Cobb: The Blackman's Lesson, Again

� Wrench in the Wal-Mart Theory | Main | Safe, For Now �

October 17, 2003

The Blackman's Lesson, Again

All you are ever told in this country about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now, in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose, in fact - this may sound very strange - you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
--James Baldwin

How many years has it been since Mike Tyson or OJ Simpson? Well, here we go again. This time it's Kobe Bryant.

Long ago, I wrote a rather long piece about the moral lessons we black men teach America by myths attached to us. But as I make my brief note about Kobe Bryant this morning, I am struck by the extent to which this is so very racially stereotyped rather than simply racial. In the old piece I made points that don't seem very convincing to me today as I extended them to Joe Jett. These days, I don't believe that anyone is any more likely to remember Jett because he was black (or remember Jett at all) than they are to remember the Nicholas Leeson who destroyed Barings Bank. Now I tend to believe that it's not because black men in total are so despised that such mythic lessons emerge, rather it is that they fulfill a racial stereotype. It's a subtle but notable difference.

The counterexample is that of Malvo. America is certainly prepared to send him to the electric chair, but he doesn't fit the profile. Mass muderers are still white psychopaths in the public imagination, as are embezzlers. Surely the idea that blacks are disproportionately criminal hasn't lost currency, but it is the outsized fear of sexual predation, and violent rage by black males that we are mostly dealing with. That we have black examples of both mass murderers and embezzlers is not what those fanning the flames of racist fear focus on, rather the black rapist and the black mugger.

It's difficult to say what pains Kobe may or may not have taken to be a 'non-threatening black man'. But he's good looking, smart, rich, successful and well-liked. He's got everything going for him except this racist monkey on his back. Others don't have it so easy, which only underscores the point. Kobe's ability to face a camera and say that he did not have forced sexual relations with that woman has been undermined from the start, and it wasn't all Clinton's doing. He, like millions of other black men are fighting stereotypical presumptions.

I predict, therefore that no matter what happens in the Kobe Bryant case, whether or not justice prevails, black male athletes will be the focus of sexual scrutiny. It's difficult to even think about the name of any white male athlete whose sexual hijinks raise eyebrows, not that I look at sports that often or that critically. But everyone knows Simpson, Tyson and Bryant. Who's left? Pete Rose?

Posted by mbowen at October 17, 2003 11:16 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/890

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Blackman's Lesson, Again:

� They cut done to the bone... from The S-Train Canvass
...stereotypes that is. Check out Cobb's piece about stereotypes attached to us fellas on the black-hand side. Not cool at... [Read More]

Tracked on October 18, 2003 02:23 AM

� Nuggets from Kitty Power
Hallelujah! I'm finally off the NYCB frontpage. Not to be ungrateful for the traffice, but a little anonymity is a good thing. My world is small enough that I've been self-censoring and if I wanted mad people from NYC to... [Read More]

Tracked on October 20, 2003 11:43 AM

Tracked on October 20, 2003 05:43 PM

Comments

i think this web site is the bomb you dont even know ok thanx bye.

Posted by: jasmine at April 30, 2004 10:32 AM