12 posts tagged “race”

Chimaobi Amutah
EDSE  647
Book Review

Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has The Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?
by Michael Eric Dyson

    Each year in cities and towns large and small throughout the United States races for municipal office seem to boil down to two dominant, pervasive, and recurrent political issues: public safety and public education. Crime and education are so important to citizens because they concern not only the voters themselves but, most often, their invaluably precious children. Whether one looks at statistics outlining arrest and incarceration rates or dropout and literacy rates, the racial group doing the worst across the board is Blacks. Myriad theories have been put forth as to why this is the case and a plethora of articles and books have been published based on formal, scientific research as well as informal observation and reflection. In the book Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has The Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? by venerable Georgetown University professor of sociology and cultural commentator Michael Eric Dyson, Dyson reflects on Bill Cosby’s take on why the community that he is a part of seems to fare so poorly in this society.
    The book’s antecedents lie in a highly controversial speech that Bill Cosby delivered in May 2004 after receiving an award at a commemoration event paying homage to the historic Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision of 1954. In his speech, Cosby decried the state of Black youth today who speak improper English, fervently pursue careers as athletes and rappers, and lack the basic self-discipline and motivation to make anything of themselves, their families, and their communities. Cosby’s comments sparked a firestorm of responses, most critically from other Blacks who felt as though Cosby’s age, wealth, and fame have left him out of touch with the current youth of the Black community and thus disqualifies him from making such generalized and hyper-critical statements. Michael Eric Dyson was one such critic who has made a point of combatting Cosby’s harsh rhetoric.
    In his book, Dyson, in true social scientist form, makes the case that extrinsic issues are more to blame for the myriad issues facing urban Black youth of today than a lack of quality parenting as Cosby professes. Dyson points to still-present and documented institutional racism that accounts for police arresting and charging Blacks at rates much higher than other racial groups as well as prosecutors seeking trial and incarceration more often than plea bargaining and judges issuing lengthier prison stays for Blacks. Dyson places Cosby in the same tradition as other elitist Blacks throughout U.S. history who were heavily critical of Blacks who they felt embarrassed the race, particularly in front of Whites--the “Afristocrats” as Dyson cleverly deems them. He makes these points all the more personal with regards to Bill Cosby by pointing to Cosby’s own struggles as a parent such as fathering a daughter out of wedlock and having another daughter publicly struggle with overcoming a drug addiction.
    This book is highly pertinent to the work that we as educators do, particularly at my current school. The KIPP network of charter schools in general and KIPP Delta in particular prides itself on working in rough inner-city and rural communities with majority-Black and Latino students from low-income backgrounds. One of the hallmarks of KIPP is discipline and the lengths to which we go to have our students speak, sit, walk, and even read with proper etiquette is amazing. Visitors to our school from local farming groups to the Governor of Arkansas remark at how amazingly well-behaved, courteous, and well-spoken our students are. This behavior seems to fly in the face of their preconceived notion that our students would be the type of students that Bill Cosby lambasted so passionately back in 2004. Our poor, Black students are expected to be loud, speak improperly, get into fights, and not have high standardized test scores. Far too often, students internalize these expectations and they morph into self-fulfilling prophecies. Thus, Dyson is correct in saying that low-quality parenting is not the predominant factor contributing to the state of Black youth today. Sadly, a lack of exposure to their own possibilities and a dearth of self-esteem are more deserve a greater share of the blame.

Today, the Clarion-Ledger published this article about Jackson recording its 73rd murder of the year. The article states that the murders have happened in every corner of the city (NO: Belhaven is not an island of non-violence in the midst of Hades) and for a variety of reasons (NO: Not all murders are drug dealers who hate each other wantonly shooting at one another). It looks like Jackson is going to have one of the highest murder rates in the nation again. Eh...

Makes me wanna gag and hurl. The students at Harvard are by-and-large herded into careers that put people before profits (shoutout to my boy Philip Parham '09 who appears in the video, however). It relates to another discussion going on as well.

Sad that I have to read about this from a French media outlet but hey...it's better than the regular news out of Trenton!

http://alternet.org/story/71290/

and the original:

http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html

the truth is a hard pill to swallow, MTCers.

This was a very interesting weekend to be in New Orleans. I came to visit one of my college roommates who is doing some pseudo-reputable alternative route teaching program. It just so happens that this weekend is also when various major public housing developments in New Orleans were scheduled to be demolished. People have called this "a hate crime against poor people" and the issue has not only garnered the attention of local activists but Capitol Hill. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to President Bush asking him to halt the demolition of four public housing developments in New Orleans: St.Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper. Now some of these names may be unfamiliar to many of you but I know the names of all these "projects" because of them being mentioned in myriad rap songs by New Orleans natives. More specifically, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper are known as the infamous Magnolia and Calliope Projects, respectively. They've produced the likes of Master P, C-Murder, Baby, Juvenile, and Soulja Slim. Most of these rappers respect their project affiliation like a national flag. I wouldn't be surprised if each of these aforementioned rappers had the name of their projects tattooed somewhere on their body like so:

In this pic, you can see Juvenile's arms which have "'Nolia Boy" tattooed on them ("'Nolia" being a reference to the Magnolia Projects, of course). His love for his hood runs deep, I'm sure.

However, a question that has come up as I talked to my college roommate and his girlfriend about this issue in New Orleans is whether or not many former residents of these projects even want to return to these notoriously old and dilapidated buildings that make up these insanely violent projects. Although my college roommate will be quick to state that, even post-Katrina with a reduced population, New Orleans is still the murder capital of the Western world (a definite overstatement) the reality is that New Orleans is still highly violent today, though far better than its heyday (?) in 1994 when 421 people were killed and it gained the title of "murder capital." That year the homicide rate was a stomach-churning 86 per 100,000 residents--unmatched by any other city in the U.S. to date. Most of the most dangerous cities in the nations (a la Detroit, Compton, D.C., Baltimore, East St.Louis) have murder rates between 45 and 60 so New Orleans', former rate should be placed in that context. In light of these realities and the equally notorious public educational system in New Orleans many people are saying that it's time to destroy and rebuild. Why would former residents come back to a place like pre-Katrina New Orleans?

In Teacher Corps, class is often talked about over race. The program attempts to regard our work as being with poor kids even though my school is more Black (97%) than poor (95%...as determined by the percentage of students who receive free/reduced price meals). The class issues at play in New Orleans with regards to housing has definitely hit home for me as my neighborhood in Belzoni is the bougie part of town. What most of those in power are hoping to do, at best, is to turn the projects set for demolishing into mixed-income developments. Large swaths of entire neighborhoods may be demolished under the rebuilding plan from early last year and presently people are seeing mixed income developments as the way to go. I worked in a mixed-income housing complex in inner-city Boston while in college and it has its ups and downs (generally speaking). Ups: nicer housing, less crime, more green space. Downs: fewer units, more expensive surrounding businesses, potential loss of sense of community. I feel strange living in a neighborhood as segregated by class as my own. Poor(er) people live on that side of Belzoni. They generally work in service industries at fast food restaurants, in the catfish plant, or don't work at all. My neighborhood is one of professionals. Many teachers live there as well as the superintendent, police chief, and fire chief and various medical personnel, insurance agents, and catfish plant managers. Where is the balance? Should we even be looking for a balance?

World History Nine Weeks Exam Question:
During the Cold War, the nations that were in conflict supported violence against each other's allies through the manipulation of smaller, weaker, and poorer nations around the world. Usually, these nations had majority Black, Asian, and Latino citizens whereas the nations that a were getting these people to fight had majority White populations. Why do you think they did this? Was it a good or a bad thing.

One student's answer:
The reason why I think they did that was because the only thing we showed White people how to do is drop out of school and have babies. We're too lazy to do anything. I think that was a good thing because they probably weren't going to fight. White people probably will get the job done.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I saw this when I was reading the Clarion-Ledger yesterday and wanted to blog about it. The U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommitte on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection held a hearing on stereotypes and degrading images in the African-American community and called in a variety of "witnesses" from the CEO of Viacom (owner of MTV, BET, and myriad other entertainment media outlets) to Mississippi's own David Banner, a Jackson native and Provine alum who has gone on to become one of the most consistently politically vocal rappers in the mainstream today.

Video of the hearing can be streamed from C-Span.Org and here is a link:

http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp?Cat=Current_Event&Code=Congress&ShowVidNum=7&Rot_Cat_CD=Congress&Rot_HT=&Rot_WD=&ShowVidDays=365&ShowVidDesc=&ArchiveDays=30

The issue of rap's lyrics and the content of videos is anything but novel though I have never before seen it discussed in this venue. The focus of the hearing was mainly how (if at all) degrading the lyrics and videos of mainstream rap music today are to women. I didn't see or hear about any females on the panel of witnesses, however...especially those whose bodies were displayed across video screens in the room where the hearing occurred like this:

CEO of Viacom, Inc. (Philippe Dauman)

the more they stay the same.

This comes the same week I defended Ole Miss from my students who felt that the Rebel mascot was racist. Go figure.

Ole Miss

Apparently, the New York Times is reporting that a number of towns in Louisiana have decided that sagging your pants in public is a criminal offense that should be subject to fines or jail time. I think these people have hit a new low (no pun intended). Outside the fact that this is clearly aimed at Black males and is another attempt in the long line of the established order dictating what is good and proper for the "lower" social, economic, and racial classes, it's really about a group of people in power preventing another group of people without power from freely expressing themselves or doing something that's displeasing to the powerful group's visual and cultural senses.

More embarrassingly, one of my city councilors from Trenton actually endorses this ridiculousness and is in the process of bringing a similar ordinance to my home town. Right. Having Black males wear belts is going to make Trenton High better, get the Bloods out of every neighborhood, and fill the potholes on my street (2nd St....I can know when I'm on my street even when I have my eyes closed because I know where every pothole is...they've been there for as far back as I can remember...at least a decade). This is soooooo not the thing that politicians and legislators should be focusing on.

It's strange how I disagree with laws like these though numerous times a day I tell my students to pull their pants up/tuck in their shirt. Am I part of the controlling apparatus of the state? Dang. Gotta keep working on that Freire...