Blacksmythe

In blogging about the CNN Black Family series I mentioned that Fryer had a couple of theories that have been debunked…or tried to at any rate. The “Acting White” argument I dealt with some time ago. But the salty negro theory–which posits that black hypertension rates are high because we retain more salt than our white counterparts–is particularly pernicious. Over at Rustbelt Intellectual Tom S. takes a much longer look at this, using the work of my colleague Thomas LaViest. Required reading. Given the plethora of social scientists working on this issue, as well as that of educational outcomes, I don’t fully understand why those responsible for the show didn’t take a little more time to make a few phone calls. 

Same deal as last night. Maybe a bit more analysis.

11:08

There’s going to be some more stuff in this close to midnight hour. But I’ve got a project I’m working on. I think I’ll come back to this….thanks for coming by.

10:58

Everett was slinging when I was growing up in and around the city. (There really is no good way to do these types of interviews.)  

Dyson deals with the skin tone thing I’ve been seeing the whole show. I wonder whether we’ve been set up for this? Whether the editor has been playing this up…placing certain interviews in the show and leaving others on the cutting room floor. 

 

10:53

I saw this last night. If you control for everything external (except skin shade), and you get different outcomes, then where does the outcome emanate from? must be differences in character right? has to be the individual choices right? the strength of individual stories is that it provides weight and heft to statistical analysis. But the problem here is that you can’t scale those individual stories up. Meaning that if John John is failing because he’s a knucklehead we can’t say that the reason black men fail is because we tend to be knuckleheads. 

Big ups to Detroit! (had to get that in there…)

 

10:41

Quick pitch–Stare in the Darkness: Rap, Hip-hop and Black Politics. Coming soon.

Romantic story about rap. Rap was a voice for the disenfranchised. Becomes corrupted. Yes. But it’s been deeply patriarchal for more than a minute. 

There’s been an explosion of hip-hop pedagogy. We’ve probably underestimated the power of hip-hop here SIGNIFICANTLY. 

Segue to Dyson. Who blames the division within hip-hop squarely on white executives.

So that’s what Lupe Fiasco sounds like. Simmons argues that MCs are the voice, STILL, of the ghettoes. Nope. They are A voice.

Concluding? Back to the twin study. Mike Dyson and his (darker skinned) older brother. In the joint for murder. I’ve seen this part before. Again, choices choices choices. 

10:32

Now this is an area that I have a great deal of expertise in. The reason I have harped so much on the responsibility meme tossed around by Obama is because the responsibility idea is attached to these negative images of black men and women, and this in turn leads to calls for much more social control. Understand that this IS big government. Conservatives don’t want smaller government as much as they want government to do less of what they dislike and more of what they do–which in this case means a bigger social control apparatus. More resources to keep folks in jail. 

Spike. 

He’s taken an interesting journey. Talk about curmudgeon. 

Jonathan Phillips is affecting an accent that makes him appear much less…connected to black people than perhaps he is. I talked to him last year…and he’s decidedly conservative. But his voice is less nasal. Just saying.

Spike blames the media for helping to promote images of rappers and ballers to black america. Again the role modeling right? Again I understand this. The attitudinal research points to this. But there is much more to it THAN this.  

 

10:20

I’ve got to say for the record that the last time someone told me I was “trying to be white” was a bit after high school when a kid I went to high school with ran into me at the movies. “You WAS always trying to be white.” I laughed at/with him and moved on. 

Malcolm. Ironic.

All I know are “successful” black men and women who were “typically” black at Michigan. Malcolm’s experience at Maryland is something I am familiar with–there were men and women at Michigan who didn’t hang out with black people for whatever reason. But there’s a blithe connection being made here between success and eschewing blackness that I can’t quite roll with. Blackness now has a cache particularly in the advertising world that extends globally. The series of questions that Soledad can ask about THESE circumstances would be much more interesting than the ones she asks about an outlier like Malcolm. What types of blackness are commodified? It would’ve been interesting to talk to an MC here.

Next up. Spike.

 

10:08

Here we go. Starting out with a birthday party where the father is absent. Brandon has two children he isn’t taking responsibility for. Brandon walks in late. (What’s Brandon’s skin shade? You guessed it.) And we’ve got the setup. Why does he not take care of his children? Generational curse. Four generations deep. His grandfather (?) has ten children that he didn’t take care of. Amazing.

Ron Mincy is the social scientist bringing up the rear here–Roland Fryer doesn’t deal with this either. For Mincy we’ve given women the ability to raise children without men, and the structural issues don’t help.  

One of Brandon’s “baby mamas” is now pregnant with twins from another man.

Quick cut to another ‘68 graduate (Kenneth Talley) who is doing the right thing. Why? Role models. Again. He had a middle class family with a father, not like those who probably aren’t fathers because they didn’t HAVE fathers. 

It’s actually Talley that I’m interested in and families like them. We don’t know enough about him. Not necessarily what separates him from the hardcore and damaged. But what connects him. Not in some crass genetic sense. 

Next up? Being black in corporate America. Yet another light-skinned success story. And my boy just hipped me to the fact that this one doesn’t “sound black” either.

9:58

“Things that are stereotypically black.” I sense a Roland Fryer moment. Yep. He’s got a piece of research (hasn’t been published…and that’s important) that seeks to prove that “acting white” is a real phenomenon rather than something madeup in our collective heads….

I had no idea San Quentin was so packed….

Chris is a San Quentin inmate, who says that if he’d had positive role models he wouldn’t be in the joint. Nothing like those individual stories right? Even Ellis Cose who starts out talking about structural issues, ends up going back to role models and psychological messages. “Education is not really a black thing.” And this is why Chris is in San Quentin. “It took me to come to prison to see somebody going to school and say ‘that’s what I want to do.’”

Next up the biggie.

Where are the fathers?

9:57

Who the hell is this poet?

 

9:53

Another black boy (Braylon) having to live with poor choices. A black kid really. He doesn’t only have his own choices to live with, but the way the bit is played, he’s living with the choices of his grandfather too…who was a pimp, player, hustler AND one of the Little Rock class of ‘68. Choices again.

9:46

The assistant D.A. One of only two black district attorneys in the county. He’s putting heads to bed each and every day. Part of the system. 

Cut to Los Angeles and D.L. Hughley. Didn’t know he used to bang. They use him as the black male voice of reason to talk about the “real” black experience with the police. Now here I put it in quotes because this is another example where a bit more nuance is required.

(What does “inherently sometimes unfair” mean?)

(Have they shown a dark skinned black man who isn’t dealing with hard times?) 

 

9:34

Back to Butch. I’m just noticing now there is one difference–Butch is lighter skinned than Kenneth is. His bio reads like that of a race man. Starts a construction company, makes a career move to teach kids. And is now living the Huxtable life. Three successful black sons…but here’s where the race man and Huxtable thing gets flipped. He was criticized for “raising his kids white.” And now each of them is involved with a white woman, while the Warrens live in a 6,000 square foot home in a tony white suburb.  

It ends with yet another social experiment. Warren’s middle son ends up shooting someone in what appears to be a drug dispute, while his older brother is the DA.

This is basically the racial twin study. What’s the implication? 

9:23

Kenneth is one of those statistics. He’s a pastor, so he’s gotten his life together, but at the same time he has no relationship with his daughter (who herself has two young children). (An African dialect? Not a language?) 

Another social scientist….a woman who studied the racial differences in employment opportunities. Interesting research but we know where it’s going right? “Being black in America is the equivalent of having a felony conviction.” Now that’s a quote. 

Next we meet Corey. Has all the skills necessary to be employed. Not necessarily well employed, but employed. Gets an interview…then promptly gets the runaround–which we know because CNN places a camera on him and we see him getting played. Because he’s got a wife and two daughters, he’s got to hustle. I saw The Pursuit of Happiness…against my will. What Will Smith was hustling for in that movie? This is what Corey is hustling for here. 

He’s an excellent example for me of someone who hasn’t quite done everything right, but given where he is, he’s doing SOMETHING. And it’s hard to see how he’s going to get ahead. The best thing he can do is somehow get stable. No mobility here.

 

9:17

Roland doesn’t really study crack use, though he’s familiar with the dynamics because his family was in the game. So he does nothing more here at first than serve up expert filler. The heft is left to Joseph Phillips (prominent black actor and conservative). His line is easy–black men in jail for drug crimes should be there. 

Back to Kenneth’s personal story. Again because of his choices (his CHOICES) he’s dealing with a hard ass life. He gets out of the joint as soon as the crack epidemic hits. Given that he’s already used coke and heroin what else? Yessir. Crack. “The greatest high I’ve ever felt. Better than sex.” 

 

9:13

Choices choices choices. Because Kenneth the pastor was angry at the world, he decided to go to the military. While in the military he got addicted to cocaine, heroin, whatever he could. When he came back? Turned to a life of crime. By the time she gets to the prison stats, we’re mired in Kenneth’s individual story. And Kenneth of course takes responsibility for it, blaming his crime on his own anger against racism.

Here comes Roland Fryer. 

 

9:05

Starting out with Little Rock…and then moving into a neat social experiment of sorts. Take two black men from the same place. One ends up an associate superintendent, one ends up a pastor, but only after being addicted to crack and having to fight that battle. Uses the charged memory of King’s assassination as a place marker. Differentiating the time before that moment, where blacks looked as if they were going forward (ever forward), and the time after. By taking two men from the same place, and then charting the different spaces they live in NOW they are able to in effect hold everything else constant. I think I know where this is going but I’m going to hold off a bit. 

 

8:56

Barkley is an excellent sports commentator…now. He’s got a good groove going with Ernie and Kenny, and has moved from the buffoon to a humorous but insightful curmudgeon. But he comes out of the gate throwing out stats that are off (there aren’t more black men in the joint than in college), terms that are off (there is no black on black crime…there is only crime, and given segregation I’m not sure what else we would expect), and analysis that is off (self-esteem isn’t our central problem, and the line in the sand language conjures up images of war. war against who?). 

excellent start. yeah right.

A blacksmythe first. I’m going to write my thoughts up as they come up so I can store them for future reference….

11:57

Ends with a discussion about relationship options. One thing that’s important to consider here is Kriss Turner would be in no danger of falling into poverty if she decides to have children without getting married. Related is the fact that the number of single parents are exploding in part because the Spence five children model is going the way of the dodo bird. Black married couples are postponing children and are having far fewer children than they once did.

11:45

I didn’t  catch this before, but see how Noguera was silenced by the Kennedy child? Who is now about to be homeless? And she asks the questions NOW…how long before he loses the light? Fryer agrees with Noguera as well…but this is where we are, right? Here’s my question. If fryer’s program doesn’t work, then what does he try next? what range of solutions is he willing to consider?

That’s two questions.

Here’s a third. How much you want to bet he gets a slice of that cell phone market?

11:31

Evil is real. Isn’t that the truth. Dyson has given shout outs to his brother Everett in his book. This is the first time I’ve seen him…didn’t know why he was in. Choices. Choices. Choices.

Tracy Burch got a hold of data from Georgia prisons. They actually categorized prisoners by skin shade. The results are more or less what you might expect, but the type of intra-racial politics that are implicated here aren’t really dealt with.

The juxtaposition between the stories and the headlines at the bottom are fairly jarring. (Why is Aaron Spelling’s widow getting press? And why is she spending 47 million on a condo?)

10:59

concludes going back to the rands, with a shoutout to mike dyson (with a brother in for life)…..

10:51

Crime in Baltimore. I was just talking with Submariner about the stress of working in trauma in Baltimore. The VIP program sounds like a program I heard about on SmartCity–a program designed to end open air drug dealing by taking the dealers, compiling a case against them that’s air tight, then threatening to take the case to trial unless the dealer gets their life together. The police department then has a liason helping them get jobs, training, etc. The VIP program is an excellent start. And Dr. Cooper is doing all he can here.

Choices. Choices. Choices.

10:40

5% of the entire population of DC is infected? You’ve got to be kidding me. And here is the down-low again…or at least its implicated in Marvelyn’s story. The solution? Again individual education. And with a brief examination of the black church then a move to a woman (Niya) who “has a boyfriend she doesn’t quite trust.”

“Has Niya’s test taught her anything?”

Rucker Johnson takes this back to the prison industrial complex. Or even bringing in the political economy of sex in communities where black men have a choice of several “sellers” and the sellers have to compete over a limited number of buyers. This stuff is social science, but it can be told in a way that makes sense and resonates. We need much more of us doing this work, speaking to this work.

10:37
If I had the swing vote? I’d hold out for loot abstain.

There is a lot of potential in this story. Given the existence of youtube and the like I wonder if a better version could be done virtually? Kind of a smartmob joint? Some real scholarship, some real stories about black families?

10:31
My man Fryer again. Identity is fluid and contextual…or at least will be for the babies of the couple identified in this section. I’m surprised that Soledad doesn’t identify herself here. there is a big difference between how ryan lived and how the rasmussen kids will live.

the next subject? sounds like aids.

10:18
this segment on powerful black single women hits hard. 1 million more black women working. twice as many black women in college in black men. I’d be interested in knowing what they’re leaving on the cutting floor. I’ve been telling women what Chris Rock told Kriss Turner for a lonnggg time. The numbers don’t work.

10:12
“When you’re married to someone you can’t just leave that easy…”
Nice juxtaposition with the married couple who–and note that we don’t know what their economic circumstances are–appears to be doing well, with ira johnson. If she just would’ve married her man, e’erythang would’ve been SKRAIGHT.

10:06
Ira Johnson has got a great outlook on life. But she’s literally walking on a tightrope right? Now if she gets the five kids taken care of and they can do the thing, then they’ll all look out for her. But the question of course is can she?

Whoopi says it. THANK GOD FOR THE WELFARE SYSTEM. So where would she be now without that? (Ok. She looked young as hell in that picture.) If you are born in poverty you are likely to….

Avis!!!!

Sorry. Avis and her husband are friends of mine. Always good to see folks I know working. Let’s me know I’ve got options if things don’t work out…..

Um. How do we get from a nice discussion of how government can help, to marrying baby daddys and baby mommas?

9:55
The big question. Was arguing (again) about the father responsibility thing.

AH. Now we see how the Smith family did the thing. The Smiths have their own construction business, began by their father.

The church. Can’t do a show about the black family without dealing with the church. You can’t tell me that Johnson isn’t doing a yeoman’s job. Two jobs, hustling, hustling, and hustling again to take care of five children. The phone vs. the lights? Taking care of the kids’ desires or their needs? Then the stats. Today 70% of black families are headed by black families.

Here’s Rolypoly Roland Martin, switching cause and effect again. With TD Jakes bringing up the rear. Soledad neatly takes their arguments and then applies them to Johnson, who of course agrees. “I was young and wanted to have fun.” When Soledad asks them why she didn’t marry the father of her children, she says she was depressed.

Which goes back to health disparities. But not in this show.

9:50
She ends the segment talking about the geography of health disparities. Spends way too much time talking about salt and hypertension, and not enough (again) talking about the types of structural issues that determine where good grocery stores are located. When I lived in Saint Louis I lived within walking distance of three good grocery stores. The entire Northside of the city had one or two.

9:47
Here we go. He says this is a theory that’s out there, but he created the theory. The doctors are right here…but note again that Fryer is the standard, and he is given the bulk of the time. Soledad asks him about political correctness, and he counters by noting that he doesn’t care about rubbing people the wrong way. But it isn’t about rubbing people the wrong way. It’s about what the data says….

9:44
The poet talks about salt and pork, implying that our diet doesn’t help. While he’s on point, our diet doesn’t have anything to do with cancer. Ah. Here’s Fryer again. Bet he uses the salt thesis.

9:37
The Kennedy family knows how to make lemonade out of lemons. Interesting they chose the single father family, throwing things for a bit of a loop. The young son uses some of his money to help dad pay bills? But going back to Fryer, with Soledad asking a question about the distinction between middle class and lower class educational outcomes, note again that the default is cultural. “The middle class family can see the results of education all around them, where the poor family can’t?” How about the differences between quality schools? When Pedro Noguera comes in he’s the critic. He says what we know to be true—that poverty is key here—but he’s almost in there as an objective “this is the other side” analysis.

9:30
Still waiting.

9:27
So the last thing I hear before the storm kicks in and the signal goes out is Fryer talking about how he acknowledges that there are other things going on–like teacher quality–but this is one thing that can help reduce the gap between black and white students. I’m not too sure about that. Again we need more time here to be able to know exactly what the achievement slope looks like over time. Are the increases stable? Do they decrease overtime, indicating diminished returns? If we look at these changes and then plot them against school quality do some schools perform better? Do some perform worse?

9:23
I thought the metric was grades, but the metric is those assessments. They know how much money they have. Would be dope for them to combine this with some sort of financial planning program. The principal talks about progress and accountability, and she’s absolutely right about how children are penalized but there are no rewards. Fryer is adding the carrot to the stick approach. (damn a thunderstorm just jacked the signal…..)

9:16
References the achievement gap…and here is Fryer, touting the money solution. I’ve got some problems with embedding the market into education. it seems from looking at the school, that there’s another problem. One of the ways in which our processes of using government have flipped is that we now take for granted that successes should be rewarded, while failures should be allowed to sink. No Child Left Behind operates on this premise, as do literally dozens of other programs. And lest we blame this on Bush, many of Clinton’s programs were based on the same philosophy. It looks at least from the outset that the school that Fryer is dealing with may be situated in the “inner city” but it doesn’t look like an “inner city school.” Meaning that the children here who succeed and get paid are likely kids who would succeed (and get paid) anyway. I wonder what the numbers look like?

9:12
from the glories of slavery to the problems of education. can’t find a better poster child than brandon. saggy pants. cornrows. no t-shirt. and then the glorious moment when he actually gets in school. i’m reminded of a scene in the wire–fourth season–where it’s clear that administrators need numbers and need folks counted only up to a certain point. then they stop counting. but the rands got into the magnet school. for them? the difference goes straight back to the parents.

9:07
kissing cousins. isn’t that special? and the word progress. multicultural families are the present…and as sister rand says “a kodak moment.” begins with slavery but ends with a nice omniamerican moment. now i don’t particularly buy the argument that black people suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from slavery. there is no genetic pathway that can explain this. i also think we can explain the issues related to the black family by a set of modern structural issues….but we also know that slavery took a serious toll on black families. that’s just glossed over here.

next up? roland fryer. this should be interesting.

The family reunion is a black family tradition, and Atlanta is viewed as the capital of black America. Nice touch. The black male show is tomorrow…but given that you can’t have a family as large as the one studied without men, the family had to come from somewhere. Bring in the illicit slavery era black woman white male relationship.

One of the questions I’ve had to respond to over and over again in regards to Obama is “why can’t we both have a discussion about resopnsibility and talk about the government too?”

Surely we can walk and chew gum at the same time?

Read this article when you get the chance. Once public officials and institutions begin to adopt the language of personal responsibility–not so much a trope of conservatism these days as neoliberalism given its use by people with a wide variety of ideological predispositions–the natural consequence is that institutions and the individuals within them become literally “irresponsible.”

Adolph Reed wrote a very long critique of Obamaism that is worth reading as well. His main argument is that Obama is better than McCain in the short term, but worse in the long term.