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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781934155943 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | African American Images |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 200 |
| File size: | 883 KB |
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The Art of Being Cool: The Pursuit of Black Masculinity
By Theodore S. Ransaw
African American Images
Copyright © 2013 Dr. Theodore S. RansawAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-934155-94-3
CHAPTER 1
Race, Fear, and Economics
On top of a hill called "Class" Looking at another hill called "Race" Or the other way around. It is hard to tell which hill is higher. Henry Louis Gates, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, 1998
One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have a Dream," Washington, DC, August 28, 1963
Introduction
There is something different about seeing President Barack Obama step off Air Force One in his custom-tailored designer suit. President Obama is cool. Whether in a meeting at the White House or just hanging out with his wife and kids, President Obama has a distinctive mannerism that some would call "swag." That is what they are calling cool nowadays, swag. President Obama's cool swag is not that surprising. When he ran for his first term in office, his campaign theme was change. Both literally and rhetorically, President Obama represents change. Not only does he look different from presidents before him, he acts differently than most other previous U.S. presidents. However, change is not something that everyone can accept. While proponents have hailed Obama's first successful presidential election as historic (Klein, 2008), opponents felt the election signaled a downfall for American society: "When the masses look at the paper and truly realize they have lost their own country" (Potok, in Clarence Page, 2008). Just a few weeks after his second successful run for resident, residents in more than 29 states filed petitions to secede from the United States (Huffington Post, 2012). All of this happened before President Obama could give his second term inaugural address. While some states like Texas are known for trying to secede since the Union's inception, it is easy to conclude that many of the other states' representatives that filed petitions oppose President Obama for something more than his politics, such as race. In my opinion, President Obama represents more than just the first African American U.S. president. He depicts both an unrepresented race as well as an often unrepresented class.
Please do not get me wrong; there are many who are not happy with President Obama's White House politics, Blacks included. Examples of the latter include television and radio host Tavis Smiley, Professor Cornel West and Professor Michael Eric Dyson. However, much of the opposition toward President Obama is based on issues pertaining to the overwhelming influence of the ruling class. Take for instance the televised presidential debate in 2012 between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. During and after the debate, Romney associated himself with the powerful elite and bourgeois ruling class of America. At the time of the debate he was estimated to be worth more than two billion dollars (Harris, 2007). On the other hand, Obama made clear from his descriptions of his upbringing — the son of a single mother, raised in modest circumstances, already detailed in his books such as Dreams from My Father1 — that he was associated with everything that presidential hopeful Romney was not: someone who represents the common people as well as the poor. Obama was deemed so likable by the common people that during a debate in South Carolina in 2012, Gingrich called him "the food stamp president" (Adair & Holan, 2012).
Class and Economics
Although he was once a state legislator and U.S. senator, President Obama's generational family earning and income were not the same as other senators or members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Sixty percent of the U.S. Senate and more than one out of three House members are millionaires (Sklar, 2010). The amount of wealth of the ruling class such as senators and congressmen is a significant factor in American politics, since after adjusting for inflation, workers earn less today overall than they did in 1956 (Sklar). This means the definition of poor in America also includes the working class. For Blacks in America wealth per capita is three-fifths that of Whites (Sklar) — interesting since before the Civil War Blacks were once considered worth three-fifths that of Whites.
Class and Education
The wealthy live in better homes and better neighborhoods and consequently, due to higher property taxes, have more money to spend for better quality schools, and can and do pay higher salaries for teachers and principals. The per pupil spending disparity between affluent public schools and poor public schools makes it easier to import Asians or even Africans to America than it is to send a Black kid from Compton to graduate school (PBS, 2012). However, the gap between standardized test scores of affluent and low-income students is double the testing gap between Blacks and Whites (Tavernis, 2012). In America, the number one indicator of success in school is family income and parents' education level (Zorn, et al., 2004). Not only do wealthy parents have more money to spend on books, tutors, and SAT/ACT test preparation, they also most likely have a higher education level from which to draw when they help their children with their homework. In other words, class is just as much a criterion for behavior as is thinking.
Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income children before age 6 in places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools (anywhere from museums to shopping malls). She found by the time high- income children start school they have spent about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy-related activities (Tavernis, 2012). Clearly, poverty and the gap between the wealthy and ruling class is not just about race. However, for many in the United States, it is easy to associate people of color with poverty, especially African Americans.
Poverty in America is associated with people of color because people of color are viewed as lazy and dependant on the government. Romney has said, "When I'm president I plan to work closely with the black community to bring a sense of pride and work ethic back into view for them" (Romney in Wood, 2012). Romney has also suggested, "Forty-seven percent of Americans are dependent on the government and believe that they are entitled to health care, food and housing" (Romney in Wood). Romney's comment was so unpopular that many felt that he was out of touch with most Americans. In fact, Romney was not out of touch with the wealthy in America, especially the American White wealthy. The gap between wealthy Whites and people of color in America grew more than 20% since 2012 (Sklar, 2012). Many of those Whites became wealthy during the slave era. This intimate familiarity with those who were enslaved in America has left a lingering impression with those who were members of the ruling class of the time. Many wealthy Whites like Romney feel they can relate to African Americans in today's society because their families probably once owned slaves.
However, just because they were freed over a century ago doesn't mean they can now be freeloaders. They need to be told to work hard, and the incentives just aren't there for them anymore. (Romney in Wood, 2012)
Perspectives similar to Romney's are symptomatic of many Americans. Our defining marker of race, class and poverty in America is slavery. If you are White in America and associate yourself with wealth, and you associate people of color in America with poverty, listlessness and slavery, then a Black president represents what is wrong with America — change in the wrong direction.
As the PBS documentary Race 2012 asserts, America is becoming more non-White than ever before (PBS, 2012). This browning of America is underscored with the second term election of a Black president. American social roles based on race which used to represent class are starting to change in ways that are related to far more than just racism. For many, new technologies, new markets, new economies, in short, differences in American worldviews on almost every scale means a change of previous American norms. This change has caused some to be fearful of what represented the American way of life. The changing relationships to race, poverty, and class — which give clues to social status — have been causing a panic in America.
Theoretical Framework
Using TMT, terror management theory (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991), I will explore how terror is related to class and the association of class to race in America. This perspective is especially important to the self-development, perspective, and perceptions of Black males in America. Since social roles are culturally biased and heavily influenced by self-esteem, TMT posits that when people are reminded of extreme change, such as the change of social roles or even death they turn to extremes to protect themselves (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2003). Since social roles like class are determined by one's culture, terror about losing social status affects both Blacks and Whites.
Privilege, by its very nature when confronted with the existence of another culture, causes fear. This occurs not just because of its differences, but because the confrontation can represent a clash between different worldviews and perceptions that forces a re-examination of self. Since all cultures are socially constructed, a new or different culture represents a possible new standard of behavior, a threat, or death of self- esteem. Cultural change represents a form of cognitive dissonance or cognitive dissemblance (Piaget, et al., 1995) that has the potential to change social roles. Everything from a personal worldview to one's self-esteem is affirmed, created, and destroyed by cultural constructs. A different form of behavior or an acknowledgment that another culture exists can represent death. A culture constructs symbols and themes that represent its members' worldview, and in essence these constructs bolster the individuals' esteem within that society. Therefore, to protect society, a threatening culture requires new rules and regulations to protect the self-esteem of the original culture.
Breen (2012) assures us that was not always the case. In the early part of Virginian history, poor Whites and poor Blacks banded together to overthrow their oppressors. Founded in 1607, Jamestown, Virginia was a company before it became the center of a colony. The first English-speaking Blacks in that part of the country were indentured servants in 1619, along with many Whites. Slavery as we know it was not established in Virginia until 1640. Prior to that date, poor Whites in Virginia were not better off than most Blacks. There is even evidence that Whites and Blacks slept together, ran away together, and protested against their overseers' maltreatment together (Breen). In fact, under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon poor Whites and Blacks expressed their anger about unfair labor treatment and government control when they set Jamestown on fire in 1676. The rebellion was quashed by British troops.
This event suggests that slavery was just as much about separating poor Whites and Blacks under the guise of race as it was about class. In other words, indentured White servants were persuaded to believe, "You may be poor, but you're not a ni-**" as an expression goes which has held currency for many generations since the 1600s. In fact, even before the precolonial era rich Whites enslaved Native Americans and purchased White slaves (Cavanaugh, 2012). Around the same time that Virginia was starting to recognize slavery, 550,000 Irish were killed and 300,000 of them were sold into slavery to the English during the Cromwell Reign of Terror during the 1650s. In fact, more Irish were sold as slaves to the American colonies and plantations from 1651 to 1660 than the total existing "free" population of the Americas! (Cavanaugh)
What I am suggesting is that slavery was initially based more on class than it was about race. For example, Wall Street was an area for slave auctions before it became associated with the New York Stock Exchange and the global stock market. Before Lehman Brothers Investments was founded in New York, the Lehman family made their money as cotton brokers in Alabama. The Morgan Family of JP Morgan Chase, Wachovia Bank of North Carolina, and Aetna Insurance all made their fortunes from selling insurance to slave owners. Race was used as a device to shroud the minds of White Americans into thinking that class was insignificant compared to race. But that has not been the case. For Whites in America, at every turn including American language, purchasing fashion, shopping at convenience stores, even the presidency has become more colorized than ever before. And if some of the changes are bad, such as the economy and politics, and those changes are represented by people of color, then race has a terrorizing influence. For many, the fear of losing America is based on the fear of others — those who are not Whites — despite the fact that America has always been an interracial place.
Lynchings
For Blacks who were enslaved in America, TMT was used in a different way. I can think of no other method of terrorizing Americans that's more effective than lynching. Lynching is the second level and perspective of TMT. Whereas fear of death by the loss of culture was used for non-wealthy Whites in America, lynching was used to cause the fear of physical death among Blacks.
It should be kept in mind that lynching was typically a Southern American Christian practice; before 1930, most of those lynched in the United States were European Americans. In 1891, 11 Italians were lynched in New Orleans. Italians were also hung in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Colorado, Kentucky, Illinois, Washington, and New York between the years of 1885 and 1915, some 50 killings in all (Pacchioli, 2004). At the time, European Americans of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant descent believed they were not only superior to Blacks but also most other Whites. America was the last country in the Western world that practiced lynching (Patterson, 1998). Used as a form of terrorism toward African Americans, lynching was often followed by burning the body.
The practice of lynching was organized and planned weeks in advance, sometimes even before a victim was chosen (Patterson). Displaying a highly ritualized choreography (Brundage, 1993, p. 36), lynching was often done on trees found on church property. It was not uncommon to burn African American churches before and after lynchings. "Trees are powerful symbolic objects, universally associated with both sacred and profane myths and rituals" (Patterson, 1998, p. 205). Trees in Christianity are symbols of the cross on which Christ — the second Adam — sacrificed his body. This Christian myth stems from a legend recounting that Adam's son placed a seed in his throat when he died — hence the phrase, Adam's apple. The seed grew into a tree whose branches were used for everything from the staff of Moses, to the wood used in one of King Solomon's temples. The wood from the tree was also used to crucify Christ and placed on Mount Golgotha, the same spot where Adam was buried (Every, 1970). Participants in a lynching were sacrificing their most prized property, a Black man, in a ritual to honor God and in turn, gain God's blessing. To them lynching was a gift exchange that brought magical transference of inalienability, common in cultures that value property and ownership of animals. The stock in this case was the Black man, later sacrificed after death by burning his body (Patterson, 1998). In many ways lynching represents sacrificial purification of the lynchers who have no choice but to offer the victim's body as payment to preserve their way of life.
Similar to the burned offering on altars, sacrifice and smell were important to God, who seemed to be aware of scent. All offerings of sacrifice were to be placed on an alter and burned, with the blood sprinkled against the altar. Moses instructed his followers to make a "burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord" (Leviticus 1:3, NIV). If you were White, the odor and sweat of the Black man's skin were the only way of distinguishing and defining one's sense of self-worth versus that of the Negro (Patterson, 1998). White Southerners' fear of losing jobs to slave labor and immigrants was the beginning of latter-day reactions to affirmative action (Katznelson, 2005; Marshall, 1967).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Art of Being Cool: The Pursuit of Black Masculinity by Theodore S. Ransaw. Copyright © 2013 Dr. Theodore S. Ransaw. Excerpted by permission of African American Images.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Robert L. Green, PhD,Acknowledgments,
Introduction: Better, Faster, Harder — Stronger,
Chapter I: Race, Fear, and Economics,
Chapter II: Black Males and Literacy,
Chapter III: The Art of Being Cool,
Chapter IV: Black Males and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,
Chapter V: Black Males, Media and Myths,
Chapter VI: Hip-Hop and Masculinity,
Chapter VII: Hip-Hop Pedagogy,
Chapter VIII: Black Male Privilege,
Chapter IX: Black Grandfathers, Fathers, and Faith,
Appendix:,
Elements of Style,
Elements of Fatherhood,
Elemental Education,