Blacks criticize their own

The reader outcry was loud and long. Late last year, essayist John Ridley wrote an article for Esquire magazine, using an in-your-face style to rip the black underclass. He went on to describe famous blacks who've excelled in recent years -- Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell -- and argued that the whole group benefited from their work. It's up to us, he wrote, to emulate their success. It quickly became clear that irate readers weren't much concerned with Ridley's argument. They were derailed by the fact that a black had blasted other blacks. In a national magazine. With a mostly white audience. Using the "N" word.

Reaction among blacks included "I KNOW you just did NOT trash black men in public" and "Why did Esquire magazine publish this mess?" And those were not the most strident responses, Ridley said in an interview. "They were angry and belligerent," he said. "They didn't even get into the meat and potatoes of the piece." For generations, blacks have bickered over what's wrong with black America. But mostly, they've done it in places other ethnic groups weren't listening: around dining room tables; within lecture halls at black universities; from black church pulpits and in the black press.

Ridley wrote that blacks need to "send niggers on their way" and stop being victims. Oprah Winfrey recently told Newsweek magazine that she built a $40 million new school in South Africa instead of in a poor American neighborhood because "kids in inner city schools" are unmotivated -- the "need to learn just isn't there." Such voices, while a minority among blacks, are increasingly vocal and pointed. They are shattering the unwritten rules of black solidarity: Let's all work together. And if we can't, let's at least keep our fights within the family. "Black conservatives have had to go to the mainstream and make their arguments there because there is no place in the black community for those arguments to be made -- not the black church or anywhere," said Shelby Steele, an award-winning author and a fellow at the Hoover Institution.

The conservative tag Steele uses for those who share at least part of his vision is slippery. Some identify as Republicans, but others are independents and Democrats -- or eschew political labels. But a common theme is individualism. Each black must take responsibility for the future, they say, and stop focusing on racial bias as a barrier. Instead, work harder in school, build businesses and accumulate wealth, power or both.

Rice is a model. In interviews, she shrugs off the stark racial segregation of her childhood, then gets back to work as secretary of state. Chris Rock was among the first to go on the attack in public. More than a decade ago, he famously -- and angrily -- joked in his standup act about the difference between black people and those he called the "N" word. The latter, he said, boast about taking care of their children and not going to jail. "What do you want," Rock demanded of them, "a cookie?" It's a sentiment others agree with, such as those involved in the push within the black community for marriage. Organizers of the fourth annual Black Marriage Day -- set for March 25 -- lament that nearly seven in 10 black children are born to unmarried parents. Most single parents have less time and money than married ones, they say, and children suffer.

Ridley's Esquire piece was titled "The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger." It quickly made its way around the online world, sparking heated, sometimes anguished debate. Ridley said many were furious that he used a racial epithet in a white publication. "They couldn't get past the word," said Ridley, a longtime screenwriter and novelist based in Los Angeles. Ronald Walters, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, said several offended colleagues e-mailed him the article. "If this was in Ebony, it would have been really different, but it's in Esquire," Walters said. "That's not a legitimate part of the African-American dialogue, the intra-group dialogue."

Bryan Monroe, vice president and editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines, said Ebony was founded "to lift up the black community and to shine an important spotlight on the black community -- and some of that is tough love -- but we can do it from a point of authenticity. It's us talking about us. ... It's an authenticity that the white media often can't have." Ebony would not have considered the Ridley piece, he said. "The frame would have been different before we even assigned the piece," he said. Ridley and others have a right to freely express their views, Walters said, because the civil rights "struggle has not been to build a wall around the black community. It was to liberate people. "But the expectation was that, once liberated, they would be sensitive enough to our tradition not to betray us."

Long a proponent of education and self-reliance, Bill Cosby provoked similar reactions when he gave black America a tongue-lashing during a May 2004 speech in Washington. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, the key anti-segregation ruling from the Supreme Court. Cosby blasted blacks for chronic problems: imprisonment, dropping out of high school and births out of wedlock. "What the hell good is Brown vs. Board of Education," he ranted, "if nobody wants it?"

Some in the audience cheered their approval. Some cringed -- partly because the national media were recording every word. Since then, Cosby has given dozens of similar speeches around the country. "There's always been a norm in the black community that self-criticisms are conducted within the black community," said Michael Dawson, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. "Malcolm X said you don't wash your dirty laundry in public. A group that feels it's under attack and oppressed wants to present a united front." That norm long united a politically diverse community.

Around the turn of the 20th century, urban blacks often criticized other, typically poor blacks who were moving en masse from the rural South into big, northern cities, said Mary Pattillo, a political scientist at Northwestern University. In a sort of noblesse oblige, the National Urban League even published gentle advice to the newcomers on how to fit in -- for instance, don't spit in the streets. "Of course, this was not published in Esquire," she said. "It was in our black newspapers and Ebony and all that." Today, that's changing, Pattillo said. "We are now having our internal discussion publicly."

Why now? For starters, many who bemoan the changes say it's because Cosby, Ridley and others are repeating the views of conservative whites, which helps promote them to a wider audience. Many whites celebrate the critics because they blame black failings, not white racism, for blacks' problems, said Melissa Harris Lacewell, a Princeton University professor of political science. "The story goes something like this: 'Wow, that black person -- John McWhorter, Armstrong Williams, Shelby Steele -- they are really brave and independent thinkers because they're willing to say something that counters what most of black America would agree with,'" Lacewell said.

"'They're willing to counter the traditional civil rights message. They must be so smart.' Well, I sort of think they're big suck-up cowards who are willing to beat up on poor and marginalized people." There's also a generational factor. Most political analysts agree that younger blacks, especially those in the middle class, are more politically conservative than their counterparts in earlier generations. Maybe they take the gains for granted because they're too young to have witnessed the gruesome realities of the pre-civil rights era. But the most prominent critical black voices are middle-aged.

They say that the nation's race relations have greatly improved, and many of today's racial challenges are more subtle than separate-and-unequal schools. The old tactics, they insist, often don't fit modern realities and it's time to reconsider them. Williams, 52, who last year released "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It," thinks post-civil rights blacks are maturing and gaining the confidence to speak out.

"When many of us were in our 20s and 30s, we were still deferring to the grandeur and accomplishments of the civil rights leaders of the 1950s and '60s," said Williams, whose book was inspired partly by Cosby's speeches. "Now they're finding their own voice. There's a new energy in search of ideas and a willingness to discuss them openly that was previously unseen in black America," he said, adding: "I don't think this conversation would have taken root the way it has two or five years ago. "Now, people are ready."

Melissa Harris Lacewell, a Princeton University professor of political science. "

Her comments are a part of the problem,not the solution.

But she be a professor.

He does a brilliant monlogue about problems with black America. The talk on the difference between black people and niggers is classic. He also goes into other things that pass for acceptable in black America that simply don't work and why black people wind up in jail.

"If a kid calls Grandma, Mommie and he calls Mommie, Pam, that kid is going to jail".

Why now? For starters, many who bemoan the changes say it's because Cosby, Ridley and others are repeating the views of conservative whites, which helps promote them to a wider audience.

Sure, let's not consider whether they might be true or not. If whitey agrees with the criticisms, they must be wrong.

Oprah Winfrey recently told Newsweek magazine that she built a $40 million new school in South Africa instead of in a poor American neighborhood because "kids in inner city schools" are unmotivated -- the "need to learn just isn't there."

The story I heard is she pulled her money from the U.S. because of problems with the public school educational bureacracy. Which version is true?

Many whites celebrate the critics because they blame black failings, not white racism, for blacks' problems,

White racism was the problem 50 years ago. It is not even on the radar screen now (well excepting Planned Parenthood, of course, and assuming the sorry state of black-majority schools is not something done on purpose the by left)

" For generations, blacks have bickered over what's wrong with black America. But mostly, they've done it in places other ethnic groups weren't listening: around dining room tables; within lecture halls at black universities; from black church pulpits and in the black press."

How many more generations of too many failures is black America willing to accept of itself? It's become a long playing situation and a lost national treasure.
It's no wonder that the Democratic Party garners 90% of the black vote...the Dems never challenge them and instead curry favor for votes....and that's just fine for too many Black Americans. It's pretty sad.

There are certainly plenty of whites that are racist and hateful but no more than blacks or latinos who spout of ignorant crap.

Conservative whites would welcome more members of the black community who are looking to move up in the world, believe in America and take care of their own with pride and self-reliance. Those values are the core of any successful society and we need more people who think that way the color of their skin be damned.

Which version is true? >>

This one is the one I saw in the news the most.

"kids in inner city schools" are unmotivated -- the "need to learn just isn't there."

Mr. Monroe, nothing is more authentic than success. Learn from "White Culture".

Giving the Revered Jackson, Reverend Sharpton and Julian Bond the bums rush would be a very good beginning.

These three leaches have done more to impede the advancement of blacks than the KKK in the last 20 years.

Get over it, my Great-Grand Parents were subject to "NINA"
they survived and prospered because they chose to, in America anyone who chooses to will prosper.

" weren't much concerned with Ridley's argument"

It's called shooting the messenger, also denial. Change is hard; self-destruction is easy.

I like when he showed the difference between white and blacks and used dog ownership as the subject.

I thought it was more an income class issue than a black/white.

Another interesting observation I have, is how Blacks are becoming a smaller minority by the day. Immigration of all types from all over the globe is making that happen. They should probably start repairing their family structure and communities before they become a forgotten relic like the american indians have become (different circumstances altogether but same outcome).

By all means Honkey must flagellate himself in front of the whole world for a perceived guilt over a practice that ended 140+ years ago and for whom present day Whitey has no connection to.

But, let anyone (White) dare criticize any Black "community" failings and the charges of racist and bigot, Jim Crow and 'you ain't got the right to talk since you ain't Black' come shrieking through.

It is little wonder that native Africans laugh at American Blacks for their incessant and infantile whinings about life in America not being fair. Black Power promoters speak of the grandeur of African culture and the historical accomplishments of African Blacks. While those same promoters hold up the continental image, they lose their gravitas when they fail to explain how African Blacks did it while American Blacks culturally fall.

The Clintons
Paris Hilton
Britney Spears
White Liberal Guilt
Trailer Park Trash
Al Franken
Bill Maher
Competitive Cheerleader/Soccer Moms
etc., etc.

"Malcolm X said you don't wash your dirty laundry in public."

Sometimes, being a true 'player' on the stage of the world means your laudry gets done for you, in public. It sucks, it hurts, but it makes you stronger and if you survive it, lets everyone know that you've arrived. Some black leaders of the recent past probably will not lead into the future as they will be washed away. Others will emerge, strong, more able, and as Joe Biden stupidly said, "clean".

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