Crouch: Some very poor excuses - So-called 'authentic' street culture is just plain destructive

When we look at the ongoing crisis in the depths of black America, it is sometimes hard to understand why there was such an explosion of outrage at Bill Cosby. One would have thought that he did the very worst thing possible when he called on the carpet the self-destructive behavior that separates prosperity from poverty. What Cosby showed was how dangerous defensiveness in face of the facts can be to any serious discussion of poverty. Poverty and ignorance have always been well-acquainted. Part of the problem at the bottom is ignorance. Part of the problem of those who suffer from it is those in the black middle class who pretend to be engaged intellectuals but come up with nothing more than long-winded dismissals of accurate observations as some variation of "blaming the victim."

I began thinking more about this when I read in The New York Times about the health problems in Nigeria that are being addressed with the hard science of medicine rather than a "respect" for indigenous culture that allows backward ways to maintain themselves. Young women who are suffering from fistulas, a problem largely gone from Western life, are being treated by European doctors who take the catastrophe seriously. These young women find themselves with babies lodged in their birth canals, which result in the tearing of their bowels or their urethras. In the backward way of people who live at least part of their lives in the world of incapacitating superstition, these girls are usually rejected in exactly the same way as the rape victims of marauding African "revolutionary" troops who turn available women into sex slaves.

None of these problems are determined by genetics or are explained by the superstitions of racism. The human being is a learning animal. Any barbaric tradition can be rejected in the face of education.

What we need in America is the same kind of hard science that has no sentimental investment in authenticity or diversity when it amounts to ways of living that are self-destructive.

An ignorant person never represents an ethnic group or a religion. An ignorant person represents, most of all, every other ignorant person - regardless of color, sex, ethnicity, class, religion or any other particulars.

Once those facts are faced, we can get to work on changing the popularization of backward ideas and barbaric behavior that the popular media promotes as "pushing the envelope," which can result in middle class black parents finding their well-reared children aspiring to be the knuckleheads and street hussies.

A belief in education, the development of skills and the refinement of character are the best weapons against backwardness of the self-destructive sort. People like Cosby and Oprah Winfrey understand this well, and we would do ourselves a favor by getting up on the level of perception from which they are making clear observation in the most important terms, the human ones that are always stronger than tired rhetoric and predictable ideology.

"... don't know. To me, it appears too many young blacks of today have dropped to the lowest common denominator. I look at it as a lack of pride."

Give me a break! That is a bunch of PC crap that belongs in the trashbin of the "self-esteem" BS. Like the post above said, it's time to choose sides. There reaches a point that talking is over, it is past that point. It is not doing any good. We already have a DAILY drive-by murder or two, or three (in San Antonio, TX) and it's amazing how OK we are with that sort of thing! NO! It needs to be eradicated. We continually speak of a "War on This, and that, and the other" but nothing happens. No, it's time to take action folks for our own survival. Gangs must be identified and eliminated. Tell me a better solution, I want to hear it. Tell me something I haven't heard in my 63 years of listening to psychobabble. You are witnessing the rise of the new barbarians right before our eyes and somehow you plan to what, give them MORE PRIDE? What's that nonsense?

Friends tell me that no one dares walking in downtown areas of middle American (Dearborn, MI for example)and of course, other places like San Antonio. What an outrage. We can't walk around in our own cities? Why not? Because we have relinquished control, law and order is NOT enforced, it's all touchy-feely crap. Nope, it's time to act, take back our streets, then our neighborhoods then our cities. We demand it, see that it is done and remove those that hesitate. Tough times call for tough folks.

John McWhorter is another truly great intellect advising fellow blacks to strive for a better education and to reject the notion that "book knowledge is white".

Bill Cosby Can't Say That, Can He?
June 3, 2004

By John H. McWhorter

Partial transcript of Bill Cosby’s remarks:

People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around. ... The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting.

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father?

People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? ... People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up ... and got all type of needles (piercing) going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a ... thing about Africa.

We have millionaire football players who can't read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs.

With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail. Brown vs. the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. ... They are standing on the corner and they can't speak English.

People used to be ashamed. ... [Today] a woman has eight children with eight different "husbands," or men or whatever you call them now.

The idea is to one day get out of the projects. You don't just stay there.

We as black folks have to do a better job. ... Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

The incarcerated? These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, saying, "The cops shouldn't have shot him." What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?

We cannot blame white people.

John McWhorter

Almost nobody in the black community is happy about our high dropout rates or the number of black men in prison. But for assorted black columnists and radio hosts, Bill Cosby is a traitor for implying that black people have power to help themselves.

These people are under the illusion that black problems cannot change until white America gets down on its knees and blesses us with a Marshall Plan. But this self-medicating notion neglects our history.

Before the 1970s, black ghettos were no picnic but were still true communities. There was much less violence and unemployment, and big cities had thriving black business districts.

Two things changed. Whites, convinced that we were powerless, loosened welfare requirements and wooed millions of blacks onto the dole, while among us, integrationism gave way to separatism.

Too many blacks stopped keeping their eyes on the prize, but it certainly wasn't because whites became more racist. The idea that we can only achieve under perfect conditions is a disabling fiction.

As for those worried that Mr. Cosby's remarks may encourage white racists, it's time we stopped lobbing this charge. For decades many black writers have strayed from the blame game, and last time I checked, the number of poor black families has kept going down while the number of blacks in high positions has gone up. The inner cities are slowly improving.

Yes, we still have some work to do. But when a longtime advocate of black improvement reminds us that we are self-directed human beings, we should listen.

John McWhorter is a fellow of the Manhattan Institute.

Commentaries by the following four other locally and nationally known black thinkers and leaders may be found here.

Sheron C. Patterson, senior pastor of St. Paul United Methodist Church in downtown Dallas.
Bishop T.D. Jakes, pastor of the Potter's House in Dallas.
Dr. Franklyn Jenifer, president of the University of Texas at Dallas.
DeDe McGuire, co-host for The Doug Banks Morning Show on WJKS radio in Wilmington, Delaware

©2004 The Dallas Morning News

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