From Whiners to Achievers? What Will It Take?

Many of the dullards in the US media establishment expressed shock and dismay upon learning that most Americans see blacks as complainers -- whiners. Media pundits immediately declared this widespread perception to be a sign of racism. But in reality, it is a simple expression of everyday reality.

African derived blacks frequently have difficulties keeping up as a group, in many multicultural societies the world over. Yet, African Americans persist in blaming all of their subcultures problems upon "the man"--the white man. Would electing a half-African politician who earned his chops on the corrupt streets of Chicago do anything at all to turn a national culture of whiners into a culture of achievers?

With a 50 percent high school dropout rate and a 70 percent illegitimacy rate, with African-Americans committing half the nation’s murders though only 13 percent of the population, black America—especially the poorer part of it—is in trouble. “We cannot blame white people,” Cosby asserted in his incendiary speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board school desegregation decision. “It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing.” As Jesse Jackson used to say, Cosby recalls, “No one can save us from us but us.”

"...for all the talk of systemic racism and governmental screw-ups, we must look at ourselves and understand our own responsibility.” Even with lingering discrimination, “there are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before in the history of America,” and “these doors are tall enough and wide enough” for just about all black people “to walk through with their heads held high.” So while “there are forces that make the effort to escape poverty difficult,” African-Americans are by no means merely the playthings of vast forces and helpless victims of racism. “When people tell you, ‘You can’t get up, you’re a victim,’ ” Cosby warns, “that’s when you know it is the devil you’re hearing.”

...Certainly their fathers aren’t raising them. That 70 percent illegitimacy rate, troubling in itself, isn’t evenly distributed but is concentrated in poor neighborhoods, where it soars above 85 percent and can approach 100 percent. “A house without a father is a challenge,” Cosby and Poussaint write. “A neighborhood without fathers is a catastrophe.” That’s because mothers “have difficulty showing a son how to be a man,” a truly toxic problem when there are no father figures around to show boys how to channel their natural aggressiveness in constructive ways.

...In addition to physical abuse, Cosby and Poussaint observe, we’ve all cringed at hearing inner-city mothers abusing kids verbally as well, making them feel worthless and unwanted. “Words like ‘You’re stupid,’ ‘You’re an idiot,’ ‘I’m sorry you were born,’ or ‘You’ll never amount to anything’ can stick a dagger in a child’s heart.” Single mothers angry with men, whether their current boyfriends or their children’s fathers, regularly transfer their rage to their sons, since they’re afraid to take it out on the adult males. “If they hear their mom say, ‘Black men ain’t worth s—-,’ the boys wonder whether that includes them. When their moms yell, ‘You’re no good, just like your father!’ all the doubt goes away.” When such racially tinged verbal abuse takes the form of “ ‘Nigger, I’ll kick your f——— black a—,’ ” the child ends up ashamed of being black, as well—a danger anyway in a society where rumors of black inferiority still echo, if more faintly.

...Of course today’s African-Americans have full civil rights and ample opportunity. Look at how immigrants from far-flung Ethiopia and Nigeria—no less black—succeed in their new land of opportunity. Moreover, notes Williams, Cosby’s views mirror those of the civil rights greats of old. Booker T. Washington similarly urged education and self-reliance and cautioned that “we should not permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.” W. E. B. Du Bois, despite differences with Washington, shared his “goal of black self-reliance.” Martin Luther King “said he wanted above all else to get black people to shed the idea that they did not control their destiny.”

...Williams’s view of most of today’s black leaders recalls Eric Hoffer’s dictum that great causes often start out as movements but degenerate into rackets. Today’s leaders have made lucrative careers out of preaching a crippling ideology that ensures that they will never run out of poor blacks to agitate for. As Cosby quipped in one of his town meetings, “There are people who want you to remain in a hole, and they rejoice in your hopelessness because they have jobs mismanaging you.”

Williams presents a rogues’ gallery of African-American leaders who harm the people they claim to serve by blinding them to the opportunity all around them and stoking resentments that serve as excuses for wrongdoing. Jesse Jackson, “the unofficial president of black America,” takes pride of place, with Al Sharpton as runner-up. _CityJournal

And now we have Barak Obama--god-child of Jeremiah Wright--another in a long line of victimist leftist oriented conductors of the great African American Whine Chorus. So here is your answer to the question of whether Obama will inspire American blacks to achieve or whether he will pander to their sense of victimhood. All indications point to the latter.

In his campaign for the Illinois senate, Obama was endorsed by the New Party (NP), a coalition of socialists, Communists, and other leftists. According to the newsletter of the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, whose members were said to constitute 15 percent of the Chicago New Party, “Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP [which] mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.” Apparently, Obama signed such a pledge. After winning the primary (unopposed because his lawyers had succeeded in knocking all three opponents off the ballot), he appeared at a New Party membership meeting to voice his thanks.

Entering the national political scene eight years later, Obama did not, to be sure, appear as a radical, but he still bore the earmarks of the world in which he had been immersed for twenty years. He called himself “progressive,” a term of art favored by veterans of the hard New Left, like Tom Hayden, as well as by old-time Communists. Early this year his wife Michelle, lacking his tact, would kindle controversy by saying that his success in the presidential primaries made her feel proud of her country for the first time. The comment, a faux pas that she was soon at pains to explain away, flowed logically from her view, expressed in her standard stump speech, that our country is a “downright mean” place, “guided by fear,” where the “life . . . that most people are living has gotten progressively worse.”

This year, Obama appeared before Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (whose official slogan is “no justice, no peace”) to seek its support. The candidate praised Sharpton as “a voice for the voiceless and . . . dispossessed. What National Action Network has done is so important to change America, and it must be changed from the bottom up.” _Commentary

This is painful to say, and painful to hear, but it must be said and heard. Obama is yet another con-man, in a long line of con-men to take advantage of the race racket in the US. No matter how much a voter may hate George Bush or the Republican Party--and want to punish them for perceived misdeeds--in the end it is himself that he is punishing by voting emotionally without reading the fine print. Wishful thinking almost always leads to more hardship, when not accompanied by a hard-headed examination of realities, and hard work.

It is possible for more citizens of all races to go from whiners to achievers, if society ever chooses to admit where the real problems lie. Abominable child-raising methods, lamentably poor education, low societal expectations, and a corrupt government-media complex that obscures the reality by crying "racism" under all circumstances--regardless of the presence or absence of significant or meaningful bias.