Don Lemon and the rage of a privileged class
OPINION - A swift kick to the backside, or 'tough love' as CNN anchor Don Lemon calls it, will not tear down the strictures of race, class and gender in this country...
Until now, it has been easy to cast away the ramblings of Sean Hannity. It is almost second nature to ignore Rush Limbaugh’s misogynist, hyper-racialized bluster and even Bill O’Reilly’s fact-free bloviating. Keep listening long enough and the hustler will have you believing you are, in fact, the hustler.
However, the real danger is that there are some well-meaning people who would have you believe that decades of de-industrialization is simply an excuse. They will say that well-intentioned domestic social policies that ripped the very fabric of families are old hat. They want you to ignore environmental degradation that continues to poison our urban centers, resulting in extraordinary morbidity and infant mortality rates, taxing public health systems to their brink and killing any possibility of economic development. The “drug wars” of the 1980s and 90s that over-criminalized black usage, but set the white dealer free, should be embraced as a good and fair justice system at work, according to them.
O’Reilly told us Lil’ Wayne is to blame for “black culture.” While I have personally pressed against the hyper-sexualized misogyny so prevalent in hip-hop today, one look at the demographics behind iTunes sales tells a different story. Who buys more “gangsta rap” than any other consumer segment? Who buys those expensive concert tickets and fills arena seats? White, suburban children.
“The impact of white flight is a myth too,” they will thump their chests and say. They will tell you with a straight face, that a quality education is available to every child in this country. That a meaningful job at a meaningful wage is equally in reach for the white schoolgirl in tiny Alpharetta, Georgia and the black schoolboy in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Those people will say to you, without so much as the respect of whispering, that the reason “those” people have to live like that is because they want nothing better for themselves. “Those” people lack a moral compass and possess no work ethic, they’ll say. If the boys would just pull up their trousers and roll their shoulders back, they could fully participate in the American economy. If they simply learned manners, got married and quit having all those babies, crime rates would fall precipitously. They are, I have heard roaring through my Twitter account over recent days, their own worst enemy.
I have likened privilege to an intoxicant, one that will have you tripping so hard that you will think you don’t have it. Privilege, I have said, is one “helluva” drug. Inhale enough and you will start believing that you are among the oppressed. At its essence, however, privilege is simply the liberty not to know. I watched in horror this week as a colleague suffered a “contact high.”
A swift kick of ‘tough love’?
A swift kick to the backside, or “tough love” as CNN anchor Don Lemon calls it, will not tear down the strictures of race, class and gender in this country. To say so gives rise to the poisonous notion that distressed communities are simply the manifestation of a collective moral failing.
Arguably, to some extent Lemon and some of the voices on the Right are correct. It is a failing and the failing is ours. For when we fail those living in the margins, we fail ourselves. When we find meaningful ways to advance the quality of life for the least of us, we raise the quality of life for all of us. To do so means to eschew cheap talking points and dig for the root of the issue.
An umbrella will surely keep you from getting wet. It won’t, however, cure cancer.
Dropping out of high school, for instance, begins with failed early childhood education. Veteran educators will tell you that the game is often lost as early as the 4th grade. The cycle of poverty and violence is perpetuated in the halls of an elementary school.
Maybe, just maybe, Lemon did not understand what he was co-signing his name to when he said O’Reilly “didn’t go far enough.” Maybe he was stoking controversy for the sake of improving his poorly rated weekend show and raising his profile. But if his half-hearted explanation on ABC’s The View is any indication, it is a little of both. Despite his self-professed humble upbringing, Lemon betrayed a barely nascent understanding of the societal and political pathologies that left generations of devastation in their wake.
“Blacks are only to blame for their problems,” tweeted Crystal Wright, a conservative black Republican who makes regular appearances on Lemon’s show. “This isn’t 1850.”
Maligning millions of peace loving, law-abiding African-Americans in this country, as O’Reilly and company did, is offensive on its face. However, willfully and capriciously advancing that idea that “black culture” or any other should be judged by its fewest and worst bad actors — the “lowest common denominator” — is destructive. But the continued focus on outcomes affords the perfect avenue by which to advance the “containment” policies still at play today.
This morning, I felt the same dull ache in my bones, just as Alice did. It is a discomfort, it seems, that never goes away. But when I feel a prick in my joints, I know to expect rain.
Follow Goldie Taylor on Twitter at @goldietaylor.
