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Where is Jesse B. Semple when you need him?

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on October 11, 2005 - 1:58pm.
on Race and Identity

Via caught in between: 

ARE Blacks A Criminal Race? Surprising Statistics (65 comments )

The growing controversy over Bill Bennett's comments have mainly centered on whether or not he was calling for some kind of Black genocide. Clearly he was not. Mr. Bennett does not believe in abortion under any circumstances, and certainly not as a tool for racial extermination.

Unfortunately, this false debate has obscured the deeper issue - whether or not Blacks contribute disproportionately to the crime rate.

That's 65 comments as of this posting, and a not unexpected number of them are straight racist.

There's a story in The Best of Simple called "Coffee Break," in which Jesse's boss asks him something along the lines of "Now that you can vote and have a congressman and all, what does The Negro want?" The discussion of the problem (and you'd really want to read it, Langston Hughes was brilliant) came down to white folks, though they let a few Blacks integrate with them, had no intention of integrating back. Jesse's boss was like, but what about all that crime, and Jesse was like "But it's only poor folks that get robbed. We don't have no multi-million dollar frauds or Hope Diamond thefts. Maybe you ought to move uptown where you'd be safer."

The boss said, "The coffee break is over." Last line of the story. 

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Submitted by dwshelf on October 11, 2005 - 3:50pm.

The problem with the cited article is that it equates all crimes.  Since lots of people posess illegal drugs, and they're more or less proportionally distributed over the various races and even geographies, then the crime rate is pretty much the same all over.

Got it? The crime rate is pretty much the same all over.

We can't stop there, everyone would laugh.  But if we use that as a premise, we can go some amazing places. Places where wishful thinking inhibits tracking back.

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Submitted by dwshelf on October 11, 2005 - 3:59pm.

So long as I'm beefing with that article, here's another one.

"common knowledge" (stereotypes)

That's not what a stereotype is.  Common knowlege may well be flawed, but it is not a stereotype.

A stereotype is an application of a generalization to a specific case, which is invalid reasoning, whether or not the generization is correct.

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Submitted by Quaker in a Basement on October 11, 2005 - 4:11pm.

Aw, crap.

More homework. I swear, P6, I come here to learn stuff, but not to actually have to work for it. Haw.

Jesse's added to the reading list.

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Submitted by Quaker in a Basement on October 11, 2005 - 8:59pm.

I didn't find "Coffee Break" in Best of... but I did find it in Simple's Uncle Sam. The conclusion of the story is even better than your retelling of it.

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on October 11, 2005 - 10:38pm.
I didn't find "Coffee Break" in Best of... but I did find it in Simple's Uncle Sam.

That's possible...Best of was my high school introduction to Hughes. I jumped deep into his stuff for a while after that.

The conclusion of the story is even better than your retelling of it.

In high school they told me a book report shouldn't give away so much of the story as to take away the point of reading it.

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Submitted by Ourstorian on October 12, 2005 - 1:34am.

Where is Jesse B. Semple when you need him?

He's right here on my shelf, a first edition paperback, signed by Langston Hughes on March 2, 1951.

On the cover, beneath the title, a drawing of a Harlem street scene, and the author's name, there is the following statement:

This is a new book and unabridged. It is made available at the low price of $1.00 because of 1. Thinner paper; 2. A huge printing; 3. Soft cover binding. We would appreciate your reactions to this experiment in publishing. SIMPLE SPEAKS HIS MIND is also published at $3.00 in a more permanent cloth-bound edition on better paper.

A half-century later, it is yellowed and brittle with age. But Hughes impeccable penmanship still illuminates the first page. 

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Submitted by Marc Ramsey on October 12, 2005 - 1:57am.

It's also in The Return of Simple, a 1995 paperback reissue by Hill and Wang...

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Submitted by ptcruiser on October 12, 2005 - 2:09am.

Sometime in the early 1960s I recall seeing a televised production of a play called "Simply Heavenly" which was based on a compilation of several of Langston Hughes' tales about Jesse B. Semple and his friends. One of the more vivid scenes I recall was one in which Semple wondered aloud about why Negroes never saw any UFOs or if they did why it was never printed in the newspapers etc. It was a marvelous and slyly satirical scene that my friends and I easily picked up on because we discussed it the next day on the basketball court and none of us were older than fourteen. Semple never left. We need to revive his spirit. I'm ready to try.

The next time I'm in New York I'm going to pay a visit to the Museum of Television and Radio and see if I can't track that broadcast down.

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on October 12, 2005 - 2:22am.

 

He's right here on my shelf, a first edition paperback, signed by Langston Hughes on March 2, 1951.

 

Where's my jealousy smiley? I hate yo azz...

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Submitted by Ourstorian on October 12, 2005 - 1:29pm.

"Where's my jealousy smiley? I hate yo azz..."

Open up an extra-large can of haterade this morning... I have five Langston Hughes first editions, including a copy of his first book, "Weary Blues," sans dust jacket.

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