One more

Keith left an email address rather than a web site.

I'm a pretty regular visitor to Juliette's site and followed her link here. I thought it was an interesting conversation, but ultimately frustrating because P6 couldn't see J's point. As a "white guy", "member of the White Race" (P6's definition) or "a guy who can't jump" (Hollywood's definition), I do have a couple of takes to add to the ones already put forth.

a. The problem with black perception of racism is that it's about achieving perfection--something that will *never* be attained. If 1 in every 1000 white people is a racist, a black person who encounters whites regularly is going to hit that 1:1000 ratio every few weeks. If 1 in every 100,000 is racist, the black community will hear about a racist incident every few weeks and a black individual is probably going to encounter racism a few times in their lives. If that 1 in 100,000 runs a blog or a hate website, it is that much more public. As a member of the 99,999, I cannot own the problem of that 1. And you need to focus on those 99,999--as hard as that may be at the time.

b. The part that was most interesting in the thread above was how P6's problem with Juliette wasn't with what she said, per se, but with the fact that she was publicly criticizing blacks in a way where white people might see it and might misinterpret it. I had a good friend in college who was black (a black activist no less) and we once had a huge talk about this exact subject. My argument to her was that it hurt the black community's credibility to be depending on people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as their public mouthpieces and advocates, and I didn't understand why the black community couldn't see that. After many late night hours of debating this, she finally admitted that in reality, a lot (if not most) blacks don't really like or respect those mouthpieces either, and criticize them in private. But *to the outside world* they don't criticize them because "they are all we have!" and they didn't want their mouthpieces marginalized or undercut by their criticisms. That was back in the late 80's when Jesse was a bigger deal, I guess. But now I see the same argument again. Only what has changed is that those dudes aren't all you have anymore to be your advocates in the public realm. Condolezza Rice takes a lot of crap--more from blacks than whites--for what? Colin Powell could be the next VP. Bill Cosby is loved and respected by millions and millions of people.

It is time for blacks to realize that their self-censorship of criticism for their own has got to stop. It is only hurting them to cling to the relics and rhetoric of the past. Whites see it, whether blacks criticize or not. Start sticking to the people going places instead of clinging to the people you had no choice about before.

Technically, my terminology isn't "member of the White Race" but is "people who self-identify as white." One can't get my full position form a single post though so I understand the misapprehension.

You say

a. The problem with black perception of racism is that it's about achieving perfection

and I wonder what brought you to that conclusion. One racist out of a thousand humans would be TOTALLY acceptable to every Black person I know.

More importantly we are nowhere near that point.

b. The part that was most interesting in the thread above was how P6's problem with Juliette wasn't with what she said, per se, but with the fact that she was publicly criticizing blacks in a way where white people might see it and might misinterpret it.

You have misinterpreted me.

My problem is that Juliette posts for the benefit of those she KNOWS are racist. She herself siad:

In answer to your question, it's bad.

and my follow-up is, why do you accept it when you know it's bad? And my explanation of WHY it is bad is that it justifies white people abandoning their half of the problem.

You DO know half the problem belongs collectively to white folks, don't you?

It is time for blacks to realize that their self-censorship of criticism for their own has got to stop. It is only hurting them to cling to the relics and rhetoric of the past. Whites see it, whether blacks criticize or not. Start sticking to the people going places instead of clinging to the people you had no choice about before.

It is time for white people to realize they are just as responsible for the situation we all must adjust to as Black people are. The denial has to stop. Black people see their denial whether white people do or not. Denying it keeps you stuck in the past

And I'm not just going to flip it like that. I'm going to take a market based approach to all this. Just like the drug war, I want to attack America's social problems on the demand side rather than just the supply side.

Raise your children right. There must be something desperately wrong with white culture that makes your children abandon it for Black culture. What happened to them that makes them idolize 50 cent, Eminem and the like?

Raise your children right and the demand dies.Demand dies, no more of those hip-hop thangs that bother Cos so much.

See? It's all a matter of perception. White folks, being the mainstream and all, tend to get away with dealing strictly from their own viewpoint. So, for example, when the first affirmative action programs were created to change the behavior of white folks, white folks put conditions on Black folks in order to participate/slow it down. That tactic continues to this day.

So if you want Black folks to take responsibility, white folks must too.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on July 20, 2004 - 8:29pm :: Race and Identity
 
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There are a couple of things I want to get off my chest about this Bill Cosby stuff and I guess here is an OK place for that.

First, doing well in school is supposedly "acting white". That was not the case in any of the mostly white high school and college I went to and it was not the case in the all black elementary or junior high schools I went to.

Being a nerd is being a nerd, acting white is acting white. Two different things. It was real easy in the 80s and 90s and probably still. If you listened to hip-hop you acted black, otherwise you acted white.

More directly, if you hung out with other black kids you act black. If you hang out with white kids you act white. How complex can that be? The single smartest black person in the school in my experiences has always acted black. Maybe that's just luck.

I can imagine a circumstance where there are schools that are nearly all white in the "top classes" and nearly all black in the "bottom classes". In that situation, the smartest black kids mostly hang out with their white classmates, listen to rock and roll like their friends and are accused of "acting white". I've never seen this but I imagine that is the case in some places. In that case doing well in school happens to align well enough with acting white that there are black children complaining to adults that they are accused of "acting white" just because they do well. Those complaints seem to have reached Bill Cosby. But the fact is the kids accused of "acting white" really do "act white".

So enough of that. I think this stuff about doing well is acting white is a myth produced by distorted perceptions. Cosby and other critics of black people latched onto it just because it fits their theories that the culture of black children is to blame for everything.

The next issue is that supposedly moral standards have degraded since when Bill Cosby was a child.

How is this supposed to have happened? Did the culture fairy sprinkle dust on a whole generation of black children?

Cosby points to a school in Brooklyn with a 50% drop out rate. Seems to me that between older siblings and older friends, people who attend that school have a clear picture of what happens to the people who graduate and what happens to the people who do not graduate.

Do the 50% who graduate get better jobs than the 50% who do not graduate? It is possible that graduating is in some cases rationally not worth the aggravation.

Something has to have changed if drop out rates increased. It was not the culture fairy. Instead of blaming the children Cosby should be asking has the amount of stress involved in going to school increased for some people? Have the benefits of finishing decreased for some people? These are issues that can and should be addressed. When cultures change, they usually change for a reason.

Next. Black leaders. Bill Cosby is not one. You may not like Farrakhan or Sharpton or Jackson, but they have devoted their working lives to trying to improve the status of the Black community. Bill Cosby has spent his working life trying to make people laugh, and mostly white people at that. That does not mean its not possible that as a fluke, the comedian might have some insight that those who dedicate their lives have missed, but we don't expect that to happen. That sure hasn't happened here.

Whew. Let's get back to the work ethic for a second. My grandmother moved from Mississippi to New York City at the beginning of the 20th century to work. My grandfather moved from Barbados to New York City to work. My other grandparents moved from Georgia to Detroit to work.

Every black person in every major US city has the same story. At one point I believe the Black participation in the labor force was higher than the white participation. So what happened to the work ethic?

Its not the culture fairy. If employers are prejudiced against Black people, that lowers the expected return from a given amount of job seeking effort. The problem is not backwards pants. Any rational actor will expend less effort seeking a job if there is a lower expected reward. Instead of fixing the backwards pants, let's fix the expected reward from a given amount of effort looking for a job.

OK. I'm done. Thanks P6 for providing a forum where I can spit this out.

Does everyone know about Geoffrey Canada? I read his autobiography recently Fists Sticks Knives Guns. Its real good. Geoffrey runs a major program in Harlem to improve the outcomes of at-risk children. Bill Cosby should give him a call.

Posted by  anon (not verified) on July 21, 2004 - 9:40am.