John McWhorter (a linguist by trade, I believe) highlights an interesting phenomenon. In his article, In Defense of Andrew Young, McWhorter makes a couple of interesting observations.
1. He notes the legitimate sentiments many people have in the Black Community; and
2. He warns how those time worn community 'Talking Points' are not without error.
Jelani Cobb adds a bit more to the contours:
"In the wake of Bill Cosby’s now-famous Pound Cake Speech at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s dinner commemorating the Brown v. Board of Education case, the comedian has been praised by white conservatives and black folk at-large for essentially keeping it real. For airing dirty laundry. For saying in public what your uncle Bobby has been saying behind closed doors for years.
But hold on. Before you fix your mouth sing Cosby’s praises, consider this: the fact that some black people make similar comments in private does not make them any more accurate when they are spoken in public. When it all gets down to the get-down, black people are no more immune to believing stereotypes about African Americans than anyone else – and Cosby was guilty of podium-pounding about the grossest stereotypes of poor black people."
Both of these points, from apparent different points of view, struck me as quite interesting. Maybe it's because I was looking for something to give voice to what I've long since seen as the unexamined 'conventional wisdoms' some people grab onto so quickly, so tight in the Black Community. Quite a few people accept as gospel stuff that really makes little sense once a little light is shown on the questionable reasoning behind such ideas. But people hold onto those ideas if for no other reason than that's what they've heard all their lives.
That's what their momma told them. Or their daddy. Somebody. So it has to be true. And hey, if they feel it, if they have some personal experience that drove them, emotionally, to that conclusion... Well, that's just it. It is gospel no matter how corrupt it is at the base.
The two commentaries from McWhorter and Jelani Cobb are particularly affirming for me because that's just what it is with some folks: Nothing But Talking Points. And, yes, Black folks have "Talking Points" too. Now, I don't know about you but that's liberating to me.
See...? I want to look at the Pro's and Con's of those things. Yes, there are, as McWhorter stated (and as Cobb suggested) a noticeable "downside" to Black Talking Points. Folks get steamed about them everyday, seems like.
People that have issues with the idea (and I should emphasize that more... with the "idea") of Black youth enforcing the wayward-backwards "Acting White" type of peer pressure are, on some level, attacking that "Black" Talking Point that says "being smart = White." Now, I don't necessarily agree with those folks but that's what it's about.
And, so, I feel we, as Black people, can fall prey to what I've called the Black Rhetorical Tradition. We have a long tradition and invest a lot, in my opinion, in the Spoken Word. Seems to me, we are some times easy or ready victims of things people say. And a lot of that has to do with how we construct identity in the Black Community. That's the very thing that even begins to make "Acting White" an issue, to the extent that it is.
So if you're one of those people who feel like that's a big issue (and I not, really) then you recognize how potentially harmful certain Black Talking Points are.
