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Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 645
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 28, 2006 - 04:05 pm: | 
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Blacks Need to Overcome … Their ‘Leaders’
By Cal Thomas
Prior to the "Million More" event in Washington a year ago, led by the former calypso singer and current Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan -- a group of participants gathered at Howard University. It looked like a meeting of the kook fringe as speaker after speaker engaged in the wildest of conspiracy theories about why blacks who are poor continue to be mired in misery.
According to some, Hurricane Katrina was a plot by the Bush Administration to eliminate their "black problem." Maybe Bush didn't create the hurricane, but he was responsible for blowing up the levees so that blacks in New Orleans would drown, thus easing welfare payments and reducing the number of black Democrat voters.
While the neo-Nazis marched in Toledo, sparking a "riot" among black gangs who, in the words of some locals were simply looking for an excuse to loot and destroy, their polar opposites were in Washington looting black dignity and destroying what remains of their "leaders' " credibility.
This latest exercise in "brotherhood" again shifted the focus from the real problems in black America, which have less to do with what white people think of blacks than how they regard themselves. It again overlooked those spokespeople who actually have something worth considering. Where among the Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton-Louis Farrakhan speakers were members of the growing black middle and upper classes? Where were the married black men with children they had fathered within wedlock and to whom they are responsible, loving father figures?
Is there anyone in doubt as to why poor blacks continue to suffer? Is it really the fault of racism and the stain of slavery? If so, how to explain those who have stopped singing about overcoming and have simply overcome? They have done so by staying in school and studying, getting and staying married, working hard and making right decisions.
Why did the "Million More" people think another march on Washington will even begin to solve their problems? Neither the problems of black Americans, nor the solutions to them, are in Washington. Washington doesn't teach people to commit crime; Washington doesn't encourage the indolent (except through too many programs that have subsidized indolence); Washington cannot begin to do for anyone what they can and should do for themselves.
It is a cliché, but worth repeating, that there are more black men in prison than in college. This is in spite of affirmative action programs at many universities. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, at midyear 2004 there were 4,919 black male prison and jail inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States. That compares to 1,717 Hispanic make inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 717 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.
Yes, there is racial bias in the criminal justice system and while not all fatherless blacks are in prison, a large majority of those black males in prison either have no fathers who they know, or the father was not part of their formative years. This is the source of the problem as well as the starting place for the solution to many of the problems confronting poor blacks..
The Jackson-Sharpton-Farrakhan "trinity" may give lip-service to the importance of an in-tact black family, but their preaching revolves around personal grievances, Bush-bashing, government programs and sometimes ant-Semitism.
What would help are more positive, father-centric cultural models, starting with the "dissing" of Black Entertainment Television and its rap-ho culture. It is as stereotypical and injurious as the stereotypes promoted by the "Amos 'n Andy" TV series of the 1950s.
One black leader who wasn't invited, but should have been, was Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, author of "Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America." Writing for WorldNetDaily.com., Reverend Peters, who is black, says, "All Americans must tell blacks the truth. It was blacks' moral poverty and not their material poverty that cost them dearly in New Orleans. Farrakhan, Jackson and other race hustlers are to be repudiated. They only perpetuate the problem by stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption."
Don't look for Peterson to be among the speakers at the next event of this type, but what he says deserves consideration.
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2660
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 28, 2006 - 06:32 pm: |
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Blacks need to overcome such as Cal Thomas and any black people who would lick up under him.
The trash that is washing up on this board is enough to make me wretch. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 484
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 28, 2006 - 06:41 pm: |
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Chris, at least you know where I stand when I post bullshit like this. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 5016
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 28, 2006 - 07:48 pm: |
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As usual, chrishayden throws a tantrum and needs to be burped to keep from spitting up because the truth makes his sick. Wonder does it ever occur to this nauseating oaf that this is 2006 instead of 1986, and that the old formulas don't dissolve problems. wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 488
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 28, 2006 - 08:52 pm: |
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Funny. I don't see where Thomas offered any new formulas. Unless he calls telling people what they should and shouldn't do (stop watching BET, stay in school, get married ect) a solution. And if so, how is he any different than Farrakhan, Jackson and the rest? And what's so new about his message?
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 5017
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 28, 2006 - 11:36 pm: |
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As opposed to the old formula of looking for leaders to lead us into the promise land, he is advocating a new approach that calls for blacks to divest themselves of these self serving mopes who by doing nothing more than agitating and misleading have outgrown their usefulness. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 493
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 12:38 am: |
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Well, he needs to offer up more tangible solutions than that. If he's going to call for blacks to "making right decisions" he must devise a plan that will provide them with the necessary tools to do so. For example, it's no secret that inner-city schools have crumbled. 15 years ago, I visited a Philadelphia public high school where water had been flooding the bathroom floors for years. I had to leap from the bathroom's entrance to a dry spot on the floor, almost 2 yards. And then I had to jump again in order to get to the stall. The person that I was visiting told me that it had been that way for years. Now here we are 15 years later, and things are still the same (as Oprah revealed 3 months ago) and in some cases even worse. In addition, out of the 51% of black students that DO graduate from high school, most are unprepared for college due to the inferior education they received in inner-city schools. With this being the case, how can people like Mr. Thomas get all self righteous especially when blacks in his position have been silent on this issue for years? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 5019
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 12:59 am: |
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Actually, I don't think he offered any solutions. He focused on the problems and observed how little has resulted from relying on our leaders to improve things. As Yvette has implied, people have to become active at the local level and bring pressure to bear in their own little community. Also, practicing birth control can certainly make things easier for young women black women and they don't need a leader to tell them to do this. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 649
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 12:47 pm: |
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"As Yvette has implied, people have to become active at the local level and bring pressure to bear in their own little community. Also, practicing birth control can certainly make things easier for young women black women and they don't need a leader to tell them to do this."
Thank you for being the beacon in the dark here. You are so right. This fantasy of a black messiah that black people dream of is not going to happen. There is no need for one. The diversity of issues and concerns among black people varies. Real changes can only come from community, group and personal efforts. There is no calvary that’s going to come blowing a bugle, riding over the hill, to save black people who are in crisis. IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! The majority of problems facing black people can only be addressed and settled by black people. The culture of victimization, apathy and entitlement is just as destructive as the drug and crime culture.
Jesses Jackson, Louis Farrakhan or AL Sharpton cannot stop young black men from gang banging, black parents for not actively holding their community schools feet to the fire for the poor education of their children , young black men from impregnating two, three, four and more different black women and the women from being impregnated by thugs and knuckleheads nor can they deter the unwillingness to work or continually seek more education. The only person that can bring such changes about are the individuals themselves. Your words ring the truth.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 5021
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 01:30 pm: |
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You and I always seem to be on the same page, ntfs, and that's because we represent a certain school of thought. A lot of what I express here is what has been written and said by others and since their words ring true with me, I just condense the gist of their contentions and put my own spin on them. When it comes to discerning the "truth", I go with my gut feeling. Obviously there are others who think with their hearts when it comes to black dilemmas and they'd rather compound the agony rather than apply tough love. |
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