Posted on 08/25/2014 5:44:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
August 28, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the mall in Washington, DC. One year later, a half century ago, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.
A half-century is a long time. Yet, as events in Ferguson, Missouri attest to, race remains a problem in America.
Why?
Change has swept our nation over these years. Technologies abound that no one would have dreamed of. And millions of black Americans have moved into the ranks of the upper middle class, the rich, and the super rich.
Yet, despite this, racial ghettos which harbor, even nurture, poverty and crime persist, generation after generation.
The tragedy of Michael Brown is too common a story. As the human spirit of black youth is suffocated under these horrible circumstances, frustrations boil over and wind up in violent encounters, often with the police, and a young black man winds up pointlessly dead.
Wealthy black liberals – like billionaire Oprah Winfrey - despite being living proof that the America dream works, who build businesses fueled by American capitalism –invariably join the ongoing chorus of the same, failed explanations of why these impoverished communities persist generations after the Civil Rights Act became law.
Liberal black media serves up the same monotone left wing propaganda, the same explanations for failure years after the Civil Rights Act, despite having produced billionaire BET founder Robert Johnson.
What do these successful, wealthy black entrepreneurs know that they are not sharing with their own?
I broke out of it years ago, after seeing what the debilitating culture of the welfare state was doing to me and those around me.
I started my own policy organization in the hope that we could start providing research and information, forums for discussion, to generate light on how misguided government policies keep the poor rather than leading them out of the morass.
And how these policies undermine the very institutions of tradition – like conjugal marriage and family - that do provide the framework that nourish human growth and potential.
The cycle of events is too tragically clear.
Tragedies, like what we are now witnessing in Ferguson, bring national attention to the ongoing, self-perpetuating realities of poverty and crime in these ghettos, and the liberals turn the discussion immediately to race rather than policies.
They get their 15 minutes of fame and media and then everything goes back to business as usual, with no change, until we repeat with the next incident.
When black conservatives, like me, speak out, the attacks, always personal, never about substance, begin.
From Bill Cosby to Dr. Ben Carson and now to House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, those who try to shine light, who try to think and analyze and get to bottom of what is wrong and fix it, are attacked.
Worse, liberal ideas inevitably are about government money. But the American taxpayer is tapped out. We are running out of money for everything, and certainly for failed ideas.
The steps out of poverty are not rocket science. Yet people need to be free to take them.
It is insulting that liberals pretend to care about the poor yet fight any acknowledgment of what has failed and block efforts to move forward with what can succeed. Despite mountains of data showing the fruitlessness of secularism and government dependency, the liberal black establishment fights to hold these communities hostage to these destructive forces.
Promising ideas abound on how to redirect government policies that can empower rather than debilitate personal freedom and the human spirit. School choice, personal retirement accounts, vouchers to acquire private health insurance and housing.
Maybe this time, when the liberal demagogues leave Ferguson to move on to the next “race” crisis, black frustration will lead to a readiness to hear some hard but freeing truths.
Booker T. Washington (self-reliance) v. W. E. B. Du Bois (blame Whitey).
Blacks chose the path offered by Du Bois.
I couldn’t get past the picture of the Luther Vandross-lookin’ dude in his “Peace Keeper” t-shirt, yelling at the crowd and waiving his hands in the air.
There HAVE to be more ‘Fergusons’.
The races MUST be kept apart by whatever means necessary, and black riots are the best means. AND the cheapest. They are self-financing by means of loot and publicity.
Whatever would become of the American Left if the black population ever rejoined the rest of the population?
Dhimmocrats would be DOA.
Yep, they’re right - we don’t have to have any more of this stuff.
Stop paying women to have bastards, first off.
All of the well-to-do blacks mentioned bootstrapped themselves and refused to accept the "I'm-a-victim" mentality liberals want. Because, with out that attitude, blacks can break out of the cycle and there goes the liberal voting base. Fifty years and almost $3 trillion later and Ferguson still happens. No, gov't policies are NOT aimed at solving the problem but rather to keep blacks pinned down and dependent on the liberals' free giveaways. If that was not the case, one is hard-pressed to explain the rationale behind free cell phones paid with our tax dollars. Sadly, most blacks can't see beyond the freebies and Ferguson is the result.
It's INFINITELY preferable to STAY here and complain about "white oppression." And, we humans OFTEN take the easy path.
Anything is possible, but if history is a guide to predicting, then my guess is they are far more interested in continuing to hear what they are already saying, just like last time and the time before that and the time before that and the time before...
When the internal dialog is stuck, skipping on a scratch and repeating the same old same old, nothing changes. And, you know what they say, nothing changes unless/until something changes.
That change must first come on the inside. Like Worf said to a couple of soon-to-be-dead Klingons seeking a glorious death in battle: "No! The battle is within!"
Successful blacks also know that SOME people will simply take the low road and complain, all the while taking government freebies, AND considering that those freebies are "owed" to them for some reason.
There are whiners in every strata of society. It takes BACKBONE and HONESTY to look in the mirror and see who really is to blame for most problems.
Well put.
Someone on the Star Trek writing staff had a brain.
Have you any idea when the next Star Trek movie is coming out?
I'm a people person dammit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
".....wave 'em like you just don't care."
Yep, they’re right - we don’t have to have any more of this stuff.
Stop paying women to have bastards, first off.
I was talking with a friend yesterday and he told me about a man that receives $1200 per month from the government for his two grandchildren. The grandchildren don’t even live with him. This is on top of his social security and other benefits.
They know there is a limit to how many children they get paid for. What they do then is say the ones over the limit stay with the grandfather, aunt, sister, etc. This is how they make certain to get the maximum they can out of their children.
There are lots of ways to get the maximum per child and a few tricks they know to get even more per child.
The people who game the system are far more cunning than we often think, “bell curve” or no.
We might have been cheated out of that classical education and missed out on Aesop's fables, but we learned many of the same lessons expressed in the realm of science fiction and science fantasy. Even in the cartoons and I still miss School House Rock. Truth is, no matter where you find it.
No clue when the next Star Trek is coming out, but am not ready to care just yet. (Still holding a small grudge for ST:Enterprise)
"Bud, the toilets today aren't worthy of the name. They come in designer colors, they're too low, and when you flush them they make this little weak, almost apologetic sound.
Not the Ferguson. It only comes in white and when you flush it -- BA WOOSH! -- That's a man's flush, Bud. A Ferguson says, 'I'm a toilet: sit down and give me your best shot.'"
No, we don't.
All we need to do is convince Sons of Obama to not strongarm-rob elderly Pakistani store owners, and then charge the police to try to get their gun, busting the cop's eye socket in the process.
Pretty simple, really.
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well.” — Booker T. Washington
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