theroot | We've been here before: Both Lemon and Cosby approach the growing
crisis of racial injustice and economic inequality in America from the
view of "racial uplift." In the 19th century, "racial uplift" meant that
respectable black women and men projected an air of education and
erudition that, in many instances, aped that of their white
counterparts. The crucial difference was the way in which the "Talented
Tenth" openly struggled against Jim Crow, racism and white supremacy.
But even the most passionate black social reformers, including W.E.B. Du
Bois, at times felt unease about the way in which poor blacks (and
their behavior, penchant for crime, proliferating children) cast a long,
negative shadow on the entire race.
Some went even further. Unable or unwilling to confront racism's
brutal institutional, political and cultural manifestations, they
settled on demonizing poor blacks. Arguing that pathological behavior
resulted in social marginalization and economic misery, the most
conservative "race" men and women of the era distanced themselves from
the black poor even as they fought mightily to gain access to
predominantly white institutions.
By the 1960s, with the release of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report on
the black family, myths of black pathology became enshrined in our
national discourse. The erroneous idea that African Americans were stuck
in a generational culture of poverty because of their own deviant
behavior (reflected primarily although not exclusively in the high rates
of out-of-wedlock births) informed debates over race and poverty in the
post-civil rights era. What became known as America's urban
"underclass" was rooted in a long-standing racial, cultural and
political stereotyping of the black poor.
This stereotype is deceptively simple. If young black men could just
pull their pants up, stop using the n-word and go to school and get a
job, their lives would be transformed. Similarly, if young black women
abandoned teen-age promiscuity and delved instead into academic studies,
black poverty rates would be dramatically reduced. What this story
ignores is the links between institutions and behavior, the binds that
tie public policy to positive and negative outcomes large enough to
affect whole neighborhoods, towns, cities, states and nations.
