Mikaela says:
Great article today in Washington Post criticizing the latest "Get to Work!" tour by Bill Cosby. Stop whining about racism, he says, and get a job, send your kids to school, and stay out of jail.
Author Michael Dyson points out clearly that this sentiment is good advice but fails to acknowledge the structural injustice that ensures unequal rewards for the same effort by black and non-black people.
By convincing poor blacks that their lot in life is purely of their own making, Cosby draws on harsh conservative ideas that overlook the big social factors that continue to reinforce poverty: dramatic shifts in the economy, low wages, chronic underemployment, job and capital flight, downsizing and outsourcing, and crumbling inner-city schools."To tell a man to 'pull himself up by his bootstraps' when he doesn't have boots is not compassionate. To tell a man to 'pull himself up by his bootstraps' when one hand is tied behind his back is not equality." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.None of these can be overcome by the good behavior of poor blacks. As historian Robin D.G. Kelley argues, "All the self-help in the world will not eliminate poverty or create the number of good jobs needed to employ the African American community."
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Personal responsibility is a necessary but insufficient condition for poor blacks to do better. We also need social justice to give them real opportunity to exercise that personal responsibility. That's why Martin Luther King Jr. didn't lead a behave-in to correct black morality, but a sit-in to protest racial injustice. (To be sure, King believed that for blacks to achieve "first-class citizenship," we must "assume the primary responsibility for making it so," even as we continue to "resist all forms of racial injustice.") Even conservative cleric T.D. Jakes argues that personal responsibility is "one-half of the solution" and that the "greater solution" is to combat "the lingering attitudes and bias that continue to fuel injustice."
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