The Ne Plus Ultra of a B-Plus Culture.

This essay over on The Root about Stuff Educated Black People Like inadvertently gets at all the things that irk me about bourgie aspiration (and The Root itself, for that matter):

Notice the qualifier, “Educated.” It’s so very necessary. You see, we so often have to remind others (and ourselves) that we’re radically different from the other black people on the block or on TV (which could be the same place, depending on who you ask). We have degrees. We go to the spa. And we our like our chicken baked, not fried. …

The site resonates with me and most of—okay, all of my friends. To the point where now, Lynnette and I decide which gatherings to attend based on whether they’ll be “EBP events” or not. (Howard alumni happy hour? Of course. A club where sagging jeans and waist-long weaves are the fashion of choice? Not so much.) Yes, the site is funny, and yes, it teases us for some of our most pretentious habits (i.e. No. 20, “Correcting Others“), but really, we like the site because it lets us know it’s okay to be…well… bourgie.

There. I said it. The dreaded B-word. Some wear it with a badge of honor, using it to describe themselves as educated, well-read, worldly and so-cool-that-they-don’t-even-have-to-try. A number of entities have popped up to cater specifically to the UBBP (Unapologetically Bourgie Black Person—I made that acronym up myself.) Jam Donaldson (the brain behind HotGhettoMess.com) is now selling a line of T-shirts encouraging proper speech and grammar, with phrases like “Conversate is not a word” and “No Questions ‘Axed.'” And a few years ago, while I was still studying at Howard, students began strutting the yard with T-shirts, hats and tote bags emblazoned with the phrase “Uppity Negro.” (Never mind that the founder told the school newspaper that she didn’t want her concept to be confused with the black bourgeoisie; it kinda ended up appealing to that demographic anyway.) …

I fall somewhere in the middle. While I enjoy the posts on Stuff Black People Like, I’m also sometimes hit with a pang of uneasiness while reading, particularly when I see comments like “I guess I’m not bourgie enough to understand,” or posts like No. 35, “Knowing What’s Best for UEBP” (uneducated black people). Call it Black Educated Guilt, if you will. You feel like you’re moving up in the world, but with every step you take, you can’t help but feel like you’re leaving someone behind.

Another EBP friend, Tara, says she too understands both sides. But she figures, with so many negative stereotypes associated with being black, you almost have to go out of your way to prove yourself to the world in general. And if that means touting your advanced degrees or making sure people know you watch CNN, then so be it.

Golly! Baked chicken and watching CNN? Oh, the dizzying heights!

What grates about these bourgie treatises is that they always seem to be zealous celebrations of normativity. And as the kicker illustrates, there’s often an awkward elevation of certain consumerist choices to the level of bold and necessary political statement — even equating those choices with personal integrity. It’s like some goofy world full of class markers where no affinity is organic (sans the food in the fridge!); what really matters is what those affinities Say About You.

This article also posits that denying bourgieness is some kind of false humility. But why can’t it in fact be a denunciation of the classist and elitist impulses that inform it? There’s nothing fundamentally ‘positive’ or ‘uplifting’ (to use two favorite bourgie adjectives) about the weird embarrassment masquerading as concern that greets black people who give their children ‘hood names.’ Calling bullshit on those specious ‘uplift’ arguments makes rooms for more nuanced conversations that aren’t quite as easy to have (and spares us all a lot of masturbatory sanctimony). I hope, anyway.