I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
'Socialism and anticolonialism'?
This is what the PR people around there thought?
It seems they were too busy thinking they were lazy to realize that maybe they were just stupid.
Jeesh!
MYOB'
.
He takes a lot of space to say essentially nothing. The Times may as well have run a blank page.
My favorite part was that he did not question the fact that ex-convicts will always have trouble getting a job. Maybe the people he writes about never get out of their situation because the wider system (created by the noble white people) is designed, in part, to make sure that that's one of the situations you can never get out of.
Brooks is a rascist sack of shit. I've heard the same thing from bigots here in Raleigh. They are nostalgic for the old neighborhood they left for greener pastures and ever since the blacks moved in they let it go to pot.
Never mind that when they moved out their houses were sold to absentee landlords, and due to neglect and general wear and tear, the gold leaved homestead of their memories became cheap housing for people less advantaged then they. As that wave of inhabitants became more prosperous, they too moved on and another crop of people moved in, attracted to the propertie by low rents.
Racists like Brooks are willfully ignorant of simple economic forces that govern the lifespan of neighborhoods in big cities and small. They have a racist agenda that deprecates the people they purport to be speaking on behalf, and they should be shamed and hounded out of the public discourse.
"In the 1980's, gentrification threatened to push Puerto Ricans out of Humboldt Park." Is he kidding? I moved into the eastern edge of Humboldt Park in 1998 and there are few condos filled with yuppies. There are north and east of it but as of 2001 it isn't a big condo neighborhood. "In many ways, Humboldt Park is nicer than it ever was." except I would never walk through that park at night with all the drive-by shootings. Was it that dangerous when Brooks lived there? I wonder how Roberto Clemente H.S. compares to the rest of Chicago high schools? Too bad Brooks doesn't know either. The metal flags were put up by Mayor Daley to try and create a Puerto Rican neighborhood for tourists to visit. No matter what Xavier Nogueras does to create a "buffer zone", the minute the condo developers don't want Humboldt Park to be a 100% Puerto Rican neighborhood anymore, it won't be. The neighborhood doesn't have an elevated train stop so that proably won't be anytime soon.
So according to him "nobody" in those neighborhoods dare to to dream of outside. Yeah right. How dare he even try to write what those people think. What an asshole.
Has anyone noticed Brooks' dismissive tone on all of his NYT columns? A lot of people have noticed they're all fluff fluff fluff, but look at the tone.
I think the fundamental problem with Brooks writing for the NYT is he believes all the myths about the SCLM. He believes NYT's "liberal" readers are dumb. And as a result, in all of his columns written for NYT he can just barely hide his disdain for his own readers.
Pity, too. He used to be at least a respectful interlocutor from the right.
He takes a lot of space to say essentially nothing. The Times may as well have run a blank page.
Very well put. What a shithead. Wait, no, here it is!
To be honest, I much prefer the assimilationist model.
Ah, thank you, thank you, David B. Growing up on the wealthy white Main Line you tried hard to shed the disadvantages of your background, and you seem to have succeeded! Your pieces would now fit in perfectly in The Suburban and Wayne Times (certainly more appropriately than the NYT).
[disclaimer: added bitterness due to the fact that Brooks went to the high school I would later attend. according to my mom, a teacher there, he had few friends.]
sidewalks crumbled so badly the kids used the upheaved chunks of concrete as caves.
The racist implications in this phrasing are so plentiful, I scarcely know where to begin. Does Brooks mean to imply that the Puerto Ricans should have mixed concrete and poured new sidewalks? Is he aware that the municipal infrastructure (i.e. sidwalks) is a responsibility of the government to fix, and that their decay is a sign of the city's neglect of non-white neighborhoods?
And don't get me started on a white man suggesting racial minorities live in caves.
Why do some people in America still not understand that there is no universal eligibility, that the so-called American Dream is bunk? Surely, any American could win a $100 million in the next Powerball, but will every American win the lottery? This whole farce of social mobility is merely a way of shifting responsiblity from themselves for social ills back onto those who suffer under them.
How anyone could even begin to suggest that this fantasy still applies in 2003 is totally beyond my comprehension. We live in a country that has lost 2.7 million jobs in 2 years. We're in the middle of a "jobless recovery", that the knuckleheads on MSGOP and FOX News endlessly laud whenever the handful of workers who have not been laid off kick production up another half a percentage point.
Increasingly in this day and age, one's social and--to a much greater degree--economic future is determined by external factors. Whenever a choice between buying a new car or a new house becomes a choice between having car insurance or feeding your family, just because a different man lives on Pennsyvania Avenue, I have to say that the American Experiment is very close to failing.
My question: Is it a lack of idealism that leads to a lack of a universal eligibility to be noble, or is it a lack of said eligibility that engenders a lack of idealism?
Just empty drivel. I'm trying to figure out what is up with Brooks. All I can come up with is that he realizes that his neo-con buddies have so wrecked the economy and foreign relations that he's got to stall for time and talk about irrelevant shit in the hopes that they can pull it out in the long run.
brooks is peddling bigotry with a happy face.
It's quite disturbing, actually.
I don't believe Bellow intended The adventures of Augie March to be a blueprint for anyone's future.
Look its David Brooks impersonating my grandfather: this used to be a nice neighborhood...until
Ah, Saul Bellow, literary darling of the radical right wing and follower of the demented Leo Strauss.
Thanks be to the almighty that those awful celebrations of ... *shudder* ... SOCIALISM and ANTICOLONIALISM ... have been replaced by Holy and Sanctified Small Businesses!
(Really, the man actually classifies a "No Yuppies" sign in a cafe as a "socialist poster". These self-proclaimed "conservatives" need to emerge from the Epoch of Stalinism and observe a modern world existing around them.)
(Definately not interested in personally attacking David Brooks - the man does not appear to be a buffoon with a "Beat Me" sign on him as does Creephammer or similar. I am so far not impressed by his NYT writing, but that is on the substantive level. He does not seem to say much substantive, and this is because, just as Bush was forced to confront in the 2000 campaign, his views are completely out of the mainstream and therefore need to be masked behind verbose fluff.)
Atrios:
Can you further describe what you mean by your claim of "peddling bigotry"? I am not offended or afronted or anything, I just genuinely don't see it in today's Brooks writing yet.
At one point, you made a great point about a previous Brooks article being genuinely offensive - the article wherein he decried the "freer and fairer" social system existing after the apparent (he says) end of the East Coast Protestent Establishment as having no way to select leaders. I agreed with you that this was offensive.
Can you clarify "bigotry", though?
I'm with Copernicus on this one - I don't read Brooks' piece as racist.
There is considerable literature about the relationship between ease of upward mobility for immigrant and minority groups in the U.S., and assimilation. I was exposed to quite a bit of this in ethinic studies classes in UC Berkeley (bastion of p.c. studies and home to not a few radical professors and students). I've read plenty about how Jews were able to succeed in both Europe and the U.S. because they easily assimilated into these societies. There are also social studies concluding that early 20th century immigrants to the U.S. - Irish, Poles, Russians, Germans, etc. - found themselves moving into increasingly higher classes as they assimilated into society.
Obviously, racism has a large part in why African Americans and Latinos are on average less well off than whites. We have to help the impoverished in creating opportunities for themselves. I firmly believe affirmative action is one way to do this.
But to mention race in discussing class mobility isn't racist and I see nothing wrong with Brooks on this. Does anyone disagree with the fact that assimiliation indeed makes it easier for people to succeed in the U.S.? Assimilation doesn't mean abandoning cultural differences entirely, but it does mean not shutting one's self off from the rest of society.
Does anyone disagree with the fact that assimiliation indeed makes it easier for people to succeed in the U.S.? Assimilation doesn't mean abandoning cultural differences entirely, but it does mean not shutting one's self off from the rest of society.
I think it depends. I wouldn't disagree with the fact that assimilation makes it easier to succeed in the US, but I guess what I wonder is, "Does it have to be neccesary?" I mean, I know I think it shouldn't be, but how do we go about changing that?
P.S. I think it's easier to assimilate when you're "Irish, Poles, Russians, Germans, etc." (and Jewish)than it is when you're black or hispanic.
Brooks isn't racist, but he's either very stupid or dishonest. My guess is the second. Basically, Brooks has a very 'selective' (read: misleading) view of history. Jews assimilated into mainstream US culture rapidly because they came to the US from many different European countries, where they formed a 'middle-man minority'. Like Chinese-Americans today (many from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Phillipines and Taiwan) Jews came to the US with little love for their homelands, a cultural tradition of educational achievement, some very useful skills, and often quite a bit of capital as well. Despite business and educational discrimination, assimilation was an option.
A better analogy for PRs are the Irish. They came to the US from a very poor country, with very strong national pride. They had low education and few opportunities (and were thought of as lazy and violent-sound familiar?), so ethnic pride and self-reliance was emphasized.
It took the Irish over 100 years (from the 1840s) to rise to average US income levels and assimilate-despite being native English speakers! Either Brooks doesn't know his history, or he's full of it.
brooks is peddling bigotry with a happy face.
It's quite disturbing, actually.
Atrios
Just so. Essay after essay on the theme of wishing you all might be "my" sort of folks. Oh for the days when WASPS were WASPS and you all wished to be. YUCH.
Read David Brooks in the Atlantic, and the NYTimes columns on WASP ledership training and a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Chicago. The theme is "I love diversity when everyone is just like me, and with a bit of imagination and work you all can be, only not really for I am more grand than grand."
David Brooks is merely writing as an insufferable snob who needs to be continuaqlly assured that we all wish we were David Brooks.
Why did the NY Times give him a column anyway? Was the idea to cover their right flank - bring on a neocon commentator so they can say they're not a 'liberal' paper? I thought that was Safire's job. Or is he retiring and Brooks is supposed to be the replacement?
Essay after essay on the theme of wishing you all might be "my" sort of folks
So often it seems that the neocon hallmark is wishing for something that will have them waking screaming and in cold sweats if and when they actually get it. To the precise degree minorities become "his" sort of folks, "his" sort of folks will come to resemble "their" sort of folks. Where's he going to hide then? Under a white sheet?
But to mention race in discussing class mobility isn't racist and I see nothing wrong with Brooks on this.
The implicit racism is found in imputing racial minorities for their social immobility, instead of blaming the rigidity of the system that they live under. It can also be found in blaming racial minorities for non-assimilationist attitudes and demographics that are mostly the fault of white flight and racism over the last century.
To 'emptywheel',
I agree with everything you say but especially with what you write about Brooks' tone which is indeed very dismissive. You should have heard him a couple of years ago when he was 'guest commentator' on Australian radio! He really manages to say nothing meaningful at all over sometimes long stretches of time.
I haven't read the article, but this article on racism looks relevant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/
s...1046113,00.html
..."Being top of the pile means that whites are peculiarly and uniquely insensitive to race and racism, and the power relations this involves. We are invariably the beneficiaries, never the victims. Even when well-meaning, we remain strangely ignorant. The clout enjoyed by whites does not reside simply in an abstraction - western societies - but in the skin of each and every one of us. Whether we like it or not, in every corner of the planet we enjoy an extraordinary personal power bestowed by our colour. It is something we are largely oblivious of, and consequently take for granted, irrespective of whether we are liberal or reactionary, backpackers, tourists or expatriate businessmen. "
RG et al:
I am not necessarily *disagreeing* with Atrios' opinion, either. I was just hoping for more explanation.
Brooks appears to have a writing style in which the substantive content, to the extent that there is any, is very subtle and is only visible in the implications of what he writes. To see where the right wing character of his writings lie, one has to really extrapolate from what he writes to the conclusions that would occur in the right wing mind.
Most people don't do that extrapolation. In this manner, Brooks is a very, very dangerous spin doctor because he can successfully put a neutral or "happy" face on thought which, when taken in a certain direction, can be taken to support very, very regressive opinions and viewpoints. Also, his "neutral" writing provides people who parrot what his statements and perspectives a way to cover their own right wing extremism with a veneer of neutrality. That is bad. The right wing viewpoint needs to be dragged out into the light and examined, closely and critically, wherever it occurs. Brooks makes a neutral veneer that hides even his own probably far right views effectively.
That's how Bush got any votes at all in 2000 ...
Does anyone disagree with the fact that assimiliation indeed makes it easier for people to succeed in the U.S.? Assimilation doesn't mean abandoning cultural differences entirely, but it does mean not shutting one's self off from the rest of society.
I agree. Black people especially should assimilate. Why do they shut themselves off from the rest of society? It is time for their long history of social aloofness to end. If they didn't want to be full-functioning memebers of OUR society, then why did they come to America?
It is projected that within 20 years, whites will no longer be the majority race in the U.S. Will we then have to assimilate, or will other minority groups still be expected to assimilate to white culture?
White folks excel at assimilating because they are so much better prepared by their culture to do so. That's why we need "racial privacy" ala California's prop 54, in a color-blind society we can all be white, except of course, when we're not.
"Most people don't do that extrapolation."
So much the worse for them. If they bothered to read with any care they would know he's a racist.
Of course for some who post in here unless you actually wear a hood or tie someone like me to the back of a pickup truck the better to decapitate them you're not a racist.
Saul Bellow was also a close friend of the late, unlamented (by me at any rate) Allan Bloom-- the closet queen who wrote The Closing of the American Mind before dying of AIDS.
Bellow wrote Ravelstein in tribute to Bloom. Very strange book.
Curious that Our Miss Brooks didn't coose to write about Henderson the Rain King.
On second thought, not that curious after all.
It is projected that within 20 years, whites will no longer be the majority race in the U.S. Will we then have to assimilate, or will other minority groups still be expected to assimilate to white culture?
To form an accurate extrapolation for this answer, one must not examine the transfer of population, but instead the transfer of wealth. In 20 years, will 90% of the wealth still be in white bank accounts?
David, you are exceedingly cryptic, and often exceedingly witty. I guess I'd better get to Googling your non-mainstream to downright obscure sources again. 
(BLUSH!)
White folks excel at assimilating because they are so much better prepared by their culture to do so.
Specifically, which white culture prepares its members so? As a middle class white American, my ability to assimilate has never been tested. Instead, mine is the cultural model for others' assimilation.
In 20 years, will 90% of the wealth still be in white bank accounts?
If non-whites want a piece of the pie, they must assimilate to white culture. Racial definitions change over time. Italians, Irish, and other white Americans have not always been white in America. White insistence on assimilation assures that culturally, if not strictly racially, the money will remain in the hands of "white" America, as it always has.
Shorter David Brooks:
A vote for Bustamante is a vote against the American Dream; and I've read Augie March, so I should know.
May not need the second part.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI...&
category=11153
KerryGraham04.com on eBay! It's for sale!
"As a middle class white American, my ability to assimilate has never been tested. Instead, mine is the cultural model for others' assimilation."
Oh really? Tell it Marshall Mathers!
"If non-whites want a piece of the pie, they must assimilate to white culture."
And become House Niggers like the Three C's?
No thank you.
I love that term "House Niggers", David E.! It hits the nail on the head especially if one knows that Clarence Thomas once said that he owed nothing to the civil rights movement!?
"David you are exceedingly cryptic, and often exceedingly witty." Thanks, Draeton. I agree!
I wonder how many compliments David gets along these lines every day. This one is true and not a shameless plug.
'Most people don't do that extrapolation'. So much the worse for them..."
David, you are so literary on top of being of being witty and (sometimes) cryptic. Re Allan Bloom: didn't he advocate 'modesty' in women in one of his books - the mind boggles!
And I have also been asking myself why the NYT gave Brooks a column - let's face it: the NYT has not been a liberal newspaper for a while!
The old hands among bookdealers in Chicago all know about Saul Bellow fencing pricey books stolen from Marshall Field's -- this was in his "Dangling Man" period, and very possibly even much later. The late Reed Michener often told of how Bellow, who lived across the street from Michener's Hyde Park bookstore, noticed Michener watching him in the store and came up to him and said "but I'd never steal from you, Reed!".
Apparently for Bellow, "striving for a life worthy of himself" didn't exclude theft.
I love that term "House Niggers", David E.! It hits the nail on the head especially if one knows that Clarence Thomas once said that he owed nothing to the civil rights movement!?
Clarence Thomas was the son of a sharecropper. And you would call him a "house nigger"? Are only certain blacks acceptable to you?
"...It hits the nail on the head especially if one knows that Clarence Thomas once said that he owed nothing to the civil rights movement!?"
Prove to me that Thomas actually said that, Helga, you lying gash.
Anonymous,
Here's a secret: we all hate Clarence Thomas and all think of him as a house nigger, OK. Even small kids. When you want to say Uncle Tom, you just say Clarence, and everyone knows what you mean.
Sorry.
Brooks is a racist idiot. Is he not aware that Chicago is one of the most racist cities in America, where upward mobility was prohibited by political chicanery. Has he ever heard of redlining. That was federal policy.
If he had asked any of those poor, benighted Puerto Ricans what happened when they went for a mortgage to move to another neighborhood, what do you think happened? Good cheer and smiles? Or a flat no.
Stupid asshole should do some research next time.
Brooks as far as I have read represents the old line conservatism that babbles comfortably in its slippers with a smoking jacket and a pipe by the fire and tells tales of a golden age when people knew their place and didn't try to exceed their station. Why some of his best Pullman porters were black as coal, nattily dressed and very polite. Shameful when outside agitators wind up the mulattoes and field hands, putting ideas in their heads about reading and writing. It's a reassuring image for those Reagan-Gingrich types (like Rove) who crave that era when the Republicans shrank from the good fight and sold their souls to get out of the Reconstruction business. Bootstraps and all that, hey what? Someday you may almost be as good as -a southern Italian.
Like I said, being White helps you pass for White.
White folks excel at assimilating because they are so much better prepared by their culture to do so.
Specifically, which white culture prepares its members so? As a middle class white American, my ability to assimilate has never been tested. Instead, mine is the cultural model for others' assimilation.
Being White helps make you feel secure in the conviction that "mine is the cultural model for others' assimilation". Talk about "face validity"!
Reminds me of those old Ripon Society boys who would stare at you very earnestly through their horn rims, they always wore horn rims, and say that negros were getting a bad deal but they couldn't see why Martin Luther King was being so extreamist. And you couldn't tell people that they had to provide service to negros is they didn't want to, it would be against the original intent of the founding fathers, and....
The Republican party is the party of Hayes and Helmes. Racism is their mother's milk and their favorite tool of division.
It's a flyover article.
If Brooks spent any time in chicago, he probably spent it in a suite at the Drake with a stack of Chicago Magazines.
Humboldt Park is actually a beautiful neighborhood in some ways--beautiful buildings (in bad disrepair), a fine park--and there are people who are trying their damnedest to make it better. (It also has a restaurant with the best pierogis in the city--it is never without a police car parked in front of it.)
But it's a war zone.
Even Chicagoans, if they live on the lakefront, may think that Chicago is a pretty enlighteneed place--but that's mainly because they haven't been to Humboldt Park, or the blasted heaths of Woodlawn--or travelled down Archer Avenue or gone into Bridgeport if you're not white.
If Brooks had tried to talk seriously about assimilationism against multiculturalism, he might have my respect--but this sort of smarmy cartoon of a portrait sounds like Jayson Blair phoning it in his couch--if Jayson Blair lived in the Hamptons.
Oh really? Tell it Marshall Mathers!
Hate to tell you, Dave, but that idiot (and he is an idiot) was not a middle class white. He was a minority where he grew up. The point that whites can assimilate is taken, but how does this prove that whites are "better" at assimilation, as was asserted?
"If non-whites want a piece of the pie, they must assimilate to white culture."
And become House Niggers like the Three C's?
No thank you.
That's right, Dave. You are your own person. You have not been assimilated into liberal white middle class ideology one bit. In fact, I've never met anyone who defined the cultural term "African American" more thoroughly than you. I never said it was right or good that minorities must assimilate to dominant white ideology in order to succeed, but if you doubt that it is the case, then you're not paying attention.
Being White helps make you feel secure in the conviction that "mine is the cultural model for others' assimilation". Talk about "face validity"!
Pete, do you disagree that the white middle class is the standard to which minorities are expected to assimilate in the US? I believe that being "White" has historically proven an impediment to noticing things like white colonization of minority cultures in the US. I think being white makes you feel secure in the "conviction" that middle class white culture couldn't possibly be the model for minority assimilation. Like I told David E., I didn't say it was right, just that it was.
"You have not been assimilated into liberal white middle class ideology one bit. In fact, I've never met anyone who defined the cultural term "African American" more thoroughly than you."
Really? Then why don't I have a position at the Heritage Foundation?
I guess "assimilation" only goes so far.
(And where did you get the idea that Mathers was poor? Do you think 8 Mile was a documentary? What a Maroon!)
Mathers was born into a poor, working-class family on October 17, 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri, though he spent much of his youth in Detroit, the city he would eventually put on the rap map. Originally taking on the stage name M&M (later changed to its current spelling), at age 14 he became a battle rapper, competing against other Detroit MCs in local clubs.
http://launch.yahoo.com/artist/
a...rtistID=1037847
Born Marshall Mathers on October 17, 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri, Eminem moved to a Detroit housing project at the age of 12, when he began his hip-hop journey. In the early ‘90s, Eminem battled other MCs on open-mike nights.
http://www.rollingstone.com/arti...id=6395&
cf=6395
You are smart, Dave.
And Mathers is still an idiot.
You comment on his assimiliation into black culture. Are you saying Mathers is "blacker" than you are, Dave?
Your belief in Rolling Stone press releases is touching.
Mathers is the hip-hop Bill O'Reilley when it comes to class politics.
And speaking for myself, I'm about as "African-American" as my idol, Hutch.
You asked where I "get the idea that Mathers was poor." The media's the only way I know to find out about celebrities, and the media says he was poor. You have better info on Mathers? I didn't think so.
You see, folks, David Ehrenstein likes to speak authoritatively on things he knows nothing about. This is why he attracts those loonies who curse at him and scream homophobic slurs on this space.
And what sort of looney are you, witey?
"The media's the only way I know to find out about celebrities, and the media says he was poor."
The media said there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, I seem to recall.
"You see, folks, David Ehrenstein likes to speak authoritatively on things he knows nothing about."
I know Curtis Hanson.
"You comment on his assimiliation into black culture. Are you saying Mathers is "blacker" than you are, Dave?"
By well-established pop cultural standards, yes.
He apes sub-literate speaking patterns and all REAL African-Americans are supposed to be sub-literate.
Unless of course they get Really Important Jobs like the Three C's.
Then they get to marry white women.
(Condi, as I'm sure you know, has stuck with her own race. And her own sex.)
"The media's the only way I know to find out about celebrities, and the media says he was poor."
The media said there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, I seem to recall.
Ah, yes. So obviously there is never any accurate information in any media anywhere. I suppose Curtis and Marshall grew up together? Or became busom buddies on the set, divulging childhood secrets in their pj's?
You post on Datalounge, don't you darling? I recognize the style.
I recognize the hostility to anyone who dares to post under their own name.
I recognize what a tired piece of shit you are.
What's Datalounge?
And my "hostility" has nothing to do with your name. I am directly attacking your poor use of evidence to back up anything you say. And now I'm also directing my "hostility" towards your pathetic freeper-like devolution into name-calling whenever someone challenges your ideas.
"If non-whites want a piece of the pie, they must assimilate to white culture."
I've found your hero -- Anatole Broyard.
Soon to be a major motion picture based on a novel by Phillip Roth.
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