Black and White Americans Search for Authenticity. . . Separately, of Course

There is a considerable body of scholarly literature from a number of academic traditions addressing the concept of authenticity. This is not an appropriate space to parse the differences or in the ways intellectuals from different areas discuss authenticity, but the idea is relevant to the discussion of THIS WEEK’s events.

Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice thoughtfully addressed a topic that we tackled last week: Congressman Bobby Rush and would-be Senator Roland Burris’s allegations that failure to seat Burris as Obama’s successor in the Senate smacked of racism. The argument is leveled against members of the U.S. Senate (all of whom are now White), as well as Barack Obama and Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, both of whom are African American and both of whom have argued that Burris should not be seated under these circumstances. Trice nicely captures a dynamic that we first formally identified in 2005 when she asks: “What does it mean to be authentically black?”

It is a question that surfaced in the 2002 and 2004 Democratic primary races between Artur Davis and Earl Hilliard in Alabama and between Cynthia McKinney and Denise Majette in Georgia in 2004. Most famously, the battle for major of Newark, New Jersey between Cory Booker and Sharpe James (2002), as documented in Marshall Curry's excellent film Street Fight, featured questions about whether a lighter skinned, ivy-league educated, Generation X African American could adequately represent the interests of “real” Black people.

Trice points out that this is not the first time Rush has implied that he is “Blacker” than his political opponents. When Barack Obama challenged Rush for his Congressional seat in the 2000 Democratic primary, a similar theme emerged. Trice implies what we argued last week: Rush is contributing to a racist view of African Americans with such rhetoric.

These questions of authenticity amount to a self-stereotyping that is particularly dangerous because, as Trice notes, it places African Americans – particularly Black men – in a box that was constructed by White supremacy. She cleverly asks why a (negative) image of Black men is not only reinforced but perpetuated by Black leaders when the behavior of the White men whose behavior has resulted in the current recession has not resulted in questions about the inherent nature of White men to be involved in harmful, criminal behavior.

The answer is revealed, in part, by a new piece of scholarship published in the journal Science. Dedicated TWIR reader Jessica Nelson brought to our attention a report of this piece by CNN, where the study’s authors claim, “there are still really a lot of negative associations with blacks.” Their proof: an experiment where Whites were placed in situations where explicitly and implicitly racist activity occurs. Results are consistent with our findings, as well as that of other researchers: participants underreport their own levels of racism.

Authenticity is, in short, the way that individuals consciously view themselves compared to who they really are. (If you do not think there is a difference, you are either very mindful and reflective, or, more likely, you are being inauthentic.)

To understand this, it is helpful to conceptualize a three-part hierarchy of thought (adapted from the work of Milton Rokeach) with “values” at the base and “attitudes” on top, with “beliefs” in the center. Values are farthest from our consciousness most of the time and, accordingly, are least susceptible to challenges and change. Attitudes are our conscious thoughts, which we allow to be challenged routinely. Even the most steadfast of our attitudes are more susceptible to change than our values. Between our values and our attitudes lie “beliefs.”

They key differentiation between attitudes on the one hand and values and beliefs on the other is consciousness. Stereotypes live at the belief level. Think about it: few people have core values that involve prejudice. Quite to the contrary, most humans share common core values such as justice, equality, fairness and honesty. At the (conscious) attitudinal level, fewer and fewer people express racial prejudice. So when experiments like the one reported THIS WEEK – or the ongoing Implicit Associations work at Harvard – find discriminatory behaviors and thoughts, they are being driven by information that is stored at the belief level, which is below our consciousness unless and until a stimulus triggers them.

We have found that our students are particularly resistant to understanding elements of thought that involve the subconscious. They believe that they are completely in charge of what they think all of the time – no one can fool them. But, of course, there is a multi-billion dollar industry (in the U.S. alone) that is predicated on being able to affect people’s behavior without them consciously processing information. It is called advertising. If a beer company said, “Look folks, if you drink our beer, you will probably be able to hang around with attractive people, and you will be more attractive yourself,” we would reject the message as absurd. Instead, the prompt us with images to that effect that activate desires that reside below our level of consciousness.

Crucial to understanding authenticity is the notion of self-deception. We deceive ourselves when we refuse to reflect upon the gaps that exist between who we (really) are and who we think we are. When we self-deceive, we cannot feel at ease, which is why it is often those who demonstrate the highest levels of implicit prejudice who are the most adamant about their lack of racial resentment or animosity.

Our lives are filled with countless choices as we exercise free will. If we are not choosing authentically (basing our choices on what we know to be right and wrong, not what is easier or the way we wish it were), we are not really taking responsibility for the freedom that we have. We are deceiving ourselves and being inauthentic. Existentially-oriented psychologists differentiate between passive volition, where we allow ourselves permission to not challenge these inconsistencies (which is often a healthy mental state if not allowed to continue indefinitely) and active volition, where we engage in reflectivity that is designed to lead to higher levels of authenticity.

As we argue often in this space, we must embrace our racism -- collectively and individually -- so that we can work to dismantle the system that has socialized us into adopting racist beliefs. If we differentiate between racism (systemic preferences for Whites and the resulting beliefs consistent therewith among those socialized in such systems) and bigotry (the attitudinal-level hatred or preference for one race over another), we move much closer to authentically making progress toward more racial equality. To the extent that we collectively engage in inauthentic behavior, we at once prolong such progress, reinforce the beliefs that are the manifestation of a racist system, and perpetuate the beliefs that allow the inequality to continue.

On NBC's Meet the Press this morning, comedian and activist Bill Cosby and his coauthor, Dr. Alvin Pouissaint (Come On, People) discussed what Obama’s election might mean to Black Americans. When David Gregory asked Cosby what he expects of the new president, Cosby responded as follows:

I believe he's, he's asking us to be honest. I believe he's asking us to look around and see in all honesty what we can do and what makes sense as opposed to what will go into our pockets or make us feel good or who we can punish according to our religion. I think it's time for all of us to, to do things in terms of community, to stop worrying about what other people think of us and, and just go right on in and begin to talk to our youngsters about correct choices, to not be afraid to, to challenge them and be honest with them and, and, and to not be afraid to just stand and, and work with him and think that we're working with him to make change and choices and challenge.

What Cosby is referring to here, clearly, is that he believes Obama is asking us to be authentic. He is absolutely correct. In fact, later in the broadcast, there was discussion about Obama’s call to Black families to parent more mindfully (which is a major argument in Come On, People).

Gregory replayed the speech from last Father’s Day where Obama made the remarks:

If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They've abandoned their responsibilities, they're acting like boys instead of men, and the foundations of our family have suffered because of it. You and I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent houses. Half. A number that's doubled since we were children.

When Obama says “if we’re honest with ourselves,” it is the same as saying “if we’re being authentic.” He is asking us to examine the degree to which what we think we are doing matches what we are really doing. As Cosby asserts, Obama is asking all Americans to be authentic.
Yet both Barack Obama and Bill Cosby have been accused of being inauthenticly Black because they have not toed the line of the Baby Boomer generation Black leaders. Michael Eric Dyson has a thoughtful, controversial book that directly addresses Cosby’s admonitions to young Black males. Jesse Jackson was caught making derogatory comments about Obama because of this Father’s Day speech.



In the January 2009 “The Meaning of Life” (quite existential in its own right) issue of Esquire magazine, Jackson provides this somewhat cryptic comment in an expanded version of the monthly “What I’ve Learned” series: “People are screaming for the running back who scored the touchdown. But the lineman knows how he got there” (p. 108).

There is a suggestion that Obama (the running back) does not know how he got there. It is possible that the Jacksons and Rushes feel as if their contributions are simply not being recognized. It is possible that they are resentful for paving the way and not achieving the success or accolades they feel are due to them. And it is possible that they sincerely feel betrayed by the new generation of Black leaders – that they feel as if the identity politics that they (we believe correctly) recognize as crucial to the realization of the dream of equality is being eschewed in favor of a more “mainstream” (read, White) realpolitik. (Jackson includes a comment regarding the “cut [Obama's] nuts off” statement, as well.)

One particularly disturbing aspect of Trice’s column is her report that Chip Saltsman, the chair of the Republican Party of Tennessee who is seeking chairmanship of the national Party, sent a CD with the racist song “Barack the Magic Negro” to supporters. Trice alerts us to the fact that

[i]n cinematic terms, the "Magic Negro," is a character who's just "white enough" in that he's neither violent, threatening nor hypersexual. His primary function is to save the white protagonist and assuage "white guilt." Think: Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith.

While it is, of course, perfectly appropriate for Whites to comment on and be critical of the policies of Black officials and the acceptability of Black candidates, Whites have absolutely no seat at the table for this discussion of Black authenticity. It is a symbolic extension of colonialism and White privilege for Whites to presume that there is any contribution to be made to this discussion.

Whites have their own issues of authenticity with which to struggle, and they are not unrelated to the belief that Black folks cannot sort out their own disagreements without assistance from Whites. It is a direct result of racism that Black folks are wrestling with these issues; recognizing that is a big step toward making sure that future generations of Black Americans do not find themselves having these same conversations.

Jillian Maynard Caliendo, a doctoral student at the Adler School of Professional Psychology contributed to this blog.



Note: Stephen will appear with Dawn Turner Trice at a forum entitled "Race and Politics in the Blogosphere" at North Central College's Koten Chapel at noon on Wednesday, January 14 as part of the College's Martin Luther King Week activities. For other appearances by Stephen and Charlton, bookmark the RaceProject.org "appearances" page, which is updated as new dates are confirmed.

Barack Obama: Way Too Black but Not Nearly Black Enough

This week (last Saturday), U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) surprised no one by officially announcing that he would seek his party’s nomination to run for president of the United States next year. As the first black presidential candidate branded as “viable” by the mainstream media, it is also not unexpected that much of the discussion this week centered on whether it was more likely for a black man or a white woman (i.e., U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY) to be elected president.

What many might have found surprising is the rather widespread discussion of how much support Obama has in the black community. We aren’t surprised one bit. This controversy centers on two axes.

On the one hand, whites generally perceive African Americans as a monolithic voting bloc. While it is true that black voters overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates, such support has been eroding for the past decade. One illustration of this is the slate of very strong black Republican candidates for high-profile statewide offices last year. But this assumption also rests largely on the tacit racist belief that blacks are less sophisticated voters than whites, and that no matter what a candidate’s position on issues or other qualifications, black voters will be drawn to black candidates by virtue of the commonality of their skin color. This is no more true than an assumption that women tend to vote for women candidates based primarily on their gender, which research has shown not to be the case at all.

The other element of this issue is more complicated, but something that our research has revealed to be increasingly common over the past five years. As more black candidates move through the ranks of local and state government and become legitimate contenders for higher positions, black candidates are running against one another, often in districts that are majority black or majority-minority. What we have observed is that when this happens, particularly if there is a generational difference between the candidates, some of the campaign rhetoric centers on what we have labeled “an appeal to African American authenticity.” That is, to compete for black votes, one candidate (usually the older one) will argue that he or she is blacker than the other candidate. This appeal varies from skin tone (literally blacker) to lived experience (the older candidate usually makes references to fighting during the height of the black civil rights movement in the 1960s) to education (particularly if one candidate was educated at an historically black college or a state school and the other attended an Ivy League school).

We saw these types of appeals in 2002 and 2004 in Alabama’s 7th Congressional District race between Artur Davis and Earl Hilliard; in Georgia’s 4th Congressional District race between Cynthia McKinney and Denise Majette in 2002; and in the 2000 and 2004 Newark mayoral races between Corey Booker and Sharpe James (see the excellent film Street Fight for documentation of this contest). In fact, Obama’s failed 2002 Congressional bid to replace incumbent Bobby Rush included suggestions of Obama’s lack of authenticity.

Obama’s perceived authenticity runs even deeper than his light skin (due to the fact that his mother was white) and his Ivy League education. Since his father was from Kenya and therefore is not the descendent of slaves, some have claimed that Obama does not have the right to claim to be African American (see Stephen Colbert’s interview with one of those folks here).

So, as we predicted in our December 1, 2006 blog, Obama has an uphill battle that is rooted in race, but not always in the ways we traditionally think of it. Many black leaders have long-standing associations with the Clinton family stemming back to the early 1990s, and such allegiances will be uncomfortable to sever, even if those leaders wish to shift support, which is certainly not a given even though there is a viable black candidate now in the race.


Read Some Other Stories About Black support for Obama at/in:

NPR
Time Magazine
My Direct Democracy
Black People Speak
Philadelphia Star Telegram
News Max