Feature: Black Social Bandits and Social Change
The concept of the black social bandit, epitomized by O.J. Simpson, and now reintroduced to us by the controversy surrounding Barry Bonds, provides a critical yardstick which can be used to measure America's racial divide.
In the wake of the 1967 Detroit and Newark riots, president Lyndon Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders warned that racial polarization threatened to split the country into “two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Every citizen, it was said, needed to adopt “new attitudes, new understanding, and, above all, new will” if existing divisions were to be erased.
Unfortunately, the commissioners’ hope that beliefs about race would be radically altered remains illusory. A racial and socioeconomic divide continues to scar the new millennial landscape. An approximation of the chasm’s breadth and depth is provided in the U.S. Labor Department’s monthly unemployment tally. It can be seen in comparative epidemiological, infant mortality, and life expectancy data; in studies of vernacular English usage, home-computer ownership, and prime-time television viewing habits. And, then, there is the ongoing debate over whether former football great O.J. Simpson should have been acquitted of murdering his wife, Nichole, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Surveys conducted before, during, and after the 1995 trial were consistent in showing that some 70 percent of African-American respondents considered Simpson innocent. A comparable percentage of whites felt he was guilty as charged. Taken together, these data sets support the belief that many black and white Americans continue to perceive reality in vastly different ways; to champion what seem to be diametrically opposed solutions to common problems; to misunderstand one another on a regular basis. Ultimately, who or what is to blame?
Close observers of American popular culture understand that divergent group histories and experiences have been shaped by skin color symbolism. From earliest times, blackness has been the European-Americans’ favorite signifier for sin and has served as a negative reference point for acceptable ethical behavior. Transferred to the North American colonies via both religious tradition and theatrical convention, this Old World habit-of-mind has caused dark-skinned people to be overrepresented in the nation’s pantheon of evil-doers irrespective of their individual character. Over the centuries, it has fueled panics over the presence of dissembling slaves, helped shape restrictive legal codes, and encouraged many a lynching bee. The syllogistic notion that since villainy is closely related to blackness then those who are black by heredity are in some way villainous is both illogical and, seemingly, inescapable. Although seldom clearly articulated, such majoritarian beliefs inform and provide a subtext for the working out of all contemporary racial relationships.
These negative characterizations have generated a series of African-American counterproposals which view blackness in a different light. Frequently, white people’s black villains are perceived within the subculture as social bandits and lauded for the manner in which they “stand up” for the race against external foes. Like modern-day Robin Hoods, they act bad for a good reason—to improve the lives of the oppressed. By way of contrast, base behaviors and criminal acts committed by whites are seen as evidence of greed, treachery, and the ignoble desire to dominate others. Thus, one group’s heroes often become the other’s villains. Highly representational, both fictive and flesh-and-blood characters are endowed with all manner of exaggerated traits. As a result, policy-makers seeking to bridge the U.S. racial divide must do more than level the playing field by improving inner-city schools, housing, and job opportunities. As if this wasn’t sufficiently challenging, they must grapple with folk beliefs and fears, stereotypes and self-defense mechanisms. To a degree greater than many have realized, the villainization of blacks and the valorization of black social bandits are to blame for our collective inability to alter the status quo in racial relationships. Black social bandits, real and imagined, are key to understanding the racial perception gap.
So, what are the black bandits really like? When contextualized within the folk heroic tradition, such individuals may be considered the proper villain’s first cousins. But, they also display attributes such as strength, courage, and loyalty that normally are associated with fully accredited heroes. Typically, they are tough, self-reliant risk-takers who are grounded in communal mores. Bandits help law-abiding folk cope with institutional restrictions through vicarious wish-fulfillment. Some nurture insurgent political impulses by their proactive responses to injustice. Others make a terrible fuss when confronted with presumptuous white people—inspiring efforts to beat the odds simply by rejecting pity and demanding to be treated with respect. Collectively, they confute assumptions of white supremacy and encourage hope that one day the prototypical societal underdog will become top dog. Determined to disturb the status quo, the boldest are considered outlaws by ruling elites. But, to a constituency long consigned to the lower depths of the social order, these troublesome scofflaws seem an army of liberation. All but their most glaring flaws may be conveniently forgotten. Perceived as selfless agents of change, their cruelty is legitimized as vengeance. Whenever they place their positive emblematic qualities in the service of group uplift, the bandits provide a useful counterpoint to skewed, imposed, or outmoded conceptualizations of morality.
But black social bandits have been known to overplay their hand and overstay their welcome. When rage is no longer tempered with reason or antisocial behavior is misdirected, the consequences can be tragic. Vengeance against white oppressors may be joined with indiscriminate cruelty toward fellow blacks. As concern for the collective welfare is displaced by self-aggrandizement, force and fatalism become the bandit’s defining characteristics. Their characteristic hypermasculinity rages out of control, souring gender relationships and endangering the weakest members of the minority community. In worst-case scenarios, bandit misbehavior inspires fear, not admiration, among former admirers. Answerable to no one, they become a terror to all. Now a decided threat to group solidarity, they are blamed for luring impressionable youth into self-destructive behaviors. Labeled race traitors by African-American critics, they test the limits of racial brotherhood by becoming racial embarrassments.
As one can see, black social bandits are difficult to pigeonhole and not easily fathomed. Their group portrait likely would be rendered in shades of gray. Over time, numerous black bandits have conspired to confuse the unwary and to disturb the social order. If overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of alpha males, they manifest a variety of physical types and dispositions. Before the Civil War, the exploits of slave rebels such as Joseph Cinque, Madison Washington, and Nat Turner were memorialized by African-American writers—and just as vigorously condemned by defenders of the South’s “peculiar institution.” In the postbellum West, black cowboy-outlaw Crawford Goldsby, aka Cherokee Bill, assisted Jesse James and Billy the Kid in blurring the boundary separating hero from villain. As metropolitan areas expanded in the twentieth century, Dolemite, Shine, and other urban counterparts of traditional animal tricksters changed the joke and slipped the yoke of subservience with both guile and style. During the Black Power years of the late 1960s and early 1970s, rough-hewn social bandits in low-budget blaxploitation films like Black Caesar, Super Fly, and The Mack walked tall, settling scores. Sly as a foxes, slick as ice, and prone to launching liberationist initiatives, each of these bandit cadres possessed the ability to turn heads. Typically feared or shunned by whites, they maintained a varied and complex relationship with the residents of black communities. Those who resisted the temptation to victimize fellow African-Americans could expect to be lauded for their contributions to psychological resistance and group ego enhancement. But, bandits who consistently exchanged evil for good regardless of race risked alienating local support groups. At best, these ruthless predators could serve as negative reference points for lessons in principled behavior. To their harshest black critics, they seemed a lot like white people.
Throughout history, African-Americans have identified white-on-black crime as the most pressing problem facing the race. In the black worldview, the racially oppressed are seen as more sinned against than sinning. The nation’s inglorious record of enslaving, segregating, and dehumanizing people of color provides ample support for these beliefs. Nevertheless, in recent years, the growth of black-on-black crime has complicated matters. Widely disseminated studies have documented the crisis. By the early 1990s, blacks made up 12 to 13 percent of the U.S. population but accounted for about one-half of all arrests for crimes carrying the threat of bodily injury. Data on victimization compiled by the Census Bureau showed that in cases where the assailant’s race was known, African-Americans were reported to have committed 65 percent of all robberies, a third of all rapes, and 54 percent of all criminal deaths. Because four-fifths of violent crimes were perpetuated by individuals known to be of the same racial group as the victim, there was little hope of justifying such behavior as a revolutionary strike against white power. If, as was the case at mid-decade, African-American males were being killed at a rate double that of U.S. servicemen during World War II and a black teenager was nine times more likely to become a murder victim than a white peer, exaggerated claims of principled social banditry were certain to ring hollow. In his 1998 work, Two Cities, African-American novelist John Wideman encapsulated the danger posed by these underclass outlaws. Simply but vividly put: “They got guns and like to use them and don’t give a f--- who they hurt.”
Black-on-black crime may be this generation’s litmus test for social banditry. Masquerading as counter-cultural rebels, underclass perpetrators often receive points for style and are viewed as authentic social bandits by the romantic and the unmolested. But, the scope and seriousness of the inner city’s problems require that this pop culture gloss be removed. If social change is to occur—if urban ganglands are to be transformed into fully habitable, racially diverse communities—black social bandits must be interrogated. Hopefully, through a joint African-/European-American initiative, proactive bandits can be separated from garden variety criminals in the public mind.
Non-blacks seeking to participate in this fact-finding effort would do well to leave their egos at home, to listen carefully to the conversations of others, and to think before speaking. Those previously unaware that white skin-color privilege confers unearned advantage and authority—including the power to define normality and deviancy—are advised to rethink outmoded assumptions about color-coded hierarchies. Whenever possible, they also should scrutinize mass-mediated images that simultaneously celebrate and condemn young African-American males as inherently violent and sexually aggressive. By doing so, many likely will realize that being black is not the same as being bad; that black villainy is not required for the flowering of white virtue.
In like manner, black interrogators grown accustomed to celebrating the social bandits’ many symbolic victories will need to avoid stretching the bounds of credulity by offering implausible excuses for aberrant acts. They will need to avoid what has been termed “reflexive absolution”—the practice of exempting the guilty from thoroughgoing censure in the name of brotherhood. Once this hurdle has been surmounted, most likely will recognize that it is possible to distance oneself from unproductive values and lifestyles without abandoning racial kinsmen intellectually or spiritually.
Without question, accurate reporting, clear thinking, and the willingness to ask hard questions will be needed if we hope to solve problems complicated both by real-world bandits and by mythic beliefs about race that continue to circulate within middle America. If any of us are to move beyond this point in our nation’s troubled racial history, we also will need what the Kerner Commission rightly conceptualized as an unprecedented level of commitment to change. As true today as in the late 1960s, both “new attitudes and “new will” will be required by all. Only a joint initiative has a chance of succeeding where less well-coordinated efforts have failed. If all parties make an honest effort, this attempt to clarify the role and status of black social bandits has the potential to unify ancient rivals in the common cause of societal reformation.
William L. Van Deburg, M.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’73, is the Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Dept. of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. At MSU he trained with civil war historian Frederick D. Williams and popular culture scholar Russel B. Nye. Since joining UW, he has worked to develop the field of Black Popular Culture Studies within the academy. He has published five books, a volume of edited documents, two dozen article-length pieces, and more than 30 reviews and entries in reference volumes. This utilization of pulp fiction, black cast film, and popular music as historical sources in their own right has helped to legitimize the scholarly use of non-traditional materials. His books on plantation slavery, on black nationalism, and on the Black Power movement are widely cited and have been anthologized both in this country and abroad. Hoodlums, a pop culture-oriented study of African-American villains and social bandits in U.S. history and contemporary society was published in 2004 by the University of Chicago Press. African-American Nationalism, an edited collection of classic essays and classroom resource materials, was released as part of the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, a 30-volume electronic database distributed by ProQuest of Ann Arbor.