Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long long way from home
A long long way from home
-- Traditional Negro Spiritual
Fish and I debate the dependent relationship between the masses, entrepreneurs and capitalists.
We began this debate in the context of who needs whom with regard to electoral politics. I asserted that I'm not interested in getting out to vote 'for the people' because I don't believe that their candidates, namely Obama and Clinton have much respect or regard for principles of liberty.
Gray and Fish went back and forth about Jante and the rules of loyalty between black individuals and their race, with the bone of contention of whether or not independent minded blacks always end up being prodigal sons.
And it finally got here:
"When you are selling records, you need 100,000 CD buyers that give you $10 worth of respect. Your compact is with the masses. That's what you do. My compact is with the elite. That's what I do."
Not exactly. I sold tickets and, most of my sales being in Europe, my customers where 98-99%% "whites"., with the exception of the UK where they were about 50% "black".
So, no, I didn't have compact with my customers. The only compact I had there was to deliver quality product.
My compact is, as I said, with the ones who opened the door for me and did so with the understanding that I would open the doors for others long after the ones who did this for me were dead and gone.
It is something every successful group does. From Koreans to Itaians to Jews to Germans. The concept is that one generation pays what it owes to the previous generation to the next generation.
Actually it is a highly conservative concept. Those are the rules of progress. You don't play by the rules, you ain't gonna have a chance to be successful in the long run. That elite that you are speaking off, Cobb, doesn't need you. You're a pet to them. I'm a pet to them. Seriously. I know, I grew up among them, went to school with them, and worked with them.
In any case, like I said, you don't play by the rules, don't expect to get a helping hand when that "elite" kicks you to the curb.
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First off, I don't expect a helping hand. Talking about me personally. I get unemployment insurance and I got family with property. If I have to go live in Bonifay Florida in a one room room, I got that room. Secondly, I'm perfectly confident that there aren't going to be any blackfolks (specifically) or people in the masses that are going to come to my economic rescue, and I certainly don't need their emotional rescue. I've been through several business cycles as an entrepreneur and I know how the hoi polloi laugh when you have to sell your BMW. Later for them suckers. They can't help me, they can't hurt me. But it's not about me.
This compact Fish speaks of is of enduring interest, however. Because it is explicit when it comes to contracts and I can expect results in court, but it is implicit between blackfolks and I don't believe anybody can bank on it. That's why sellouts sell out, because when it comes down to it, there are nothing but emotional and psychological bonds between African Americans, and love & hate don't pay the rent. It is my theory that (and I think it's pretty deep) only African Americans from dysfunctional families depend on that compact. De La Soul said it a decade ago - "I've got too much family to heed your threat". But those without family must heed all the threats. They are the permanent underclass, they are the permanently orphaned and they have to cling to dime store ideology because they don't have parents. They sing that old Negro spiritual with a deeper meaning.
I really want Nulan in on this because he has an evolved sense of black communion and I want to interrogate him on how he sees that dynamic at play with those of family values. Again, remember my fundamental rule about the difference between political conservatism and liberalism: Liberals guard against the dysfunctions of the family with the power of the state. Conservatives guard against the dysfunctions of the state with the power of family. These outline their priorities for public vs private action, and whose responsibility it is to do something when things fall apart. From my Old School perspective, I say a self-sufficient black family should be the locus of priorities and that is a simple conservative tenet. So naturally I diss bastards, just like Cosby. I would say that I am naturally fuedal as well, but that goes to contracts and compacts between people.
When I say that the black monolith is broken, it is not a myth. The monolith is broken because African Americans have in fact found compacts they have been able to sustain in the post-Jim Crow era more viable and profitable than those with the old black community. The aim of Black Power was to sustain them but Black Power failed, and it continues to fail primarily because it hasn't adopted, by and large, the benefits of corporate and global management. I take Fish to be an exception and the hiphop nation by extension. But Black Power of that sort is insufficient to handle DuBoisian imperatives. Still I digress.
What's of key interest is the extent to which the implicit and explicit social contracts by the rich and wealthy to the middle class and upper middle class are intact. Because this is precisely the intersection of contention when we speak of black prodigals. Example, OJ Simpson. Example, Michael Jackson.
I leave it there to discuss.
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