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> "It looks to me like this guy has taken his suburban upper class experience (he called his living situation "Huxtable-esque") and assumed that all black peopl

by whack 10y ago

> "It looks to me like this guy has taken his suburban upper class experience (he called his living situation "Huxtable-esque") and assumed that all black people who are living above the poverty line are somehow doing just as well as he is." That's exactly the point. He hasn't. He's pointedly trying to avoid generalizations, and he's frustrated by the fact that the media only trafficks in anecdotes and stories that fit the prevailing generalization. And these generalizations aren't even reflective of the vast majority of black experiences. We can quibble over numbers all day, but even with the numbers you cited, the majority of Blacks aren't living in poverty. The majority of Blacks don't have "zero or negative net worth." The Author's life and experience is just as reflective of the "Black experience", as that of someone who grows up poor in the inner-city. Imagine if a Swedish newspaper decides one day that they want their readers to better understand "how Americans think". And so they start following, interviewing and publishing stories featuring a number of Americans. They approach you one day, you agree to go along, and then after a few months, you're told that your story is getting dropped because you don't resemble the "archetypical American". You do some digging around and find that every single one of their stories feature White Trump voters living in Middle-America, struggling financially. And the only reason you weren't featured was because you were a Democrat who didn't fit the above labels. How would that make you feel? Yes, the middle-America Trump voter is indeed an American, but that doesn't make Democrats any less American either. Ultimately, we need our media and news sources to tell the story of all individuals and perspectives. Because the only way we can better understand the world, and each other, is if we are exposed to a wide variety of perspectives and experiences. There is a very real danger of people only being exposed to a single story, and starting to stereotype everyone they meet to fit into the mold of that one single story. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a...

uncletaco 10y ago
Was the author really pointedly trying to avoid generalizations? His last paragraph suggests, at least to me, that he's more interested in building a new narrative of the "archetypal black entrepreneur". > We have a responsibility to command an image of the ‘archetypal Black entrepreneur’ which represents the majority of us, and not just the minority. By realigning the story from stereotypes and struggles to the significant amount of positive movement in the Black entrepreneurial space — and acknowledging the fact that many of us come from backgrounds set up for success, we can better serve our collective advancement. Let’s move away from the emphasis on Black suffering, and make the celebration of Black excellence — the new normal. In my opinion he's looking to replace one generalization with another rather than do what you're suggesting and push people towards telling stories of all individuals and perspectives. He's also doing this by zeroing in on a single statistic, emphasizing it's inverse, and then using that to build a case that more black people are living in his situation than are living in poverty. Unfortunately I have a hard bias against anyone who pulls numbers out of context in order to build a narrative. It also troubles me that taking a deeper dive into his source's findings on the lived experience of many African Americans shows that the single statistic he made up (based on the inverse of the source's findings) is fairly misleading. In my opinion he did the same thing that Milo Yiannopoulos did on Bill Maher. Milo said trans people are disproportionately involved in more sex crimes than the rest of the population. He said this while arguing in favor of the North Carolina bathroom law. Yes, what he said was true, but he failed to mention that trans people are the victims in the vast majority of those cases. While we can "quibble over the numbers", I think its dishonest to take data and twist it to push a narrative -- no matter the point being made. That is in large part what frustrates me with this article -- I find it paints a dishonest picture of black wealth in order to push a generalization of black entrepreneurship favorable to the author's own lived experience. While I'm largely in agreement with what you -- and Adichi -- have to say with regards to the dangers of the single narrative, I am not at all convinced the author's post was written in that spirit, considering he feels we have a "responsibility to command an image of the 'archetypal Black entrepreneur'".

by whack 10y ago

uncletaco 10y ago

Was the author really pointedly trying to avoid generalizations? His last paragraph suggests, at least to me, that he's more interested in building a new narrative of the "archetypal black entrepreneur". > We have a responsibility to command an image of the ‘archetypal Black entrepreneur’ which represents the majority of us, and not just the minority. By realigning the story from stereotypes and struggles to the significant amount of positive movement in the Black entrepreneurial space — and acknowledging the fact that many of us come from backgrounds set up for success, we can better serve our collective advancement. Let’s move away from the emphasis on Black suffering, and make the celebration of Black excellence — the new normal. In my opinion he's looking to replace one generalization with another rather than do what you're suggesting and push people towards telling stories of all individuals and perspectives. He's also doing this by zeroing in on a single statistic, emphasizing it's inverse, and then using that to build a case that more black people are living in his situation than are living in poverty. Unfortunately I have a hard bias against anyone who pulls numbers out of context in order to build a narrative. It also troubles me that taking a deeper dive into his source's findings on the lived experience of many African Americans shows that the single statistic he made up (based on the inverse of the source's findings) is fairly misleading. In my opinion he did the same thing that Milo Yiannopoulos did on Bill Maher. Milo said trans people are disproportionately involved in more sex crimes than the rest of the population. He said this while arguing in favor of the North Carolina bathroom law. Yes, what he said was true, but he failed to mention that trans people are the victims in the vast majority of those cases. While we can "quibble over the numbers", I think its dishonest to take data and twist it to push a narrative -- no matter the point being made. That is in large part what frustrates me with this article -- I find it paints a dishonest picture of black wealth in order to push a generalization of black entrepreneurship favorable to the author's own lived experience. While I'm largely in agreement with what you -- and Adichi -- have to say with regards to the dangers of the single narrative, I am not at all convinced the author's post was written in that spirit, considering he feels we have a "responsibility to command an image of the 'archetypal Black entrepreneur'".