Another Critique Of The Cosby Piece

The eminent Ross Douthat offers some kind words and criticism of my Cosby piece. His critique is similar to John McWhorter's but slightly different. Both argue with my point that, culturally, the black past was  more virtuous than the black present. John takes an aim at the illegitimacy rates, while Ross goes wide-angle and argues for asserting the virtue and morals of one era over another. I hope that's fair. I obviously disagree. But like I said in reference to John's piece, I had 7k words to make my case and if I didn't do it there, it's highly unlikely I can do it here.

I will say this--we need to be very careful about conflating hip-hop with gangsta rap. I have my problems with the intersection of both, but they aren't the same. In the piece, I criticize Ronald Ferguson for saying that the rise of hip-hop in the early 90s had some sort of relationship to the alleged decline of reading among black kids. I then pivoted to say that throughout the 90s gangsta rap exploded almost inversely to a decline in murder rates and teen pregnancy rates among black kids. But Ferguson didn't argue that the subgenre of gangsta rap caused the decline--he argued that entire genre of hip-hop caused the decline. That's a broad swipe that includes everything from M.C. Hammer to to Rakim to Tribe Called Quest to Scarface to X-Clain. I cited gangsta rap example to point out problem of confusing causation and correlation. But I was still tackling Feguson's faulty argument that ALL hip-hop caused the decline.

That said, I think Ross's point about eras and virtue is a good one and worth considering and debating. The gangsta rap/hip-hop confusion doesn't entirely invalidate that. I just want us to be clear about what were discussing. By all means check out the convo. I read Ross regularly, and certainly recommend his blog.

Comments

[Joe L.]

I don't really have a critique. I just thought it was a fascinating piece on the whole. I'm a young white guy, politically conservative. In particular I found the analysis of why it is so hard to get more conservative blacks to align with the GOP pretty interesting. Also, why black nationalism is more attractive. Those are insights that I'd have trouble coming up with just using my own life experience.
On the whole, great read.

[Nathanael Johnson]

I read your Cosby piece in the Atlantic Monthly. I am a white male, and it was extremely enlightening to get a nuanced view of the streams of thought within the black community (though I have been exposed to some of them before).
What Cosby is getting right isn't just about African Americans. It's about all people, everywhere. The virtues of hard work, honesty, responsibility and sexual integrity are traditional values for a reason. They have been prized by 'successful' civilizations. When comparing some of Confucius' thought to the biblical book of Proverbs, the emphasis on self-control, hard work, respect for God and marital integrity are pathways to prosperity not just in the "sweet by and by", but in the here and now on earth.
For those who are well off, money has a way of ameliorating the consequences of poor choices in the short term (though one can become relationally and morally bankrupt) but the poor are destroyed when families and individuals lose their virtue and bedrock morality. The fact that our culture celebrates the loss of virtue and the 'truth' that there is no truly universal personal morality is not just a sad day spiritually, but is a crime against the most vulnerable in our culture.