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Go Home Frances Fox Piven, Jim Sleeper, and Me

JOHN MCWHORTER JANUARY 25, 2011

Frances Fox Piven, Jim Sleeper, and Me

BY JOHN MCWHORTER

A point of order.

I have written, often, that Columbia social work professors Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward (who were married) wreaked havoc on poor black communities in the sixties by openly calling on poor blacks to seek welfare payments rather than work. The story is simple and sad. Early last year I told it thusly in these pages, and see no reason not to simply present exactly what I wrote then. To wit, Piven and Cloward hoped

that this would bankrupt the government and force a complete overhaul of our distribution of income. It wasn’t that they thought there was no work for blacks—just that it was beneath blacks’ dignity to do it. By 1968, the organization was staging more than two hundred protests a month, sometimes assisted by the Panthers.

Traditional civil rights leaders didn’t get it. Piven has recalled, “We met with Whitney Young [executive director of the National Urban League] … and he gave us a long speech about how it was more important to get one black woman into a job as an airline stewardess than it was to get fifty poor black families onto welfare.” But when Piven and Cloward published a manifesto in The Nation, there were 30,000 reprint requests. One thousand neighborhood service centers nationwide encouraged people to go on welfare who would not have otherwise. In the '60s, one-third of the people whose incomes made them eligible for AFDC were on the rolls. By 1971, 90 percent were.

For three decades, welfare was an open-ended program, unconcerned with whether people got jobs or whether children’s fathers were present or able to work. The government never fell, and meanwhile black neighborhoods started falling to pieces. The near-fatherless tracts now thought of as normal would have sounded like science fiction in even the poorest black districts before the '70s. Rarely in American history have people with such a destructive agenda had such power over the lives of the innocent. I wish Piven and Cloward had stayed obscure teachers instead of helping to ruin the lives of, for example, some of my relatives.

I meant this. I have written, and often said in public, that I would have seen perfect sense in what Piven and Cloward were advocating if I had been there at the time. What rankles me is that the experiment was such a resounding failure, and yet Piven has continued to insist that what she advocated was a good thing. It seems callous to me.

And: My annoyance here is based on a larger argument I have made at length and often, such as in my Winning the Race, that the new kind of welfare in the sixties was decisively poisonous for black people who deserved better, and had a lot more to do with the black community’s problems than, say, the relocation of factory jobs to the suburbs, which is the accepted op-ed page wisdom on such matters.

Now: Of late, Glenn Beck, for reasons of his own, has mounted a crusade against Piven (Cloward is deceased) which has resulted in death threats against her as a Marxist threat to our nation. This chills and disgusts me. I have never advocated witch hunts of this kind against anyone whose views I disagree with, and have had no interest at all in painting even openly Marxist views like Piven’s as inherently “unAmerican.” I entirely respect Piven’s right to express her views.

What chills and disgusts me even more, however, is Jim Sleeper’s claim that in criticizing Piven and Cloward I was taking a page from Beck. Sleeper has made a blithe, messy assumption on the basis of chronology: Beck started in on Piven a year ago this month, and my blurb in these pages on her and Cloward – in fact one of ten blurbs about assorted people, not a concentrated hit on Piven and Cloward alone – appeared in March. Sleeper has it that I “joined in” with Beck, then.

Let me get this straight: I, “clever” but “sad” as Sleeper has it, sat at my laptop lapping up the rantings of Glenn Beck of all people, and decided to chime in with him. This vision is, frankly, exquisite – “Yep, boss!” I yip, banging out a screed designed to shore up the base that Beck and his ilk preach to.

To be known as “controversial” as I am is to be accustomed to constant misinterpretation. It’s part of the territory, including what I know will be an eternal misimpression that I am a right-wing Republican because I disagree sustainedly with many of the tenets of the Civil Rights orthodoxy and worked for a conservative think tank (one which has always been hospitable to Democrats, but it’s understandable that few know this or ever will). If people want to call me “conservative” so be it – I truly don’t care. But what Sleeper is implying of me is something I cannot let stand unanswered.

For one, despite that my New Republic piece appeared last March, I was writing about Piven and Cloward as far back as 2000 in my Losing the Race, a book Sleeper reviewed and claims to have “rather” liked. I have also written about Piven and Cloward often since then, such as here. That is: I am at least “clever” enough that I do not need Glenn Beck to teach me my social history.

I in fact had no idea what Beck was saying about Piven last March. Contrary to what one might suppose of a “conservative movement water-carrier,” I do not follow the man, for the reason that I am a cranky liberal Democrat. Sleeper’s sense of me is clearly based on not having engaged a word I have written since Losing the Race, given that he is obviously bright enough to process that someone who supports Barack Obama, reviles the War on Drugs, supports gay marriage, never voted for George Bush and writes of Black English as coherent speech would be rather infelicitously cast as a “conservative movement water-carrier.”

Instead, Sleeper is savoring a gratifying narrative according to which I am a “sad” figure – the “clever” black writer who gets co-opted by the riches and fame offered him by the right wingers. Never mind the condescending notion that actual black conservatives must be, by definition, “co-opted.” Here, his depiction of me is, quite simply, grievously inaccurate -- and is a rare example of criticism of me that verges on calumny.

Yes, we are all misread, constantly. But I am moved to respond to Sleeper’s charge because I simply cannot tolerate the idea that I would actually be in bed with the kinds of people who mount hostile, anti-empirical crusades against people in the press. And yes, the timing is especially poignant right now because of the national discussion of what happened in Tucson.

Important: I am hardly implying that Sleeper is amiss in not having followed ten years of my writing. I am one of thousands of writers on countless subjects, and none of us can follow everybody. I, for one, do not follow Sleeper.

But to tar me as a Beckian on the basis of having read a book of mine eleven years ago and then a few paragraphs I wrote ten years later – and logically, it can only be that this is exactly how much of my work Sleeper is familiar with to paint me the way he has -- will not do. I am one “conservative water carrier” who has, in fact, disappointed countless right-wingers who, like Sleeper, assumed I was a new Shelby Steele or Ward Connerly, but found out otherwise. There are people in this crowd who have basically cut me dead since I came out for Obama, for example.

So: Again, I deeply disagree with what Frances Fox Piven advocated. However, my disagreement has nothing to do with Glenn Beck or anyone like him and was never intended to spark ad hominem crusades against her or anyone else. This constitutes my official risposte to what will be a floodlet of discussion on line over the next couple of weeks on the Beck/Piven affair, sparked by Sleeper’s piece, in which my name will be paired with Beck’s.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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38 comments

I’m sure I’ve followed John McWhorter ‘s work more closely than he’s had any reason to follow mine: Almost a decade ago I heard him speak at his alma mater, Simon’s Rock College of Bard; I’ve been attentive to his defenses of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard; and so on. I won’t characterize his performances here, except to note that they seem designed to meet penitential whites’ needs for what Shelby Steele called a “racial bargainer,” a black writer who puts us decorously through our paces in exchange for recognition and approval he believes he wouldn't achieve if he didn't write so often about race. This very old game has many modulations; let's cut it short right now. Since I was an early and rather scathing critic of Frances Fox Piven’s politics by racial paroxysm (Chapter 3, The Closest of Strangers, 1990), I’d simply like McWhorter to tell us: 1. What really prompted him to zap Piven now-- as Glenn Beck has been doing -- when she’s in her late 70s; when her husband and co-author is gone; and when her racialized welfare strategies are long-discredited? What’s in the air just now that makes McWhorter want to get out his eraser, as he put it, and rub away at ghosts of the 1960s? 2. What actually substantiates his claim that “Rarely in American history have people with such a destructive agenda [as Piven and Cloward] had such power over the lives of the innocent....., helping to ruin the lives of, for example, some of my relatives."? McWhorter needn’t mention relatives’ names, but can't he tell us how Piven’s ineffectual strategies actually helped ruin their lives? In my post, which McWhorter links above, I wrote that, watching him and Beck excoriate the racial politics I exposed 20 years ago in The Closest of Strangers (and ten years ago, in a dozen articles in TNR), I feel a little like George Kennan, whose call for Cold War “containment” of the Soviets got so distorted and distended by certain warriors that he felt as if he’d dislodged a boulder atop a mountain and had to watch it smash its way down, setting off avalanches along the way. What’s McWhorter’s real reason for jumping on the anti-Piven boulder so far down the hill? Finally, in a column during the 2008 campaign I assessed what Steele – and, I must now add, McWhorter -- are missing, or deliberately avoiding, in devoting so much of their writing to the racial bargaining Steele described. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/01/obamas_racial_wisdom_vs_holdou/

- jimsleeper

January 26, 2011 at 4:57am

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For what it's worth, you have my full support, Mr. McWhorter. I'm a liberal Democrat and a sociologist, and I have yet to come across something you've written that hasn't been thought-provoking and persuasive, and not in the least demagogic.

- bmoodie

January 26, 2011 at 8:59am

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After an reaction and re-reaction, people were tripping all over themselves post-Tucson to declare hate speech in the media and Fox news (pardon the redundancy) to have absolutely zero, nothing, nada to do with the tragedy. Fine. But make no mistake, uber-douche maniacs like Beck will cause at the very least the attempt at creating more tragedies. You cannot shout to a nation of 300 million people that freedom is ending, totalitarianism is knocking at the door, millions of innocent babies are being murdered in part to help further the liberal cause, and America is teetering on the brink of utter ruin without someone eventually using what Angle would call Second Amendment Remedies. Where will the attack be... at the Tides Foundation? A Planned Parenthood? George Soros's beach house? And when it does happen, what will we collectively say? When the perpetrator turns out to be - surprise! - clinically sane but obsessed with the idea of watering Jefferson's tree, will we give credit where credit is due? I'm of the opinion we needn't wait. Start shouting from the rooftops that Glenn Beck is going to get someone fucking killed. Period. I'm sick and tired of those of us on the left being so frightened of being no longer listened to in the great debate after being labeled reactionary and pre-disposed to seeking to politicize tragedy that we're too scared to call a spade a spade. Life is sacred. Deliberately motivating people to violence is a sin. We may not be able to shut Beck up legally, but we can at the very least call everyone's attention to the fact that its a much shorter walk from his microphone to a crime scene than some people think.

- Tristan

January 26, 2011 at 9:07am

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"I have written, often, that Columbia social work professors Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward (who were married) wreaked havoc on poor black communities in the sixties by openly calling on poor blacks to seek welfare payments rather than work." It is not that poor people were not entitled to welfare support during the period under discussion. They were legally entitled to welfare. It is not that there were abundant, decent paying, blue collar low skill, semi-skilled jobs available in the urban ghetto. How quickly we forget that A. Philip Randolph and his associate, Bayard Rustin, struggled mightily to get young black men into the construction trades' apprentiship programs. The issue surrounding the Fox-Beck controversy has nothing to do with either Jim Sleeper or John McWhorter. Their exchanges are a side show if there ever was a sideshow. The point is that Messrs. Rupert and James Murdoch are using the unstable Glenn Beck to do their dirty work, aimed at the Left. Mr. Beck has every right to speak his form of truth. What he doesn't have a right to do is allow his web site to become an unregulated forum for physical threats, murder or assasination. It is interesting to note that the Glenn Beck show has not had commercial sponsors for eleven months now, in the UK. All advertisers have pulled out. The show is a complete flop from the standpoint of advertisers. British business understands that Mr. Beck is over the top and in violation of several Broadcaster's codes of ethics. Fox is out of control.

- LawrenceGulotta

January 26, 2011 at 10:27am

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Jim Sleeper is wrong that Piven's ideas "are long-discredited," by the way. She was elected president of the American Sociological Association in 2007, a sign of her present-day prestige in the discipline. And characterizing writers' motives as Uncle Tomism or efforts to parlay white guilt into prestige make an end run around a person's argument, making it all the more difficult to think and communicate clearly. The other commentators are right that there's no comparison between McWhorter's reasoned intellectual critiques and Glenn Beck's vicious, empty-headed baiting and scare-mongering.

- bmoodie

January 26, 2011 at 10:53am

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To bmoodie's observation that Piven was elected president of the ASA, I'm tempted to respond, "I rest my case." But, more seriously: 1. Please look up my assessment of the welfare-protest strategies pursued by Piven and Cloward's National Welfare Rights Organization in the 1960s. It is those strategies, and the social theory and welfare policy they promoted, strike both McWhorter and me as wrong. But since they've long been discredited, McWhorter might want to answer the two questions I've posed in my first comment, above. 2. Read Michael Tomasky's brief comment about all this in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/jan/24/us-politics-fox-news

- jimsleeper

January 26, 2011 at 11:28am

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Sorry to intrude so often, but one more point: The analysis of Piven's welfare strategies I've just mentioned is in Chapter 3 of The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York (WW. Norton, 1990). Regrettably, it's not on Googlebooks. Maybe I'll scan it and put it up on my website, but can't do it this week. www.jimsleeper.com This, from McWhorter's March column, strikes me as nothing but demagogic: "Rarely in American history have people with such a destructive agenda had such power over the lives of the innocent. I wish Piven and Cloward had stayed obscure teachers instead of helping to ruin the lives of, for example, some of my relatives." "Such power? Wow!" I wrote in the column to which McWhorter is responding. "McWhorter was certainly on-message with thunderings against Piven and Cloward by Beck and Horowitz." Wittingly or not, he certainly was. I'm asking him to tell us if this is wholly a coincidence or whether Glenn Beck jogged his memory.

- jimsleeper

January 26, 2011 at 11:37am

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So, if I'm getting the general feel of this discussion, John McWhorter, Jim Sleeper, and Michael Tomasky all are deeply opposed to Beck's evil transformation of legitimate criticism of Piven (which all three writers have expressed at different times) into a kind of ominous public and potentially violent threat against her. Good. I would expect nothing less.

- ironyroad

January 26, 2011 at 12:30pm

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The primary issue it seems to me is the oddity of Beck's having to trudge for a hot issue by going back a near half-century or so ago to find a bloody shirt to wave. But this is still a live wire to touch so many years later. But Piven/Cloward, despite the "Nation" article, was never at the forefront of deep, sustained interest. Yes, there was a lot of intense shouting and "revolutionary" fervor among parts of the left eager to redress social injustice in the country, including the Piven/Cloward welfare plan, which has a certain symbolic dignity, and a mostly horrendous practical meaning---not the least of which it is taken as the springboard for overgeneralizing critics of all social amelioration in the mid-century US. This column's author, although perhaps politically incorrect (I use the term bemusedly) and reminding us of the clever but sad Charles Murray-type critiques, does seem to make a few valid points, and I for one am glad to see him put some distance between himself and Beck, who is a mere opportunistic right-court jester.

- Atlas-QT

January 26, 2011 at 12:45pm

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Jim Sleeper seems to be responding to McWhorter's post without having read it. He asks, "What’s McWhorter’s real reason for jumping on the anti-Piven boulder so far down the hill?" — apparently not being aware that McWhorter cites multiple cases of his having criticized Piven and Cloward quite a ways back up the hill. Why should McWhorter answer Sleeper's questions when Sleeper pays no attention to what McWhorter has already written?

- ayjay

January 26, 2011 at 2:06pm

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Well, I attended Columbia Social Work school and I don't find a thing wrong with Mr McWhorter's views - which are heartily represented among both students and faculty, BTW. It is unfortunate that Beck, Piven AND McWhorter know so little about the place and only pick the most cartoonish, antiquated views to hammer on - lazy. I suspect if you pick any student walking in to the building and ask them what they think of Piven's work, they'd roll their eyes.

- WandreyCer

January 26, 2011 at 2:19pm

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WandreyCer: ROTC back on campus anytime soon?

- jacko

January 26, 2011 at 2:38pm

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A small thing, but I'm more than a little puzzled by Sleeper's description in his piece of McWhorter as a "clever, sad" writer. This is of course subjective, but my impression of McWhorter's prose style and personality, both in his books and on this blog, has been of a kind of energetic pragmatism, far more resilient and optimistic than sad.

- ironyroad

January 26, 2011 at 2:43pm

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Thank you. That's my point pretty precisely. I don't know what Columbia social-work students' views of Piven/Cloward are, but if they're what you suggest, it reinforces my question, why does McWhorter keep banging the anti-Piven drum now, and why, especially, when Glenn Beck and David Horowitz are resurrecting her old views just in order to deflect criticism of our casino-finance and corporate-welfare system? I wrote about Piven's views and welfare-protest strategies in 1990, when not so many people just rolled their eyes, as WandreyCer tells us Columbia students do now. Why is McWhorter still at it, especially now that Glenn Beck is doing it so demagogically, not critically? Is McWhorter telling us he had no idea what Beck was doing? So far, he's telling us nothing. My question is why, last March, when Beck was flailing away, McWhorter wrote, ""Rarely in American history have people with such a destructive agenda [as Piven and Cloward] had such power over the lives of the innocent....., helping to ruin the lives of, for example, some of my relatives." That sounds pretty demagogic to me.

- jimsleeper

January 26, 2011 at 2:44pm

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In response to Ironyroad's question, please read my first comment above -- the first one that was posted, just after John McWhorter's piece. May I also suggest a column from during the 2008 campaign (linked at the bottom of my first comment, above), about the fate of "racial bargainers" -- that is, of black writers who take it upon themselves to write for predominantly white liberal audiences about race, race, and race, as if hoping to reap from the effort a stature and respect they may fear they wouldn't get if they wrote mainly about other things. What's really sad is that they may be right, although I don't think that has to be true in McWhorter's case, as it didn't need to be in Steele's. What's sad is when they get trapped in gilded cages of their own and their patrons' making. I hope McWhorter gets out. Perhaps TNR can be his way out.

- jimsleeper

January 26, 2011 at 2:56pm

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It isn't true in McWhorter's case, as you'd know if you read him. He mostly writes about linguistics and generally writes about race only when he's being baited into it, as you're baiting him now, or when it's the latest issue-of-the-second, e.g. when Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested.

- Simon Greenwood

January 26, 2011 at 3:51pm

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For those interested, I have just posted a long blog entry on John McWhorter's article, in which I comment on his argument and that of Jim Sleeper. You can find it here: www. pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2011/01/26/john-mcwhorter-takes-on-jim-sleeper-and-frances-fox-piven-and-confuses-the-real-issue Ron Radosh

- conservpro

January 26, 2011 at 4:00pm

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Simon Greenwood knows very well that I'm not baiting McWhorter into anything but am responding to what, by his own reckoning, is his third or fourth complaint about what Frances Fox Piven did to blacks. The complaint itself is half-right, but the reasons for his repeating it at this point in time are still unclear. I think that those reasons have a lot to do with what's been "in the air," as I explain in the TPM column that prompted his latest post: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/22/glenn_beck_endangers_a_78-year-old_radical_--_and/

- jimsleeper

January 26, 2011 at 4:59pm

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Jim, (if you are still reading this thread), the sad reality is that on all substantive issues, you and McWhorter are on the same wavelength. Much of this debate reminds me of the Trotskyist sects who incessantly war over scriptural interpretations of minutae. Where I disagree with McWhorter is that intellectuals like Piven/Cloward don't have the sort of Pied Piper clout they are ascribed, even back in the heady days of the 1960s. That's bad social theory (if subtly flattering to intellectuals' sense of their self-importance and social weight.) If they don anything, they give voice to larger trends that percolate independently of what they say or do. And Piven/Cloward were not arguing for the overthrow of the government but for introducing a social-democratic welfare state; a worthwhile goal. What needs to be dispassionately and objectively addressed is why the unforseen consequences cropped up, as is often the case in history. And genuinely conservative intellectuals, unbiased centrists, and un-blinded left-wingers are usually the better canaries in the coalmine for when this happens than the true believers.

- cansv

January 26, 2011 at 6:05pm

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Jim, I'm unclear how that first paragraph of your first post should help clarify my puzzlement about the use of "sad." Is your point that you were using the term not to describe McWhorter as a writer per se, or his style, but rather to denote your sense of his ideological development? What I did notice, however, was the sentence: "I won’t characterize his performances here, except to note that they seem designed to meet penitential whites’ needs for what Shelby Steele called a 'racial bargainer,' a black writer who puts us decorously through our paces in exchange for recognition and approval he believes he wouldn't achieve if he didn't write so often about race." Which is pretty much "characterizing" in my book.

- ironyroad

January 26, 2011 at 7:27pm

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With sincere appreciation for the comments and questions by cansv, ironyroad, and others above, I'd better leave off this discussion and get on to other work. I say this not just because of other demands (and deadlines) but because I really have already written a great deal about Piven and Cloward's theories, strategies, and many related matters and cannot hope to reprise it here. May I commend especially pp. 91 - 110 of my The Closest of Strangers? Or chapters 3 and 4 of Liberal Racism? You can get these books "good as new" from Amazon and others for very little. In The Closest, I explain why Piven and Cloward's use of race as a proxy for class confrontation was designed to discredit liberal 'welfare' policy from the left, in ways that were supposed to bring down the welfare system and replace it with a guaranteed minimum income for all and also thereby to expose and strain the contradictions of the capitalist system beyond its breaking point. It was a Marxist scenario, using blacks and Latinos, instead of the "working class" as its cat's paw, for complex reasons I can't go into here. See my pp. 160-162. It was based on assumptions about race and power, not to mention about the limits of the American political imagination and civic culture, that, I argue, were woefully wrong. As for "sad," I've said what I can in my (too-many) comments above. I've seen John McWhorter, and I've followed him in print, and while I believe that he is very talented and well-intentioned, I think that he has too often taken up the "racial bargainer" role -- and, to some extent, put into that role by his past editors -- in ways that sadden me, at least, to observe. Other young black writers, too, are playing to, and being boxed into, these roles. We all have to grow out of this, for reasons and in ways I won't go into here. The New Republic, as we all know, has been predominantly a "white, Ivy League" magazine, and it has had a hard time finding and keeping regular black contributors who want to address that readership. McWhorter is trying to break free of being stereotyped as the "racial bargainer" who sometimes pops up in these circumstances, but he also has to break free of his own long tendency to gladden the hearts of conservatives who love being right about how liberals are wrong on race but have little besides bromides to contribute in their own right. I've observed and experienced this problem from a number of angles, at TNR and in New York journalism, as well as in my books. I've published articles on race in TNR under four of its editors -- Hertzberg, Sullivan, Kelly, and Lane. (Most of those were under Sullivan, mainly because that's when I was writing them.) Some of the material found its way into my book Liberal Racism, especially the chapter on racial electoral districting, "Voting Wrongs," which had an important if unacknowledged influence on some NY Times reporters and some of the principal deep thinkers about districting. So I do value the magazine's role in smashing some liberal idols and sacred cows. But a lot has gone on since my last TNR articles on race, in 1996 and 1998, not least Obama's election, which, whatever its disappointments, did pull Americans -- especially liberal Americans -- upward on learning curve on race, the kind of curve I sketched in Liberal Racism, always yearning for a black bridge-bulider like him. He is himself a bridge, in his very being, especially when we let him be. Without sketching here what I think the new challenges are, I'll just say that digging up old icons now and smashing them again is sort-of beside the point.

- jimsleeper

January 26, 2011 at 8:14pm

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I regret to say that I agree with Sleeper's characterization of McWhorter as a "racial bargainer." I have not previously known that term, but I have followed McWhorter's writing in TNR over the past year and a half, and my observation is that he trades on being a black writer who consistently bucks what he regards as the conventional wisdom of "liberals" as civil rights activists regarding race. That is not to say that, as a black man, he has no right to believe that racism is no longer a significant problem in our country, that the NAACP is obsolete, and that social pathologies in urban black community are largely attributable to black culture itself. But surely he must recognize that, whether or not he regards himself as ideologically "conservative," his publication of those views legitimizes conservative views about race, and, at least in the eyes of those conservatives, his very blackness will imbue his views with special authority. And so, at least to my eyes, his writing in TNR has been dominated by the subject of race (with occasional forays into linguistics, which even then often involve race). His journalistic hook is that he is a black man who chastises the black community and its activists. He does this, even though his area of expertise is linguistics, not sociology. It is as if he fears he would not be published in TNR (or anywhere else) if his writings were generally limited to his area of expertise, rather than race. McWhorter also has a penchant for gross oversimplifications. Earlier this month, he wrote an article published in TNR in which he claimed that the legalization of drugs would eliminate all of the social pathologies in the urban black community. Here, he posits that Piven and Cloward were the leading cause of the problems in the black community. McWhorter is an intelligent man and a good writer. But it is difficult to take him seriously when he makes arguments like that. Dhurtado

- NR143296

January 26, 2011 at 10:28pm

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"liberals" AND civil rights activists

- NR143296

January 26, 2011 at 10:32pm

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It is interesting -- and dismaying -- that in all these comments there is not a single mention of the widespread view among conservatives in the late 60's - early 70's that giving urban Blacks money - either as welfare, a guaranteed minimum income or cash to community organizations - was a cheaper way to buy off urban riots than making major reforms in labor and manpower policy to provide jobs with decent wages. Milton Friedman was a notable advocate of this "give them money rather than jobs" approach, on the grounds that it would be cheaper and less disruptive to the "Free market" than policies aimed at meaningful employment opportunities. He repeatedly expressed this view in his newsweek columns which had a hundred times larger readership than articles the Nation. The simple reality is that the views of two academics would have had no measurable effect on the growth of the welfare system had the conservative establishment not tacitly endorsed the "welfare is cheaper and less progressive than jobs" philosophy as a way of buying off ghetto riots. The fact that there is not a single comment above that references this central fact should give all the participants in this debate pause. The United States did not develop a massive welfare system instead of European-style manpower policies simply because two academics wrote an article in a liberal magazine.

- lev

January 27, 2011 at 7:29am

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"I regret to say that I agree with Sleeper's characterization of McWhorter as a 'racial bargainer'." Is there something wrong with bargaining, dhurt? I am curious, as the opposite of bargaining seems to be a stand-off. Also, on the larger point, I think that Sleeper is somewhat mischaracterizing Steele's deployment of that term, which covers e.g. Louis Armstrong, Jackie Robinson, Sidney Poitier, and Oprah Winfrey (and he came back to the topic in 2008 to point out that Obama is the first real political bargainer we've had). Steele didn't mean "bargaining" in the sense of weakly negotiating something away or nervously seeking approval (which is, I think, how Sleeper means it) but rather as a take-it-or-leave-it offer in which the black artist or media personality or politician says essentially to white America: "I won't rub your nose in the history of American racial oppression, in return for which -- IN RETURN FOR WHICH! -- you won't judge me on the basis of my race. Deal?" This is something different than a fuzzy compromise, I'd say.

- ironyroad

January 27, 2011 at 11:33am

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Irony- I don't know what Steele means by the term, but I think what Sleeper means is a Black man's adopting the white-conservative party line in exchange for economic or political advantage. In McWhorter's case it is a sellout, even if he believes what he writes, because otherwise he surely would write more predominently about language and literature rather than race. Dhurtado

- NR143296

January 27, 2011 at 4:55pm

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Exactly, it's a mischaracterization. And if Sleeper is genuinely suggesting that McWhorter has adopted "the white-conservative party line," then that has me scratching my head in some bafflement. I know many people well left-of-center who would agree with him privately even if they were unwilling to say so publicly.

- ironyroad

January 27, 2011 at 5:18pm

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I mean, be honest dhurt, do you at least admit the possibility that someone may actually hold the positions they declare without being a "sellout" (whatever it is they might be ostensibly selling)? Or is everyone who doesn't share your opinion guilty of corrupt reasons for not sharing it?

- ironyroad

January 27, 2011 at 5:22pm

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Irony- I would ask you to read what I write a bit more closely. I wrote "even if he believes what he writes," it is a sellout. So I have already conceded that he might believe what he writes, indeed, he likely does. I cannot read his mind. But in my view it is nevertheless a sellout because, but for the marketability of a black journalist who is contrarian with regard to the civil rights movement, he probably would eschew writing about race, and write more predominantly about his academic field. And he surely must know that his writings will be co-opted by people whose objectives are sinister, even if his are not. Do you not agree that the white, conservative party line is that racism is no longer a significant problem in our country, that the NAACP's challenges to housing discrimination and other forms of discrimination are misguided, and that the black community pretty much has itself to blame for its problems? Again, McWhorter might genuinely believe those things, but he doesn't generally support his hypotheses with any evidence. And, he occasionally discloses that he might not really be so sanguine about the absence of racism in our society when some event strikes a nerve with him, e.g., the Gates situation which reminded McWhorter of how he once had been stopped by police officers for walking while black, and made him confront the fact that law enforcement officeres still engage in discriminatory treatment of blacks. Dhurtado

- NR143296

January 27, 2011 at 8:33pm

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As far as I can see, nobody can hold opinions that you disagree with, and be African-American, without being a "sellout." And more frustratingly, you don't even bother to say what's being sold out. Perhaps you should read what you write a little more closely. In general, I've found that McWhorter supplies quite considerable evidence (circumstantial/experiential) for his hypothesis, including -- if you read Losing the Race, for example -- much from his own teaching experience. To the best of my knowledge, he has argued broadly that racism in the old Civil Rights sense is indeed no longer a problem in the United States -- and quite frankly, if it were, Obama wouldn't be in the White House -- but that an influential slice of the Black political establishment acts as if it were. I find this a reasonable argument (not correct or unchallengeable per se, but reasonable). Maybe I'm wrong but my impression is, you feel uneasy when presented with his arguments and declaring them unacceptable a priori enables you to not deal with them.

- ironyroad

January 28, 2011 at 12:26am

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I think that there is racism still in this country, and one variation is evident in the views of the authors of many of the convoluted, unnecessarily abstract comments above. The racism is reflected in the notion that a black author who writes about the experiences of being black in America is somehow a "sellout" (a slippery and denigrating term at best used by the authors including most notably Sleeper with a variety of meanings) unless his views -- and the number of times he expresses those views and the number of footnotes he attaches to his writings -- coincide with the views of the author or at least the author's views of what the black man should be saying. In other words, an articulate and well educated black man who writes what he thinks about his experience is, for the posters above including Sleeper, dishonest and writing only to placate somehow a white audience unless the particular white poster agrees. Given that line of thought, there is absolutely nothing that a black man -- McWhorter or anyone else -- can say about race that Sleeper or any of the others critical of McWhorter can say that Sleeper or any of those who agree with him can find to be honest. So, to add to all of their other failings, in the view of those attacking McWhorter blacks like McWhorter even when educated are fundamentally dishonest. To me that's racism, pure and simple. Another case of white boy arrogance. How not to be racist in this context: write about what McWhorter says and not about some imagined strategy based on his skin color. I don't think that McWhorter or, for that matter, any other successful black person is "bargaining" for anything. There is no trade off involved. He and the others simply want to be seen as human beings and not as racial specimens.

- PeteBeck

January 28, 2011 at 7:00am

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CORRECTED VERSION OF WHAT I WROTE ABOVE: I think that there is racism still in this country, and one variation is evident in the views of the authors of many of the convoluted, unnecessarily abstract critical comments above. The racism is reflected in the notion that a black author who writes about the experiences of being black in America is somehow a "sellout" (a slippery and denigrating term at best used by the critical posters above including most notably Sleeper with a variety of meanings) unless the black author's views -- and the number of times he expresses those views and the number of footnotes he attaches to his writings -- coincide with the views of the critical poster or at least the critical poster's views of what the black man should be saying. In other words, an articulate and well educated black man who writes what he thinks about his experience is, for the critical white posters above including Sleeper, dishonest and writing only to placate somehow a white audience as part of a cross-racial bargain unless the particular white poster approves of what the black man says. Given that line of thought, there is virtually nothing that a black man -- McWhorter or anyone else -- can say about race that Sleeper or any of the other posters critical of McWhorter can find to be honest. Everything is the result of a bargain, an intellectually compromised deal with whitey. So, to add to all of their other failings, in the view of those attacking McWhorter, blacks like McWhorter even when educated are fundamentally dishonest. To me that's racism, pure and simple. Another case of white boy arrogance. How not to be racist in this context: write about what McWhorter says and not about some imagined strategy of his based on his skin color. I don't think that McWhorter or, for that matter, any other successful black person is "bargaining" for anything when he speaks his mind and participates in American society.. There is no trade off involved. He and the others simply want to be seen as human beings and not as racial specimens acting out what someone else imagines to be their role.

- PeteBeck

January 28, 2011 at 9:27am

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Looking back in on some of these recent comments, I feel a little like a teacher re-entering a classroom full of juveniles who've been egging one another on, e.g.. "The racism is reflected in the notion that a black author who writes about the experiences of being black in America is somehow a 'sellout' (a slippery and denigrating term at best used by the critical posters above including most notably Sleeper with a variety of meanings)......: etc. etc." Let's restore some order by doing our homework: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/books/2000/0012.sleeper.html

- jimsleeper

January 28, 2011 at 9:39am

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Jim, a word of advice: there are a number of smart and intellectually credible commentators on this and other discussion threads on TNR (I don't necessarily speak of myself here), and if you re-enter a conversation which has been functioning quite well without your magisterial presence, you are very welcome, as indeed other posters would be who usually have interesting things to say. I would try, however, to avoid snide and patronizing introductions on the lines of, "I feel a little like a teacher re-entering a classroom full of juveniles who've been egging one another on." They don't add anything to the value of your contribution.

- ironyroad

January 28, 2011 at 10:03am

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Jim, I am sorry that I was not aware that your article published more than ten years ago in Washington Monthly was part of the assignment. I guess my pencil was broken when you wrote it on the board. I only read what you wrote above, and I stand by my comments ... now reinforced by your last post.

- PeteBeck

January 28, 2011 at 10:59am

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I agree that the liberal, let-them-eat-welfare, response to poverty in the black community in the 60s (and beyond) -- especially in the context of their non-response to the economic changes that were making that community's escape from poverty more difficult despite gains in civil rights -- was and has been incredibly destructive. Not only in the policies it encouraged, but even more important in the policy debates and realistic assessments of economic change in America that it discouraged from ever taking place The more recent conservative response to poverty and the problems of economic changes, for the black working class and, in the decades since the 60s, the broader working class -- let-them-eat-debt -- has been equally destructive. But, I find it very doubtful that many ordinary people in those communities in the 60s were inspired to choose welfare over jobs because of some academics' ideas. People do what they need to do to survive. If welfare is on offer, but jobs aren't, survival requires accepting what is available. If available wages aren't adequate to cover actual cost-of-living in your community, and opportunities for better jobs and better wages aren't available, people will use what is available -- very easy (but very expense) credit -- to close the gap. It's like suggesting that the millions of married, working class women and mothers who entered the workforce in the 1970s and 80s did so only because they read Betty Friedan. When, for the most part, those women never heard of Betty Friedan. They entered the workforce because changing economic conditions meant that a second income was becoming a requirement to maintain their family's economic security and provide their childred with basic, middle class advantages.

- esmense

January 28, 2011 at 2:37pm

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Irony, your rebuke of Sleeper's condescension is is well-taken, but then I wonder why you think it adds value to the conversation to say something like, "As far as I can see, nobody can hold opinions that you disagree with, and be African-American, without being a 'sellout.'" Rather than attempt to psychoanalyze me based on -- well, heaven knows what -- it would be more valuable if you would actually engage what I say. I said: "But in my view it is nevertheless a sellout because, but for the marketability of a black journalist who is contrarian with regard to the civil rights movement, he probably would eschew writing about race, and write more predominantly about his academic field. And he surely must know that his writings will be co-opted by people whose objectives are sinister, even if his are not." If that is too cryptic, let me rephrase it. In my view, McWhorter is selling out his true calling, which is to write about linguistics and literature, to instead write about race, because he has found that he is more marketable as the black man who holds views about black social pathologies that appear to point the finger at blacks themselves rather than at the legacy and persistence of racism in our country. Do you think TNR would have hired him if he insisted that he was only going to write about his areas of expertise: linguistics and literature? And do you think TNR would have hired him to write about race if he were a linguist who also happened to be white? In other words, TNR is engaging in tokenism, and McWhorter appears to be going along with it in order to advance his own career. I have only read what McWhorter has written in TNR. And it emphatically is not the case that he writes only from his own experience regarding matters of race. He writes quite categorically about the current state of racism in our country as a whole, even though he has no expertise, as far as I know, in sociology, psychology, demographics or economics. Finally, I do not argue that no progress has been made since the civil rights movement of the 60s. But I disagree with McWhorter that racism has virtually been exterminated. Please, let's not fall into the trap of concluding that Obama's election proves that racism is no longer a problem. It proves that there has been progress. But, among other things, the "take our country back" reaction to Obama's presidency shows me that racism is quite alive, and quite virulent. Dhurtado

- NR143296

January 31, 2011 at 11:51pm

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I have spent the last week or so, scanning the internet, looking for responses to this article/event. In my quest for information and insight, I find it incredible the amount of short-sightedness that makes it’s way into prominent print, discussed and debated, and in essence, a witch-hunt all its own. I think it would suffice to simply sum up Sleeper’s personal character as “someone who lacks vision.” I know that I am hardly qualified to make such an assertion, since I don’t know all the intricacies of his personality or of what personal history constitutes his particular brand of cynicism. But then, he is guilty of that very crime in this case, so I don’t feel so bad. Dr. McWhorter is a complex human. In fact, what I read in this article is his anger over being “generalized, categorized, and boxed-up” into a handy little package that Sleeper’s readers can digest. All the subsequent articles I’ve encountered over this past week seem to be a menagerie of justifications and rationalizations for certain events, certain opinions, certain phrases…blah blah blah. But that’s not the issue here. Let me help you Mr. Sleeper. Dr. McWhorter is a Linguist. Some people might think that means that he translates stuff. Others, might think that means that he knows a bunch of languages, or punctuates his sentences really good. But, in reality, Dr. McWhorter being a Linguist means that he can “see the fabric” of the 6000 existing languages spoken on this little planet. He “sees” the historical nature, the impact and integration of language and culture, the little nuances of sound, and how those sounds mean different things to different people as they convey their thoughts to fellow humans. He doesn’t just know about all that stuff….He “sees” it. A geologist looks at a mountain and “sees” its construction, its history, heat, pressure, and constituent rocks. The geologist sees the individual cleavage points of all the conglomerate rocks and their constituent minerals. The geologist “sees” while we look at the same mountain and describe it as “pointy” or “jagged” or “rolling”. The anthropologist “sees” civilization as an ever-changing, interactive dance of people and culture, evolving through the ages. And when the anthropologist looks at a person, they “see” millennia of interaction in the shape of their faces and the glint in their eyes. These types of people, while certainly brilliant, hold a common core characteristic. They possess the natural mentality to see the intricate physical properties, time, and motion in the massive attributes of our world. That’s no small feat. John McWhorter writes about stuff. But more importantly, his writings reflect the way he “sees”, and the way he “sees” can be summed up as a complex tapestry that he is not just educated in….but one that he revels in…every moment of every day. So…when John McWhorter is categorized into a handy little box that Mr. Sleeper can understand, it doesn’t surprise me a bit that Dr. McWhorter might have a bit of a problem with that. His reaction is not arrogance and it is not rationalization. Nope….it’s quite a bit different than that. It is a simple declaration, “Sir, you do not know me”. It’s unfortunate that he has to write an explanatory article to clean up a mess that a person with less vision has created.

- John_Hart

February 11, 2011 at 9:57am

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