Why a Black Agenda is Wrong (Part 3)

3/17/2010

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Analysts and social commentators (God bless their hearts) with the best interests, the American interest, in mind, have always done their very best to keep the national conversation on racial disparities focused and centered on the best decisions that blacks can make to lift themselves from poverty to prosperity. 
 
In terms of educational, economic and social success, there have always been at least two schools of thought within the black American community. The first of which: 
 
What can we do for ourselves and what are we waiting for? 
 
This perspective, I believe, is beautifully illustrated by the words of Frederick Douglass given in a speech in Boston in 1865: 
 
“[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us…I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!…And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!…[Y]our interference is doing him positive injury.” 
 
Douglass’ sentiment here cares not to be judged on the basis of his race but by his character, his intelligence, interests, physical attributes and abilities, skill levels and his motivation to succeed. 
 
Thankfully, American history is mired in examples of enormous black achievement amid the most racially pernicious time periods. History, that is often—purposefully I think—dismissed, omitted and outright lied about. 
 
Politics: 
 
As early as the 1850’s blacks had a win, win attitude towards the interests of public service and took full advantage of what was an inherent embrace from a welcoming Republican Party. 
 
1867- John F. Cook, a black Washingtonian, is named Chair of the Republican Party. 
 
1870- Of the 23 blacks elected to the United States Congress, 13 were former slaves and all were Republican. Please allow me: 1865, you are a slave, 1870, you are a sitting U.S Congressmen: http://www1.law.nyu.edu/davisp/neglectedvoices/index2.html 
 
Education Public and Armed Service: 
 
In the area of educational excellence, there exists—arguably—no greater American educational legacy than that of Dunbar High School and Thomas Sowell a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University has chronicled that story: “From 1870 to 1955, most of Dunbar High School, (Washington D.C.’s first public school for blacks) graduates went off to college, earning degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Williams, Wesleyan and others. As early as 1899, Dunbar students had higher scores on citywide tests, than students at any of the District’s white schools. Dunbar’s attendance records were generally better than those of white schools and its rate of tardiness was lower. Latin was taught throughout the period from 1870 to 1955 and in the early decades, Greek was taught as well. Large classes were the norm, 40 students per teacher. It was more than 40 years before Dunbar had a lunchroom, which was then so small that many children had to eat lunch on the street. Blackboards were old and cracked. It was 1950 before the school had a public address system. Most of the parents of Dunbar students worked in unskilled and semiskilled occupations. White-collar and professional parents totaled 17 percent. http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html 
 
“Yet the dogma marches on that a middle-class background is necessary for academic success,” Sowell opines. 
 
These and many other “black success stories” aren’t isolated incidents of academic and political accomplishment, that led to upper-class living standards but to the contrary, these occurrences were the norm and more importantly the culturally expected standard for our grandparents and great grandparents. 
 
The second school of thought did not take root until the onset and coupling of the “social engineering of the 1960’s.” and the eroding of personal responsibility within the black community. The message that blacks should “not work, don’t save and not get married,” was baked in and permeated black neighborhoods and soon enough, the aforementioned successes of blacks began to become over shadowed by what were alarming and distressing statistical rates within the black community. 
 
The second school of thought is more an “article of faith” than anything else: 
 
What can the government, “the man,” “whitie,” or the “system,” do for me and why is it taking so damn long? 
 
All too often intellectuals and second-hand intellectuals, for that matter, make the case that the existential threat to black achievement and the overwhelming reason for black underachievement is the “system.” As I stated in “part one:” “because of America’s racist past the system is forever rigged, most blacks are poor, there is a racist at the heart of all whites, and that because of these things, regardless of class or opportunity, no black American should be held to mainstream, (white) standards of morality or ‘academic achievement.’” 
 
This “I am forever a victim” way of thinking and its cultural acceptance has doomed us all. 
 
Nonetheless, numbers don’t lie: 
 
Abortion 
 
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. According to the U.S. Centers for Dieses Control, blacks make up 12% of the population (36 million), but 35% of the abortions in America. The CDC reports that since 1973 there have been approximately more than 13 million aborted black fetuses in America. Blackgenocide.org 
 
Black on Black Crime Rates 
 
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 94 percent of all blacks killed nationally between 1976 and 1999 were killed by other blacks. 
 
On October 17th 2007 Chicago tribune columnist Clarence Paige reported that “Today’s young black males kill more young black males in a year than the Ku Klux Klan killed in its entire history. Paige chronicles that between 1882 and 1968, historians have documented more than 4,700 lynching of African Americans, mostly in the South. In 2005, the latest full year of FBI statistics concludes, “almost 8,000 black Americans were murdered, mostly by other black Americans.” 
 
Black Dropout Rates 
 
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics shows that black students drop out of high school 11 percentage points fewer than they did in 1980, but still maintain a national average of 8.4 percent, 3 percentage points higher than their white counterparts. 
 
Pregnant Unwed and Out of Control 
 
The National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 2007 nearly 72 percent of the births to black women were out of wedlock. Mothers were unmarried in about 51 percent of Hispanic births and 28 percent of non-Hispanic white births. 
 
A 70 percent illegitimacy rate among blacks (90 percent in some inner cities) easily makes the point that there is a serious lack of accountability and responsibility. And the notion of blacks killing each other, whether by gun or by abortion doctor appointed visit, at a higher rate than the Ku Klux Klan could have ever dreamed of accomplishing is beyond disgraceful. And to know these facts, as many “civil rights leaders” and intellectuals and blacks in general do or to pretend that it is not truth (as ugly as it is) “or that “systemic” forces are more responsible than blacks themselves is knowingly to lie to oneself.” 
 
From the moment of emancipation our forefathers and mothers accomplished and secured for themselves the very best education, the highest positions in politics, armed services and the private sector, through hard work and an unflagging spirit of determination. 
 
But their successes or shortfalls for that matter were not contingent upon some “black agenda.” 
 
“Black America,” can we please stop wasting everyone’s time and end the loud debates and arguments based in denial and perpetual falseness? 
 
Let us simply have an agenda, wherein we remove ourselves from the “table,” get up and go to work.
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Why a Black Agenda is Wrong (Part 2)

3/10/2010

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The African American experience is one of great tragedy and immense triumph. But, for more than half a century, far too many journalists, priests, preachers, television and radio personalities, public school teachers, columnists and many more, have focused more on the tragedy and have all too often ignored the triumph. 
 
The Origins of the “Black Agenda” 
 
“Losing the Race: Self-sabotage in Black America” author, Dr, John McWhoter writes, “when the process of bringing blacks to equality with whites began, the concept of blacks as a race of victims was logical and appropriate, for the simple reason that it corresponded with reality.” Contextually put, in fact, this was a time wherein many blacks were poor, undereducated, and underemployed and had to live with and often times accept brutal racism and segregation from most public services, in many parts of America almost exclusively because of the shade of their skin. 
 
The harsh realities of that turbulent time period, reluctant societal transformations, all coupled with a legislatively mandated and culturally susceptible moral authority shift, created a uniquely human dichotomy during and after the civil rights era. As Dr. Shelby Steele, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford University has written: 
 
“Whites in America (during the 60’s and 70’s) were fearful of being considered racists in one hand and in the other hand, blacks were fearful of being considered inferior.” 
 
These dueling de facto and de jure conflicts generated outgrowths that have helped shaped the political, economic and social paradigm of our generation. 
 
Here are the two most visible catalysts. 
 
We Whites Are Guilty, Equals the Welfare State 
 
As public tensions over the civil rights movement began to dissipate and more blacks began to take full advantage of job and educational opportunities, while saving their money, raising their families and owning more and more homes and businesses, there was also a growing body of blacks accepting more and more government assistance. 
 
Landon B. Johnson and the Great Society established Aid to Families with Dependent Children for “women unwilling to get jobs”, Medicaid, for doctors bills that “weighed too heavily”, Rent Supplement Programs for those “having trouble paying the landlord”, and the first permanent Food Stamps Programs for “people unwilling to buy their own groceries.” Eventually though, as “WWI ended Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom” and WWII brought FDR’s “New Deal” to a close, “the Vietnam War crushed the loftiest ambitions of the Great Society” but not before it successfully turned Aid to Families with Dependent Children recipients from 3 million in 1960 to 8.4 million in 1970; when Uncle Sam in effect, became the ‘babies’ daddy.’ 
 
These and other innumerable statistics are a direct affront to the many who marched, died, bled, and sacrificed for blacks to have the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. 
 
But the do-gooders who suffer from “White Guilt,” (which is also the title of Dr. Steels 2006 publication), and must “make things right” through the “power of government,” would soon receive some help from an emerging industry of “poverty pimps.” 
 
Whitie Owes Me, Equals the Industry of the Victimhood Vendor 
 
Decades after the ink had dried on the pieces of much needed civil rights acts; legislation which helped produce a culture where even the most subtle instances of racial discrimination ended in class action law suits, we still don’t have to go far to find a “civil rights activist” fighting tirelessly for the “little man.” 
 
For years the good Rev. Jackson and Sharpton, Julian Bond, Maxine Waters and the ‘crew’ have all cashed in greatly from political usury and are all CEO’s of the Liberal Exploitation Political Action Group.” 
 
Their mission: “To keep 90 percent of blacks voting Democratic, thereby rolling up huge wins for the liberal exploitation agenda.” What’s more, “if you vote for ‘us’ we will supply you with more cookies, cake and ice cream than you can handle.” 
 
Simply put, many blacks fell for the lines pushed by theses race hustlers who constantly reminded America that “the white man owes us and we won’t stop reminding him of that until his debt is paid.” 
 
The sad irony and the political paradox behind the unholy alliance between the race baiters and the Democratic Party—in which I can’t wait to chronicle in future posts—is that; why after more than four decades of voting 90 percent Democratic, do we still need a…well, “Black Agenda?"
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Why a Black Agenda is Wrong (Part 1)

3/3/2010

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Envision for a moment that Channel 5 was a multibillion dollar Media and Entertainment Corporation named “White Entertainment Television” (W.E.T.) – and that it ran advertisements championing the message of “White Star Power.”

 Or, picture a Congressional White Caucus in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate whose political agenda centered solely on the advancement of “white America.”

 Imagine “Historically White Colleges and Universities,” or the “National Association for the Advancement of White People” (both organizations receiving federal grants).

 Or more pointedly, think about the political and cultural fallout that would ensue if prominent academic, religious and political leaders, business executives and entertainment moguls, etc. met at George Washington University to discuss the “White Agenda” and when the President was going to take said “agenda” more seriously?

 Now of course these scenarios are all hypothetical but what if they were all-of-a-sudden the reality of today, in 2010? There would certainly be social conflicts and disorder everywhere.

 Meanwhile – in totally unrelated news – Tavis Smiley’s “Black Agenda Summit” was held at Chicago State University recently. The conference featured a panel of distinguished guests such as Minister Louis Farrakhan, Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson, Jesse Jackson and Princeton University professor Cornel West, to name a few.

 Although the controversial event was overshadowed by coverage of the healthcare reform debate, Smiley said he was still “motivated to host this panel because of the reluctance of Black leaders to hold President Obama accountable for problems that specifically or disproportionately affect Blacks.”

 Really?

 The reason why blacks continue to statistically produce unemployment numbers that are twice as high – and academic success rates that are almost twice as low – as our white counterparts is because for more than fifty years blacks in America have sold out and bought into the notion that because of America’s racist past the system is forever rigged. There are meritless perceptions amongst the black community that “most blacks are poor,” “there is a racist at the heart of all whites,” and that because of these things, regardless of class or opportunity, “no black American should be held to mainstream, (white) standards of morality or academic achievement.”

 Farrakhan, West, Dyson, Jesse Jackson and Tavis Smiley are just a few of the members in an unnamable league of so-called “black leaders” that are not willing to hold any meaningful dialogue on what the real threats to achievement and excellence in the black community actually are.

 And even with the best intentions in mind, and the most media coverage possible, the motivation needed to “uplift” and “advance” “Black America” has, and always will, begin with blacks in America – not self-serving politicians and emotive policies.

 But unfortunately, America is constantly reminded by today’s “black leaders” (who are ironically a disproportionately influential and affluent contingent) that blacks cannot possibly be expected to succeed in the face of such obvious systemic inadequacies.

 Excuse me, but I beg to differ!

 There are numerous factors to take into account when considering the general and specific shortfalls in the “black community.” Among them are the following few:
  1. Since 1940, rates of divorce and non-marriage have soared among black adults, and, as a result, the percentage of black children born to unmarried mothers has risen from 17 percent to 70 percent.
  2. Father absence has risen greatly in the last four decades. Between 1960 and 2006, the number of children living in single-mother families went from 8 percent to 23.3 percent – and 34 percent of children currently live absent their biological father.
  3. Father absence clearly contributes to family poverty. In 2003, 39.3 percent of single-mother families lived in poverty, but only 8.8 percent of father-present families lived in poverty.
  4. The Pew Research Center has concluded that 7.32 million American adults were in prison, on parole or on probation in 2007, a tripling over the last 25 years. That makes, on average, 1 in every 31 American adults in prison, on parole or on probation. For Blacks, the numbers are a depressing 1 in 11.
  5. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, blacks make up 12% of the population (36 million), but 35% of the abortions in America. (All statistics coming from www.fatherhood.org)
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see the elephant in the room – there is a clear lack of a real dialogue on the choices that blacks have made in regards to self improvement and empowerment in the last several decades.

 And until questions are asked, relevant to the real ailments in the “black community,” no President or panel will be able to lift the plight of an afflicted minority.
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An analysis of Daniel Flynn’s “A Conservative History of the American Left”

1/4/2010

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The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster. A nation cannot cross a desert of organized forgetting.
- Milan Kundera, “The Book of Laughter & Forgetting” (1977) 

 The pernicious history of the American left has many starts and restarts. But the legacy of the American Left took a Giant leap, when Robert Owen gave his "A Declaration of Mental Independence," speech in the public hall of New Harmony, Indiana, on July 4, 1826. The idea of “mental independence” gave birth to the never ending movement of dreams and dreamers who all hoped to ultimately deliver “Heaven on earth.” But in fact Robert Owens’ sermon was a declaration of war on the three Pillars of Western civilization: private property, religion and traditional marriage. Robert Owen brought to America the ideas of mere gratification that had already failed in Europe. But Owen in an attempt to separate himself from pass failures-like so many on the left chose to do, continued in his efforts to “introduce an entirely new state of society; to change it from the ignorant, selfish system, to an enlightened social system which shall gradually unite all interest into one and remove all cause for contest between individuals.” It has been almost two hundred years and this “new state of society” still remains to be seen. It is cynical yes, but more pointedly it is terribly ironic that the same Pilgrims who fled communism in Europe were the forebearers of a communist Plymouth Colony setting a precedent for ensuing communes in the early American Left, one failing right after another. Capitalism and individual initiative proved first why there could never be an American Left. “Of the twenty-nine Fouriest communities that dotted the American landscape in the mid-nineteenth century, twenty-seven never made it past their fifth year. The North American Phalanx made it past twelve. Why?” Unlike its sister commune of “dreamers and philosophers” Brook Farm, the North American Phalanx “attracted men and women accustomed to hard work.” Because the North American Phalanx turned away 70 percent of ‘unproductive’ applicants in three years, utilized the various surrounding water ways and “followed strict accounting rules” it was able to “pay $4,000 in dividends in its first four years.” But ultimately because “a skillful teacher, who received at the North American Phalanx nine cents an hour, on going into the outside world was paid five dollars for two hours labor” it was hard for even one of the most successful social communes to compete with a vastly more competitive American economy. It is a conserved American tradition to do what best promotes personal freedom through individual progress. But those on the American left have always been determined to usher in a “new society” in which “each will be for all and all for each.” The American Left can never be because in order for this “all for each” society to work, a price must be paid wherein some things must be taken from those according to their ability and given to others according to their needs. Always attempting to make the old new again, the American left has no tradition or a record of proven success. With the 1914 establishment of the Federal Reserve and an American Left influenced President Wilson, hard working Americans found themselves living under the economic oppression of a top marginal rate at a wartime high of 77 percent. This top rate, which ultimately raised American debt, was the first time that the ideas that the American Left held about “equality in economics” actually made it to fruition. It was also the first time that modern America felt the pain and pressure of a redistributive income tax. However, President Warren G. Harding’s Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon cut the top marginal rate of 77 percent in 1918 to 25 percent in 1929, “which spurred the prosperity of the "Roaring Twenties”,” notes Dr. Burt Folsom. “Combined with truly prudential Congressional spending, the national debt actually decreased for several years.” What’s more, the traditional practice of not punishing prosperity but rewarding hard work would prove successful yet again. Suffering from historical amnesia, President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” (or the “New deal II) would be one of the latest attempts of those on the Left to use an “impersonal Government” to provide personal Responsibilities. Without personal responsibility coming from each person, could there really be an American Left? The Great Society established Aid to Families with Department Children for “women unwilling to get jobs”, Medicaid for doctors bills that “weighed too heavily”, Rent Supplement Program for those “having trouble paying the landlord”, and the first permanent food stamps programs for “people unwilling to buy their own groceries. Eventually though as “WWI ended Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom, and WWII brought FDR’s “New Deal to a close” “the Vietnam War crushed the loftiest ambitions of the Great Society” but not before it successfully turned Aid to Families with Department Children recipients from 3 million in 1960 to 8.4 million in 1970. Alas, “by the end of Johnson’s presidency, blacks, students, and the Vietnamese-the groups along with the poor, upon whom he had showered money most lavishly in schemes of renewal-stood in violent rebellion against the man who thought of himself as their benefactor.” “Urban riots, students forcing campus shutdowns, and the Vietnamese rejecting his Great Society on the Mekong in favor of Communism broke Lyndon Johnson’s progressive heart.” “How is it possible” Johnson asked after his presidency, “that all these people could be so ungrateful to me after I had given them so much?” The answer is that no matter how much you “expand the powers of the government” it will never be able to “solve the enigma of the world.”Those on the American Left forever focused on the future have always chosen to suspend their disbelief in hopes of a Heaven on earth. Ardently seeking control, socialists on the American Left who “distrust man” and “resent God” must lie; forgetting their past, while exaggeration “the grimness of the present and glory of the future.”The American Left will never be because the Ideals that Robert Owen railed against in His “Declaration of Mental Independence”: private property, traditional marriage and religion are the reasons that Americas’ place in the world is an exceptional one. They are ideas that uniquely set America apart from the rest of the world. And still, even years after the terror attacks of 9/11 the idea of prosperity through hard work inspire millions to migrate to America each year. The American dream is one rooted in reality and a dream realize through hard work. The American Left is merely a dream.
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