A Bound Man by Shelby Steele

Author:Shelby Steele
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bargaining and Challenging

Bargaining and challenging are the two great masks that we blacks wear when we seek success and power in the American mainstream. They are identities of a sort. They come replete with belief systems and a politics, even a psychology. People seem naturally inclined toward one or the other, but bargainers can sometimes challenge and challengers can sometimes bargain. The very fact that racial masking is still an aspect of black life makes the point that many of us—consciously or unconsciously—still feel we must navigate the predispositions of the white majority in order to win success and power. This is the existential circumstance that makes bargaining and challenging timeless features of black American culture.

Both these masks enable blacks to set up an exchange with white America in which innocence is traded for power. These masks were always features of black culture. No doubt, slaves bargained with and challenged their masters. But since the sixties, both masks have become far more common for two reasons: more blacks have sought success and power in the mainstream and whites have endured a collapse of moral authority in racial matters. The sixties stigmatized white Americans with the racial sins of the past—with the bigotry and hypocrisy that countenanced slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. Now, to win back moral authority, whites—and especially American institutions—must prove the negative: that they are not racist. In other words, white America has become a keen market for racial innocence, and this is the new underlying condition that elicits so much bargaining and challenging.

Blacks, on the other hand—now fully acknowledged as America’s long-suffering victims—possess a largesse of moral authority that whites simply can never have. And this amounts to a currency of power in a society that now needs moral authority around race for the very legitimacy of its institutions. Of course, whites cannot bestow racial innocence on themselves. Thus the market in which blacks sell and whites buy.

When bargainers in any walk of life seek success in the American mainstream, they make a very specific deal with whites (individuals and institutions): I will not use America’s horrible history of white racism against you, if you will promise not to use my race against me. In other words, bargainers grant whites the innocence and moral authority they need in return for their goodwill and generosity. Bargainers give before they ask, and they trust that reciprocity will prevail—that goodwill will elicit goodwill. Bargaining is effective because it begins in magnanimity.

In the eighties, The Cosby Show made the classic bargainer’s deal with its vast white audience. Bill Cosby said, in effect, look, I’m a comedian, an artist of a kind, and I want to practice my art. I want to share it with the world, and I believe you will appreciate it. Therefore, you can turn on my program every week and be assured that you will not have the ugly legacy of white racism rubbed in your face. Instead, I will judge you by your better instincts and trust that you will rise to that judgment.

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