Michael Eric Dyson (25 page)

For black (and brown) people, on the other hand, there are huge differences. The use of internal self-explanations by blacks underscores for them the role of structural, not individualistic, elements in the cause of poverty. External self-explanations, on the other hand, increase the likelihood of individualistic, not structural, explanations for poverty. There appears to be a dramatically different understanding of the relationship between personal experience and causal explanations of status in black communities than in white ones. As Hunt suggests, one reason for this might be that black experience is conditioned by class and caste. For blacks who are
gainfully employed, this results in a halfway house of thinking: “they are better off than the abject poor but still relatively disadvantaged compared with middle-class whites,” suggesting that they are in a unique position to understand both “their relative success and the importance of beliefs in internal, individual sources of advancement” and the “relative disadvantage and the continuing significance of external, environmental barriers to equality with whites.”
³⁶
Thus, for blacks, internal self-explanations flow “from a sense of having worked hard and having made sacrifices to achieve personal success and the status that gainful employment brings,” although, unlike whites, who generalize from their personal experiences to the poor, employed black folk have more complex views that are shaped by their racial status.
³⁷
As a result, even when employed blacks explain their success by internal elements like hard work, talent and dedication, they also realize they have had to surmount structural barriers in the process, leading them to believe that other black folk face similar obstacles. Thus, internal elements are but one factor in explaining success. Black folk often understand the role of both internal and external factors, and thus, “assuming personal responsibility, or saying ‘I made it because of me,’ does not preclude—indeed it can increase—the acknowledgment that structural barriers exist in society.”
³⁸

It is clear from social science research that many black folk are capable of sustaining two apparently contradictory views: recognizing that individual responsibility for personal destiny is enormously important to the culture, while at the same time acknowledging the structural barriers that prevent both
social justice and self-realization. Most successful black folk appear to recognize that while they have worked hard, applied themselves diligently and taken advantage of every opportunity to enhance their God-given talents, other black folk may not be as fortunate as they are in laying claim to their educational and employment aspirations. The sensitivity among gainfully employed black folk to the plight of less fortunate members of the race contrasts with the beliefs of most whites, who lean far too heavily on individual responsibility as the nearly exclusive determinant of social status. Since the bulk of blacks embrace structural explanations for poverty while leaving room for personal agency—and while the black poor themselves often seek to exercise to the best of their ability individual responsibility in the midst of incredibly difficult circumstances—it stands to reason that prominent and fortunate blacks have a responsibility to acknowledge that complexity while putting forth arguments that defend the most vulnerable of the race. This holds even for conservative members of the race. Although newfangled black neoconservatives have often forgotten this lesson, black conservatives from the past were more willing to acknowledge structural barriers while emphasizing personal initiative.

Bill Cosby has forsaken these insights, the result of centuries of struggle, to embrace in his public comments a callous disposition to the poor that resembles the most extreme and acid views promulgated by some conservative white critics. Cosby has clearly spurned formal empathy and embraced almost exclusively an individualistic framework, leaving behind the close attention to structural features—poor housing,
terrible classrooms and tough neighborhoods—that he so ably explored in his
Playboy
interview. Just as in his comedy Cosby has consistently sought to appeal to a white audience, his recent views certainly play to the preference among most whites to explain their situation and, therefore, the situation of all others, in terms of initiative and personal responsibility. Cosby undoubtedly is aware of the conservative cultural and moral values that are widely shared in most black communities, even among the poor, a fact that not only contradicts the image his public harangues present—that most poor blacks have lost their moral compass—but also suggests that calls for personal responsibility are ethically redundant. It is not that such calls are not useful, and to a large degree predictable, given that, in a certain view of these matters, the train of moral enlightenment glides on tracks of sheer repetition. But that is different from dissing an entire group of folk—a fact that is hardly mitigated by Cosby’s insistence after his attacks that he doesn’t mean
all
poor black folk, the verbal equivalent of a “wink-wink” to the knowing—for not possessing the very thing he knows is abundant, a moral sensibility that is far richer than their material circumstances.

Cosby’s views of the black poor are so bent out of shape by his apparent aggravation that he is led to deny the rigid racial realities that make it extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible, for poor black folk to flesh out their desires to be educated, gainfully employed and free from the despotic empire of want and penury. There is significant disadvantage still to black skin in an American culture that proclaims the virtues of individualism while denying to blacks,
as a group
,
the means to fulfill their individual potential. Not only does Cosby discount the white racial privilege he so honestly confronted in his
Playboy
interview, but he underplays the persistent racism that affects blacks of every class level, but especially poorer blacks. To adapt an old saying in black America in explaining the relative impact of social forces, if well-to-do blacks have a cold, then poor blacks surely have pneumonia. The reason Cosby can be relatively dismissive of structural racism may have to do with his
relative
freedom from the constraints of social prejudice as a globally recognized celebrity, and his failure to fully account for the structural economic injustice faced by poor people may have something to do with his freedom from want, and from the severe psychological and personal penalties it imposes on the most vulnerable. While most of us are disturbed by self-destructive behavior among poor folk, we must also have a clearer grasp of the social and economic landscape for the poor, and what extreme poverty does to individuals trapped in situations of acute desperation.

None of this suggests a black disinterest in responsibility, but it does suggest a widening of our understanding of just what responsibility is, who has it, and how it functions in a more complex vision of social justice for
all
Americans. I suggest that we hold in mind several dimensions of responsibility, summarized in the dynamic, reciprocal relation between three interrelated types of responsibility:
personal
and
social responsibility, moral
and
intellectual responsibility,
and
immediate
and
ultimate responsibility.
Personal responsibility involves the individual’s being accountable for her actions and acting in a
moral fashion that is helpful to herself and to the members of her family, community and society. Social responsibility involves the society’s exercising collective accountability to its citizens by acting, through agencies (social services, psychological services and the like), institutions (schools, religious organizations, government and the like), and spheres (private and public employment and the like) to enhance their well-being, especially the most vulnerable. To speak of personal responsibility without understanding its relationship to the social order is to miscalculate what we may reasonably expect from human beings in a given situation. On the other hand, to speak of social responsibility without factoring in the roles and duties of individuals is to misjudge the extent of accountability we can reasonably expect from our society.

Moral responsibility involves self- and other-regarding behavior that aims to realize the good intentions, and maximize the just actions, of persons and societies. Intellectual responsibility involves the exercise of mental faculty for the purpose of self-development and the development of society. To speak of moral responsibility without understanding its constitutive relation to the intellectual goals, and possibilities, of individuals and societies is to misjudge what we can reasonably expect from either. To speak of intellectual responsibility without understanding the ethical ideals and moral properties that constitute and govern intellectual pursuit—and the social conditions that make it possible—is to miscalculate the relation of thought to behavior.

Immediate responsibility involves persons and societies acting accountably to address issues, ideas and problems in
the present time and environment. Ultimate responsibility involves persons and societies acting accountably to address issues, ideas and problems with an eye on their personal and social impact in the long run. There is another meaning as well: Ultimate responsibility involves assigning culpability for actions, and consequences, that may appear to lie with particular individuals but that in fact is determined by larger and perhaps more distant (in time) forces. To speak of immediate responsibility without figuring in ultimate responsibility in both senses is to minimize the role of more distant and daunting factors that shape the choices at hand. To speak of ultimate responsibility, in both senses, without understanding how immediate responsibility may still alter personal and social outcomes is to posit a determinism that dishonors individual effort and social transformation.

These meanings of responsibility should be kept in mind as we make demands for the poor to be more responsible. Too often we fail to give them credit for how they are already being personally and morally responsible, given the conditions they confront in the home, in the neighborhood, in the school and in society. We have at the same time failed to calculate, or to as aggressively demand, social responsibility toward the poor. And with both targeted and indiscriminant assaults on the poor, and Cosby fits the latter bill, we have failed to act in an intellectually responsible fashion to use the wealth of research we have at our disposal to relieve, rather than reinforce, their suffering. And we surely haven’t used our resources to retard the personal and collective demons that gnaw at the souls and flesh of the poor. Neither have we
accepted our ultimate societal responsibility for the problems—racism, class and caste prejudice, with all of their attendant ills, which the poor didn’t invent—they grapple with daily. As with Cosby, we have given far too much emphasis to the personal responsibility of the poor without speaking of our social, intellectual, moral and, yes, ultimate, responsibility to the poor. This is more than a philosophical category mistake; it has fatal consequences for how we view the poor and what resources we are willing to place at their disposal to more fully enable them to escape their plight. Our irresponsibility in this matter far outweighs whatever irresponsibility we might impute to the poor.

We have acted, as a society, in an intellectually and morally irresponsible fashion when we assign too much weight to personal responsibility of the poor without figuring out whether they can even respond honorably and reasonably with the resources at hand to the challenges they face, challenges rooted in finite factors that have in large part been constructed by, and in, the social order. But perhaps one of the biggest disservices, and one of the greatest acts of intellectual irresponsibility, is to believe (and to demand the poor believe it too) by assuming personal responsibility, the poor could in any significant way alter their social plight. As Bishop T. D. Jakes said in response to Cosby’s comments:

The poor cannot erase the blight of white supremacy by behaving better, no matter what advocates of racial uplift or personal responsibility like Bill Cosby suggest. Assuming personal responsibility cannot remove vicious structural barriers to economic mobility. Exercising personal responsibility cannot prevent the postindustrial decline in major northeastern cities, nor can it fix the crumbling infrastructure that continues to keep the poor, well, poor. Being personally responsible can’t stop job flight, structural shifts in the political economy, the increasing technological monopoly of work, downsizing, or outsourcing, problems that middle-class folk, who are presumed
to be more personally responsible than the poor, face in abundance these days. As historian Robin D. G. Kelley observes: