Michael Eric Dyson

by Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Also by Michael Eric Dyson

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Introduction

  Chapter One - Speaking of Race—Or Not

  Chapter Two - Classrooms and Cell Blocks

  Chapter Three - What’s in a Name (Brand)?

  Chapter Four - Family Values

  Chapter Five - Shadow Boxing with a Scapegoat?

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Index

  Copyright Page

  Praise for Is Bill Cosby Right?

  “Dyson, who can coin a phrase with the best of them … roundly defends the black youngsters whose circumstances sparked the Cosby campaign.”

  —William Raspberry, Washington Post

  “Dyson deconstructs the logic of Cosby’s comments and defends poor Blacks.”

  —Ebony

  “Dyson is seen by many as the heir apparent to such black intellectual luminaries as Princeton’s Cornel West and Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr… . In his Cosby book, Dyson uses history and social science to raise nuanced images of poor black people… . And these virtues are abundant in Dyson’s own fluent and gorgeous multilingualism. There is syncopation, repetition, call and response, variations of idiom; there is hilarity, grief, the sly rattle and snap of the rhetorical snare; he samples like a rapper, with scholarly footnotes.”

  —Princeton Alumni Weekly

  “Well-researched … Dyson then dissects these remarks, offering ironic observations that contrast what Cosby is saying about poor people with Cosby’s own unseemly behavior over the years. Dyson’s … keen observations, wit and intellectual skills have allowed him to report the material … in fresh ways and make this a highly readable book.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Dyson is evenhanded … [and] passionate about this subject, and his advocacy for the poor is admirable… . Substantive and well-expressed.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Dyson makes a number of genuinely provocative points, particularly while outlining the seemingly insurmountable structural challenges facing those mired in poverty… . Is Bill Cosby Right? should get a thorough and rigorous airing, because Dyson is onto something: the maturation (some would say collapse) of the black body politic… . As I read, I found myself wishing that this book could be debated in a public manner by a panel of thoughtful African-Americans from all walks of life.”

  —Anthony Walton, The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)

  “Withering attack on Cosby for his criticisms of the black poor and why Cosby is letting other factors off the hook that keep the underclass where they are … A good reminder to look at the whole picture, including self-help and personal responsibility.”

  —Greg Moore, Denver Post

  “Informative history and social analysis … [of] the long history of black middle-class disdain toward the poor, much of which is rooted in a desire not to give white people a reason to look askance at them… . I don’t think the black middle class has lost its mind, but sometimes we all need to take a deep breath and consider what is in our hearts before we engage our mouths.”

  —Seattle Times

  “Dyson does more than just take off the gloves … he’s got brass knuckles underneath ‘em, two sets worth, and he’s ready to rumble… . Dyson angrily rises up in defense of what he sees as an attack on the black poor by the ‘Afristocracy’ of intellectuals, civil rights leaders and other members of the African-American establishment.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Dyson deconstructs Cosby’s career of 40 years as one of the most famous black men in America, and finds him sorely lacking in terms of his relevance or commitment to civil rights issues… . [Dyson] is a compelling writer with a keen analytical mind.”

  —Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “[Dyson] examines Cosby’s complaints in a new book and concludes that the rage of elders such as Cosby does little to bring about prison reform, better jobs or adequate funding for public schools. Dyson challenges all of us to work together to find answers to enduring social problems.”

  —Tucson Citizen

  “A provocative book that will provide fodder for debate and discussion.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  ”Dyson’s insightful book challenges Blacks and Whites to confront the social problems in the Black community.”

  —Jet

  “The primary value that [Dyson’s] book serves is to hold the mirror of historical, sociological, political and moral reflection so that one can engage in the debate in a more judicious and less emotional manner.”

  —Byron Williams, Oakland Tribune

  “Dyson is at least aware that class conflict in the black community goes back to the very beginning. The most striking thing about the discussion that has followed the Cosby comments is the extent to which even well-educated Americans have been surprised to learn that class antagonism exists in the black community at all. This entrenched ignorance about black life was a long time in the making, and is only now being dislodged.”

  —Brent Staples, New York Times

  Also by Michael Eric Dyson

  MERCY MERCY ME:

  THE ART, LOVES AND DEMONS OF MARVIN GAYE

  THE MICHAEL ERIC DYSON READER

  OPEN MIKE:

  REFLECTIONS ON PHILOSOPHY, RACE, SEX,

  CULTURE AND RELIGION

  WHY I LOVE BLACK WOMEN

  HOLLER IF YOU HEAR ME:

  SEARCHING FOR TUPAC SHAKUR

  I MAY NOT GET THERE WITH YOU:

  THE TRUE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

  RACE RULES: NAVIGATING THE COLOR LINE

  BETWEEN GOD AND GANGSTA RAP:

  BEARING WITNESS TO BLACK CULTURE

  MAKING MALCOLM:

  THE MYTH AND MEANING OF MALCOLM X

  REFLECTING BLACK:

  AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURAL CRITICISM

  To

  The Rev. Dr. Frederick George Sampson, III

  The Rev. Orlando Arnold

  Ms. Delores Sampson

  Ms. Tommye Arnold

  Dear friends who allowed a young, poor father

  to live with them in Detroit

  To

  The Rev. Dr. William Douglas Booth and

  Mrs. Ruth Booth

  Beloved Second Father in the Ministry

  and Motherly Conscience

  Who fed me and taught me the true meaning

  of ministry and manhood

  and

  The Rev. Dr. Riggins R. Earl, Jr., and

  the late Mrs. Lovelene Earl

  Marvelous Mentor and Soul Encourager

  Who fed me and first inspired a young pastor

  to pursue a Ph.D.

  And to

  Mwata Omotiyo Dyson, M.D.

  Beloved son of the heart, who, despite being

  told no three times

  Pursued his dream and went from anonymous

  to Anesthesiologist

  Your Mother and I are so proud

  Preface

  The Afristocracy Versus the Ghettocracy

  On May 17, 2004, Bill Cosby stepped to the podium in Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall. The famed entertainer was to receive an award for his philanthropic endeavors during a gala event commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, sponsored by the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Fund, and Howard University. When Cosby opened his mouth, instead of lauding the efforts of civil rights pioneers, he bitterly scorned poor blacks for “not holding up their en
d in this deal.” The Washington Post, which broke the story, reports that Cosby lamented that activists “marched and were hit in the face with rocks … to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around,” referring to the “lower economic people” of the race. Cosby accused them of “not parenting,” and said that they “cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit”—meaning those in jail and prison—while failing to prevent their children’s criminal behavior. “Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol? And where is his father?”

  Cosby also attacked black youth who “put their clothes on backward: Isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong?” He assailed the young black girl who “got all type of needles [piercing] and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a damned thing about Africa.” The venerable father figure also lambasted black parents who give their children “names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Muhammad and all that crap,” adding that “all of ’em are in jail.” Cosby repeatedly accosted the black poor—with a few black millionaire ball players thrown in for good measure—for their failure to master literacy. He said—referring to black children as inanimate objects—that “[i]t’s standing on da corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. ‘Why you ain’t, where you is go… .’ I don’t know who these people are.”

  The entertainer also assailed poor black mothers and fathers for their horrible parenting skills, saying they buy their kids “$500 sneakers” but refuse to “spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.” Cosby claimed that most black inmates are not “political criminals” but folk who go “around stealing Coca Cola” and who get “shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! And then we all run out and we’re outraged, ‘Ah, the cops shouldn’ta shot him.’ What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?” Cosby pounded the black poor for their abysmal educational track record, citing their “50 percent drop out [rate]” from high school and charging that black folk are “raising our own ingrown immigrants.” On and on Cosby went, berating black parents and youth for their numerous faults, his ramblings united by one theme: the miserable condition of the black poor brought on by their own self-destructive behavior. More recently, Cosby appeared at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Citizenship Fund’s annual conference and widened his attack on the black poor, saying that the charge of airing dirty laundry leveled against him paled in comparison to the bleak reality of blasphemous black children. “Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it’s cursing and calling each other nigga as they’re walking up and down the street. They think they’re hip. They can’t read; they can’t write. They’re laughing and giggling, and they’re going nowhere.”1

  Cosby’s remarks are not the isolated ranting of a solo rhetorical gun slinger, but simply the most recent, and the most visible, shot taken at poor blacks in a more-than-century-old class war in black America. His views are widely held among a number of black constituencies—it is not unusual to hear some black poor and working-class members themselves joining Cosby’s ranks in barbershops and beauty salons across America. But Cosby’s beliefs are most notably espoused by the Afristocracy: upper-middle-class blacks and the black elite who rain down fire and brimstone upon poor blacks for their deviance and pathology, and for their lack of couth and culture. The Afristrocracy—composed of lawyers, physicians, intellectuals, civil rights leaders, entertainers, athletes, bankers and the like—rail in private (which includes, ironically enough, spaces in the “black public,” including churches, schools, conventions and social gatherings, that are usually beyond the reach, or the interest, of the masses of whites, especially the white media) about the pernicious habits of the black poor but rarely make the sort of news Cosby did by letting their bilious beliefs slip into wide public view.

  The black poor—the Ghettocracy—consists of the desperately unemployed and underemployed, those trapped in underground economies, and those working poor folk who slave in menial jobs at the edge of the economy. The Ghettocracy is composed of single mothers on welfare, single working mothers and fathers, poor fathers, married poor and working folk, the incarcerated, and a battalion of impoverished children. Ironically enough, the Ghettocracy extends into the ranks of athletes and entertainers—especially basketball and football players, but, above all, hip-hop stars—whose values and habits are alleged to be negatively influenced by their poor origins. Thus, the conflict between the Afristocracy and the Ghettocracy takes on generational overtones, since the values and behaviors that are detested by Afristocrats are largely—though by no means exclusively—located among the young.

  Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? examines, and responds to, the claims made by Cosby—and, by extension, the lunging phalanx of Afristocrats—in his now infamous speech, and in speeches he has since given across the country in what I have dubbed his “Blame-the-Poor Tour.” I will dissect Cosby’s flawed logic, reveal the thin descriptive web he weaves to characterize the poor, and address the complex dimensions of the problems he bitterly broaches. It is clear that my subtitle is provocative, perhaps inflammatory, though not nearly as inflammatory and offensive as Cosby’s remarks and the wide support they have garnered among black people, especially the black middle classes. Indeed, there are many black middle classes: the one barely a paycheck or two from poverty; the one a notch above, with jobs in the service economy; the one more solidly in the middle, with low-level professional jobs; and the one in the upper stratum, with high-level professional employment and the esteem such labor yields.

  Moreover, class in black America has never been viewed in strictly literal economic terms; the black definition of class embraces style and behavior as well. Hence, it is not uncommon to hear “that’s so ghetto” used to describe behavior associated with poor folk, whether one picks up garbage or sets a pick-and-roll on the basketball court for a living. And the charge of “acting seditty”—or, putting on airs—can be leveled at the poor and rich alike. I simply aim to provoke black folk into serious self-examination, the sort we claim the poor should undertake, but one that we in other classes may seek to avoid. If Cosby’s implicit claim is that the black poor have lost their way, then I don’t mind suggesting, with only half my tongue in cheek, that the black middle class, of which I am a member, has, in its views of the poor and its support of Cosby’s sentiments, lost its mind. I hope to lay bare the vicious assault of the Afristocracy on the Ghettocracy and offer a principled defense of poor black folk, one rooted in clear-eyed acknowledgment of deficiencies and responsibility but anchored by an abiding compassion for the most vulnerable members of our community.

  Introduction

  An Afristocrat in Winter

  “Do you view Bill Cosby as a race traitor?” journalist Paula Zahn bluntly asked me on her nighttime television show.

  Zahn was referring to the broadside the entertainer had launched against irresponsible black parents who are poor and their delinquent children. Cosby’s rebuke came in a May 2004 speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. Not content with a one-off tirade, Cosby since then has bitterly and visibly crusaded against the declining morality and bad behavior of poor blacks. Six months into his battle, Zahn snagged the comic legend turned cultural warrior for his first in-depth interview. Cosby clarified his comments and reinforced his position. No, he wasn’t wrong to air the black community’s dirty laundry. Yes, he would ratchet up the noise and pace of his racial offensive. And he surely didn’t give a damn about what white folk thought about his campaign or what nefarious uses they might make of his public diatribe. One could see it on Cosby’s face: This is war, the stakes are high and being polite or politically correct simply won
’t do.

  Since I was one of the few blacks to publicly disagree with Cosby, I ended up in numerous media outlets arguing in snippets, sound bites, or ripostes to contrary points of view. In the New York Times a few days after his remarks, I offered that Cosby’s comments “betray classist, elitist viewpoints rooted in generational warfare,” that he was “ill-informed on the critical and complex issues that shape people’s lives,” and that his words only “reinforce suspicions about black humanity.”1

  Still, I don’t consider Cosby a traitor, and I said so to Zahn. In fact, I defended his right to speak his mind in full public view. After all, I’d been similarly stung by claims of racial disloyalty when I wrote my controversial book on Martin Luther King, Jr. I also said that while Cosby is right to emphasize personal behavior (a lesson, by the way, that many wealthy people should bone up on), we must never lose sight of the big social forces that make it difficult for poor parents to do their best jobs and for poor children to prosper. Before going on Zahn’s show, I’d already decided to write a book in response to Cosby’s relentless assault. But my appearances in the media, and the frustrating fragmentation of voice that one risks in such venues, pushed me to gain a bigger say in the issues Cosby has desperately if clumsily grabbed hold of. This book is my attempt to unpack those issues with the clarity and complexity they demand.