All posts by christianfloyd

The Usefulness of Political Philosophy

Black Community

The structures that perpetuate racism are very real and are relatively concrete. If this is true, what is the purpose of political philosophy? Political philosophy operates in a world that is unrealistic and finds absolute solutions that aren’t actually practical in the real world. This line of thinking may raise the question of why have any types of philosophy at all, but I’ll focus on political philosophy for the purpose of this post. It might make more sense to focus on actual political policy since that could actually create actionable ideas for application in reality. However, there may be a certain purpose to political philosophy in that actual goals that would be ideally reached in the real world are mapped out.

In The Imperative of Integration, Anderson takes a stance that is political pseudo-philosophy. This is characterized by the fact that she takes a more non-ideal approach than would be taken by someone writing a piece of political philosophy and by the fact that even though it is more realistic than political philosophy, it is still not incredibly practical. As mentioned in class, this could be so that he book isn’t evaluated to the level of a piece of political philosophy, but it leaves Anderson in somewhat of a limbo. Not quite ideal enough and not quite practical enough. However, it could be argued that she strikes a balance between the two that yields some of the benefits of both (but also probably has the inconveniences of both as well).

Chris Rock said it best

Black Community

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2r3rjh

Our class discussion and reading The Hidden Cost of Being African American caused me to think of the Chris Rock video that I included above. In this video, he talks about the difference between rich and wealthy. Perhaps the most striking example that he gives is: “Shaq is rich. The white man that signs his check is wealthy”. While Chris Rock is joking since he says all of this in comedy show, it is funny because it is true. It is difficult for black people in this country to accrue wealth, stemming from when the black community had no wealth.

Chris Rock also speaks beyond the power structure of wealth by commenting on how it is enduring. He says “Wealth is passed down from generation to generation. You can’t get rid of wealth. Rich is some sh*t you can lose with a crazy summer and a drug habit”. Wealth is powerful because it is something that is long lasting. Also, wealth builds on itself and allows for future generations to amass more of it. There is a saying that “money is power”, but it may be more accurate to say that wealth is power.

Structure vs. Culture

Black Community

Among people who are educated on the subject or simply can read statistics, there is little disagreement on how black students under-achieve in the classroom in comparison to their white counterparts, even when controlling for socio-economic circumstance. However, there is a debate about whether culture or structure has a larger effect on black success in schools. I think that culture has a way of informing the structure. Specifically, in this instance I think that the “acting white” slur contributes to causing structural inequities. It can also be said that the structure is informing the culture and is the reason some black students say others “act white”.

 

Black students who tell other black students that they are white because of their academic prowess affect the will of black students who want and capable of academic excellence. This can cause a systematic shift by encouraging black kids not to take the most difficult classes, and this would help create the structural inequity, among other causes. Also, it is possible that the fact that white students are much more prevalent in higher-level classes causes the “acting white” slur to exist. Black students mostly see white kids in those classes and therefore want associate academic success with whiteness. This leads them to call some fellow black students white and further perpetuates the system as the black students who are called white continued to be discouraged.

Bill Cosby and the Black Family

The Black Family Week 10

Last week, we touched upon Bill Cosby briefly in regard to the black family. Bill Cosby was the face of black respectability before the rape allegations came to light in recent times. Bill Cosby has made many remarks as to why the black community lags behind, and he enters into the realm of family. During the infamous Pound Cake speech, he criticized the prevalence of single-parent black families, and he implied that this is completely their fault with no reference to the structure that perpetuates this types of situations. I think that Bill Cosby in both his actual speech and his show to a certain extent embody respectability politics in relation to the black family.

 

Out of character, Cosby was certainly a man who embodied respectability by essentially saying that the black community needed to pull up their pants, take care of their kids, and get a job. His shows exhibited a similar character. They portrayed the “ideal” black family with two professional parents and kids that were generally doing well and staying out of serious trouble. I think that Cosby uses the model he created to implore black families to “fix” themselves. It seems as though he has the mentality of “if I can create the ideal black family on screen and pull myself up by my boot straps, then you can do it too”. I don’t agree with his view because it isn’t realistic and is deprecating the black family.

Perception of Neighborhoods and Disadvantage

Structural Racial Inequality Week 9

The neighborhood perception example, referring to why people avoid certain neighborhoods, that we discussed in class is very interesting to me. Are people wary of entering certain neighborhoods because they have high concentrations of Black people (or Latinx people) or because they view the neighborhoods are more dangerous or violent independent of race? I think that this is a nuanced question and almost certainly varies from person to person, but my feeling is that race plays the larger role. People will know that a neighborhood is predominately filled with Black people and then from that will assume that this neighborhood is dangerous.

 

Why is this? I think that it is because Black people are associated with violence and poor living conditions regardless of the actual nature of a neighborhood. I would imagine that the poor perception of these communities creates further disadvantage in these communities because wealthy people with advantage and capital aren’t going invest in Black neighborhoods if they aren’t even willing to visit them. Also, the neighborhood violence and disorder that is prevalent in lower class Black neighborhoods may be a greater product of class than race. Of course, this class situation is perpetuated by race, but I would not be surprised if other poorer communities had the symptoms as poorer Black communities.

What is the gang impact?

Black Community

Over the past few weeks, starting with Black Picket Fences, we have gotten a closer look at the roles that gangs play in Black communities across the country. Of course, gangs are portrayed by the mass media as an entirely destructive force, but gangs play multiple roles within these communities. Some of these roles have a positive impact; others have a negative impact. It is well publicized how most gangs take part in the drug-selling business as well as participate in violent crime. However, it is seldom discussed how gangs function as social and support networks both within the gang itself and extending into the community. The people who form these gangs are from the communities and areas where the gang resides and forms its territory. Therefore, they are personally invested in these communities and aren’t purposely trying to destroy them. I’m not going to argue that they don’t cause harm to the communities however. The drug dealing and violent crime are certainly not constructive and are often detrimental. The dual impact of gangs on communities makes it difficult to decipher if gangs are a positive social institution for the communities or a harmful band of criminals. The answer is probably somewhere in between.

Thought on 1 in 100

Policing the Carceral State Week 7

The thing that stuck with me the most from this past discussion was how the Pew Foundation published 1 in 100 in order to bring attention to mass incarceration in the United States. As we discussed, the title come from the fact that 1 in 100 people in the United States are in prison or jail. What is stunning is that they could have picked even more potent numbers. They didn’t include people who are under penal supervision outside of confinement (parole or probation), and they could have chosen certain groups of people to make the number even lower.

 

My question is whether choosing a different static with which to title the book would have been more or less effective. I imagine that they chose 1 in 100 because it encompasses the entirety of the population regardless or race, sex, or other differentiators. Including the entire population could serve to get everyone behind the cause it is evidently affecting everyone in the US, and people are definitely more likely to react if they can see that it is affecting people like themselves. However, they could have picked a more dramatic number such as the 1 in 9 black males in their 20s and early thirties that are currently in jail or prison. I’m not sure this number would have gotten the same widespread media attention that book received under its actual title. It could have not come across as groundbreaking since young, black men are often viewed as criminals, so the media would not have made nearly as big a deal about it. Contrarily, it could have also been even more publicized because it puts the insane disproportion of racialized incarceration into a single statistic. We’ll never know, but it is something interesting to ponder.

Blurry Line of the Black Elite

Ghetto Poverty Challenges for the Middle Class Week 5

The black middle class has historically been referred to as the black elite, but after reading Black Picket Fences, I think I can say that large swaths of the black middle class don’t qualify with this “old elite”. The black middle class is much larger than it was in the late 1800s and has grown in heterogeneity. It seems as though there isn’t the same type of separation that there used to be between the black middle class and the black lower class. As shown in Black Picket Fences, they blur together. The places where the black middle class lives are in direct proximity to where the lower class people live. This causes there to be a lot of spillover culturally and structurally.

 

For example, you see the black middle class (especially the youth) perpetrating the behaviors that are generally associated with the lower class and most likely have their genesis there. It appears that the black middle class isn’t trying to distance itself from the black lower class, but instead is now embracing many parts of the culture. This appears to mostly be a phenomenon in the younger generations, as the respectability politics of the black middle class fade away to a certain extent.

End of Racism?

Black Community

One thing that stayed in my mind beyond leaving class from this past weak was the argument of whether racism will be eventually overcome. I think that it is very safe to say that racism is still definitely a problem in America currently. But will it always be a problem? The two arguments that I’ll discuss are the “Tragic Racial Flow and Durable Racism” argument, which says that racism is an enduring entity and will not be solved, and the “Triumph of Liberal Democracy and the American Creed” argument, which says that racism will be overcome. The former argument is based on the premise that America is set up as a racist place and will therefore primarily benefit those of European descent. The latter argument claims that the United States will eventually open up to the world and that there will be no group claim on the United States system.

 

I agree more with the Tragic Racial Flaw argument more than the Triumph of Liberal Democracy argument. However, I will say that anything is feasible in the broader timeline of humanity, but I don’t think that the two sides can be reconciled to the extent that Smith tries to reconcile them. I think that in the foreseeable future racism will endure. It is too ingrained in our systems to change anytime soon. One of the most potent signs that racism is going to be here for a long, long time is that the written law now says that all people should be treated equally and have equal rights, but this doesn’t play out in practice. Also, there are some written laws that don’t explicitly discriminate against black people, other minorities, and other socially disadvantaged groups, but they still affect them detrimentally in unfair proportions. For these reasons and others, I do not think that the significance of race is declining.

Christian Floyd intro

Black Community

Hello, my name is Christian Floyd. I’m a sophomore living in Leverett House, originally hailing from Nashville, Tennessee. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to concentrate in, but I’m deciding between neurobiology and human evolutionary biology. Hopefully, the choice will be clearer after this semester! However, I am interested in medicine, so I am relatively sure about part of my academic path.

 

Last semester, I took AAAS 10 (the intro African American studies class), and I found it incredibly interesting. In addition to being a black man in American, that class influenced me to take this one because the material was so engaging and relevant. I really look forward to having great conversation in this class and interacting with you all.

 

When I’m not in class, I enjoy running and playing basketball. I’m also a member of Black Men’s Forum, HealthPALs, and Kuumba (a choir on campus that sings music from the African diaspora). I look forward to getting to know everyone in this class!