A New Civil Rights Movement [NYT/Bob Herbert: Blacks must change their BEHAVIOR]

The NYT ^ | Dec. 26, 2005 | Bob Herbert

[billhilly]

I didn't grow up in Mississippi, but along the Mississippi river about a hundred and twenty-five miles above Memphis. we are moving to Desoto County, in north west Mississippi, and just below memphis.

[CurlyBill]

It sounds like he is lamenting the total lack of black leadership...

Yep. Sadly, black leadership has been predicated on MONEY for the last 50 years or so. Self-annointed "leaders" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are in it for the money only... shaking down anyone and anything they can without regard for the struggles of their own people. They run a mafia-like racket and the smiling white faces in the media ignore the real story.

[GladesGuru]

Not a hypocrite, just a black journalist.

Ya see, we have to judge them by different standards. They aren't lying, just practicing "post-structuralist journalism".

[rdb3]

I didn't grow up in Mississippi, but along the Mississippi river about a hundred and twenty-five miles above Memphis. we are moving to Desoto County, in north west Mississippi, and just below memphis.

The Delta region, near Arkansas I see. Cool. That's where my parents are from (eastern Arkansas). And I have white relatives in Tupelo.

No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

[rdb3]

Not a hypocrite, just a black journalist.

I don't think so. As a black man myself, I have no problems saying loudly that a hypocrite is a hypocrite no matter what color that hypocrite may be. No excuses.

[billhilly]

Tupelo. Home of Elvis. I grew up on a steady diet of delta music, mixed with country. My home was where the state of Kentucky met Tennessee at the River, and just across the River was Missouri.The closest big town to us was Memphis. St. Louis was the next, but farther.

When I was about 10 my family moved about twenty miles east, to Fulton, Kentucky/South Fulton, Tn. That was in the late forties. I left there in 1956 and have lived in Virginia for most of my adult life. My roots are in the midsouth, and I can't get them out, nor do I want to.

Where are you now?

[rdb3]

Where are you now?

Addison, Texas. Just NE of Dallas and in Dallas County.

This is a looooooong way from Cleveland!

[billhilly]

Texas is pretty neat I guess. Wherever you are can be sweet If you want it to be. Fortunately for me, I have visited 49 of our fifty states and have lived in four of them.. Most of them are very special, and to those who live in them, all are.

[Popman]

Addressing issues of values and behavior within the black community should not in any way imply a lessening of the pressure on the broader society to meet its legal and ethical obligations. It should be seen as an essential counterpoint to that pressure.

In what way has broader society (white people) has a legal or ethical obligation to meet?

Despite the sometimes valiant efforts of individuals and organizations across the country, we are not meeting that obligation now. And that's because there's a vacuum where our leadership should be.

Hello, Jesse, Al, face it you have failed your people. Even your sycophants in the media now recognize it

[FormerACLUmember]

Herbert is a liberal AND a New York Slimes propagandist. This article has zero credibility. Herbert does not mean a single word of what he is saying.

Herbert must have wrote this to keep some critics off his back. He doesn't believe any of it.

[GladesGuru]

One of my oldest friends ( a hunting buddy ever since college) is also black and his views are exceeding close to mine. I'll send him the article, but I think his take will be the same as mine.

The article under discussion is simply saturated with the NYT Communism Lite faulty premises. Let's analyze a key part of Herbert's 'epiphany' as a FReeper called it.

"But much of the suffering in black America could be alleviated by changes in behavior. What's more, those behavioral changes would empower the community in ways that would make it easier to successfully confront opponents in government and push the society in a more equitable direction."

The first line is true but trite - all human problem can be changed by changing one's behavior.

The second line is where the NYT Communism Lite come boldly to the fore - "empower the community". And in the same sentence is "push the society in a more equitable direction".

That Communism Lite advocate does not yet get the core concepts so clearly explained in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
We have Inalienable Rights and are free to make of our lives what we can.

If Herbert feels the Founding Documents are too complex for those who willingly, deliberately, and repeatedly knee-capped themselves educationally and culturally, then I suggest a serious reading of something more simple but equally effective.

If Herbert needs a super simplified social pattern to recommend to the gangsta trash, may I suggest he recommend a Bible and contemplation, understanding and diligent practice of the the Ten Commandments.

If the gangsta trash isn't theologically inclined, the dimmest of intellects can understand and practice the last Six Commandments. They are the most concise social constructs yet written. Even gangsta trash can understand them.

If blacks buy into the 'gangsta' bit, then they destroy their lives. Their problem, not ours. I shoot thieves and attackers. But I live in Florida where guns and the use of them in defense is legal. Herbert has to suffer under the Sullivan Law.

If and when I hear Herbert advocating individual responsibility instead of "community", equitable society" ad nauseam - then and only then will I grant that he is no longer a paid advocate of Communism Lite (communism minus the firing squads).

[GSlob]

Which Issue of NYT? Dec 26/2005? What page?

[oneofmany]

I agree. Herbert is vermin of the lowest order. This just proves the insanity of Liberalism. Radical shifts in thinking, believing in totally contradictory ideas, ie Black people need to take responsibility vs. being an advocate for the welfare state.

[billhilly]

See post 50.

[DieHard the Hunter]

>Wel, for your information, smartie-pants, I do know what grafitti is...

Tagging is a blight DownUnder. Kids do it without the slightest consideration or respect for the feelings of others. And it makes my blood boil...

Hip-hop and the garbage "culture" that goes with it is one of the very few US Exports we could have done without. Why it is encouraged (or even legal) is well beyond me.

[GSlob]

Thanks. He has written a bromide.

[summer]

This article has zero credibility.

Oh, I think you and some others are being too harsh here. Herbert is putting responsibility on the black individual in this article (whether he "means it" or not, as you or someone commented). For example:

...It is ironic, to say the least, that now, nearly a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, much of the most devastating damage to black families, and especially black children, is self-inflicted.

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that some of the most serious problems facing blacks in the United States - from poverty to incarceration rates to death at an early age - are linked in varying degrees to behavioral issues and the corrosion of black family life, especially the absence of fathers.

... Now, with education widely (though imperfectly) available, we have entire legions of black youngsters turning their backs on school, choosing instead to wallow in a self-imposed ignorance that in the long run is as destructive as a bullet to the brain.

There's a crisis in the black community, and it won't do to place all of the blame on society and government.

But much of the suffering in black America could be alleviated by changes in behavior...

...the obligation that black adults have to create a broadly nurturing environment in which succeeding generations of black children can survive and thrive.

In short, IMO, there's not a whole lot of public discussion on the "obligations" of black adults toward their future generations. I think the last time someone brought that up, Donna Brazile accused the speaker of putting out dirty laundrey in public, or some such nonsense.

[DieHard the Hunter]

OK mate, I've had time and opportunity to digest the link you sent. And many thanks! I agree 100% -- if that be possible for a "Pakeha" from NZ. (it is possible, I think...)

Even with the Sailor Words, the article is spot-on.

I am not and can never be a part of the "Black" experience in North America: by accident of birth if nothing else. But this hip-hop gangsta graffiti "culture" surely cannot be the very best that Black America can produce, 150 years after emancipation...? OK, or even 30 years after the Civil Rights movement?

[FormerACLUmember]

Sorry, I just don't believe a single word from Herbert, after the years of lies from this NY Slimes professional deceiver.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"Call me crazy, but I did not know that Bob Herbert was black until I just saw his picture."

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Me neither. But I knew he was a whiny liberal, which is annoying whether black, white or green. I hope today's column is the beginning of a new Bob Herbert.