Views > October 18, 2005 > Web Only

Katrina, Cosby and Class Divisions

By Salim Muwakkil

Hurricane Katrina made clear that poverty and blackness remain too intertwined to be coincidental. But while too many black people remain poor, a growing number do not.

Since 1968, the year of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, the black middle class has tripled, as measured by the percentage of families earning $50,000 or more. But the percentage of black children living at or below the poverty line also has increased since King’s assassination. What’s more, the incarceration epidemic (and its attendant woes) has increased poverty among countless young black men just at the peak of their earning potential.

The simultaneous growth of these disparate groups within the black community has helped nurture a class divide that is growing more rancorous. Signs of this conflict have been bubbling just beneath the public surface for quite a while.

One example of this growing tension has been the ongoing angry demonstrations by a group of young ex-offenders outside of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Chicago headquarters. The group opposes Jackson’s brokerage-style of leadership and seeks to curtail his role as the black community’s leading voice. To some extent these tensions are both class and generational: Jackson’s civil rights paradigm may resonate with beneficiaries of affirmative action, but it rings few bells with ex-inmates from the hip-hop generation.

So far, this gathering storm has escaped public notice. But there are increasing signs that we’re in for a change.

We got a strong signal in May 2004, when Bill Cosby castigated “lower-economic people” in a sweeping jeremiad. At an NAACP confab commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, Cosby said “people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around … the lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal.

“These people are not parenting,” he said. “They are buying things for kids—$500 sneakers for what? And won’t spend $200 for ‘Hooked on Phonics.’

“I can’t even talk the way these people talk: ‘Why you ain’t,’ ‘Where you is’… You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.”

He mocked the way some African-Americans name their children: “with names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all that crap, and all of them are in jail. … They are standing on the corner and they can’t speak English.”

His speech, which seemed to be extemporaneous, was a wide-ranging rant peppered with familiar fulminations. Many African-American commentators let the speech pass without initial comment. After all, Cosby is a popular entertainer with a history of philanthropy for black causes. Even the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who sat next to Cosby during his controversial NAACP speech and who usually takes great umbrage at any racial insult, let the beloved comedian slide.

But Michael Eric Dyson, a prolific author who writes often on African-American culture, adroitly utilized Cosby’s remarks as an occasion to examine the contours of the growing class divide in black America. In his unambiguously titled book, Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, Dyson eviscerates Cosby and the “Afristocracy” (the black elite and professional classes) that he says looks with increasing disdain on the black poor.

Dyson persuasively argues that an inequitable system relentlessly victimizes the “lower economic people” Cosby condemned. In contrast to the “Afristocracy,” he has dubbed them the “Ghettocracy” (the black “underclass”, the working class/working poor and the incarcerated).

Their behavior patterns are adaptations to the limited options they face in a white supremacist culture, Dyson contends. The popular University of Pennsylvania professor, who also is an ordained Baptist minister, further charges that too many members of the black middle class have abandoned the goals of the civil rights movement that made their existence possible. He cites evidence that well-to-do African-Americans increasingly blame poor blacks for their own plight.

Dyson’s themes echo back to E. Franklin Frazier’s classic 1957 text, The Black Bourgeoisie, which scornfully chronicled moneyed African-Americans who mimicked whites while demeaning their less fortunate brethren. But Dyson’s attempt to frame the poor’s dysfunctional behavior in a historical context makes him vulnerable to the charge that he is romanticizing pathology.

Many cultural critics hurl that same charge at hip-hop artists. Part of Cosby’s critique, which he took on the road following the extraordinary response to his 2004 speech, is an attack on the hip-hop aesthetic of “representing”— that is, celebration of your situation.

The class divide within the black community is at a point I would characterize as a low intensity conflict. I fear the intensity will increase as record numbers of ex-inmates continue to flood neighborhoods that are woefully ill-equipped to rehabilitate and assimilate them.

Recent natural disasters have provided a glimpse of the domestic disasters that await us all if we continue to ignore the widening gap between rich and poor.

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• Reader Comments

  I guess my husband and I would be considered members of the “Afristocracy”, and no the black middle class has not lost its mind, it’s lost its patience. I grew up in a poor single parent household with two siblings and no money in the 60’s on the south side of Chicago, am 44 years old, well educated, make a very good buck, and resent being chastised because I don’t totally buy into the mindset of “The man just keepin’ a brotha down.  It’s all the white man’s fault,” and other such drivel.  I will be the first to admit that there is racism but it was a lot worse in the past and African Americans managed to overcome the limitations to become doctors, lawyers, college professors, etc.  I am one of them, so please spare me.

  No, I don’t want to live in a neighborhood filled with random gunshots.  No, I don’t want to have a drug dealer on every corner yelling “I got work”.  No, I don’t want to shop where there is bullet proof glass and a little turning basket.  No, I don’t want to live where children run in the streets like wild banshees.  In short, I don’t want to live in the environment that you create and wish to perpetuate.  Let’s face it you could change all of the above if you chose.  Strangers aren’t coming into your community doing these things, the members of your community are. No white people are pushing drugs on the corner in Englewood, black folks are.

  Well, sorry members of the “Ghettocracy” that you are having such hard times.  Maybe if you had gotten an education you would be better off.  Maybe if you had obeyed the law you wouldn’t be an ex-con.  Maybe if you stopped buying into the negative stereotypes being perpetuated by gangster rap and hip hop you would have a more balanced worldview.  Maybe you should start looking at the man in the mirror to explain your situation, but stop blaming me.

  Posted by Adocann on Oct 18, 2005 at 7:05 AM

  Here is a simple question: who should we listen to, a man like Cosby who tells the hard truths or a man who believes such idoicy as: “Their behavior patterns are adaptations to the limited options they face in a white supremacist culture”?

  For me, the choice is easy.

  If you want to excel, excel. Study hard. Work hard. These are not “white” traits or values, these are human values. Opportunity is available, but it requires personal effort. Sitting around blaming your problems on others is just stupid and unproductive.

  Disclaimer. Life is not fair. For anyone. After one succeeds in their goals, they should feel free to offer help to those “left behind”. A perfect example is Cosby. . .

  Posted by wolf on Oct 18, 2005 at 9:16 AM

  I’ve said this before in nearly all of Salim’s articles, which I do greatly enjoy, but it needs to be said again.

  Salim: You consistently speak of the growing incarcaration rate of African American males but you never ever speak of what causes this or speak out against it. The War on Drugs is essentially the sole reason for this epidemic, please In These Times and please Salim write an article about the relationship between the War on Drugs and African American males incarcaration rates.
  Thanks
  www.votenader.org
  www.norml.org
  www.naacp.org
  www.aclu.org
  www.ssdp.org

  Posted by NaderRaider on Oct 18, 2005 at 12:30 PM

  No one can deny there remains a race problem and to characterize it as a “low intensity conflict” is as apt as any.

  Where the problem stems from and why it seems perpetual is the nexus of disagreement.

  Anyone remember the Mayflower Compact’s “no work, no eat” clause?  Our forefathers were smart enough to realize EVERYONE had to pull their share of the load.

  Why is it primarily American Blacks who refuse to assimilate into the homogeneous American culture?  Other cultures have arrived, assimilated, aspired and succeeded while retaining their own cultural identities. 

  How has the message delivery of victimization over the least 40 years by Black ‘Leadership’ led to the present mindset of “it’s not my fault”? And now the message is so ingrained, will the present “ghettocracy” ever listen to a message of simple human values such as productive work, pride in accomplishment, education, desire to succeed within the system?

  I believe Cosby is courageously and bravely speaking truth to all who will hear.  Unfortunately the power of nihilism is not interested in hearing.

  Drug use is merely a symptom, and a convenient entertainment expedient, not a cause of the “ghettocracy’s” current basement position on the economic ladder.  In my younger years I smoked my share and did my share of ‘illegalities’ (there goes my future in the FBI) but I belatedly realized that’s no way to attain personal goals.

  I’ve hired many people to aid in construction jobs over the years and it is very disheartening to hire a guy who is down on his luck at a wage well above minimum only to have him fail to show up Monday morning then Tuesday confess he “had a big weekend”.  To blow a week’s wages on a “big weekend” is the stuff of teenage excess.  These guys MUST learn that tomorrow is worth saving and sacrificing for.  Teenagers typically learn to constrain such behaviors upon assuming the responsibilities of marriage and family. 

  Oh yeah, it’s different in the Black community.  With no commitment there is no responsibility, right?  With no responsibility anything goes, right?  Okay, turn up the expletive-laden hip hop and roll the windows down. 

  Just remember, if society is only as strong as its weakest link then we ALL will suffer the consequences of failure.  Like our forefathers on the Mayflower, if any do not work, we all will suffer.  Don’t blame it on the whites or the Chinese.  Those that save and provide for bad times will suffer less then those that don’t.

  Posted by mikeingeorgia on Oct 18, 2005 at 1:36 PM

  Work hard, reminded me of Aesop’s “ The Ant and the Grasshopper “ and I found this from the Progress Report :

  http://www.progress.org/archive/antgrass.htm

  The Ant and the Grasshopper
  Three Versions!

  You probably know a version of the story somewhat like this:

  The Ant works hard in the heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

  Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he either dies out in the cold, or begs and receives humiliating charity from the ant he teased.

  Now, a little background: Don Gifford, in his book The Farther Shore, discusses the old fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant:

  That fable from the sixth century B.C.E. has been retold in a variety of ways. In the middle of the spectrum are versions that end with a flat moral tag, pointing out that when he became winter-hungry, “the grasshopper knew it was best to prepare for the days of necessity.”

  At the twentieth-century end of the spectrum, the ants are said to take pity on the grasshopper and keep him warm and well-fed so that he is fit to fiddle all winter for the comfort of the children of a consumer society.

  At the seventeenth-century end, the ants tend toward the sarcastic: “Since you sang all summer, you may as well dance all winter to the tune you sang all summer.”

  Now here’s a new version, written by libertarians as a parody. (We have deleted some gratuitous insults from the text.) See the difference:

  When winter comes, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC and ABC show up and provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a film of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
  
  America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country of such wealth, this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

  Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS Evening News and tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do everything they can for the Grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the “Era of Greed.” Richard Gephardt exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the Ant has gotten rich off the “back of the Grasshopper,” and calls for an immediate tax hike on the Ant to make him pay his “fair share.”

  The Ant sues, but loses the case.

  The story ends as we see the Grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while he lives in a government house. The Ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV they are showing Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding audience announcing that a new era of “Fairness” has dawned in America.

  Posted by David in Canada on Oct 18, 2005 at 5:12 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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