The Path from Victims to Victors
In their new book, “Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors,” Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint, Professor of Psychiatry and Faculty Associate Dean for Student Affairs at Harvard Medical School, consider the ways black people can rise above a history of oppression, seeming hopelessness, fear and lack of education on the path to victory. You may have seen them this weekend on Meet the Press (click the to read the transcript, watch the broadcast or read excerpts). Here are some of the statistics, ideas and concerns the gentleman presented:
1 . In 1950, five out of every six black children were born into two-parent home. Today, that number is less than two out of six. In poor communities, that number is lower still.
2. Right, right now, there are 2.2 million people in jail, and at last count about 910,000 were African-Americans. Now, at the time of Brown v. the Board of Education of 1954 there were 98,000 African-Americans in prison. So just from that period of time, there’s been a ninefold increase.
3. A black man is seven times more likely to commit a murder than a white man, and six times more likely to be murdered. 94 percent of black people who are murdered are murdered by other black people. Although black people make up 12 percent of the general population, make up nearly 44 percent of the prison population.
4. But the more we see it in neighborhoods, the more we will accept it that we can’t help it. And what we need to do is give people more of a confidence that they can. They must realize that the revolution is in their apartment now. The revolution is in their house, their neighborhood, and then they can fight strongly, clearly the systemic and the institutional racism.
5. Well, this is a very important point. If powder cocaine, 80 percent of those arrested are white; crack cocaine, 75 percent arrested are black. And you need 100 times more powder cocaine… to get the same penalty mandatory… that you would get with crack cocaine. There’s a disparity.
6. (on the N-Word) And there’s no way that you can make that word positive in this culture, in terms of what it meant for black people, their oppression, slavery, lynching. That can never be made positive. And even the people who suggest that it can, say a gangster rapper or the kids in the street, say it’s positive and “You’re my brother,” use the word.’ They also use it when they’re shooting and killing each other. They’re calling them that, that same name in a derogatory way.
7. this is not the first time my race has seen systemic or institutional racism.
8. And domestic violence, I think people have to understand, is also a form of child abuse. That the domestic violence in and of itself is a form of child abuse. Children are damaged if they see a father punch a mother or vice versa.
9. We have a HIV-AIDS epidemic in the black community where we’re responsible for 50 percent of the new cases. Well, there’s behavior, see, connected to all of these things. Do we have choices around what kind of food we eat? We have an obesity, diabetes epidemic in the black community. To suggest that all of those problems are due totally and solely to systemic racism, I think, is just not correct. But I think systemic racism should be worked on always. We’re a strong people, if we’re a strong people because we raise our children to be strong, they’ll be better activists who can bring about some of those systemic changes, policy changes that are so… institutional.
10. Certain people tell us that we are picking on the poor. Many of those who accuse us are scholars and intellectuals, upset that we are not blaming everything on white people as they do. Well, only blaming the system keeps certain black people in the limelight but it also keeps the black poor wallowing in victimhood.
Whether you agree or disagree I believe even the busiest YBP can help. If you are a successful business owner, offer a free clinic. If you are an Administrator, recruit from black churches and schools. All of us can alert local black organizations and associations if we know our employer is hiring. All of us can talk to our employers about bringing school kids to the job for a morning or afternoon. Be a Guardian ad Litem, Big Brother/Big Sister or mentor.
Most importantly, be an example. Let the words that come out of our mouths reflect who we really believe we are and what we really believe we are capable of. Let everything we do reflect the character our parents and loved ones encouraged and modeled. We would better understand how difficult the less educated, motivated and experienced among us have it when we realize how hard it can be even for us to change some of our behaviors, patterns of speech and habits when we have EVERY incentive to do so. We’ve said it before: each one of us, individually, has to be the change we want to see in the world. Come on People!
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Comment by Lester Spence on 15 October 2007:
This is what I’d like you to do if you could. Take your real job, and conceive of a problem that is of this magnitude on your job.
What types of solutions would you suggest to solve it?
Comment by GIB on 16 October 2007:
Ok, I’ll do my best. Interestingly, I work in dependency court and very often I see what could be said to be some of the effects of what Cosby and Poussiant say is going on. 80-90% of the parents in Dependency court here in Miami are black even though blacks make up only 10-15% of the population. Admittedly, there are several reasons for this, all of which aren’t related to lack of education, motivation or things of the like. Even with that said, 60-70% of the mothers in these cases either aren’t sure who the fathers are or the fathers do not show up. 95% of the families we see, black or not, tend to be poor, poorly educated, on some form disability, and/or have a mental and substance abuse problems. These are everyday facts for me. In that regard I don’t know if I have to imagine something of that magnitude. I think I live that magnitude everyday.
So what is the solution? Well, I live by the notion that the spirit of hope is that I can’t do everything, but I can do something. Part of that something is choosing a job like this, where my role is to represent the best interests of children in these cases. Alongside other professionals in court, we make sure they get in early headstart, that developmental delays are addressed, that they see dentists and doctors regularly, that if they are victims of sexual, physical or mental abuse that they see therapists as soon as that is appropriate. Parents are placed in evidence-based parenting, anger management and substance abuse programs. They, too, see therapists and often end up in family therapy. They sometimes go to dyadic and play therapy to teach them healthy interactions and tools for raising and supporting their children. We can suggest places that will help with housing, job training and attaining everyday goods. These are things that can change their mindsets.
I have heard it said that the mind is the new frontier. Controlling the mind and realizing how our thoughts are related to what we experience as reality is of critical importance. We can no longer be victims. And, those of us who have been given the opportunity, resources and capability to step outside that victim mentality I think have a responsibility to help those who may, understandably, find that difficult.
This does not require everyone to quit their current job and do social services. But, it does require us to start doing things differently. A new definition of insanity I often hear is doing things the same way over ad over and expecting a different result. I think Cosby and Poussaint do us a great service just by suggesting we take a second look and try something different.
Now, one of my co-workers constantly gets on me about this whole “The Secret,” law of mind action pseudo-psychic, psychobabble. And, I understand why. It’s easy for me with my two degrees, decent job and free time to explore some of these loftier notions of existence. I don’t have mouths to feed, fear violence in my neighborhood (too much), nor have I lived in the cyclic pattern of socio-economic distress that can result from growing up poor and poorly educated. But, I can do small things, like outreach with my New Thought (read: law of Mind Action-believing, Metaphysical Christianity) church. I can be a Big Brother with the specific intention of giving one little boy a bigger vision of what his life can be. This is one of the reasons I LOVE prosperity preachers. Because they bring a message of abundance and victory, not victimhood and indesert. Today is about changing visions. Shaping minds. Revising stories. Our story does not have to be about defeat, but how we continually rise to the challenge of injustice and lack. And, we do it by building up ourselves. We should call each other victors instead of niggers. I dare us to try that for a while.
So these, I find, are the solutions I can offer. Day by day things. Speak blessings and victory into the lives of children. As often as I get when one of the kids in my cases comes to court I tell them how proud I am of them and how I believe in them. We can do that in the grocery store with a child we’ve never seen before or will again. Get involved. Get on the Foster Care Review panel in your neighborhood. Find a way to be an advocate for just one black child or one struggling parent. If you can, work for a social services agency. Be a teacher. I tell you, when you do those small things that you know one day, even if just incrementally, will have the long-term effect of improving the lives of just one person, hope continues to spring eternal. That’s where I live. That’s where I need to live. In a place that believes that just I, even me, have the power, day to day, to help bring about change in this world. That takes thought and a choice to believe in the best possible outcome and I have to take that message “out there” where it’s not always believed.
Neither the solution nor the revolution will be flying down on wings of angels. We are the angels.
Comment by Lester Spence on 16 October 2007:
here’s where we agree.
we agree that what is required is a literal revolution of sorts. we’ve got to do something drastically different than what has been done before in order to deal with the situation. we also agree that everyone has a stake, and that this is not something that “we” can simply do for “them” or something “they” can do for “themselves.”
i’ll show you where we disagree by way of comparisons to one current crisis.
the current crisis is the financial crisis brought on by the collapse of the housing market. this collapse was brought on by a decrease in demand, a decrease in individual income, and an increase in subprime mortgage lending. People bought houses with very bad loans, thinking that they’d either make enough money to pay the mortgage when it increased…or the homes would be worth so much that they could sell them if times got too rough.
The end result? The collapse of a significant segment of the market that ends up having negative spillover effects.
How does this relate? One possible position to take here is that the markets will right themselves if people and institutions really think carefully about what they’re doing and simply use this opportunity to change their behavior. A culture of excess has tainted the market and what is required is something akin to a cultural revolution.
This solution is the one that would fit very closely with the one offered by Cosby and Poussaint on the one hand…and you here.
The other option is for the federal government to intervene by crafting a set of policies that would in effect protect the market from a full collapse. Although cultural change may be necessary it is not sufficient to protect investors and institutions from the effects of what are really structural problems.
Guess which one the federal government chose?
What I find fascinating is that many of the responses I’ve read to Cosby begin by acknowledging the material and structural bases for the current problems we have. But when it comes to solutions for some reason they jump straight to culture and psychology, rather than considering public policy options. Given that the cultural/psychological options themselves require a revolution of sorts, it can’t be that this option is easier to pull off. There’s something else going on.
Comment by GIB on 16 October 2007:
I agree with you there are more things at play than just the need for cultural/psychological change. There are still institutional impediments to not just having the opportunity “every one else has” but the capacity. So, it’s no coincidence the number of articles that appear here and similar places about financial planning, independence and security. That’s another relatively new area for us in terms of savvy and strategy.
See, we don’t yet have the history of family estates nor legacies, generations and broad spectra of professionals in our family lines. Such that when one of us enters law school or business school, we have tens of family members who have done it before. I think that leaves us at a disadvantage just on the preparedness level. I think that’s when we’ll be truly equal and I think that’s why social programs and things like affirmative action can’t yet end. Sure access and opportunity appear equal, but there is a foundation that is missing.
In my opinion, that’s missing in the example of the housing market you gave. And, we will probably be disproportionately affected by this crisis, too. So yes, something else is going on. But, that’s where my angels comment came down. Politicians nor our government are going to shift on a dime to doing more responsible, fair things for this, or any other disadvantaged community. This society is still “us/them.” And, that’s what we have to step out of. For me, that’s the beginning. If we remain victims of the system, victims of the market, victims at the hands of our own family or community, it doesn’t change the fact that a victim mentality tends to wait and blame. We have to latch on to something else. It is proven: blaming and waiting doesn’t and hasn’t worked. It’s time for something different. And, the only way I see to do something right now to change our outlooks on the future and ourselves is to change the mind. Change the way we think.
See, we’re not going to have better market participants until we have more educated ones. We are not going to have more educated ones until we have the structure and discipline of going to school. We aren’t going to have the structure and discipline of going to school until we have willing, giving and present parents. We can’t have present parents until they aren’t immersed in street violence, absent, or imprisoned. We aren’t going to reduce those things that render these parents incapacitated until we disincentivize a consumer culture, blind acceptance of the way capitalism keeps us separated, gangsta culture, and the status quo. We can’t change what is until we change ourselves and how we approach what “is.”
I recognize that this argument still may seem not to address the more practical realities. But, it’s what I believe. I have seen the change in myself that comes from recognizing that there is no reality, only how I perceive reality which gives me the power to shape it. That’s daring, I think. Some call it crazy. I call it the way. See public policy is outside of me. I can’t affect public policy the way we might like to (legislation) because I can’t change all “the public” involved at any one time. I can only change me. And, I can only hope that small acts and being an example will shape the public policy of those around me, and they start changing their mindset and behavior, and they start doing what they can to improve our communities, and all us changed people start finding themselves in the position of power and raising families that prove what we already know: we are powerful beyond measure, and fully capable of realizing our greatest potential right now.
Comment by ETS on 16 October 2007:
were these problems put in context in the book or were they written as if they are only “black” problems - created and maintained by blacks and blacks alone?