems to me that anyone interested in ensuring the health and welfare of black citizens would be as interested in making sure the police serve and protect ALL of their citizens, as well as ensuring that business elites of whatever color have the proper climate in which to do business. Furthermore it seems to me that informing the black business elite of the climate in which his/her employees would work is all a part of the free market.
Full information and all that.
I've written about the issues the St. Louis Schools are facing. A new slate of officials chosen by the Black Leadership Roundtable, Civic Progress (a group of powerful white business elites), and the Mayor, have made some real tough decisions about the schools. They've hired a management firm to slash and burn, privatizing services, closing schools, and firing staff. From what I understand they are also planning on bringing in some of the people responsible for the "Houston Miracle". What it looks like at this point was that the Black Leadership Roundtable bit off more than they could chew.
From what I understand they recently took their anger out on their head...in another example of how important it is to be an ELECTED leader.
The head of the Black Leadership Roundtable has been talking about issues of education (specifically the "black-white achievement gap") for years now, and he was one of the chief architects of the deal that saw the new slate elected. Sometime ago the Black Leadership Roundtable received a sizeable grant, and he was informed that he could oversee the grant....BUT that he had to resign his position as chair.
He did so...and was then informed that while his resignation was accepted, the oversight position would go to someone else.
Years down the line he could be viewed as a visionary, and the person who singlehandedly pushed the schools to save themselves. I doubt it for reasons I won't go into here.
But whatever the case, what happened to him is another reason why we need ELECTED leaders. The part I've been focusing on is accountability...we as citizens need to be able to hold these individuals accountable for their actions. But from their perspective, if they truly are going to attempt to engage in radical change (as opposed to say...holding a protest march, then leaving), they need to have a constituency that will protect them. Radical change usually involves shooting off more than a pinky toe, and folks usually react to change like this by doing more than pulling out a knife.
I've spent a lot of time on the Internet as a race man, but I think I've probably spent more time as the fly in the buttermilk as it were. I've proven to myself and to others the value of sustaining black & white dialog on racial issues. I'd like to point out a few things that I've recently been thinking about.
From the black side there is a very powerful disincentive, or taboo against, confiding in whitefolks about the presence of racism. I think the notable exception to this is when Jews start the conversation in a particular way. If a nominally white person outs himself as a Jew, unprompted to a black person and talks about racism, I think a strong bridge is built.
It's one of those things I beleive blackfolks are immediately responsive to on a gut level. Socially, we look out for each other. This is part of the essence of what I call the Kwaku network - blacks telling other blacks about offenses done to blacks. Right now as we speak, there's a little duststorm of outrage rising over the selling at Urban Outfitters of a product called Ghettopoly. Some of this stuff rises to the NAACP (which ought to be a lot less black and a lot more PoC) but it doesn't go to your next door neighbor who is white.
There is a perception that people are going to be more white than people, 'when push comes to shove'. I don't think so, but our social intercourse has not matured in the mainstream these 50 years of integration, to the level at which black/other intimacy is generally tight enough to share these revelations. Whitefolks don't ever give up the front and fantasy that they could be 'the man' (and all I can think about is what happened to Ray Romano - how he became a superstar on his mediocre talent. Look at a picture of him today. He looks physically different. He's not a vulnerable human being any longer, he's an icon of the nominally white American dream). Whitefolks don't ever admit their trash backgrounds and humble themselves around blackfolks. Blackfolks don't ever let their guard down and simply trust whitefolks in a carefree and easy way. And of course blacks are constantly reminded of how many people just don't get it. The risk, I think for most blackfolks is too great. I don't excuse it. It's something that we must get over and I know a lot of people are trying...now I'm hearing Mike's voice take over in my head about the kind of civility that we have to show each other,*constantly*. I think it's a little bit more than that on a personal level, it is a refusal to retreat. It's demonstrating somehow that an individual is never going to withdraw into their racial safety zone and ignore the 'others'. Is there too much racial injustice in America for each of us to make that promise? Perhaps. Is the ethos of colorblindness wrecking havoc with this potential intimacy? Absolutely. Is 'diversity & multiculturalism' a sort of retrenchment into the personal politics of difference? I think so.
So there are many barriers to overcome that mitigate against the potential for a sustained interracial conversation which settles terms and can focus political energy. But if I may use a jewish analogy, blackfolks want a divine kingdom on earth. We want the laws and the powers to defeat our enemies. We developed ourselves on our own and we want to be left alone. We don't believe this intimacy and friendship is the way to go. It's tedious, it's slow, and every friend is not a fellow warrior. Who knows that better than blacks who are not 100% African blooded but still disconnected from a certain half of their family? This is why the jewish provocation works, we understand the point of view of a jewish warrior. It's not so much a friendship as an alliance, and we don't have to keep investing in intimacy to know that the battle will still be engaged. I percieve that's where the friendship thing goes between blacks and whites. The whole drama over a racial incident and the black & white person look at each other with their mouths open "I thought you were my friend" says the white person. "I guess all I am to you is a friend" says the black. That's why blackfolks consistently say they'd rather deal with a redneck bigot, because at least he's honest and they always know where he's coming from.
A question about Black Strength was raised to me in the context of whether or not America is truly interested in black success. Could an economic downturn, given the shaky psychology of the hiphop generation and the loss of pre-integration community, set Black America way back?
I honestly believe that African Americans have amassed enough social capital to survive any economic downturn in the US. Living in Southern California, I find it difficult to believe that blacks will not compete successfully against Mexicans, if indeed it comes to that. Blacks may not have climbed very high on the economic ladder, but they do have some room to fall, and in a very coarse way of seeing things, if speaking English is an advantage, if being closer to whites than Mexicans or other latinos is an advantage, blacks will take it.
My perspective on the strength of African Americans in the lower socioeconomic strata comes primarily from my view of the Armed Forces. Many folks like to make a target of 'the man's army' as a dead-end plantation one step above prison, but I think that is entirely wrong. The Army is an integral and fundamental part of the infrastructure of America and blacks are not excluded or barred. They are welcome; they are invited. America is never going to get rid of its Army, so if blacks are disproportionately there, then they are disproportionately better off. As well it cannot be understated that in any apocalyptic scenario of race war that there are certainly enough blacks who are competent to lead armies in any capacity anywhere in the world. If we wanted to take 5 southern states for blackfolks, it is militarily possible in that kind of incredible scenario.
I also consider what happened in Los Angeles in the Riot of 91. Fewer than 100 people died, and it's not clear that the majority of those who did were black. So even when it comes to chaos, shooting in the streets and burning cities down, African Americans survive crises. The black population is not decreasing. 35 some odd million is large and healthy.
I would be interested in seeing some kinds of 'black nation' statistics shown. I only see one side of the equation as when we hear about how many millions of dollars blackfolks spend on potato chips, immediately followed by some foolish statement like "Why can't we buy Citibank?" I talk about 'competing with them' and say comparing black to white is not a proper barometer of the health of African America. We need to look at that more objectively, like comparing various African American classes to Kurds or Punjabis or Aino or the people of Chiapas.
I agree that our internal diaspora has suffered from the loss of monoculture. But we are adapting rapidly to American class definitions about as quickly as any group this large can. Furthermore I think we are doing so with a great amount of cultural influence which makes our assimilation different from that of any other ethnic group. So I will concede that our emotional/psychological/spritual thang is being thinned out and dispersed. But my bottom line is that the psychic dysfunction we are acutely aware of goes out the window outside of a bourgie comparison. My definition of bourgie is, you are bourgie and middle class if you expect your clothing to make a social statement about you. People who work in chicken plucking factories don't have that luxury. Most African Americans do. So I am not inclined to sweat too much about 'babies having babies' or all other kinds of non-criminal behavior in which African Americans compare disfavorably to European Americans; it's not the proper context.
I think that blacks need to walk the walk of class when it comes to ideas of nationalism. Who ever said black nationalism was strictly socialist or Marxist? So when we actually do compare black Atlanta to Kurdish Mosul that we don't slip into ranting about the average black person in poverty as compared to those Kurds who are now trying to run their oil refineries. If there are black bank vice presidents here, then we acknowledge that in our comparisons.
Racism in all of its manifestations negatively affects blackfolks whatever their class. But the kinds of racism African Americans face today is of a different quality and frequency than that of 50 years ago. The context of my classifications of the different severities of racism was to speak about 'effective resonance' which is the effect of a certain racist act or acts on the whole of black society in order to measure out the appropriate response.
I think that if we are honest about class within African America we will find there to be different solutions to the same problems of racism, and different impacts. But the whole of African America is too deeply bound to the health of America for Class Three or probably even Class Two racism from retarding black progress. Blacks are not going to get fired from the Army, nor are they going to stop buying potato chips or shopping at Wal-Mart. Racism will not rise to that level for the same reason that all the farm workers and chicken pluckers won't be deported.
When America catches cold, all people in the lower socioeconomic classes will catch pneumonia, but African America as a whole will not. Being honest about class means acknowledging the strength of all African Americans who can and do thrive as well as the shared pain of the poor and undeducated across racial lines.
"When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored." --Eric Hoffer
I recently joined the AfroFuturists. I've always been an honorary member because I've been making black noise on the internet basically since PPP was invented. Today, however, I'm getting correspondance in real time. The following question (among many) was posed:
Would black children be more motivated if they didn't always feel like they could never compete with "them"?
This gets to the heart of a number of important issues. I have several angles on it.
The first is that children in America don't need to be externally 'motivated' per se. They simply need to understand their class expectations / generational imperatives and rise to them. Once children rectify their identity with their class, it doesn't matter where they go, that pretty much defines the direction they are headed. This is the difference between achievement and excellence. Only a very few people excel. Most of us achieve.
I think kids will be what their personalities lead them to be. If they are competitive, generally speaking, and their class expectations are to be a basketball player, chances are that they don't need any special motivation to learn how to dribble. They'll take it upon themselves, and the next thing you know, they'll be dribbling. If they are not competitive, then they'll sit on the sidelines. People do what they want to do.
Secondly, one of the most tiring and futile exercises is comparing simply black with simply white. On any day of the week you'll be able to find a poor black person and a rich white person. Comparing the two is meaningless and constantly done. What is not often done is comparing families, and of course that's because it's difficult to do. But a start could be talking about some of the following factors.
Generations of college attendance
Generations of home ownership
Numbers of business owners
Let's leave it at that. If you look at an extended family and start tallying up such factors, it's going to tell you a lot about what kind of expectations are in the home and what children can easily see as their destiny.
So I'm combatting the myth that you can 'motivate' someone into American success. I say that American success is organically grown, and that concentration on the exceptional individual is a big problem in the thinking of those who believe in motivation. I am saying that there is something fundamentally wrong with telling a young girl that she can be 'an Oprah'. The fact of the matter is Oprah herself can't even raise a daughter to be 'an Oprah'. Bill Cosby's children are not movie stars, but I have a very good idea what they are like.
Tangentially, I think this is key to understanding something about the phenomenon of the underachieving black children of Shaker Heights as studied by Dr. Ogbu. I seriously doubt you'll find those families have 2 and 3 generations of college or home ownership. My nickel says their parents were exceptional and just moved to Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights which were not black neighborhoods two generations ago. But if you go to the Old School upper middle class black neighborhoods, you'll find a much more consistent level of success.
None of this should come as any surprise. Old money and family traditions work for blacks the same way they work for whites. Why anyone should believe any different smacks to me of the same old idiotic white liberal structuralism and paternalism which overruns conversations of this type. Too bad blackfolks believe it.
While I'm on this tangent I should note, apropos what Dr. Spence is saying below that I find symmetry in my assertions and his criticism of 'positive images'. What are positive images supposed to do other than motivate? We get into that entire game of self-esteem, which is so often just an artifact of conformity.
Thirdly, to interject a bit of scholarship. Andrew Hacker in his book 'Money' said that most Americans, no matter what their socioeconomic status believed that they would be very satisfied if their salaries were increased an average of about 20%. That much more would make the difference for them. In this context I take it to be a confirmation of my achievement vs excellence idea, but most importantly that the overwhelming majority of blackfolks are always going to be able to find whitefolks with 20% more. It's not a huge amount on any absolute scale, but it is the material difference between what people get and their satisfaction.
So long as the gap between black and white is viewed in purely in terms of race and money, minor differences will continue to be a source of continuing dissatisfaction. There is always more 'them' out there just beyond the reach of blackfolks. No amount of motivation is going to close the gap. So long as 'they' are subjectively 'white' the target will shift and will keep shifting until some African nation becomes the planet's superpower.
Therefore efforts should be directed at reconciling people to familial progress in the context of class, that area in which they have some direct knowledge of their status quo and achievement relative to it.
Matters of uplift through motivation, positive images and beating 'the man' are ultimately useless, because they 1) cannot be reliably replicated generation over generation 2) they have diminishing returns as socioeconomic status increases and 3) there will always be somebody (nominally whites) at points beyond the increment of satisfaction.
Understand that I believe we are begging improper questions in the matter of racial uplift. There should be no reason for 10 million black families to be upset at the socioeconomic stalling or regression of several dozen black families in Ohio. There is no status for the race, there are only averages which are not really useful. Who can depend on this or that University study or position paper by the NAACP to help us deal with the problems of our outlook on life. If we have families, then they can tell us if we are doing well or poorly, and this is a close and immediate benchmark. If the race is to achieve or fail it will come from the families in aggregate, not from the race as a whole and then allocated among the families. So our benchmarks must come from families.
Finally, let me throw in a twist. If blacks cannot find satisfaction in improving the lot of their extended families and are searching for external motivation in order to compete with 'them', what are they doing but 'acting white'? In this way of thinking there is no other context for black progress except that which can be identified as white and superior - a presumed constant threat yet a moving target. But black families will never be white by this definition. There is no escape from this foolish cycle. Clarence Thomas' sister will never be a judge and that's no surprise. Barry Bonds' father was a baseball player and that's no surprise either. Clarence Thomas has an issue with 'the race', Barry Bonds does not.
Blacks need to do right by their own standards in line with their family, religious and class traditions. Otherwise they will be endlessly frustrated by setting standards which will estrange them from organic support networks of family and community. 'They' will always be out there as will excellence. When the family achieves consistently, excellence becomes a simpler achievement through inheritance of a well organized legacy.
Flash forward.
The positive images argument goes something like this. Images have an impact on how we perceive reality. Our understanding of events on a local (in the case metropoles), state, and national level is at least partially driven by media images. As such, they have an impact on how we think, and how we feel.
Given that most images of African Americans on the local news are negative, it stands to reason that these negative images have a negative impact on how people perceive African Americans, and how they feel about African Americans. If we change the images, it stands to reason that we change the way people think, and feel about black people. The solution then, is for us to get more positive images of black people in the news to counteract the negative ones.
Does this sound familiar?
This dialogue sounds a lot like it was ripped out of the uplift writings of the early 20th century. Our problem is largely a perception problem, driven partially by the media (as it is "the media") that shows the images in the first place, and partially by problematic African American behavior.
Now to be fair, there is research that links policy preferences to media images. Rosalee Clawson (Associate Professor, Purdue University) has found for example that whites tend to think of social security as a form of "white affirmative action" and that they are more likely to support social security if they see images of older white senior citizens along with news stories talking about the policy. Shanto Iyengar (Professor, Standford University), and Frank Gilliam (Professor, UCLA) have shown that the average "crime script" in local news features Blacks prominently, and that these images had an impact on evaluations of President Clinton (people shown news stories with black criminals were more likely to base their evaluations of Clinton on how he dealt with crime, people shown those images were also more likely to evaluate Clinton on how concerned he was about whites). Finally, Martin Gilens (Professor, Princeton University) in his work Why Americans Hate Welfare finds that the reason whites hate welfare is because they associate poverty with black women.
So there is reason to focus on "positive images." As they structure responses to public policy, it is important that we fight to ensure that blacks are at least accurately depicted. This fight must be waged...we must make sure that newspapers for example do not simply show images of black women whenever they run poverty stories. We must make sure that if black suspects are shown prominently whenever they are arraigned the same thing happens with white suspects.
BUT....at the same time we must realize that this dialogue is still mired in the conservative "uplift" concept. It takes the structure as a given, and only articulates change around the margins. In this case for example, dealing with the nature of images rather than the wider context. Two dynamics loom large.
The first is growing media concentration. As the stories (nonfiction and fiction) we watch, read, and hear, become more and more concentrated, the nature of those stories change. Rather than watching or reading news about our local state representatives, we are watching (on the NEWS no less) interviews with national tv stars. The new season of Alias just started on Sunday...I wouldn't be surprised if the lead-in for the local ABC affiliate's nightly news was an interview with Jennifer Garner. (I like Alias...think Garner is beautiful. But DAMN.) Rather than spend time tracking environmental dumping (a corporate crime of vast proportions) news agencies simply run to the scene of the latest carjacking.
The second is growing hypersegregation. As our metropolitan areas become more and more segregated not only on racial dimensions but on class based dimensions, it becomes easier to surveil problematic behavior on racial angles. You want to see someone on welfare in St. Louis? Just go to the North side, where all the poor people who just so HAPPEN to be black, live.
Note here that explicit racism doesn't even have to come into play on the behalf of news reporters or producers. It takes an arm and a leg to drive to the Appalachians (or their local equivalent) to get images of the white poor. Let's just go down the street! Gotta love bureaucratic efficiency.
So by focusing on the positive images without examining media concentration, and urban re-segregation it becomes impossible for black people to do anything more than change things at the margins.
I just gave a talk at a Think Tank sponsored by Brothers of the Academy. I'm pretty blasted...the Think Tank was in Kansas City. I didn't want to spend too much time away from the family, so I got a rental car at 12am drove to KC...got there about 4am. Then woke up at 7:30am to get ready for the presentation. Presented it at 8:45am then got back on the road at 2pm. Drained.
The concept of racial uplift is I believe a true part of the Old School. But while I agree with the general concept....uplift after all is a Cardinal Principle, it is also deeply problematic in some important ways.
As used in the early 20th Century--when organizations like Omega Psi Phi were started--it was used ostensibly to imbue African Americans with a sense of agency, with a sense of responsibility. African Americans as a whole had the power to lift themselves up from conditions of material subjugation. Wealthier African Americans (they DID exist even during this time) had the responsibility to serve as role models for those less fortunate.
Now I believe that black people have agency. Contrary to popular belief we aren't totally powerless...and our lives are not individually or in the aggregate, pathological.
But the concept of "uplift" as disseminated by scholar activists such as Anna Julia Cooper, and WEB Dubois, is conservative to say the least. It is based on the fundamental premise that white supremacy is an attitudinal construct that is caused by black pathology. In blunt terms--the reason black people ain't got nothing is because black people don't act right. If black people were to properly organize their lives (establish modern family structures with a strong man at the head; stop having children out of wedlock; establish honorable jobs; carry themselves the correct way in public) two things would occur.
First, poorer black people would, from "role modeling" the behavior of the organized blacks, act better. They would organize their homes, organize their lives, and in the process improve their neighborhoods--which because of the disorganization was wracked by crime, disease, and harlotry.
Second, white people would see blacks carry themselves in a different way, and they would in turn realize that black people are responsible enough to bear the burdens of citizenship. They would then realize that the norms of white supremacy which forced them into all black wards, and kept blacks in the south from voting, were antiquated. A new era would begin.
The problems with this should be apparent, and I'll briefly touch on two. In its "pure" form, the notion of uplift is apolitical at worst, and at best articulates a vision of racial subjugation that is attitudinal rather than structural. Dubois in his strong social science phase believed that all he had to do was use the tools of social science to show whites and blacks how things really were and they would change their minds, leading to a change in relationships. It doesn't quite work that way.
The second problem is that the Victorian model upon which the pure vision is based, is itself, deeply sexist, racist, and classist. Folded into the model are notions of "civilization" which are based solely on European upper-class norms and standards (a civilized family is patriarchal, a noncivilized family is not; a civilized woman works only in the home, an uncivilized woman does not).
(As a sidenote come black nationalists flipped this on its head by arguing that the best civilizations were actually the OLDER civilizations. The Western vision was--the younger your civilization was, the better it was. The Southern vision was the exact opposite, which is one of the reasons why Egypt becomes so important in the African American imagination.)
In as much as black people living in America were influenced by American ideas, it shouldn't be surprising that black people attempted to flip the script on the Victorian model of success. But it should also be unsettling to know that many blacks supported the logical ideological conclusions (racism is attitudinal rather than structural, blacks are pathological), and the policy conclusions (many indicated support for some form of eugenics).
Now what the hell does this have to do with "positive images"? I'll get to that next.
(This brief piece is a snippet of a larger lecture I gave in my black politics class. It is based on the work Uplifting the Race)
A second take on John's debating point. This is the question I would ask:
Do you believe Americans have the right to be free from white supremacy?
Like John, this is a question I wish would be answered. A simple yes or no would suffice. Given that the current Initiative would continue the practice of white supremacy by making the Civil Rights Act unenforceable (perhaps with the exception of police stops), this question is a very important one to consider.
There have already been lots of debates — among California candidates to replace Gray Davis, among Democratic candidates to replace George Bush — and there will be lots more to come. I have a very simple question that, so far as I know, has never been asked and that I wish someone would ask at one of these events:Do you believe that every American has a right to be treated without regard to race, creed, or national origin? Please limit your answer to one word: "yes" or "no."
I wonder how many candidates who clearly believe the answer to this question is “no” would have the courage to say, simply, “no.”
The answer is yes. It is an individual choice.
A similar question would be "Do you believe that every American has a right to be treated without regard to party affiliation?"
The answer is similarly yes. However a person who chooses to identify with a party or a race also reserves the right to define what it means to them to so identify and determine guidelines as to what that affiliation means.
Your fallacy suggests that by doing so all parties are invested into a zero-sum system of conflict. This is nothing more or less than reinscribing fixed and negative values into race, which intelligent people know to be fluid.
You beg the question because your interpretation of the current (permanent?) state of political affairs is that race means exactly the same thing to the State of California, ie the people of California in 2003 as it did in hmm let's say the year of the Bakke Decision. WRONG.
Put simply, if I cannot be black, then you cannot be white. But then again aren't you saying that you are exactly the same white as what the Klan means? Or do you somehow have the magical power to redefine what white is to you?
If you do, then you have the power to redefine what the State means by white and black and brown as well. So long as citizens wish to be represented politically as a color, isn't it the state's responsibility to respond? Or is the state bound in all cases never to give color, despite the fact of the people's self-identification, a moment's consideration?