Michael Eric Dyson (21 page)

While Cosby has described the lethal moral seizures in black America in terms of class and age—he has lambasted the poor and the young for quite some time now, and I engaged his arguments in Chapter Three—it is also clear that on some issues, including the themes of his speech and this
book, there may be as much a
genre
divide as a generational one. There were blacks of an earlier generation, for instance, as is evident in observations from
Morals and Manners
, who laid full responsibility for the poor on their shoulders, while today folk like Cosby flow steadily in their wake. Then there were folk who emphasized structural elements that might help explain why poor parents had a tough time of it—mothers going to work outside the house, poor workers struggling to make ends meet, the hostile racial and economic conditions of the times. The same is true for certain social analysts today. There were people a century ago who railed against the evils of popular entertainment, just as there are today critics of the consumption of hip-hop and rap; there were also folk in earlier decades who celebrated the joys and consolations of secular music and, like their contemporaries, drew from it sustenance for their lives. In homage to Sterling Brown—who divided the black character types in American literature into seven categories: the contented slave, the wretched freeman, the comic Negro, the brute Negro, the tragic mulatto, the local color Negro and the exotic primitive—I want to suggest seven types of black folk in the cultural imagination who straddle generational lines in their interests, identities and insights: ghettocentrists, gangstas, griots, gamers, gospelers, gentries and gayz.

Ghettocentrists
hold that the ghetto, the inner city, the local black neighborhood, is the source, the
locus classicus
, of authentic black identity and supplies important standards, norms, habits, traits and behaviors for black community. In the past, this category included writers like Richard Wright
and James Baldwin, and it now includes athletes like Allen Iverson, hip-hoppers from KRS-ONE to Nas, and millions of ordinary residents as well.

Gangstas
believe that the lifestyle and ideology of the outlaw, the rebel and the bandit challenge the corrupt norms of the state, the government, and the rule of law in society. In the past, it has included Harlem gangsters like Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson and Leroy “Nicky” Barnes and the characters of writers like Chester Himes and Donald Goines. Today, it includes rappers NWA, Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac, and thousands of small-time hoods, gang bangers and anonymous thugs.

Griots
believe in the obligation to preserve cultural memory, racial practice and ethnic solidarity. They argue that the transmission of cultural habits, moral traits and racial wisdom are critical to the flourishing and survival of black culture. In the past, this included cultural nationalist Marcus Garvey, educator Mary McCleod Bethune and writer J. A. Rogers, and in the present, it includes intellectuals Maulana Karenga and Haki Madhubuti and rappers Chuck D. and Talib Kweli.

Gamers
include folk who hustle in a variety of guises—bank employer, local entrepreneur, underground economist—and who seize the metaphor of gaming, prominent in arcane social and philosophical theory, to explain and extend the trickstering tradition in black culture. They are all united by “getting over.” In the past, this included leaders such as Booker T. Washington and entrepreneur Madame C. J. Walker, and in the present, it includes entrepreneurs Russell Simmons and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.

Gospelers
represent the spiritual renewal and religious vitality of black culture. They prize the virtues of moral suasion and decent living as the antidote to personal failure and existential fear. There is a premium on inner peace, spiritual
and
social transformation, and, especially these days, material security, signifying the split soul of religious piety. In the past, this genre included Mahalia Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and C. L. Franklin, and today, it includes Kirk Franklin, Yolanda Adams, T. D. Jakes, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Charles Adams, Jeremiah Wright, Freddie Haynes, Lance Watson, Rudolph McKissick, Calvin Butts and Carolyn Knight.

Gentries
are the black aristocrats, the black elite, the Afristocracy, who embody the ideals, norms, behavior and performance of proper society, with a dash of uplift thrown in for good measure. As a class, they both love and loathe black folk, accounting for the ethical schizophrenia of their activities, from helping the poor to haranguing them. In the past, this included the Dobbs and Bonds of Atlanta and the Walkers of Memphis; today, it includes any Negro included in Lawrence Otis Graham’s
Our Kind of People
.

Gayz
are the aggressively, progressively gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender presence in black America who gain the political meaning of their identity by fighting both racism in gay communities and homophobia in black life. Gayz challenge the monolithic conception of black identity while forging solidarity in the fight against the terrors of race and class. In the past, this category included James Baldwin and, more recently, the late Audre Lorde, and today it includes Barbara Smith, Randall Kenan, E. Lynn Harris, Keith Boykin and Meshell Ndegeocello.

These types embody some ways that black folk throughout our history have responded to the critical issues of black identity, social struggle and political organization. They also suggest how we have gathered our individual and collective resources to combat racism and other social plagues. Since these types are neither rigid nor pure, there has been quite a bit of traveling back and forth between categories, but I think they still capture major intellectual, social and political orientations in the culture. Perhaps in picturing black culture and identity through these categories, we can understand the persistence of certain beliefs in black culture that trace an ideological, even sociological, vein, and perhaps a class-based one as well, challenging strict precepts about generational difference. To be sure, the generational differences among the types are crucial and should be paid attention to—for instance, contemporary griots may have a more complex vision of the means to transmit black values than their predecessors. But the consistency of orientation may nonetheless be highlighted, and prove useful, as we engage historical arguments about the organization of black life and thought.

For our purposes, these types suggest that the relentless attempt to tag the current black generation, especially its poor and most vulnerable members, as somehow unalterably alienated from the mainstream of black life, and, most important, from the best traditions of our history, is in fact inaccurate. So much of the criticism endured by young and poor black folk revolves around their alleged ethical estrangement from the black moral mainstream in history. And yet, if we see that types of black people have consistently behaved or
thought in a certain fashion—and this without casting an essentialist frame to the proceedings, but offering instead a nuanced, historical exploration of cultural continuity—we may dispense with the vindictive use of history against the black poor and young, such as the one Cosby has appealed to in his recent remarks. In its place, we can offer more sophisticated and subtle analyses of cultural traits and racial behaviors that have roots in antecedent practices. These types point to the heterogeneity of black culture and suggest that internal racial conflicts between different kinds of black folk have as much to do with current clashes over how we view the poor, for instance, as do simple differences in age and time. If nothing more, the existence of these types gestures toward discovering more complex explanations for black behavior beyond the clichés and stereotypes that plague the discussion.

If Cosby’s discussion of the poor has been hampered by such clichés and stereotypes, and a failure to recognize the racial and cultural continuities suggested by these types, his apparent ignorance of the vast body of literature on the lives of the poor, or his deliberate rejection of its claims, especially about obstacles poor parents face, is even more problematic, and even depressing. It would take a gargantuan act of will to overlook the work of William Julius Wilson, Michael Katz, Robin D. G. Kelley, Elijah Anderson, Katherine Newman and literally hundreds of other scholars who have intelligently and in great detail specified the barriers poor parents face, from dwindling public capital to lethal public policies, including welfare reform, and the obstacles we have known
about for decades, including social demobilization precipitated by structural changes in the economy—for instance, the shift from manufacturing to service industries, the heightened technological monopoly of labor, and the disappearance of work.
⁸⁰
Cosby has shown no familiarity with the depressing statistics that make life hell for the poor, for instance, that more people die younger in Harlem than in Bangladesh, that nearly 25 percent of black America is poor, and that the minimum wage has plummeted by nearly 35 percent since 1968.
⁸¹
And what of the best-selling books that document the plight of the working poor, those citizens who rise every day out of commitment to the work ethic but who are repaid with wages that place them below the poverty line? Surely Cosby read Barbara Ehrenreich’s masterly journalistic exposé of the cruel predicament of the working poor,
Nickel and Dimed
, or David Shipler’s sobering portrait of the same population, with a title as austere and elegant as the subject it describes,
The Working Poor
, whose opening lines should haunt Cosby and all of us: “Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. The term by which they are usually described, ‘working poor,’ should be an oxymoron. Nobody who works hard should be poor in America.”
⁸²
Even Cosby’s attacks on single black mothers contain an irony: Their numbers have actually gone down. In 1970, for black females between ages fifteen and seventeen, there were 72 pregnancies per 1,000, while in 2000, there were 30.9 per 1,000.
⁸³
Despite his defenders’ suggesting that
Cosby has a right to blast the poor because he was one of them, a crucial distinction must be made: Cosby was a poor
child
, not a poor
parent
. Even though there are numerous liabilities of being poor as a child, one of them isn’t shouldering moral responsibility and social stigma for one’s plight, a regular occurrence for poor parents.

There was a time when Cosby was much better informed and much more compassionate about the poor, earlier in his career, when he wasn’t yet so far from poverty’s orbit that he could fly off into rage against its victims. In an interview, Cosby painted a poignant portrait of what it was like to be poor.

That’s the Cosby we need to revive: a critical, clear, compassionate analyst, perhaps even an informal ethnographer, of the lives of the poor. We need not pity the poor, nor should we deny the huge problems among the parents of the black poor, but we should never lose sight of the colossal barriers they face just to get up in the morning, just to put one foot in front of the next, just to make ends meet. What we need more of is the relentless effort to help lift the poor from their condition even as we enable them to respect themselves and support their families through the hard work for which they are often given little credit. In this era of family values, we must learn to value all families. As Cosby’s family troubles prove, one need not be poor to experience failure or setback, and as the lives of so many poor folk suggest, you need not be wealthy to act decently in society and to love, and be loved, at home.