Cobb

This might be a related question to what I'm reading here. What if you compared some of these thoughts in this post with first generation American immigrants (with the possible difference in the acclimitization of Mexican immigrants), or second/third generation immigrants?

What is it that relates to an immmigrant's experience that propels that immigrant culture to material success, and what of those can be useful? If so, what's stopping that and how can it be improved?

I think one of African American's biggest problems is that we're so aggregated. We really don't distinguish ourselves as first-generation, second-generation as well as immigrants, especially voluntary immigrants. I mean if you look at Koreans in America, or Taiwanese, most of them came with some money in their hands voluntarily. Blacks don't disaggregate as easily. But I'm stressing class and culture and Old School so that we can, because Black Nationalism as originally concieved cannot work any longer.

(more later)

I have to let this one maranade a bit...

I think about those left behind quite a lot, especially now that our local paper has run a series of articles about the hair-raising infant mortality rate in Shelby Co., TN. There's an area of Memphis that has infant mortality rates that rival third-world countries. As you say, anybody with any ability at all got up and left, but there are quite a few people left behind. The articles talked about teenagers having three or four babies, no pre-natal care, (so naturally a lot of premature births, expensive and very dangerous for the babies) with no mention of men in this community at all. Somebody's getting these children knocked up. Where's the law? Why's the community not kicking their butts? And where's our illustrious mayor in all this? - fathering his own little out-of-wedlock offspring. Oh well, at least we have a shiny new arena for our NFL team, not that we've finished paying for the previous one. Cobb, when you find a remedy, let us know.

*that would be NBA, whatever.*

I think the answer is old time religion, and I don't mind that a strong backbone of religious values is a good hedge against la vida sin corazon. But I'm not sure that's going to ever help materially. See while I understand that Black Nationalism itself is not going to raise the non-Cosby black middle class, I think an application of its values in a crossover world will work, and that can satisfy black ambition. But if the non-Cosby black middle class is only going to settle for old time religion, then there's a lot of black issues that get healed, but not cured. With us at racial equilibrium, it locks that black middle class right where they are. No progress. As a progressive Old Schooler, I'm uncomfortable with that.

See my conflict?

So I think the solution is 'Pushed Back to Strength', which means the non-Cosby black middle class abandons the South Side of Chicago and all thos Michael Jordan dreams and goes to find a nice little southern community or maybe a dying town in Montana where crystal meth has not yet taken over. That's why I'm talking about 'The Bottom'.

What's happening is that (illegal?) Mexicans are coming into these old factory towns and becoming the ragpickers and chicken pluckers. Where is the black middleclass dad who has always been a dependable postal worker, and why can't he become the factory boss? What is going to steer that class of blackfolks away from the hiphop ghettoes they don't like anyway?

Red Lake Indian Reservations...urban black ghetto... the U.S. has been consistent in how we solve the "problem" of non-whites.

http://www.downingworld.com/title.html#anchorB3_24_2005

"But nobody, politically or economically is giving thanks, and culturally all the thanks are going to hiphop. The result? A huge sense of political frustration in the black middle that keeps them falsely aligned with the interminable dissatisfaction of those at the bottom. This is wrecking hell with black politics and I think the primary cause of black political apathy."

Cobb - Albert Murray once observed that in this country black people don't suffer from a lack of accomplishments but from a lack of recognition of their accomplishments. In any case, I would be extremely interested if you would elaborate on your point regarding the discontent of the black middle class.

By the way, I'm sure that you are quite aware that historically speaking members of the black middle class in general have never played any significant role in the development of those activities and artifacts that we call black popular culture. The black middle class tended as a whole to keep its distance from things like ragtime music, blues, jazz, vaudeville and other forms of popular culture it considered "vulgar" and "low class."

Again, I am extremely interested in reading your views about this sense of malaise or, perhaps, ennui, among the black middle class. I sense that folks are not as happy as they pretend or desire to be and many of our people are living lives of "quiet desparation."

When I think of the black middle class vis a vis cultural production, the first person that comes to mind is Jelly Roll Morton, who was basically high yellow and colorstruck. He didn't want to be associated with the funky jazz and sought to elevated it via skills, but he was deep in it as well. There's a parallel between him and all of the hiphop businessfolks, critics and other non-creatives with college degrees whose kids might get through college off Jay-Z's back. Basically he was a big time code switcher and closet freak. So I'm not so quick to write off the black middle class wrt their participation in the creative enterprises. Eddie Murphy may just be one man, but it takes a village. Also let's not discount black radio.

But to the main point. I think a great deal of black political frustration comes from the middle class. I don't believe that the black underclass is particularly interested in American politics anyway. Ask them what the black political caucus is, they don't know, they don't care. I think a perfect example is black agitation over the Wal-Mart issue. What you can be sure to find at every one of these grass roots political events are the college educated Marxists or street activists talking to neighborhood folks. You also might get some gang intervention specialist or someone from social services who doubles as a community activist. In other words there are a whole host of folks whose primary constituency is the downtrodden who show up with their fliers and protest schedules. (I'm not being fair, of course) What you will rarely find are PTA moms or they guy who runs the liquor store around the way. You might often find a minister who does community outreach, and some older folks who have the time in the middle of the day. But my sense of this is that you will get a largely black middle class audience and everybody there thinks that it is their responsibility to represent somebody less fortunate than them - people who don't show up. When it came to the Inglewood Wal-Mart, we kept hearing people talk about how Wal-Mart was horrible for blackfolks because they exploit the masses. But when the black woman who worked for Wal-Mart stood up and defended her employer, the silence was deafening. I think we have a very big problem doing any real self-representation and circling around to accountability. Everybody is waiting for The Black Agenda to materialize, including me I suppose. In the meantime, everyone who goes independent is some sort of 'sell-out'. Sell out to whom? Their own interests. But nobody wants to hear that because we honestly do recognize that blackfolks' interests diverge by class.

So a silent fraction of the black middle class is 'independent'. I think that means basically that they don't want to be a part of black politics as it is currently constituted. We may blame the Democrats or the Republicans, but if we had a real agenda we could play both sides. The fact that we don't means that we're waiting to be courted. And waiting, and waiting.

So black politics ends up being a moral show, without real aspects of patronage. That upsets me. It's one of the reasons I've gone Republican. I know it's about patronage.

Fascinating discussions...I'm just an old white guy in Vista, who worked in 2 of the Phoenix "ghettos" (I don't like that term) in the early 70s. That process started when I became aware of the "Negro" problems in the mid 50s at the age of about 9-10. I also studied African-American history at UCSD. And although I now work in extremely poor villages in Cambodia, I value your discussions very highly. It was working with all the little brothers and sisters in Phoenix that propelled me to always care for the poor and eventually landed me in Cambodia.

Well, you certainly have more patience than I.

I guess what I'm trying to say in anthropology-speak is that the modernization of the Negro has cost him his indigenous capacities. Granted that the Negro has done this of his own accord and much was done in the context of the modernization of America itself. But I wonder if we haven't lost some of the gumption we had back when people used the word 'gumption'.