Posted on 09/19/2014 12:31:39 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
Many images that came out of Ferguson, Mo., last month looked like scenes from Birmingham, Ala., in the 1960s: the gun-wielding police officers, the sign-carrying protesters and the chants demanding equal treatment and human dignity. But that’s where the similarities ended.
For all the righteous indignation it inspired, the Ferguson turmoil has become the latest in a series of flash-in-the-pan causes that peter out without inspiring lasting movements for racial justice. As an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi during the ’60s, what I learned was the importance of organizing at the grass-roots and how even small actions at this level can have national impact. That is why I cannot help but notice that many black leaders, in their efforts to drive change, are ignoring some of the great lessons of the Southern Freedom Movement.
For one, the black leaders we most often see in the public eye have become experts at complaining about what the white man does to black people. Al Sharpton and others fill their rhetoric with fury about the white power structure, but ultimately serve messages that are superficial and myopic. To be clear, I am no right-wing ideologue blaming black people for the oppression that has beset them for generations. At 71 years old, I have experienced my share of brutal and dismissive racism. But this one-track approach will not generate change. Perhaps the great lesson of the southern Civil Rights Movement is that as much as it challenged white supremacy, it was the challenges that black people made to one another that truly empowered the movement.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Well into the Obama presidency, and in light of the Ferguson madness, is it time yet to suggest that Black people scr*w up everything they touch?
Not a lot of signs in B’ham IIRC.
Just marchers.
Stop having kids without fathers married to their mothers!
That’s a start. We can add get a job and pull up your pants to the list....
It’s a flash-in-the-pan cause because it’s totally BS. Notice still absolute quiet as to any information about what the officer was actually doing or what is happening now. All we hear of is the myth of the “Gentle Giant,” in fact a nasty gangbanger who had just knocked over a liquor store.
It’s not a matter of lack of opportunity and money that causes Black athletes and entertainers to fail.
I’d like to hear a black empowerment organization endorse individual career and family planning? Taking control of one’s life and building a plan for the future? Working diligently and exercising self-control to implement that plan?
Accumulation of wealth is usually not an accident. Adverse conditions can impede a good plan, (usually in a temporary and limited fashion). But a bad plan (or no plan) will guarantee the adverse outcome.
An elegantly written piece for sure. Only a black man could put these points out there.
With only 6% of black eligible voters bothering to vote, in a 2/3 black community entirely discredits their main gripe— that gripe being a practically all white, (and racist), police force and practically all white city commission, and district attorney.
That fact makes their sudden outrage all the more ridiculous. But who could so inform them of such an inconsistency but for a black man?
The writer gives the boobs a tutorial on advancing a cause, IF IT’S REAL. It’s been done, already! He rightly fingers goofy Al Sharpton and reminds the boobs that change comes from the bottom up, not the top down, from the fortune seekers with names and TV shows of their own.
No, I believe these Ferguson blacks are victims of public education and the Marxist slant for perpetuating victim status, and for benefitting Party apparatus, all beloved by Harry Belafonte and like minded misery hounds.
Charles Cobb was probably much better educated in his day than this current crop of intellectual rubes blowing up Ferguson.
I wish he had addressed that.
Name a community that has improved once Blacks became the majority.
Waiting...............
The had the power all the time. Self-control, self-discipline, hard work, and a positive, appreciative grateful attitude. All sorely lacking in some quarters.
Black people need to get a grip. The problem is not that the police force is overwhelmingly white. Its not that only 6% of the blacks voted. Before the Brown incident were the people feeling oppressed? No. The vast majority of the people there were happy with their neighborhood. Perhaps that is why they didnt feel the need to vote or to encourage more blacks to join the police. The problem started due to an isolated incident and a “witness” testimony that the autopsy shows was wrong. The people in the town jumped to a conclusion and this was picked up by outside agitators who were brought in by un-named groups to fan the flames and encourage unrest.
bfl
Until the black population begins looking internally; to judge a man upon the content of his character, and to uphold their own character; nothing will change.
As long as the blame whitey mentality pervades, NOTHING will change. The culture won’t change, the prison population won’t change, the welfare queens won’t change; nothing will change until people stand up on their hind legs and change themselves!
Blacks can thank their screwed up attitude of I’m a victim and it’s all whities fault on the DEMOCRATS who have been kissing their rear ends for votes at the same time keeping them down on the plantation without them realizing it. That’s why they have not progressed like the other minorities. It’s all about attitude
Read the article. Looks like he’s simply advocating for the older generation of race baiters to move aside for the younger group of race baiters. Yes, like opera and other endangered cultural events, gotta create a money-generating future.
It’s all about voting the “unrepresentative” White people out and voting the Black people in. Because....it worked so well for Detroit.
The Crips and the Bloods have killed tens of thousands of black children, and not a peep out of the black leaders. As I witness this I can only say the alligator tears they shed for Trayvon and Brown on the TV cameras are purely for political purposes, because if they really cared about the lives of their children: 1) They wouldn’t abandon them in unconscionable numbers to grow up like wolves on the street, and 2) they would demand justice against the gangs - or lynch them themselves!
“Black people had the power to fix the problems...they failed”...........
This same thing can be said about many areas and cities in the country. Most blacks are products of their environment and have done nothing to improve it for themselves and other blacks. Do I feel sorry for them? Absolutely NOT.
At one time this was a free country and we all had the opportunity to exceed. How did we do it, we worked at it. Blacks had the same rights as everyone else but squandered it away when the welfare checks started to arrive.
“Me work? NO WAY so gimmedat”!
Author states: “As an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi during the ’60s, “ etc.
Southern black people really hated this organization back in the 60s. Nobody asked them to come, but they would show up in some poverty-stricken town, stir things up, organize protests etc., then take off leaving the local people to clean up after them and mend fences with white neighbors and the police.
The people of Ferguson basically told race-baiters and agitators like Sharpton to get out of town before history repeated itself.
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