Q: (arky@slate) I've been wanting to ask you about your references to DuBois' ideas concerning the "Talented Tenth." Do you subscribe to that view, and if so, how would you define the "Talented Tenth," and do you think the net has any function for these people? I also wonder if you think the net could be a vehicle for promoting the 13 solutions you listed in your site. My main question, though, is what had you hoped the net would do for race issues and how and why has it failed thus far in your view.
I often refer to myself as "a previously proud member of the group formerly known as the talented tenth". Before I understood what DuBois was all about, and actually I still don't, I knew that talented tenth was what was expected of me. You are born into this, I grew up in it, and never really seriously abandoned the concept until I was about 24 years old.
I say the former group because I believe that they have split into two camps, the old school and the progressives. Both groups despair of uplifting the race in any massive way, rather they take an 'each one teach one' approach. (By the way, this is all dirty laundry, consider yourself privileged). The primary difference between the old school and the progressives is found in the role of the church and political activism. The old school might best be characterized by Jesse Jackson, the progressive school by bell hooks. Both are certainly dedicated uplift, accepting piecemeal progress, but the progressives are much more likely to speak in multicultural, post-modern terms.
I say previously proud because I can't say that I am absolutely committed to uplift. I don't follow the program. I contribute, but I'm not a team player - I'm too mercurial. Consider the fact that I am talking to you.
The cadre of the Talent Tenth has always been somewhat elusive, yet it has a set of ways and means, reasons and rhetoric that are fairly easy to identify. Raisons d'etre of early black internet pioneers show up on my TT radar. I should know, because even though I don't have faith in the concept of racial unity, which I believe to be a fundamental TT principle, in some way boohab's activity is a hedge. Blacks in my generation would like to be able to claim TT status and have that status negotiable in America, but you rarely hear comments like "I very much disagree with Al Sharpton, but you've got to respect him for standing with his people no matter what." in the mainstream. So race raising can be something of a covert activity despite the fact that it can be so fundamentally civilizing. It's often simply not respectable to do right for black folks, no matter how noble one's orientation. So although positive things are being accomplished, TT folks are not as loud as they are proud.
The net has failed the politics of race only to the extent that its potential to change politics in general has not yet been realized. Primarily that is because the Internet competes with broadcast and print media. Both have slandered the net's credibility and both are seen to be more accurate judges of what the Internet is and does than the Internet itself. As more people get online, that will change. But most important political limitation of the Internet is structural, or rather I should say it lacks the political 'killer app'. The structure of discussion groups where politics is discussed does not allow groups of interest to represent themselves in an appropriate manner. Computer moderated discussion groups clearly can facilitate discussions which are very sophisticated. However, the net has yet to create an equivalent of Robert's Rules of Order which allows structured deliberation. The end result is that self-identified issue-oriented interest groups cannot coalesce.
To the extent that race as a subject matter is explored and discussed freely, I consider boohab's work a success in ways that are impossible to replicate in any other medium. Still the matter of resolution lies before us.