Ruminations on Cosby and Bush
For a number of reasons I have refrained from weighing in on the recent comments made by Bill Cosby. Many of my colleagues have already dealt with the subject, for one. Another reason is that to an extent, we’ve heard this rhetoric before. Contrary to popular belief, it is not extremely courageous to call poor people lazy or to say that poor black parents are not holding up their end of the bargain. But Bush’s recent snub of the NAACP in favor of the National Urban League caused me to reconsider. I think there is a marked attempt to move people away from explicit political critique and engagement that can actually have beneficial effects if we are aware, but can lead to dissension, division, and crass political attacks against the poor if we are not.
One of the reasons why people don’t tend to fully engage in politics is because they are taught that politics are separate from their lives. It comes into play once every four years with the Presidential Election. It might come into play on the off years when a state governor is elected. And that’s about it — unless folks want you to boycott or to protest. The mundane and most important aspect of politics — monitoring officials, keeping them accountable, and changing local policy — these aspects are often left hanging. To an extent, the critique is still there — we’ve got critiques for days, and these critiques are important — but the actual attempt to create and implement policy too often goes ignored.
When I think about the difference between the NAACP and the Urban League at this moment in time, this is what I think about. The Urban League, by far the more conservative of the two groups, is an “in the meantime” group dedicated to pursuing a set of incremental policy goals that can be fought for and won in that period after the far-spanning critique but before the end result. While to a degree they acknowledge the role of politics in improving the life chances of poor citizens, they are more interested in non-political short-term solutions to the problems of poverty. The NAACP on the other hand, particularly under the leadership of Kweisi Mfume and Julian Bond has made it their business to engage in a trenchant critique of the current administration, and to ensure that people are engaged and prepared to give Bush the door come November.
Cosby’s comments reflect — to a degree anyway — the approach best embodied by the Urban League. Poverty is caused by individual failings, and the best way we can deal with it is to deal with those individuals and their personal behavior — whether it is their language (their supposed inability to speak Standard English), their criminality (their propensity to steal pound-cake), or their parenting habits (more specifically their lack of parenting).
Of course this is the farthest from the truth. Concentrated poverty is not the result of a lot of men deciding to have babies without taking responsibility. Concentrated poverty is not the result of a lot of kids deciding that they don’t want to speak Standard English in (or outside of) school. Concentrated poverty is not even caused by bands of roving pound-cake stealing gangs who routinely have to be shot in the head by police in order to quell their cake-stealing madness.
Concentrated poverty is the result of political processes that have to do with zoning. You want to know why liquor stores are prevalent in poor communities but less prevalent in wealthier ones? Why suburban kids looking for beer often have to drive all the way into the city to get their fix? Look no further than the local zoning board. Zoning processes are often used to both keep poor families out (to exclude multiple-family dwellings for example, or to exclude renters) of middle class neighborhoods, and to keep negative developments (liquor stores, check cashing stores, certain types of billboards) outside of them as well. We know that race plays a role in this dynamic, and important one. But black middle-income brothers and sisters are often as loathe to live with black lower-income brothers and sisters as whites are.
City budgetary processes are also involved. With city budgets being gutted left and right, officials are forced to make hard choices. Which neighborhoods get timely garbage pickup, and which do not? Which neighborhoods have eyesores removed, and which ones don’t? Which parks are kept nice and neat, and which ones are allowed to fall to pot? Neighborhoods in which citizens are active, well off, or (usually) both are given the majority of the resources. Neighborhoods in which citizens are not as active, not as well off, or (usually) both are given the minority of the resources even as they are the ones most in need of them.
Bush doesn’t want to speak to the NAACP because of the two groups the NAACP is more likely to bring this critique up than their counterparts in the Urban League. This doesn’t make the NAACP radical by any stretch of the imagination — they are still way too top heavy with an executive board numbering in the dozens, and much too prone to keeping individual chapters from engaging in issues they feel are important. But in Bush’s eye they (along with Michael Moore) may as well be Communists.
Given these larger political processes that maintain and sustain concentrated poverty at the neighborhood level, it hardly seems right (in an intellectual sense, not a moral one) to condemn the individuals within them. Their behavior may indeed keep some of them from achieving their dreams, but weighing their behavior against the context of their neighborhood it seems to me that the neighborhood context is the true demon. However it is important that we recognize the necessity of being involved on a number of levels simultaneously. In this case, the Urban League gets access to Bush that it can possibly use to leverage resources to deal with poverty and economic hardship in the short term. And hopefully Cosby, rather than taking his Smack Down the Poor Tour on the road, will actually be able to put his money where his mouth is…and invest in programs like The Algebra Project or the Harlem Project.
And the NAACP can take Bush’s snub, and run with it…using it as a clarion call to black men and women to get involved in the political process. I was just at an event this past weekend designed to train youth organizers for the upcoming election and beyond. The last person to speak was a young brother from the NAACP. From what I understand the NAACP is giving local organizations a significant amount of money to both register and educate voters. If this comes to fruition, the end result (at the national level at any rate) should be more attention paid to political processes and policies designed to deal with the long run, and more attention paid to incremental policies designed to deal with the short run. Finally both the Urban League’s willingness to work with Bush, and Cosby’s comments, will further emphasize the necessity of having discussions within black spaces about the issues that both divide and unite us.
(Originally published in Africana.com)
