by Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?
69 “The State of the Dream 2004: Enduring Disparities in Black and White,” United for a Fair Economy, January 2004, p. 20.
70 Ibid.
71 Cellblocks or Classrooms? The Funding of Higher Education and Corrections and Its Impact on African American Men. Justice Policy Institute, August 28, 2002.
72 Michael Eric Dyson, Why I Love Black Women (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003), p. 202.
73 For claims of genocide, see Robert Staples, “Black Male Genocide: A Final Solution to the Race Problem in America,” Black Scholar, no. 3 (May-June 1987). For claims about young black males as an endangered species, see the essays in Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, editor, Young, Black, and Male in America: An Endangered Species (Dover, Massachusetts: Auburn House Publishing Company, 1988).
74 Gibbs, Young, Black, and Male in America.
Chapter Three What’s in a Name (Brand)?
1 Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
2 Shane White and Graham White, Stylin’: African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).
3 Ibid., p. 92.
4 Ibid., p. 93.
5 Ibid., p. 155.
6 Ibid., p. 154.
7 Ibid., p. 163.
8 Ibid., p. 222.
9 Ibid., p. 222.
10 Willard B. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000 [1991]), p. 187.
11 Ibid., p. 203.
12 White and White, p. 239.
13 Ibid., p. 229.
14 Ibid., p. 240.
15 Robin D.G. Kelley, “The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II,” Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994), pp. 161-181; White and White, pp. 254-256.
16 Crane, p. 187.
17 Ibid., p. 189.
18 “Hot Clothes,” American Demographics, quoted in Crane, p. 191.
19 Crane, p. 191.
20 Ibid. Of course, I am not arguing that “ghetto chic” or “ghetto couture” is unproblematic: The black youth who drive its creation are surely not rewarded—either through wide cultural notice or in monetary measure—for their inspiration. And neither am I arguing that these youth are immune to the consumptive fetishes that mark the cultural landscape. But that is the point: These youth are part of consumer cultures that rest, in part, on the stimulation of desires for material products that can be, well, all-consuming. But black youth are no different in this regard than the rest of us, if it is true that they are more vulnerable because of their tenuous economic standing in society. Nevertheless, even given their limitations and conditions, black youth have helped to shape the consumptive desires of millions through their ingenious innovations in fashion and style.
21 C. Shilling, cited in Alexandra Howson, The Body in Society: An Introduction (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004), p. 111.
22 Howson, The Body in Society, pp. 110-111.
23 Rufus C. Camphausen, Return of The Tribal: A Celebration of Body Adornment—Piercing, Tattooing, Body Painting, Scarification (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 1997), p. 16.
24 Ibid.
25 D. Altmann, cited in Howson, p. 111.
26 See Margo DeMello, Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 174-177.
27 Ibid., p. 6.
28 Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Binding of Women [Reprint Edition] (New York: Harvest Books, 1996).
29 Ibid., pp. 21, 27, 29, 41.
30 I realize, as proved by Larry Koger’s book Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 [Reprint] (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), and as Edward Jones’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Known World (New York: Amistad Press, 2003), illustrates, that some blacks owned blacks during slavery. I am suggesting that poor, despised, subjugated blacks never owned other human beings. In the use of “Shaniqua” and “Taliqua” here, I intend the same class division Cosby suggested, but with a different interpretation: I am arguing that the poor black in slavery was never in a position, as were aristocratic blacks, to do the greatest damage to other blacks.
31 Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America [Reprint] (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 95-96; 149-150; Stephen Wilson, The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Personal Naming in Western Europe [Reprint] (London: Routledge Press, 1998), p. 309.
32 Ibid., pp. 95-96; 149-150; Wilson, ibid.
33 Wilson, p. 309.
34 Wilson, p. 308.
35 As Wilson writes, the question of who named the slaves—owners or blacks themselves—is “not easy to answer. Slaves who were bought would already have names but these could be changed. The naming of children born on plantations depended on the policy of the owners and also on what category of slave they belonged to: house or field slaves. Some owners and/or their wives clearly named their slaves. Humorous, classical or religious names may betray this control, or aspects of the pattern of naming. Few names were duplicated on the Chesapeake Bay plantations in the mid-eighteenth century and names were not usually transmitted within families.
“Other owners allowed slave parents to name their offspring, and we have seen that they might pick African names or imitate those of the master’s family. More significantly, names were passed on within slave families. Slavery was not conducive to family life… . And some owners were reluctant to part families. It was liberal owners, who thus fostered slave families, who also left the naming of children to their parents.” Wilson, p. 312.
36 Wilson, p. 312. There is proof that the significance of naming lasted far beyond slavery. In the rural South, there was often a big celebration attending the naming of an infant, and before that, rituals of recognition of the importance of birth for the expectant mother and unborn child, suggesting the transformation of time and space in black rural communities around family and female bonding. “Before the birth, the women quilted, sewed, had slumber parties, and developed a sisterhood group around the expectant mother. They met at her house and prepared it for the new arrival. Once the baby was born, they danced, sang, toasted the new mother with iced tea, and reminisced about old times, especially the last birth before this one. Much time was spent thinking of a name for the child and celebrating its meaning, which more often than not reflected family ancestors and traditions.
“Naming celebrations had their own peculiarities and functions. People came from all over to find out for whom the child was named. The name was often announced throughout neighborhoods, in churches, and at the local schools. Relatives and friends visited to see if the name suited the child’s physical, intellectual, and emotional characteristics. The naming ceremony had dancing and singing. Community members brought food, and the new parents and older siblings had the opportunity to tell well-wishers how excited they were about the new baby and how his or her name continued family traditions.” Valerie Grim, “African American Rural Culture, 1900-1950,” in R. Douglas Hurt, Editor, African American Life in the Rural South, 1900-1950 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), pp. 1112-1113.
37 Berlin, p. 173.
38 Berlin, Ibid.; Wilson, p. 309. As Wilson points out, by the nineteenth century, that number had dropped to only one percent, signaling the erosion of the older generation’s influence and the successful incorporation, acculturation and, indeed, assimilation, of the African slave to American life, at least at the level of naming practices.
39 Berlin, p. 173.
40 Ibid., p. 174; Wilson, p. 310.
41 Wilson, p. 310.
42 Ibid.
43 Peter Wood discusses this in Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Reb
ellion (New York: Knopf, 1974), pp. 185, 182, respectively, cited in Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 36.
44 Wilson, p. 311. For a discussion of the “Big” designation, see Betty M. Kuyk, African Voices in the African American Heritage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 42.
45 Wilson says that more sons were named for their fathers because owners usually recognized “uterine ties” and as a result paternal ties were “much more vulnerable.” Also, he suggests, “there may also have been a traditional patrilineal sense” operating as well. Wilson, p. 312.
46 Berlin, p. 240.
47 Ibid.
48 Berlin, p. 321.
49 Wilbert Jenkins, Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2002), p. 154.
50 Stanley Lieberson and Kelly S. Mikelson, “Distinctive African American Names: An Experimental, Historical, and Linguistic Analysis of Innovation,” American Sociological Review 60:6 (December 1995), p. 930.
51 Wilson, p. 314.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., pp. 314-315.
57 Ibid., p. 315.
58 See Lieberson and Mikelson, p. 932, for claims of the relation between black power, black nationalism, distinctive black culture and unique names. According to Wilson, a study by Jerrilyn McGregory (“Aareck to Zsaneka: New Trends in African American Onomastics,” Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Onomastic Sciences [1990], pp. 389—396) that examined unusual names in Indiana found that “one quarter of girls’ names were distinctive in 1965, but 40 per cent by 1980. Boys’ names remained more traditional from the custom of naming them after fathers, but here too there was a clear trend towards distinctive Black names. McGregory relates this development to the disillusionment which followed the ‘success’ of the Civil Rights movement.” Wilson, p. 315.
59 Jet, June 31, 1993.
60 Lieberson and Mikelson, p. 930.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid., p. 931.
63 Ibid., p. 933.
64 Ibid., p. 934.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., pp. 935-936.
67 Ibid., p. 936.
68 Ibid., p. 937.
69 Ibid., p. 939.
70 Cathy M. Jackson, “Names CAN Hurt!” Essence, April 1989.
71 Clifford Thompson, “Inventing Our Names, Our Selves: African Americans’ Personal Names,” Commonweal, March 24, 1995.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 On ABC TV’s newsmagazine 20/20, black reporter Jami Floyd did a piece that took off on Bertrand and Mullainathan’s study, which is discussed in the text that follows. Floyd assembled a group of black professionals who didn’t believe that their unique black names would prevent them from getting a job. Floyd put twenty-two names to the test, and had the group post two identical resumes each on popular job Web sites: one with their real name, the other with a white-sounding name. Predictably, the white-sounding names got the nod at least 17 percent more than their unique black names. During the piece, Floyd interviewed conservative essayist Shelby Steele, who, predictably, laid into the unique black names and blamed the folk who bore the names, not the society that courts prejudice against them. “I think it’s a naiveté on the part of black parents to name their children names that are so different than American mainstream names. It suggests to people outside that community who hear those names a certain alienation, a certain hostility.” Steele argued against giving kids unique black names. When Floyd asked Steele, “So, you’re telling black folks, don’t name your child DeShawn or Laquita?” Steele replied, “Yes.” Floyd said, in response to Steele’s answer, “Name your child John or Robert or James or William,” and Steele replied, “I’m saying don’t name your son Latrell. Don’t do that. He’s going to live 50, 60 years in the future. Give him a break, call him Edward.” Thus, Steele concedes the argument to dominant culture’s bias, and counsels no resistance at all on the part of parents or other blacks to such bias. Fortunately, Floyd also interviewed sociologist and author Bertice Berry, who argued that when black folk who have power have unique or unusual names, folk learn to say them. “We’ve learned to say Condoleezza. And you just can’t get more ghetto than Condoleezza… . We hear Leontine and you think opera. But it’s ‘Leon-tine,’ ‘Colin’; when they are associated with power and wealth, we learn them.” See transcript, “The Name Game: Can a Name Hold You Back in Job Search?” 20/20, August 20, 2004.
75 Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” Chicago Jobs Council.
76 Kendra Hamilton, “What’s In a Name? Study Shows That Workplace Discrimination Begins Long Before the Job Seekers Show Up for an Interview,” Black Issues in Higher Education, June 19, 2003.
77 Bertrand and Mullainathan.
78 Robert J. Barro, “What’s in a Name for Black Job Seekers?” Business Week, November 3, 2003, p. 24.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid.
Chapter Four Family Values
1 “Woman Makes Groping Allegations Against Bill Cosby: Cosby’s Lawyer Says Claims Are ‘Categorically False,’” January 20, 2005, NBC10.com. For the claim of being a “great friend and mentor,” see Jonathan Kingstone and Ian Robertson, “Bill Cosby ‘A Mentor’ to Accuser,” Toronto Sun, January 22, 2005.
2 Jonathan Kingstone and Ian Robertson, “Bill Cosby ‘A Mentor’ to Accuser,” Toronto Sun, January 22, 2005. Constand’s name was first used in this Canadian paper, and not in American papers, which have usually observed a ban on naming accusers/alleged victims in their news accounts of cases.
3 Brodie Fenlon, “Cosby Denies Assault; Woman Claims She Was Drugged, Fondled in Star’s Home,” The Ottawa Sun, January 21, 2005, p. 5.
4 “Family Defends Woman’s Groping Allegations Against Bill Cosby: Cosby’s Lawyer Says Claims Are ‘Categorically False,’” January 21, 2005, NBC10.com.
5 Kingstone and Robertson.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Maryclaire Dale, “Cosby Lawyer Asks Why Accuser Took So Long,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 21, 2005.
10 Ibid; “Woman Makes Groping Allegations Against Bill Cosby.” In the end, district attorney Bruce Castor decided not to file criminal charges against Cosby.
11 Mark Stamey, Murray Weiss and Andy Geller, “Actress’ Bombshell: Cos’ Rubbed Me the Wrong Way,” New York Post, March 2, 2000, p. 14.
12 Ibid; Michael Starr, “Cosby: Tabloid Lied,” New York Post, March 8, 2000, p. 81; Mark Armstrong, “Cos Cracks ‘Enquirer,’” March 8, 2000, Eonline.com; “Cosby Threatens to Sue Tabloid over Sexual Abuse Story,” March 7, 2000, Cnn.com; “Cosby Wants Retraction,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 8, 2000, p. 52.
13 Stamey, Weiss and Geller, p. 14.
14 Ibid.
15 “Cosby Threatens to Sue Tabloid over Sexual Abuse Story,” March 7, 2000, Cnn.com; Mark Armstrong, “Cos Cracks ‘Enquirer,’” March 8, 2000, eonline.com.
16 Ibid.
17 “Family Defends,” NBC10.com.
18 William Raspberry, “Bill Cosby’s Tough Love,” Washington Post, December 13, 1989, p. A25.
19 Lawrence Christon, “The World According to Cos,” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1989, Calendar, p. 6.
20 Ibid.
21 Raspberry, p. A25.
22 Bill Cosby, Fatherhood (New York: Doubleday, 1986).
23 Frank Walker, “Cosby Daughter Fights Addiction,” Sun Herald (Sydney), June 10, 1990, p. 17.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Elinor J. Brecher, “The Megastar’s Daughter,” Miami Herald Sun, June 15, 1992, p. 1C.
30 Ibid.<
br />
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Jacqueline Trescott, “Erinn Cosby’s Heavyweight Bouts; from the Tabs to Her Dad to Mike Tyson, the Comedian’s Daughter Has Come Out Swinging,” The Washington Post, May 18, 1992.
35 Ibid.
36 “Cosby Daughter Says Tyson Assaulted Her 3 Years Ago,” Chicago Sun-Times, May 10, 1992, p. 41.
37 Trescott.
38 Ibid.
39 Brecher.
40 Trescott.
41 Brecher.
42 “Erinn Cosby Weds During Private Ceremony at Parents’ Philadelphia Home,” Jet, October 12, 1998, p. 32.
43 See “Erinn and Evin Cosby Discuss the Foundation Their Family Has Started for Children with Learning Differences,” The Early Show, March 25, 2002.
44 David W. Chen, “Bill Cosby Was Target of Extortion,” The New York Times, January 21, 1997, p. B3.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Benjamin Weiser, “Cosby, an Unerring Father on TV, Speaks of Affair in Extortion Trial,” New York Times, July 16, 1997, p. B1.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Benjamin Weiser, “Question in Cosby Case: Scheme or Plea for Help?” The New York Times, July 10, 1997, p. B1.
54 Weiser, “Cosby, an Unerring Father,” p. B1.
55 “Blood Test Planned over Cosby Paternity,” The New York Times, July 29, 1997, p. B2.
56 Ibid.
57 Weiser, “Question in Cosby Case.”
58 Weiser, “Cosby, an Unerring Father.”
59 Ibid.
60 Benjamin Weiser, “Paternity Issue Remains Alive in Cosby Case, Despite Denial,” The New York Times, July 17, 1997, p. B3.
61 Ibid.
62 Bill Hofmann, “Jailed Autumn Begs Cosby to Meet Two ‘Grandchildren,’” New York Post, November 6, 1998, p. 12.
63 Benjamin Weiser, “3 Are Found Guilty of Trying to Extort Money from Cosby,” The New York Times, July 26, 1997, Section 1, p. 1, Metropolitian Desk.
64 Benjamin Weiser, “Reporter’s Notebooks; Defense Lawyer Weighs Paternity Suit in Cosby Extortion Case,” The New York Times, July 28, 1997, p. B3.
65 Bob Herbert, “In America; No Mercy for Autumn,” The New York Times, July 11, 1997, p. A27.