Orlando Patterson, someone whom I have heard much about but not read, comes out swinging with some interesting hardlines, most of it properly directed at economists and researchers. By stating what appears obvious to me, and sketching out some future directions for research, he centers the question of the 'dysfunctional black male' back squarely within the area of culture.
It's not often that I think that there is a reasonable national debate on the things we in the black chatting class dig debating, but this is one of them. Earlier this year there was some debate about a widening gap or some such about how hard it is for black men. I don't think I bothered much with that because of what I see as obvious about blackfolks. We choose our lives.
So I find it intersting that since I've gotten back on XBox Live, I've experienced an interesting confirmation of these core 'graphs by the good Dr.:
SO why were they flunking out? Their candid answer was that what sociologists call the "cool-pose culture" of young black men was simply too gratifying to give up. For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture, the fact that almost all the superstar athletes and a great many of the nation's best entertainers were black.
Not only was living this subculture immensely fulfilling, the boys said, it also brought them a great deal of respect from white youths. This also explains the otherwise puzzling finding by social psychologists that young black men and women tend to have the highest levels of self-esteem of all ethnic groups, and that their self-image is independent of how badly they were doing in school.
There are a lot of white boys that want to be niggas, and do a lot of showing out of that sort in their trash talk online. Just this past week, gaming on Project Gotham Racing 3, I heard such conversations. The appeal of being a cool nobody that can rag on society with impunity is apparently immense. How can you be completely irresponsible to middle class values and cool at the same time? The instruction manuals are rapped from coast to coast.
This is a subset of degeneracy that our affluent society tolerates. It's annoying that loudmouth knuckeleheads who do little but make noise, crime and babies pollute our population. But it's very easy to get away from them. They have no mobility, no power, no real influence over anything but their particular niche markets. People like me get really pissed that there are lots of people with the nerve to name that the sum total of 'black' culture. I say it is part of an historical stream of vulgar banditry going back though and beyond Sherwood Forest - that there is nothing special about classes of losers, outcasts and anti-social bohemians. But in America, it's uniquely tied in with this invention called 'youth culture' which allows half-grown humans to have their own music, dress, ethics, sports & slang all mass marketed and co-opted into a segment of mass consumption.
Still, it's a choice. It's a bit too easy of a choice because it is bankrolled, and yet I wonder how many with libertarian sensibilities would allow a bit of common righteousness to give the smackdown to the prophets of this hiphop subculture. Too many folks don't bother to disambiguate race and culture amid the confusion of political correctness and multiculturalism. We in the Old School have few such qualms or confusions. Just as Chris Rock says, just as Cosby says, we know the difference between blackfolks and niggas. We're not afraid to call a spade a spade. Why? Because racial segregation forced us to live with them a lot longer than everyone else. We know the ultimate costs. America may yet learn.
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