via More Middle-Class New Yorkers Fall Behind on Rent and Face Eviction – NYTimes.com.

So what does “that certain kind of person” look like?

I had a talk the other day about the fortunes of the GOP in the wake of Arlen Specter’s defection.

The writing was on the wall as soon as middle-class men and women looked in the mirror and realized they were swiftly becoming “that certain kind of person.”

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For those unfamiliar with Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, know this. Because literally billions of dollars move based on their statements, they tend to be extremely conservative in their pronouncements. Perhaps no other group of people besides the (trained) clergy consider their words with more care. For him to say that the free market ideology he supported was basically wrong, would be akin to the Pope saying that he was wrong about Jesus being simultaneously the only begotten Son of God and man.

Now of course the problem here is that those of us on the outside looking in have always known that free market ideology doesn’t work. But the thing is that we weren’t considered part of the rational world. 

When what we think of as “social scientists” first began to employ statistics in order to control, manage, and study human populations, there was a moment in America where white supremacists used statistics in order to prove that slavery as a social system worked well for blacks. Using cooked census data they found that the percentage of blacks who were insane increased the further north one went. Whereas only one out of a thousand or so blacks were deemed insane in the deep south, in the northeastern corridor there were places where one out of every eighty or so were deemed insane. 

The way that white supremacists explained this was extremely logical–though still racist. Blacks didn’t have the mental capacity to live with all of the choices that freedom offered. “Do I work? Do i stay home? Do I go to the store? Do I take a walk? Do I read?” And each of those choices themselves led to other choices, which led to other choices, which…you get the picture. Much better for blacks to live in a system where all of their major choices were decided for them. 

Riiiighht. 

(Congress questioned this finding…and when they looked into it found that in many cases there were more insane blacks in some of the towns, then there were people in the town!) 

But it is this type of logic either applied to non-white spaces (‘inner cities’, ‘barrios’) domestically, or to the “third-world” in general, that caused people to ignore the flaws of the free market. To their (and our) detriment apparently.

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In realtity, what ever parts of our culture become mainstream will affect their preceptions of us and their interactions.

How we treat each other sets precedent for how others will treat us.

In response to my request for data, my younger fraternity brother cited The Black Image and the White Mind by Entman and Rojecki…and also the recent poll conducted by Cathy Cohen out of Chicago for her Black Youth Project. What I’m going to do here is respond to him…minus the smackdown. The bottom line? There is a difference between blame and responsibility. We have the responsibility to carry ourselves with dignity and honor, regardless…but we are not to blame at all for what Imus said.

My younger fraternity brother (I’ll call him “Pup” for short) cites Entman and Rojecki in order to show that black people have some responsibility for how whites think of them. Here are Entman and Rojecki’s central findings:

Our findings show that in a variety of ways across the diversity of genres and outlets, the mass media convey impressions that Blacks and Whites occupy different moral universes, that Blacks are somehow fundamentally different from Whites…

We also find a major difference between the surface and deeper levels of media content. At the surface, any examination of the media reveals evidence of enormous progress…..Yet at deeper levels, negative images abound. (pp. 6, 7)

Now my counter-argument was twofold. First that the desire of blacks to get other blacks to “act right” in order to pursue citizenship has a LONG history, going back over 100 years. In his work Before the Ghetto, David Katzman points out that middle and upper class blacks even in the 19th century consistently blamed poor blacks for racism, arguing that their behavior brought this on.

Though there is a lot of history behind this claim (Dubois and Washington make similar claims, as does Malcolm X and Martin Luther King in the more contemporary era), there isn’t much data. In fact, we know through history that the opposite is true–that however civilized black people acted, whites subjugated and in many cases terrorized them.

In the contemporary moment, we’ve got all types of examples of righteous behavior, of black people being humane towards each other, towards non-blacks, and towards nature. But what dictates what is sold on the market–what becomes mainstream–are the preferences of the mass market. What Entman and Rojecki do is show the content of these preferences. Blacks participate in this in as much as black actors and performers need jobs…but blacks do not “create” these images. Rather, a small percentage of blacks choose to participate–but these images existed before some of us began the modern day minstrel show, and they’ll likely continue after they’re gone. And lest Pup think that history plays no role in this, check out the quote below:

…Whites’ attitudes on race and perceptions of Black behavior reveal a necessarily simplified but understandable mode of thinking that arises from the absence of regular, close interaction and from largely hidden but lingering cultural influences. (p.7)

Where do those “lingering cultural influences” come from?

My second argument was that even many whites who have close contact with other blacks evince negative attitudes towards them. There is a burgeoning literature on the role of racial context on racial attitudes. How does living near middle class blacks influence white attitudes? How does living near blacks period influence white attitudes? James Jackson, Vincent Hutchings, Cara Wong, and others have recently conducted a large scale survey on black, Latino/a, Asian American, and white attitudes. Their findings suggest that when whites live closer to blacks, their negative attitudes about blacks increase.

Now if the “positive black images” argument was correct, we’d imagine that whites who live around “upper class” blacks (or “blacks who act right”) would have better attitudes than whites who live around working class or poorer blacks right?

Nope.

Finally, Pup brings up a whole host of citations from Cathy Cohen’s project, noting that most black youth find rap distasteful–at least the stuff played over the airwaves.

Now if blacks are actually responsible for our depiction in the media here, this piece of data would go the opposite way. That is, most black youth would be ok with the current form of rap music, and those of us representing the old school would have to go toe to toe with the kids in order to get them to act right.

But that’s not what we’re seeing here.

There is a casual tendency to take kneejerk reactions against black people in cases like this. Although it’s usually presented as “tough love” or even as “old school” there is really only one word for it: accommodationist. We’ve got to fight against this tendency with all of our might, whenever it rears its ugly head.

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Accomodationism refers to the ideology taken up by blacks in the Jim Crow era. Given the pervasive nature of Jim Crow terrorism blacks had to decide whether (and how) to fight, or to go along to get along. This latter strategy involved using various means to change the self-image of black people as well as their image in the minds of whites. It also involved various forms of self-help either through religious, fraternal, professional, or educational institutions, or through various media publications. But the one strategy that was largely disavowed was that of political and economic action against the terrorist regime. The best way for black success was to accept the contours of Jim Crow and to do everything they could to help themselves within those confines (along with getting out of the way of whites).

What we are dealing with now is nothing less than a new form of racial accomodationism. When was the last time that someone posited that structural factors were responsible for black life chances, without qualification? That is, instead of saying “well, we know that some police have it out for black people…but yet and still black crime is real”, saying “some police have it out for black people and we need to figure out how to deal with this.”

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They note the following:

1) Policing is a stressful, difficult and dangerous job that no sane person wants to do.

2) Police officers (some who are also persons of color) have been killed in the line of duty leaving families (like the victim’s in this case) orphaned and widowed. The key difference is that Sharpton, to my knowledge has not shown up for cases like these.

3) And of course, you do have reprehensible cases of police misconduct and corruption.

And black/Latino communities have to keep in mind the following (some context deleted for space reasons):

1) The police have to discern who has criminal intent in an atmosphere that idolizes rebel behavior thanks to commercial hip hop imagery. Gone are the days when the heroes and villians wore opposing color schemes. Now there are legions of Black and Brown youth, whose fashion sense and mannerisms mimic those comprised of the thug element. Many are not criminals but (a la 50 cent) how is one to tell the difference between a gangsta and a wanksta.

2) Not only do you have a street culture that has risen to mythic proportions but also street ethics that manifest in “stop snitchin’” policies-the ghetto version of the Italian omerta.

3) And lastly, we have a youth culture that unfortunately fulfill the stereotypes that have been ascribed to them. In the Bell case, all three parties had numerous arrests for drug and weapon charges in the past.

Questions:

• When the writers say “of course there are some reprehensible cases of police misconduct” what do they mean? Are they saying that this is a part of the job? That we should except misconduct as routine? How is this misconduct distributed? Are Manhattan socialites as likely to be the victim of misconduct as Puerto Rican working class men? If not, why not?
• If no sane person would take the job of the police, then are we to believe that the police are in fact, insane?
• The three aspects of black/Latino life they focus on are modern in nature. Is police brutality against communities of color a modern phenomenon?
• Did the police know about Bell’s record before he was shot and killed? Is this why they sought to stop him?

If we don’t take into account the stated purpose of the police, as well as the historical trajectory of their development vis a vis black communities, then it is very easy to take Afronerd’s point of view. But if we take into account the fact that police are paid by our taxes to protect us, then the first viewpoint we should think about are those of the citizens they are supposed to protect. Further if we understand that police misconduct is not a “natural” part of the job, in as much as it is targeted towards certain populations, and that this misconduct is not a modern response to hip-hop, then rather than taking some brutality for granted (and blaming it on hip-hop), we’d likely take a more sensible approach to crime fighting and to police behavior.

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Now I guess I could be persuaded to believe otherwise. But then again if you pressed hard enough you could convince me that the tigers lost last night.

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But anyway, the problems with Iraq, with Foley, with Afghanistan, all point to gross negligence, incompetence, and (in the Foley case) a crass desire for power that knows no end.

(An aside on the Foley issue. The Nation has an excellent piece on Foley arguing that if he would have been able to come out of the closet and be who he was then perhaps this would not have happened. For what it is worth I believe them to be right.)

Anyway. Let’s say that the entire political landscape was different, and the political interests that you as a voter prefer run the entire government…and that government does exactly what you want it to. If you knew that this government would not only be replaced by that of your political opponents, but they would be TOTALLY INCOMPETENT…how big would you want your government to be? The Republican Administration is the worst administration I have ever seen from top to bottom. They are incompetent, corrupt, and millenial. Not to mention classist, racist, sexist, etc. etc.

I believe in a government large enough to counter private corporate interests. But times like this? I want government to be small enough that these people (and those that voted for them) can’t do any more damage.

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