Archive for April 14th, 2008

Here’s a video of the rap battle that’s been burnin up the internet all weekend. I…man, I ain’t even gon’ comment on it. It speaks for itself.

I’m thoroughly intrigued by what Ta-Nehisi Coates describes as the “organic Black conservative” tradition. He points it out both in his blog and in his article on Bill Cosby in the Atlantic Monthly. In looking to bridge the not-as-big-as-we-act-like-it-really-is gap between Black liberals conservatives, Coates identifies himself as a “left-libertarian.”

I do believe that black folks are ultimately responsible for their own fate. I do believe that the greatest problem we face, right now, is putting black fathers back in the home. I am wholly uninterested in the grieve-a-thon between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters which seeks to determine whether it’s harder for a white woman or black man in America. I just really don’t care, and think it’s utterly counterproductive to sit around and try to figure it out. Ditto for “coalition building.” I’m not interested in building bridges to Latino or to Jewish communities. Beyond attending a few panels populated by professional talkers (like yours truly), I don’t even know what that tangibly means, nor do I know what relevance it has to the average brother here in Harlem. I support the rights of virtually anyone to come to this country and work the crappy jobs that Americans won’t work, and the better ones that most of us are too stupid to work. I support tangible things which I can feel, touch and see, and broach no quarter for intangibles like “patriarchy,” and “white supremacy.” I don’t really care if Don Imus is on the air or not.

Sound conservative? Meh, I don’t know. I’m green as all get-out. I believe that government needs to–specifically–look at ways to help black men. Let’s start by expanding the EITC to noncustodial fathers, ending the drug war, and reinventing the criminal justice system. Let’s look at the creeping epidemic of obesity and get government involved in convincing people to eat right and get off off thier asses. Know why? Because government is gonna get the bill anyway when they’re laying up in the public hospital–only then it’ll be with interest.

I’m probably right in there with him, or at most, maybe a block over. Because I’ve spent so much time in school, I can’t help but acknowledge the impact of structural forces on the Black community. I would hafta be downright ignorant to act like white supremacy hasn’t been a factor in the way things have happened throughout American (and world, but I tend to focus more on America, cuz this is the here and now that can be impacted) history. Likewise, I’d hafta be blind and dumb to believe that racism has somehow been magically ameliorated because a Black man finally [insert action here]. At the same time, to act like white supremacy as an ideology or racism as an action or set of structures based on that ideology is the biggest factor determining Black folks’ fates seems to me to be robbing us of any sense of agency. Has racism been an obstacle? Yes. Has it been insurmountable? Rarely. That means that, as I’m wont to say, the onus is on us.

Where I tend to veer rightward (to the extent that I actually do, which is another question for another day), it’s in my belief that the government is not the cure for what ails us. (Not in every instance. I agree with Coates that the EITC should be extended to non-custodial parents and that the drug war has been a miserable failure, both in terms of its intended objective and its externalities.) One time I wrote,

This is pretty much where I draw the line and why I stand on the side I do. I can’t really watch movies like Rosewood because they make me want to put on a black leather glove and start smacking people upside the head, but when I read about what happened in places like Rosewood or Black Wall Street in Tulsa, I’m reminded that those people were about getting it done. Forget about the governments refusal to grant them reparations, even though many of them had actually lived during physical slavery, the government was openly hostile to them and actively denying them justice. So what did they do? They got out there and did. I’m right with the activist on some things, but I step to the right when it comes to the solutions. The government is not going to do it; most things, the government couldln’t do, even if the willingness was there. I mean, I can understand the thought process that says “since the government was complicit in doing things to the detriment of Blackfolk, the government should put forth the same effort in redressing those wrongs.” For some folks, affirmative action and welfare (?!) represent that government redress. (Being that Blackfolk aren’t the majority beneficiaries of either one of those, I don’t see how that can be the case.) Whatever. Whether you think it’s owed us or not, we ain’t gettin’ it. And this is not an ideological capitulation, it’s just being pragmatic. Look, racism isn’t going anywhere. Hate to say it, but that’s just a part of our national fabric. And even at that, it’s certainly not what it used to be, but as long as there is material gain to be had by using race as a factor in some decision-making process, racism and all those other -isms will remain. So if Black folks are supposed to wait for the last vestiges of racism, individual or structural, before we make a major move, we might as well quit now. Of course that’s not the solution, and my activist friends know that too. It’s the brothers and sisters with the PhD’s that give the worst reports. What kills me is, they do one thing but say something else, dismissing their own accomplishments as atypical; “I’ve been more fortunate than the average Black person.” Yeah, and you made some better decisions, too. Racism and the legacy of slavery and jim crow and whatever other historical events we’d like to point to can’t explain away everything. My kids didn’t not-know 12*12 because of some unseen link to their ancestors, they just didn’t study. Instead of running off a list of why “the rest of us” can’t, maybe it’s time for us Black folks who have achieved something to focus more on why “we” did and try to break down the barriers between the two.

(are you supposed to blockquote yourself?

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. I’m thinking that Coates is also right about there being some middle ground between Black liberals and conservatives. Actually, I don’t think there’s really a middle ground, because I don’t know that, for most of us, there’s actually any chasm. I think there’s a continuum, but because until recently there has been no overtly political expression for emphasis-on-Black conservative ideology, folks tend to react viscerally to the term “conservative” because of its association with certain white folks. And that’s a tragedy, because I think there’s a whole lot more we can do working together than we can do sitting on our “sides” and pontificating about who’s way is better. (I think this problem is particularly egregious on the internet, but again, that’s a whole nother post.)