Them: "You...elitist!!" Me: "GASP! Yuh cuss meh?!" (Or is it?)

More and more I find myself leaning towards the books of sociopolitical commentators and satirists. Books by Bill Maher made me laugh until tears streamed down my face, reads by Dr. Cosby and Rick Shenkman made me chuckle and say, "You know...that's true..", Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" gave me new insight into capitalism and how it affects sociology, and Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck made me fold my arms, snicker, and say, "Huh...never thought I'd say it, but that's pretty true..." Of course, out of fear of losing my black card (I'm just kidding...sort of) I've also read any and everything W.E.B DuBois ever wrote, am currently re-reading Richard Wright's "Black Boy", collect Toni Morrison just for the challenge of reading the prose, (yes, this is a dichotomy, but she writes fiction books about the sociological aspects of black society, in my opinion...it's just a hard read...LOL), and Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and I have developed a love-hate relationship.

And this is where I begin the rambling. Intellectually, of course, but rambling nonetheless.

I recently was introduced to Dyson at the Harlem Book Fair when my best friend bought me his book "Debating Race with Michael Eric Dyson". Now. I try to stay hip to what's going on within today's society, particularly items having to do with race relations and the like, because these things tend to interest me. So it surprised me that I had not heard of Dyson prior to this moment. Perhaps I was just too busy dealing with my business. I began reading his book - it was a compilation of conversations with regard to race relations he'd had with political analysts and the like. Having received both his bachelors' and his Ph.D degree in religion from Princeton, Dyson managed to work his way up to discussing his views en masse in a variety of topics, the largest being his bifurcation of what he perceives to be a divide between the youthful hip hop culture, and the older soul culture, his "Afristocracy" and his "Ghettocracy". Other earlier books of his included "I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr." and "Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture".

Huh.

As I read his book, I found myself teeter tottering between enthusiastic agreement and utter disbelief. A moderate, I often stand on middle ground, choosing to find the positive and reflective argument on both sides, and encourage compromise, something that Dyson, as a staunch liberal, does not do very often. I vividly remember thinking to myself as Bill Cosby ranted about the state of black America, "yes! you tell 'em, Bill!!!" So when I came across Dyson's book, "Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Have the Black Middle Class Lost Their Minds?" in the public library, I decided to try Dyson out again.

The more I read it, the more it upset me.

While Dyson points out a lot about the judicial system and how certain aspects of it are stacked against the minority in particular, he does nothing, in my opinion, to bridge the gap between Cosby's words and his own opinions therein, other than to quote Cosby as applicable to the chapter. I found myself often shaking my head - and not in a good way. Even though Dr. Cosby's past is dotted with a touch of scandal, for the most part, he has done nothing but give back heavily to impoverished communities such as the one he came from in Philadelphia, as well as paying for the college education of well over 500 youth over the course of the years.

The frustration from where Cosby speaks from, to me, comes from a place of hurt watching his community. Cosby notes, "Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are [not*] holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn't hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don't know that today."

There are a few things with this. For starters, it is pretty evident that Dr. Cosby is speaking very, very generally. I know personally good parents who end up dealing with rough children when they come from married two family households, just like I know of many single parent households where the parent knows every last thing that is going on with their child, and they just don't play that. (I am one of those single parents.) So no, it doesn't apply to all parents.

Working in the system, however, I can honestly say that this stigma is very real, in existence, and sad. I speak to parents EVERY DAY that tell me that they don't know where their kid is, why they weren't in school, and flat out say that they don't know why I keep asking or calling. I know students that regularly miss their scheduled SATs and don't see the big deal in it. I admonish students ALL THE TIME for wearing their jeans so low that they might as well not be wearing them at all, for calling their teachers by their first name, for chilling on the corner smoking weed or for cutting their hair in the bathroom when they should be in class, the lazy ungrateful and it baffles me everyday.

I understand Bill Cosby's random tirade. I have one every day in my office. My coworkers laugh. But it is no laughing matter.

So no, Dr. Dyson, I do not agree with you. I do understand that many of our new generation comes with a certain set of baggage that we did not necessarily have in our heyday. I understand that there are obstacles. But our ancestors cleared many of the bigger obstacles. Yes, the system is stacked against us, but we are aware of that now. In our urban cities, we receive funds all the time to be educated against this sort of thing. We are now using our history as a crutch. We are! I read that book and I said to myself, "here goes one more lazy negro manual book making excuses for us". The valid points that you make in the book about the judicial system and the like are overshadowed by many of our unwillingness to, quite frankly, LEARN.

Someone called me an "uppity negro" elitist the other day. In years past, I thought this was an insult. But if being an elitist means that I find our current state unacceptable and inexcusable, then I wear that badge with pride.
I do have solutions for some of these things, but they will be in a different blog. This one's long enough.

What did you think of Dr. Cosby's assessment of our current society? If you are familiar with Dyson's work, what did you think of his assessment? What do you think we, as a growing society, can do to address the growing problem(s) in our community?

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