There’s a significant current of anti-intellectualism within American culture as a whole, and has been for many years. For a simple example, note that our current President, who went to Andover, Yale, and Harvard, seeks to bury his intellectual pedigree while he and his proxies lambast his opponent, whose educational background is remarkably similar, as an out-of-touch elitist because of that education. (And because he speaks French.)
It’s not just the African-American segment of the population.
I don’t think the author was saying that Cosby had NO right to criticize. Rather, I think he was claiming that Cos should not be quick to level criticisms against the black community. He wasn’t arguing that Cosby’s claim was invalidated by his (alleged) sexual misconduct; rather, it was that Cosby should not be so hasty to level criticism, based on his own failings.
I happened to disagree, for reasons that I explained earlier, but I don’t think this was a simple ad hominem attack either.
*There’s a significant current of anti-intellectualism within American culture as a whole, and has been for many years. For a simple example, note that our current President, who went to Andover, Yale, and Harvard, seeks to bury his intellectual pedigree while he and his proxies lambast his opponent, whose educational background is remarkably similar, as an out-of-touch elitist because of that education. (And because he speaks French.)
It’s not just the African-American segment of the population.*
Exactly. We’re not speaking of “black” problems here so much as we’re talking about American problems that have a worse effect on black Americans.
I heard Cornel West on Tavis Smiley’s NPR show last night talking about the Cosby thing. (You can listen to it on-line here… The segment is about halfway down the page.) As most of you know, he is a Black intellectual and Professor at Princeton and is politically left-wing. (In fact, one of the things he said was that Bill Cosby is no Clarence Thomas.)
Cornel West was unambivalently defending Cosby. He said that the Black community should embrace such criticism from a fellow member of the community, that such self-criticism is an important and useful thing. And, he noted that Cosby has the stature and credibility to do it because his actions have shown that he truly cares about and works to advance the Black community, i.e., he recognizes the larger picture and is not one who simply blames the community for all of the problems that they have. (That’s where the “He’s no Clarence Thomas” line came in.)
Anyway, I recommend a listen…It is a short segment, probably only about 5 minutes long.
Because no matter what, they will always be seen as black. Michael Jackson aside, that’s the one thing they can’t hide.
As a result, issues take on a racial dimension when they involve a black man or woman. Let’s take Jayson Blair. When he was caught out, there was a lot of hand-wringing about “was he overpromoted because he was black,” was he an “unqualified black man,” and what does it mean for “black journalists” that Blair was caught.
Jack Kelley of USA Today was caught in a similar set of fabrications. I never heard anyone asking if he was overpromoted because he was white, or if he was an unqualified white man, and what it means for white journalists that Kelley was caught. Kelley, being white, is judged as an individual. Blair, the black man, is judged as a representative of his race.
Perhaps this is because the over-riding white part of society that remains in control never sees the race card within their own, precisely because they hold (almost) all the cards. There is no point in addressing the (white) race card because it makes no sense in their eyes. Whites judge “their own” by an individual standard because the race issue is perceived not to exist to/among them, or it actually doesn’t exist at all. At the same time, whites judge blacks by the race card because of that “difference.”
OTOH, the race card is used by blacks towards whites because it is a white-dominated society. The white segment doesn’t see blacks as just another one of the whole, but “different.” Yet at the same time, blacks use the race card among themselves, hence the Cosby speech.
Oh, lord. Had I known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have busted my ass to attend an HBCU - you know, for the pride of the community n’shit. I would’ve kept my black butt at a state school. :smack:
That scenario that Starguard described? DEAD ON. Different HBCU…same old shit. Folks more concerned with the next step show and football game than when is their next exam. (In fairness, I’m sure I can say this about most of the the students at PWCs as well.) Hell, FAMU (my “beloved” alma mater) has lost my financial aid information…twice. TWICE. Two separate times, I have been unable to take my finals because the administration couldn’t find my paperwork in time. But they’re QUICK to turn down my in-state tution requests - even after FOUR YEARS HERE! Anything to screw over the students. (I won’t even mention our computer lab.) If all goes well, I’ll be at Florida State in the fall. After 4 years of FAMU’s crap, I think I have the right to say, “Hell no!”
[url=http://www.southernillinoisan.com/rednews/2004/05/26/build/opinions/OPI002.html]Leonard Pitts*, who writes for the Miami Herald, may be the best black columnist in the biz today. He IS, IMHO. I’ve read columns that make me cry, that make me angry, that make me wistful. But he doesn’t pull punches.
The one to which I linked supports Cosby. That’s the way I read it.
[quote]
Yet at the same time, blacks use the race card among themselves, hence the Cosby speech.[/quoye]
I think it was W.E. Dubois who said that black people get used to seeing themselves from two opposite perspectives simultaneously: from the inside out and from the outside in. In other words, blacks see themselves from their own vantage point while also seeing themselves from the perceived vantage point of everyone else. That often means that when an “outsider” hurls critical generalizations towards blacks it is received defensively, but not when an “insider” says the same things.
It also means that when a black person criticizes other black people in a generalized manner, this criticism sometimes is not motivated by mere appall (“this is wrong behavior that is harmful to you and our society, please stop!”) but, rather often, it is motivated by shame and frustration (“look at how bad you are making us look, please stop!”
One reason I know this is because, as a black person, I experience this kind of reaction all the time. Out on the street, I’ll see all types of people doing stupid, wrong things. If a white man hawks up a lugey on the sidewalk, I’ll simply be grossed out. If a black man does it, I’ll be grossed out and exasperated because (I subconsciously feel) he is contributing to the stigma of being Black in America. A white woman dressed slovenly and speaking in an uncouth manner raises my eyebrow. A black woman doing the same triggers a raised eyebrow as well as embarrassment and anger.
You feel these mixtures of emotions when dealing with a dual perspective of your own race. It is hard to view a member of your race as an individual when you carry the perception that the greater society doesn’t. Whites, I suspect, do not have to deal with this to the extent that blacks and other minority groups do.
Disclaimer: I’m not saying that Cosby’s comments are motivated by that kind of reaction. They may or they may not. I’m just sharing ideas.
rattler, help me out here. I am a bit ignorant and don’t know which abbreviation stands for what and what your point is. My question was real: What is the attraction in today’s world of a traditionally Black school over a mixed school with a superior academic reputation? You chose a “Black school” over a good state school and now regret it? You chose it out of “pride of community”?
PWCU = predominately white college/university
HBCU = historically black college/university
People choose to go to HBCU’s for a variety of reasons…most of them similar to the ones people choose to attend any university. I did not attend a HBCU, but I had two–Spelman and Hampton–on my short list.
Having attended a very PWCU, I can tell you that it was not always the most comfortable experience. I had always attended integrated schools, but I was not used to sticking out like a sore thumb ALL THE TIME. Imagine a lecture hall full of hundreds of white kids–mostly men–and being one of a couple of black kids…and a woman! I had to search harder for lab partners, and sometimes when I’d find one, they’d be obviously upset to share space with me and never let me do anything. I’d find myself in social science classes and have to listen as classmates unapologetically exposed their racist ideas (I will never forget the guy who said that the first humans were obviously white since most people on Earth are white. And then he had the nerve to call Malcolm X a racist for asserting otherwise!). I once inserted myself into an extracurricular arts club and participated regularly, but no matter how many meetings I went to, the other club members could never seem to remember my name or telephone number to remind me of events/activities. Fortunately for me, being a loner, I didn’t give a fuck anyway.
I had a professor who, upon seeing me for the first time, asked if I was an athlete on scholarship. If he had really seen me, he wouldn’t have asked that question. This is the same guy who “joked” on a field trip to R.J Reynold’s plantation house that I had to go through the back door, but everyone else could go in the front. I laughed (why be the angry black female?) but inside I was embarrassed. He wouldn’t have joked around if we had been visiting a German concentration camp and I was Jewish, but for some reason, slavery is a laugh-o-riot.
Now…I don’t have any regrets about going to the school I did, but I can definitely understand why someone would choose Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, or Tuskeegee over a “good” PWCU. Not only can you get a “good” education at those places, but you don’t have to be on high alert all the time. If someone doesn’t pick you as a lab partner, it may be because you have bad breath or you’re not assertive enough. It wouldn’t be because you’re seen as a stupid Affirmative Action negro.
I don’t know a lot of white people who have attended a HBCU, even though the HBCU right next to them may be cheaper and better It’s sad, but we live in a society that will always place a crappy PWCU school above a good HBCU.
Are most “good” universities truly “mixed”? I just graduated from a very diverse institution (go Scarlet Raiders!) but your Harvard’s, Stanford’s, Rice’s, and Notre Dame’s are not really all that “mixed”. Fifty percent of all black high school students attend predominately black schools. Jumping from being the majority to a very small minority (my undergrad was 7% black) is not an easy transition to make for everyone. People will always gravitate towards others who are like them. Expecting black people to buck this tendency would be kinda foolish.
Harvard, to use your example, has an 8 to 9% Black population. Your school had 7%. Some PWCU’s have less, some more. But if you are going to make it in science and technology, or a host of other fields, don’t you have to get used to being out of your comfort zone at some point? And is more than one out of fifteen really all that bad, given the current state of our nation?
Sure you ran into some ignorant putzes. I ran into some people in college who had never met a Jew before and asked (seriously mind you) where my horns were. And was called a kike Jew boy for the first time there. I wouldn’t have traded it for some Yeshiva or predominately Jewish school and be protected from the ignorance that is out there.
Of course your post also suggests another point that I urged my 18 yo to consider well as he looked at schools last year. We have raised him in a diverse community and he wanted a school with diversity as one of his criteria. It is more than the numbers. 20% Black doesn’t mean much if they all hang together and don’t become lab partners with you. You can be like the populations in that Escher print, sharing a space but one group walking on what is walls to the other group and never interacting. I urged him to consider smaller schools that might have a smaller amount of diversity on paper but where people actually mingled across the board.
Comfort is all well and good, but that intellectually ambitious Black kid from a predominately Black High School is going to have to learn to deal with a professional world that is a majority non-Black. And a good many of them will be racist twits without even realizing it. They just don’t know better. Yet. It is as critical a part of his/her education as any coursework.
I guess I just find it odd to see HBCU’s promoted as “seperate but equal” as if that was a good thing.
So do others in other minority groups experience the same mixed emotions? Is this mixed emotion thingy a shitty byproduct of living as an individual within a minority group of the larger society? Is this restricted by race within the larger society, or does it extend to among culture groups who may “fit in” by race but not in other areas? For this latter question I’m thinking about new white immigrants in the US who gravitate to their “own kind” to begin to fit in within their new home, but when they mix with Americans in general, the accents, mannerisms and general foreign upbringing makes them a target as an “outsider.” (An irony since we are all practically sons and daughters of immigrants in America.)
Now if I take my own thought a bit further, at what point to those of us as sons/daughters of white immigrants (once, twice, several generations removed) become part of the whole and no longer outsiders? No more accents? Does each subsequent generation lose a bit of “outsiderness?” If so, why are blacks still outcast? Is it the blatant black v white issue, just because blacks look different, all other things being equal? If so, does this predispose that blacks will never “fit in” within a larger white society because the skin color is the overriding factor?
And what does this say about the majority white part of society? What barriers do whites need to take sledgehammers in hand and break down among ourselves?
I don’t mean to be rude or anything but how do you know you weren’t picked as a lab partner becuase you had bad breath, smelled or something like that? Is there a chance that becuase you are on high alert every slight by a white person is racism?
That’s part of the reality for many black people in America – you never know if the way you’re treated is because of something about you as a person or because of your race. You try not to get all paranoid about things, but when there are no other obvious reasons for something happening, it’s always a lingering thought: was that because I’m black?
It can be bad if you aren’t used to it. I mean, I bet if you put a typical Doper in a real life situation in which they were 1 out of 15 (race-wise, gender-wise, or nationality-wise) on a CONSTANT basis, there’d be some uneasiness.
I agree about moving out of your comfort zone. However, a place like Harvard isn’t a microcosm of the world either. Harvard is full of upper-middle class, wealthy kids primarily from New England. The breakdown of my graduate institution was an approximate cross section of northern New Jersey (slightly disproportionate representation of Indians and Asians, though)–with no ethnic group being “predominate”–but that’s not reflective of reality either. I guess my point is that black kids who go to HBCU’s aren’t the only ones who need to move out of their comfort zone.
At my undergrad institution (go Jackets!), students at the nearby HBCU’s would often transfer over their junior year. This not only had the positive effect of increasing black student enrollment there, but students could reap the benefits of both HBCUs and a PWCU.
Well, I can’t say I learned anything new about ignorance by going to a PWCU. I can’t say being humiliated by my professor made me a better, stronger person. And I do think I missed something by not going to an HBCU. Perhaps I would have actually had fun in college and had more friends. Perhaps I would have been less timid about joining extracurricular activities and had taken some more interesting courses. But then again, maybe I would have hated it. I don’t know.
Not to be snarky, but duh. That’s why there are such things as internships and co-op programs. There’s also graduate school. I’m of the mind that comfort actually is a very important thing to education. There are plenty of opportunities available for breaking out of that zone…no need to start when you’re cramming down 18 credits of calculus, chemistry, and physics. For black students, they may ready and willing to jump into the world of minority status right off the bat. Others may desire to stay “close to home”, so to speak. It’s no different than religious kids wanting to attend religious schools or liberal kids wanting to attend politically liberal institutions. Everyone in college has to move out of a comfort zone eventually.
HBCU’s are no more separate than a PWCU. I don’t see white kids flocking to Howard or Spelman, even though the doors are open to them and these places offer scholarships to them. If there’s equal access into these institutions, I don’t see what the problem is. The only way that I could see HBCUs not being “good things” would be if there was nothing valuable to be obtained by learning in an environment that fosters and supports African American culture. And I don’t think this is true.
When you are a racial minority, racism is always a potential explanation for “weirdness”. Sure, maybe I had a hard time finding a partner because my hair looked like a bird’s nest. Or maybe it was just that there were an odd number of students in the class, and I was the odd-man out. It could have been a variety of reasons, but racism could have also been one too. If you’re working in a environment where you don’t have to be the racial minority, then you don’t have to worry about racism. It’s just one thing you can cross off the list.
I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, but it would be foolish for me to automatically discount racism as an explanation for people’s bad behavior. That’s not being on high alert. That’s just called common sense.
I think membership to a stigmatized minority group is a more important factor than just simply being a member to a minority group. And it not need be predicated on race, either. Gay people probably experience it. I can imagine that when AIDS stastitics are used by straights to show that gay people are irresponsible or lavishly promiscious, many gay people get defensive. But when a gay man speaks out about similar things, his message is apt to be received a little better. Stereotypically behaving gays (flamboyant, loud, and visibly homosexual) probably also trigger the same embarrassed reactions I talked about earlier when they are among gays who act like the average guy or girl on the street.
Most white immigrants are capable of assimilating just as soon as their accents and habits start looking like everyone else’s. Some white immigrants are capable of assimilating immediately simply because their accents and customs do not mark them as “strange and foreign”, but rather “quaint and interesting” (think Brits).
Blacks and other racial minorities have the added barrier of appearance. I could speak and dress just like Jennifer Smith from Ames, Iowa, and I still would be unable to readily blend in because of my skin and hair. I could be living spack dab in the middle of Montpelier, Vermont, and still people would consider me part of “The Black Community”. Somehow always separate and different from my neighbors.
History has also contributed largely to our perception of white & black. It wasn’t until relatively recently that blacks were even really allowed to fully assimilate, so we have some catching up to do. The struggle for identity and self-acceptance has also been incorporated into (what some consider) the African-American culture, so unlike many immigrants who were/are willing to lose a lot of themselves in the pursuit of assimilating, blacks as a whole are less likely to part with the things that make them different from the mainstream. Perhaps that is also due to the understanding that even if we were to become chocolate Jennifer and John Smiths in all matters of behavior, the perception of difference would still stay because of our membership to a stigmatized race. You can’t get away from that no matter how proper you speak.
I don’t believe blacks will “never” fit in. Time is the great persuader. I think we are still feeling the growing pains of the civil rights movement; some people were expecting changes overnight and that was never supposed to happen. I think as time goes, racial prejudice will decrease.
BUT I also fear that there will become such a huge gap between middle-class blacks and lower-class ones that a real splintering will occur. Middle-class blacks, feeling frustrated that their acheivements and “normalcy” is constantly being overshadowed by the deliquency and underacheivement of the lower-class, will seek to separate themselves from the other group by physically moving away from them or (like Chris Rock does) setting up distinctions between “good black people” and “niggers”. Lower-class blacks, who already find it difficult to advance on their own, will continue to perpetuate the cycle of behaviors that we are talking about in this thread. So what we end up with is a minority group that is okay to prejudge, hate, and belittle. And it’ll be okay because it’s not exactly racism, but classism.