Does that mean Cousin Pookie voted?
"The turnout was amazing, but I don't think it was Pookie," Dillard said in an interview Monday. "Pookie's just so disaffected, under the
economy, he's just given up hope."
Maybe, she said, it was Ray Ray.
^^^^^ CB: Most people don't vote most of the time. Most Black people don't vote most of the time. The "ideal type" seemingly referred to as Pokie or Ray Ray is solidly in the non-voting group.
But in the Jesse Jackson tradition, O has a fifty state voter registration campaign started to turn out as many as possible of the disaffected and alienated people. In the 60's we said "poor people". Martin Luther King initiated a "Poor People's Campaign" just before his death.
With respect to the effort to place O in Black social structure, Black middle class and all that, the inherent second class status of Black people in America must be taken into account of. The racial category Black carries with it a sort of "badge" of inherent working "classness" because of its historical root in the slave class.. "Black" remains a badge or incident of slavery, which was a severely or extra working class. So, even "middle class" Black people have an inherent dose of working class and non-eltite status. The Black social structure has a sort of collapsed more egalitarian shape compared to the White social structure. It doesn't mean there is no snobbery or class conflict though.
This is why Black people don't consider it talking down to them when O uses Black English more with a Black audience.
This is in part why it is somewhat absurd to try to tag O as "elitist" as the media and his opponents did following the "bitter" comments. Black in America is an inherently second class status, even for most middle class Black people . O couldn't talk folksy , like C, and get anywhere because he would immediately tumble too far down the status ladder to be eligible to be President. He had to be extra eloguent to be just even with his White peers. A Black candidate for President ( or any profession or high status position) is held to a higher standard than average to be considered eligible. This is less so with progress. My parents' generation took this as fundamental, my generation less so, but still true.
As to Cosby, comrades might want to research the Garvey and Black Muslim movements for a longer tradition of emphasis on "Do for self" and " Tough love". But also, since the main victims of anomie in the Black community are Black people, many Black people have self-interest in dealing with the problems Cosby is trying to address, even as they don't want White people to be criticizing Black people for these same things they don't like, because they know structural racism is the deeper cause of a greater proportion of social problems.
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