Working for the Man Every Night and Day

By Tim Wise, LiP Magazine. Posted July 21, 2004.

A few weeks ago, a young man approached me after a speech I had given at his college and handed me a small piece of paper with the name of a book he thought I should read. Given that the student and I had previously gotten into a bit of a row over the issue of racial profiling of Arabs, I didn't have high expectations about his recommendation.

I suppose it's a good thing I was prepared for what I got: the name of a book by black conservative Larry Elder, whose only real claim to fame is that he does a bad imitation of Judge Wapner on a pedantic little courtroom reality show called Moral Court.

Oh, and that white folks like the student in question really like him. Which, as it turns out, is all it takes to become a bestselling author in this country.

Elder – like Shelby Steele before him, and Walter Williams before that, and Ken Hamblin before that, and Thomas Sowell before him, and Clarence Thomas always – says the kinds of things that most white folks love to hear: essentially, that blacks are the source of their own problems in life. Black cultural pathology and bad behavior, according to these types, explain everything from black poverty rates to black incarceration rates.

What about racism?, you may ask. What racism? To the Larry Elders of the world – and to the whites who have made them media stars entirely out of proportion to their scholarly credentials (or decided lack thereof) – racism is just an excuse black people use to explain away their own internal shortcomings.

Lately, two of the more popular arguments made by black conservatives and the white people who love them are, first, that blacks spend too much money on luxury items they can't afford, refusing to save money the way responsible white folks do; and second, that blacks place too little value on education, preferring to critique learning as selling out or "acting white," and thereby sabotaging their own achievement.

That the evidence for both of these positions is utterly lacking makes little difference, it seems. After all, when one is saying what the Man wants to hear, the Man requires no footnotes or actual corroboration.

Black Consumption and the Myth of Black Profligacy

Arguments that support the dominant culture easily become popularized myths, bordering on legend, after which point they are almost impossible to assail. Black profligacy has pretty much attained that status, what with the regular portrayal of blacks as obsessed with "bling-bling," within mainstream TV and other media. While it would have been difficult for whites, on their own, to get away with presenting this one-dimensional, supersized cartoon of black spending, they have had help from folks like Yolanda Young. Young, like Elder and all the rest, is an African American who specializes in the kind of self-flagellating drivel that appeals to the sadistic side of white America's racism. We get a taste of her forthcoming book, SPADE: A Critical Look at Black America, in a recent USA Today article.

In her USA Today piece, Young claims that blacks have been spending exorbitant amounts of money lately, despite the tough economic times in which the larger black community finds itself. In other words, instead of rational belt tightening, African Americans have been going on a spending spree: the implication being either that black folks are irresponsible with their money, or at least that they are "motivated by a desire for instant gratification and social acceptance," caring more about their own selfish desires than "our future."

To back up her claims, Young turns to a group called Target Market, a company that tracks spending by black consumers. But a careful glance at the source of her claims makes it apparent that she is either incapable of interpreting basic data or that she deliberately deceives for political effect. In fact, not only do the figures from Target Market not suggest irresponsible spending by blacks in the face of a bad economy, they tend to suggest the opposite.

According to Young, blacks spent nearly $23 billion on clothes in 2002, and this, one presumes, is supposed to signal a level of irresponsible profligacy so obvious as to require no further context or clarification. But, in fact, the very tables on which Young bases her position indicate that from 2000 to 2002 (the period of a slowing economy), black expenditures on clothes fell by 7%, even before accounting for inflation. In other words, as the economy got worse, blacks reined in their consumption.

It's useful to watch how the pros at this dissing game make it work. Young consistently bases her arguments on raw numbers, counting on her readers to marvel at their size, while ignoring the comparative data that makes sense of those numbers. For example, Young tweaks blacks for spending $3.2 billion on consumer electronics, but fails to note that even before inflation, this is down roughly 16% from 2000, when blacks spent $3.8 billion on the same. She chastises her black brothers and sisters for spending $11.6 billion on furniture in 2002, but fails to note that black spending on furniture actually fell by 10%, even before inflation, and by 2002 was only a little higher in current dollars than it had been in 1996.

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