Michael Eric Dyson
Page 9
Cook and Ludwig uncovered an intriguing fact: that the black students who were members of academic honor societies were more likely than other black students to view themselves as “popular.” Further, they found that students who belonged to honor societies in predominantly black schools were more popular than their peers who had not received such an honor. Cook and Ludwig concluded that there was little evidence to support the notion of an oppositional peer culture to black academic achievement. In fact, other studies suggest that the parents of black students are more likely than white or Asian parents to have assisted their children with their homework or met with their children’s teachers, and just as likely to encourage them to put forth their best effort in school. Black parents are more likely than white parents to place their children in educational camps, attend PTA meetings, check their children’s homework and reward their children for academic success.62 Moreover, while only 6 percent of white students in grades 6 through 12 reported discussing national news events with a parent on a daily basis, 26 percent of black students in comparable grades reported that they did so.63 And there is evidence that high school black peer groups were more likely than comparable white peer groups to believe that it is important to study hard and get good grades, leading to the conclusion that white, not black, academic peer culture opposes academic achievement.64
More recently, University of North Carolina professors Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist, and William Darity, Jr., an economist, coordinated an eighteen-month ethnographic study of eleven schools in North Carolina and concluded that black and white students are fundamentally the same when it comes to the desire to succeed, knowing that doing well in school can positively impact later life, and feeling good about themselves when they do well.65 They also concluded that when anti-intellectual activity occurs in white culture, “it is seen as inevitable, but when the same dynamic is observed among black students, it is pathologized as racial neurosis.”66 The authors also argue that the single case where they found any evidence of the anxiety of “acting white” occurred at a school where there was an overrepresentation of whites in gifted-and-talented classes and a drastic underrepresentation of black students. But the anxiety occurred most frequently not among the students, but among the teachers and administrators, who accused the black students of being “averse to success” and placing a low value on education, underscoring how racial hierarchy and the social mythology of low black academic desire collude to deprive black students of an equal education.67
Finally, Cosby’s remarks about black youth and the criminal justice system are incredibly naïve, mean-spirited or woefully uninformed. While it is true that most black men who are incarcerated are not “political prisoners,” that doesn’t mean that their imprisonment doesn’t have political contexts and consequences. For instance, Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs”—which, as both Lani Guinier and Tupac Shakur contended, is a war on black and brown people—inaugurated changes in public policy and policing measures (leading eventually to racial profiling) that greatly increased the odds that blacks would do serious time for nonviolent, and often first-time, offenses. This political decision had grave, and foreseeable, consequences that disproportionately affected young blacks: They were more likely to become incarcerated. The increase of black incarceration was driven by political considerations, not a boost in, for instance, drug consumption. In fact, self-report surveys of students and adults suggest that black folk do not report greater rates of illegal drug consumption than do whites. In fact, it’s often lower. For instance, in 2003, 26.5 percent of white students in the twelfth grade reported using illegal drugs within the past thirty days; for the same cohort among blacks, it was just 17.9 percent.68 However, by a huge margin, black folk are much more likely to be arrested and to serve real prison time for drug-related offenses. This situation is unavoidably, unmistakably political, contrary to what Cosby contends.
It is also ironic that Cosby seems to justify the shooting by police of a black man who steals a piece of pound cake. Most black folk surely don’t approve of stealing and certainly want criminals removed from the community, especially violent ones who menace neighborhoods. Yet, too many of us understand the nexus between poor schooling, severely limited life options and the subsequent self-destructive choices made by desperate young men. Moreover, despite a strong desire to see criminals arrested, black folk are justifiably wary of police who often seem incapable of distinguishing legitimate criminals from law-abiding citizens who call the police for protection—not for harassment or brutality. Years ago, Cosby understood the complex social arrangements that provided the backdrop for explaining certain forms of criminal behavior. He also understood how disparities in money offered differing brands of justice.
Cats with dough don’t commit armed robbery or most of the crimes poor people commit. Yet rich guys’ crimes— like embezzling a bank or moving a million dollars’ worth of heroin a year—hurt a hell of a lot more people than some guy who sticks up a candy store and gets away with $12. So I think something’s a little wrong there. When the rich man comes to court, he’s got the best lawyers money can buy. But the poor man, the black man, gets a lawyer who’s not necessarily interested in the case and may even consider it a pain in the ass. And then there’s the whole thing about under-the-table payoffs to judges, which I won’t attempt to document but which exist. What I’m saying is that there are two kinds of justice in this country: one for the rich and one for the poor—and blacks are poor. When the black people keep getting shafted by cops and courts, how can they have respect for people who are supposed to represent the law?
Cosby’s blistering, brilliant analysis captures the harsh, excessive and unjust penalties imposed on poor blacks. It also situates in its historical and racial context the criminal justice system, and clarifies the link between class and justice. Of course, Cosby’s powerful critique of the two-tiered justice system, one for the wealthy, the other for the poor, offers another jarring contrast between his past thought and his present practice. For instance, while condemning the black pound cake stealer, Cosby stood by Martha Stewart’s side, and showed up in court to support her, even though she fit Cosby’s description of a person with huge resources who buys justice and whose crime, perhaps, has a more harmful effect than the man robbing a candy store or stealing a piece of pound cake.
The disparity in the distribution of justice is painfully apparent in the case of black males. From 1974 to 2001, the percentage of black males who had been in state or federal prison increased from 8.7 percent to 16.6 percent, while the percentage for white males went from 1.4 percent to 2.6 percent during the same period. The percentage of black women who had been in state or federal prison rose from 0.6 percent to 1.7 percent, even as the rate for white women increased from 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent.69 Blacks are six times as likely as whites to have gone to prison at some time in their lives. If the trends hold up, one out of three black males born in 2001 will be imprisoned at some point in his lifetime. In 1974, that number was one out of eleven. Only 5.9 percent of white males born in 2001 have a chance of imprisonment in their lifetimes. For black females, the number is 5.6 percent and for white females, a paltry 0.9 percent.70
And when one considers the relation between education and incarceration, things look even bleaker for black men. According to the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) report “Cellblocks or Classrooms? The Funding of Higher Education and Corrections and Its Impact on African American Men,” we have a lethal public policy of prizing prisons over education. 71 There is a swelling prison industry that is sweeping ever larger numbers of blacks into local penitentiaries. The more black bodies fill the jails, the more cells are built and the more revenue is generated, particularly in the rural white communities where many prisons are located. The prison-industrial complex literally provides white economic opportunity across the class strata, from the lower- or working-class maintenance worker, the moderately middle-class guard and the solidly middle-class prison executive to the
wealthy merchants of incarceration capital who manufacture and produce prison life. In 1995 alone, 150 new prisons were constructed and filled, while 171 more were expanded.72
Big money is at stake when it comes to making a crucial choice: to support blacks in the state university or the state penitentiary. As the report makes clear, we have chosen the latter. During the 1980s and 1990s, state spending on corrections grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education. By the end of the last century, there were nearly a third more black men in prison and jail than in colleges and universities. The number of black men in jail or prison has increased fivefold in the last twenty years. In 1980, at the dawn of the prison construction boom, black men were three times more likely to be enrolled in college than incarcerated. In 1980, there were 143,000 black men in jail or prison and 463,700 enrolled in higher educational institutions. In 2000, there were 791,600 black men in jail or prison, while only 603,032 were enrolled in colleges or universities. It’s not a matter of whether “Junior” stole the pound cake; it’s a matter of whether he can get into a school that will train him to cook rather than incarcerate him because he stole when he was hungry.
None of this is meant to dismiss black crime or serve as an apologia for destructive behavior, but it is necessary to underline the social and personal forces that drive criminal activity, even as we fight against an unjust criminal justice system that targets black men with vicious regularity. I speak as one who has been a victim of crime. As it is with most victims, I can remember the most recent event, though more than twenty-five years ago, with chilling accuracy.
“Give me yo’ money, nigga,” a voice icily demanded of me as I walked with a female companion on a hot summer night in Detroit in 1977.
I had barely glimpsed in my peripheral vision the approach of his grim, steely figure—young, black and male like me—before he pressed his demand on us, ominously backed by a coal black .357 Magnum. The threat evoked by his sudden appearance choked my vocal cords, and squashed any fantasies I may have had of heroic action under desperate circumstances. I hardly managed a reply, which, by tone and terseness, was calculated to inform him that we had no money (why else would we be walking near midnight in the ghetto neighborhood where the ’67 riots began?) and to cushion the rebuke he would undoubtedly feel with my admission.
“Man, all I got in my pocket is a dollar and thirty-five cents,” I uneasily pleaded, praying that my precision about my indigence would force him to acknowledge that we were poor targets for an armed robbery.
“I don’t believe you,” he angrily protested. “Now give me all yo’ money.”
My companion and I grew tenser, fearing that we were about to meet the fate of so many others who failed to have the goods when robbers came calling in Detroit, then known as the murder capital of the nation. By now, the hand that held our assailant’s gun was visibly trembling, as much, I sensed, out of fear as out of frustration that we had no money. His quaking posture betrayed a vulnerability I desperately sought to exploit, hoping I might forge a bond of racial empathy with him beyond whatever forces drove him to assault us.
“Man, you don’t look like the type of brother that would be doin’ something like this,” I hastily offered.
“I wouldn’t be doin’ this, man,” he exclaimed, seemingly as surprised by his own willingness to explain his actions as by my desperation in provoking his response. “But I got a wife and three kids and we ain’t got nothin’ to eat.”
Then came the cruel twist to his rationale for robbery, the partial cause of so-called black-on-black crime contained in his near-repentant revelation.
“And besides, last week, a brother did the same thing to me that I’m doin’ to you.”
Perhaps the irony lying awake in his own words burdened his conscience. Maybe it nudged him to reevaluate the laws of street survival that turn the victims of crime into its perpetrators. Or perhaps he took pity on our frightened but sympathetic faces. Whatever the case, he allowed us to flee from his potentially harmful grasp. We thanked God and our lucky stars, but only after we were at a safe enough distance to escape should he change his mind.
Too many others, particularly black men, are not as fortunate as I was that night. I know that’s what angers Bill Cosby, in part: the sense that the carnage has become routine, perhaps acceptable. With chilling redundancy, black males are dying at the hands of other black males. The mutual harming of black males has furnished the themes of too many films to count, and too many rap narratives as well. The situation for black males, especially juvenile and young adult males, has darkened the outermost regions of hopelessness. Terms usually reserved for large-scale social catastrophes—terms like “genocide” and “endangered species”—are now applied to black men with troubling frequency.73
More foreboding is the common belief that relief appears nowhere in sight. There are over fifteen million black males in America, and despite the success and happiness that some enjoy, many others are snared in unhealthy and unproductive lifestyles. Matched in extremity by the outsize cultural attainments of figures like LeBron James or, for many, Bill Cosby, millions of ordinary, anonymous black males are robbed of social standing and personal dignity by poverty and racial injustice. Often, these men are left to fend for themselves and their families with little more than mother wit and diligent labor that is poorly rewarded. Still others seek more satisfying and immediate material rewards in criminal lifestyles.
The social injuries to black male well-being are indexed in the mind-numbing statistical litany whose mere recitation testifies to the crisis at hand. Black males are more likely than any other group to be spontaneously aborted. Of all babies, black males have the lowest birth weights. Black males have the greatest chance of dying before they reach twenty. Although they are only 6 percent of the U.S. population, blacks make up half the male prisoners in local, state and federal jails. An overwhelming majority of the twenty thousand Americans killed in crime-related incidents each year are black males. Over 35 percent of all black males in American cities are drug and alcohol abusers. Twenty-five percent of the victims of AIDS are black men. Fifty percent of black men between sixteen and sixty-two are not active in the labor force. Thirty-two percent of black men have incomes below the poverty level.74
The situation is equally perilous for black youth, especially those trapped by the justice system. More than six in ten juvenile offenders in residential placement are minority youth. Minority youth accounted for seven in ten juveniles held in custody for a violent offense. Recently, I visited a detention center and jail for young people. Of course, most of the youth locked up—for petty thievery and, yes, for double murder—were black boys and girls. My wife and I spoke to them, and we were touched, even moved to tears, by their stories. They were young folk eager to make amends for what they had done wrong. But many of them were also hungry for love and affection. As I read Cosby’s words, I thought about these young people often trapped by forces larger than their minds can explain. They wrote to us when we returned home, and every nice thing they said about us would be said about anybody who spent just a little time with them. Here are some of the things they wrote to me after my visit, in their own spelling, their own voices, which speak to the deep need our youth have to be loved, held and redeemed. They are responding to questions posed to them by the wonderful woman who runs the literacy program.
WHAT DID YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT THE AUTHOR VISIT?
Boys
* I like when he was talking about me learning how to read because I need help.
* He told everybody the truth and he was real and what he said touched me.
* He was real but at the same time he was educated.
* The way he talked about music and the way he used it to show us how we live.
* How he said that youth now days lisen to what rapers talk about an then we go do it.
* They cared about the people.
Girls
* He was funny and funny.
&nb
sp; * I like the way he acknowledged the group and he spoke very bluntly
* The way he talked to us because he said the true.
THE VISIT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF…
Boys
* had more time to talk with us
* he would have used words we could understand
* he did not talk as fast
Girls
* Nothing could have been better, he was excellent
* Had more time to talk with us
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD LIKE TO SAY DIRECTLY TO THE AUTHOR?
Boys
* Yes I would like to say to you that I love what you do.
* Thanks for the book, also when talk to younger people that are not in collage you should use words that are more commonly used and understanded.
* Thanks for coming to talk to us about real stuff we need to know about.
Girls
* Thank you for putting a smile on my face. You should come back again. Thank you for helping not only people of color but all people.
* Thank you for coming and you helped me out with what you were talking about. I always thought it was my falt and you explaned that it wasn’t. Thank you for everything! I’m the one you said looked like your daughter. Thank you!!
WERE YO U INSPIRED BY MEETING THE AUTHOR?
Boys
* I always wanted to meet an author that write books because I wanted to know how did they ever think about doing that.
* I was inspired to learn more words and more educated words
* He was speaking the truth about black people.
* To read a lot more cause when he and his wife talked to us they sound smart and knew what they were saying. I used to think reading was only for entertainment but now I read for inteligents.