Prometheus 6

Carl Jung had an interesting approach to studying spirituality. He recognized he couldn't approach the supernatural stuff directly but he could study the impact people's beliefs had on their personal psychology and behavior. I've tried to take a similar approach in my observations of folks and I've developed a number of ways to model people's behavior. In one of the models I use, a person's world/self view is a narrative. The narrative is 'run' like a program, with current or speculative data as 'inputs,' to make decisions. The narrative develops from each person's interaction with their environment. This model is as bare-bones as a weather model consisting of nothing but the daily temperature plotted on an X-Y grid...but that bare-bones model does display broad but useful patterns. In particular, it models my understanding of Black folks' reaction to Dr. Cosby well.

A requirement of the narrative is that it support the person's sense of who she is and that it must include the facts as she knows them. That "as she knows them" part is crucial...you can't know what was never presented to you. If everything tells you that your original nature is flawed, yet you have a healthy sense of self you will have to go through some serious psychological contortions to build a self-narrative that works. Constantly refuting the negativity, even just to yourself, is exhausting. Freeing yourself from the need to do that constant refutation leaves that personal energy free to be used in other ways.

I've seen this effect in grown men. When I first started writing on race issues I posted an excerpt from Rage of a Privileged Class by Ellis Cose on a bulletin board network. The relief in the responses I got was palpable. The consensus comment was, "I knew I wasn't crazy." It turns out "Damn, was that racist??" is a lot harder to take than, "That was racist, what do I do about it?" because as long as there's a question you have to ask the question at every interaction.

So a lot of work was put in to get more positive...more accurate imagery of Black folks into the mix. We wanted more of those images for young folks to measure themselves against and grow into. It's the reason role models were so over-hyped. It's the reason Black families nationwide tuned into see Lt. Uhuru on Star Trek and Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show. The improved narratives would not be definitive. Only rarely is a single element in one's life definitive. But if one could build a self-narrative without the negative elements the odds shift significantly in the direction of wholeness.

A broad acceptance of Dr. Cosby's approach would actually reverse this.

I have great respect for Dr. Cosby's accomplishments and appreciation for his donations. But that doesn't mean I must give deference when I feel his approach on any given issue is damaging. When people correctly point out that focusing exclusively on the problem portion of our community is inaccurate, his "I don't want to hear that shit" is problematic.

And the fact is, such attacks feel the same coming from Black people as from white people. Worse, actually. Listen to Bev Smith talking to Tony Brown (two conservative Black folks I really respect, irrespective of their particular errors):

...and let me tell you the problem I have with it.

Ms. Smith is aware "behavioral problems" aren't limited to the lower economic class. She is aware the lower economic classes don't have the resources to hide the fact.

And she is equally clear the lower economic classes are the problem.

Straight up, this has been my biggest frustration with conservative Black folks. If you listen to them there's no doubt both Mr. Brown and Ms. Smith are Black partisans. Yet they miss even unsubtle problems.

If the goal is to benefit the community, Dr. Cosby et al are making strategic, not tactical, errors.

WE SEE THE UPPER CLASSES ARE NO BETTER THAN WE. We hear this rhetoric as scapegoating.

Understand?