Naming Our Destiny

In some ways, the name we chose for our son was a mask since his ethnic identity would not be readily apparent. But our deliberations involved more than appearance. When we pored over Web sites and books containing more than 20,000 names and genealogies, we talked about the symbolism each potential name would carry. Old Testament names were strong candidates because they were derived from virtues like faith, dedication and hard work; by giving him my middle name, which reaches back several generations, it tied him to family tradition. Admittedly, we did give up some of our heritage by not choosing an African name. Yet bougie did not fully explain the reasons for our choice.

So how about bourgeois? Neither of us has an aristocratic background, nor are we conservative on fiscal policy. We both attended reputable universities but we’re still working on accumulating material wealth. Moreover, our views on social policy seem much too progressive to mesh with the stodginess evoked by the bourgeois adjective. So bourgeois didn’t seem applicable either.

Still pondering the answer, I was listening to National Public Radio when David Brooks was discussing his book Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (Simon and Schuster, 2000). Brooks explained that “bobos” are those among the educated elite who attempt to reconcile bourgeois ideals with bohemian ones (i.e., promote artistic or cultural expression, question the status quo and serve the disenfranchised). They might also appear to be contradictory at first. Using phrases like “compassionate conservatism,” “smart growth,” and “natural hair color” without irony, they can articulate the link between two (seemingly) opposing concepts.

Brooks’ analysis of the bobo lifestyle can be broken into three categories: environment, personal history and attitude. A bobo environment includes expensive stores that provide shoppers the opportunity to pay above-market prices for items made to look old, simple or “earthy.” High-end furniture stores like Ethan Allen or Pottery Barn fit this category with their rustic and Shaker styles. The personal history of bobos is marked by high professional achievement based not on family wealth, but on education, ambition and hard work.

The bobo attitude or world view shapes their environment and guides their personal histories. It moderates their bourgeois taste for expensive specialty markets with “organic” production or “Old World” cooking. It balances the hubris that might accompany an elite college degree with community service or understatement (“I went to a small university in New Haven”). The richer bobos become, the harder they try to find bohemian ways to express their financial success.

As I listened more closely, I thought perhaps Brooks had captured the disparate ideas I was trying to reconcile. Then a female caller asked him whether he had attempted to apply his thesis to African Americans; he confessed he hadn’t. I’ve decided to try to answer the question, believing it might clarify my perspective on our family’s values in the process.

By examining his book, I discovered that upwardly mobile African Americans and bobos share the same spirit. For example, as members from each group move up the social ladder, many legitimize their success by channeling it into social causes. My own values seem to be a composite of the interconnections between the two cultures, but it’s worth first taking a look at the rise of the black bourgeoisie.

Merging Africa and America

Africans who crossed the Atlantic in the 1700s did not bring luggage. However, memories of their old lives were stowed away in their African names. But when they arrived in the New World, those names were replaced with European ones, triggering an ongoing process of African redefinition in America.

Olaudah Equiano exhibited an early attempt at redefinition. He was a slave captured in Northern Nigeria and brought to America around 1755. His first name, which means “favored,” “having a loud voice” and “well spoken,” turned out to be prophetic. It was illegal for slaves to read, but he found a way to master English and write a narrative in 1789 that recounted his Atlantic crossing and his introduction to slavery. In one passage he wrote, “My [new] captain and master called me Gustavus Vassa. I at that time began to understand him a little, and refused to be called so … and when I refused to answer to my new name, it gained me many a cuff; so at length I submitted, and was obliged to bear the present name, by which I have been known ever since.”

Equiano forged a new identity out of his African memory and European present; the result was an assimilation formula many African Americans after him followed to varying degrees. He wrote that he “imbibed their spirit, and imitated their manners,” but he then directed his growing literary talent toward the Abolition cause.

Perhaps more difficult to reconcile were dual racial identities. A great number of biracial (or less favorably, mulatto) children were born during slavery, often the result of rape. Their lighter skin generally meant they would be exempt from grueling fieldwork, and would instead perform domestic work. It also meant they would receive a second-hand education of bourgeois values. By working in the “big house” they were exposed to the conversations and activities concerning the business of slavery. Hence, they were, white and black, privileged and enslaved.

Some biracial progeny simply accepted the privilege that came with their lighter skin and conferred its benefits upon their “darker” family members. Others created a separate society, from which sprung a set of values and traditions still within the spectrum of black culture. For others still, there was no true reconciliation. They either muted African memories and “passed” for white, or were rejected by their extended family. This last group lived in a type of cultural exile. In his novel Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Sherman, French & Co., 1912), James Weldon Johnson described such a dilemma, “Sometimes it seems to me that I have never really been a Negro, that I have been only a privileged spectator of their inner life; at other times I feel that I have been a coward, a deserter, and I am possessed by a strange longing for my mother’s people.” (The character’s mother was black; his father, white).

Questioning Education

Unshackled but not unfettered, free black men and women seeking education found incongruity between it and their self-image. On one hand, education could mean liberation of the mind and preparation for new opportunities. On the other hand, the education they received often advanced European ideals that conflicted with black realities. For example, Western Civilization courses recorded Africa as the “dark continent” or periods of glory for African nations as the “dark ages.” African American contributions to history were overlooked or downplayed. Psychological studies of blacks depicted them as sociopaths, genetically prone to commit crime.

The question posed to would-be scholars then was: “Does academic excellence in the context of a society that holds African Americans in low regard mean acceptance of anti-black ideals?” Author Carter G. Woodson believed the segregated educational system prepared black students for second-class living. In his landmark book, The Mis-Education of the Negro (Africa World Press, Inc., 1933), he wrote: “When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. …You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.”

Conversely, pioneer educators such as Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper and Booker T. Washington had a more utilitarian outlook. “Education has the irresistible power to dissolve the shackles of slavery,” Bethune said. Based on this belief, she went on to build Florida’s Bethune-Cookman College. Washington founded Tuskegee University in Alabama. But whether education for blacks was a means to an end or a way to challenge European thought, the quest for education engendered intense introspection.

As many doctors, lawyers, educators and other professionals emerged from historically black institutions, they legitimized their education by discussing how it would help their communities. Returning to their native communities to begin private practice, black professionals took pride in providing services previously inaccessible to blacks.

To be Gifted, Black and Bourgeois

As the black bourgeoisie emerged in the mid-20th century, its members started living in enclaves that grew into exclusive communities: Highland Beach, Md., Baldwin Park, Calif., or Oak Bluffs in Martha’s Vineyard. These communities also practiced their own form of discrimination by excluding blacks who did not have the proper pedigree. While membership generally guaranteed a financially rewarding professional life, it still could not protect wealthy blacks from the fallout of racial discrimination.

In his trenchant, if not caustic, book Black Bourgeoisie (Free Press, 1957), former Howard University Prof. E. Franklin Frazier analyzed the lifestyle of African Americans who had “made it” when school desegregation was occurring. He found that financial or professional success, coupled with their rejection of (and by) white society, led to destructive attempts at personal reconciliation. Instead of using social activism to balance their success, blacks purchased yachts, mansions and cars to mitigate their rejection. Instead of looking at their “blackness” as a context to celebrate the obstacles they had overcome, they saw it as the last obstacle preventing them from true success. The adoption of these “white manners” created other problems, as some were left feeling empty and filled with self-hatred.

The difficulty in finding equilibrium between bourgeois success and bohemian connections persisted into the late 1980s. When Lois Benjamin interviewed a hundred prominent African Americans for her book The Black Elite: Facing the Color Line in the Twilight of the Twentieth Century (Nelson Hall, Inc., 1991), she found that successful corporate executives worried about being labeled “Uncle Toms.”

Though a misnomer, the term stung when used against blacks accused of trading their ethnic and racial identity for acceptance within a white business environment. Still, they knew they had to stifle progressive ideals if they wanted to be considered for the same positions as whites. Despite their knotted existence, some black corporate executives claimed they could successfully combine their influence with social consciousness. Some tutored children in distressed communities. Others made significant financial or professional contributions to organizations such as the National Urban League and the NAACP.

Building upon both Frazier and Benjamin’s work, Lawrence Otis Graham has painted the most current picture of the black bourgeoisie in Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class (Harper Collins, 1999). In observations and interviews, Graham found that elitist attitudes and materialism, which Frazier noted in the 1950’s, were still prevalent among the black elite. School reputation, house size and, to a large extent, the shade of their skin, determined which blacks qualified as one of “our kind.” And yet Graham, who grew up as one of “our kind” and who also admitted getting a “de-negroidizing” nose job, fervently defended the social conscience of his colleagues. He recounted numerous examples of how exclusive organizations to which he belonged contributed to the well being of their communities.

For many of the blacks described within Graham’s book, acceptance to the invitation-only inner sanctum of blacks was not only a means to success, but success itself. Those who belonged to exclusive black social organizations like Jack and Jill (for young adults), Boulé (for professional men) or Girlfriends (professional women) defended their membership, saying it positioned them for educational and professional opportunities. While that pursuit may in fact lead to material benefits, it is clear that acceptance into such groups is also an end into itself. Graham notes that negative opinion followed those who mistakenly attended the wrong colleges, joined the wrong Greek organizations, or moved to the wrong neighborhood.

Resolving Incongruities

Reviewing centuries of African American identity and redefinition made it clear that the questions my wife and I asked ourselves about our identity had been raised long ago. Phrases in our lexicon like “Give back to the community,” “Remember where you came from” and, more recently, “Keep it real,” or pejoratives like “Uncle Tom” and “oreo” (synonymous with bougie) indicated that many other African Americans were seeking answers to those questions.

This enhanced perspective, however, now provided answers for me: First, none of the terms – bobo, bougie, or black bourgeoisie – fully described us. Our high educational and professional standards might appear bougie to those who don’t know our true motivations, but we will not change those standards because of appearances. We share the bobo attitude (financial success must blend with social conscience), but we have not yet achieved the financial success typical bobos have enjoyed. Likewise, our community, Prince George’s County in Maryland, is still trying to make itself suitable for bobos. Though we have a few interesting bookstores and restaurants, we lack Old World bakeries, Ethan Allen stores and other high-end retail.

Our lives intersect with some of the social structures upon which the black bourgeoisie draw their strength. For instance, my wife went to a prominent historically black college. Also, the church where we were married is known for its network of black professionals. We know the success of the people with whom we interact in these places inspires other young blacks, but we don’t share the elitism that genealogically separates one “kind” of successful black from another. Our friendships cross economic boundaries and are based on mutual feelings of respect, not who will help us gain entry into the inner-sanctum.

To be a successful black couple in America is to accept some bourgeois values. We maintain thriftiness in order to save money to buy a home. And we help preserve the aristocracy by working at or buying products from Fortune 500 companies instead of starting our own. So we’ll just keep on making sure each morning we recognize the couple we see in the mirror.

With these answers we could look back on our son’s name and feel at peace with our decision. We chose his first name, Spencer, because it seemed to connote dignity and individuality. We chose his second name, Madison, because his father, grandfather and great-grandfather share it. And despite the fact his name is not identifiably African, our attitudes, experiences and extended family will cause it to take on African American meaning. The clarity these answers provide for our family’s mission comes at a great time because Spencer is now taking his first steps.

 

Post script: Since the writing of this essay, we had a second son, Sterling.  We went through a similar process of value clarification to choose his name as well.
Note: This essay is posted on another site, and was published in an anthology, Mirror on America.  But since I’m the original author, I thought I’d post it here also.