Cosby's black conservatism

I was slammed hard by several deadlines yesterday, and will be today also, so I apologize for not posting more, or getting to this piece sooner. Ta-Nehisi Coates explores Bill Cosby's brand of black conservatism in this intriguing Atlantic Monthly essay. Excerpt:

The civil-rights generation is exiting the American stage—not in a haze of nostalgia but in a cloud of gloom, troubled by the persistence of racism, the apparent weaknesses of the generation following in its wake, and the seeming indifference of much of the country to black America’s fate. In that climate, Cosby’s gospel of discipline, moral reform, and self-reliance offers a way out—a promise that one need not cure America of its original sin in order to succeed. Racism may not be extinguished, but it can be beaten.

Has Dr. Huxtable, the head of one of America’s most beloved television households, seen the truth: that the dream of integration should never supplant the pursuit of self-respect; that blacks should worry more about judging themselves and less about whether whites are judging them on the content of their character? Or has he lost his mind?

Those beliefs also animate Come On People, the manifesto that Cosby and [psychologist Alvin] Poussaint published last fall. Although it does not totally dismiss government programs, the book mostly advocates solutions from within as a cure for black America’s dismal vital statistics. “Once we find our bearings,” they write, “we can move forward, as we have always done, on the path from victims to victors.” Come On People is heavy on black pride (“no group of people has had the impact on the culture of the whole world that African Americans have had, and much of that impact has been for the good”), and heavier on the idea of the Great Fall—the theory, in this case, that post–Jim Crow blacks have lost touch with the cultural traditions that enabled them to persevere through centuries of oppression.

“For all the woes of segregation, there were some good things to come out of it,” Cosby and Poussaint write. “One was that it forced us to take care of ourselves. When restaurants, laundries, hotels, theaters, groceries, and clothing stores were segregated, black people opened and ran their own. Black life insurance companies and banks thrived, as well as black funeral homes … Such successes provided jobs and strength to black economic well-being. They also gave black people that gratifying sense of an interdependent community.” Although the authors take pains to put some distance between themselves and the Nation of Islam, they approvingly quote one of its ministers who spoke at a call-out in Compton, California: “I went to Koreatown today and I met with the Korean merchants,” the minister told the crowd. “I love them. You know why? They got a place called what? Koreatown. When I left them, I went to Chinatown. They got a place called what? Chinatown. Where is your town?”

The notion of the Great Fall, and the attendant theory that segregation gave rise to some “good things,” are the stock-in-trade of what Christopher Alan Bracey, a law professor at Washington University, calls (in his book, Saviors or Sellouts) the “organic” black conservative tradition: conservatives who favor hard work and moral reform over protests and government intervention, but whose black-nationalist leanings make them anathema to the Heritage Foundation and Rush Limbaugh. When political strategists argue that the Republican Party is missing a huge chance to court the black community, they are thinking of this mostly male bloc—the old guy in the barbershop, the grizzled Pop Warner coach, the retired Vietnam vet, the drunk uncle at the family reunion. He votes Democratic, not out of any love for abortion rights or progressive taxation, but because he feels—in fact, he knows—that the modern-day GOP draws on the support of people who hate him. This is the audience that flocks to Cosby: culturally conservative black Americans who are convinced that integration, and to some extent the entire liberal dream, robbed them of their natural defenses.

“There are things that we did not see coming,” Cosby told me over lunch in Manhattan last year. “Like, you could see the Klan, but because these things were not on a horse, because there was no white sheet, and the people doing the deed were not white, we saw things in the light of family and forgiveness … We didn’t pay attention to the dropout rate. We didn’t pay attention to the fathers, to the self-esteem of our boys.”

I find this all fascinating, and mostly encouraging. As Coates observes, though, the fact that it tends to be understood and articulated in terms that are not only pro-black but anti-white makes it hard for people like me to embrace. A paleo white friend couldn't figure out why I was so exercised over Rev. Wright; what's not to like about his self-help gospel? My answer was (is) that respecting oneself and one's own people does not require one to demonize other peoples -- and if it does, you'd better rethink it.

It is admittedly an unclear issue. If I were a Catholic who chose only to patronize Catholic-owned businesses out of a sense of communal solidarity, is there something wrong with me doing my part to deny the Jew, the Protestant, the Muslim or the unbeliever an opportunity to make a living? I might say: my intent is not to tear down the others, but rather to build up my own. OK, fine -- but what are the limits on that? It might be pointed out, for example, that in my town, there are no black Catholics, so I am in effect boycotting all the black-owned businesses in town. Is that right? And for that matter, if I said, "Henceforth, I am only going to do business with white-owned and operated businesses, out of solidarity with my people" -- would anybody have trouble understanding what that was all about?

To what extent does loving and helping your Own require you, intentionally or unintentionally, to reject and be hostile or indifferent to the Other? How does one navigate the ethical shoals of this problem?