I want to start by saying, I haven’t read through this book. I believe it to be more worthwhile to establish the viewpoint of this one of Jason Riley’s books for my dialogue with this group, and to lay out and evaluate the ideological foundation of it, than it is to have processed every thought that’s within it before using it as a reference point. So I’ll give a disclaimer – there may and I’m sure there are progressions of thought or perspectives in it that I don’t agree with, and would silently refute while reading through it if I were to, or would decry if asked about them, but my reference to the book is of the overarching argument Jason Riley is making with it. In my review of the book’s substance and the author’s intellectual framework, I’ve read summaries of it, skimmed excerpts from it, and watched talks the author gave about the book.
Please Stop Helping Us presents an argument for an approach to the flourishing/development of the black community, that centers around the establishment of economic self-sufficiency, as opposed to the acquisition of institutional power in the public arena. This primary divergence in method of improving the lives and the livelihoods of the black population throughout the United States resummons a contention in viewpoints that harkens back to the turn of the 20th century, when the opposing ideological foundations for advancing the black community were being debated between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. The former’s legacy and efforts advocated for the uplifting of the black community through the implementation of internal educational and entrepreneurial initiatives, while the latter’s activity oriented toward the assertion of proper standing within civil society and national political representation. The pursuit of community-wide self-sufficiency through means of the grassroots development of intra-community enterprise led by Washington reached a point of divergence with Du Bois and those he organized with, at the presentation of Washington’s “Atlanta compromise” – a speech in which he appealed for black collaboration with white leadership for the sake of developing what could be described as the “human capital” of the black population, while ultimately submitting to statutory/functional dominion by the white population. The NAACP was founded soon after and the civic equality initiative led by Du Bois took hold of the black community’s collective narrative until the Civil Rights Act’s passing soon after his death.
I believe that Please Stop Helping Us is a continuation of Booker T. Washington’s legacy – the pursuit of the black community’s development by way of intra-community educational and entrepreneurial activity, however I believe that Washington’s championing of the supremacy of developing the “human capital” of the black community didn’t become the proper avenue to take toward the well-being and prosperity of the community that I believe everybody – internal and external to it – wants to make so at the end of the day, until after his death. The professional/educational/communal development that he’d pursued were fundamental goods for the black and white populations throughout our society, but I believe those areas of focus were not legitimate options on the table for the internal and external efforts for the community’s development, as long as the constitutional and regional laws designating a second-class citizenry for the black population were in place. This being said though “separate but equal” was thrown out, the Civil Rights Act and its legislative successors were passed, and in a paraphrasing of one of Jason Riley’s points made: the legitimacy of black societal leadership and governing authority is solidified in the presidency of Barack Obama.
My understanding of the present age is that the fundamental force undermining the black community’s flourishing is not active or systemic racial inequality (though their existences can be demonstrated, and argued, respectively), but rather the black community’s culture, socialized attitudes, and “collective intelligence”. I do follow Jason Riley’s assertion that the legislative efforts aimed at manufacturing an “equality of outcome” in as many facets of public life as can be regulated into form is self-defeating, while it is well intentioned. I think that today’s narrative within and emerging from the black community around racial injustice as the overarching social dynamic there is to overcome is born out of a 50 years stagnated intellectual project that represents the legacies of Dr. King and other champions of the black community, yet has been frozen into the community’s collective narrative and needs now to be innovated upon. During one of the conversations I had with my family around when this year’s protests started up, I pointed out that the NAACP of today is a just about functionally useless organization, emailing out grievance-inducing updates that generally have nothing to do with the majority or just about all of the black community’s everyday obstacles and concerns – and the organization’s legacy having diverged from the purposes of its contemporary activity was apparent as outside of the currently held overton window on the subject.
I think that academically styled & championed ideological initiatives, credentialing the packaging of guilt, social obligation, and easily repeatable talking points – which is what I understand “How to Be an Antiracist” and all of the public praise lauded onto the book to be – are just about useless if not detrimental ultimately in shoving the notion of “looking for racism everywhere” down everyone’s throats and further stagnating the national conversation, and formalizing the organizational maneuver of “appointing a black guy who’ll talk about black peoples’ problems, thereby affirming the organization who appointed him as sympathetic to the black community’s cause and subsequently absolved of impropriety concerning allegiance, when the ideologues ask about that organization’s ‘black people scorecard’".
As of now I believe that the internally cultivated, and externally assisted development of the “human capital” within the black community is the next hill it has to climb. I believe that Jason Riley’s writing and accessible recorded speaking engagements around the book lay out an intellectual framework for the timeliness of this initiative, as well as the economic statistic-based presentation of the progression and declines within the community, as a measurement of “well-being”. I’d say this commentary of mine on Please Stop Helping Us, is a reflection on the contextual frame that the book exists within, as opposed to a direct evaluation of its contents, and is best considered in that manner.
Additionally, while I do, and in this essay am laying out my belief that an economic/educational initiative would be best implemented within and for the black community right now, as opposed to the political/legislative one most commonly pursued right now, I believe that more impactful and effective than either of these initiatives would be a community-wide spiritual revitalization. I don’t necessarily mean toward the fulfillment of peoples’ ultimate well-being being attained (salvation and justification before God), while that is properly contextualized as the overarching objective – but I mean toward a practical, worldly progression in internal tradition. I’ve, personally, spent time now diving into the workings of American law/legislation, our financial system and dynamics of capital flowing in our society, and in a spiritual foundation with God as an individual and the practical society-wide outcomes of a cultural/authoritative adherence to God’s commands, and largely believe at this point that underlying every flourishing society throughout the scope of known history there was divine intervention involved – related and even unrelated to that society’s establishment of God’s word as fundamental.
So, those are my thoughts, on the topic of and tangential to Jason Riley’s Please Stop Helping Us.
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