Blacks ponder MLK legacy: Cosby's criticism struck sore spots

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, long a time for reflection in the civil rights movement, finds black activists looking for new ways forward after a tumultuous year.

It was a year in which comedian Bill Cosby issued a blistering attack on black America's ``dirty laundry'' of semiliterate, low-achieving children who drift into crime. It was a year in which President Bush [related, bio] snubbed the NAACP but saw his percentage of the black vote go up 2 percent from 2000. It was the year when black church leaders came out strongly against gay marriage.

``The events of 2004 have finally revealed to the broader community the complexity of the black community,'' said Janis Pryor, an activist who once worked with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy [related, bio] (D-Mass.) and the Rev. Jesse Jackson and now heads a business consultancy.

``We have differences about how we should go forward in the 21st century. The days of seeing the black community as a group that is in lockstep are over . . . we can't be taken for granted,'' Pryor said, citing the willingness of more blacks to leave a traditional Democratic safe haven to vote Republican.

``Forty years after the march to Selma, we're living in a post-civil rights epoch,'' said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, known for his own unorthodox activism. This month, he spoke to Bush about faith-based initiatives and invited Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to Boston Wednesday to discuss the same issue.

``The challenge to blacks and whites is to develop a post-civil rights framework,'' he said. ``The problems that confront the black community are primarily, but not exclusively, internal.''

He cited black-on-black crime, teen pregnancy, the violent aspects of hip-hop culture, and academic underachievement.

``The most important spokesmen to reflect where we are now are possibly Bill Cosby and Chris Rock,'' Rivers said, citing the comedians' biting criticism of black failures. Meanwhile, he said the traditional ``paleo-liberal'' leadership of groups such as the NAACP and the Democratic Party, ``is completely marginalized.''

The Rev. William Dickerson of the Greater Love Tabernacle Church in Dorchester said despite decades of work, there is a growing frustration that so many blacks remain mired in poor housing, high crime neighborhoods with poor education.

``It's one thing to talk about moving forward, but we haven't been able to do it,'' he said. Though it was insensitive of Cosby to call black youth ``dirty laundry,'' he said, ``at some level we have to talk ownership. We can point fingers until the cows come home, but there are certain things we have to do.''

Ken Johnson, former director of the Ella J. Baker House in Dorchester and still active in Boston initiatives, said, ``We should look at this year as a case of political maturity, recognizing the political diversity of the black community.''

American blacks of Caribbean descent, with their own history, are emerging. A growing black professional and business class views government in new ways. But Johnson cautioned, ``It's good that people have diversity of thought but they should not forget that race is still salient. In the dark of night, people will still look at your race before they look at how you speak or how you dress.''

http://www.neoperspectives.com/blackconservatism.htm

Today, some Conservatives, rather understandably, don’t often appreciate the role that the modern 'civil rights' groups still play in combating explicit racism because they see them as the front-runners of leading their people into implicit slavery through welfare programs etc… Far too often these 'civil rights' groups inexcusably play on their peoples' fear of explicit racism to advance their own agenda and brainwash voters [example 2000 Florida and 2004 Ohio recounts]. This is not to say that the African American leaders, the NAACP, and other organizations don't have a legitimate purpose in fighting overt racism where it still exists, but why can't they fight both kinds of racism? Why did (do) they support the slavery of welfare?

Initially, they may not have had much choice. During the 50s and 60s a great political upheaval took place across the solidly Democratic South as some Southern Democrats, who since the civil war had led the fight against the civil rights movement and desegregation, grew disgusted with the national Democratic leadership and bolted to the Republican party. Over the years various historical revisionisms have been put forth that label(ed) the Southern Republican party as the new 'party of the racists'. In truth, there were many differences between the Southern Democrats and the new leftward movement of their national party and racist attitudes were fading. Cultural issues, taxes, pacifism, and the growing religious movements all contributed to the slow exodus from the Democratic party. In the 1968 Presidential election it was a segregationist Democrat, George Wallace, who carried the South. In 1976 Jimmy Carter, a liberal Democrat (who ran as a centrist) and a strong civil rights supporter, swept the South.

But the fact that some leftover extremist elements entered the folds of the Republican party (where some remain today - like the CCC) was enough to cause African American groups to, understandably, choose the opposite path. Having ancestors abused as slaves and then living through the bitter experiences of discrimination and segregation drove the newfound African American political movement to embrace socialism almost by default. Old style 'moderate' Southern Democrats like George Wallace were more interested in rolling back civil rights gains then tackling the racial problems of the South, and the growing Southern Republican party was also indecisive, attempting to pander to it's many constituencies. The only place African Americans found acceptance and true outrage over the racial conditions in the South was on the far left of the American political spectrum. Early civil marches, especially in Washington, were also attended by labor unions. Martin Luther King Jr's SCL (Southern Christian Leadership) civil rights organization received much of it's funding from New England liberals. King was a socialist, and was accused (perhaps often unjustly) of having communist sympathies.

Nonetheless, one can only agree that it would be better to live as a socialist then as a slave or second class citizen. Having listened to Martin Luther King Jr's autobiography (250), read Malcom X's autobiography (249), and attended a 2000 Monmouth University speech by Black Panther co-founder Bobby Searle, I can certainly appreciate the effectiveness of King's nonviolent methods in bringing change. As progress against explicit racism advanced through this method, we must then ask at what point does the harm through implicit racism (via welfare) begin to overshadow the good achieved through combating explicit racism? And did the civil rights movement have to be fought this way? How would African Americans be living today if the civil rights movement was fought using King's nonviolence, but with a conservative ideology? Would it have gotten the same support amongst African Americans at the time? The innately deceptive and ultimately destroying promises of (economic) liberalism must surely have found acceptance amongst the poorer black populations and garnered additional support for the civil rights movement. All of these questions are not easily answered. In the end, African Americans did achieve civil rights - but at what a cost! And when will this economic stagnation and family dissolution finally stop? When will an African American leader stand up and shout "Enough is enough - we are free - now let's take off these chains!"?

The most amazing thing is that liberal black leaders and organizations, to this day, attack conservative African Americans as "Uncle Toms". Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, the highest ranking elected Republican in the country had Oreo cookies thrown at him - black on the outside, white on the inside - during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign (238). Black leaders don't apologize and admit that conservative African Americans were right about Welfare Reform; they attack and demean them.

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