Friday, August 02, 2013

with nothing obvious to struggle against, who you obliged to struggle for?


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.

5 comments:

umbrarchist said...

Here is another funny case for science fiction.

The Uplift War by David Brin

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2011/07/wertzone-classics-uplift-war-by-david.html

Read that book and think of Europeans as Galactics and chimpanzees as non-Whites and see how funny it is.

umbrarchist said...

Talking about economics in the 20th century without talking about planned obsolescence is TOTAL NONSENSE. What was the cash flow for Black Americans each year since 1960. What might have happened if Malcolm X and MLK had advocated mandatory accounting for Black kids. But instead we believe in consumerism just like White folks.


The funny thing is that the technology is so complicated the White folks don't know what they are buying. We are just turning the planets resources into garbage and calling increased GDP economic growth. What it is it just trashing the planet faster?


I know a White man that just bought a octo-core laptop computer for $3,000. It is fast and he is impressed. He owns a small business with 10 employees that makes a few million a year. If he needs that much processing power then how could much bigger businesses with less computing power have operated in the 1980s.


We just need crappy software to waste that processing power.


We should have had a 3-day work week and poverty eliminated by 1990. But our Darwinian economic theory would not allow that.

CNu said...

What might have happened if Malcolm X and MLK had advocated mandatory
accounting for Black kids? But instead we believe in consumerism just
like White folks.



lol, pity the poor benighted afro-saxon, a helpless slave of dopamine hegemony....,

Ed Dunn said...

"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."


What an interesting thing for the professor of this article to say. So should we say to the young black male to keep the pants sagging, keep using the n-word and don't get a job? I do not know why this is being debated unless the professor is being oppositional for opoositional sake..

"Similarly, if young black women abandoned teen-age promiscuity and delved instead into academic studies, black poverty rates would be dramatically reduced."


Of course black poverty rates would be dramatically reduced! Again, is this statement wrong because Don Lemon said it and agreed with Bill O'Rielly?

"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."



The narrative presented by Don Lemon doesn't ignore the institutions or the past - he just doesn't use it as an excuse or a barrier to say "no we can't" or "we can't do this because of that" type excuses I've been hearing from everybody who has attacked Don Lemon.


Can't be a champion of a cause without maintaining victims for that cause....so it sounds like the professor need to have young black males to stay sagging and use the n-word and the young black women to become single teen moms with inadequate funding to raise the child so he can disagree with Bill O'Reilly and Don Lemon...

CNu said...

Ed Dunn,is truth! Accept no substitutes....,

p.s. that's the great Submariner's little brother. Bra Sub would bend over backwards in defense of the Hon.Bro.Preznit - evidently - little brother (sharp and well-spoken though he is) is also extremely loathe to call a spade a spade

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