In Thomas Sowell’s "A Conflict of Visions," he delineates the two diametrically opposite views of mankind which lie at the root of most political, economic and ideological conflicts. They are the "constrained" and the "unconstrained." These visions or ideologies were best personified, historically, by William Godwin, the Marquis de Condorcet, and John Maynard Keynes (unconstrained) and by Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Milton Friedman (constrained). In specific arguments, these two view might be called in politics, "conservative" and "liberal." In economic debates, they would be "laissez faire capitalism" and "socialism." Elsewhere, the two view could be termed "tragic" and "Utopian." From Dr. Sowell’s book, allow me to list just two specific contrasting examples:

• "While believers in the unconstrained vision seek the special causes of war, poverty, and crime, believers in the constrained vision seek the special causes of peace, wealth, or a law-abiding society."
• "While the constrained vision sees human nature as essentially unchanged across the ages and around the world, the particular cultural expressions of human needs peculiar to specific societies are not seen as being readily and beneficially changeable by forcible intervention. By contrast, those with the unconstrained vision tend to view human nature as beneficially changeable and social customs as expendable holdovers from the past."

Two contemporary examples of the constrained and the unconstrained views would be the distinct disconnect between how Michael Eric Dyson sees the world and the way Bill Cosby sees the world. It is that schism between Dr. Dyson and Dr. Cosby that I wish to address in this disputation. I hope to discuss Dr. Sowell’s wonderful book in a later discourse.

As I have mentioned in an earlier entry, Dr. Dyson felt Bill Cosby’s remarks in 2004 at the 50^th Anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (full transcript with audio can be heard here) were an affront to the dignity of the poor black people and served no constructive goal. He began with the usual talk show appearances and editorials offering up his views on Cosby’s affront of "blackness." When this seemed to play well with his audience - particularly after his appearance on Tavis Smiley’s radio show - Dr. Dyson decided to write a book to rebut Bill Cosby’s much-publicized speech. The book was entitled "Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?"

Michael Eric Dyson is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His previous books have included hagiographies of Marvin Gaye, Tupac Shukar, and Malcolm X. And, lest I forget, the instant classic, "Why I Love Black Women." He is what one would could easily describe as a "media darling" as he cuts a striking figure on camera. He is a regular participant on HBO’s "Real Time with Bill Maher" for just this reason. He is hailed (according to his own book’s dust-cover) as "one of the nation’s foremost intellectuals." [Yes, Virginia, that is "sarcasm."]

Let me be clear at the outset. I am not a fan of Dr. Dyson. He is what I dislike most about the current hybrid of "academic/media personality/pseudoscientist" that hold tenured academic positions and spend their time - not in the classrooms teaching - but writing books. And these books are not generally within their academic disciplines but about pop culture. These "intellectuals-as-pop-stars" are growing legion in our media-driven culture. They are "professors" who take up academic space while using their faculty credentials to prop up their profile for the myriad telecast outlets that comes calling whenever there is controversy in black/white relations. Let me give just two examples:

Exhibit A: Most recently, Dyson was quoted in the Boston Globe regarding the perceived weakness of Barack Obama’s comments concerning the Don Imus fiasco. Specifically, according to the Globe, Dyson "said he supports Obama's campaign but questions why he did not speak up more forcefully about Imus." He added that the other presidential candidates had the same responsibility. The Globe further quoted Dyson: "Here’s the point: Paying attention to the issues of race is an American concern. It looks as if he's [Obama] being so careful and cautious not to ruffle the feathers of the mainstream that he may inadvertently raise the hackles of the black majority."

Exhibit B: To give you a bit of the flavor of Dr. Dyson’s views or "authentic blackness," I submit the following: Dyson is a frequent guest of the Tavis Smiley Show on NPR. On his last appearance (March 9, 2007), Dyson - who said many things, also said this:

So, I have expressed my prejudices and my personal bias and will now proceed with the examination of Dr. Dyson’s book.

I want like to take a trick from Dr. Dyson’s bag and coin a term to apply to his treatment of Bill Cosby, individually, and his critique of his remarks. I will call Dr. Dyson’s book prototypical "Afro-McCarthyism." I have never read a more vicious and personal attack. In just the first 12 pages, Dyson manages to suggest:

• Cosby said nothing that blacks don’t say in "countless blacks spaces" (barbershops, pulpits, street corners). His crime was he "short-circuited the policing mechanism of the black elite - the Afristocracy." [He uses his inventions of "Afristocracy" and "Ghettocracy" to seperate rich from poor black Americans.]
• Cosby’s comments "let many [white social critics] of these whites off the hook." [An often used phrase - "off the hook," in Dysonian terms, is to lessen white guilt.]
• Cosby unfairly emphasized "personal responsibility not structural features" and "wrongly locates the soucre of black suffering." [This is the essence of the Sowellian dicotomy that exists between Dyson and Cosby: personal versus societal root cause.]
• Cosby is a hypocrite whose "mean-spirited characterizations of the poor black as licentious, sexually promiscuous, materialistic and wantonly irresponsible" overlooks the fact that he allegedly has an illegitimate child of his own.
• Cosby’s attack of the "black poor and their linguistic habits" displays "his ignorance about ‘black English’ and ‘Ebonics.’"
• Cosby’s "disregard for the hip-hop generation" is "poisonous" and, besides, "young black entrepreneurs like Sean "P-Diddy" Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions." [The logic of this argument eludes me still.]
• Cosby’s "inability to discern" unique black names is "bigoted in its rebuff to venerable forms of black identity and culture."
• Cosby’s views "have traction in conservative (and some liberal) circles" and will "bolster the belief that less money, political action and societal intervention - and more hard work and personal responsibility - are the key to black success." And "Cosby may even convince them that personal behavior will help the poor more than social programs, thus letting white and black elites [here is my favorite phrase again] off the hook." (Emphasis mine)

Mind you, all these charges against Cosby are made in pages 5 through 12 of the book. The remainder of the 250 or so pages of the book are an elaboration of the "real" causes of the dysfunctional behavior Cosby unfairly noted in his speech. Unfortunately, there are no new ideas about how to solve the actual causes of black poverty. In Dr. Dyson’s view the "real" causes remain the persistence of societal, environmental and institutional racism, a prison-industrial complex that unfairly imprisons black males, "crumbling ghetto infrastructures, lead poisoning and asbestos consumption among poor children," et cetera.

I must admit that there are some interesting (if not illuminating) passages in the book. For example, I was unaware that there are three "strategies of blackness" that "point to how black folk manage their identities on a cosmic level." According to Dr. Dyson, they are:

1. Accidental blackness. Dyson describes this as "we are human beings who by accident of birth happen to be black." He lumps Cosby with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Tiger Woods is this grouping.

2. Incidental blackness. Dyson: "we are proud to be black, but it is only one strand of our identity...Colin Powell and Barack Obama, among others, fit here."

3. Intentional blackness. Dyson: "we are human beings who are proud of our blackness and see it as a critical, though surely not exclusive, aspect of our identities...Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, Ella Baker and Malcom X and a host of others belong here."

This tri-level hierarchy seems culturally significant to Dr. Dyson. The more one moves from level one (accidental blackness) to level three (intentional blackness) the more favor - and deference - you receive from Dr. Dyson.

Another interesting passage is this:

"It is not merely a matter of whether one agrees or not with Cosby; it is the fact that Cosby has not been practiced or articulate in matters of public negotiation with the subtleties, nuances and complexities of racial rhetoric."

My first reaction to this was "Say What?" This jargonized questioning of Cosby’s qualifications (I assume) to speak about race is an example of the frequent attempts of Dr. Dyson to sound as if he - not Cosby - is more qualified to speak about race in America. In fact, according to Dr. Dyson, "One of [Cosby’s] defenders even admitted that ‘Cosby would not be at his best as a professional civil rights leader, a Black Panther, or the head of a poverty program.’" One can only assume that, by including this passage, Dr. Dyson feels that he would be more qualified than Cosby in those roles.

The neologisms that Dr. Dyson sprinkles throughout the book are often jarring: "...patterns of disturbing neoapartheid..." was one turn of the phrase. Another was the passage in which Dr. Dyson extols the "fierce linguisticality" [I couldn't’t find that word in any dictionaries so, I suppose, Dyson made his point] of black English:

"Black English captures the beautiful cadences, sensuous tones, kinetic rhythms, forensic articulations, and idiosyncrasies of expression that form black vernacular voice...it is a rhetorical practice laden with complex and technical rules - for instance, the use in black English of zero copulas, or forms of the verb "to be."

I must admit, this was another - and still unresolved - "Say What?" moment for this reader. Dyson later defends black English by submitting "The more languages folk have at their disposal, the more easily they are able to negotiate with the hidden premises of power that underlie discussions about linguistic appropriateness. To ignore the cultural and racial contexts that deny access to such multilinguisticality, and to overlook the rigid racial and educational hierarchy that reinforces privilege and stigma, are intellectually dishonest." I must admit another "Say What?" moment occurred here.

Dr. Dyson spends time later in the book discussing Cosby’s "diss" of the dress styles, tattooing and multiple body piercings of black youth. It appears that:

• Baggy Clothes: "Many black youth who wear baggy pants may feel they are already in prison, at least of perception, built by the white mainstream and by their dismissing, demeaning elders. Their baggy pants may symbolize, consciously or not, their restricted mobility in the culture."
• Multiple body piercings: "Body modifications...suggest that the body is both a signifying battlefield and unfinished project...Contemporary practitioners of modifications...seem to invite or underscore their marginal status...Whatever their motivation might be, it is clear that those who practice body modification can now signify on their bodies, through their bodies, with their bodies, thus liberating themselves from certain Western norms."

In his rather lengthy discourse on "body modifications" and how it traces back to African roots, Dr. Dyson does not address female genital mutilation in Africa and the horrors its practice still extracts from African women.

As he turns for the homestretch, Dr. Dyson returns to his thesis arguments. These seem t be:

1. "Cosby’s position is dangerous because it aggressively ignores white society’s responsibility in creating the problems he wants the poor to fix on their own."
2. "It should be no surprise that Bill Cosby has let white folk off the hook for the problem of black America."
3. Cosby "is led to deny the rigid racial realities that make it extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible, for poor black folk to flesh out their desires to be educated, gainfully employed and free from the despotic empire of want and penury." (Italics mine)
4. "That is why it is probably best that [Cosby] explore his gifts for comedy and leave the social analysis and race leadership to those better suited to the task. If nothing else, Cosby’s ventures into the realm of social criticism prove the non-transferability of genius..."

Thus, we have the two views of poverty in black America - Bill Cosby’s "constrained" view and Michael Eric Dyson’s "unconstrained" view. Personally, as if you haven’t gleaned this already, I am among those who hold a "tragic" - as opposed to "utopian" - view of life and society. If one waits around for someone else to lift you from your current circumstances, I am convinced you have a long wait ahead. Some behaviors as pointed out by Bill Cosby - regardless of how one chooses to explain or rationalize their psychological, cultural or racial basis - remain counterproductive for inclusion and ultimate success in mainstream American culture. Regardless of how you explain it or rationalize it, it’s just a truism that is not going to go away.

In nature, all salmon - however heroic and mightily they swim against the prevailing current - meet the same end.

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Addendum: For a flavor of what Dr. Dyson offers to the public debate of racial problems in America today, I recommend you read a review of the "Pass The Mic" Tour where he performed with Tavis Smiley and Cornel West. A review from someone who attended can be found here.