Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black Ame

By Juan Williams Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black Ame (First Edition) on Amazon. com.
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At a gala to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Cosby was criticized for his remarks, but his thesis is defended here by NPR senior correspondent and Fox News commentator Williams. While taking care not to dismiss the reality of racism in American society, the author echoes Cosby in rejecting racism as an explanation for high levels of out-of-wedlock births, neighborhoods paralyzed by crime and deficiencies in education.

The last particularly incenses the author: Brown was about getting access to a decent education, but a substantial number of poor African-Americans, he says, disdain to use that access. Williams assigns part of the blame to nihilism fostered by a thuggish, misogynist music industry. That industry would not be so successful, however, if the black establishment had not abdicated its responsibility to foster healthy cultural norms.

Instead, noted African-American leaders occupy their time with projects that are not easily distinguishable from protection rackets Williams condemns demands for slavery reparations or in seeking further subsidies for the black middle class. Some African-American politicians, he concludes, rely on a pool of reliably poor people in whose name they can extract endless public funds for programs that they and their cohorts can administer. Williams has particularly harsh words for the maladministration and patronage politics of mayors Sharpe James of Newark and Marion Barry of Washington, D.

The greater need is for a culture that promotes the discipline and enterprise that characterized black society at the time of the Brown decision. There was a problem adding your email address. It takes a real leader to look beyond the immediate emotional satisfaction--and even the academic justification--of throwing up a middle finger in the face of the oppressor, and see the bigger picture.

It takes a leader to think through the consequences and outline a better path--even if it requires sacrifice in the short term, sacrifice that may include giving up the easy emotional satisfaction of ultimately pointless acts, unexamined gestures of rebellion that never rise to the level of true resistance or long-term revolution.

But that kind of leadership is sorely lacking.

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Why have black leaders spent the last twenty years talking about reparations for slavery as if it were a realistic goal deserving of time and attention from black people? Why is rhetoric from our current core of civil rights leaders fixated on white racism instead of on the growing power of black Americans, now at an astounding level by any historical measure, to determine their own destiny?

Fifty years after Brown, much of the power to address the problems facing black people is in black hands. Here is Cosby at the very start of his famous speech:. It's what you're not doing. Black Americans, including the poor, spend a lot of time talking about the same self-defeating behaviors that are holding back too many black people. This is no secret. It's practically a joke. And black people are the first to shake their heads at the scandals and antics of the current crop of civil rights leaders who are busy with old-school appeals for handouts instead of making maximum use of the power black people have in this generation to determine their own success.

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So how did we end up in this situation? Black leaders have always risen to the occasion in the past, and in far more desperate situations--why does the talent bench seem so thin today? One key here is that nearly forty years after Reverend King's death, the best black talent don't have civil rights leadership as their chief ambition. That leaves the civil rights leadership of today in older hands: And they are still fighting the battles of the s. Then there are the latecomers, such as Al Sharpton, whose contribution is to mimic the aging leaders. Neither the old-timers nor their pale imitators recognize that national politics has changed and black people have changed.

Hell, white people, as well as Hispanics, Asians, and other immigrants, have changed. Yet the black leadership is fighting the old battles and sending the same signals even as poor black people are stuck in a rut and falling further behind in a global economy. Note that Cosby never identified himself as a civil rights leader. As he later put it, he is not Martin Luther King Jr. Cosby is a legendary figure in America's entertainment industry. He is at the top of his field. In speaking out, he presents himself as an ordinary man with a deep passion for the well-being of his people, black people.

He is full of the rage of an average man who sees vulnerable people being hurt and feels compelled to speak out about the glaring errors and lack of truth-telling in dealing with their problems. They want someone to do the work for them.

Juan Williams on African-American 'Victimhood' : NPR

I am not Dr. I am not a leader. One of Cosby's sharpest darts thrown at the current civil rights leaders hit home a few months after his Constitution Hall speech. He was at a town-hall meeting in Detroit to speak directly to black Americans in one of the nation's blackest cities.

He wanted ordinary black people to hear from him directly about his comments at the Brown anniversary gala. When he reflected on today's black civil rights leaders, Cosby essentially asked, Why are black leaders making the case for black crack addicts to get softer sentences? Why are black leaders so concerned that cocaine users get shorter sentences than crack smokers? Let's look at the logic. It is true that the people snorting cocaine are more often white and middle-class, and crack addicts are disproportionately black and lower-class. You can make the case for a racial disparity in sentencing.

But what if all this effort from black leaders was successful and crack addicts got lower sentences?

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Systemic racism, they [black leaders] call it. Black leaders, he declared, should tell poor black people to stop smoking crack.

They ought to demonize anybody who does it. They should say it is a betrayal of all the black people who fought to be free, independent, and in control of their own lives since the day the first slave ship landed. They should identify the crack trade as one of the primary reasons why so many young black people are ending up in jail.

Certainly, back leaders should be in front of marches pushing those crack dealers out of black neighborhoods.


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And that effort should include a message that has yet to be heard with sincerity from black leaders: But when was the last time you heard any civil rights leader raging against the clear evil of crack dealers, shaming them to stop selling crack? Has anyone seen the civil rights leaders at the head of a march against bad schools or a boycott against the minstrel acts and sex, beer, and gangster images that are promoted as authentic black identity on Black Entertainment Television? Essence, a black women's magazine, has taken the lead in condemning hateful verbal attacks on black women by black rap musicians.

But the most visible black leadership is silent. The good news about black leadership in America is that it has a history of inspirational success.

Juan Williams on African-American 'Victimhood'

Working against tremendous odds, black leaders have organized, built coalitions, and trained and inspired people of all colors to break through racism, taboos, and stereotypes to create the greatest social movement in American history--the twentieth-century civil rights movement. That movement offers examples and tools of consistently innovative leadership that have left America's political, corporate, and cultural leaders hurrying to catch up.

Movements for the rights of women, Hispanics, children, and gays have all credited the historical civil rights movement with opening doors for them, and have made the black rights movement the model for achieving their own aspirations. And that history of strong leadership offers an example of what is possible for people who want to offer sincere, progressive leadership to black America today.

Civil rights leaders have a fabulous record of progress, excellence, and achievement, and a willingness to fight and sacrifice for the next generation. Their commitment to democracy, law, and equality has made the civil rights movement the moral center of America for the past century. Even black leaders who lost battles along the way became legends by setting out a clear path of courageous struggle.

Failure wasn't desired, of course, but was willingly risked in the name of standing up for what was right. From the start of slavery in the United States, black leaders devised escapes, sabotaged plantation operations, and plotted strategic acts of violence to defy the system of human ruination that is slavery.