An Interesting Viewpoint

I was watching Fox News this morning and they had Juan Williams on. He was talking about Bill Cosby's controversial comments regarding black youngsters and the black community in general. He sided with Cosby against the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Jackson and Sharpton's political futures rest firmly on maintaining the oppressed victim mentality in the black community.
What Cosby said essentially was that it's time for people to get off their dead butts and to stop blaming exterior conditions for their own bad choices. For instance, it may be a fact that a particular school with a predominantly black student body is a bad school. It is equally true that people either choose to go to school regularly and learn, study, do their homework and really try to make the best of what they have, or they don't. Those who choose not to learn are responsible for those choices.

Cosby pointed out (and Williams agrees) that this victim mentality and really stupid attitudes among black youth are ruining any chances blacks have to continue moving into the middle class and out of poverty. It's not "cool" to be smart and work, for instance. But it is "cool" to hang out on a street corner, insult women, sell and/or take drugs, and belong to gangs. Stealing is cool. Holding down a job isn't. Gang violence is cool. Respecting the law isn't.

Such attituded and the breakdown of what used to be a strong black community in the US has really taken its toll on blacks in general, but it's not whites they need to blame for their problems. Whites don't make black men father out of wedlock children then abandon both the child and the mother. Whites don't make blacks commit crimes, drop out of school, or not even look for work. Again that's a factor of attitude within people themselves.

I'm not even trying to argue that many poor blacks don't have it bad. Of course they do; their chances for getting out are smaller because they have less to work with in terms of education, job skills, the results of their own poor choices, etc. in the first place. But they can get out. More and more blacks join the ranks of the middle class every year, or at least they did until this current administration.

I am encouraged when I hear people like Williams and Cosby stand up and tell it like it is, thus attempting to thwart the attempts of so-called black leaders to foster a permanent sense of victimization, hopelessness, and entitlement in the black community. Sharpton, Jackson, and their ilk are not doing blacks a favor by encouraging blacks to feel as if there is no way out and that they are owed a living.

I strongly believe that good solid job training programs should be available to everyone who needs them, free of charge. I support mentoring and tutoring programs, including SAT tutoring classes for kids in poor schools. I even believe that college admissions standards should contain exceptions for kids strong high academic backgrounds who had to work or tend family rather than do the usually expected extracurricular activities. I do not believe the academic standards should budge a shred based on race.

In the end the black community will fight to reestablish itself as a real, effective community. I see signs of that already and am encouraged. In the end though I would much rather hear news about black academic and workplace advancement than about the number of unwed births or the numbers of young men who choose to waste their lives in prison.