Cosby was right

Several weeks ago, Bill Cosby was speaking at Howard University at a commemoration of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. He used the stage to criticize black America, and especially the black underclass, for developing an “opt out” subculture in which students won’t go to school or take advantage of opportunities won by the civil rights movement: “These people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education and now we’ve got these people walking around who can’t speak English. I blamed the kids until I heard the parents talk. Everybody knows it is important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.” In addition to speaking out about poor grammar and parenting skills, Cosby also attacked those who complain about police brutality.

Many blacks have praised Cosby for publicly calling attention to the social pathologies that plague the America’s black communities. Atlanta Journal and Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker wrote that it is important for black Americans to have a spirited debate about the challenges of the post-civil rights era: How do we raise the academic achievement of black students? How do we curb black-on-black crime? How do we attack an AIDS epidemic spreading like wildfire in black America?

Conversely, others have argued that Cosby’s comments are a classist, elitist attack on the poor. Popular Washington, D.C., talk show host Joe Madison believes the entertainer/social activist went overboard by absolving white America and the government of any responsibilities for the ills of poor blacks. After the speech, NAACP Legal Defense Fund head Theodore Shaw rushed to the podium and noted that the larger (that is, white) American society still bears some responsibility for the failure of many black Americans to join the economic and cultural mainstream.

Interestingly, black people regularly discuss these same issues -- among ourselves. Anybody who has ever heard Minister Louis Farrakhan speak to a largely black audience would attest that Cosby’s comments were tepid in comparison. Moreover, Farrakhan does not use humor to soften the blow. Clearly, the controversy is not about what Cosby said but that media coverage allowed white America to hear him say it.

A crucial political and psychological prong of the civil rights paradigm has been exploiting “white guilt.” Here, support by whites for policies endorsed by the civil rights movement (affirmative action and opposition to school vouchers or the death penalty are good examples) are attributed to white goodwill but nonsupport is characterized as white racism. There is inherently nothing wrong with this strategy. All social movements are fueled by the raw emotions of hurt and pain that give meaning to group storytelling and sensemaking. Think, for example, of the pro-choice movement: female reproductive freedom historically determined (and restricted) by male-dominated legislatures; males, because of biology, getting to “play” but not having to pay for unintended sexual outcomes; and back alley abortions resulting in needless sterility and deaths. Given this emotional backdrop, it becomes psychologically uncomfortable for many men to politically oppose late-term abortions even though it is patently clear that these procedures kill a fully developed human being.

Black conservative scholar Shelby Steele, in an essay titled “The Double Bind of Race and Guilt,” contends that the great unacknowledged event of the civil rights era was that white Americans became stigmatized as racists. Because of such labeling, whites and American institutions have no moral authority when it comes to race-related reforms outside of those established by civil rights leaders: “Thus, timeless principles of self-reliance, hard work, sacrifice, and moral responsibility now become stigmatized as demonic principles that ‘blame the victim’ and cruelly deny the helplessness imposed by a heritage of oppression.” Cosby, as a black, crossed this emotional line in the Howard University speech because he did not require white authority to defer to the nation’s racial tragedy but, instead, called for greater collective responsibility by black Americans. His comments were outside the civil rights movement’s “box.”

Cosby’s comments reveal an interesting paradox in using white guilt as the centerpiece of the civil rights movement. The strategy has worked but simultaneously undermined the very principles -- delayed gratification, responsibility, and educational attainment -- that lead to collective competence and character. Healthy communities require a culture of evolving human development. These characteristics are not fool’s gold.

Yet, Steele is wrong in asserting that whites became stigmatized as a result of the civil rights era. When one group opposes another for a long period of time, they become stigmatized. Men opposed to any plank of the feminist agenda are stigmatized as chauvinistic. Both North Korea and South Korea, mindful of past Japanese military and cultural hegemony, are alarmed by U.S. proposals to arm Japan with nuclear weapons in response to North Korea’s nuclear program. Simply put, oppression leads to stigmatization and political leverage.

The real question for black America is whether it is advantageous to continue the emphasis on white guilt as a political strategy or shift to a strategy of developing the cultural norms and values that negate pathological behaviors.

I favor the latter and Cosby’s comments suggest he does as well.

Such a shift would not let whites off the hook for either past or present racist behavior. History and current manifestations of institutional bias remain powerful indictments. Nor would such a paradigm shift suggest that social pathologies are unique to black Americans. In the global village where we live, it is too easy to refute such vicious libels.

Paradigm shifts are always difficult to facilitate. Adherents to discredited paradigms remain -- because of their emotional investment -- until their intellectual and physical demise.

Still, these shifts are necessary when the dominant worldview no longer has accurate explanatory power. The civil rights paradigm is at this point in its life cycle. Cynthia Tucker and others directly call for a post-civil rights paradigm. Maybe Cosby’s speech will usher in this transition.