Two perspectives from black Americans that couldn't be farther apart. First, Shelby Steele's statement of responsibility and self-reliance in an interview with The American Enterprise. Some excerpts from a must-read piece...
TAE: You say many things in black America have not improved as they should have since the 1960s. What do you think happened?STEELE: Here we were a people who, during the civil rights movement, took charge, fought out a peaceful revolution, and won against a society in which we were outnumbered ten to one.
We won a personal victory, then turned right around and put our future in the hands of the larger society. To understand that, just consider another theoretical option. What if, in 1965, every black person had left America and started a new nation? We would have put all of our energy into education and development—because we’d have had to become competitive with this huge American country. We would have focused on hard work and conservative values. There’s no doubt that our new nation would have had conservative politics.
But we didn’t leave America. We were smack in the middle of a society that knew what it had done to us before. There was a profound amount of guilt. We knew that guilt was there, and we had a U.S. President who was reeling backwards, putting the responsibility on whites to make things up to us, promising to end poverty. We bought into that, and it made us weak. We bought into precisely the opposite of what we should have done.
Our real problem was a lack of development. We weren’t educated. We weren’t competitive. And so rather than really tackle those problems within our group, we just kept saying, “Well, you guys haven’t given us a good enough school yet. You haven’t given us good enough this, or good enough that.” We had this wonderful excuse.
Steele then eloquently makes the case against racial preferences...
TAE: You say that as long as we have affirmative action, blacks will never be able to take full credit for their own advancement.STEELE: Absolutely. It smears every single black person.
Look at me, for example. My enemies say my career would have gone nowhere without affirmative action. I don’t think that’s true, but because there is affirmative action, they can say that. There are no blacks who are free from that stigma, and that’s a terrible thing to do to people who are trying to succeed on their own. I think affirmative action is the worst cruelty blacks have endured since slavery.
At that point, blacks made the worst mistake in our history: putting our faith in the hands of outside saviors. The idea that somebody else can lift you up, can teach you skills, and make you competitive is just ridiculous. That sort of abject dependence has never worked, and it never will.
Blacks do well in sports, music, entertainment, and literature—because there’s absolutely no white intervention, paternalism, affirmative action, or anything else. We’re asked to compete without any assistance, and sure enough, we compete. We succeed. In these areas, whites never intervene, so we ask the best and we get the best. But in colleges and other places, there are a billion excuses. Whites intervene and convince themselves not to ask much of us. It’s the same old vicious cycle.
TAE: Should affirmative action be abolished?
STEELE: Affirmative action and all of its sundry manifestations should be completely eliminated. It stigmatizes all blacks, and it’s not voluntary. One of the real cruelties of affirmative action is that whether we want it or not, it is imposed on us, simply because of the color of our skin. You don’t get to opt out.
From Steele's pride and optimism to the story of a 7-year old poet with a message of grievance, separatism and anger. I feel sorry for the little girl. In Michelle Malkin's account she appears to be a cruelly manipulated vehicle for her father's radicalism, (she's 7, for heaven's sake). Here's a taste of her poetry:
White Nationalism Put U In BondageWhite nationalism is what put you in bondage
Pirate and vampires like Columbus, Morgan, and Darwin
Drank the blood of the sheep, trampled all over them with
Steel, tricks and deceit.
Nothing has changed take a look in our streets
The mis-education of she and Hegro -- leaves you on your knee2grow
Black lands taken from your hands, by vampires with no remorse
They took the gold, the wisdom and all of the storytellers
They took the black women, with the black man weak
Made to watch as they changed the paradigm
Of our village....
They killed the blind, they killed the lazy, they went
So far as to kill the unborn baby
Yeah White nationalism is what put you in bondage
...and so on, dripping victimhood, the prodigy articulates her father's anger in verse. How very, very sad.....both the destructiveness of the message, and the loss of a normal childhood for the little girl. Teaching kids to hate is child abuse.
Be sure to go read the whole Steele interview. It's Clip and Save stuff.
Posted by dan at March 16, 2006 12:32 AM