Black Wealth, White Wealth: Quotes

     I suppose I should preface this post by pointing out that while I may seem to have criticisms of a lot of the readings that does not mean that I find them to be without value. I've enjoyed most of the readings, and have found great value in much of what we've looked at.

     This reading, in particular, has left me feeling incredibly uneasy. Black Wealth, White Wealth co-authored by Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, had a few moments that felt contradictory to me. At times it seemed to recognize the ways in which Black folk in the US have been, and continue to be, marginalized and oppressed in an anti-Black, White Supremacist society. But then, and mainly at points where they cite (in a praising manner to boot) William Julius Wilson, it seems like they devalue the power of racial discrimination and the ways in which it presently affects the life of Black folk. Because these are the moments that caused me the most difficulty while reading the text, these will be the moments that I will focus on in this blog post as it seems less crucial to spend time focusing on points I understood and agreed with.

But, first:

     Are we surprised at the lack of inherited wealth in the Black community? Especially when we currently live in a time where we are trying to move “beyond” race without truly confronting our history? We will forever be haunted by the ghosts of the past if we continue this foolish hope of moving “beyond” it. Is it a surprise that repression of the Black communities continues, although through somewhat different means? Same ends, though. Different means, same ends.

     It is possible that the first several pages ruined the rest of the text for me. For no matter how far away I got from page 7 my mind still went back to it, thinking “how could these authors support such a statement? How could they provide it without comment? How can I consider the rest of the arguments when they are potentially working from a destructive framework?”

The passage that I am referring to is on page 12 (.pdf page 7). They introduce an incredibly problematic William Julius Wilson quote by saying he provides an “eloquent and influential...” statement:

The argument for class, most eloquently and influentially stated by William Julius Wilson in his 1978 book The Declining Significance of Race, suggests that the racial barriers of the past are less important than present-day social class attributes in determining the economic life chances of black Americans…Discrimination and racism, while still actively practiced in many spheres, have marginally less effect on black American’s economic attainment than whether or not blacks have the skills and education necessary to fit in a changing economy. In this view, race assumes importance only as the lingering product of an oppressive past. As Wilson observes, this time in his Truly Disadvantaged, racism and its most harmful injuries occurred in the past, and they are today experienced mainly by those on the bottom of the economic ladder (12, emphasis mine)

…

     Immediately after reading that I took to Facebook and shared that passage with a like-minded friend of mine. He immediately replied with “good old wjwilson” and when I said I hadn’t heard of him before he pointed out that I was probably better off before. This man, William Julius Wilson, is considered by many to be the leading sociologist on race and these are the kinds of arguments he puts forth? That certainly makes me worried for Sociology as a discipline.

     Even now, several days after having read that particular portion, it’s difficult for me to calm the rage brewing inside so that I may adequately express by disfavor with this excerpt. The problem is….where do I even begin? The statement itself is easily read as contradictory to anyone with even an iota of critical race theorizing capabilities. Discrimination and racism is exactly WHY many Blacks do not have the “skills and education necessary to fit in a changing economy”. To imply that anti-black racism is primarily something of the past is incredibly naïve, and perhaps willfully ignorant. If anti-Black racism was truly a thing of the past, if we as Black folk in America today are simply living in this society feeling the residue of past racial discrimination, there would be far less Black death at the hands of the state. There would no longer exist job discrimination on the basis of race. Michelle Alexander would never have had to write The New Jim Crow. And why does she call the prison system The New Jim Crow? Because we have not attended to our past and due to that we are fated to continue to exist within a cycle of repetition! And how can we even begin to attend to our past when “leading sociologists” like Wilson refuse to acknowledge what is happening (what is TRULY happening) in there here and now?!

Race assumes importance only as the lingering product of an oppressive past.

I just can’t even begin to address that sentence. The steam coming out of my ears makes it nearly impossible to type a full sentence.

     The majority of these chapters discuss the ways in which middle-class Black folk are essentially treated as if they are “lower-class”. This is how race is classed (and one could make an argument for ways in which class is also raced, but I will not attend to that at this moment). Sure, “racism and its most harmful injuries occurred in the past, and they are today experienced mainly by those on the bottom of the economic latter” (12). But racism and its PLENTY harmful injuries are still occurring in the here and now, while we continue to be haunted by the past, and this is experienced by all Black folk regardless of where they fall on the economic ladder. But, let’s not forget, regardless of where they fall on the economic ladder they might as well be at the very bottom rung of said ladder.

     It is beyond my comprehension why people cannot see the ways in which class is used as a tool to further anti-Black racism and Black suffering. Why must we try and separate these things, or to place class as the heavier weight? It’s unproductive and it ignores the specificity of Black suffering.

Later, on page 34, Wilson appears again to help bolster the authors’ argument:

The emphasis on race creates problems of evidence. Especially in the contemporary period, as William Wilson notes in The Declining Significance of Race, it is difficult to trace the enduring existence of racial inequality to an articulate ideology of racism. The trail of historical evidence proudly left in previous periods is made less evident by heightened sensitivity to legal sanctions and racial civility in language.

Of course, the long list of Black bodies killed by state sanctioned “human hunters” (Martinot and Sexton, “The Avant-Garde of White Supremacy”) simply for existing in their bodies, doesn’t reflect an “articulate ideology of racism”. It seems as if what is needed are signs saying “Whites Only!!” and lynching during lunch breaks for some people to see that anti-Black racism is very much still alive and strong as ever. In response all I can do is quote at length a portion of Steve Martinot and Jared Sexton’s “TheAvant-Garde of White Supremacy”:

Under conventional definitions of the government, we seem to be restricted to calling upon it for protection from its own agents. But what are we doing when we demonstrate against police brutality, and find ourselves tacitly calling upon the government to help us do so? These notions of the state as the arbiter of justice and the police as the unaccountable arbiters of lethal violence are two sides of the same coin. Narrow understandings of mere racism are proving themselves impoverished because they cannot see this fundamental relationship. What is needed is the development of a radical critique of the structure of the coin (170).

I quoted this particular passage in response because of the way in which Oliver and Shapiro seem to imply that “legal sanctions” and “racial civility in language” somehow works to make the impact of racism less felt. And the fact that the majority of this reading consists of examples of how policy has worked to discriminate and oppress Black folk, but then they also seem to champion the ways in which policy can help. No. We don’t need policy. What we need is a radically new structure or else we will continue to play out the same exact story again and again. 

Why do I spend so much time discussing violence? Because State violence and the quotidian nature of racism that Black folk face every single day has a direct impact on their class status and the way in which they are viewed and treated in society. The fact that these chapters do not even begin to address the prison system or other forms of state violence greatly disappoints me. And it shouldn't just be a chapter in the book. It is relevant to many of the points that they bring up (uhm, hellooo, being a "felon" definitely has an impact on the accumulation of wealth, and that's just one easy way they could've tied the prison system in) and yet they are incredibly quiet on the issue. The text was originally written in the late 90s, and so it would be plenty relevant to them to have mentioned these things. And yet they didn't. Perhaps they threw it all into one chapter, but a "very special episode: chapter edition" is not good enough. We can't have a truly productive and full conversation of Black suffering and Black class/racial inequality if we ignore the points I have brought up. 

About 1/3 through the article.
Already fired up for my blog post
Get ready.
:)

Barbara Jensen's "The Invisible Ism" and "Belonging Versus Becoming"

I’m not quite sure how to properly label this post so I’m leaving it blank. I think this will be somewhat of a reflection post, even though it’s not on our list of post formats to choose from.

I found the two chapters assigned to us from Barbara Jensen’s Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America to be quite…interesting. I definitely learned a few new things that I thought were fascinating (like the entire section on language), but there were also a few moments where I just couldn’t completely feel (to know!) what she was saying.

Before I completely dive in I’d like to first just quote her definition of class and classism, mostly for my own benefit so that I have her definition written in a somewhat permanent space, but also for my peers’ benefit for anyone who has not yet been able to read the text or who simply missed it:

Class is an injustice that says some Americans deserve much more time, leisure, control, and far more financial reward than others. Classism is the set of myths and beliefs that keep those class divisions intact, that is, the belief that working class cultures and people are inherently inferior and that class itself demonstrates who the hardest workers and the rightful winners are (31, emphasis Jensen’s).

I found her definition of class/classism to be quite interesting because it differs a bit from what we’ve heard before. Not so much the classism part, but definitely the class definition. With a quick glance it would also seem as if her definition of class was created simply to bolster her definition and argument surrounding classism. But, if we are to think about it a little longer, it becomes much clearer that her definition of class is not there simply to serve the purpose of her argument about classism but rather to highlight the inequalities inherent in a system that stratifies in such a manner. Class is hierarchical, because of that ordering it means that some folk will be on top (superior) and others will be on the very bottom (ultimate inferiors). To have, and embrace, such a system that categorizes in such a way is to embrace inequality. That is what capitalism does. It produces, and embraces, inequalities. It thrives on inequality. For if there were no lower classes then how could there be a capitalist class? The capitalist class needs the working class because they need a class to manipulate, exploit, and dominate.

Later in the same chapter (“The Invisible Ism”) Jensen goes on to posit what she believes to be the most “common form of classism [which] is solipsism, or my-world-is-the-whole-world”. Of course this is one of the most common, and pervasive, forms of classism. It is a necessary tool in order to ensure that class, beyond simple economics, exists. I made a note of this in my last blog post: colonizers are like viruses. Generalize a bit and switch in “oppressor” for “colonizer”. The key to ensuring that the life of the oppressor will continue is to replicate the oppressor’s beliefs in the bodies of those outside of the oppressing class. The oppressing/dominant/ruling/capitalist class is a statistical minority! They cannot continue to oppress if they have not caused others to internalize classist beliefs. In order to insert these new beliefs the oppressor must erase what once was. If the structure is created to suit the middle-class, then others have to either adapt or not play the game. In order to adapt they must shed some of their own identity so that they may take on some of the oppressor’s identity. This is erasure. Solpsism causes erasure of identity and deracination.

What I find a bit funny, in an interesting way, is that while Jensen brings up, and condemns, a concept that brings my mind to erasure, she somewhat commits the act herself. She continuously mentions “ethnic identity” or “racial identity” but never really spends any time there. And I don’t expect her to, but that’s because I am jaded. However, her attempts at inclusion, at least in these two chapters, often stop after she makes note of “ethnic identity”. She often continues to make broad-based statements about the working-class without a true acknowledgment that most of her studies and observations (or at least the theoretical perspective that she is using to analyze these observations) are not inclusive of POC. Perhaps there was a general disclaimer in the introduction section of the book that I may have missed, as I did not go above and beyond and read more than what was assigned (although I do try to read introductions/prefaces, but I just did not have the time).

To give an example, as so far I have mostly been speaking in generals, let us turn to chapter 3 (“Belonging Versus Becoming”):

For those who cross the class divide, almost everything about the process asks you to forget what you knew before. How does one speak of, or grieve, a place that isn’t even on the map? Invisible, voiceless, unacknowledged—how does one remember what to remember? (53).

Jensen had the perfect opportunity at this point to discuss the way in which race is classed, and the multiple marginalities when it comes to class and people of color. For people of color crossing class lines even more must be forgotten (although it is not truly possible). For those whose skin marks them as being of a lower class even more must be stripped in order to really cross class lines. And then the question remains as to whether they can ever truly do so. For in the end it doesn’t matter quite how much agency one speaks with, or whether they can quote Derrida at length; they will forever walk around with a blatant class marker, one that cannot simply be unlearned or hidden away back home.

It wasn’t until a bit later in the chapter that the realization that perhaps Jensen is one of those ‘post-racial’ people popped into my head (she’s clearly not. She’s simply just not the best at inclusivity, either). On page 62 Jensen states that “when the working class has organized for better economic treatment, as it often has in American history, it has done so in spite of deep ethnic, geographic, gender, and color differences, forging a new and larger sense of ‘us’”. Now…I just didn’t know how to take that. It seems purposefully naïve. And through that naivety she also erases the difficulties of past mass class movements where “togetherness” just wasn’t happening, or at least wasn’t happening without a huge fight and many deaths and even more jailed. It’s as if she is purposefully false-remembering the past, and unfortunately by doing so she commits an act of erasure. I’m not the most well-read on class movements but recently I have been reading Robin D.G. Kelley’s Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depressing. At times reading about the ways in which the White southerners, those of whom would benefit very much from the Communist Party and others like them at the time, were filled with such spiteful hatred just pained me. There was no “us” in their minds, at least not a broader class “us”. That is not to say that the Alabama Communists were not able to come together…eventually. But to put it as simply as “when the working class has organized…in spite of deep ethnic…and color differences, forcing a new and larger sense of ‘us’” erases the difficulties and actual BLOOD shed to make it happen. Of course, there is only so much room in a book so I may be unfairly criticizing Jensen here.

My last critique is less of a critique and moreso genuine confusion. How is it that Jensen could attribute the epistemological framework of what is essentially “connected knowing” (what she calls “emotional” knowledge/wisdom) to being a phenomenon of the working-class? It just seems to not account for things like socialized ways in which the genders are taught to learn. In “Procedural Knowledge: Separate and Connected Knowing” Mary Field Belensky, et al., posit that:

                        Separate and connected [are used] to describe two different conceptions or experiences of the self, as essentially autonomous (separate from others) or as essentially in relationship (connected to others). The separate self experiences relationships in terms of “reciprocity,” considering others as it wishes to be considered. The connected self experiences relationships as “response to others in their terms” (236).

Does this not sound quite familiar to the ways in which Jensen separates the epistemologies of the working and middle class? And yet Belenky et al stated that “separate and connected knowing are not gender-specific. The two modes may be gender-related. It is possible that more women than men tip toward connected knowing and more men than women toward separate knowing” (236). This is due to socialization. Once things are engrained in us enough they begin to seem natural (they are naturalized). Perhaps this, instead of class differences, explains why the couple she mentions on pg 60 were having such trouble. The husband wanting the wife to use more words and just be explicit with her feelings/thoughts whereas the wife is communicating but in the way that she has been taught to communicate. Maybe it was a coincidence that Jensen used the genders in such a way for this example, but by doing so it makes it harder to see whether the wife communicates in such a way because she was raised working class or because she has been socialized to be a connected/emotional learner/communicator because of her gender.

Just some things to think about! I did enjoy this text. So far this is my favorite reading of the semester.

Work Referenced

 Belenky, Mary F., Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and JillMattuck Tarule. "Procedural Knowledge: Separate and Connected Knowing."Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader. By Alison M. Jaggar.Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008. 235-47. Print.

Jensen, Barbara. Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America. Ithaca: ILR,2012. Print.

Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the GreatDepression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1990. Print.