Michael Eric Dyson

by Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?

  The question of authenticity shouldn’t be dismissed, just rendered in more complex fashion as we probe the roots of black identity. It makes sense, for example, to ask whether low-slung, beltless pants and stringless shoes, both styles of urban gear that mimic prison clothing, are authentically black. It should be obvious that such styles can claim no direct lineage in black life; but it is equally obvious that the commercial and creative use made by blacks of elements outside the culture is indeed an authentic black cultural trait. It should also be obvious that claims to authenticity do not resolve the ethical issues of identity. Whether something is authentic or not doesn’t settle whether authenticity is a good or bad thing, a productive or destructive force.

  The Cosby Show was integral to heated cultural debates about whether the images projected on the show were real, that is, representative of actual black life and the conditions we confront, or creations of commercial television that distort the facts. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., argued in his essay, “TV’s Black World Turns—But Stays Unreal,” the black “fixation with the presence of black characters on TV has blinded us to an important fact that ‘Cosby,’ which began in 1984, and its offshoots over the years demonstrate convincingly: There is very little connection between the social status of black Americans and the fabricated images of black people that Americans consume each day.”53 Speaking to another dimension of “real,” the relation between aesthetic creations and political status, Gates contends that “the representations of blacks on TV is a very poor index to our social advancement or political progress.” Gates also suggests that the blending of Cosby’s television image and his real-life persona, like that of other successful blacks, increases the likelihood that their individual prosperity will be seen as representative of all blacks, especially as the boundaries between fiction and fact are overcome through marketing and advertising. “Today, blacks are doing much better on TV than they are in real life,” Gates writes, “an irony underscored by the use of black public figures (Mr. Cosby, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Bobby McFerrin) as spokesmen for major businesses.” Gates says that when “Mr. Cosby, deadpan, faces the camera squarely and says, ‘E. F. Hutton. Because it’s my money,’ the line blurs between Cliff Huxtable’s successful career and Mr. Cosby.”54

  The question of black authenticity gathers all the intersections of black life in miniature; it portrays the relation between identity and class, culture, gender, ideology, sexual orientation, region, religion, age and the like. Some blacks think that “real” blacks don’t vote Republican, marry outside the race, adopt gay lifestyles, support abortion, bungee jump, climb mountains, attend the opera, or love country music. These views reveal the tribalism that can trump complex views of black life. Proud of their roots, some blacks worship them. But roots should nourish, not strangle, black identity. To be sure, some versions of black identity that were offered as an alternative to simple archetypes, for instance, antitypical celebrations of the thug, gangsta or the “real nigga,” often come off as the only authentic vision of blackness going, a temptation for the exponents of all notions of blackness. I’m afraid that’s the trap into which Cosby has too often fallen in his criticisms of young people and the poor. Ultimately, “real” or “fake” has as much to do with the politics we practice, the goals we project for black life and the means we advocate to achieve freedom and self-expression as it does with the existence of an objective blackness. “Real” is the by-product of a dynamic struggle, one that is still very much alive.

  The strategies of black identity promote a provisional response to the stages, styles and status of black identity. The strategies of blackness point to how black folk manage their identities on a cosmic level. These strategies have primarily to do with how we view our black identities—and how they play out—in relation to the dominant culture. If status is internal to black culture, then strategies are the outward face of black identity, how we offer the world a picture of our blackness. The first strategy is accidental blackness; we are human beings who by accident of birth happen to be black. The message this strategy of blackness sends to the white world is: “Our blackness is only the most obvious—but surely not the most important—element of our identities. We are human beings with the same likes, wants, needs, desires and aspirations as you.” Cosby has consistently held true to this position, and as the journalistic sources cited above prove, he has been received that way in white society. As Newsweek suggested, “Bill Cosby is not a Negro comic; he is a comic who happens to be a Negro.”55 And as Cosby insisted, “The story about me is not the story of a black man, but of a man. What happens to me, happens to just a man.”56 Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice and Tiger Woods (“The bottom line is that I am an American … and proud of it! That is who I am and what I am. Now with your cooperation, I hope I can just be a golfer and a human being”) join Cosby in this category.57

  The second strategy is incidental blackness; we are proud to be black, but it is only one strand of our identity. The message this strategy of blackness presents to the white world is: “Our blackness is important, but we do not spend our days thinking about it, nor do we believe that race is nearly as important a factor in the nation as it used to be.” The strategy of incidental blackness relies upon cautiously acknowledging the historic force of race while proclaiming its erosion in contemporary affairs. Colin Powell and Barack Obama, among others, fit here. Finally, there is intentional blackness; we are human beings who are proud of our blackness and see it as a critical, though surely not the exclusive, aspect of our identity. The message this strategy of blackness sends to the white world is: “We love ourselves and our culture, and other cultures as well. We embrace the political aspect of our blackness. We don’t want to forget our blackness because it is central to our identities, but we also understand that in a culture still plagued by racism, we can’t afford to forget our identities because we know the dominant culture hasn’t either.” Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, Ella Baker, Malcolm X and a host of others belong here.

  The strategies of blackness permit black folk to negotiate the white world while remaining sane and balanced. Black folk may pass in and out of various strategies over a lifetime. And the focus on race in these strategies surely doesn’t block the consideration of other equally compelling features of identity rooted in gender or sexual orientation or religion or class. Those with a simple view of blackness fixed on archetypal representations of identity may find comfort in strategies of accidental blackness that treat racism as if it didn’t exist. Even if blacks disagree with such a strategy, they understand the racial fatigue that can make such a prospect enticing. In turn, those with a complex view of blackness who may embrace antitypical black identities might favor an intentional strategy in making arguments for racial justice in the workplace or in higher education. These strategies of blackness are used in varying ways and degrees in different contexts at different times, so that a person who is intentional in one setting—say, on the front lines of a protest before the Supreme Court to preserve affirmative action—may be incidental at the company picnic. Circumstances, and, of course, political and ideological factors, and one’s take on the stages, struggles and status of black identity, determine what strategy one employs to survive. Cosby has favored the strategy of accidental blackness for most of his career; his departure from it to evoke intentional blackness, and thus to bolster his authority to criticize the poor, shouldn’t be overlooked.

  If Bill Cosby’s views derive from profound debates about black identity, these debates can shed greater light on his racial philosophy and, more recently, his comments about the black poor. To be sure, Cosby’s decision to kick the habit of race in his art in the early sixties—a decision “urged on him” by white manager Roy Silver—had many advantages.58 First, Cosby’s strategy of accidental black identity countered the clumsy way white television writers used racial humor to get laughs. Next, Cosby’s strategy met racial stereotype at its roots and cut it off; thus he wouldn�
��t have to face the problem of how to explain an offensive sketch, since it would be stopped before it began. For instance, Cosby refused to become the “token” Negro on I Spy who drew unnecessary attention to his race. Cosby and his manager culled the scripts for potential offenses.59 In one script, an Asian child was supposed to rub Cosby’s face and be surprised that his color didn’t come off. Cosby was annoyed and promised that should it happen again, “I’ll rub back.”60 Third, viewing race as a crutch caused Cosby to work harder to be funny without playing his race for easy laughs. In Cosby’s view, color was the lazy comedian’s ruse, used in lieu of digging deeper into the human psyche and the world outside of race to find humor.

  Cosby’s views were simple and absolute: Race-conscious comedy is less authentic, and certainly less compelling, than color-blind humor. Cosby failed to see that while the easy reliance on color could be a crutch, it didn’t have to be. There are many ways to probe the complex interiors of color—to hold it up in the light of comedic day and peer inside its prismatic effect. Moreover, Cosby overlooked how much work such an enterprise might demand. Lazy comedians are lazy comedians, in whatever guise or genre they operate. Diligent artists can bring new insight by relentlessly stretching their art. Dick Gregory did it before Cosby, and Richard Pryor and Chris Rock have done it since. Despite Cosby’s brilliant work, race hasn’t disappeared; it seems he might have as usefully led us through the battlefields of race instead of around them. Or, failing that, he might have more loudly applauded comedians besides Gregory and Pryor who did. While Cosby’s comedy elegantly conjures the nonexistence of race, there is moral beauty as well in confronting the beast and slaying it with a laugh, a strategy used by black folk through the ages.61

  A convincing argument can be made for playing with stereotypes to deconstruct them; it is just as reasonable to critically engage black archetypes and experiment with antitypes. Cosby’s way of proceeding, as if stereotypes didn’t exist, or as if most antitypes were useless and self-defeating, is one way, a sometimes helpful way, of dismantling them. But there can be value in hammering away at stereotypes—or signifying on them, or relishing the demystification of their esoteric lunacies, and thus resisting their rule laugh by laugh. The same can be said for black comedy’s role in treating archetypes and antitypes. Keenan Ivory Wayans’s sketch variety series, In Living Color, often assaulted plastic archetypes of blackness and exploded—and, yes, often extended—racial stereotypes in the risky endeavor of probing rather than idolizing black culture. In Living Color, through its irreverent antitypes and its signifying excesses, showcased a different, complex side of the black humanity Cosby longs to affirm. If nothing else, Wayans proved that art doesn’t exist merely to reinforce “positive” views of black life, but to invite blacks and others to confront our identities, to reflect on them, to be bothered by them and to probe, often in uncomfortable ways, the racial pieties we hold dear. In one brilliant stroke, In Living Color addressed the stages, status and styles of black identity. Comedy shouldn’t just soothe; it should also disturb. Color needn’t be a crutch; it can also be a catalyst—to self-reflection and greater understanding.

  Cosby’s effort to bring the races together through his comedy was both courageous and flawed. The yen for truths that unite blacks and whites reflected the integrationist ethos of the civil rights movement Cosby wished neither to join nor lead. Cosby’s comedy enlivened the ideals of universality and color blindness at which branches of the movement aimed. But there was often a huge gap between what the movement meant by “universal” and “color-blind” and what the broader society understood them to be. Cosby’s frequent failure to understand that difference has made his vision of color blindness and universalism much less salient, and, quite frankly, much less useful, to black folk. The whites who came to Cosby because he failed to unnerve them, to shake them, or to challenge them at all, felt just fine. As Cosby boasted to Rex Reed, “People accept me because I’m not controversial. Most of them don’t even think of me as a Negro.”62

  The civil rights movement perceived universalism in the guiding ideals of democracy and justice that should benefit all peoples. The movement also argued that the “self-evident” claims of humanity for each community must be respected; one needn’t destroy one’s particular identity to fit in. As W.E.B. Du Bois argued in 1903, black folk didn’t want to lose our identity as the price of our survival. For Du Bois, the American Negro “would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”63 Unlike Du Bois, Cosby didn’t see that black identities needn’t give up their particular ethnic or racial slants to be universal; that’s a false dichotomy engineered by the white merchants of a variety of universalism that seeks to project the normative as the universal. The two surely aren’t the same.

  It is supremely ironic that, under the banner of universalism and “self-evident” rights, black folk fought to gain benefits of citizenship that turned out to be neither self-evident nor universal. It should give pause to folk like Cosby that the universal as it was conceived in areas of white society was a masquerade of racial privilege that only appeared to be welcoming and inclusive. By contrast, black folk were often viewed by their white opponents, the upholders of the universal, as shattering the political compact by asking for “special” rights—except that those “special” rights turned out to be the rights that were guaranteed to all white male citizens. Black folk made their arguments about being included in the center of political privilege while being shunted to the social periphery; they were often regarded as vulgarly particular in their claims. Paradoxically, as blacks begged to be included in the universal from an allegedly particularistic standpoint, they were denied access by the advocates of an allegedly universal perspective.

  The justification for keeping blacks from their universally recognized rights of citizenship was an alleged cultural and moral inferiority. Black folk fell literally and metaphorically beyond the pale of white identity, which, during the time Cosby rose to fame in the early sixties, was viewed as the divining rod for normalcy. Most whites and a large number of blacks—and who can blame them, since it was beat into their brows from the time they got here—viewed white identity as normative, and hence universal, since whites were able to impose their interpretation of its meaning on the nation. Whiteness, a particular slant on the universal, was enshrined as its very definition. In reality, in its white supremacist mode, it was a gross defection from the very spirit of the universal, though in other aspects it needn’t have been, since all universals must find local footing. This cultural situation understandably confused citizens of all colors, including gifted folk like Cosby who could expect no exemption from the seeming omnipresence of white culture.

  Each time Cosby cringed at the very thought of color or race in comedy, he bought the logic of normative white identity hook, punch line and sinker. Cosby didn’t cringe at race or color per se; he cringed at blackness. He didn’t see the color of whiteness; it was the “universal” he embraced. When Cosby talked of doing comedy that both blacks and whites could enjoy, its ideals and standards were often derived from a white base. (As proof, Cosby and his early white managers ruthlessly scrutinized his routines with the intent that Cosby should be color-blind, or, in their words, “work white.”)64 Even when Cosby turned to his family for material for one of his legendary routines, say, about his brother Russell, he undermined the universal character of the story by ignoring its racial dimensions and an important lesson of the civil rights movement: The “particular” that is not conceived as exclusively or exhaustively representative is the path to the universal.

  Universalism may be composed of either vicious or virtuous specificities. The use of race didn’t have to mean that Cosby had to forsake his dream to become universa
l; he simply needed to avoid the illusion that any particular identity, white or black, could possibly capture the truth. His decision to go color-blind just as color could legitimately be explored through humor was a missed opportunity for us and Cosby, who, given his desire for uplifting art, might have taught us all a great deal about race through his stand-up routines, television shows, comedy albums and films. To do so, he didn’t have to leave comedy and become an activist like Dick Gregory, who, by 1967, viewed himself “as a social commentator who uses humor to interpret the needs and wants of Negroes to the white community, rather than as a comedian who happens to deal in topical social material.”65 Cosby might have benefited, however, from a complex view of black identity instead of the simple view of blackness that seemed to hold him back.

  Cosby’s racial confusion and embrace of simple blackness didn’t end there, but flashed as well in his reluctance to speak out on race. The comic’s stern refusal to be a leader is understandable. “I’m tired of those people who say, ‘You should be doing more to help your people.’ I’m a comedian, that’s all.”66 It is extremely difficult to balance the obligations to excel as a black entertainer, or more generally as a black professional, with the demands that one speak for one’s race. If it is true now, it was even truer when Cosby first blazed to celebrity. The sheer unavoidability of racial representation, however, looms for the gifted and blessed, for those whose talents make them, willy-nilly, role models and de facto spokespeople for a race still under siege, with one-quarter of its members mired in poverty. That there is little choice in the matter often gnaws at those whose natural inclination is to recede into the woodwork of their given profession. Cosby has insisted that he is better suited for quiet, behind-the-scenes race work, a claim that is odd to some given the public life well-known comedians lead.