Black Conservatism

As someone who practically spent every Thursday evening watching the Cosby Show on NBC from late 1980s until its final episode in 1992, I could not resist clicking the link to the article "The audacity of Bill Cosby’s black conservatism," written by Ta-Nehisi Coate and published in this month's Atlantic Monthly. I found the article to be informative and well-written. We need more thoughtful expositions about racial experience, particularly in light of this year's political, social and religious controversies related to U.S. Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Somewhat surprisingly, what I ended up appreciating the most about this article was Mr. Coate's anchoring of Mr. Cosby's messages into much longer historical context. In addition, I relished sidenotes to two Atlantic Monthly articles from more than a century ago (written by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois in 1896 and 1897, respectively) which brought back some faded yet fond memories from the U.S. history classes I have taken.

Below are some illustrative passages from the article.

Excerpt 1: Cosby vs Dyson is analogous to Washington vs Du Bois a century ago

The split between Cosby and critics such as Dyson mirrors not only America’s broader conservative/liberal split but black America’s own historic intellectual divide. Cosby’s most obvious antecedent is Booker T. Washington. At the turn of the 20th century, Washington married a defense of the white South with a call for black self-reliance and became the most prominent black leader of his day. He argued that southern whites should be given time to adjust to emancipation; in the meantime, blacks should advance themselves not by voting and running for office but by working, and ultimately owning, the land.

W. E. B. Du Bois, the integrationist model for the Dysons of our day, saw Washington as an apologist for white racism and thought that his willingness to sacrifice the black vote was heretical. History ultimately rendered half of Washington’s argument moot. His famous Atlanta Compromise—in which he endorsed segregation as a temporary means of making peace with southerners—was answered by lynchings, land theft, and general racial terrorism. But Washington’s appeal to black self-sufficiency endured.

After Washington’s death, in 1915, the black conservative tradition he had fathered found a permanent and natural home in the emerging ideology of Black Nationalism. Marcus Garvey, its patron saint, turned the Atlanta Compromise on its head, implicitly endorsing segregation not as an olive branch to whites but as a statement of black supremacy. Black Nationalists scorned the Du Boisian integrationists as stooges or traitors, content to beg for help from people who hated them.

Excerpt 2: The organic black conservatism is a response to failed government policies

The rise of the organic black conservative tradition is also a response to America’s retreat from its second attempt at Reconstruction. Blacks have watched as the courts have weakened affirmative action, arguably the country’s greatest symbol of state-sponsored inclusion. They’ve seen a fraudulent war on drugs that, judging by the casualties, looks like a war on black people. They’ve seen themselves bandied about as playthings in the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan (with his 1980 invocation of states’ rights” in Mississippi), George Bush (Willie Horton), Bill Clinton (Sister Souljah), and George W. Bush (McCain’s fabled black love-child). They’ve seen the utter failures of school busing and housing desegregation, as well as the horrors of Katrina. The result is a broad distrust of government as the primary tool for black progress.

Excerpt 3: Cosby's rhetoric is not new

Indeed, a century ago, the black brain trust was pushing the same rhetoric that Cosby is pushing today. It was concerned that slavery had essentially destroyed the black family and was obsessed with seemingly the same issues—crime, wanton sexuality, and general moral turpitude—that Cosby claims are recent developments.

Excerpt 4: Cosby's activism is driven by a sense of rage caused by the failure of Liberalism

Part of what drives Cosby’s activism, and reinforces his message, is the rage that lives in all African Americans, a collective feeling of disgrace that borders on self-hatred. ...[truncated] Liberalism, with its pat logic and focus on structural inequities, offers no balm for this sort of raw pain. Like the people he preaches to, Cosby has grown tired of hanging his head.