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I've frequently heard that a big problem, and part of why so many young black kids look up to rappers and athletes as role models, is that there just aren't many good role models for them to look up to. And that was a point I'd previously conceded. But when you think about it, that doesn't actually make sense. It's true that black people should have more equitable representation in positions of power, but there are some that exist in positions of power and they don't seem to be regarded as role models within the black community - at least not to the extent that the issue actually seems to be a lack of black role models to choose from. Like there should be more black CEOs and scientists, but there are enough out there to serve as role models, but they simply don't seem to be regarded in that way. There has obviously been a black president and there are many black members of congress. It's not like there is such a paucity of them that the only possible person a young black kid could look up to is someone like Future. It's true that only 6% of CEOs in the US are black, but I'd bet good money that the average black person can't name a single one (and for the record neither can I), and the same is true for the six black CEOs that head fortune 500 companies. If there is such a demand for positive black role models, why are none of those six executives widely regarded as such?
I guess my question is to those who say that the only role models available to young black kids are entertainers, what do you mean? Why do the above examples not suffice to the point that there are just no role models for young black kids to look up to?
I. I think there's a germ of a correct idea here: black men choose strategies that work, in part because they see them working. Becoming a high-status gangsta character in entertainment is possible, makes use of natural talents, and will be genuinely respected; becoming a physicist or a senator is both harder work, and not really high-status. The former issue may be remedied with China-style social engineering – antisocial hip hop artists publicly humiliated, emasculated, reduced to second-class citizens like some underclass rabble, sexy rebellious «trugs» becoming dirty «ruffians» in the Victorian sense. Alas, something tells me this route will not be taken.
II. But also: the whole role model theory is just more positive psychology claptrap, hopefully soon to go into the same trash bin as power posing, Pygmalion effect and so on. It's both a liberal fiction and another conservative-friendly epicycle to support the race-blind (yet helpless to save the speaker from racism accusations) idea that it's all in the culture.
It's actually turning the situation on its head. The story goes kinda like this: people of group X somehow or another happen to get overrepresented in the notable/elite group A, therefore X-people in general learn that this is an avenue of success for them, start doing A-coded things, succeed, so the overrepresentation is maintained. Now we convince Y-people that they, too, have champions among A, so they choose that path and hopefully X and Y are eventually equalized (per capita) in A positions.
This is painfully silly if you think about it for a bit. The logic of a high school girl «choosing» a political platform because she's seen Hillary in a pantsuit (or, well, a sociologist picking a thesis about racial role models; I guess the similarity here is not a coincidence). In practice the reason the ranks of As are stuffed by Xers is not any role model effect at all. It may be, indeed, a certain systemic advantage (not all progressive beliefs are absurd on their face). But more fundamentally the advantage may be just that Xers inherently have a high Aness score, so the right tail of general Aness distribution is X-heavy. We know how tail effects work in a great number of cases; it's a very parsimonious and powerful scheme whose premises – polycausality of trait values, central limit theorem and normality – are basically unavoidable for human traits that matter.
Naturally, role model theory proponents tend to assume that tail effects are something furry-related; or if they're savvy, they figure it's alt-right pseudoscience like phrenology. The very idea that groups may differ on «Aness quotient» is alien to them; indeed the idea that people have predispositions and aren't blank slates, or that different skills and occupations are not nominatively distinct but demanding different capabilities which can be ranked quantitatively – all that's pretty archaic, cringe and boring to them.
Come on. It's a just-so story. Imagine a white boy saying the opposite: «if there are no precedents, I could still be the first! This idea will be my edge!» Or a scrawny Asian kid: «I will prove that we can do it no worse than Gaijins!» (a popular and, far as I can tell, organic trope in sports mangas; the Japanese are easily inspired by hulking American athletes in sports where East Asians are poorly represented and cannot seriously compete). It's perfectly conceivable that the paucity of known «relatable» figures from your demographic will be an invigorating stimulus, rather than discouragement. Naturally we could speculate about median reactions; but only outliers make it to the role model level anyway.
III. The more sinister aspect is that (I suspect) this theory is peddled by simulacra producers who sell people role models under the guise of entertainment. One could say they're in the racial Dasein engineering business, or hope their business to actually be that; they are crafting narratives about ways demographic identities can relate to the world. These are the folks who dutifully inserted cringey black nerds in glasses into my 90s television – characters who neither made sense on their own nor appealed to anyone, white or black. They were trying to summon those nerds into reality. They are also behind the denied (even here) but incredibly obvious overrepresentation of interracial couples in fiction (see @Lewyn here and what he replies to).
IV. And a more charitable, but also more hopeless, aspect of this I can think of is that the role model theory is true – but exactly for performers of roles, for people whose career is near-entirely about being famous, or at least looked at and admired. @Heebiejeebies tells us of «a little black girl who wants to be a pop singer». Many such cases. Does it matter if she imitates Katy Perry or Beyonce? Either way she will make the same choice of life goals and values, it'll only affect her path within the chosen socioeconomic niche. Trying to add Marie Curie or, uh, Marie Maynard Daly (thanks Google, my go-to source for black intellectuals) into that list is very disingenuous. A woman going the Marie Curie route will not become famous-like-Marie-Curie, not even close; it's a thankless job for conscientious introverts, the only hope here is exactly to be made into another role model, on account of your demographic's rarity in the occupation and the fact that influential people buy the role model theory. It's something of a reputational Ponzi scheme. And it has dual added harms of deceiving people with public performer personalities into joining the field, which they will a) turn into more of their attention-seeking circus, and b) discredit their rare brethren who are in fact outliers and care for the job as such.
The hopeless part is that many of those high-status prosocial occupations that progressives are trying to fabricate and «amplify» diverse role models for are dominated by white men precisely because they are not about public performing. These people go there to realize a dream, to gain power, to give back to the community. They have well-formed ideals, authentic inner desires or capabilities in search of an application – which is a… more than adequate replacement for «relatable role models». Even though there are plenty, it's not they who invite more of the same, it's the nature of the field, and the nature of those who feel affinity for it.
Reminds of the conspiracy theory that succesful Black male entertainers are forced to take portray women, in order to humilitate them. A notable of this hypothesis is Chappele.
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