Former NBA player Charles Barkley, never one to avoid sensitive topics with his signature tact, had some theories on why Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson wasn’t liked by some of his teammates because he wasn’t seen as “black enough”:
“There are a lot of black people who are unintelligent, who don’t have success,” Barkley said. “It’s best to knock a successful black person down ’cause they’re intelligent, they speak well, they do well in school, and they’re successful. It’s crabs in a barrel. … We’re the only ethnic group that says, ‘hey, if you go to jail, it gives you street cred.’ “…”Unfortunately, as I tell my white friends, we as black people, we’re never going to be successful not because of you white people but because of other black people,” Barkley said. “When you’re black, you have to deal with so much crap in your life from other black people. It’s a dirty, dark secret; I’m glad it’s coming out.”
So there you have it. The only reason black people don’t have more success is because of other black people. Also, everyone should pull their pants up. Sigh.
Team Blackness also finally delved into all this Ebola talk, and we did it with our very our Ratchet A** Scientist.
Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS
srv
Mr. Coates is not happy with him.
Patricia Kayden
What Barkley is saying could be true for some Blacks but he really needs to stop stereotyping and throwing such a wide net. Some people of every racial group have a crab-in-a-barrel mentality.
And there are loads of successful Black people. Does he not know that we have a Black President and a well-educated Black First Lady? Sigh.
Mnemosyne
I honestly am not entirely sure what to say, because I know I’ve heard other black people say this before. It was part of the 2008 presidential campaign, with some people saying that Obama wasn’t “black enough” because of his background and education (and it wasn’t only white people I heard saying that). Obviously, Barkley said it in a blunt way, but he’s pretty well known for that at this point.
Tree With Water
Stewie Griffith of Family Guy: “Hey, black America- thanks for taking it all in stride”.
kc
First person I ever heard use that crabs-in-a-barrel simile was Spike Lee.
Mike E
btw congrats on solving the double vision ;-)
Rathskeller
Great basketball player. Not a careful thinker.
patrick II
I had a black friend (sorry, but I am not entirely racist even though I used the “black friend” trope) who was smart, well educated but who did not have much money. His kids went to school in a poor, black school district. He told me of the peer pressure from other students there for his kids not to “white out” and be good students. It was not an easy thing for them to handle.
I don’t know how widespread this is, since I am talking about one person’s anecdote, but it does happen. Is Barkley overgeneralizing? I am sure he is, but on the other hand I would say that as a very successful black man, he has had similar experiences.
Citizen_X
What, like white people don’t do the exact same BS? Take this, for example:
The Republican Party will celebrate someone who’s successful, but someone who’s intelligent, who speaks well, and who does well in school? They’re the enemy.
planetjanet
I think “crabs in a barrel” may aptly define a lot of Tea Party types. That, and Devil take the hindmost.
rikyrah
Charles…
sigh…
tired of him
Jackie Chiles
In other news Charles Barkley says some crazy shit.
The point for Mr. Barkley fails miserably at acknowledging is that the natural habitat for crabs is NOT a barrel. It’s the ocean. You can draw your own metaphorical conclusions from there with regards to the history of blacks in the new world.
Cycloptichorn
I’ve heard this exact same thing said before by many of my black co-workers who went to college. It was difficult for them to maintain their friendships with those from their communities who didn’t; and it was a painful and difficult to understand thing.
the Conster
This has happened to smart girls for forever. There’s a lot of pressure on them to not outperform the boys, because playing dumb is cute or sexy or something. It’s all feeding into the white male privilege that is perpetuated from the cradle to the grave. Non-white non-males can be our own worst enemy.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen_X:
That’s why I’m wondering (and this is only my ignorant white person theory) if it’s a manifestation of the American class divide. As people are probably tired of me saying, our class system is essentially racially-based: a black person is automatically assumed to be lower-class, while a white person is automatically assumed to be at least middle-class (if not upper-class) until proven otherwise. And those class boundaries can be fiercely defended even when they seem to outsiders to be detrimental — take a look at all of the white people on TV pretending to be lower-class (like the “Duck Dynasty” idiots or Sarah Palin).
Betty Cracker
@Citizen_X: Very true. It’s an elitism thing. White people may not express it in racial terms because white people generally have the luxury of not having to think about race much, but a parallel phenomenon exists.
scav
@patrick II: My German Grandmother didn’t speak to her sister-in-law for decades because she was getting above herself and putting on airs in a locally notorious who got invited to a wedding scenario. There’s a lot of Prole Pride and ilk in the whole disdain for eee-leetes and pointy-headed intellectuals running about the general culture.
ET
I don’t want to say that there isn’t any of that type of attitude because I think there is, but I think he should have been a bit more careful about his language and not said or at least left the impression, that this is something that all African Americans believe, because I don’t believe that is true at all.
Keith G
It doesn’t seem to me that remarkable that factions of a group that has been historically oppressed find reasons to confront each other.
One group, in this case represented by Barkley, saying, “This is the game that needs to be played. Please shut up and stay out of my way while I succeed at the game.” While members of another group may be saying something like, “This is not our game. Why are you playing it? I am not going to.”
It seems to me that this would be a fairly easy dynamic to find throughout history. My own personal experience would be with the Gay communities in the seventies and eighties.
Alesis
For those who are wondering whether Charles Barkely has a point I would refer you to the work of Harvard economist Roland Fryer whose researched the “acting white” phenomenon and found it of limited value.
http://cobb.typepad.com/visioncircle/2005/06/roland-fryer-an.html
That’s the empirical side. TNC has the historical error Barkely is committing down pretty well.
Remember just because black people say it does not mean the utterance is not racist in nature.
Hal
Yes, there are some black folks out there who think getting good grades and speaking a certain way is “acting white.” There are people of every race/ethnicity who think the same, they just call it by a different name.
There are so many factors that affect the success of the African Americans in this country, and for Barkley to simply say it’s other black people is nothing but fodder for white racist trolls who think Al Sharpton is the boogey man and there really is a black panther party scaring away white people from the voting booths.
BTW: knowing a single black person who once said something similar to Barkley doesn’t validate his opinion. Talk to a range of black folks and you’ll see plenty of people who embrace success and education.
Another Holocene Human
Charles Barkley is an egotistical prick and always has been. He calls other Black people STUPID because he lacks the insight to understand that people aren’t going to love all over you when you insult them and act like a bag of dicks all the time.
It’s always projection.
Another Holocene Human
@Cycloptichorn:
I’ve heard ‘crabs in a barrel’ used for other impoverished, crime ridden communities as well. And I think you nailed why this is so. The frustration, anguish, envy, and guilt make relationships between those who have achieved some success and those who are still mired in the misery of poverty and abuse very painful and fraught.
And let’s not forget that some of those who “succeed” will fall again due to mood disorders. That is very, very common.
I think a lot of it does come down to parents. Did they beat and berate their child or compete with their child, or did they build them up every night, encourage them, support them, love them? When young people have unplanned pregnancies and lack a familial and societal safety net to help them raise those children you get a lot of abuse and neglect.
These are the wages of inequality and cruelty. It has nothing to do with culture. That is just a lie.
Suzanne
It would not surprise me, a white woman, if it was almost a universal truth that members of a marginalized group were more strict about enforcing cultural standards on each other than dominant groups on marginalized groups. In my experience, women police one another’s appearances more than men police police women’s appearances—that seems to be a natural result of patriarchy.
If what Barkley is saying is true, and I have witnessed only isolated incidents like what he is describing, that seems to be a natural outgrowth of the horrible racist social system white America has set up for itself.
I don’t know if what Barkley describes is systemic. I saw a few incidents like he described when I was in high school, but I went to a very poor/working-class HS, so I’m sure class issues were also at play. And of course, I’ve also seen many other successful black people and families.
But I think Coates is right: if it does happen, it’s only in response to an unequal system.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: Germany had 9 social classes and the boundaries were policed quite severely. And not every 19th century emigre was a 48er, a political activist who wanted to tear that system down.
sparrow
@Patricia Kayden: This crabs-in-a-bucket thing is something you find all over. It’s exactly how my SO describes life in Greece (at least for the middle class, and say 20 years ago, pre-crisis). A local man in his village wanted to open a winery. He went to France and got a degree in Oenology, and worked around the world learning about wine first. When he came back to set up on his land near the village, h was endless mocked by all the neighbors; they open said – “who do you think you are? do you think you are better than us?” (this is a pretty poor area, mainly small wheat and olive farms). This went on for years before he finally started winning prizes at international competitions. Now, of course, they are “proud” of the local son. Like you would never know what they said even a few years before. My OS has gotten open hostility from people because he has an advanced degree from the US. It is one of those things I am happy we DON’T see much of in American culture.
Another Holocene Human
@Hal: Listen to what Barkley is saying. He is friends with exactly the sort of white people who will gladly eat up the words of a Negro-Whisperer who tells them that they don’t have to worry their pretty little 1%er heads about income inequality or systemic racism because the ugly picture they glimpse from time to time that so disquiets them is, gosh darn it!, those silly colored folks just like being bootless and singing the blues. Tsk tsk.
Another Holocene Human
Barkley is a narcissist/social dominator. Social dominators are like, what, 3% of the population? If a white CEO talked smack about the poors you would ridicule his ass. So. Consider the source.
ruemara
Fuck Charles Barkley. That’s not the problem. It’s the inculcated distaste towards intellectual displays.
mai naem
I’ve heard this from a couple of black aquaintances but I think it depends on where they live, go to school,where their kids go to school etc. Also Barkley is super successful and so it wouldn’t surprise me if he runs across people from his childhood who are jealous of his success.As an aside, I know somebody who works with NBA teams on the tech end, and he’s told me Barkley is well known in basketball circles for helping people out financially without seeking attention and praise for it.
Another Holocene Human
Does anybody know anything about Mychal Massie’s life prior to Project 21? He wrote his own fulsome bio where he claims to have founded In His Name Ministries but that’s nothing but a NY PO box.
He wrote once that his father’s name is Howard. There is or was a Howard Massie living in Miami Florida with a son or nephew living in the house named Antwone. Dude registered to vote there in 1966. (Gotta love public records.)
Other than that, I got nothing. I wonder did this guy change his name? Criminal past? Someone else online expressed frustration that he seems to be a cypher. It is really odd. He burst onto the scene at CPAC 2007. Apparently he is in NYS or was at that time.
Weird.
Amir Khalid
I’ve heard stories about resentment of those who “act white” like that for decades. But I’ve always had trouble believing that, among Americans, only black people do what Charles Barkley describes. People get shunned by all kinds of groups for daring to make themselves different. In a community where most people’s prospects suck, a person who bucks the odds and succeeds, and gets their ticket out, is going to face some resentment and ostracism for it because that’s just how humans roll.
gvg
He is overgeneralizing from his own experiences. He is also ignoring that what the white power structure is doing is far more damaging. The drug overreaction which has resulted in the highest incarceration rate in the world has done just incredible damage to the black community just for a start. The lack of job opportunities for decades has resulted in even more damage. The startling death rate for blacks is another matter.
And he wants to put the blame on social pressure among blacks. He is not very perceptive is he?
I have had ONE black aquaintance complain of something like this out of many. I would speculate that some subgroups or neighborhoods have this problem and others don’t. Even if it was pervasive it just doesn’t rise to the level of what the powerful have done to the weaker group.
I first heard of the crab bucket in a Terry Pratchett novel and since Terry is British, I’d guess there is some of it everywhere. Some. Good Grief.
SatanicPanic
@patrick II: I’ve heard that. I’ve heard Latinos get on each other for acting white. I’ve heard Whites get on each other for acting something else. So it’s a real thing for some. Trying to make that the reason that to black people having trouble in the USA is pretty dumb though.
Punchy
What’s crabs in a barrel? Never heard that expression. Is that an Auburn thing?
Another Holocene Human
@ruemara: But that’s true in American schools generally.
Our whole culture beats the drum that school sucks and people who do well at school (as opposed to sports and fucking) are losers.
Immigrant groups who very much value education and push their kids to succeed academically stand out for this reason. 2nd gen often rebel and over-Americanize with middling grades just to prove they aren’t their greenhorn parents.
The story of young men of color quitting school before graduating is rapidly becoming an old wives’ tale. Completion rates are soaring. There are no fucking jobs for 16 year olds so they are sticking it out. And lead poisoning rates (leads to impulsive behavior) have also plummeted. IQ and achievement are going up and will keep going up.
If Barkley still thinks it’s 1993, well who is surprised by that?
sparrow
@Amir Khalid: I don’t speak for all white people (!!) but from my slice of middle-class, midwestern, catholic up-bringing, this kind of “pulling people down” didn’t really happen. Not systemically. For the most part people who succeeded were looked up to, held as models for your kids. My cousins/old school friends have no real clue what I do (and don’t really care), but would never ever make a snide remark about my getting a PhD – and of course they ask my advice for their kids as far as college if they get interested in science, etc. I donno. Just one data point, but I would say this phenomenon does not happen in most middle and upper-class American communities of *any* race. I seriously doubt that well-off AA experience this in their communities.
Another Holocene Human
@Punchy: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=crabs-in-a-barrel
Or crabs in a bucket.
Every time you try to get out, somebody pulls you back in!
(There is also apparently a wikipedia page for ‘crab mentality’. Uh. Okay.)
Mandalay
@Citizen_X:
Yes indeed, a great example being Rick Santorum calling Obama “a snob” for wanting every American to go to college.
That was actually a real doozy of a quote coming from Santorum: he sneered at education for all, put down the uppity black guy, yet he wants his own kids to go to college, and he got an MBA and a law degree for himself.
So getting an education is perfectly fine and reasonable for the Santorum family to aspire to, but other people…not so much.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: See Cycloptichorn’s post, above. It’s not about lack of authenticity. It’s about relationships.
raven
@SatanicPanic:
Another Holocene Human
@Mandalay: Like Phyllis Schafly’s plan for all other women except Phyllis Schafly.
Mandalay
@gvg:
Sadly it’s even worse than that. If it were just “drug overreaction” then there would be many more white people behind bars as well. The drug laws are a flimsy pretext to incarcerate blacks, just as Republican voter ID laws are a flimsy pretext to stop black people voting.
Systemic racism is flourishing in 2014.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: Is this a fair representation of Ogbu’s work?
I was reading the summary and frankly it looks like a big exercise in question-begging.
The null hypothesis would be that failures of Black achievement are due to systemic, ongoing, structural racism. After all that is something that exists, that we can see, feel, touch, measure, and so on. At any rate is is going to be the first order cause that may spawn other second order effects.
So if you are arguing for an alternative explanation, you can’t go back to the null hypothesis to set your alternative explanation in motion.
When young Black men from impoverished communities get turned down for jobs they don’t just “perceive” that they have no chance, it’s a fact. And that fact drives the reaction, the “why try” because there is–very rationally–no marginal gain. So it’s a second order effect as a direct consequence of systemic, structural, pervasive racism.
There is no “theory” there. It has no explanatory power. The reason is racism, and all he’s doing is describing some of the fallout.
IMHO.
Unless this is a mischaracterization, which it could be.
Steve from Antioch
A – The only reason black people don’t have more success is because of other black people.
B – The only reason black people don’t have more success is because of white people.
Statement B isn’t correct just because Statement A is false, even if Statement B is “closer” to the truth.
Another Holocene Human
@Mandalay: “Law and Order” started in the Nixon admin as a reaction to the Civil Rights Act. The crack epidemic started in the early 80s and peaked in 1990. The crime wave cranked up in the 1970s and peaked in the early 1990s.
There are some links between really long sentences and prison overcrowding and the crime epidemic of the late 20th century. But the drug incarceration stuff was very racial. And it got going well before crack did. And even crack wasn’t really crack, it wasn’t everything it was “crack”ed up to be. There was a fucking moral panic about scary black teens during the 1980s (well after white flight was a done deal).
Why was that? Hmmmm.
Another Holocene Human
@Steve from Antioch: Excluded middle fallacy. I rate your concern trolling a C-.
Elie
@Patricia Kayden:
I think that there is no small degree of black resentment of Mr. Obama, unfortunately. Cornell West is one but there are many others who though they speak of policy “disappointments”, couch them in such negative terms that you just know its also something else. Also, the Republicans had a number of black morons who clearly resented the success of this President above all else and took pains to be as insulting as possible.
As a black person, I also have experienced some of that resentment from members of my own race. Sadly.
mai naem
Canadians make jokes about themselves being like crabs in a bucket. I think it was Martin Short who made a joke about successful Canadian comics.
Mike in dc
I think the observation that some people may resent success or perceive buying into the system as selling out is perhaps valid, but the framing of “black people will never succeed….because of black people “, the overgeneralization/stereotyping, and the dropping of the context of white privilege all skew the comments into the realm of “deeply counterproductive and misleading. “
Steve from Antioch
@sparrow:
This is certainly is present in America, too, among certain low-income “white” subcultures, at least in my experience.
gene108
@gvg:
I do not think he is excusing white racism and bigotry. I think he is talking about a very specific social dynamic in the African-American community that he believes is the cause of why somebody on the Seattle Seahawks does not like their starting QB, Russell Wilson.
Steve from Antioch
@Another Holocene Human:
Actually, since my statements are not the opposite of one another, the law of the excluded middle does not apply.
You should also learn what “concern tolling” means before you try to use it in a sentence.
See, I am not concern trolling you there, I am just suggesting that you are talking out your ass.
Rob in CT
You see this in poor white communities too.
Further, even in lilly-white, affluent communities, it is (or at least was ~20 years ago when I was in school) deeply uncool to be smart & engaged in school (starting in middle school, but particularly in highschool). Nerds may have conquered the world since, sorta, and maybe that’s reduced that particular bullshit, but I doubt it. There’s a basic anti-intellectualism in (white) American culture, and I’ve seen PLENTY of it.
Yet somehow the “acting white” thing is unique and the root of black Americans’ problems? Yeah, I don’t think that flies.
Does that attitude not help? No doubt. But it seems to be a common reaction by struggling/failed/oppressed communities. It’s human. Like so many other human things, it kinda sucks and should be resisted.
Suzanne
@Mike in dc: I think you are 110% right here.
@Steve from Antioch: Not just low-income. The moment I started graduate school, I heard a few comments from even friends and family that were pretty offensive and designed to try to knock me down a few pegs. And I was encouraged to be successful.
Universal truth: Haters they are gonna hate.
scav
@Another Holocene Human: She must have bred exceptionslly true although I’m not sure whether to blame her Prussian grandparents or the poor Mecklenbergers for the tendency. The Prussian were likely just as poor, but they’ve at least got the stereotype of fighty- grumpy to play with. Mecklenbergers just ate a lot of cabbage and fish.
ETA. wasn’t education though, not in her case. Earn all the grades you want, put away all the cash you can. Putting on airs and graces though: deadly.
SatanicPanic
@sparrow: There’s a definite class element to it, because I got called out for doing well in school in the poor part of the state I grew up in.
Steve from Antioch
@Suzanne:
Really? Wow.
I notice a definite difference among my affluent friends and their children who are all for education – with the only outliers being those who question the monetary value of investing in education because twenty somethings “should just start a business” or some other glibertarian sentiments.
On the other hand, the lower income folks I know often view education with some suspicion.
I don’t want to pry, but was your graduate school in something like, say English? I have heard choices like that kind of disparaged among even the affluent because that is not a career path to making more money in their minds. (I don’t share this utilitarian view of education, btw.)
Another Holocene Human
I disagree with Ogbu’s categories.
You have immigrants who are quite involuntary, refugees fleeing violence in their homeland. They come to our shores with a lot of issues because of that. But the way that they integrate into our society over time I think has more to do with the existing matrix of expectations and oppression than how much duress they were under when they came here.
And frankly the Middle Passage is necessary but not sufficient when you’re looking at the plight of Americans and immigrants to America of color because there are big fat differences between the conditions in the continental US and the Caribbean, even though the Caribbean was slave trade ground zero for generations.
This whole “explanation” also sidesteps the legacy of colonialism, but that’s impossible if we want to stay grounded in the real world.
There have been several major internal migrations in US history. I’m going to mention two: the Great Migration, and the Okies. These were internal migrations by dirt poor people who were met with a less than hospitable reception. If anything, the “Okies” were more hated at first than Great Migration migrants whose labor was in demand.
But compare/contrast Orange County and the Inland Empire today with Michigan in general and Detroit in particular.
Many whites totally snob out over Orange County antics, their speech, their religion, their bad taste, their morals. But they have not been denied political autonomy within their communities. (If anything, they’re always looking to go further and misuse power to oppress the nonconformists in their ranks.) Whereas Michigan has the emergency manager law. Created to dispossess middle class and working class African-American communities. It’s like the frigging Palestinian occupation. You elect leaders we don’t like? Poof, they’re gone. Oh, and we’ll be taking that plot of land, too.
Here’s another compare/contrast — post perestroika Russian immigrants vs. Somalian and Sudanese refugees. I lived in a community that got quite a few Russian emigres. They had … trouble … adjusting. For one thing they were not used to a democratic political culture and thought democracy meant going to a town meeting and screaming and disrespecting everyone. Rules? Those are for other people … today this beach will be a nudist beach. And so on. And, hey, they’ve even given us some home-grown terrorists in the Tsarnaev brothers.
But you’d think the biggest threat to New England ever were the Sudanese “lost boys”. They may be men now but they’re still “lost boys”. They can’t fit in. tsk tsk. I’m sure halting English and dark skin had nothing to do with it. And so violent. What a shame. Tsk tsk tsk.
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
Not just a black thing. See, e.g., the old insult “lace-curtain Irish.”
geg6
Huh. The only person (besides that asshole Barkley) I’ve ever heard this crap from is Bill Cosby. You know, Cosby the accused rapist. He’s one of those bootstraps guys from way back. I have lost any respect I ever had for the man because of this kind of shit and long before I heard anything about the sexual abuse allegations.
Mnemosyne
This week’s Radiolab episode started out by talking about literal voices in your head (like what schizophrenics sometimes hear) but then segued into talking about stereotype threat and some of the really interesting ways researchers have found to get around it. Some of them have found that they can get equal results from black and white students by telling the black students that what they’re going to do is a “puzzle,” not a test. If the students are told it’s a test, the black students generally do worse than the white students.
It was really compelling to see how certain simple-seeming words or actions could trigger failure because of what people feel others’ expectations are. Radiolab has covered this topic a couple of times, probably because it’s fascinating and applies in multiple ways — for example, they’ve found that if you tell white people that you’re going to be testing their innate athletic ability, they will do worse at a hitting a golf ball than if you tell them it’s just practice.
burnspbesq
What Barkley is describing may or may not be widespread, but it is real. An example of it was captured perfectly in the ESPN documentary about the “Fab Five,” the Michigan men’s basketball recruiting class of 1991. The part where Jalen Rose describes his attitude toward Grant Hill was pretty painful to watch.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
It’s a little hard to tell, because it seems as though all of the reports of what Barkley said are incomplete, but he does seem to start out talking about black people shaming other black people for “acting white” and then segues into claiming that he’s told his white friends that it’s the main thing holding black people back.
Suzanne
@Steve from Antioch: Not English….architecture. Some of it came from pure jealousy. I have a cousin who was always coddled and told she was awesome and was pretty and popular, but who dropped out of seven colleges and is now in her forties and is sometimes waiting tables. Her mom has said quite a few snide, shitty things to my mom and I, always when the topic of education or career comes up. Some of my friends made comments about how “only rich people go to grad school”, or how it “must be nice to not have to worry about money” (where they got this idea, nobody knows). Also heard a couple of “now you think you’re too smart for us, don’t you?”. That’s very mild compared to what I imagine people from a really poor background or different race experience.
Another Holocene Human
@Elie:
I’ve seen what you’re talking about but in my experience there are wayyyyyy more white people, especially white heterosexual males, who are “disappointed”, consider BO a sellout, complain that he “doesn’t lead”, and are ready to offer their unasked-for assfax analysis of what BO could do better.
The fact that BHO is one of the most brilliant politicians qua politician on the scene in the last 20 years is completely lost on their never-even-ran-for-town-election-board asses.
There are a lot of jealous white guys who think they’re smarter than BHO. They’re not, but for some reason they just think/know/assume they could do it better than the POTUS.
Another Holocene Human
@Suzanne: Wow, are you related to me?
Steve from Antioch
@Suzanne:
Yeah, only rich people go to grad school is a statement that could only be made by someone who never attended graduate school. Interesting.
Timurid
@planetjanet:
The Tea Party (and Barkley) are more like crabs sitting on the rim of the barrel and tossing in firecrackers…
Suzanne
@Another Holocene Human: Heh, don’t think so. I just think haters are gonna hate. I think this is human truth.
Steve from Antioch
@Timurid: well put
Another Holocene Human
@geg6: Charles Barkley, a true peach:
http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2013/11/15/barkley-what-i-do-with-my-black-friends-is-not-up-to-white-america-to-dictate/
“The language we use sometimes it’s homophobic, sometimes it’s sexist, and a lot of times it’s racist. We do that when we’re joking with our teammates and it’s nothing personal,” Barkley said.
http://dimemag.com/2014/05/tim-duncans-girlfriend-shames-charles-barkley/
http://starcrush.com/dumb-celebrity-quotes-149-answer/
“Listening to a woman is almost as bad as losing to one.”
Another Holocene Human
Barkley II:
http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/charles-barkley-fat-shames-for-fun-and-profit/
http://barkleyquotes.blogspot.com/
the first one is moderated with just three links. lame.
Another Holocene Human
Barkley III: if you want to understand why he says such awful things:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Look for the section on “social dominators”.
srv
@burnspbesq: Had forgotten about that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9i_S0zU4tw
Suzanne
@Steve from Antioch: Ironically, at least half of the people that said it came from families with more money than mine. But it’s about the attitude. Out of my graduating class of almost 800, I would be surprised if more than 15 people went to graduate school. If 75 people went to college, I’d be shocked.
Another Holocene Human
Charles Barkley I, attempt 2:
“The language we use sometimes it’s homophobic, sometimes it’s sexist, and a lot of times it’s racist. We do that when we’re joking with our teammates and it’s nothing personal,” Barkley said.
http://dimemag.com/2014/05/tim-duncans-girlfriend-shames-charles-barkley/
http://starcrush.com/dumb-celebrity-quotes-149-answer/
“Listening to a woman is almost as bad as losing to one.”
Suffern ACE
@Mandalay: If it just were IDs. It now looks like if you have the same last name and first name as someone else, you are going to be purged and have to either re-register to vote or prove that you aren’t someone else. What al jazeera is reporting is a monsterous injustice. You were born. You have a common name. And now you can’t live that down.
Violet
@Mnemosyne: White coat syndrome is well documented in patients having higher blood pressure in the doctor’s office than testing at home. Similar sort of thing. They’re at the doctor’s office and are terrified. Hence higher BP.
karen
Think of people with Asian backgrounds (Korean, China, Indian, Pakistan) and how they are not only pressured to be doctors or lawyers, but to marry one. Their grades are watched like a hawk.
For Jews it’s the same but probably not the same pressure on the women as much with the men. I went to my cousin’s last Passover and all the men in that room were either, surgeons, lawyers or CPAs. They went to Ivy League schools and their parents had too.
I can’t speak for Asians, but I know that any Jewish child who purposely not do well because it was “acting Christian” would be wise to run as far as they could.
Mandalay
@Another Holocene Human:
Ah yes, the familiar “nothing personal” defense being invoked to make it all seem like a bit of harmless fun.
Here’s a soccer official in England using exactly the bogus argument:
It’s all just a joke, nothing personal, as though castigation of the group does not apply to the members of the group.
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
Stereotype threat is a little different than that — “white coat syndrome” is more akin to a phobia/fear of medical personnel, but stereotype threat based more on societal expectations about the group you belong to. You really should listen to the Radiolab episode if you can, or this article has a good summary.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: Well if he hadn’t been dead for 20th years I’m sure he’d love to talk to you about it. I know that he looked at similar situations in other cultures, Korean kids in Japanese schools for one, and found similar situations in regard to school success.
Amir Khalid
I’m a little surprised that this crowd got to 80+ comments on this topic without anyone mentioning this Kurt Vonnegut story.
C.S.
@Another Holocene Human:
Didn’t the metaphor originate with W.E.B. DuBois? I thought it came from Souls of Black Folk.
karen
@Another Holocene Human:
.
FIFY
raven
@C.S.: It’s not in that form, here’s a searchable version.
Heliopause
I find the dynamic here interesting because Barkley wandered a little afield from the original context. If Russell Wilson is perceived by some of his teammates as not being “black enough” it likely isn’t because of perceived relative intelligence. After all, he is on the same team with Richard Sherman and Doug Baldwin, two high achievers from Stanford who speak easily to the press, and if either of them has ever had his “blackness” questioned I’d find that a bit surprising. Here is the relevant part of the original article by Mike Freeman:
That doesn’t give us a lot of background on what these anonymous teammates might have an issue with, other than that Wilson is “well-spoken.” But again, he is teammates with, for example, Richard Sherman and Doug Baldwin. So I think that Freeman is either exaggerating, or there’s more to it than he’s telling us.
Mnemosyne
@Heliopause:
I continue to suspect it’s a social class issue with the rest of the team. Richard Sherman is intelligent and highly educated, but he’s the son of a garbageman from Compton. According to Wikipedia, Wilson’s father is a lawyer and his mother is a legal nurse consultant. Wilson’s grandfather was the president of Norfolk State University, a historically black college.
Wally Ballou
Hey, it wasn’t a black dude who sang about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die.
As to his larger point, anti-intellectualism and not gettin’ above your raisin’ and proud defiance of middle-class norms of respectability and propriety are not unheard-of among rednecks and other underclass whites. Who tend to get a pass for it (and even applauded for it) by the same folks, themselves mostly white, who tut-tut about “black cultural pathology”.
sherparick
Going to the original Mike Freeman story, it appears that some of the quotes are actually from Freeman, not Barkley. Freeman is also Black and the particular context is the reason the Seattle Seahawks sent Percy Harbin on to Philadelphia like he had Ebola.
I would point out to both Charles and Mike, that his phenomon is not restricted to just blacks. I am very familiar with it in both the Redneck community, Irish-working class, and German working class and peasantry, all communities where I have friends, and relatives by blood and marriage. This is case where Barkley and Freeman are just more familiar as Americans where race is front and center, but class is is in the background, and failing to notice the same phenomena amount the white players and colleagues. In the U.K., Ireland, and Germany, everyone knows one’s family’s and everyone else’s family class origins and who is stuck up and who is pushing above his proper sphere. John Mortimer, of Rumpole of the Bailey fame, wrote novel that was adapted for TV 30 years ago on the subject in post-WWII and Thatcher England called “Paradise Postponed.”
Origuy
There are a lot of Russian jokes about envy and resentment of someone doing better than you:
An old Russian joke tells about a poor peasant whose better-off neighbor has just gotten a cow. In his anguish, the peasant cries out to God for relief from his distress. When God replies and asks him what he wants him to do, the peasant replies, “Kill the cow.”
Plantsmantx
Anyone who would be held back by people telling them that they’re “acting white” is a pretty weak person. I’ve always been puzzled by the fact that many people who make this claim say it was so traumatic, when it’s obvious that they didn’t care much for and looked down on the people who supposedly told them they were “acting white”.
Another thing- it’s also obvious that a lot of people who report having been told they were “acting white” believe they were/are “acting white”, and tell their little stories with barely concealed pride in “acting white”.
And the whole bit about “it’s a dirty, dark secret, and I’m glad it’s coming out!!”- it implies that it’s a “dirty secret” that white people don’t know, and people like Barkley are going to “tell on us”, as if we’re children, and he’s going to tell Mama and Daddy…or as if we’re all still slaves, and he’s going to tell Massa.
Plantsmantx
Coates:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/charles-barkley-and-the-plague-of-unintelligent-blacks/382022/
Chris
The lunatic part of this analogy, which they think is so clever, is that it so perfectly describes them.
Workers somewhere forming a union so they don’t have it as bad? Bust the union. I don’t have a union, why should they?
Federal government workers still have mostly okay pensions and salaries because they haven’t gotten raped as badly as the private sector in the last thirty years? Cut the government, trim the fat. I don’t have good benefits, why should they?
Poor people getting welfare? Cut the welfare. I was on food stamps, nobody helped me, why should they get a helping hand?
The entire wingnut worldview is based on the crab bucket. They’ve spent the last thirty years touring the country looking for any group of crabs that they thought might have it too good and knocking the uppity scumbags down for getting thoughts above their station. Listen to any rant for any length of time about unionized workers, public employees, or any liberal demographic and tell me there’s no “envy” and no spiteful determination that they won’t get NOTHING because they don’t deserve it. Meanwhile, the fisherman on Wall Street looks down at the bucket and continues to laugh.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Tribalism, and resentment for those who’re perceived as thinking they’re “too good” for their community, pops up all over the place. The problem isn’t noticing it, the problem comes when it’s labeled as specific or unique to a particular ethnic/sectarian group (yes, there is a reason people back on the Sam Harris threads were comparing his bigotry to the many comments made about black culture), which requires ignoring
1) any part the outside world may have had in creating the problem (I can well imagine that resentment for the “successful” classes might fester in a community that’s been shit and pissed on as thoroughly and continuously by those same classes as black America has) and
2) just how common it is outside of that community, as well. Yes, there’s a school of thought in black America that sees doing well in school as “acting white.” I don’t see the difference between that and how white right-wingers tag anyone with a college education as “elitist” and dismiss all fancy book-larnin’ as frivolous and useless – apart from how mainstream it is. White people who embrace the tribal, anti-intellectual stereotypes of their culture end up wildly successful politicians (George W. Bush), TV sensations (Duck Dynasty) or both (the Palins). White anti-intellectualism doesn’t just hold people back in school – they actually demand that it be written into the schools’ curriculum (evolution and global warming controversies).
Years ago, there was a “what if Sarah Palin were black” thread here, where the following point was made –
Mind you… how much of this actually reflects the culture of “lower class rural whites,” versus the caricature of rural white culture that the Palins and Duck Dynasty embrace? Don’t know. As I mentioned in one of the last Palin threads, I’m skeptical of “white trash” stereotypes. But the simple fact that this caricature has become such a sensation that one of our two major parties runs on it, wins (Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush) on it, has national debates with schoolteachers and scientists based on it, and generally thinks it’s something to aspire to, should show that anyone who claims it’s limited to “the black community” is full of shyte.
TL/DR: the simple fact that “intellectual” is still considered a minus rather than a plus in our overwhelmingly white dominated political culture says Charles Barkley’s claims are nonsense.
My Truth Hurts
There may be that sort of pressure in black communities but it’s there for us white folks too. Growing up a boy in lilly white Chicago suburbs in the 70’s and 80’s I was made fun of for not liking or being very good at sports and being into geeky science and history stuff. Girls have it even worse, basically taught to be quiet and pretty to attract a husband, Women who speak out or speak intelligently and with authority are “bitches”. Black folks who do the same are “uppity”. Still I think it’s a machismo problem that affects all classes and colors. There’s racial components to it for sure and it manifests itself differently in different groups, but I believe it’s a human experience and not so much a “black” experience. The jealous idiots most of us are surrounded by will not sit idly by and let people who are smarter than them succeed, no matter what their color is.
you have no idea
I completely understand what Mr. Barkley is trying to say. I see it all the time. But then, I live in the deep south.
The differences between work ethic is night and day in the black and white communities. The attitude of not only “something for nothing” but “nothing for more than what whitey gets” is a common theme in the black community. Its one reason it’s hard for a good person to get ahead. The general reputation precedes them.
It also appears that the less you do and “get away with” the higher on the pecking order you appear to be. I don’t see that at all in the white community.
I’ve never lived outside of the south, but I understand from other black people this is NOT the norm in the north.