Even before Cosby gave his Brown vs. Board of Education speech blaming lower-income blacks for racial disparities in education, I’ve been interested in the power of black elites to shape and mold black public opinion. I threw up a little in my mouth when Obama gave his Father’s Day speech, blaming black men for black poverty.
When Obama was elected President, a number of scholars tested the effect of his election on racial attitudes, on stereotype threat, on educational outcomes.
But for my interests the most important question has yet to be asked. When Obama claims that black poverty is more a function black DYSfunction, are blacks more likely to believe it? The struggle against racial disparities begins in black and brown communities. When black and brown elites blame these disparities on black and brown populations, they DEmobilize populations. When Minister Louis Farrakhan for example brings one million men to the seat of government only to say “we don’t want ANYTHING, but instead want to apologize” these men are shifted AWAY from political activism and towards the type of self-help behavior that does little to nothing to either empower black communities or reduce the effects of racism.
I wrote a grant proposal after Obama’s election to test the Obama effect on black attitudes about poverty and the black poor.
I just received word yesterday that it was accepted.
This will be an excellent opportunity to begin a critical conversation on the role of black leaders in black politics. I’ll keep you updated as to the results.
Congrats on the grant–sounds like a great avenue to explore. 🙂
Not necessarily challenging you here, but what leads you to believe that Obama will be able to influence black opinion with this tactic any more than his predecessors?
I remember mentioning a few years back that a speech we read for class by Booker T. Washington (I.I.R.C.) was almost identical in content to Cosby's and Obama's and hundreds of others despite being written nearly a century beforehand and in a completely different era racially speaking.
There's a grain of truth to the “stop being so black” argument, but history has shown it's not a feasible solution. You've made a pretty compelling case that not only is it an unproductive tactic, it's also COUNTER-productive.
If it takes a black president for it to work, great, but color me skeptical.
I'm making a different claim Mark. We already know that blacks exposed to conservative messages attached to black elites will express more support for those messages than blacks exposed to the same message attached to white elites, even if those white elites are ideological fellow travelers. My goal here is to extend the work by considering a different set of black elites, and by examining the effect on policy preferences. You are write to note the historically conservative streak in black elite rhetoric…the question is does this rhetoric follow black opinion or shape it?
I forget your nuance about the difference between generic condescending white liberalism and the new liberal structuralism you see in Obama, but they're both the same species to me. That's only because I'm stressing a higher standard of (black) family values. But I'm going to wax on about that whole thing over at cobb vis a vis karma trekkers, observing the entire romance between the first world left and the third world beauty.
From the Archives: : Does Obama shape black opinions about poverty? http://t.co/dPMJUsVm
From the Archives: Does Obama shape black opinions about poverty? http://t.co/dPMFmSMc