Customer Reviews

My American Life: From Rage to Entitlement

5 star:		(4)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For those of us who know and are friends/colleagues of Price Cobbs, and speaking for myself as a writer, being objective will not be easy...like Mom saying how terrific her son is. But I'll try objectivity.

This book really ought to be entitled, "READ THIS BOOK !!" - bold, underscored and 2 exclamation points. As a long-time friend of Price and his family, there were no differences - well, perhaps a few, but to the point that differences are and should be treasured. So here I am in 2006 discovering a whole other Price Cobbs I thought I knew. And for the reader who has no personal knowledge of the author, it will be an adventure, an eye opener. In a word - riveting. His writing has evolved from the "Black Rage" days - it's crystal clear, concise and slam dunk. He writes eloquently yet simply and straight forward. His life is our lives if you think about it.

So. READ THIS BOOK. Whether you are a young white liberal or old white ultra-conservative, an upwardly mobile black, Hispanic, Asian or whomever, or a stay-at-home parent - you will relate - and most likely be deeply touched by passages that ring true, that perhaps are on a par with your own experiences in this life.
There is, or should be, great kinship in the human experience, and if more of us would adopt that mantra, the world as it is today would turn into a more peaceful place.

Once, back in the 1960s when I headed public relations and media for Esalen Institute, Price asked me how I had managed to be this open, tolerant, understanding and relatively non-prejudiced person. I answered, "well, number one, I've always admired and been fascinated by other cultures since at least first grade; but number two, I do have prejudices. I hate cauliflower and bigots."

But even coming out of the civil rights years, the Esalen racial confrontation experiences, this new book brings a whole new perspective about others'(and Price's in particular) pain and rage in dealing with the hurtful actions of others toward their fellow man. Like many readers, I would think, I get tired of all the "me me me" books out there today - growth, get rich, and other do-it books, and so I tend to read less and less. However, "My American Life" was one I could not put down. It has all the makings of a literary prize winner, and many of my friends and I feel strongly that it has the makings of a darned good feature length movie.
So, strongly recommended; great reading.

Dr. Cobbs, you know America thanks you for this expose on the feelings of people who have been raging quietly for centuries. Sir, "entitlement" for them would mean "humanity" for us. Katrina may have been that wake-up call telling us that the rage is going to still be going on in the hearts of some Americans because their entitlement is still far and shortcoming.

This is a close and intimate read about a subject that should shame America but it doesn't. Cobbs hand is trying to strike a balance between the way it is and the way it ought to be. Very encouraging.
--Margaret Opine

Dr. Price Cobbs has made important contributions to American society in a number of ways: as a physician to his patients, as the articulator of major sociological insights in Black Rage, Cracking the Corporate Code: The Revealing Success Stories of 32 African-American Executives, as consultant / teacher / coach for leaders and managers in major corporate organizations, and as a model of integrity, achievement, energy and fun for family and friends fortunate enough to know him.

In this book he shares his personal journey in an engaging and readable fashion, chronicling his life and the forces that helped shape him over the last 80 years in America. Readers of all races can find this to be a book of great interest, and perhaps they will go on to discover further Dr. Cobbs' insights into how we grew up, how that affected our self image and our views of others, and how we can move beyond our individual and societal programming to become healthier, better, more effective human beings.

As a black and white couple married for over 45 years, we are fortunate to experience the very excellently articulated story, "My American Life," by Dr. Cobbs. He has provided us with a better understanding of our rage and the importance of entitlement in our lives. It is truly a book to be read by all Americans.

Byron and Ann Barker

As a white American, I found this book to be invaluable in educating me about the African-American experience in this country during the 20th century.

I was completely unaware of the dynamics that shaped current racial issues in our country, and I found that the way Price Cobbs described his early childhood experiences and beliefs, as well as those of his parents, to be incredibly insightful.

His training as a psychiatrist has certainly enabled him to describe the subtleties and nuances that I have often found lacking in other autobiographies. I also found that his self-disclosure was extremely helpful in bringing this to life.

I wish that more Americans of every racial and ethnic background would read this as it provides such meaningful insight into our increasingly multi-ethnic society. Well done, Dr. Cobbs!

A single correction in response to the representation of the book on this site: the excerpt from page 56 alludes to the absence of German and Italian internment camps during WW II. This is the enduring public impression, but not actual fact. People of European origin were interned. See, for example the historic record of Crystal City, Texas for a better understanding of that time period.

Note: my response is to the excerpt, and not to the rest of the book, which I have not read, thus the above 1 star rating is posted only so I can gain release from this Review section...

Did Cobbs forget Freud's Admonition about the value of self-Analysis?

While it is true that Mr. Cobbs is the same guy full of rage in the 60s, who helped change the way America looked at racism, it is also true from these pages, that all along we had misunderstood the true nature of Mr.Cobbs' rage, and of his real life quest. Apparently, it was not the same cause as that of most oppressed people. A careful review of this book will reveal that Mr. Cobbs' goal all along was the same as that of the racist whites who had been oppressing him and us: the goal of entitlement.

Most of us never saw, nor have we been pursuing, entitlement as the ultimate object of our freedom and independence - and even if we had been, few of us would have been so brazen to openly admit it. For no matter how artfully it is re-defined, entitlement has been, and remains the primary tool of those who continue to oppress the weak, the disenfranchised, the marginal, and those who have no one to speak for them -- in our increasingly mean-spirited and mismanaged "democratic society."

Undoubtedly, Mr. Cobbs would call that wallowing in one's own victimhood, and in some, but not all cases, he would be correct. However, he seems to have erred on the wrong side of this debate and thereby missed an important fact: there is more than one way to graduate from victimhood.

One way to throw off the yolk of victimhood is that which he has chosen, and which is the object of this book. It is about how some blacks, who have always felt they had a right to the same bankrupt values and entitlements and way of life that racists whites claim exclusively for themselves, have freely chosen "the ways of entitlement" as their life project. Cobbs seems completely unembarrassed by this pursuit to gain the right to unfair advantages, illicitly acquired gains, perks, prerogatives, special privileges and access, covenants, the right to exclude others, etc. -- all of which were used against him as a young man.

All along it seems that Mr. Cobbs has been nothing but a closet elitist, wanting nothing more than to become a member of the "its WHO you know rather than WHAT you know club." Mr. Cobbs' fight for freedom has been little more than a disguised fight to become a mean-spirited honorary white, and nothing more. Apparently, like Jessie Lee Peterson, he has achieved this goal and is justifiable proud of it. And wants to pass it own as his most important legacy.

Touché to Dr. Cobbs!

But Dr. Cobbs is not the only one who has given up his victimhood. There are others of us who have done so as well, perhaps in much less creative ways. But most of us did not turn in our victimhood card for the right only to use the same old Billy club once used to keep us in our "place." We did not graduate from being a victim only to assume the posture of the oppressor. Few of us ever saw adopting the values of "entitled whites (racists or not) as a virtue." If a sense of entitlement was wrong when used against Cobbs as a young man, it is surely just as wrong when Cobbs and other members of his so called "Talented Tenth," seek to use it against others.

However, from the book one can see that Cobbs acquired this pedigree honestly, and not from his father, who was a hard working Doctor not in search of such entitlements. His father was an exemplary example of a servant to the people he administered medicine to. No, Cobbs admits that he acquired this unholy penchant from his mother. Who through her own pain and rage "over-learned" the petty ways of the white racists who oppressed her. She learned how to transform self-hatred into a sense of entitlement, and through social osmosis past it unerringly on to her son who was anointed "the Bishop," at birth.

Having read Black Rage when it first appeared in print, I was anxious to see what one of the authors had to say a generation later. And although I am by now used to "so called" successful blacks reciting their bios as if it is some kind of Holy Grail for the rest of us, I was greatly disappointed it what Cobbs had to say.

He after all is a Psychiatrist. But apparently is one similar to the bus driver who never took a bus trip. Rather incongruously, he alluded to the "Stockholm syndrome" without being aware that it aptly applies to his own life of seven decades of sublimated rage and pain. Cobbs apparently lacks the vision and awareness to see that his dreams have finally matured from the incubator of his rage. But instead of taking on a fully adult form, they have been taken over and commandeered by those who caused him so much pain as a young man, and while he would readily see this kind of transformation in others, he has failed to see that his own mind has been slowly but inexorably colonized. This book is nothing if not a roadmap into Cobbs own subconscious--his desperate attempt to escape the pain, fear and rage acquired from seven decades of racism. What we see behind the screen is less rage, but still much pain, and many unfulfilled yearnings.

Like Uncle C. Thomas and Aunt C. Rice, unconsciously and ever-so-slowly, Dr. Cobbs has redefined the parameters of his humanity and his worldview so that they are now in perfect alignment with the racist values that oppressed him as a young man. He refuses to see this transformation for what it is - a slow generational process of cooptation. Never once did he try to impose his terms and values on the world, because slowly, they were wrung out of him through his pain and rage and - through a social lobotomy, in situ - were replaced with the oppressor's own values. With this mental substitution, the reality across the Bay Bridge, which is everyday equal to the devastation in New Orleans, or anything we, or Cobbs saw in the deep segregated South, can no longer be seen. Cobbs is wilfully and morally blind to it. In Cobbs' mind Oakland is not there.

From the safety of the high (and dry) ground on Nobb Hill in San Francisco, which in social distance, is as far away from Oakland as it is from New Orleans, Dr. Cobbs has learned what side of his bread is buttered. He knows how to give great undue weight to the mostly cosmetic changes made since the Civil Rights Movement and since he wrote Black Rage. Yes, yes, we all know about Rosa Parks and MLK, but that an buck fifty will not get you a cup of coffee at Fishersman's Wharf. He obviously has not been across the Oakland Bay Bridge lately to talk with its ex-Mayor Jerry Brown.

Cobbs' success is sad and pyrrhic: Like Bush in Iraq, he has had his head in the sand and has declared a private and mostly unconscious victory for himself and his mom, while Rome burns both inside and all around him. He too will be "shocked and awed" when the real war in American society, which is all but inevitable, begins. He has used a now well-worn tactic for black success: When you can't defeat the bankrupt values that oppress you, adopt them as your own and call it a lifetime victory. Patty Hearst would reconize that for what it is: The Stockholm syndrome.

Cobbs' goal all along was not to defeat racist oppression, but to get in bed with it. It is like Jews wanting nothing more than to try on an SS uniform. Cobbs has gone from rage in the 60s to being comfortable today in the uniform of the oppressor, and calling his version of entitlement "giving up victimhood." "If only all those victims would voluntarily give up their victimhood, how nice could America really become?" Can an authentic Black man actually be saying such as this?

Now "the Bishop" has the rarified vantage point he always sought: consorting in the boardrooms high above the "wretched of the Earth," with an adopted set of bankrupt values that he can pretend are his own. From that perch, he can lord over "the new wretched of the Earth" in the same way that the racists whites lorded over him in the 60s. I guess,in a grotesque sort of way that is a kind of success. His mother would be proud. Two stars.