Abstruse

Abstruse means difficult to understand.  I was called abstruse once when attempting to explain the distinction between index coefficients in canonical correlation analysis compared to those in standard structural equation modeling. From that one day in class more than 25 years ago, I still have a fondness for the term as an apt descriptive of myself. Personally, I do not consider my plane spoken comportment to be difficult to understand, but rather that most outside of the world of science, do not abide by taking one’s words as what they mean and are stated to mean. Many cases this is because people have bias that frequently prevent them from acknowledging facts that they too may be aware of but typically avoid because they do not support or confirm to their personal, political or philosophical narrative. Consequently, many consider that my views on race in 21^st century America, as a Black man too are abstruse in the age of Black Lives Matter and continuous charges of seeing racism everywhere someone goes.

Today, race and racism are seen around every corner. Whether if it is the orcs in Lord of the Rings or asking a group of black men with a history of dining and dashing to pay before they are served. Whenever a cop, especially a white cop shoots or kills a Black man, it is an instant racist success. Are any of these truly racist acts or are they rooted in common sense? If a group of white men with a history of dining and dashing were confronted by a Black person, would it still be racist? I ask this because for many Blacks in America, it seems they consider the biggest obstacle to success and achievement in America is racism. I vehemently disagree.

First, as one born in segregation in the deep south, nothing that we as Black folk confront, even the police is as racist as it was in the late 1950s and 1960s – NOTHING. For people to form an organization as if this is a real problem is sinister, superficial and disingenuous and I can provide elucidation on this. In 2017, there were 1147 killings by police of which 149 were unarmed including 49 Blacks and 51 whites. There are approximately 900,000 law enforcementofficers in the U.S., a nation with 328.7 million citizens of which 47.4 million (14.6%) are black and of that 21.5 million (48% of Blacks) are male. Using simple math, this means there was 1 Black killed for every 6.5 million U.S. citizens, 1 for approximately every 967,000 Black citizens and 1 for every 438,000 Black male citizens. When the same analysis is conducted using drowning, of which 2,760 Blacks died because of drowning, this accounted for 1 out of 118,000 U.S. citizens, 1 out of every 17,000 Black citizens and 1 out of every 7,700 Black male citizens. Thus, the query, if Black lives mattered, wouldn’t or shouldn’t drowning be higher than Blacks killed by police?

Such analysis is factual yet remain ignored. I have done similar analysis with Black accident victims, those of cardiovascular disease deaths and Black homicide victims – all way more significant that Blacks killed by police. I am not saying that this is not a problem, but rather it is disingenuous to say this is a major problem. But when I consider Black kids shooting each other, maternal mortality, poor education outcomes in the form of dropout rates and reading and math proficiency, poverty, health and employment, police killing Blacks isn’t that important and is more so an outcome of our learned helplessness.

The modern world view that appears to be only applicable to Blacks born in America is that we are helpless and cannot do for ourselves without the pity of whites. This nature is never applied to Jews, Koreans, Jamaicans, Nigerians or Chinese, just us. It is as if we have been taught as Black people that racism is more important than it is or that we have been taught over the past few decades that Blacks in America are the ONLY and first race in history to be proud to think we cannot succeed unless we have ideal conditions. Think about it, it suggests that because we are having problems we will never achieve or have success. It seems to be forgotten that we as a people had success even with Jim Crow and segregation. It is the goal of racist to implant such ideas to make us obsess about racism, even subtle, that we cannot succeed until racism is obviated. This is neurotic and illogical.

Yes, white privilege is real, but how does Black folk always talking about it solve our problems? Unfortunately, when you address it, you are attacked. Take the example of Bill Cosby. Cosby said what our parents and grand parents said. Be responsible, take care of your kids, study and work hard. Just saying that is what mad Ta-Nehisi Coates his career. His first major piece in the Atlantic attacked Cosby for “respectability politics.” What is wrong with being respectable? I know no Black mother father, grand mother or grand father that do not desire or preach for their kids to be respectable. Eric Dyson got so mad he wrote a book attacking Cosby for what in essences, Blacks have been teaching their offspring for more than a century. From their position, it is wrong o teach people to be responsible, respectable, and to believe you can succeed on your merit alone regardless of economic circumstances and history shows that we can, have and did achieve and only stopped this approach in the mid-1980s. It is easy to make a baby, but it is hard to be a father.

We need to take responsibility for not only ourselves but equally our families and communities. But according to Coates, asking people to be responsible and to raise their children is blaming the victim although we all see and know that individual behavioral dysfunction (speaking proper English is acting white, studying hard is acting white or reading is acting white) is the groundwork of African American economic disadvantage. First generation Asians in NYC who barely speak English hold education the highest of all aspirations so much so that many go without food and basic amenities, so they can pay for tutoring for their children. This is too much for us because we are locked in on being victims and the targets of steady racism. If we do not instill a capacity to function and compete in our children, we will never have equality of outcomes and crying racism will do nothing to accomplish such. Sure, Affirmative action will improve numbers and get you in the door, but it will never address the fundamental problem behind why our children do not stay in or perform well in the top institutions of higher learning in America.  This is a problem because it means Blacks will always be a peonage class collectively. To put it simply, we cannot blame white people for the failures in our communities or us as parents not doing homework or reading with their kids.

Blacks in Barbados, a nation also impacted by slavery and with high population of single parent households see their kids on average score 1300 on the SAT. Across Africa, the average GMAT score is approximately 510 compared to 433 for U.S.Blacks.

Once jokingly, a colleague of mine (a physicist) said: “now we can describe victimization as a time dependent projection matrix with intersectionality being the op-diagonal matrix coefficient.” It made perfect sense to me, for it implied that you have a set of characteristics which are ranked, typically on race and how they rate on the victim hierarchy, and it changes over time as a function of other intersectional variables such as religion, gender, and sexuality. This is where we are as Black people – we want people to lower standards for us to succeed as if we to dumb, stupid, disadvantaged and oppressed to do well on our own effort.

Acknowledging that a white person has white privilege such that they see me as helpless and inferior and can only achieve with white assistance and handouts is not only insulting but also the axiology of racism. It is the same disposition that whites exhibited toward Blacks during slavery, Jim Crow and the Black Codes.  It is the same disposition that led to segregated schools from Boston to Little Rock, for the good of Blacks.  Still we incessantly repeat the lunacy that Blacks will never have success until white come to terms with racism. I do not even know what that means. Is it saying that once this Fourier eutopia happens, then and only then, Blacks will be able to achieve success in America? Is it saying that once progressive liberal whites admit their white privileges, and atone for this original sin by admitting their inherent racism and worship their God Ta-Nehisi Coates will make it all good for Blacks only then? I think Not.

No matter how much white people read Coates and hoist the scarlet letter of white privilege, it will do nothing to address the underlying conditions that alone are contributing to our collective behavioral dysfunction. So far it has only resulted in a defensive populous that seeks to talk about the books by Black authors they read and endless pedantic twitter rants and op-eds that serve only to feed their egos, for targeted action in their minds directed at solving problems are not as essential as constantly complaining and blaming white people.