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Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Kindler, gentler pathologizing: racial asymmetriesin The Cultural Matrix

Crystal M. Fleming

To cite this article: Crystal M. Fleming (2016) Kindler, gentler pathologizing: racialasymmetries in The Cultural Matrix, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39:8, 1436-1444, DOI:10.1080/01419870.2016.1153695

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1153695

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Kindler, gentler pathologizing: racial asymmetries inThe Cultural MatrixCrystal M. Fleming

Departments of Sociology and Africana Studies, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, USA

ABSTRACTI suggest that despite its conceptual and empirical ambitions, The Cultural Matrixis a book painfully out of touch with the times. Far from avoiding the racistassumptions of sociologists who portrayed African-Americans as socially andculturally deficient for most of the twentieth century, The Cultural Matrix isvulnerable to some of the same anti-black impulses that have animated socialanalysis since the establishment of the discipline. Specifically, I argue that thePatterson and Fosse engage in what I call ‘kindler, gentler pathologizing’ – away of depicting African-Americans as responsible for their own uplift, whilestill paying lip service to the structural barriers imposed by racism. Further, Iexplain the role of racial asymmetries in producing a portrait of black youththat minimizes racism. Finally, I discuss the authors’ arguments in light of the#BlackLivesMatter movement.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 18 December 2015; Accepted 9 February 2016

KEYWORDS Assimilation; white supremacy; #BlackLivesMatter; anti-blackness

To the casual observer, The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth appearsto have the standard features of decent and respectable racial analysis. Whilethe collection of essays invites controversy by investigating the role of blackculture in reproducing inequality, the authors are careful to acknowledge theexistence of racism. Orlando Patterson and Ethan Fosse – the volume’seditors – marshal a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative data inorder to argue, with what appears to be genuine emotion, that black youthdesperately need cultural reform in order to escape the intergenerationalgrip of poverty and social isolation. Readers sceptical of approaches that pri-vilege culture over structure are supposed to be reassured by the book’sembrace of policy interventions and government programmes to fightracial discrimination.

A closer look at the nearly 700 page collected volume, however, reveals amore complicated agenda. Building on Patterson’s prior critiques of African-American culture, the authors invoke an assimilationist framework to

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Crystal M. Fleming crystal.fleming@stonybrook.edu

ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES, 2016VOL. 39, NO. 8, 1436–1444http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1153695

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suggest that blacks must work much harder to adopt the prevailing values ofthe ‘mainstream’. In making this case, they also urge sociologists to takeculture seriously as a ‘semiautonomous’ factor contributing to the predica-ment of black youth in the USA today. It is worth underscoring just how pro-foundly political this assertion is. By describing assimilation as the ideal,Patterson and his collaborators implicitly suggest that blacks should restricttheir imagination and efforts to pragmatic integration (rather than collectiveaction to contest and challenge the racial status quo). Few scholars in theworld are as knowledgeable about the global history of slavery as OrlandoPatterson – which is why his retreat from Marxist analysis and strident advo-cacy for black assimilation into capitalism is especially remarkable. What doesit mean to suggest that blacks should merely aim to assimilate into a main-stream that continues to profit from the enslavement, rape and brutalizationof their ancestors?

It is an accident of history that The Cultural Matrix emerges in the midst ofthe most pervasive black uprising to take place since the civil rights move-ment. #BlackLivesMatter – an avalanche of protest and collective actionfounded by three black women – as well as protests in Ferguson anddozens of other cities across the country have highlighted the role ofyoung black people in shifting the political narrative and marshalling theiragency for change. While black youth and allies are engaging in what is argu-ably the most explicit and sustained public critique of white supremacy andstructural racism in a generation, Patterson, Fosse – and some of their col-leagues – have chosen instead to focus their critique on black culture. Thisdecision is profoundly political and morally disastrous, as it reflects whatKilson (2001) has called Patterson’s ‘accomodationist’ perspective, one thatargues that minorities should adopt the values and practices of the dominantgroup in order to integrate and attain success within the capitalist system.

Despite its conceptual and empirical ambitions, The Cultural Matrix is abook painfully out of touch with the times. Far from avoiding the racistassumptions of sociologists who portrayed African-Americans as sociallyand culturally deficient for most of the twentieth century, The CulturalMatrix is vulnerable to some of the same anti-black impulses that have ani-mated social analysis since the establishment of the discipline. Specifically, Iargue that the Patterson and Fosse engage in what I call ‘kindler, gentlerpathologizing’ – a way of depicting African-Americans as responsible fortheir own uplift, while still paying lip service to the structural barriersimposed by racism. How is this genteel denigration accomplished? Thework, as a whole, is characterized by an intensely asymmetric racial critique– one that harshly scolds African-Americans for their culture while also mini-mizing the impact of racism. Although the authors certainly acknowledgestructural racism and ‘disadvantage’ they do not explicitly name or describethe systematic socio-political dominance of socially defined whites. Indeed,

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the phrase ‘white supremacy’ is not mentioned at all in the volume, and whilethe authors gesture towards an acknowledgement of structural inequality,they nonetheless portray racism as an obstacle that can be overcome witha crafty combination of public policy and cultural uplift. The potential harmof this neo-pathologization of black youth is all the more striking in thewake of heightened attention to the tragic deaths of Sandra Bland, TamirRice, Freddie Gray, Aiyana Stanley-Jones and countless other African-Ameri-cans abused and slaughtered in police custody.

Those familiar with Patterson’s scholarship are aware that his critical stanceon black culture runs through Rituals of Blood (1998a), The Ordeal of Inte-gration (1998b) as well as various op-eds and essays that urgently call forblacks to get it together. While most observers are aware of his views onAfrican-American culture, readers may be less familiar with his writings onblacks outside of the U.S. Patterson rarely discusses race and culture in thebroader context of the diaspora, yet understanding his overall perspectiveon black agency requires attention to this work. The Children of Sisyphus, anovel that Patterson penned in 1965, chronicled the struggles of wretchedlypoor and downtrodden people living in a filthy Jamaican slum called the‘Dungle’. The pessimism and hopelessness displayed in Patterson’s descrip-tion of cycles of poverty and depredation in Jamaica contrasts sharply withthe faith he espouses in the capacity of cultural reform to uplift blacks inthe USA. This optimism about the possibility of black mobility in the USAmay be unsurprising, given Patterson’s trajectory and success as an upper-middle-class immigrant. But another clue to Patterson’s overall perspectiveon race, agency and upward mobility may be found in an unpublishedpaper he wrote entitled ‘Institutions, Colonialism and Economic Develop-ment’, a case study of Barbados’ successful economic development.1 The fol-lowing passage merits quoting at length:

Barbadians refused to accept existing relations as the natural order of things, butthey rejected any notion of a ‘revolutionary consciousness’ that called for thereplacement of the institutional and broader cultural weapons of the rulingclass with something radically different , such as the black, proletarian con-sciousness that emerged among the lumpen-proletariat of Jamaica… a majorstrand of which deliberately rejects literacy in favor of a boisterous, ‘vulgar’orality…which is great for pop music but a decided obstacle to learning,reflected in the dismal performance of Jamaica’s public schools. Instead, Barba-dians, especially after emancipation, came to realize that in an extremely asym-metric contest, the only effective strategy for the weaker party was toappropriate and use the power of the stronger party to their own ends. This,in essence, was the strategy of subaltern cultural appropriation. The strategywas facilitated by the peculiar status of the poor white or Redlegs populationof the island, which, as we have argued earlier, encouraged black Barbadiansto the view that race was not the all-determining factor explaining their con-dition; rather it was their lack of institutional and cultural knowledge and

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know-how. While fully recognizing the presence of racism, they saw that, in non-intimate affairs, the white elite judged performance by the coldblooded stan-dards of a capitalist system in which institutional competence, private property,the dictates of the market and the efficiency principle, were paramount. (N.d.: 40,emphasis added)

Patterson views Barbadians’ pragmatic appropriation of the dominant culturemuch more positively than attempts at ‘revolutionary consciousness’embraced by Jamaicans in his home society. From this perspective, Pattersonasserts that ‘the only effective strategy’ for economic uplift involved culturalappropriation rather than cultural transformation. Further, he views Barba-dians’ attitude towards racism as conducive to upward mobility – theyacknowledged its existence without viewing race as an ‘all-determiningfactor’. Patterson concludes: ‘Not by physical force then, nor by ideologicalcompensation, but by capturing, mastering, and deploying to their ownends the institutional power of the ruling class and the broader cultural frame-work within which it was embedded, would they ultimately triumph’ (N.d.: 40).

These, of course, are the very same assimilationist arguments found in TheCultural Matrix, albeit stated in much less explicit language. It is clear enoughthat Patterson, Fosse and their collaborators view African-Americans asinvolved in an ‘asymmetric contest’ – though their theorization of thedegree of that asymmetry (and oppression) remains opaque. That said, theauthors’ belief that blacks should resign themselves to their subordinatestatus and adopt the dominant culture pervades the volume. A chapter co-authored by Patterson and Jacqueline Rivers examines participants in ABC,a job-skills programme that aims to change certain cultural and behaviouralpatterns of inner-city youth to improve their chances of employment. Patter-son and Rivers note that ‘A few respondents perceived the cultural changes totheir behaviour as racially loaded, but they were resigned to the reality thatthose were the terms on which they had to negotiate the world, in particularthe world of work’ (427). One respondent, called Richard, put it this way:

If we [black people] made the rules, things would be a whole lot different, but…you know it’s white people who are making the rules…We’re not making therules and you can’t beat them either. You think you can beat them, but youcan’t. (427–428)

Like the Barbadians who attained economic success through the appropria-tion of dominant cultural and institutional knowledge, Patterson and Riversdepict ABC participants as engaged in the pursuit of procedural knowledgeand cultural orientations that will equip them to play by the rules designedand enforced by the dominant group(s). Unfortunately, however, their ownempirical data suggest that the programme was not particularly effective inaltering the cultural perspectives and behaviour of the black youth involved.

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Patterson is obviously aware that he has been accused by scholars on theleft of denigrating black culture. This is why, in part, he ridicules the notionthat ‘any reference to cultural practices [is] tantamount to blaming thevictim’ (4). In The Cultural Matrix, Patterson and Fosse attempt to avoid thischarge through a variety of subtle rhetorical strategies. They claim to focustheir critique on a specific segment of the black community – what Pattersonhas called a ‘problem minority’. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times2, Pat-terson writes that this population ‘varies between about 12.1 per cent (in SanDiego, for example) and 28 per cent (in Phoenix)’ comprised of ‘disconnectedyouth between ages 16 and 24…With few skills and a contempt for low-wage jobs, they subsist through the underground economy of illicit tradingand crime.’

A decade ago, in another New York Times op-ed entitled ‘A Poverty of theMind’, Patterson sang a very different tune. Rather than advancing ameasuredcritique of a very specific ‘segment’ of the black community, he blithely por-trayed the entire group as prone to dysfunction and violence:

Why are young black men doing so poorly in school that they lack basic literacyand math skills?… studies [have not] explained why, if someone cannot get ajob, he turns to crime and drug abuse. One does not imply the other. Jobless-ness is rampant in Latin America and India, but the mass of the populationsdoes not turn to crime. And why do so many young unemployed black menhave children – several of them – which they have no resources or intentionto support? And why, finally, do they murder each other at nine times therate of white youths?

With the kindler, gentler pathologizing of The Cultural Matrix, Patterson andFosse acknowledge the multiplicity of black sub-cultures found in urbanneighbourhoods and ostensibly restrict their critique to the ‘street configur-ation of the disconnected’. They acknowledge (albeit in surprised tones)that the vast majority of blacks living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods arelaw-abiding, hardworking, ‘socially conservative’ people. On this point, Patter-son notes:

There are, indeed, differing cultural configurations in the inner cities of America,and one of these is a major source of the problems black youth face. But theproblem arises not from the plurality of configurations… but rather from thedestructive reign of violence of one of them – the sociocultural configurationof a minority that has captured the streets of the inner cities and spread whathas been called a ‘culture of terror’ on their neighborhoods. (45–46)

Yet, even here, subtle asymmetries with enormous consequences persist. Ofthe book’s ten references to ‘terror’, only two were descriptions of state vio-lence against African-Americans. Most of the others were characterizationsof black violence. This imbalance illustrates the general pattern of thevolume’s analyses: strongly worded condemnations of a ‘problem minority’

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and a pervasive minimization of the racial terror that suffocates the lifechances of black people at every level of the social order.

In a chapter entitled ‘The Social and Cultural Matrix of Black Youth’, Patter-son refers to sociologist Alford Young’s (2006) finding that low-income blackyouth tend to blame themselves for their failures and deny the impact ofracism. Patterson notes that Young is ‘clearly bothered and uncomfortablewith his own findings’ (86). He continues: ‘Sociologists love subjects whotell truth to mainstream power; they grow uncomfortable when these subjectstell mainstream truths to sociologists’ (88). Yet, at no time does Patterson – orhis collaborators, for that matter – express the slightest understanding of whyanyone with genuine concern for the well-being of black youth should bealarmed by their individualism and self-blame. If black youth do not recognizethe deleterious impact of racism and discrimination on their life chances, thenthey are unlikely to contest the political and social context that normalizesanti-black racism and stigmatization. To put it differently: the recognitionthat the cards are stacked against them is a key insight that could helpyoung African-Americans enact agency and challenge the conditions oftheir oppression. Indeed, this crucial aspect of consciousness raising is oneof the most important contributions of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

In his well-known book Ain’t No Makin’ It, Jay Macleod (the Harvard soci-ology student-turned Anglican priest), made a clear and compelling caseagainst excessive individualism and self-blame among black and white low-income youth. Macleod showed that individualism among oppressed youthin a northeastern town he called Clarendon Heights blinded them to the struc-tural forces that made it extraordinarily for them difficult to ascend the socio-economic ladder even when they played by the rules. The key insight ofMacleod’s book, originally published in the 1980s, was that rule-playing andcultural assimilation are not enough to propel the masses of disadvantagedyouth over the forces of systematic inequality that severely limited their edu-cational and occupational opportunities. Despite Patterson and Fosse’s con-tention that most white sociologists avoided racial analysis in the post-civilrights era out of fear of offending black sensibilities, Macleod (a white man)made his argument without avoiding the role of culture:

The culture of Clarendon Heights – with its violence, racism, and other self-destructive features (as well as its resilience, vitality, and informal networks ofmutual support) – is largely a response to class exploitation in a highly stratifiedsociety. (2009, 255)

Yet, Macleod understood – even as an undergraduate! – that structural factors(including present-day racism) ‘lead to levelled aspirations, and levelledaspirations in turn affect job prospects. Contrary to popular belief, structureis still the source of inequality.’ And, unlike Patterson and Fosse, he acknowl-edged the considerable downside of self-blame among the structurally

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disadvantaged – namely, that people who feel entirely responsible for theirpredicament are unlikely to enjoin collective action for the political andsocial transformations that might improve (and extend) their lives. Ratherthan passively adopting the dominant culture, Macleod argues that oppressedyouth should learn to challenge it.

Fosse’s own chapter on the cultures and values of ‘disconnected youth’also reproduces a number of the problems discussed earlier. Using quantitat-ive survey data, he compares young people’s attitudes and values across fivedimensions: psychological health, sociocultural networks, work and school,risk and expectations, and American government and policy. Fosse showsthat “disconnected black youth are culturally divergent in terms of theirvalues and attitudes” (160). But what are the theoretical and political conse-quences of framing black youth as ‘disconnected’ rather than ‘oppressed’?Moreover, Fosse reports that ‘disconnected black youth are less acceptingof many of the values and beliefs of prototypical ‘mainstream’ society’,implicitly normalizing the dominant group and depicting it as a moral com-munity deserving of emulation. We are told that unlike the presumablyangelic mainstream, disconnected black youth ‘view helping others as unim-portant and [report] a lower tendency to engage in altruistic behaviors such asletting others in line, donating blood, or lending a valuable item to anotherperson’ (140). But what, exactly, is this ‘mainstream’? Is Fosse talking aboutwhite America? If so, where is the empirical data showing that white Ameri-cans have shown themselves to be especially ‘altruistic’ to low-incomeblack youth?

With regard to social networks, Fosse suggests that disconnected blackyouth have less diverse networks than connected black youth, but revealsnothing about the diversity of white youth’s social networks. Has Fosse con-sidered the implications of the fact that the vast majority of white peopleactively choose to self-segregate and protect their racial privilege ratherthan integrate into an increasingly diverse society? A recent study conductedby the Public Religion Research Institute and the Washington Post shows thatthree-quarters of white people have friendship networks that are 100 per centwhite.3 It is also unclear how the diversity of black youth’s social networks canbe analysed as an ‘attitude’ or ‘value’: if black youth are excluded from workand quality education and relegated to living in predominately black neigh-bourhoods due to white racism and white self-segregation, how could theychoose more ‘diverse’ social networks? How could they elect to interactwith whites who avoid and exclude them? Finally, on the willingness ofblack youth to engage in social action, Fosse appears to have guessed (under-standably) badly. He writes that ‘cultural divergence may lead to a political orsocial movement to change the existing power structure, as has been advo-cated by the sociologist William Julius Wilson’ but concludes that such mobil-ization would be ‘unlikely given the current political motivations and

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engagement of black youth today’ (161). Despite these dim expectations forblack youth, the #BlackLivesMatter movement continues to be propelled bythe energy, leadership and innovation of young African-Americans.

In sum, The Cultural Matrix fails to do the kind of intellectual work thatordinary young black people are now doing on a daily basis, from thestreets to social media to classrooms and campus protests – connectingtheir individual and collective experiences to systematic white supremacyand intersecting forms of oppression. By advocating assimilation, the books’editors (and to a lesser extent, the individual authors of the collected chapters)normalize both capitalism and the white mainstream. Rather than probing thecultural crisis of white racism and separatism, The Cultural Matrix argues thatblacks need to do more to adopt the views and behaviours needed to attain‘success’ within the dominant culture. Yet, in failing to clearly name anddescribe the racial context of twenty-first-century America – the persistenceof white supremacy and virulent anti-blackness – Patterson and Fosseobscure the racial matrix within which black youth are fighting for theirlives. Moreover, despite their presumably benevolent intentions, Pattersonand Fosse construct an analysis that is especially vulnerable to racist interpret-ations. Sociologist Vilna Bashi-Treitler (2015) makes a similar point in her cri-tique immigration researchers who advocate assimilation, leaving theiranalyses wide open for racist appropriation. The danger of this vulnerabilitycannot be overstated in a political context where one of the leading candi-dates for the U.S. presidency openly embraces racist policies with the enthu-siastic support of whites consumed with a sense of ‘aggrieved entitlement’(Kimmel 2013). The late Derrick Bell (2005) issued this warning when discuss-ing Patterson’s criticisms of black culture – a warning that has evidently beenignored:

when we attack those responsible for and profiting from racism’s continued viru-lence, those we accuse are not without either the power or the will to respond.But when we aim our assaults at a people whose dire predicament is withoutprecedent in a history that includes 200 years of slavery, then we are underan ethical obligation to consider our positions in the light of the likely use ofour words by those who despise and are quite willing to see dead a segmentof our people who… look like us, however different they may act. (326)

It is said that an Ethiopian cannot change the colour of his skin, nor a leopardchange their spots. I do not expect Orlando Patterson to suddenly embracethe need to name and challenge white supremacy after spending the lastseveral decades criticizing black culture. Nor do I expect him to repudiatehis open call for African-Americans to valorize dominant values and capitulateto capitalism. But I would hope that a younger generation of race scholars –including those featured in The Cultural Matrix – will develop the courage andimagination to challenge the on-going violence of state sanctioned anti-black

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racism just as stridently as they condemn the self-defeating elements of blackyouth culture.

Notes

1. ‘Institutions, Colonialism and Economic Development: The Acemoglu-Johnson-Robinson (AJR) Thesis in Light of the Caribbean Experience’ http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/patterson/files/institutions_colonialism_and_economic_development.pdf?m=1413570082.

2. ‘The Real Problem with America’s Inner Cities’, 9 May 2015, The New York Times,URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/opinion/sunday/the-real-problem-with-americas-inner-cities.html?_r=0.

3. ‘Three quarters of whites don’t have any non-white friends’, 24 August 2014, TheWashington Post, URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/25/three-quarters-of-whites-dont-have-any-non-white-friends/.

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3 (1): 81–106.MacLeod, Jay. 2009. Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income

Neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Kimmel, Michael S. 2013. Angry white men: American masculinity at the end of an era.

New York: Nation Books.Patterson, Orlando. 1965. The Children of Sisyphus: A Novel. Boston, MA: Houghton

Mifflin.Patterson, Orlando. 1998a. Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American

Centuries. Washington, DC: Civitas/CounterPoint.Patterson, Orlando. 1998b. The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in

America’s “Racial” Crisis. Washington, DC: Civitas/Counterpoint.Vilna Bashi, T. 2015. “Social Agency and White Supremacy in Immigration Studies.”

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1 (1): 153–165.Young, Alford A. 2006. The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility,

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