The End of Blackness

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | February 20, 2004 | Jamie Glazov

[cyborg]

``Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?: How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire > Customer Review #1:

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WOW is all I can say.

This book made me want to work so much harder in life to achieve my business goals. The key is fake it until you make it. No one knows you struggles unless you tell them and you cant make excuses for your life and why you have to work hard. I read it fast and read it again.

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``Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?: How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire > Customer Review #2:

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Changed My Life

This book gave me a new sense of understanding on how one African American man can not only change history but do it with style and passion. I never new what Reginald Lewis did during the time frame he did it back in the 80s I was a young kid growing up in the south Bronx area of New York City still trying to find a role model to look up too that looked like me. I first heard of Mr. Lewis in college but still had no idea of what he had accomplished until reading his book and then hearing about untimely death some years later. I have read this book 5 times since I bought it and I get a sense of vigor every time I finish it. Not only is it possible for me as a young black man to become the owner of a billion dollar company like him but do it in a way that will make all the white guys at my former prep school green with envy. My only regret is that I never got to meet Reginald Lewis before he died. It would have been such a great honor to meet such a driven and determined man. To sit and do lunch with him at the Harvard Club in New York and just watch all around us wonder how we got there.

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``Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?: How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire > Customer Review #3:

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The sub-title would have been a better title. Oh well.

I came across this book through the recommendation of an acquaintance. I was initially put off by the title, it seemed arrogant, but my philosophy of learning from everyone helped me get over it.
At the end of the day this is a great book. The format is confusing because Mr.Lewis passed away while still in the process of completing it. Mr.Walker does his best to keep Mr.Lewiss voice, but he fails in many ways.

As for the content, it is riveting. To see the humble beginnings of a man that decided that "No" was not good enough is tremendous.

The lesson that I learned from him is that "acquisition" is just as good, if not better than organic growth.

He pursued McCall Patterns with a tenacity that was both admirable and envious. Who else could see the potential? No one apparently, and is coup landed him a 70xs return on his money in under five years. Then to move into the food industry with the same energy was impressive.

It is unfortunate that he passed away so suddenly, his value investing was very much right out of Benjamin Grahams school of thinking, and Mr.Lewis definitely had the potential to become the next Mr.Buffett.

Great book, it really set the tone for how I will grow my own business.

[William Wallace]

Thanks for the heads-up, Michael. Excellent article.

Don't assume all the venomous reviewers on Amazon who self-identify as black really are black. White liberals think spewing ugly racial epithets is ok as long as they're directed at black conservatives (witness Clarence Thomas and Condelezza Rice). Per their twisted logic, pretending to be black gives legitimacy to their race-baiting.

I will be sure to pick up Debra Dickerson's book after reading such "reviews."

[farmfriend]

Thanks Michael!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thank you for the ping and the post. Wonderful column!

***……… I'm just so tired of being black in that way, that way which can only understand itself as the people who are oppressed by white people. The people who condone murder as long as it annoys whites. The people whose morality is situation specific if there's a way to get back at whites by forgetting our home training.

……….So, combining old fashioned virtue for its own sake with Post-Movement opportunity was my recipe for success. So many poor blacks are missing the first component, they can't make use of the second.

………. Why keep reliving your worst nightmare over and over again? They're still focused on the obstacles, not the opportunities because they 're still focused on making white people 'fess up and apologize. They act as if its still 1954 instead of 2004. They're old dogs who can't learn new tricks, even the young ones who hew to old school racial discontent.

…… Also, we have to learn to believe in our own efforts again. We have to act as though we truly believe we don't need anyone to ride to our rescue.

………. Reading the newspapers while trying to move beyond the tropes of a stultified racial discourse, was maddening. Even as I was trying to abandon my post in black America's war with white America, I was constantly being brought up short by thinly veiled racism and just plain bs all around me. ***

[Rytwyng]

She's got a lot of wisdom on how blacks ought to behave, but her own thinking is still warped...She makes a number of cracks along these lines --

the racism still seems so obvious yet white people walk around free and unrepentant

It ain't obvious to us. Every white with a conscience, has at some point heard the endless black accusations of "continuting covert racism", and taken a very long, hard, soul-searching look at ourselves first, and secondly our culture at large. Most of us HONESTLY don't see it, even when we've looked for it very diligently. (I don't deny that blacks suffer a lot of unpleasantness but I as an outsider can plainly see that other causes for these problems exist, which so far overshadow the lingering ghosts of racism - if any -- that to blame the white man for the problems is simply ludicrous. I've heard nonwhite foreign immigrants make the same assesment, so this is not just a "white" view).

Anyway... if a white person is convinced that this terrible specter of ongoing racism, doesn't exist, then to "walk around free and unrepentant" seems to us to be the exercise of our God-given human birthright -- it's just too bad that blacks interpret it as an offense against them.

In a way, buying into the black ideology on this subject would actually relieve a substantial psychic burden that many whites carry -- it's psychologically easier to "confess and be forgiven", than it is to constantly stare an apparently sincere accuser in the eye and tell him a thousand times over, that you just aren't guilty -- especially when the accuser seems to get more violently furious with each denial. Accepting the "guilt" would be easier, and would make race relations easier at least in the short term. But it would require a lie, and I (along with legions of other whites) just can't stomach the concept of living a lie, not even for the sake of racial peace.

And so I must live with black hatred, and arm myself against it. Such is the price of truth.

[Rose in RoseBear]

Pingpingping!

[Map Kernow]

Saw this lady on C-Span---she makes a hell of a lot of sense. Remember first hearing of her through John McWhorter, the Berkeley linguistics professor who wrote "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America," another eminently worthwhile book.

[cyborg]

Probably in her circle of reality, a lot of white people are the way she describes. That's unfortunate.

[Map Kernow]

The consensus of many if not most of the reviews of Ms. Dickerson's book on Amazon.com by self-identified black people dismisses "End of Blackness" as "a book to make white people feel good." Books by black people that reach across the racial divide are obviously perceived as a threat by "race hustlers."

[azhenfud]

Fantastic interview and author. America needs more men and women of all races with as much clarity of thought as is shown here...