Somewhere between Salim Muwakkil’s In These Times article, “Jena and the Post-Civil Rights Fallacy” and Bob Herbert’s positive review  (pasted below) of Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint’s new book, “Come on, People: On the Path From Victims to Victors,” lies the truth.  Cosby and Poussaint’s book was featured for a full hour on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday. 

Mr. Muwakkil suggests that America’s “school to prison pipeline” belies the argument that America has moved into a post-racial era in which black candidates can run for office without their race being a major factor.

Bill Cosby says black people need to stop blaming white people for their problems.

Mr. Cosby is resented by many black intellectuals, but not because they necessarily disagree with his sentiments.  Critics say the comedian’s one-sided, no-nuance approach lends aid and comfort to folks like Jena’s Reed Walters and Roy Breithaupt who deny that racism has anything to do with anything.

At first glance, Bob Herbert appears to fill the middle ground between the “blaming white folks makes it worse” school and the “institutionalized white racism” camp.  The New York Times columnist wrote ten influential columns on the Tulia drug sting (the case that created Friends of Justice), and he is famous for his graphic depictions of white bigotry and eloquent diatribes against the mass incarceration of minority males.

But Herbert has also written a string of columns in recent years critical of Hip Hop Culture and the pathologies commonly associated with the black underclass. 

Unfortunately, Herbert rarely discusses both issues on the same day and under the same heading.

Mr. Muwakkil, orthodox leftist that he is, laments the persistant reality of entrenched white racism and “the school to prison pipeline”; but he has little to say about the alarming social disintegration within poor neighborhoods.

Here’s the problem: Mass incarceration multiplies the social chaos it is intended to address.  The theory behind America’s love affair with prisons and jails works like this: if we send offenders away for very, very long sentences, people will stop doing illegal things.  Because people act in their own best interest, the threat of incarceration encourages people to live within the law. 

Sadly, things haven’t worked according to plan.  Anyone who has worked with at-risk kids (as I have) knows they rarely do what is in their best interst.  In fact, they don’t know what their best interest looks like.  Under the best circumstances, adolescent males have an alarming tendency to act on impulse.  Under the worst circumstances, impulse is everything.

The Children’s Defense Fund invited personal responsibility gurus like Bill Cosby and Juan Williams to their recent conference on Dismantling the Cradle to Prison Pipeline.  As I mentioned at the time, the Howard University audience embraced their message with enthusiasm. 

The next night I was on the same stage with several Jena 6 family members.  Same rapturous response.

But you rarely find Bill Cosby on the same panel with Ted Shaw of the Legal Defense Fund, or Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree.  Placed on the same stage, these folks would have to address each other’s issues–something they are more than capable of doing.  But they never seem to get the chance.

In my experience, you can’t get anywhere with a mainstream black audience unless you address the personal responsibility issue and the debilitating impact of institutional racism.  The folks who streamed to Jena would generally agree with Cosby and Pouissaint.  Blaming whitey for your problems is a one-way ticket to personal oblivion; but that doesn’t mean whitey ain’t a big part of the problem–he is . . . I am.

When we admit that the prison problem begins with the cradle we understand that fatherless families place little boys and girls (especially boys) at enormous risk.  But we also acknowledge the debilitating impact of racially toxic, white-controlled, environments like Jena High School.  Inner city schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, even if they enjoy a high percentage of minority teachers and administrators, are generally overwhlemed by low teacher morale, substandard facilities, little parental support, and the myriad social problems kids drag to school behind them. 

On balance, American society has chosen to ignore poor families and dysfunctional schools.  We believe that if we lock up enough young males folks will straighten up sooner or later.  We keep waiting and nobody seems to be straightening up.

Against this depressing backdrop, Cosby’s rant against black poor people rings hollow.  He fails to address the full complexity of the problem out of fear that too much nuance will encourage a counterproductive “blame whitey” cult of victimization.

Most people, it is assumed, can only live with one big idea.

But this is not an either-or proposition.  It is not a zero-sum game in which paying attention to one side of the problem deflates the legitimacy of the other side. 

I retract the last paragraph.  In practice, it is as zero-sum game–but it shouldn’t be.

If we segregate the issues we cannot address the problem.  The cradle to prison pipeline must be considered in the context of personal and family responsibility–and vice versa.  Tackle just one aspect of the problem and we will fail, miserably, repeatedly, and utterly. 

October 16, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Tough, Sad and Smart

By BOB HERBERT

They are a longtime odd couple, Bill Cosby and Harvard’s Dr. Alvin Poussaint, and their latest campaign is nothing less than an effort to save the soul of black America.

Mr. Cosby, of course, is the boisterous veteran comedian who has spent the last few years hammering home some brutal truths about self-destructive behavior within the African-American community.

“A word to the wise ain’t necessary,” Mr. Cosby likes to say. “It’s the stupid ones who need the advice.”

Dr. Poussaint is a quiet, elegant professor of psychiatry who, in public at least, is in no way funny. He teaches at the Harvard Medical School and is a staff member at the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston, where he sees kids struggling in some of the toughest circumstances imaginable.

I always wonder, whenever I talk to Dr. Poussaint, why he isn’t better known. He’s one of the smartest individuals in the country on issues of race, class and justice.

For three years, Mr. Cosby and Dr. Poussaint have been traveling the country, meeting with as many people as possible to explore the problems facing the black community.

There is a sense of deep sadness and loss — grief — evident in both men over the tragedy that has befallen so many blacks in America. They were on “Meet the Press” for the entire hour Sunday, talking about their new book, a cri de coeur against the forces of self-sabotage titled, “Come On, People: On the Path From Victims to Victors.”

There weren’t many laughs over the course of the hour. Speaking about the epidemic of fatherlessness in black families, Mr. Cosby imagined a young fatherless child thinking: “Somewhere in my life a person called my father has not shown up, and I feel very sad about this because I don’t know if I’m ugly — I don’t know what the reason is.”

Dr. Poussaint, referring to boys who get into trouble, added: “I think a lot of these males kind of have a father hunger and actually grieve that they don’t have a father. And I think later a lot of that turns into anger. ‘Why aren’t you with me? Why don’t you care about me?’ ”

The absence of fathers, and the resultant feelings of abandonment felt by boys and girls, inevitably affect the children’s sense of self-worth, he said.

The book lays out the difficult route black people will have to take to free the many who are still trapped in prisons of extreme violence, poverty, degradation and depression.

It’s a work with a palpable undercurrent of love throughout. And yet it pulls no punches. In a chapter titled “What’s Going on With Black Men?,” the authors (in a voice that sounds remarkably like Mr. Cosby’s) note:

“You can’t land a plane in Rome saying, ‘Whassup?’ to the control tower. You can’t be a doctor telling your nurse, ‘Dat tumor be nasty.’ ”

Racism is still a plague and neither Mr. Cosby nor Dr. Poussaint give it short shrift. But they also note that in past years blacks were able to progress despite the most malignant forms of racism and that many are succeeding today.

“Blaming white people,” they write, “can be a way for some black people to feel better about themselves, but it doesn’t pay the electric bills. There are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before in the history of America.”

I couldn’t agree more. Racism disgusts me, and I think it should be fought with much greater ferocity than we see today. But that’s no reason to drop out of school, or take drugs, or refuse to care for one’s children, or shoot somebody.

The most important step toward ending the tragic cycles of violence and poverty among African-Americans also happens to be the heaviest lift — reconnecting black fathers to their children.

In an interview yesterday, Dr. Poussaint said: “You go into whole neighborhoods and there are no fathers there. What you find is apathy in a lot of the males who don’t even know that they are supposed to be a father.”

The book covers a great deal that has been talked about incessantly — the importance of family and education and hard work and mentoring and civic participation. But hand in hand with its practical advice and the undercurrent of deep love for one’s community is a stress on the absolute importance of maintaining one’s personal dignity and self-respect.

It’s a tough book. Victimhood is cast as the enemy. Defeat, failure and hopelessness are not to be tolerated.

Hard times and rough circumstances are not excuses for degrading others or allowing oneself to be degraded. In fact, they’re not excuses for anything, except to try harder.