Why Do African-American Superstars Like Chris Rock and Bill Cosby Go Out of Their Way to Stigmatize [View all]

[jtuck004]

the Less Fortunate?"
"The toxicity of respectability politics."

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Of course, the substance of what Rock said wasn’t new. It hewed to the same line of respectability politics that had been a part of black political life since the days of Reconstruction. Even W.E.B. Du Bois, perhaps the most important sociologist in all of American history, posited a theory for black liberation that rested on the idea that 90 percent of black people ain’t shit and could only be saved by the “talented tenth.” He later abandoned that idea, but it got stuck in our collective imagination nonetheless. Rock’s language was different, and jarring, offering a legitimacy to the use of a racist slur to describe a class of people, but even that wasn’t new. After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X reportedly said, “We had the best organization the black man has ever had. N–gers ruined it.” Malcolm’s context was different, but the rhetoric is still in line with the idea that it’s the bad black people who ruin things for the good black people....
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What bothers me just as much, if not more, than the profitability of this line of thinking, is that anyone who engages in it (Barkley, Lemon, Riley or whoever) positions him- or herself as some sort of exalted truth teller, revealing the secrets black America is too afraid to face. They won’t touch the truth of how white supremacy has dictated the contours of black American life, but telling kids to pull up their pants and stop acting like “thugs” is right up their alley.

Moreover, these aren’t secrets. They’re flat-out lies.
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The real “dirty, dark secret” is this: the n–gers helped us survive. It’s all of those welfare queens, dope-dealing cousins, liquor store-robbing uncles, cable-stealing aunties, drunk granddads, and fast-tailed grannies who have made any of our relative success possible. It was those dope-dealing cousins who were able to buy someone’s kids’ school supplies. It was a good-for-nothing-drunk-of-an-uncle who fixed cars that helped folks get to work. It was an aunt who had five kids out of wedlock who did someone’s hair and made alterations on their suit for a job interview. It was those fight-at-the-drop-of-a-dime thugs who made it safe for their younger brothers and sisters to walk through their neighborhoods unmolested. It was the money from a grocery store robbery pulled off by an illiterate grandfather that kept the lights, gas and water on.
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In praise, it sounds as though I’m flattening the identities of those people who are usually deemed unworthy, and to a degree, I am. We are all complex, we contradict ourselves, are neither all “good” or all “bad.” But counter-narratives are important, particularly when the dominant narrative only serves to dehumanize. So here’s to the bad blacks, making black America’s survival possible, even if they never find that money in Chris Rock’s books.
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Here.

If you are interested here is a link to the essay referenced in the story, entitled:

"DEAR BLACK PEOPLE: PLEASE STOP SPREADING THE LIE THAT “BAD” BLACKS ARE HOLDING “GOOD” BLACKS BACK"

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1. Because it’s not true...
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10. Because making blanket negative statements about (relatively) powerless and voiceless people is just as bad as what you’re accusing them of.
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I copied that last line because although there is a special case to be made for this in the black community, it seemed like very good advice in a lot larger sphere, whether one is talking about any of the most vulnerable of our neighbors or some nameless voter. It's how people are kept apart, how division is maintained. It is a tool of oppression. Those words (such as the term "poor people&quot are the words of the oppressor, and if one is saying them, they might want to see if they have joined, whether they meant to or not, with those who are hurting the people.