In his fast-paced, funny and sometimes frustratingly glib book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now -- Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything, David Sirota introduces "The Huxtable Effect," named for the affluent African-American family at the center of The Bill Cosby Show. A child of the 1980s who's openly critical of the cultural trends he identifies, Sirota describes the Huxtable Effect as the source of "two of the most deceptive arguments" supporting the idea that race can be "transcended":
The first says African Americans face no racial barriers that cannot be overcome by hard work, subservience, and allegedly universal white benevolence. The second asserts African Americans who do break those barriers are liberating themselves of their race and are therefore different and more laudable than typical black people.
As Sirota observes, this has unfolded into an ideology that erases serious discussion of race from our political culture. Barack Obama, to cite the most obvious example, "just happens to be black." The cost of mainstream success for African Americans is, as Sirota observes, accepting Cosby's strategic willingness to "leave all of that anger and controversy' about ongoing racism and racial disparities aside."
Considering Sirota's ideas in relation to "American Skin (41 Shots)" generated one of the best discussions of the semester in the "Bruce Springsteen's America" class that readers of this blog have been following for the past couple of months. By the end of the hour and fifteen minutes, we'd put Springsteen in dialogue with Eminem and, more importantly, cut through some of the mystifications that make it impossible for Americans to talk sense about race. To put the take-home message out front: anyone paying even the slightest attention to the world around them knows that the notion we've arrived in a "post-racial" society has absolutely nothing to do with reality.
Springsteen makes the point as clearly as it can be made in "American Skin," written in response to the killing of 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo by the New York City police.
"It ain't no secret, no secret my friend, you can get killed just for living in your American Skin." In context, Springsteen's meaning is clear: being black can get you killed.
But that's not what Springsteen sings. The skin in his song isn't black or brown, it's simply, chillingly, American. "American" isn't a synonym for "white;" the men and women who have been lynched, harassed and shot down over the years are as American as George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton. And anyone who thinks that violence will stay contained on the other side of the imaginary lines is -- Bruce and my students would probably put this more politely -- out of their fucking mind. That's what Malcolm X was saying when he described the assassination of John F. Kennedy as a case of the "chickens coming home to roost." Like the attacks on the Twin Towers, what happened to JFK can't be divorced from larger questions about the nature of American society. (That's not a justification, it's a difficult fact.)
The centerpiece of the class discussion sparked by "American Skin" was a complex elaboration on the way Bruce's song calls on us to think about race today. Perspectives varied greatly, largely reflecting whether students came from big cities, suburbs or small towns. But everyone recognized that there's a sharp line between those who feel like the police are there to protect them and those who try to avoid contact as much as possible. There's a clear contradiction between the Huxtable Effect claim that differences between people no longer matter and the reality that we're living in a world where blacks (and immigrants and youth who don't read "middle class" to the cops) are in real and present danger.
Does that mean nothing's really changed since Sirota's 1980s (which he traces to a mythic, and very white, 1950s)? My classroom experience tells me that's not the case. My millennial generation students who grew up (as Sirota notes) with Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey as its heroes, don't think or live race the same way mine (and Bruce's) did. Part of that's simple demographics, the growing presence and visibility of Latinos, Asian Americans, immigrants from across the globe. But part of it's a changing consciousness -- fueled by economic collapse and polarization -- among students who a generation ago would have thought of themselves uncritically as "white," heirs the American dream. They're not going to get the vocabulary to articulate their experience from American Idol or Fox, but they know something's wrong.
That's where Eminem comes into play. Class member (and blogger) Brian Moran was straightforward in claiming that his generation is willing to reject a "whiteness which is on its way out the door." For details on what that means, give a listen to "White America":
Eminem's not about to believe the Huxtable hype. Both his whiteness and producer Dr. Dre's blackness make a difference, albeit in different and changing ways. And he knows he's not the only young white who knows it. The concluding laughter and affirmation of love for America are a classic case of the blues wisdom that sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.
The meanings of race in America are changing. But, as Eminem and Springsteen know, that's not because huge numbers of African Americans are ascending into the deracinated dream world of the Huxtables. It's because more and more Americans of all races are discovering what most blacks haven't had the option not to know: that some of us count a hell of a lot more than others. That's a bedrock fact Springsteen has been aware of since he built "Incident on 57th Street" and "Jungleland" around a world where whites, blacks and Latinos walked the same streets. He doesn't have a simple answer to the issues he sets in front of us. But he knows as surely as Eminem that race matters. It's a problem he's been grappling with for more than forty years. I'll take that up in my next post.
how about people just do the right thing?
all of us know the difference between right and wrong even if we don't always have the right words.
in our interpersonal relations, all of us, except for the sociopaths among us, know what the boundaries are in dealing with another human being. and when we've DONE something to another person that crossed that line.
we can make an exception for children, but adults should be mentally strong enough to deal with the spoken word. and enter into conversations - emphasis on conversations - about emotional topics without losing sight of our basic human commonalities. when we focus on our differences, the conversations become increasingly adversarial. don't they?
it's always going to be about ACTIONS. and actions matter much more than what a person says.
wherever someone stands in their knowledge of American history, political affiliation, religious preference, sexual orientation, marital and family status, socio-economic status, or any other divider you choose - we are ALL Americans and we're all on this frickin bus together. and we're all just trying to get to our stop. if it crashes because a few idiots insist on doing dumb s . h . i . t . to other passengers and hitting the driver, true, some of us might make it out alive. but, speaking as a passsenger, i'd rather we all make it to our stops, walk down the steps and off the bus; alive.
but it must be VERY hard to do.
because, so far, i haven't seen people consistently doing the right thing by other people.
manhood
http://www.stylelist.com/wale-oyejide/home-before-anyplace_b_1359901.html
sincerity
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/IGNSTHMD/trayvon-martin-911-tapes_b_1365697_143057862.html
hubris
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/american-front-osceola-county-arrested_n_1500296.html?ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices
acknowledgement
http://voices.yahoo.com/why-police-violence-kills-people-like-2456658.html
healing
http://voices.yahoo.com/critique-rock-soul-bell-hooks-6643726.html
PS.
impart conscientiousness
instill ethic
inspire reading
alot fidelity
create expectations
discuss ownership
is anybody there?
if you dont provide some fodder for a conversation on race relations im going to pass a law that all black males have to dress up in superhero outfits...
no?
hello...
The key is moving from a conversation based on guilt and/or shame (depending on our specific histories) to one based on taking responsibility for creating a different world than the one we're living in. There's nowhere in the mix--white, black, Latin; rich, poor; male, female--which is comfortable or safe. And we're in a pop culture that's absolutely terrified of risk.
What to do? The only answer I have is to get the conversations going as constructively as possible in the spheres we operate in. I subscribe to the general tenor of Malcolm's statement that what white people can do to help the process is deal with the problems in their own communities, but that doesn't mean pulling back from conversations across various lines. There's no place in America that can, in any meaningfuly sense, be described as "white" today.