Countering The Conspiracy To Destroy Black Boys, by Jawanzaa Kunjufu
With the Iraq War having finally brought to an end by President Barack Obama per his campaign promise, and with the 10th year anniversary of the Afghan War looming ahead, the nation is now left to grapple with a number of powerful questions; among them, is the very real issue of what has been achieved for all the blood and treasure expended? Are we indeed “safer”? Have we stunted or otherwise impeded the growth of Islamic terrorism-most notably Al Qaeda-so we don’t have to “fight them over here”? Has our relations with the Islamic World at large, improved?
I think the answers to these questions, speak for themselves: not a week after President Obama ordered more than a 100K troops out of Iraq last month, than a rash of bombings took place all over Iraq-at a very important time in its new national history, to boot. In Afghanistan, despite a nearly 100K troop presence and the aid of NATO forces, the Taliban is as strong as ever, with its Pakistani “franchise” conducting terror bombings, shootings and raids so often that it has become a daily occurrence. Back home in the USA, Fasial Shahzad and Umar Abdulmutallab, have attempted to conduct terror operations of their own, among quite a few others. Then, since Sep 11 2001 around the world, there have been numerous bombings-July 7 in the UK, the Madrid bombings in Spain, the Bali bombings in Indonesia, the standoff with the Abu Sayaaf in the Philippines, and more recently, the Abu Shabaab in Somalia. Perhaps what’s most jarring-and truly threatening-about the latter group, is that they have drawn much of their inspirational and operational talent right from the USA themselves-young Men either originally born in Somalia, or otherwise native born American citizens who heeded the call of Jihad.
A crucial aspect of these “wars on terror”, was the idea of “winning hearts and minds”-that, through a series of measures-a mix of traditional combat operations, beefed up intelligence and “nation building”-we could convince the ordinary townsfolk that we’re the good guys and that we could sway them over to our side, thus isolating and marginalizing the hardcore holdouts. Indeed, this is the core strategy of General David Petraeus-he’s even written a book on it.
But has any of this worked? With nearly a decade of continuous wars being fought, quite literally around the globe in one way or another, what has been achieved-and perhaps most importantly, have we won the hearts and minds of the countless numbers of young Men like Shahzad and Abdulmutallab?
Its a question that brings me to the meat of my post today, since a goodly bit of the public discourse that takes place in our country centers around Black Men and what they’re not supposedly doing. To be sure, there’s been no Petraeus-like plan to win the hearts and minds of Black Men and boys, but still, I think we can ask if whether what we’ve been doing has had any real effect or impact on that score. It’s been something I’ve given a good bit of thought to in more recent months.
Recently, one of my regular commenters, a younger Brotha named Dragnet, and I had an interesting exchange on the “Open Letter to Bene Viera” thread. The exchange centered around a sensitive, but urgent question: does the college experience literally payoff, for Black Men, in aggregate? We argued divergent points of view, but ultimately agreed on one: that it isn’t the panacea that many both inside our community and out, proclaim it to be, and that it may indeed be more injurious to some of our Brothas. Dragnet agreed with me also, that the siren call of the streets is just too strong to overcome, and that we’ve failed to come up with a more compelling “ad campaign” with which to sway these Brothas over.
I argued that was in large part due to simple Econ 101 principles-something Dragnet himself, and others like who’ve received some measure of formal training-should readily recognize and understand. It’s called “cost/benefit analysis”. Simply put, no one has been able to make the cost/benefit analysis, in simple, plain English and math, making the persuasive case as to WHY college matters and is BETTER, both in the short AND longterm, for Black Men. I say such an analysis hasn’t happened, nor is it likely to happen, because we all know, deep down, that we cannot provide it.
We just don’t want to openly admit it.
Allow me to backtrack here a bit, giving you a real life example from my past, to both illustrate the point and to hammer it home.
Many years ago, when I was about 18 or so, I grew up in North Philly, and was deep into the Hip Hop scene; I was a DJ, or what they call a “Turntablist” now, and ran in a lot of associated circles. One of them, was the drugs dealing circles of the time.
I knew a cat who we all called Spanish Ed-since he was Puerto Rican-and while he had no talent whatsoever on the Wheels of Steel, he did have money-lots of it-to get what was then state of the art equipment. His basement looked like a music store, complete with racks and racks of records, huge sound systems, you name it. He often sponsored spinoffs in the neighborhoods with big cash money prizes, rapping contests, etc.
This guy-who was only 19 at the time-not only had his own house, but he also had two cars, a Lincoln and a Porsche; two bikes, both Ninjas; and was the first guy I’d ever seen who had a huge 50″ TV.
We attended summer school together one year, and I would often hangout with him because he wanted me to help him with his turntable skills, and because I liked being to workout on really top notch equipment. So, after school let out I would often be at his spot. One day, I arrived at his place to find him counting money-lots and lots of money-he even had one of those dollar bill counters like you saw in “Scarface”? It was the first and last time I’d actually seen one of those. We sat at his dining room table as Ed counted out upwards of $150K US-and that didn’t include the roughly dozen or so water cooler jug-sized bottles that were filled to the brim with coins, from pennies to quarters. I figured he had to have had what, easily another stack in that alone?
The entire table was filled with money-not receipts, not bank statements, not t-bills-but with hard currency, Dead Presidents. I would go on to run multi-state business operations totalling in the millions of dollars per year in sales; I would make weekly “drops” at the bank’s night time deposit slot of $50K or more. But I would never again see the kind of money I did that summer afternoon at Spanish Ed’s crib.
I want you all to think about what I just said for a moment. Let it sink in. Let it wash over you. The vast majority of you have never seen in excess of $150K US-cash-before in your lives-and certainly not as a teenager. In fact, something tells me that Dragnet may not have seen such a thing, and he works in finance. I could be wrong-he’ll kindly correct me if this is so.
Much has been said of Bill Cosby’s famed-or infamous, depending on your point of view-”Poundcake Speech” and subsequent comments and actions. Among them, has been a penning of a book with noted Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, called “Come On, People!”, a kind of how-to guide to parenting young folk and motivational self-help book rolled into one. I decided to read it after all the hub-bub about Cosby’s statements had died down.
In its pages, on the matter we’re discussing right now, it takes up the question of employment, career matters, and making money, and of course it rails against the notion of flipping burgers or some other menial work as being dead end. It also sings the praises of community college as a pathway to a better life for many young and not-so young Black people, giving a list of occupations that can be achieved by going that route. Most of them have salaries of, at the time of the book’s publishing, around $40K.
That’s not even one third of what I saw on that table.
Well Obsidian, drugs dealing is not only criminal, but you can be killed or locked up! And to that I say, yes, that’s true. In fact, I haven’t seen Spanish Ed in years now, and have no idea what has become of him since those heady days of our youth. For all I know, he could very well be dead, or wound up like Big Meech, serving a de facto life sentence. And let me note something else-like the book Freakonomics says, not all drugs traffickers-even if they don’t wind up in jail or dead-will end up making big money. In fact, quite a few make only a little more than what they would working “straight” low-tier jobs. Not much different from the straight world, now is it? After all, many, many people start out at the bottom and remain either there or if they’re lucky enough, work their way up to middle management, there to remain for the balance of their careers-with precious little to show for it.
Then there’s the very real prospect of occupational hazards that Men face, historically and in our time, even now. Indeed, each passing year sees its share of guys giving up the ghost on the gig-from having a lethal coronary on the way in to work (I’ve heard it said that quite a few Men have lethal or near lethal heart attacks and/or strokes on Monday morning), to meeting their grisly end any number of ways: getting shot if they’re a cop, getting smashed up if they’re a factory worker, taking a bad step if they’re a construction worker on a highrise project or bridge, getting the Pat Tillman treatment if they’re a soldier.
Again, I speak not from arid theory, but realworld experience. The week before I began my job at the plant a Man got killed-in the very same spot that I worked, in fact-and do you know what his bereaved spouse got in compensation?
$80K US. And that was after a year of wrangling with the courts, despite the entire shop seeing the Man get run through with a very pointy hydralically-powered hook through no fault of his own.
So, to me, a guy that tries to apply basic Econ 101 principles to things, I don’t see much difference between the Big Meeches of the world, and the Pat Tillmans; both chose paths that contain within them occupational hazards. The question is whether its worth it to pursue one path over another. Given all that we know about the Afghan War, to say nothing about the Iraq War, can anyone say the latter died for a good cause?
Cost/benefit, people. Cost/benefit.
I think a big problem here, is one of ideology-or shall I say, moralizing. You see, we like to moralize to people-it’s a distinctly American thing to do-and we do it to others around the world, as well as those among us whom we feel need to be told what they “should” be doing. So, we like to push an ideological view on people, but we’re woefully short on a practical, pragmatic, *cost/benefit* sh*t to spit. And when it comes to this particular topic, it shows.
The simple truth of the matter is, that Osama bin Laden and the Streets, they have something very, very important in common: both have a much more compelling message, than the other side. Its a message slickly marketed, field tested, and highly effective-and we have no freaking clue as to how to counteract it. We don’t because we really don’t HAVE a better alternative in many instances, plus we’re still thinking that played out, antiquated, Sir Ivanhoe crap. This is why, back a few weeks ago during MSNBC’s “Education Nation week”, not ONE WORD was said about what to do to bring back the country’s Black boys who dropped out of highschool back into the fold. It’s because, we don’t know how to on one hand, and we really don’t give a sh*t on the other.
I’ve made the case to Dragnet, that we’re not doing our sons, nephews, brothers, any favors by NOT having these kind of hard-hitting discussions-discussions about how the real world operates, and their role in it. About the real cost/benefit analysis it takes to do this or that, measured in hard currency and time invested, to say nothing of the intangibles that come with all of that. We don’t do this because on the one side, we know we really can’t say with a straightface that it’ll payoff for them, and on the other side we really don’t know how to think outside that little box our grey matter is in.
Oh, and before anyone tries to lecture me about drugs, let’s be frank. It’s been with us as long as tats have, and if we’ve learned anything about human nature, people can and will go to great lengths to get high. I personally don’t partake myself, but I’d be a fool not to see the big money that’s in it, especially so long as it remains an underground enterprise. I’m not arguing whether one should, or should not, get in the game. All I’m saying is that it is one of quite a few career paths than can indeed prove successful, if one plays their cards right. The same goes for rappers, athletes, you name it-you need talent, drive, persistence and a heck of a lot of sheer luck in order to make it-just like you would if you decided to go to college and try your hand at the straight world. In fact, given what we know on that score, being a Black Man, you’d probably need a goodly dose of Providence, too.
Well, Ms. Brown Sugah’s looking at me and making the Sunday Morning repast, so I’ll signoff for now. I try to think hard about the big picture. When you look around, you see a lot.
Holla back
The Obsidian
