Posted on 04/12/2008 2:42:58 PM PDT by freerepublic_or_die
Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X. It was a hot July evening. Cosby was speaking to an audience of black men dressed in everything from Enyce T-shirts or polos to blazers and ties...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
No, I’m sorry I can’t understand it. That’s the most beautiful thing about living in the USA, you can rise above your circumstance. My parents, who both had alcoholic fathers, could’ve just said “oh well, my father’s a worthless POS, so I’ll never amount to anything because I had such a tramatic childhood”. No, they rose above their circumstance living in poverty and now have the most gorgeous piece of heaven in N. CA and have a very close knit family who all love one another. They committed to each other they would never allow alcohol to ruin what they worked so hard for. Nothing like what they had growing up. So, no, I don’t understand their negative attitude. Your life is what you make it. We live in a land of opportunity to all who want to work for it. And I think therein lies the problem, some don’t want to work for it.
Perhaps the appropriate reparation for those desirous of such would be a gov't funded one way plane ticket and a correspondence course in the new language.
“I personally think it has to do with the Protestant Work Ethic.”
I can’t disagree with that.
In other words, most African Americans would never have been born except for their ancestors' misfortune of being enslaved.
The same applies to most other Americans, except for first-generation immigrants or Native Americans...they wouldn't exist if their ancestors had stayed in their original homelands.
bump for later
In my post I was referring mainly to the black children reared in ghettos where warring gangs, drive-by shootings, frequent murders, drugs, etc. hardly inspire a desire for education. Those who want to learn are accused of "acting white".
Many of these kids probably come from generations of famililies existing on welfare.
Maybe I sound like a bleeding-heart liberal but I'm far from that. Crime deserves punishment, and in some cases, parents should be jailed along with their child.
“Protestant work ethic” is a factor, so is the Catholic tradition of family.
Most blacks are Babtist. I really feel a lack of family values is the problem. Catholic traditions really emphasize the traditional family, and parental obligations such as ensuring children are educated, and marry well are the norm among practicing Catholics.
As an adult my formation in the church has emphasized that my first apostalate is my family. With my husband being first. I always find myself wishing that those teaching be shared in the black community. I lived these neighborhoods for a time as a kid. It is a very negative environment. You really can’t blame them if that is all they know.
http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=16&ca=45&te=10&id=12737
This one I just can't figure. Your wages are garnished by the state.
This is like buying houses you can't live in. No wonder so many go to jail. (It is quite a bit cheaper and the food is free).
It isn’t a matter of losing to the white man, it’s more of a failure to acknowledge and live up to the highest human values and traditions which are not exclusive to color, race nor gender. It’s too bad that the Jacksons and Sharptons and others who have and enjoy such influence don’t teach these simple truths instead of preaching divisiveness and racial hatred. We would all be so much better for it.
I really hope what I underlined is not a true belief.
To leverage political influence for Democrats this idea has been suggested and stated for several decades by the Democratic Party and hence much of the media. There is no doubt that many black people believe this no matter how bad the Democratic Party performs.
Many people in our country hear both directly and indirectly a constant suggestion that the GOP is the home of KKK types or that rich white people hate black people(unless they are Democrat). It is the best way the Democtratic Party can influence a voting block. It is very easy to anger people and thus motivate them to stay on this plantation. It has worked for at least 40 years.
My old man saw something very similar in rural Germany in 1945. He was one of the million or so Western Allied personnel who stuck around long enough to de-mil the country. His area of concentration was aircraft factories (I still have a jeweler's loupe he liberated from a Focke-Wulf factory, it's former owner's name -- Schinkel -- still scratched on the side in Gothic cursive script).
He told me about driving in the countryside and seeing beefy farm women driving horse-drawn carts (one could tell what country one was in by the number of wheels on the cart: four or two), while their husbands sat on the back of the cart, smoking Meerschaums. The women did a lot of the manual labor, the men very little. As a result, the women were quite strong: he once saw a German woman, in the house where he and other American officers had been quartered on the civilian population, lift the corner of a 600-pound brass bed one-handed, while sweeping underneath with the other.
You may buy whatever you like. He did well on tests, and for all I know he outgrew his desire to be a gangsta. I suppose you think all smart people *make it*. You would be wrong.
susie
This particular boy, like many I had, was being raised by grandparents. His mother was still alive, just doing her own thing in the big city (where he had lived until that that year). I gotta say that from what I could see, the popular black kids were not the ones who put forth effort in school, they were the jokers and the gangbanger wannabes. It’s hard for a kid to overcome that, at least until they’re older, and by then they may have already made a bed that’s very difficult to get out of.
susie
Most of the HS girls I had who had babies didn’t know or didn’t say who the father was, so there didn’t appear to be any garnishment of wages. They were living on the taxpayers expense. Anyway, when you come from a culture that doesn’t look past today, the govt taking your wages, or putting you in jail tomorrow doesn’t look like any big deal.
susie
Why were you discouraged? Are you black? I could care less how many blacks make the honor roll at my kids school. I also really don’t care how many whites/asians or any other group makes it. My only concern is that my kids make the honor role.
If read through this, you’ll find that the author dropped his son off at the office of his “partner” while he went to interview Cosby. (He wasn’t ready for his son to see and hear Cosby). I assume this “parter” talk means the author is gay. This would explain the difficulty he has with Cosby’s upholding family values and the role of the father.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a decent black man ran?”
One man comes to my mind — Dr. Walter Williams.
Walter Williams! Brilliant!
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