Michael Eric Dyson

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

  The philosophy of racial uplift, dating back to the nineteenth century, rests on the belief among black elites that the lower classes of black folk had to be roped in before their moral lapses gave white folk even more reason to repress black life. Indeed, the tensions between the black elite and the working classes and poor folk that I describe in Chapter 4 grow out of the philosophy of racial uplift. Black aristocrats took to chastising poor black folk in a variety of venues, including schools, churches and community and fraternal organizations, seeking to inculcate in their loose charges the Victorian values to which they subscribed and which they hoped would win them acceptance from the white majority. The ultimate goal of racial uplift philosophy was to prove to white folk that the black race had made significant progress in reaching the goal of true civilization. Ironically, many of these whites would never themselves meet the strict standards advocated by many black aristocrats, and neither would they have to prove themselves worthy of the very requirements they imposed on black life, thanks to one of the more gleaming hypocrisies that composed the immoral backbone of white supremacy.

  Racial uplift, however, wasn’t a simple affair, and had at least two prongs.16 The first prong, a more interesting and organic vision of racial help that was obscured rather quickly by its more elitist interpretation, extended from the folk religion of slaves and touted personal, spiritual and, at points, social transcendence of earthly suffering. Education and theological resistance to white supremacy were viewed as crucial to black liberation and the social uplift of black folk from the pits of political degradation. This vision of uplift was prominent in the aftermath of slavery and during Reconstruction. The second prong protruded from the efforts of black elites to promote what historian Kevin Gaines says was “self-help, racial solidarity, temperance, thrift, chastity, social purity, patriarchal authority, and the accumulation of wealth… . Amidst legal and extralegal repression, many black elites sought status, moral authority, and recognition of their humanity by distinguishing themselves, as bourgeois agents of civilization, from the presumably undeveloped black majority; hence the phrase, so purposeful and earnest, yet so often of ambiguous significance, ‘uplifting the race.’”17

  Within black female religious circles the notion of racial uplift was translated into what religious historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham calls the “politics of respectability.”18 Black female religious elites sought to transmit middle-class values to the black masses to bolster notions of self-help and to win the approval and respect of white America. The politics of respectability “equated public behavior with individual self-respect and with advancement of African Americans as a group. They felt certain that ‘respectable’ behavior in public would earn their people a measure of esteem from white America, and hence they strove to win the black lower class’s psychological allegiance to temperance, industriousness, thrift, refined manners, and Victorian sexual morals.”19 While black religious women also attacked the failures of the American political system to provide racial equality for blacks, they were equally adamant about fussing at poor blacks for failing to adopt middle-class lifestyles. Black women also formed clubs and sororities to ensure the racial uplift of the black masses, pursuing their goals within a male-dominated culture whose elitist leadership had imposed yet another set of expectations on women to be moral exemplars for the masses and respectful of male privilege.20

  Black elites also used the press to lob rhetorical bombs at the black poor, some of which rival Cosby’s assault for color and cruelty. Chicago Defender editor Robert S. Abbott repeatedly called out from his pages for the uncouth black masses, newly migrated from southern cities and hamlets, to behave in more appropriate, that is, restrained, middle-class fashion. A series of cartoons that ran in the Defender in the 1920s and 1930s capture in their titles the efforts of the black elite to shame the black poor into behaving better: “Folks We Can Get Along Without” and later “Folks We Must Live Without.”21 The Defender warred against the black masses in editorials like the one entitled “THE NIGGER,” where the term, according to the writer, was justly applied to the “handkerchief heads that are coming to this city from many of the southwestern states,” blacks who talked loud, exhibited brash behavior and wore shabby clothing.22 In New York’s Amsterdam News, a columnist complained that young blacks who claimed they had “no chance” to make it in the white world should “deport [themselves] with greater decorum and decency on street cars” and quit acting “like so many jungle apes.” After noting that the young black used “the street car” as “his stage and he is the star performer,” and after observing young black men issuing catcalls to black and white girls, playing musical instruments, using profanity and appearing in “the car in full monkey regalia and strut[ting] as though they were the princes of the jungle,” the writer concluded that “What we need among us is about five million funerals.”23

  From the beginning, these internal tensions in racial uplift thinking, between its more populist, resistive leanings and the elitist shadow cast by black aristocrats who became the public face of the philosophy, have defined the ambivalence black folk feel toward racial uplift. There is great enthusiasm among the masses for racial uplift that embraces and encourages the rank and file; in turn, there is among this group well-deserved skepticism about the chiding that comes down from well-positioned, well-heeled, well-appointed blacks who seek more to appease white folk than to relieve the suffering of blacks. Of course, the black elite have historically found great refuge in the private observance, and public performance, of their civility; such civility is not only an argument in defense of their humanity but it is, as well, an argument against the behavior of those (poor) blacks thought to undermine their positions and privileges among whites. To be sure, there was, and is, not a strict line of class affiliation keyed to even elitist views of racial uplift; some poor blacks embrace such views in the hope that they might actually approach the dignity promised, which means, of course, unhealthy doses of self-abnegation, given that the price of admission to such fraternity is the conscious rejection of the identity they have inherited or invented. And in some cases, the black elite commit class suicide and reach beyond the limits of their circles to embrace the masses—Martin Luther King, Jr., comes readily to mind.

  With Cosby, the Afristocracy has reclaimed the most harmful, hurtful dimensions of its racial uplift role—which, ironically enough, has always ridden down on the masses of black folk, so perhaps it should be re-baptized as racial castdown—and spoken in its most virulent voice about the poor. While it is clear that Cosby’s mean-spirited attacks are of a piece with the most vicious elements of racial uplift philosophy, they might have as easily veered toward the redemptive elements of uplift: focusing on elements of mass black culture that enable black folk to resist their oppression, transcend their suffering and transform their pain. Instead, Cosby has added to their misery. As were his most prickly predecessors, Cosby is so obviously embarrassed by the masses of black folk that he has taken to insulting and, truly, intimidating them, from a bully pulpit that stretches across the media and extends into arenas across the nation. Besides wanting white folk to think of black folk as human, Cosby’s intent appears also to be to get rid of the scourge of unwashed masses whose language, thinking, behavior, clothing and bodies are irredeemably offensive. Of course, there is ample cause for concern, even alarm, about some younger blacks and the poor, but the answer to their condition is surely not a beloved father figure firing missiles at them from an ideological launchpad located in the white media, operating from within a worldview more easily associated with uncaring quarters in the mainstream than with healing traditions of black social movement and self-criticism. Rather than encounter the problems of the poor, or the conditions that offer them limited options, which often, yes, lead to poor choices, Cosby blasts them in condescending anger. He has, in his most recent comments, ceased being curious, or courageous, about the sources of poverty and surrendered to a cynical reactionary politics t
hat, as William Ryan said in 1971, blames the victim.24

  In our society, according to sociologist Joe Feagin, there are three ways to explain the causes of poverty: the individualistic, which blames the poor for their poverty; the structural, which emphasizes economic and social forces; and the fatalistic, which isolates factors like bad luck, chance and illness. 25 Since the myth of romantic individualism still strongly grips the culture, it is unsurprising that the individualistic explanation for poverty is most widely favored. In this view, people are poor because they lack thrift, are lazy and have loose morals and other character defects.26 Neither should it be surprising that those with greater status in society, for instance, those who are white, older and have higher incomes, are drawn to individualistic explanations of poverty, while those with lower status, those who are black, younger and with lower incomes, stress structural elements, although they often cling tightly as well to individualistic explanations. 27 This testifies to the apparent hegemony the individualist account enjoys across the culture, even among the working class and poor themselves. In contrast to this pattern, structural accounts of poverty’s origins fluctuate according to group membership, personal experience and the social climate at any given time. Instead of displacing individualistic explanations, structural forces compete for a hearing alongside the dominant ideology. In times of crisis, however, whether a severe economic downturn or racial rebellion, there is greater tolerance and support for structural explanations. 28 Perhaps this is so because big social crises are bound to affect folk we know to be decent and hardworking and thus we are more sympathetic to redistributing wealth and implementing social welfare initiatives than might otherwise be the case. Also, traumatic snags in the social fabric created by visible racial unrest or cultural disquiet remind us that there is greater work yet to be done to knit us together as “E Pluribus Unum.” They also underscore how our thinking about who deserves relief from social suffering is as much a matter of trust as it is a matter of objective calculation.

  As a group, blacks are only slightly less likely to single out individualistic factors as the cause of poverty than whites, but at the same time, blacks embrace structural explanations much more forcefully. Much more than whites, who favor individualist explanations in greater numbers, blacks embrace both explanations of poverty.29 This intriguing simultaneity of beliefs among blacks challenges flat either-or thinking, and may suggest why black views on the causes of poverty are more complex than usually allowed for. It also gives the lie to folk like Cosby who labor under the mistaken assumption that most blacks, even the poor, don’t understand that, to some degree, in some cases, personal factors play a role in poverty, even if that role is much slighter than those who would like to lay the entire burden on the laps of the poor prefer to believe. Most black folk, it seems, are already quite willing, even when it’s not in their interest, or even especially relevant, to take account of individual responsibility in computing what must be done to explain or relieve their poverty. The need, therefore, for loud lectures about hard work and personal initiative is vastly overplayed and, in many cases, those lectures are vainly repetitive, more an instance of the lecturer needing to prove he is willing to take the poor to the woodshed than a case of the poor forgetting their obligation to do as much as they can to forsake indigence. (The presumption of rational self-identification is key here, too, since most folk don’t want to be poor, and if we can imagine ourselves as them, and vice versa, we must presume that they would act exactly as we would to escape poverty. This view was succinctly stated by Malcolm X when he said, “I’m the man you think you are… . If you want to know what I’ll do, figure out what you’ll do. I’ll do the same thing—only more of it.”)30 Thus, when black folk support social intervention on behalf of the poor, such as redistributive measures, and when they accent structural features of poverty, or fatalistic elements like poor health or bad luck, they must not be seen as doing reflexively what comes naturally to blacks. Such views slight the complex moral and social landscape black folk occupy, including the poor. Eschewing simplistic or reactionary thinking, they often sort through the causes of poverty and combine them in a fashion that is more complicated and honest, and certainly more humane, than their most vicious critics.

  When blacks lean toward structural explanations of poverty, emphasizing low wages, severe underemployment, racism and poor schooling, there is at work what may be termed formal empathy, or the principled identification with the difficulties and struggles of the majority of blacks beyond the boundaries of one’s individual experience. Even if one is socially stable and economically secure, one nevertheless opts to take account of the forces that fail the masses of blacks—economic inequality, racial hierarchy, social dislocation, environmental devastation, material deprivation, restructured work and the like—in explaining why so many are poor. Formal empathy neither discounts nor exaggerates the role of personal responsibility in an explanation of poverty; instead, it relates individual initiative to the possibility of its achievement in a world where inequalities remain entrenched. Any calculus of social desert, or blame, must rest on a just tabulation of the forces that bolster or blunt the drive to move beyond one’s difficult circumstances. To suggest that the lack of personal initiative is the source, and not the consequence, of poverty, is to confuse cause and effect. This is another way of saying that formal empathy insists on tracing onto the moral landscape the anatomy of social responsibility, a matter I will elaborate shortly.

  Social science research on the “underdog perspective” suggests that gender (women are more likely than men to view structural causes of poverty as crucial) and household income (those with lower incomes are clearly inclined to invoke structural factors) play a significant role in shaping beliefs about the causes of and solutions to poverty.31 When one throws race into the mix, there is clear evidence that experience of oppression increases the likelihood of pointing to structural features to explain personal and social status. Even those citizens with greater education seem to have more awareness of the variables that create inequality and, generally speaking, have greater compassion for the poor and socially vulnerable.32 One might also use education to get at contrasting beliefs about poverty by focusing on how people explain to themselves the social-psychological factors that determined their success in formal schooling and work. When one compares “internal and external self-explanations” for educational and employment success and applies them to beliefs about poverty, there are interesting racial differences. 33 Internal self-explanations stress social-psychological variables having to do with ability (talent, intelligence and skills) and effort (desire, dedication, motivation), while external self-explanations involve social-psychological variables that have to do with opportunities (family background and other life circumstances) and luck (fate and chance).

  For whites, as might be expected, resort to internal self-explanations strengthens beliefs that individualistic elements cause poverty, while adopting external self-explanations leads to an emphasis on structural factors.34 This suggests that whites view their personal situations and those of others in a similar fashion. The appeal to internal self-explanations reflects the embrace of the dominant ideology of individualism and makes it more likely that its advocates will stress personal responsibility to the strongest degree in blaming people for their own poverty. The use by whites of external self-explanations suggests a willingness to cut across the dominant ideological grain and to underscore the role of structural factors in accounting for poverty. The difference between the two tells how whites view the causes of poverty. As sociologist Matthew Hunt argues, when “whites say, ‘I made it because of me,’ they tend to view the society as an open system in which people have similar chances, personal responsibility is the rule applied to everyone, and poverty gets explained in the terms of internal/individual-level factors. Similarly, when whites believe they have been held back by outside, external forces … they also assume that similar … barriers in society must exist
for others (e.g. the poor).”35

  For black (and brown) people, on the other hand, there are huge differences. The use of internal self-explanations by blacks underscores for them the role of structural, not individualistic, elements in the cause of poverty. External self-explanations, on the other hand, increase the likelihood of individualistic, not structural, explanations for poverty. There appears to be a dramatically different understanding of the relationship between personal experience and causal explanations of status in black communities than in white ones. As Hunt suggests, one reason for this might be that black experience is conditioned by class and caste. For blacks who are gainfully employed, this results in a halfway house of thinking: “they are better off than the abject poor but still relatively disadvantaged compared with middle-class whites,” suggesting that they are in a unique position to understand both “their relative success and the importance of beliefs in internal, individual sources of advancement” and the “relative disadvantage and the continuing significance of external, environmental barriers to equality with whites.”36 Thus, for blacks, internal self-explanations flow “from a sense of having worked hard and having made sacrifices to achieve personal success and the status that gainful employment brings,” although, unlike whites, who generalize from their personal experiences to the poor, employed black folk have more complex views that are shaped by their racial status.37 As a result, even when employed blacks explain their success by internal elements like hard work, talent and dedication, they also realize they have had to surmount structural barriers in the process, leading them to believe that other black folk face similar obstacles. Thus, internal elements are but one factor in explaining success. Black folk often understand the role of both internal and external factors, and thus, “assuming personal responsibility, or saying ‘I made it because of me,’ does not preclude—indeed it can increase—the acknowledgment that structural barriers exist in society.”38