A number of Black writers and political persons are profiting from bashing the Black community. Some time ago, when asked about his fellow Black Berkeley professor John McWhorters' book, Ishmael Reed said, "There is money in bashing Blacks."

Not only is there money, but the field has become a career growth area. The occupation usually covers literature and politics, but it is found mostly in literature and communications media. Typically, it is characterized as follows: a Black person writes a book that is very critical of the Black community, the book becomes a bestseller, and then he/she is elevated from obscurity to recognition, given financial resources, feigned praise, and access to media attention. A basher without a book contract who goes on the media to criticize the Black community is heard repeatedly and usually given a book contract to continue his/her rounds of Black bashing as he/she publicizes the book. Any Black political figure who rails against the Black community is also heard repeatedly, and each time he/she is asked to speak, an honorarium is paid. Some are even placed in leadership positions and are made "point men/women" for a cause not benefiting the Black community.

During the years Reagan was governor and president, S.I. Hayakawa, a Japanese American, was used by Reagan to crush Black students at San Francisco State University. He was later elevated into the US Senate. This was as close as the conservatives could come in the bashing game. Since that time, things have changed in urban areas--now there seems to be an inexhaustible pool of supposed Black intellectuals on call to openly write diatribes of the Black community and all things Black for a handful of dollars and White recognition and acceptance.

The Black basher usually has a prescribed script of stereotypically tired and worn clichés that Whites have developed over the years based on their "observations" of the 27% Black underclass, which they readily apply to the whole.

Political bashers can be readily characterized by the Ward Connerly types who are elevated into leadership roles and used as proxies. Both types, the writers and the political bashers, should be distinguished from Afrocentric teachers. This distinction is necessary because bashers often borrow from the materials of Afrocentric teachers.

The major motivation of Black bashers, whether they are writers or political types, is financial gain and mass recognition. They have found an economic niche and they develop a product that can be proffered to the constituency of that niche. Their enterprise is self-motivated and self-benefiting--money and media access.

Some time ago, Stanley Crouch audaciously appeared on the Chris Rock show with one of his basher books in hand, attempting to set the record straight on Alex Haley. Of course, Black people do not know the record of Alex Haley, and lest we too highly esteem him. Crouch was there to set that part of White history about Black people straight.

Money or publicity is involved, and publicity can equal money if you are selling books. Crouch and other bashers have gotten fat off Black meat, but Rock gave that portly man no comfort.

Typically Black bashers have benefited from the Civil Rights Movement and/or Affirmative Action through their education prior to coming to their new niche market strategy. In an interview, John McWhorter, one of the newest Black bashers, was asked about his use of Affirmative Action for his education and his position at Berkeley; he acknowledged that he had taken advantage of some programs. And, of course, everyone knows that Wardell Connerly received Affirmative Action bids in his business, although it is not clear whether he acknowledges this fact. But once they have gotten across the river, they want to tear down the bridge so others cannot cross.

As a rule, many Whites have always bashed others who were not like them, unless those others openly express desires to be like them. Under those circumstances, they have taken a certain perverse pleasure in being White and trying to convince others to hate themselves so much that they, too, desire to be White. But Blacks who bash their community fall into the category James Baldwin has defined as self-haters and self-bashers. The great Apostle Paul said, "...No man hates his own flesh; he nourishes it..." unless there is mental disease.

Also typical of Black bashers is their attempt to distinguish themselves from the Black community because, beyond the finances and fame that Whites offer, they see their own community through the eyes of White America. But such a prism will seldom allow a correct perception. Whites have always attempted to get Blacks who do not fit into the stereotypes they have concocted from their poor sampling to see themselves as apart from other Blacks. Hence, they are different from other Blacks. And that difference is good because other Blacks are bad. Historically, however, they have been unsuccessful to any significant degree in socializing Blacks to White positions-- even though they control the media and the images that go out to America.

It is only natural that any decent and intelligent person wants to distinguish himself/herself from the ignorant and depraved. But when an entire community is broad-brushed by the image of the least successful 27% of that community, it is not only unfair, but illogical. No one would consider the small percentage of planes falling from the sky, compared to the large number that travels free of accidents and conclude that all planes fall from the sky. Yet this is the form of reasoning used to broad-brush the Black community. But it is more troubling when a Black person measures the whole community by his/her own limitations or the limitations of a few weaker members.

Black bashers should be distinguished from Afrocentric teachers. This is necessary because some bashers use Afrocentric themes and rhetoric. Afrocentric teachers are not uncritical supporters of the African American community; their comments and critiques are often stinging and brutal. Yet they always recognize and make clear what aspect of our community they are referring to; they are always careful not to broad-brush the whole by the few. They are always cognizant of the causative factors that brought the portion they address to the degraded position they occupy; and, most of all, they always recognize and cite Black potential in the midst of and beyond the confines of our sojourn in the USA, exhorting Blacks to rise to their potential, which is found in the larger part of their history.

The Afrocentric teacher teaches, researches, speaks, and writes because of a love for him/herself. But that self is defined as his/her community--a communal self. For the basher, his/her motivation is also self, but self is defined as and individual self, not a communal self.

Afrocentric teachers are fulfilling a recognized obligation that they owe to their community. They have acquired talents because other Blacks paid a dear price for their rights to acquired them--whether that price was an indignity faced, physical abuse endured, or a life given. These intellectuals know and acknowledge a debt owed. So they return to their community. Bashers take wherever they can and at any cost to other Blacks.

But for the book-selling bashers and the would-be pundit bashers, Haki Madhubuti has shown that one need not bash to sell books, having sold approximately a million copies of his latest book. Colin Powell has shown that one can be a politically conservative Black person, occupy the highest of positions, and have media attention without the need to bash. They have come to their positions through hard work. The basher route is the easy way--Whites pay handsomely to see their views of others reflected in the mouths of those others. Bashers add no insight to the debate; they only repeat each other's and their purchasers' points of view.

Black intellectuals have an obligation because of the price that was paid for them to be intellectuals. Sitting in the best schools and measuring up to the intellectual challenges and the rigors that were presented are not the only costs of Black students' education. There is a cost that may be hidden to them--the cost of getting there. A cost they did not pay, but it was paid by their fore-parents with an understanding that it would be paid back. And for any educated Black to think that when he/she did well in school and measured up to the challenges presented, as his/her fore-parents knew he/she would, that this achievement was a debt repayment in full is naive and just wrong.

Each one of us should ask, What is the nature and status of the debt we owe to our fore-parents? For the bashers, they must first come to grips with the fact they owe a debt. To those who are able to understand their debt, it is this: the cost of getting there is still outstanding and due.

As Americans, we owe a debt to the society for the institutional structures that are set up in which we can develop our potential. We pay for these institutions through our taxes, outright gifts, and tuitions. But beyond that, we owe a debt of good citizenship, to further the system that we have taken advantage of, to make it better if we can, so our children can also benefit as we have. These are clear and understandable obligations that all citizens owe to this nation.

But the debts that Black Americans owe are of citizenship and more. That more is not owed to all America, but to a certain group who did so much more for us than the rest; they went far beyond the call of duty. We owe a special debt to Black people who have gone before us and bought, often with their blood, our right to possess the normal citizenship debt. These were Black people we did not know personally, but they cradled us in the arms of their love as their children and gave up their lives and dignity for Black strangers who were no strangers to them--these were the fore-parents of Black American children.

Therefore, it is ethically, morally, and historically logical that since we are the recipients of benefits accrued at the expense of a select few in the name of all, benefits that would not have occurred without their sacrifices, we are obligated to repay that debt; we cannot simply void it or pay it to another person. If Sam thinks that I have a potential he wants to see me develop, and he is willing to go into debt that I may have the opportunity to develop that potential, I am not obligated to Mary who has done nothing for me. I am obligated to repay the debt to Sam.

This society has, from the start of slavery even until now, attempted to cut Blacks off from their history and their roots, and give them a history and a culture alien to their true nature. That pattern continues today, but in a smaller measure.

Some Whites, often through Black mouths, attempt to advance the idea that we should cut ourselves off from the obligations we owe to our fore-parents who sacrificed so much during Slavery, the Civil Rights, and the Black Power movements. They say that we should just go from where we are, here and now.

Of course, that type of reasoning is only white noise coming through black mouths as a way of severing themselves and their nature from a hideous and inhumane past that speaks poorly about their humanity. It is also an attempt to disassociate their victimized hordes from identifying with those victims of an unnecessarily ruthless oppression. Both strategies are for purposes of assuaging their guilt and to keep intact a present system that is still unjust and unfair.

The idea of going on from here, right now, as advocated by Black bashers at the behest of their white benefactors, would be fine, if here and now were fair and even. But since it is not, it distorts who we are, and it breeds Black bashers and self-haters. So here and now must have another dimension to it. Enter the Afrocentric teachers who love Black people enough to speak in their hearing the truth and not bash the whole because of the proportionally few; enter the Afrocentric teachers who are not concerned for a few dollars but the whole body of Black people; enter the Afrocentric teachers who know their obligation is based on a debt of history, a debt of love to their people, a responsibility of the greater light they possess, and an understanding of Black potential.

These are the Black people who should be speaking, and let the Stanley Crouches, the John McWhorters and company put in abeyance their noise concerning Blacks; they add nothing new to the Black dialogue.[]

  Frank A. Jones

........... ......................