[Another excellent anti-racist piece from the progressive libertarian Arthur Silber's new blog, Once Upon a Time (powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/). It is wonderous to hear someone within the libertarian world demolish the kinds of bigotry that I- for one- remember hearing every day in childhood.

Salonmistress.]

[If you'd like to comment on this, please post your reply here:

No Credit for Good Intentions: "Well Meaning"? Hardly.


Fat Albert vs. Rosa Parks

In a valuable column, business writer Michelle Singletary debunks some of the myths that Bill Cosby is fond of peddling about the "black underclass." Singletary first sets forth a bit of background:

During a ceremony last year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, Cosby contrasted the achievements of civil rights activists such as Parks with the current generation of "lower-economic and lower-middle-economic people" who he said have not been holding up their end of the deal.

Cosby said they are squandering what Parks and others fought for.

They are "fighting hard to be ignorant," he said.
Cosby accused poor blacks of being "bad parents" because, for example, they spend what little money they have on "brand name sneakers" costing $500. The result is that "[a]ll this child knows is gimme, gimme, gimme." As Singletary notes, "white conservatives and some blacks" heralded Cosby for his "bravery" in speaking truths that others dare not name.

But it's not brave to peddle myths -- myths that are entirely inaccurate, that are based on long-held stereotypes with especially vicious historical roots, and that are most notable in their dishonesty and cruelty. We saw all these myths resurface with particular virulence and in a context where their cruelty was unmasked so that the horror became unmistakable in the wake of Katrina. It should be emphasized that the obviousness of the dishonesty and cruelty involved did nothing to slow down those who traffic in these lies.

Singletary is recommending Michael Eric Dyson's "Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?" for her monthly Color of Money book discussion. She uses Dyson's book to cut away the lies and get at the truth:
Dyson begins most chapters with Cosby's own words and then methodically dissects the comments, showing just why the comedian was rattling off nonsense much like his Fat Albert character Mushmouth. "Cosby's remarks are not the isolated ranting of a solo rhetorical gunslinger, 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," Dyson writes in the book's preface.

Dyson, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, deftly demolishes the stereotypes Cosby let loose.

Let's take Cosby's assertion that lower-economic and lower-middle-economic people are pathological consumers throwing their money away on overpriced consumer goods.

Dyson counters with research by anthropologist Elizabeth Chin. In her book "Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture," Chin concluded that black youths are not brand-crazed consumer addicts any more so than other youths. In fact, the children Chin studied more often than not made good purchasing decisions.

"The point of Chin's book is to dispel the sort of myths perpetuated by Cosby and many others, black and white," Dyson writes. "The perception that the meager resources of the poor are somehow atrociously misspent on expensive consumer items is far out of proportion to the facts of the case."

...

But what about the oft-repeated assertion that poor blacks can't afford to be spendthrifts?

"There is a cruelty to such an observation," according to Dyson. "Not only is the poor parent, or child, at a great disadvantage economically, but they are expected to be more judicious and responsible than their well-to-do counterparts, with far fewer resources."

Dyson's book is a stinging indictment of upper-middle-income blacks who have benefited from the civil rights movement but now feel justified to criticize poor black folks who haven't ascended to the same financial success.
I find it very intriguing that Dyson refers to the "more-than-century-old class war in black America." One element that makes conversations about significant cultural and economic problems so difficult is the complexity of the factors involved: here, racism and economic class are both involved, and they reinforce each other in ways that are often hard to untangle.

Most people, and almost all commentators and pundits, will purposely avoid complexity whenever they can, and propagandize on behalf of a starkly simple storyline. We saw this after Katrina, and we see it now in connection with the riots in France. The hawkish Terror War ideologues are eager to cast the French riots as the latest symbol of the "clash of civilizations" between the Enlightenment West and Islamic fundamentalism. But as I've noted (here and here), Islamic fundamentalism has very little to do with events in France. Once again, it is largely problems rooted in both blatantly racist policies and historically-grounded economic inequalities that underlie the riots.

Many people see the problem of racism but, at least in a fair number of the articles I've seen, they tend to overlook the problem of economic class. But as I said, both these elements are involved: they are interdependent, and it is crucial to try to see how they reinforce each other, both now and in the past. There is another, related problem that merits a brief mention in this context: the conservative-libertarian myth of capitalist America, where everyone can be Bill Cosby or Oprah if they only apply themselves diligently enough.

This is an oversimplification that omits so much that it is tantamount to a lie. And it has been a lie for well over a century. The largest engine that has driven the American economy is corporate statism: the unholy alliance between large, entrenched business interests and government. Almost all conservatives and libertarians apparently are ignorant of or would prefer to forget the fact that it is businesses themselves that have lobbied for government regulation and control historically -- precisely so that newcomers would be prevented from entering their industries and competing for their customers.

Today, corporate statism has swallowed almost all of our economy. This system -- which has almost nothing to do with the myth of "capitalism" that conservatarians constantly peddle -- works to the benefit of those who have already profited from it, and continues to exclude those who have not. The former tend to be upper middle class and wealthy whites (with the occasional Cosby or Winfrey thrown in); the latter are the poor, including many black Americans.

These issues deserve lengthier consideration, which I hope to get to at some point. In the meantime, Singletary's column is a good brief introduction to the subject.