Cosby and Poussaint appeared on Russert this weekend and have put together an admirable perspective on a depressing series of facts about many African Americans. I think that he has a considerable amount of weight in his pronouncements, but man it's news I just don't want to hear.
I've been thinking a bit this weekend about fatherhood, not only because Cosby is the author of that fabulously successful book (Fatherhood) but also because of another book I saw on a similar topic. I saw it in the airport the other day and on the cover were three handsome successful doctors. These African American men told the story about forgiving their fathers. Hmm. But also I spent some time shopping with my entire family which is something I haven't done since the beginning of school.
So today's question for me became, what did your father not give you? This must be the thing that you want most from yourself and society. It is the manly quest that defines most of us. As much as I love and respect my father, the answer jumped immediately to my head in this context. This thing that I have become that he is not is that part of me that thinks I'm a more successful man than he is, as good as he was. I could answer that question and give myself a grade, and I think every man today can.
Cosby laments the failure of parenting, and he is attempting to summon the spirit of the Old School for today's generation of parents. He is trying to get them to say something to their children that he sees that they are not saying - to do something that they evidently are not doing. In particular he is demanding that parents take control of the things they can control, and do it out of love.
As much as I disdain talking about the psychological, I cannot deny the personal. And perhaps the reason I find psychological questions and analyses as so fluffy is because of my experience and faith in the Old School. But Old School values are certainly not enough to overcome that racism that exists - and yet they are the thing we control. We control our values, we control our affinities, we choose our own lives. Daily. I cannot sustain the thesis that African Americans are incapable, even if this is the ugly truth born out in the evidence Cosby and Poussaint show. We are not a monolith and yes there is that ugly reality - we all know it when we see it. But we're not all victims of it. As self-serving as it may sound, I'm brought back to that old quote when foolishness goes down:
Mom: There goes your people.
Dad: I didn't raise 'em.
Poussaint suggests that there is a new dysfuntion within black culture, or rather a virulent infestation in much more of black culture than ever before, that looks at the bad and says it's normal. But we know better, and that's why Cosby says 'Come on people...', because when I hear that tone of voice in my own parents I knew the next phrase was 'you can do better than this' or 'I expect more from you'.
Cosby cannot be America's Dad. I know he wants to be, but we all have our own real fathers to reckon with. What did your father not give you? Were you able to get it for yourself? What are the consequences in your life of that success or failure, or is the jury still out? Last week EC Hopkins asked about how we define success. I happen to think success is deeply class-defined, but it really starts with what did your father expect of you and how did he handle the cards life dealt him.
The ugly subjects of incarceration, single parenthood, drug abuse, murder and crime dog our civilization. All of these are not givens, and even when they are, our attitude towards harsh reality is instrumental in our fate. There is a politics and a culture and, I imagine, a psychology out there that assigns much of that to fate. We can do better.
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