This chapter summarizes African American commentary on respectability politics and lays out the details of the TJMS’s refusal to engage in it, most particularly in its resolutely pro-working-class orientation and philanthropy. It provides abundant crew and audience contributions that illustrate this refusal and orientation, with specific attention to labor—how the show brings a particularly black-identified “grown&sexy” aesthetic joi de vivre—the assertion of the superiority of responsible age over careless youth, of finesse over flamboyance—to often-denigrated, stressful workplaces and their workers, including police and military personnel. In so doing, the chapter documents the class, race, occupational, and geographic range of the TJMS audience. It lays out how the show handles celebrity politics, the range of ways in which crew and audience play with language, at times ridiculing ungrammatical audience members, and enjoy teasing people for being “country” or “old-school.” But it also positively documents working-class black boomer nostalgia, and justified annoyance with “these kids” and their ignorance of “real” soul music. Finally, it thoroughly considers TJMS’s “whiteness studies”—their complex takes on black/white differences, white racism, and anti-racist whites. It also lays out TJMS’s globally anti-racist “we are the world” vision—including Muslims—and a model of black adult political and social responsibility which may or may not be associated with Christianity.
African American Undergraduate Success in Engineering: The “Prove Them Wrong" Syndrome or Social Responsibility
