By now, you have come across Gene Marks’s article “If I were a poor black smart kid”, that was published in Forbes Magazine 12 December 2011. Let begin by saying that in terms of the actual strategies recommended by Marks to poor black smart kids, there is little, if any, disagreement between me and him. Marks is right to point out that thanks to technology, there is much that a person can do nowadays to advance herself or himself that was simply not an option a mere two decades ago. Likewise, he is right to draw attention to forging personal connections.
So what bothers me about Marks’s article? My answer comes in the form of a question: “What, pray tell, did the article have to with being poor and black as opposed to merely being poor?” And the answer to that question is very simple: Absolutely nothing. The advice that Marks proffered holds equally for any smart kid who is poor: white, black, Asian, Latino, Arabic, and so on.
Now, it is precisely because Marks’s advice so obviously applies to all poor children who are smart, and equally so, that his singling out poor black smart kids draws enormous attention to itself. There is not a single recommendation that does not apply to a poor Asian or Latino or white or Arab, and so on, provided that they are smart.
But I imagine that Forbes would never have published an article entitled “If I were a Poor Kid”. And that consideration brings me to my sense of outrage with Forbes Magazine. It looks for all the world as if what we have is none other than a form of misguided liberalism. Forbes by way of Marks or, conversely, Marks by way of Forbes, has used blacks in order to promote the image that they have marvelous racial sensibilities with respect to blacks. Thus, what we have is none other than a rather self-serving article. After all, it is not as if poor black folks all over the United States are likely to read Marks article and thus profit from his having published it. Indeed, poor people generally, whatever their ethnicity, are not likely to read the article. However, blacks are singled out. And my point is that they are singled out in a way that can only be construed as self-serving. And perhaps there is no better evidence of this than that Marks proffered ideas are merely based upon his untried self-reflections—and not an ounce of personal experience. His being white is utterly irrelevant; his complete lack of experience is not. Imagine a male offering advice to women regarding how to deal with rape, where that advice is based solely upon his reflections regarding the matter. We would all take him to be a fool—not because he is a male, but because he has no experience in that regard. A male who has worked with female victims of rape could obviously have much to say to female rape victims. Likewise, a white who has worked with poor black kids or poor kids in general could have much to say about how they should proceed in order to succeed.
To see just how pugnacious Marks’s essay is, I ask the following question: Should I boast and beat my chest when I help Asians or Latinos or Arabs, or whites, and so on, who are very talented but also extremely poor and thus are entirely lacking in a sense of direction in terms of academic success? To me the answer to this question should rightly be a resounding “No!” This is because in so behaving I am merely doing my job.
A wonderful essay to poor students generally about how to succeed would have been a marvelous moral gift. Alas, that kind of essay would have gotten in the way of Marks being able to pat himself on the back for being ever so mindful of the plight of poor blacks, and thus a non-racist white. And that I suggest is really what Marks’s essay was all about. Otherwise, to paraphrase one of Tina Turner’s well-known songs: “What ‘s race got to do, got to do with it?”.
© 2011 Laurence Thomas
