Posted on 11/23/2003 4:17:52 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Each week, I receive several correspondences from black people calling me an Uncle Tom, a race traitor and that sort of thing.
The most recent epithets came as a result of my column asking Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Warren Sapp to shut his mouth, stop acting like a child and get back to playing the exemplary football that made him a repeat Pro Bowler.
Weeks later, I am still being accused of dissing not only Sapp but African-American culture itself. So, the question is: Exactly what is African-American, or black, culture?
According to my critics, the likes of Sapp and the late rapper Tupac Shakur epitomize African-American culture. If they are right - although I believe that some are simply venting out of anger - then I primarily dislike their brand of black culture.
What do I mean?
Although I appreciate Tupac's poetic genius, I dislike his gangsta persona. Remember, Tupac was a violent brother, and he died in a hail of automatic weapon rounds. I like Sapp's work ethic (which I would advise all youngsters to emulate) and his love of the game, but I dislike the nasty image, on and off the field, he has faithfully cultivated.
Again, if these two men represent African-American culture, then I have major concerns with my culture.
Now, to the essential point of this column: We - African-Americans - should strive to be admired for all the right reasons. I obsess over who we are as a people, about how we fit into a nation that continues to treat us as outsiders after all this time. I obsess over our survival. Sure, we will survive like everyone else. But what will be the status of our collective health in another 100 years, or 50 years even?
These are questions I ponder daily. I have convinced myself that the time has come for mature African-Americans to redefine black culture. Mature blacks must wrest back from the Sapps and Tupacs the values that sustained our people during the long years when de facto and de jure practices guaranteed our third-class citizenship.
We must relearn the sentiments of self-determination and introspection. We should not tolerate another black-on-black killing, another neighbor's house being invaded, another ounce of cocaine being sold on our streets, another adult luring a boy into a deadly confrontation with the police, another child lollygagging and never opening a book.
Mature blacks should unapologetically teach the values their elders taught them. Earlier generations of blacks were taught, for example, the practical power of simple politeness. A "yes, sir" still opens doors of opportunity. A "thank you" still commands respect from others. An "I apologize" still forges trust. Allowing someone else to "go first" in line still paints a smile on the other person's face. "Please forgive me" still elevates the worth of everyone involved in a given conflict.
Blacks nationwide plead for economic development, and we complain of discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere. Well, I have a radical solution for many of our complaints - at least where we have control: We, as a people, need to apprehend the subversive efficacy of the intellect and formal education.
The most subversive act an African-American child can commit in school is to demonstrate a mastery of standard, formal English. Imagine a boy mastering algebra and chemistry. Suppose the same boy completes all of his assignments with excellent grades? Suppose he stays on top of current events? Suppose his teachers and principal like him?
This boy would take away every excuse for whites to legitimately deny him anything. At the same time, he would be admired for at least one good reason: He values learning.
Being intellectually capable is black people's most important possession. Acquiring knowledge and using our intellect to better ourselves are the most powerful and most useful acts we can commit to subvert a system that has kept us down.
My fraternal and maternal grandparents were quiet, determined subversives. I loved listening to them talk about the "days before welfare." I remember how these unflappable people put their families before everything else; how children dared not insult an elder inside or outside the home; how doing well in school was taken for granted; how "cutting up" in public and "shaming the family" were not tolerated.
Calling me old-fashioned and an Uncle Tom does not change this simple truth: If African-Americans are to succeed and enjoy the benefits of this rich culture, mature adults must persuade our children to strive to be admired for all the right reasons.
Because the "W" in Whites is. It is a proper collective noun describing an entire race. "Jews" is capitalized, as is "Indian," "European," or "Chinese." Nothing PC, just an old editor's conscience.
I would go a step further and say they were succeeding DESPITE these dubious "helpers."
Of course there is. We are all racists and do things when no minorities are around. Didn't you see Eddie Murphy's "White Like Me"?
Some of us have may have lighter skin than they do, but other than that they are Americans frist, and have ancestory from Africa ,secondly. They should be raised to behold their American spirit ,and to forward themselves using all of the riches of this country. That is what I am teaching my Scottish-Danish -Cherokee- Irish American children to do.
An intersting story for you: I had to remind my son of attending a friend's birthday party. He could not remember her from the homeschhol co-op group of girls in his class. I told him her name, she could not remember her that way, I told him what she was wearing the last time we saw her, he still was unsure because all fo the girls sort of stick together. I asked him: "Honey, have you ever noticed some people we know ,and some friends of ours have darker skin than we do, including our friend from co-op with the darker skin than yours"? He said , "no Mom, I only see them as people".
This from the boy who notices when I have trimmed my bangs in the bathroom as I come out the door.
I don't want to teach my son to see people with darker skin than his, as African- Americans. I want him to always see them as people first. I wish for the sake of all of those children, that we could do away with calling them Africans. They are Americans.
As a recovering freelance writer, I question this. This is not to say you are incorrect, but the races/groupings in question are Negro and Caucasian. The words "black" and "white" (modifiers) are colors which, as fair as I know, we don't capitalize*, e.g. the Purple plum, the Green pencil, etc., and yet we (are expected to) write "the Black man", "the White man" quite frankly it's more along the line of "the Black man", "the white man".
This is why I wondered if this practice wasn't rooted in PC-ism.
*(We don't usually capitalize.)
Keep them coming CW.
We must relearn the sentiments of self-determination and introspection. We should not tolerate another black-on-black killing, another neighbor's house being invaded, another ounce of cocaine being sold on our streets, another adult luring a boy into a deadly confrontation with the police, another child lollygagging and never opening a book.
I love this guy, but does he realize that he's not just talking about black Americans? Lower, dumbed down standards are rampant in all segments of U.S. society.
It's the "I'm a victim, so everybody owes me" game that is played by the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, and their surrogate white and hispanic Democratic counterparts. The design is to keep the leadership rolling in money, and they must have a miserable, self-destructive underclass always in need to sustain them. The massas can whip up said underclass when votes are needed, and then let the neanderthals sink back down into hopeless lives until the next time the rent-a-mob is needed.
The author is right that common sense in raising our young is crucial, but common sense has not in been vogue for a long time.
And on a completely different tack, I wonder why Republican leaders are allowing a huge new underclass of illegals to overrun our country, particularly with Homeland Security supposedly in charge. Illegals provide cheap labor, yes, but it's the average U.S. taxpayers who are paying all their social benefits and other expenses, while living next to the only ethnic group to ever illegally enter the U.S. by the millions, and who don't even have to learn English. No problemo, we'll print your voting forms in Espanol. < /rant>
I capitalize it out of respect, then.
And if I were being PC, then this discussion would be academic. I would refer to Blacks as "African-Americans," or whatever tag the chic are using this week.
This is very well described in Berbard Goldberg's new book on media bias, Arrogance. He devotes a chapter to why the media excuse the bad behavior of Blacks, and others to their treatment of gays and feminists.
But now that we have talk radio, the Internet and Fox, this stuff isn't going to work as much. It seems that young people are more attracted to the Conservative news sources than to the Lieberal ones.
Depends on which kind of scalawag you mean:
1) one who is playfully mischievous
2) a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel
3) white Southerner supporting Reconstruction policies after the Civil War usually for self-interest
I'll admit to 1), but only a poltroon would call me 2) or 3).
Long live Jubilation T. Cornpone!!!!!!!
I was responding to Post 12 by G.Mason.
He offered a quote:
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism...The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin...would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." (Teddy Roosevelt speech, New York, 1915)
This quote has to do with immigration, that is why I was writing about immigration.
Sure there were Americans who happened to be black in 1915, but I do believe they were not referred to as anything hyphenated.
Americans who happen to be black, should consider them selves lucky for not being an African who happens to be black.
Americans who happen to be black, pushing to be hyphenated are really pushing for the ruin Teddy was speaking against.
Let me be clear before I hurt any feelings, white politics are just as stupid as black politics, and buying into the concept of African-Americans, is buying into the concept of black politics.
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