Part II:

Under slavery and Jim Crow, there were always African-Americans willing to advance themselves at the expense of the masses of black workers. This elite group put themselves at the service of their masters, allowing themselves to be used as object lessons for other members of the oppressed group. They helped to justify racism and the class nature of capitalism, claiming that progress only came through "hard work" and "following the rules." Their willingness to sell themselves was only matched by their contempt for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t emulate them.

Today, capitalism still needs these sellouts. In Ivy League colleges, one of the key purposes of minority student programs is to turn out black and Latino businessmen and administrators for capitalism. The bosses can then say, "See, there is no more racism. If you can’t make it, it’s your own fault." They also need politicians and stars who can promote ideas that white orators would not be allowed to get away with. Enter comedian and multi-millionaire TV star Bill Cosby. Cosby gave a now-infamous speech at the 2004 NAACP awards ceremony in which he attacked activists who charged the criminal justice system with racism. He disparaged "lower-economic and lower-middle-economic people" for "not holding their end in this deal" and attacked young black people for their dress, the names they carry, and because "all of them are in jail" (‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’, Ta-Nehisi Coates TheAtlantic.Com).

Cosby’s line was initially ignored by the liberal media and rejected by the hacks who pose as "leaders" of the black community. Since then, he has co-written, with Harvard Medical School professor Alvin Poussaint, "Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors." This book promotes the idea that black workers who continue to question the existence of worse conditions in their communities have only to look at their own failings for answers. It also promotes a new separatism:
"(F)or all the woes of segregation there were some good things to come out of it" (Coates). No, not mass multi-racial struggle against racism and for working-class unity; like the Nation of Islam, Cosby and Poussaint laud separate black businesses serving black people. Cosby regularly preaches a doctrine of "personal responsibility" and "self-reliance" to black, mostly male audiences at churches and colleges in major urban areas.

Cosby’s rhetoric dovetails with Barack Obama’s attempt to downplay the endemic nature of racism by pushing hard work, patriotism and national service. But Obama’s politics are just a cover for sharper attacks on the working class, in particular black, Latino, and immigrant workers. The rulers have to repackage "blame-the-victim" ideology in order to justify these rotten conditions. So when Obama recently spoke at one of Chicago’s largest black churches, he resurrected Moynihan’s culture- of-poverty theories when he assailed black fathers for sitting "in the house watching Sports Center" and claimed that they "have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men" (NY Times 6/16/08).

One may wonder why a candidate who claims to want to "bring people together" did not mention in his speech that marriage rates among all young males, as well as young black males "are strongly correlated with the annual earnings of these young men" (Bob Herbert, NY Times 6/21/08 quoting from Andrew Sum, Center for Labor Market Studies). Or the fact that "mean annual earnings of young men without four-year college degrees have plummeted substantially over the past 30 years" (Herbert, quoting Sum).

Or finally that in 2006, 50.4% of all births to women under 30 were "out of wedlock," reflecting both cultural and economic changes (were all of these women part of the "underclass," too?)(Herbert)

Both Obama and Cosby ignore extensive research done in the 1970s and 1980s highlighting the development of "resilient kinship ties" in black families as a historical response to "persistent racial oppression" ("The Black Family" and US Social Policy: Moynihan’s Unintended Legacy?" Dean E. Robinson, 2003). Anti-racist sociologists also attacked Moynihan’s idea that black family structure was "in crisis" by studying the history of that structure over a century, and proving that differences between black and white families developed over long periods, and didn’t affect the family unit’s fundamental strength (Hill 1972; Stack 1974; Gutman 1976; Jones 1985).

Despite its proclaimed demise, the racist beast always reappears in new forms. That is because the rulers cannot rule without it. With communist leadership, workers will see through these tricks. Racism cannot be reformed away under capitalism. The only way to stomp it to death is to violently overthrow the tiny group of exploiters who profit from it. Communism’s principle "from each according to commitment, to each according to need" will abolish the material basis for the bosses’ wage slavery and racism, which will lead to the elimination of this plague on humanity.