Keeping it Real at the NYTimes

One month ago, guest NYT columnist Barbara Ehrenreich busted a gut castigating Bill Cosby for daring to suggest that African Americans needed to accept some measure of personal responsibility for some of the social ills - such as highschool dropout rates, teen pregnancies, and poor English skills - that affect the African American community.

Ehrenreich isn't surprised that a rich person is criticizing black people; that's "such a dog-bites-man story." But what's surprising about the Cosby story is that a black billionaire is leveling the criticism. "The only thing that gave this particular story a little piquancy is that the billionaire doing the bashing is black himself."

For Ehrenriech, it's unthinkable, really. How could a black person be so callous? "...it's just so 1985 to beat up on the black poor. " "...it must be fun to beat up on people too young and too poor to fight back."

Indeed, it must be fun to beat up on the blacks; how else are we to explain that, in the weeks since Ehrenreich wrote her sarcasm-laced column, the NYT has printed the opinions of numerous African Americans who are essentially unanimous - in supporting the notion that the African American community must take responsibility for its problems?

Leading off, we have Henry Louis Gates Jr., perhaps the preeminent African American intellectuals of our day:

"Why has it been so difficult for black leaders to say such things in public, without being pilloried for ''blaming the victim''? Why the huge flap over Bill Cosby's insistence that black teenagers do their homework, stay in school, master standard English and stop having babies? Any black person who frequents a barbershop or beauty parlor in the inner city knows that Mr. Cosby was only echoing sentiments widely shared in the black community.

"Too many of our children have come to believe that it's easier to become a black professional athlete than a doctor or lawyer. Reality check: according to the 2000 census, there were more than 31,000 black physicians and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000 black dentists. Guess how many black athletes are playing professional basketball, football and baseball combined. About 1,400. In fact, there are more board-certified black cardiologists than there are black professional basketball players. ''We talk about leaving no child behind,'' says Dena Wallerson, a sociologist at Connecticut College. ''The reality is that we are allowing our own children to be left behind.''

"Only 50 percent of all black children graduate from high school; an estimated 64 percent of black teenage girls will become pregnant...Are white racists forcing black teenagers to drop out of school or to have babies?

"Mr. Cosby got a lot of flak for complaining about children who couldn't speak standard English. Yet it isn't a derogation of the black vernacular -- a marvelously rich and inventive tongue -- to point out that there's a language of the marketplace, too, and learning to speak that language has generally been a precondition for economic success, whoever you are. When we let black youth become monolingual, we've limited their imaginative and economic possibilities."


Next up, media darling and Democratic Senate candidate Barack Obama, who announced the following to an adulatory national (and international) audience:

"Don't get me wrong. The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks, they don't expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don't want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon. Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white."

Even the Times's Letters section tilted (in 6 out of 8 letters!) against Ehrenreich and in favor of Cosby, Gates, and Obama. Three of the letters are so poignant and relevant that they are worth including here:

a) To Bill Cosby's remarks and those of Barack Obama and Henry Louis Gates Jr., I wish to add this: Let every black kid who scoffs at being studious as ''acting white'' remember who else thought that education was inappropriate for dark-skinned folk: slave owners and their sympathetic legislators in the Old South, who made it a crime to teach a slave to read and write. So, kids, look at the company you keep. Whose side are you on? J. Swartele-WoodMahwah, N.J., Aug. 1, 2004

b) Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s take on the causes of some of the problems facing a large segment of the black community is mostly correct. I take issue, however, that a conspiracy of silence exists in the black community that works to make people fearful of publicly discussing these issues. Regular, everyday black folks, no matter where they lived or worked, have talked about these issues for generations now. I often heard such discussions at family gatherings; my friends and I talked about these issues as teenagers in the housing project where we grew up, and we still talk about them today.Black intellectuals have articulated the need for self-development and critical thinking. What has apparently changed is that black elected and appointed officials are finally beginning to follow the lead of many of their core constituents and are adding their voices to the debate. Barack Obama's timely remarks at the Democratic convention should be seen not as a generational change in African-American political leadership but as an honorable and astute move by a black elected official to align himself publicly with the black mainstream.Darryl CoxWest Chester, Pa., Aug. 1, 2004

c) As an African-American, I was not at all appalled by Bill Cosby's remarks, because I knew them to be extracts from something greater. Let's face it: education is no longer considered the ticket out of impoverishment. Ambitions in entertainment and sports have usurped the prestige that educational goals once held.Bill Cosby, the entertainer, the billionaire, is hardly bashing anyone, as Barbara Ehrenreich says. He is saying, in his way, what disturbs many. DOUGLAS HATCHERNew York, July 8, 2004

So, to recap, here's what we have: a) 1 middle-aged white woman who is horrified at the notion of asking black people to take responsibility for some of the problems in their community b) 3 prominent black (or part-black) figures who agree that more must be demanded from the black community and c) 75% of the printed responders to articles on both sides of the issue (likely, but not certainly, black) who either rip Ehrenreich or vocally support the targets of Ehrenreich's vitriol.

Well, what do you know? An example of a middle-aged white liberal whose condescending attitude toward African Americans is out-of-touch both with the African American community and the public at large. Now there's a dog-bites-man story.