Reasons

The reason I'm here: a friend whose mind I respect and admire, and whose opinion I value greatly, has asked me to write. Anything. (A book, he says. Who's got time, energy, or the central thesis for a book? I can't even keep a central thesis to my posts.) His plea was, though not the first along these lines from friends, family, loved ones, the first one I took seriously. "At least friggin' blog," he says.

Be careful what you wish for.

He had sent me this article, about a topic near and dear to my heart, and asked me to pontificate.

(Pontificate - v. to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way," from the Latin pontifex pont, pons (bridge) + facere (to build or make). Note that pompous and dogmatic are synonymous with the chief epithet of the Pope. Just sayin'.)

I held forth in my accustomed fashion, without any thought to brevity:

• “For many black middle class, and black elite, accomplishment and class identification are simply ways to differentiate themselves from the masses, from the stereotype of being poor, black, uneducated, and intellectually inferior.”
• Uh-uh. Mr. Reya is actually demonstrating what I believe to be the root cause of any perceived need of the Black Elite and/or Middle Class to self-differentiate: fear of persecution from those with whom they would identify. It’s a hell of a thing to say, “I am this; this is a large part of who I am,” and have the majority of those who also identify in that way say to you, “No, you are not. We reject you.” It happens on a very, very regular basis. I’ve heard it said of Professor Gates, Cornel West, President Obama – note, these are all Black literati. Sam Jackson and Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Dr. Dre and Chuck D., even Kanye West won’t get these allegations, despite their affluence, intelligence, or how well-read they are, because they “represent.”
• Or, in other words, this is what happens When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong.
• “Having become less isolated and thus more exposed to the contempt and hostility of the white world, but at the same time cherishing the values of the white world, the new black bourgeoisie with more money at their disposal, have sought compensations in the things money can buy. Moreover, their larger incomes have enabled them to propagate false notions about their place in American life and to create a world of make-believe. (Black Bourgeoisie p. 148 -149)”
• I haven’t had my hands on Black Bourgeoisie since my Vassar days, but I wish I could look for what on Earth “the values of the white world” are. My guess is, consumerism, valuing appearance over substance, keeping up with the Joneses and damn the cost, and liberal or lenient child-rearing models. I could go on, but you get the point. Too often, Black Americans (among others) conflate “white values” or “white ideas” with “American values” and “American ideas.” I’m not sure either label fits very snugly.
• I don’t know what world of make-believe we’re supposed to live in. I’ve said it often enough of myself, and it’s true of most in the Black American Middle Class: we’re too poor for the rich folk, too rich for the ‘poor’ folk, too Black for the White folk, and too “White” for the Black folk. When your desire to be acknowledged as nothing more or less than what you choose to identify as meets universally with nothing but dismissal and/or scorn, what world can you devise for yourself?
• In other words, it’s not just the White world whose contempt and hostility such Black Americans as we are exposed to (as I’m sure you noticed).
• “Affinity fraud”
• What a horrible, horrible term. The idea being, those with whom you wish to identify somehow possess the insight and power to determine whether or not you truly identify with and relate to them, in your heart and mind. To my knowledge, no racial classification or socio-economic stratum has developed telepathy in their pursuit of keeping their boundaries closed to all, save those who belong.
• If anything, there’s a phenomenon by which Black Americans have time and again voted against their self-interest because of religious identity, socioeconomic identity, and regional identity. Racial identity, to my knowledge, hasn’t historically had a large enough effect on the voting patterns of Black America writ large – at least, not until recently. If Blacks could be swayed by arguments of racial unity by someone claiming affinity, Prop 8 would never have passed. Instead, they were swayed by arguments of religious and moral unity by others claiming affinity. If the Civil Rights Movement had been more powerfully evoked…who knows?
• In such an environment, this [is] the probable response he’d get from the average black man, "Player, your struggle ain’t mine, don’t come crying to me when shit changes up on you."
• Well, the ‘average Black man’ may (or may not, which is how I’m leaning) indeed speak to his friends and family in that way; I just highly doubt that’d be anyone’s response if he found himself in a debate with Professor Gates. It’d be like telling the President, “G’awn witcha bad seff” if given the chance to meet him in the Oval Office. Really, that’s a very condescending conclusion.

However, if you put aside the stinging and baseless condemnation of Professor Gates and other Black literati, I mostly agree with the premise that, as a social group, Black Americans are starting to identify more with their particular class than their race. I have noticed a lessening of the principles behind the Talented Tenth – that the advancement of a relative few talented, educated Black Americans would serve as the rising tide to float the foundering ship of Black America.

I just don’t blame the Talented Tenth for that. We live in a culture that prizes “keeping it real” – a culture that rewards mediocrity and apathetic stagnancy. This author is catastrophizing and limiting to Black America a dynamic I’ve seen the country over: fallout from the growing belief that the American Dream is dead. It’s not Black America that’s dispersing and going our separate ways, it’s any and every culture that had heretofore bound together in search of opportunity, betterment, advance, to leave a better life for their children than they had. I’ve heard a poll quoted that most Americans no longer believe they’ll be able to leave their children better off than they themselves were. My ethnic studies professor once said “If you’re working right now, on the books, and paying into Social Security, thank you – because you won’t see a dime of that money, Social Security will be dead long before you retire. I’m good, though, so thanks.” This is the prevailing belief – even amidst the hope the Obama administration generated during the election and the months after and even through the first hundred days, there was a sense that the best he could do would be to minimize the scope of disaster.

So nobody in “the masses” is really listening – not because they’re consumer-zombie barbarians, but because they’re running on fumes in the Hope department. And again, this isn’t just Black America. Community is dying, but not just in Black America. People are becoming more selfish, but not just in Black America. It’s one thing to look at how the fallout from this phenomenon affects a specific race and/or socioeconomic class, and quite another to presume that the phenomenon only affects that group. The latter premise allows the author to conclude that Black America is somehow being subsumed: at the upper level, into White America, and at the lower, into Poor America.

It’s bullshit. We’re as much Black America as we’ve always been, and this blog is proof of it. My current understanding of one thing Black America has always been: on a constant, painful search for identity, at (often violent) odds with itself, fearful of both continued oppression and continued advancement, and above all, fearful that our identity will be stripped away entirely before we have a chance to define it. Many Black Americans tend to (mistakenly) ascribe power over their ability to self-identify to others, and is it any surprise? Black America is just plain used to others having the power. Freedom of choice is very, very new to this group: I am of only the second generation to experience it. In any case, having signed away this power, all that’s left are the labels ascribed to them, these ‘masses’, this ‘average Black American’; those Black Americans who refuse to accept the labels, or who remain in active search of betterment, are scorned – because we scorn what we fear. Especially when they might win, and then what does that mean to me, if I’ve refused even to fight? It must mean that I am apart from these, these who win battles of progress. But I may take solace in knowing that if I am apart from them, I am at least in good company – it would be more comforting to me to say then that they are apart from me. They are other, they do not belong, and we must not and will not allow them to identify with us – because our hope is gone, and to rouse it is painful.

I could go on for a year. My brother and I have this discussion frequently, both as Black Men fighting all of these pressures I’ve outlined, and as Black Men who have chosen professions in which we are de facto shepherds of our Black American clients. In his case, they’re all Middle Class and Elite youth. In mine, they often are the beaten, hopeless ‘masses,’ but who come from all walks of life with one thing in common: having turned to drugs to shut out the hope, the fear, the despair. We who have taken back (with pain) the power to self-identify, and to hell with anyone who would label us differently or strip from us that with which we label ourselves, observe the continued search for identity as a sort of shadowboxing match – all you really need do is stand up and say, “this is what I am; these are the ways I identify myself.” There are battles to be fought, surely, but they’re battles of economic status and enfranchisement – we must continue to wrest the freedom secured by so many other Americans, but they are external battles. To struggle for the freedom to identify yourself, to find your own identity, is to struggle with yourself – your doubts, your fear, your despair. And too many Black Americans (this author, I believe, among them) are choosing the wrong battles. Furthermore, when they lose (as one must invariably, when battling oneself), they strike out at those who appear to be “winning.”

This criticism of Professor Gates, to come back around to the point, is absurd. The idea is that somehow, due to his success, intelligence and/or affluence, he no longer has the right or claim to speak against the indignity and omnipresent threat of racial profiling, even in the wake of being a victim thereof. So what if he didn’t really think about it before? So he’s a little in the dark. I’m sure he’s been tailed home several times, and has just fallen out of the habit of looking because he knows he’s where he belongs, on his way home. Personally, I would love to see a world in which more Americans of various stripes had the luxury of forgetting how “vulnerable all people of color are to capricious forces” like a rogue cop. Nothing about that blissful ignorance, though it may affect his ability to relate to the “masses” on a more quotidian, external level, has anything to do with his right or privilege of self-identification. Neither does whom he chooses to marry, where and how thoroughly he was educated, nor – most ridiculous of all – who has and who has not heard of Professor Henry Louis Gates. How is that not a symbol of the ignorance of the “several working class Blacks” being polled? And, if they haven’t heard of him, so what? He isn’t Barack Obama. While he’s certainly on my list of “Black Americans all Black Americans Should Learn a Little About,” he’s certainly not on my list of “Black Americans all Black Americans are Supposed to Know About.”

And as to the rest of the allegations of his being out of touch, I wonder what gets discussed at board meetings of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund if not the plight of Colored Persons in need of Advancement and Funds for their Legal Defense. (Okay, I know the answer to that last, but you gotta figure the aforementioned plight works its way in there somewhere.)

Thus Pontificated

D

And now here we stand, you and I. You have read what you would of the background I have chosen to provide (to call it "my background" would be worse than disingenuous), and you have seen a sampling of what is in inventory during an honest appraisal of my Weltanschauung. Will you be back to visit? I make no promise of regular updates, but it's quite often that the world sees fit to inspire or annoy (guess which happens more frequently) me to the point that I need to get "it" off my chest. I hope you'll come around now and then; I don't mind being alone in the forest with my one hand clapping (yes, I've tried, yes, it makes a sound, if you're stubborn enough), but I'd greatly prefer if maybe just a few occasional readers left some feedback. I don't have much of a real mission statement, since all that was asked of me was that I share my perspective on the world, my take on things.

But when I get on my high horse, you'll be the first to know. When I get knocked down, you'll be the first to know (likely, the topic - if you're skimming - will be "Tubthumping"). When someone else puts me on an ivory tower and I forget to laugh uproariously at the notion, you'll be able to tell. Y'wanna know what I think? --wait, y'do? Why?

I'll be back. But what do you think?