Black liberals and Black conservatives--Can we hug now?
I've got a piece coming out in this month's Atlantic, which attempts to place Bill Cosby in, what Professor Christopher Alan Bracey calls, the organic black conservative tradition. In that space I see folks like Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Macolm X, hell, maybe even David Walker. The point I try to make is that it's wrong to see black conservativism, strictly, as the province of fools like Alan Keyes or ragaholics like Clarence Thomas. We have to concede that Louis Farrakhan, the man who led us to the mall, is a black conservative--if a somewhat nutty one. We have to concede that Malcolm, in all likelihood, probably would have been pro-life. (As a die-hard Malcolmite, I'm just dying for some reader to correct me on this, by the way).
I'm not a Black progressive. I'm a progressive Black man. In the Black side of the blog networks we kinda worked out a couple of years ago that Black Conservatives are not the same thing as conservative Black folks. To be clear on the difference, you just have to examine the noun phrase. Which word is the noun and which the adjective?
We focused on Black Conservatives because they were the most...what, problematic is a good word. Only Black Republicans were more insulting to your typical Black guy. Fact is, though, the same noun phrase logic applies to Black Liberals and Progressives as to Black Conservatives and Neoconfederates. Which word is the noun, which the adjective?
You get to hug folks that share your noun. Are you a Conservative? You get to hug Conservative, be they Black, white, whatever. Just picture Ward Connerly hugging Malcolm X. I dare you.
Still, I'll probably read the article when it's published.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Newsvine
Furl
Google
Yahoo
Good point about
Good point about conservative black folks not being the same Black Conservatives. That's worth some consideration.
Just in case
Here is a link to the Atlantic Monthly article.
I suppose I'm a conservative Black person
socially, but I'm not a Black Conservative, and don't know if I could really talk with Black Conservatives. Some, maybe. Others, hell no.
The limits of Cosby's
The limits of Cosby's politics are captured in the following excerpt from the article:
When Cosby came to St. Paul Church in Detroit, one local judge got up and urged Cosby and other black celebrities to donate more money to advance the cause. “I didn’t fly out here to write a check,” Cosby retorted. “I’m not writing a check in Houston, Detroit, or Philadelphia. Leave these athletes alone. All you know is Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jackson. Forget about a check … This is how we lost to the white man. ‘Judge said Bill Cosby is gonna write a check, but until then … ’”
I suspect that the degree of
I suspect that the degree of prominence being given to Bill Cosby and his straighten up and fly right campaign is another sad reminder of how pervasive and invasive popular culture has become in the black community. When a person whose primary schtick is to tell jokes and make us laugh and eat Jell-O pudding manages to become, whether intentional or not, in the public's mind the leading moral arbiter of our community, a tectonic shift of cultural and social values has occurred without debate, discussion or understanding.
Traditional black leadership, and I am not referring here to the heads of black advocacy organizations, has simply ceded the ground and abdicated its historic role in providing guidance and direction to our community. In fact, too many of them seem too dazzled by the accoutrements of popular culture and celebrity to recognize the real dangers of allowing entertainers - even entertainers with Ed.D degrees - to play the role that Cosby is now playing for the black community.
One of the more debilitating consequences of the current Cosby Show is that it furthers weakens the already tenuous understanding that the black community has for influencing and changing public policy. Let's not fool ourselves here. Despite all of the anti-government, individual initiative, fend for yourself rhetoric that the American public has been bombarded with for the past 40 years, government at all levels has and continues to play a major and decisive role in determining who gets what and why in America. It has always been that way and, at last report, it will continue to be that way.