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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3120 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 11, 2024

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I can't think of how to phrase this, but: does anyone know of a good source or place where I can read about the black American lower class? In terms of their daily lives, aspirations for the future, hobbies, etc. I don't know where to find anything that's not a hagiography from the left, or Sailer-style noticing. It seems like, apart from social media, it is the least-represented, least-analyzed group online.

I know that for such topics as the fentanyl crisis, there was a big genre of think-pieces in which journalists went among the white lower class and asked them, "Why do you do what you do? How do you think this happened?" and so on. I'm not aware of anything similar where black people, who are not middle-class aspirants or celebrities etc., are asked, "What's going on? Why do you like this and not that? How do you feel about Policy X? What do you think AI is gonna do to the economy, or to your own job prospects?" and so on.

I get some exposure to this by talking to my next door neighbor, but he, specifically, always steers the conversation towards trying to buy my spare car; and I'm not ready to sell it yet, so I just go inside lol.

"Why do you do what you do? How do you think this happened?"

Are you familiar with Tommy G on Youtube? He does videos like that with all kinds of people, almost always lower class. Here he's with the Somali gangs in Minneapolis.

Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America by John McWhorter was pretty controversial when it was released twenty years ago. McWhorter is a Columbia linguist and is himself black. Glenn Loury's Anatomy of Racial Inequality also bears mentioning.

Neither of these are brother-on-the-street accounts, but I'd say are closer to such than what you'd find by Thomas Sowell.

I'd argue Baldwin's The Fire Next Time is now dated, but it's worth reading if only because Baldwin was such a compelling writer and that book is widely revered/reviled. In a similar (i.e. dated) vein, although it's been 30 years since I read it, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was Maya Angelou's best (in my view only really good) work. It's really worth reading, though I don't understand the hype around anything else she ever wrote.

I like Coleman Hughes but it's sometimes like reading the perspective of a white guy who grew up black, and in that sense I suspect removed from a more typical experience.

I grew up in the deep south where black folks were a large part of my youth, and then lived in Africa three years where I was the only white dude for 200km. Still half my life has been in Japan, where I'm again a minority but there aren't a lot of black people, so I feel pretty out of touch in how the racial climate particularly in the US has changed. It certainly seems worse than it used to be but who knows from this distance.

Probably you'd want to look at the writing of black conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, particularly autobiographies. Anything by someone left would be filled with blaming white people, and anything by someone white would probably be of limited trustworthiness since it'd be more speculation than true experience.

Sowell’s autobiography also has a cool story about him beating up a mugger on the subway.

Although this is not exactly what you're looking for as it's neither text nor particularly rigorous, I can warmly recommend Peter Santenello. He does vlog-style videos where he goes into communities and tries to get into conversations with people. While he does obviously have a certain viewpoint that shines through, it's very far from the sort of highly-online politics you're alluding to and he mostly lets the people he is interviewing do the talking. Relevant to your specific request, he has done videos on black neighbourhoods in LA (e.g. 1, 2), New York, Chicago as well as on the Black Belt or Gary.

If you like his content, I also highly recommend watching his videos on the NYC Hasidic Jews and the Amish, those are probably his two best series.

This is a really good question. I would also be interested in reading things like this, where people actually talked to black people and describe their own views on things, instead of imputing to them whatever's politically convenient.

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