The country has bent over backwards to make amends for the racism in its past.
The black community of today with its culture of dependency is the author of its own dilemma. They are at fault, not the white man, not the welfare state, not the nation.
Acknowledging that first is how to 'take responsibility'.
I think your lumping Smith in with the rest of the dependency culture is sort of unAmerican. He is an individual. He doesn’t wallow in filth or record it, and has made a number of very entertaining shows and films for general audiences. I have never heard him playing “the card” in a situation. He has been married to the same woman for many years. He is an individual, and one who knows that if he comes down hard on either side of this question, many from both outside and inside “the community” will try to destroy him. I think he deserves to be an individual, not bear the “black man’s burden” for all the ills of a demographic group.
Its a little disingenuous to pretend that in 64, all of America instantly shed racism, and opened their arms to their black bretheren, and that for reasons we whites never fully understood, the blacks suddenly went nuts.
A lot was done, but pretending that racism didn’t have some effects on today is a bit over the top. Of course the black culture is to blame for an awful lot of what they have become. In the 80s and the Cosby era, a lot of the racism was dying fast, and was on its way out.
Smith has it right. Yeah, a lot of things have been the cause of the state of Black America. But he told his boys not to dwell on the cause, but to dwell on what they can to to take responsibility for whatever state they find themselves in.
That’s a solid message. Your take on this is exactly why blacks often look at conservatism and decide nothing they can do will get them accepted. By any objective standard, he said a very solid fatherly and good citizen thing to his kids.