Is Bill Cosby Right? by Michael Eric Dyson
Dyson, Michael Eric. 2005. Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? New York: Basic Civitas Books.
46 - The civil rights movement perceived universalism in the guiding ideals of democracy and justice that should benefit all peoples. The movement argued that the "self-evident" claims of humanity for each community must be respected;
47 - one needn't destroy one's particular identity to fit in. As W.E.B. Du Bois argued in 1903, black folk didn't want to lose our identity as the price of our survival. [. . .] Unlike Du Bois, Cosby didn't see that black identities needn't give up their particular ethnic or racial slants to be universal; that's a false dichotomy engineered by the white merchants of a variety of universalism that seeks to project the normative as the universal. The two surely aren't the same.
80 - But I also thought of Elizabeth Chin's marvelous ethnographic study of the consumer behavior of poor black children, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture [. . .] Chin contends that black youth are not the "combat consumers" they are portrayed as being: either captives of a powerful fetish for brand names or predatory consumers willing to steal for Air Jordans or kill for a bike [. . .] Chin also notices that, unlike their middle-class and upper-class peers, the children she studied were made profoundly conscious of what it costs to clothe, feed and take care of them; hence, they usually spent part of the money they had on nec-
81 - essary, not pleasurable, itens. Chin explains her work in a powerful anecdote about the prejeduice she confronted and, by extension, the black youth she studied, in examining the consumer behavior of black youth. She says she had developed, as do most researchers, a one-line response to questions at cocktail parties about the nature of her research in New Haven.
[page 255, note 44.] Elizabeth Chin, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 60-61
92 - None of this is meant to dismiss black crime or serve a s an apologia for destructive behavior, but it is necessary to under-
93 - line the social and personal forces that drive criminal activity, even as we fight against an unjust criminal justice system that targets black men with vicious regularity. I speak as one who has been a victim of crime.
178 - Even Cosby's attacks on single black mothers contain an irony: Their numbers have actually gone down. In 1970, for black females between ages fifteen and seventeen, there were 72 pregnancies per 1,000, while in 2000, there were 30.9 per 1,000 [note 83]
[page 268, note 83.] From Michael Males, cited in Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Mushmouth Reconsider: you Can't Say That on TV--But Bill Cosby Can," Village Voice, July 13, 2004
212 - I suggest that we hold in mind several dimensions of responsibility, summarized in the dynamic, reciprocal relation between three interrelated types of responsibility: personal and social responsibility, moral and intellectual responsibility, and immediate and ultimate responsibility. Personal responsibility involves the individual's being accountable for her actions and acting in a
213 - moral fashion that is helpful to herself and to the members of her family, community and society. Social responsibility involves the society's exercising collective accountability to its citizens by acting, through agencies (social services, psychological services and the like), institutions (schools, religious organizations, governmment and the like), and spheres (private and public employment and the like) to enhance their well-being, especially the most vulnerable. [. . .]
Moral responsibility involves self- and other-regarding behavior that aims to realize the good intentions, and maximize the just actions, of persons and societies. Intellectual responsibility involves the exercise of mental faculty for the purpose of self-development and the development of society. [. . .]
Immediate responsibility involves persons and societies acting accountably to address issues, ideas and problems in
214 - the present time and environment. Ultimate responsibility involves persons and societies acting accountably to address issues, ideas and problems with an eye on their personal and social impact in the long run. [ . . .]
These meanings of responsibility should be kept in mind as we make demands for the poor to be more responsible. Too often we fail to give them credit for how they are already being personally and morally responsible, given the conditions they confront [. . .] We have at the same time failed to calculate, or to as aggressively demand, social responsibility toward the poor.
227 - One of the most dishonest effects of elevating Cosby as a spokesman of black interests is that conservative commentators pretends that he is the first prominent black leader to call for personal responsibility. [. . .] One conservative white columnist praised Cosby's bravery for airing dirty laundry while decrying the "complete breakdown of leadership within the [black] community," claiming that folk like Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson have "spent the past 20 years telling the black community that their problems are due to the white man keeping them down." [. . .] Farrakhan, of course, has been promoting a gospel of black self-help for decades, and while he assaults white supremacy, he recognizes the virtue of black folk, including the black poor, assuming responsibility for their destinies. [. . .]
228 - Sharpton has constantly applauded the virtues of hard work and self-determining action for black fol. And Jesse Jackson is in a long list of leaders who have understood the dynamic relationship between personal and social responsibility.
46 - The civil rights movement perceived universalism in the guiding ideals of democracy and justice that should benefit all peoples. The movement argued that the "self-evident" claims of humanity for each community must be respected;
47 - one needn't destroy one's particular identity to fit in. As W.E.B. Du Bois argued in 1903, black folk didn't want to lose our identity as the price of our survival. [. . .] Unlike Du Bois, Cosby didn't see that black identities needn't give up their particular ethnic or racial slants to be universal; that's a false dichotomy engineered by the white merchants of a variety of universalism that seeks to project the normative as the universal. The two surely aren't the same.
80 - But I also thought of Elizabeth Chin's marvelous ethnographic study of the consumer behavior of poor black children, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture [. . .] Chin contends that black youth are not the "combat consumers" they are portrayed as being: either captives of a powerful fetish for brand names or predatory consumers willing to steal for Air Jordans or kill for a bike [. . .] Chin also notices that, unlike their middle-class and upper-class peers, the children she studied were made profoundly conscious of what it costs to clothe, feed and take care of them; hence, they usually spent part of the money they had on nec-
81 - essary, not pleasurable, itens. Chin explains her work in a powerful anecdote about the prejeduice she confronted and, by extension, the black youth she studied, in examining the consumer behavior of black youth. She says she had developed, as do most researchers, a one-line response to questions at cocktail parties about the nature of her research in New Haven.
"I'm studying the role of consumption in the lives of poor and working-class black children." Here I would more often than not get a knowing look. "Ah," the response would be, "you must have seen a lot of Air Jordans.". . . "Actually, no," I'd answer. "I only saw two pairs of Air Jordans on the kids I worked with." [T}his statement was nearly always met with incredulity. More than once people responded with something to the effect of "There must have been something wrong with your sample.". . . [T]hese comments also disturb me because so many people seemed to prefer haning on to ideas about poor black kids that had been gleaned from the pseudo experience provided by the kinds of news stories I have so extensively critiqued in the preceding pages. Like the terms inner city and ghetto, the "Air Jordans" response to thinking about poor and working-class black children and consumption obscures more about those children than it reveals.44
[page 255, note 44.] Elizabeth Chin, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 60-61
92 - None of this is meant to dismiss black crime or serve a s an apologia for destructive behavior, but it is necessary to under-
93 - line the social and personal forces that drive criminal activity, even as we fight against an unjust criminal justice system that targets black men with vicious regularity. I speak as one who has been a victim of crime.
178 - Even Cosby's attacks on single black mothers contain an irony: Their numbers have actually gone down. In 1970, for black females between ages fifteen and seventeen, there were 72 pregnancies per 1,000, while in 2000, there were 30.9 per 1,000 [note 83]
[page 268, note 83.] From Michael Males, cited in Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Mushmouth Reconsider: you Can't Say That on TV--But Bill Cosby Can," Village Voice, July 13, 2004
212 - I suggest that we hold in mind several dimensions of responsibility, summarized in the dynamic, reciprocal relation between three interrelated types of responsibility: personal and social responsibility, moral and intellectual responsibility, and immediate and ultimate responsibility. Personal responsibility involves the individual's being accountable for her actions and acting in a
213 - moral fashion that is helpful to herself and to the members of her family, community and society. Social responsibility involves the society's exercising collective accountability to its citizens by acting, through agencies (social services, psychological services and the like), institutions (schools, religious organizations, governmment and the like), and spheres (private and public employment and the like) to enhance their well-being, especially the most vulnerable. [. . .]
Moral responsibility involves self- and other-regarding behavior that aims to realize the good intentions, and maximize the just actions, of persons and societies. Intellectual responsibility involves the exercise of mental faculty for the purpose of self-development and the development of society. [. . .]
Immediate responsibility involves persons and societies acting accountably to address issues, ideas and problems in
214 - the present time and environment. Ultimate responsibility involves persons and societies acting accountably to address issues, ideas and problems with an eye on their personal and social impact in the long run. [ . . .]
These meanings of responsibility should be kept in mind as we make demands for the poor to be more responsible. Too often we fail to give them credit for how they are already being personally and morally responsible, given the conditions they confront [. . .] We have at the same time failed to calculate, or to as aggressively demand, social responsibility toward the poor.
227 - One of the most dishonest effects of elevating Cosby as a spokesman of black interests is that conservative commentators pretends that he is the first prominent black leader to call for personal responsibility. [. . .] One conservative white columnist praised Cosby's bravery for airing dirty laundry while decrying the "complete breakdown of leadership within the [black] community," claiming that folk like Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson have "spent the past 20 years telling the black community that their problems are due to the white man keeping them down." [. . .] Farrakhan, of course, has been promoting a gospel of black self-help for decades, and while he assaults white supremacy, he recognizes the virtue of black folk, including the black poor, assuming responsibility for their destinies. [. . .]
228 - Sharpton has constantly applauded the virtues of hard work and self-determining action for black fol. And Jesse Jackson is in a long list of leaders who have understood the dynamic relationship between personal and social responsibility.
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