A lot of folks have e-mailed me recently about the Cosby piece. I would say they fall into two camps--black followers of Booker T. Washington, or white people who believe that black folks have consigned themselves to the demographic basement. Better, smarter, more literate folks than me have hit this one out the park. Kenneth Jackson's incredible Crabgrass Frontier includes some devastating chapters on how black folks were essentially excluded from FDR's housing programs. Ira Katznelson's book, When Affirmative Action Was White, does a fine job showing how FDR was forced by Southern Democrats to exclude black people from many of the other programs which basically subsidized the middle class in this country.
There are reams of stats showing blacks lagging behind whites. I think virtually all of them are irrelevant save one--the difference in wealth between black and white America. The great Dalton Conley (who I had the chance to interview, but regrettably, not quote) has written movingly about how many of the differences between blacks and whites are actually differences in wealth. Social scientists who simply try to control for income, and then wonder why blacks still lag are missing the point. As arguably the greatest black intellectual of our time, Chris Rock, once noted, "Shaq is rich, the white man who signs his check is wealthy...Wealth is passed down from generation to generation, you can't get rid of wealth. Rich is some shit you can loose with a crazy summer and a drug habit."
That was the message of Booker T, and from that perspective he was right. The Du Bois faction overlooked the great power of economics, and how wealth allows you to bend society and--if your cause is just--make things right. But, equally, Booker T took an incredibly pollyannish view of America at large, and the white South in particular.
Nothing else so soon brings about right relations between the two races in the South as the industrial progress of the negro. Friction between the races will pass away in proportion as the black man, by reason of his skill, intelligence, and character, can produce something that the white man wants or respects in the commercial world.
The logic of that works fine--except one thing. Booker T wrote that in
1896, just as whites were terrorizing black folks throughout the South
and attempting to running them off of land which they owned. It wasn't like Southern whites were willing to stand by and let blacks cultivate themselves and eventually compete with them. As the great cry of the day went, Would you want one of em marryin yer daughter? People who say that black folks screwed up by not following Booker T miss the point--black folks did try to follow Booker T--and in rather in large numbers. The history on this isn't even debatable. Check out this series done by the AP some seven years ago, which documents years of land theft from black folks attempting to cast down their buckets, as Booker T advised. Dig the history of black Wall-Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma where prominent black folks who, again, were following the lead of Booker T were burnt-out and scattered by angry whites. The entire Great Migration was fueled by black people fleeing the South in the hopes of--not enrolling at Ivy League schools--but securing jobs doing manual labor, just as Booker T suggested.
This isn't just theoretical for me. My spouse's great-grandfather was ran off his land in Tennessee after he got into an altercation with some local whites, and feared being lynched. He fled to Chicago and lost his farm. That's wealth that would have gone to my son and his cousins. To say that black haven't tried the boot-strap method requires an incredibly literal ignorance of American history.
Where does that put us now? The greatest challenge we face lay in not perpetrating the foolishness of black leadership past, by adopting an either/or approach which doesn't grapple with the complexity of America. We have to stop the dumb formula of, either it's us or it's the white man. In fact, no actual black person thinks that simplistically. But our intellectual dialouge has been frozen in this cartoonish pattern. We have to learn to insist on the best from ourselves, while at the same time not speaking like the sins of the past have absolutely no effect on the problems of today. The black/white wealth gap is a DIRECT result of this government either knowingly attempting to suppress black attempts to create wealth, or simply looking the other way while racist thugs did it for them.
But here is where Cosby is right--it now falls to us to fix this thing. It's important that Chris Rock ends that monologue with a critique of black spending habits.In a perfect world, steps would be taken to heal what was done to us. But this is a country, like all country's, which is flawed. We're the great blind-spot. The sooner we accept that. The sooner we can change it--not by protest and pleading, but through the only means anything ever really changes anything when dealing with human beings--through power.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Where have you been? I've been saying the identical thing, even down to the Chris Rock quote. I have a feeling that I'm going to be hanging around here for a while. Can't wait until I determine our differences.
So let me ask you this. In my scheme of things, I have held out some hope for what I call 'Aggregation', which is essentially what one expects to find upon moving to the promised land of Atlanta, 'The Black Mecca' and instead only finding a kind of nouveau riche ultra-class clash.
Is black wealth going to be passed down through family inheritance or through institutional inheritance?
It seems to me that many black liberals think that the latter is bound to occur (or else). And that means, specifically the legacy of the 'wealth' of Affirmative Action. I think they seek for it to be a political concession in perpetuity for which endless generations of African Americans must always be thankful. The destruction of the edifice of Affirmative Action by degrees is lamented like a house passed down to children, as the ministers might say, with a foundation built on sand.
I happen to think that wealth, and blackness for that matter, will only be successfully passed down as a private affair - the old fashioned way as is the rule of history. Why we should be any different is beyond me, but not apparently out of the question. But I still wonder if any Aggregation of any sort will take place. Might it be The Boule? Might there be a sort of corporate blackness, some closely held enterprise? As time goes by, I think the incentive to do so fails. After all, what did the NFL do? What did the NBA do? What did hiphop do? We got to the point of college scholarships in our black on black endowments, but not much more, and Oprah's exception may have sealed that tomb for good.
Yet and still, I'd like to entertain the fantasy that an America with eight or nine Reginald Lewis sized billionaires might rebuild Tulsa or some other municipality in their own image, and the next Prince George's County might work at a whole new level. But I'm not holding my breath.
Thanks for stopping in.
Re: Wealth Building.
It will almost certainly be a private affair. I'm dubious about the actual affects of affirmative action, for the better or worse. Affirmative Action in education generates a lot of headlines, but a shockingly large number of black professionals still come from HBCUs. I don't really heap much scorn on Affirmative Action though, mostly because if I were a policy-maker with dictatorial power and looked at the history of black folks here, I would try to right the obvious wrong.
But that ain't happening, so I think debates over whether it should be the govt or us are basically moot. It WILL be us. I think those who are in public office should look for smart ways to remedy the wealth gap. A good start has to be prison reform and--as I have said repeatedly--an extension of the EITC to noncustodial fathers.
I am encouraged by Atlanta. We have to remember that wealth-building is a long-term exercise. I expect to see the fruits of all this, not in my children, but in my grandchildren.
Your post and the Cosby piece reminds me of this poem by Dudley Randall:
"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"
"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook,
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain."
"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"That all you folks have missed the boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house."
"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail?
Unless you help to make the laws,
They'll steal your house with trumped-up clause.
A rope's as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you've got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I'll be a man."
"It seems to me," said Booker T.--
"I don't agree,"
Said W.E.B.
If you look at Du Bois’ later life it is a kind of repudiation of all of his arguments, and likewise Booker T. leaving the world a college that he built with his own sweat and tears is an affirmation of his arguments. Live your beliefs and see where it gets you.
The poem above is just a logical extension of Ta-Nehisi’s whole piece… the poor black man can’t get up because economic opportunity and inherited wealth were denied him. Forget that the poor are always faced with this challenge, here, everywhere. Forget that minorities in this country all face similar obstacles. Forget that race and religious violence and discrimination are a huge part of American history, black white red catholic jewish muslim japanese irish arabic. Forget that anyone, from any generation, can lose their middle class inheritance to economic and family misfortune.
Remember that Booker T, in a land with less opportunity and more prejudice and a greater history of oppression, economic opportunity deprivation, and zero inherited wealth, left a college in his wake. With less than any of us, any where, he left a college. Remember that.
If you look at Du Bois’ later life it is a kind of repudiation of all of his arguments, and likewise Booker T. leaving the world a college that he built with his own sweat and tears is an affirmation of his arguments. Live your beliefs and see where it gets you.
The poem above is just a logical extension of Ta-Nehisi’s whole piece… the poor black man can’t get up because economic opportunity and inherited wealth were denied him. Forget that the poor are always faced with this challenge, here, everywhere. Forget that minorities in this country all face similar obstacles. Forget that race and religious violence and discrimination are a huge part of American history, black white red catholic jewish muslim japanese irish arabic. Forget that anyone, from any generation, can lose their middle class inheritance to economic and family misfortune.
Remember that Booker T, in a land with less opportunity and more prejudice and a greater history of oppression, economic opportunity deprivation, and zero inherited wealth, left a college in his wake. With less than any of us, any where, he left a college. Remember that.