In case you missed anything:
The Cosby Effect: What Did They Hear?
The Cosby Effect: Why did he say it?
The Cosby Effect: What's wrong with the approach
The Cosby Effect: The understanding that was missing
A little ahead of schedule
The Cosby Effect: The Early Edition
You could draw the conclusion that I feel Dr. Cosby has pointed to issues that need addressing but has done so a little carelessly. Let's get a little more careful. As I said hinted in The Early Edition, the idea that all the issues Dr. Cosby raised have a single root cause…bad parenting…makes little sense to me. In point of fact, much of it is American, not Black-specific. For instance:
- Participating in the production of media that
- lionizes violence
- celebrates misogyny
- promotes a destructive, dysfunctional capitalism
- Overvaluation of sports
- Undervaluation of education
Now, we're busy telling folks wealth = nobility, and being horrified when our young aspire to the roles that are both extremely lucrative if you succeed and full of folks that ain't that different from themselves.
And who's paying for all this bling and bounce and gold teeth? White folks. And it's white folks who keep most of the proceeds too. Of the records AND the leased dreams the artists live in front of the Cribz camera, the TV burning the idea of platinum happiness lived to the beat…don't think those bling shows are harmless. They convince the next generation of artists (they come along every six months or so) that they, too, can drive a Hummer at 20 years old.
Wealth is the definition of good in the USofA. To expect our youth to act otherwise is like blaming fish for being wet.
But I'll come back to this later.
- Non-mainstream dress
- Non-mainstream speech to the exclusion of standard TV English
- Vulgar speech
I've discussed the core problem before in The Racism Series, in the post titled The Root of the Resistance but I didn't directly apply it to this.
Maslow posited a hierarchy of human needs based on two groupings: deficiency needs and growth needs. Within the deficiency needs, each lower need must be met before moving to the next higher level. Once each of these needs has been satisfied, if at some future time a deficiency is detected, the individual will act to remove the deficiency. The first four levels are:
According to Maslow, an individual is ready to act upon the growth needs if and only if the deficiency needs are met…
- Physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts, etc.;
- Safety/security: out of danger;
- Belongingness and Love: affiliate with others, be accepted; and
- Esteem: to achieve, be competent, gain approval and recognition.
Number three is the killer. The need to affiliate with and be accepted by others must be resolved prior to the need to gain recognition for competence. This is also the reason there are more followers than leaders, and why everyone looks for a leader in the first place. It's why, in a time when adults openly declare their fear of the children, the children look to each other. And it's real easy to reject mainstream values when you are rejected by the mainstream.
The above two sets of issues are normal reactions for a human in the conditions under discussion. As I said, they're not Black-specific:
My experience working with students from k-undergarduate, parents and teachers bears out the generalizations from research.Students with highly engaged parents tend to do very well in school. The most engaged parents tend to be Asian-Americans, European immigrants and Jews. Most native-born American parents, white or black are disengaged from their children's education and a significant minority are indifferent or hostile to education though not to school athletics or other social fluff.
The crucial difference is that while the average white student is just as likely to embrace an empty, instant gratification, hip-hop/pop/video game/sports/Reality show/Jerry Springer value system mass culture - their Black fellow student is more likely to also be in poverty, have fewer positive adult role models and be further removed from the mainstream.
To a certain extent, the lifetime effect of the average white student spending school years wallowing in ignorance and self-absorbtion, is mitigated by being immersed in the traditional mainstream which they can understand or affect even when they do not actually practice those traditional values. That's part of the reason white students do not get the same criticism that Cosby has levelled - the aggregate effects are not as dire or at least as visible.
Many Black students can ill-afford the same kinds of self-imposed cultural handicaps in addition to systemic ones like racism or poverty.
That's my boy Mark, from the comments. Don't bitch at me if you don't like the conclusion. You can complain about what got emphasized to me, though.
The last set is new, though.
- High teenage pregnancy rate
- Physically abusing women in reaction to poverty
…and they'll take a minute to discuss, as a separate issue, I think.
No, domestic abuse is not new, but for this specific reason…and it's rare enough to be disregarded. But I DO know someone who was in the situation which is why I don't just blow it off, I guess.
We're not done by a long shot here.
Posted by P6 at July 7, 2004 08:24 PM
Trackback URL: http://www.niggerati.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2624
Comments
Hey Prom !
Glad you added affiliation response - the power of peer relationships among children once they hit upper elementary school is amazingly powerful. At times in middle-school years it is overpowering, somewhat earlier for girls than boys. How a child handles that depends a great deal on their comprehensive social support structure.
Most children can keep things in balance most of the time because they have an array of positive adult influences in their lives Obviously, the vast majority of people exposed to Hip-hop or video games or Heavy Metal or scary comic books or whatever the bogey-man of the moment is, do not run out and shoot-up a crowd of bystanders.
It's the disconnected child who is most at risk and in my experience that is probably the greatest single variable in terms of being a predictor of trouble ahead. There are many others of course but if you are not connected to the positive at a time you are figuring out *who* you are, a negative set of values is far more attractive an identity to a 13-15 year old adolescent than having none at all.
We're social animals. The disconnected child is more at risk. The disconnected family is more at risk. The disconnected community is more at risk.
Posted by P6 at July 8, 2004 10:10 AM