Message for people who shamelessly invoke the old “legacy of slavery” excuse and view the government as some sort of savior (emphases added):

“In 1940, when blacks were politically impotent, their poverty rate was 87 percent. By 1960, before blacks achieved much political power, it fell to 47 percent. During that interval, in various skilled trades, the incomes of blacks relative to whites more than doubled. Before 1960, there were no anti-poverty programs or affirmative action programs that can explain an economic advance that exceeded any other 20-year interval, though there were Truman and Eisenhower administration attacks on some of the gross forms of racial discrimination. A significant chunk of black progress occurred simply through migration from rural areas in the South to big Northern cities. Between 1960 and 1980, black poverty fell roughly 17 percent and continued falling to today’s 24 percent. The decline in black poverty between 1960 and 1980 might have simply been a continuation of a trend starting much earlier and cannot be attributed solely to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Johnson’s War on Poverty, or Richard Nixon’s affirmative action.

“Most of the major problems that many black people face are not amendable to political solutions and government anti-poverty programs. Let’s look at some. In 1940, 86 percent of black children were born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate among blacks was about 15 percent. Today, only 35 percent of black children are born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate hovers around 70 percent. Today’s breakdown of the black family is unprecedented. It began in the 1960s with the War on Poverty and the harebrained ideas of the welfare state. In the mid-1960s, Daniel Moynihan sounded the alarm about the breakdown in the black family in his book ‘The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.’ At that time black illegitimacy was 26 percent. Moynihan said, ‘(A)t the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family.’ He added, ‘The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.’ Moynihan’s observations were greeted with charges of racism and blaming the victim. By the way, the welfare state is an equal opportunity family destroyer. Today’s illegitimacy rate among whites, at nearly 30 percent, is higher than it was among blacks in the 1960s when Moynihan sounded the alarm. In Sweden, the mother of the welfare state, illegitimacy is 54 percent.”

– Walter Williams, Politics and Blacks

I try to avoid lazy blogging – posting a huge excerpt of an article and adding a sentence or two of my own opinion – but today I’ll be lazy because Shelby Steele’s recent article is a must-read, and long-time readers are familiar with my view on Republicans “reaching out” to blacks. I vote for Republicans based on shared values, and I will never understand why that’s not a good-enough way to attract anybody, regardless of race. However, I don’t think the GOP will ever attract a significant number of minorities (which is not a bad thing, by the way). Why? Here’s my theory.

Steele offers his theory in “Why the GOP Can’t Win With Minorities.” He writes:

“[C]onservatism sees moral authority more in a discipline of principles than in activism. It sees ideas of the good like ‘diversity’ as mere pretext for the social engineering that always leads to unintended and oppressive consequences. Conservatism would enforce the principles that ensure individual freedom, and then allow ‘the good’ to happen by ‘invisible hand.’
…
“What drew me to conservatism years ago was the fact that it gave discipline a slightly higher status than virtue. This meant it could not be subverted by passing notions of the good. It could be above moral vanity. And so it made no special promises to me as a minority. It neglected me in every way except as a human being who wanted freedom. Until my encounter with conservatism I had only known the racial determinism of segregation on the one hand and of white liberalism on the other — two varieties of white supremacy in which I could only be dependent and inferior.

“The appeal of conservatism is the mutuality it asserts between individual and political freedom, its beautiful idea of a free man in a free society. And it offers minorities the one thing they can never get from liberalism: human rather than racial dignity. I always secretly loved Malcolm X more than Martin Luther King Jr. because Malcolm wanted a fuller human dignity for blacks — one independent of white moral wrestling. In a liberalism that wants to redeem the nation of its past, minorities can only be ciphers in white struggles of conscience.

“Liberalism’s glamour follows from its promise of a new American innocence. But the appeal of conservatism is relief from this supercilious idea. Innocence is not possible for America. This nation did what it did. And conservatism’s appeal is that it does not bank on the recovery of lost innocence. It seeks the discipline of ordinary people rather than the virtuousness of extraordinary people. The challenge for conservatives today is simply self-acceptance, and even a little pride in the way we flail away at problems with an invisible hand.”

Four chapters into my novel (!), which I’ll blog more about once I’m finished the 75,000-word draft, I thought I’d take a break and point you to a column by the fabulous Star Parker (love her!).

All Star Parker’s op-eds are worth reading, especially the latest, alternatively titled, “We’re All Inner-City Blacks Now.”

Blacks are not given enough credit for being trendsetters in America.

Blacks started playing the blues, jazz, and R&B, then the rest of America started playing them.

Blacks discovered the politics of victimhood, then the rest of America started catching on.

Black women got into having babies without marriage. Then white women started getting into it (the incidence of white out-of-wedlock births today — almost 30 percent — is higher than the black rate in the 1960s).

Blacks bought into dependency and the welfare state. Now the rest of America has bought in.

Blacks for years elected politicians championing public policy that destroyed their own communities. Now the rest of America has installed a new political leadership with the perfect formula — run roughshod over private ownership, disdain traditional values, substitute political power for personal responsibility — for destroying our country.
…
As the black family collapsed, predictable social pathologies escalated. Crime, drugs, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, fatherless children, abortion and disdain for education.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Her point is that Big Government makes things worse. Visit Star Parker’s web site, CURE.

By the way, if you haven’t read her personal story, Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats: From Welfare Cheat to Conservative Messenger, and the wonderful Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can Do About It, you’re missing out.

Support conservative authors!

I must return to my fictional world. The characters assure me their story is worth telling, so I must listen. Ciao!

One of the reasons I’m wary of talking to mainstream media reporters and doing taped interviews for mainstream news shows is bias.

As a conservative and, let’s face it, a black conservative at that, I know there’s a fairly large gulf between my views and those of the reporters, producers, and most of the audience. I don’t trust those news organizations to be fair and accurately portray what I say.

Actor and conservative columnist Joseph C. Phillips, whom I consider a friend, appeared on CNN’s “Black in America,” a show (series?) I didn’t see because I don’t watch TV. (Remind me to share my “off TV” story sometime.) I can’t comment on the show’s content, but I believe Joseph when he says CNN gave his liberal counterpart much more time to make his point, while giving Joseph a mere sound bite that put him in a less than favorable light.

I understand how the process works. You can talk to a reporter for an hour, but you’re lucky if the story includes one sentence from the conversation or more than a few seconds of your comment.

Fortunately, CNN gave Joseph a forum to expand on his point about racial disparities in sentencing. From “Black Americans should be masters of our fate” (emphasis added):

“I have little sympathy for men and women who prey on the innocent hardworking members of the community. I am particularly critical of men who are guilty of criminal behavior, as this runs counter to what I see as one of the primary duties of men: to be guardians of the home and of the community, not parasites on that community. I am, however, uncertain that society gains very much by sentencing thousands of young black men to prison for nonviolent drug offenses. The sentences introduce them to a system from which it is difficult to extricate themselves and begins the downward path to joblessness, absentee fatherhood and more criminal behavior — in short, creating more of the very behavior we are trying to discourage.

“The disparity in the guidelines’ impact does not in my mind prove systemic racism. I would, however, argue that it does not represent the best the American justice system has to offer and in fact undermines faith in that very system, especially among black folk.”

Agree or disagree?

If you watched “Black in America,” tell me this: Was it more of the same “Jim Crow is returning!” hysteria or something reasonable and balanced?

(And read my review of Joseph’s book, He Talk Like A White Boy.)

Update: It appears that “Black in America” is available (legally?) on YouTube. I don’t think I’ll watch it. Not interested.

***Scroll down for updates***

Blaming white people can be a way for some black people to feel better about themselves, but it doesn't pay the electric bills. There are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before in the history of America. - from Come On, People: On the Path From Victims to Victors

In “Tough, Sad and Smart,” columnist Bob Herbert discusses actor Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint (who was a consultant for “The Cosby Show”) and their new book, Come On, People: On the Path From Victims to Victors, which is about, among other things, fatherlessness among blacks and the failure to seize opportunities America has to offer.

I’ve said many times on this blog and elsewhere that the collapse of the family is the biggest problem facing black Americans. While I believe certain bigoted attitudes will always exist, white racism, as traditionally understood, is neither an obstacle nor a threat to any black person living today.

There was a time I tried to see both sides of the blame-the-white-man debate, but no longer. I’ve lost patience with it. I see only one side. Slack black men and women who make babies without providing those babies with the immeasurable benefit of a stable, solid home (marriage, residential father) cause more damage to their children than anything the most virulent racist could ever do or has the power to do in 2007.

We love blaming nameless and faceless for our troubles. Looking in the mirror and acknowledging our own slackness is not something we fallen humans do very well.

Questions for black readers 40 and under:

1) If you’ve experienced white racism in your lifetime, send me an e-mail with examples of how this white racism has been an obstacle to you. Prove me wrong. With your permission, I may post your response.

2) If you grew up without a residential, biological father, send me an e-mail and share your story. What were some of the challenges you faced? How has fatherlessness affected you as an adult? Have you repeated the cycle and abandoned your own children?

lashawn [at] lashawnbarber [dot] com

Update: I received a touching e-mail from a black man who grew up fatherless and blamed himself, as children sometimes do. But he broke the cycle. Today, he’s a husband and father who learned how to parent his child. I’ll post an excerpt of his e-mail later today, with his permission.

Later…Harold B. writes (excerpted):

“I am a forty year-old African-American male who grew up in a single-parent household in an impoverished community in Memphis, TN. My mother had a drug problem and there was extreme violence and sexual abuse in the home in which I was raised. I am a statistic. However, not of the variety that the MSM loves to parade before the American people.

“I graduated high school with a B-average and received an appointment to attend the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. I earned my degree and received an honorable discharge from the military. I then went to work for different non-profit organizations helping traditionally underrepresented student populations attain post-secondary education and training. I am currently the Pre-College Program Manager at a top 5 public research university. We prepare deserving students of color from low-income families for the academically competitive classroom environments they will encounter at this institution or any other top-tier university.

“Know that I have given you my personal background information, I must address your question of how growing up fatherless impacted me. During my earliest years, I routinely fantasized about my “superhero dad” coming to my rescue. He would take me away from the physical and emotional hell that I was trapped in. As I got older and he never came, my feelings of anxious anticipation turned into feelings of doubt and rage. Why did he not want me? What did I do wrong? What is wrong with me?

“The older I got, the louder the voices in my head became, telling me that I did something to keep him away. It was all my fault! No matter how much people tried to make excuses for his abandonment, I did not buy them. I had to hold someone personally accountable for this tragedy. Unfortunately, all the anger and rage I had towards him was unleashed inwardly. I hated myself!

“Fortunately for me, I attended an elementary school that taught me the love of learning. So, there were two powerful, competing forces inside my head battling for control of my life and my soul…I received an appointment to the Air Force Academy. This prestigious institution gave me a sense of self-confidence and, more importantly, self-esteem, that helped me subdue and control the rage inside.

“I will close by telling you about a life changing C-SPAN experience I had. I was watching…late one night and I saw the Justice Clarence Thomas Book Party at the home of Armstrong Williams. Tears flowed down my face for an hour as I watched these politically powerful, strong black men discuss their humble beginnings and how hard work led them to prominence.”

Related posts and book reviews:

• Slackness
• The Hard Sayings of Bill Cosby
• Your Children, Your Responsibility
• The Mission: Middle-Class vs. Lower-Class Families
• Fatherless Boys and Foolish Feminists
• Corrupt black leadership and culture of failure impede black progress

There’s nothing quite as inspiring as a drive through downtown in the nation’s capital on an Indian Summer’s night…

Update (9:46 p.m.): This blog has opened a lot of doors for me.

Not only have I met terrific people, but this tiny small space has given me the courage to boldly say what I believe needs to be said.

Not only that, but it’s given me the confidence to speak to large groups of people in person, on the radio, and on TV. I’ve never been what you’d call a wallflower, but I never imagined I’d be called upon to talk to people about what I believe, and defend it without shame or fear. I’m not the most articulate or the best looking or the smartest, but I’m here, willing to take risks.

I know some readers miss what this blog used to be. At the peak of this site’s popularity, I used to blog several times a day at least six days a week. In fact, I think I blogged more when I had a day job. Some posts produced 100+ comments. I craved the interaction, loved the civility, hated the trolls, and never thought I’d slow down or close commenting.

But all that changed a few months ago. I wanted this blog to be something else. I’d been running it one way for over three years, and I was ready for a radical change, just short of shutting it down. So I slowed down the posting and closed commenting.

For the first time since I started this blog, I’m blogging exactly the way I want, what I want, and as frequently (or infrequently, as the case may be) as I want. Hate the Hanson blogging? Not my problem. I like the Hanson blogging. Miss commenting? Hey, that’s the way it is now. I may open comments sometime in the future. For now, I’m loving the “echo chamber” that is lashawnbarber.com.

My traffic is not as high as it once was, and that’s OK. It really is. Actually, to see it drop and to not care is quite liberating. Woo hoo!

For the first time since I started this blog, I’m taking the time to enjoy the open doors. After fours years of blogging (November 5 will be my fourth blogiversary), I’m ready to slow down, take advantage of the networks I’ve built, and do things I enjoy, whether or not related to politics.

These changes have displeased some readers. While your readership has meant a lot to me, go if you feel you must go. No hard feelings. There are literally millions of blogs about there, a few hundred of them actually worth reading. Peruse my blogroll before you leave and bookmark new favorites. For new readers who found my blog through CNN or the Washington Examiner or BlogCritics, welcome to LBC. Perhaps you’ll find something else you like. If not, browse the blogroll. You just might find a gem.

That was a long intro to this: Tonight, I met a man I admire very much. I was invited to join a group of conservative bloggers and columnists (like Kate O’Beirne, Bill Kristol, and James Taranto) for dinner with Justice Clarence Thomas. This humble, personable man said that despite what some black liberal types say about him in the press and on blogs, he’s never had a bad experience with one. They may call him an “Uncle Tom” behind his back, but never to his face.

Justice Thomas told us a couple of anecdotes about how two black men at different events “confronted” him, asked him questions, listened civilly to the answers, and concluded: “Why are they lying about you? What can we do about it?”

Justice Thomas talked about his experiences speaking at certain events, where all the other speakers were allowed to have opinions, and no one mentioned their race. He, on the other hand, has to deal with the consequences of having certain opinions as a black man.

He described the hostility of some blacks toward him as “intellectual segregation.” Legal segregation is over, but some people have “White Only” and “Colored” sections in their minds. Blacks aren’t supposed to stray from what the party line says is good for black folks. What’s good for black folks, to liberals I know, is the perpetuation of victimology. Teach the black man that he cannot help himself and encourage him to rely on his “betters” to guide him. The whole world is against him. He needs our help. He can depend on us. We’ll fight the “racists” on his behalf. We’ll take from the racists and give to him. Then he will love us.

Well, that’s the way I see it.

I’m done rambling for tonight. Welcome, new readers, and thanks for stopping by, regular readers. Buy Justice Thomas’s memoir, My Grandfather’s Son.

Good night to you all…

(Thanks, Michelle!)

———————————————————————–
Pick up a copy of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, released today. Check for updates to this post. I’ll have a personal story to share later.

In the meantime, watch/listen to Thomas’s interviews with:

• 60 Minutes (broadcast last night)
• ABC News (published yesterday)
• Rush Limbaugh today beginning in the second hour at 1 p.m. EDT. Not a member of Rush 24/7? Listen online at WBAL WMAL.

Related column and posts:

• Black Pride, White Paternalism
• The True Meaning of “Black Pride”
• Black Conservatives and Black Liberals: What’s the Difference?

***Scroll down for clarification***

Last week the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that schools in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, could not use race as a tiebreaker when assigning students.

Although Justice Clarence Thomas is vilified by black liberals, he has a keener understanding of “black pride” than they have. Unlike white liberals, Justice Thomas believes black children can excel in predominantly black schools and don’t need to mix with whites in order to learn. So-called progressive blacks have bought into the white supremacist notion that black children must share classrooms with white children to be educated. They completely miss the irony of their own self-loathing, practically begging whites to allow their children to sit alongside theirs.

The true meaning of “black pride” has been lost.

I’m always — always — embarrassed whenever I hear a black person convinced of his own “high” intelligence arguing that the government should force whites to live around blacks, send their kids to school with blacks, and hire underqualified blacks. It’s as though the civil rights, “black pride” movement never happened. People fought and died, bled and cried to dismantle a government system that forced racial segregation. Decades later, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are fighting and crying to keep in place a government system that forces racial integration because we poor black folks can’t do a thing for ourselves without white folks around.

If blacks like Clarence Thomas and myself were pushing that line of crap, the slurs “Uncle Tom” and “Aunt Jemima” would be apt. But we’re saying the opposite. Black liberals are the ones begging white people to “accept” them. At the same time, black liberals are the ones raising their kids to believe this country, the greatest on the planet, is a cesspool of white racism and that white people are bound and determined to keep them down. Why the heck would you want to be around people you think are trying to keep you down?

Contrary to what some of you have been taught, Americans have a right to live wherever they want and avoid whomever they want for whatever reason. Private businesses have a right to hire whomever they want and avoid hiring whomever they want for whatever reason. It’s shocking to some people and might hurt black people’s feelings, but it is not illegal to want to be with certain people based on race or to avoid certain people based on race. We have the freedom to self-segregate, and the government does not have the authority, constitutionally or otherwise, to order people around to achieve some arbitrary racial balance (or imbalance, as was the case with Jim Crow). It didn’t have that authority in the days of Plessy v. Ferguson, and it doesn’t have that authority now.

For a lesson in true — as opposed to phony — black pride, read Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District et al (PDF).

For a standard recitation of white liberal paternalism, read Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent. “The White Man’s Burden,” indeed.

Update: In case anyone has trouble spotting the issue in this post, allow me to be explicit: I’m not demeaning the idea of “black pride” in itself; I’m demeaning black liberals’ idea of black pride. Those are two very different things.

Monday, July 2 @ 9:00 a.m.: Check out my latest Townhall column, Black Pride, White Paternalism.

Juan Williams, author of Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It (I reviewed his book here), has an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education.”

An excerpt:

“In 1990, after months of interviews with Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the lead lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund on the Brown case, I sat in his Supreme Court chambers with a final question. Almost 40 years later, was he satisfied with the outcome of the decision? Outside the courthouse, the failing Washington school system was hypersegregated, with more than 90 percent of its students black and Latino. Schools in the surrounding suburbs, meanwhile, were mostly white and producing some of the top students in the nation…Had Mr. Marshall, the lawyer, made a mistake by insisting on racial integration instead of improvement in the quality of schools for black children?”

Justice Marshall’s answer is surprising.

Monday, July 2 @ 7:49 p.m.: Although I understand what Juan Williams is trying to say in this article — that racial integration in government schools might not be all it’s cracked up to be — the principle behind it is very much alive and should remain so: the government should not mandate or sanction segregation/discrimination by race in government schools. In other words, even if certain schools end up primarily black or primarily white because of residential patterns, the government should not have the power discriminate against people based on race or prefer certain races to “balance” schools. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA) was supposed to put an end to that power. It states in part (emphases added):

“Desegregation” means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but “desegregation” shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.

That is the principle of Brown v. Board of Education embodied in the CRA. How much clearer can it be?

If private individuals want to create racially exclusive schools (or hire certain people based on race), that’s their right as private business owners. We have freedom of association in this country, and that freedom includes (or should include) providing services to whomever we want to provide services. But the government must stay out of the skin color business.

Tuesday, July 3: Or to put it another way: “What [Brown] ordered was the removal of laws and policies prohibiting racially mixed schools. The principle it upheld was nondiscrimination — which would often (but not always) lead to racial integration.
…
“The real educational problems faced by minority kids today are not lack of white students to sit by but inadequate choice, lack of order, a shortage of good teachers and families who don’t make a priority of learning. Most parents, given a choice between racially balanced schools and safe, sound schools, would unhesitatingly choose the latter.”

Related posts:

• Juan Williams, Scared Leftists, Etc.
• Juan Williams, White Minority at UC, Etc.
• Education, the Global Economy, and You
• Super Post for Super Tuesday of Equality
• Dred Scott and the “Legacy of Slavery”
• Repeating History

And op-eds:

• Supreme Court hears race-based school assignment arguments
• Race preferences defeated in Michigan
• White Student Sues For Racial Discrimination
• Corrupt black leadership and culture of failure impede black progress

I just got word that Star Parker, one of my favorite people, will guest host ABC’s “The View” tomorrow. As you probably know, even if you live in a cave, Rosie O’Donnell left the show. I’ve never, ever watched it; I’ll see it for the first and only time tomorrow.

See Star’s latest column, “A detached NAACP in crisis.” My unsolicited advice to the organization: go away.

Book reviews:

• Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can Do About It
• White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay

Related post:

• Star Parker’s Forum At The Cato Institute

I met actor Joseph C. Phillips last year when we shared a discussion panel with Shelby Steele (author of White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era) on race relations. At one point during the Q&A, Phillips lost his temper with someone in the audience. He admonished the person for failing to acknowledge that America’s Founders, regardless of their faults, had the right ideas. Individual liberty, freedom of expression, due process, etc., are objectively good principles, even if the Founders hadn’t intended to apply these principles to blacks.

Phillips had committed the “sin” of publicly expressing gratitude for being an American, despite America’s history of slavery and subjugation. His new book, He Talk Like A White Boy, is a semi-autobiographical collection of essays about his love for this country and his respect for the “old school” values that make America strong. Recurring themes are family, faith, and freedom.

Best known for his roles as Lt. Martin Kendall on “The Cosby Show” and Justus Ward on the soap opera “General Hospital,” Phillips is a rarity in Hollywood. He writes candidly about growing up speaking proper English (“talking white”), being different from the mainstream, and having his “blackness” questioned.

The opening anecdote of the 232-page book sets the tone and reveals what eventually becomes a lifelong frustration. After he made a comment in his junior high school accelerated English class, another black student said, “He talk like a white boy!” What does that mean? Phillips thought. Instead of chastising the girl or dealing with the substance of the remark, the teacher merely corrected her grammar.

“No, LaQueesha. Joseph speaks like a white boy!” The teacher had the entire class repeat the correct sentence. “[T]hat moment,” writes Phillips, “was not only the beginning of junior high school, it was the beginning of my life.”

Phillips began to recognize what he calls the “tyranny of opinion” — the idea that a self-anointed group stood at the doors of culture and determined who was or wasn’t black enough. As a conservative columnist and speaker, Phillips receives his share of letters and e-mail from members of this group who sling ad hominem attacks (usually anonymously) but rarely deal with the substance of his work. “In their minds,” he writes, “I no longer speak like a white boy, I now think like a white boy.”

He Talk Like A White Boy is replete with examples of this tyranny in action. Phillips recounts a nasty experience on a TV talk show called “America’s Black Forum.” Between segments, a black liberal journalist let loose with a profanity-laced, personal rant against him. “Imagine if I had cursed at Deborah Mathis in front of a studio audience,” Phillips writes. “My inappropriate behavior would have signaled the bankruptcy of my arguments. To the guardians however, Deborah’s inappropriate and unprofessional behavior is seen as a righteous defense of the race.”

Such a defense is considered righteous to many blacks. Criticizing negative elements of black subculture is “airing dirty laundry,” and holding opinions different from mainstream blacks is traitorous.

Airing more dirty laundry, Phillips decries the emphasis on sports in the black community over academics. “Doing well in school and reading books become anti-black, joining the debate club instead of the basketball team is anti-black as well.” But Phillips doesn’t criticize others just for the sake of it. His book is textured with honest details and examples of his own faults, and he doesn’t rationalize his wrong-headed decisions.

Phillips stays focused on the book’s themes while writing honestly about his anxiety over auditioning, his mother’s suicide, and his efforts to be a faithful Christian, a good husband, and a good father. In a poignant essay about his late father, Phillips laments the diminished role of fathers in the culture in general:

It is a shame that as social currency, fatherhood has been so drastically devalued. A man’s honor is cheap—Boys must see the pride in their father’s smile, feel the firm hand of a father’s discipline, and hear the bite of correction in his voice. Boys will not grow into men unless men lead them—Boys do not need male role models and they don’t need father figures; they need fathers in the home.

Despite the “race traitor,” “Uncle Tom,” and “self-hater” name-calling, many black conservatives understand and share the desire to identify with our racial group. “[N]o matter how successful, educated, or integrated we become, we still seek out images and stories that reflect some sense of who we see when we look in the mirror,” Phillips writes. But that doesn’t preclude telling the truth.

Phillips injects humor into serious subject matter with laugh-out-loud tales about his attempts to be “cool” while conceding that he’s “corny.” For readers interested in a black actor’s perspective on Hollywood, He Talk Like A White Boy will definitely satisfy. Phillips has met and formed strong friendships with many well-known actors. However, the name-dropping is not boastful; it’s instructive. He shares his struggle to be a working actor who doesn’t compromise his values or accept demeaning roles.

He Talk Like A White Boy is one man’s story of love of family and country. Readers looking for a forthright — and sometimes painful — account of being a black conservative won’t be disappointed.

Originally published at National Review Online on June 2, 2006

Update II (4/20): Last Friday, I participated on a panel organized and sponsored by the Booker T. Washington Society. Ron Court and Reggie Jones started the organization last year to commemorate the 150th birthday of Booker T. Washington, former slave, educator, public speaker, and writer.

The Booker T. Washington Society is committed to educating students about Washington and providing high school students with $1000 college scholarships. The Society also treats scholarship recipients to a few days in the Washington D.C., area to see historic sites and attend workshops, where they hear from black entrepreneurs and others. Last year, the panel I participated on focused on economics. This year, the group was smaller and the panel discussion was more intimate.

More importantly, all the panelists — me, Rev. Jesse Peterson, and Reggie Jones — are Christians. Court, who was moderating, is a Christian, too. Rather than beginning the discussion with Hurricane Katrina (the students were from New Orleans), each of us shared our personal testimonies and our ascent from the abyss, so to speak. Two of us currently own businesses, and one used to own a business. Jesse Peterson, who built a janitorial service from nothing, sold it and started an organization called Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND). The motto is “Rebuilding the family by rebuilding the man.”

Peterson operates a home for mostly black boys, where they must work to earn their keep and learn how to be responsible, decent men. Most of the boys, like many black children in this country, are not being raised by their fathers. Often vilified by ignorant blacks who can’t tolerate another black person who doesn’t blame whites for problems, Peterson truly cares about blacks, unlike so-called leaders in the professional civil rights industry.

Back to faith. The focus of the panel discussion was personal stories of faith and how that faith gave us the courage to clean up our lives and reach for our dreams. Afterward, I was pleasantly surprised that so many people thanked me for sharing my testimony. Unless otherwise indicated, I always assume most people in a group are not Christians. My assumption was wrong this time.

The group, which included students, a few teachers and parents, wanted suggestions on what to do about rising crime rates in New Orleans and how to reach black boys growing up without fathers. Peterson gave some “tough love” advice about helping boys to confront and forgive their absent fathers, to stop considering themselves victims of white racism, and to take responsibility for their children and for themselves as men. He also said they should stop listening to civil rights charlatans, who are in the business of keeping blacks angry.

Again, last year’s discussion centered around economic issues. This year, it was faith based. Economics won’t save these lost boys. Only Christ can do that, and it was a wonderful experience being surrounded by people who feel exactly the way I do.

Read about the changed life of a man who lived in Peterson’s group home as a teen.
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Don Imus

To all the people who keep e-mailing me about Don Imus, STOP. To those who intend to, DON’T.

Here’s my obligatory statement: I’m embarrassed by the way some blacks have reacted to Imus’s remarks and thoroughly disgusted by their white enablers. As a multiracial society, America is rife with double standards. There’s one standard of acceptable behavior for whites, and another, much lower standard of acceptable behavior for blacks (of all socioeconomic classes). It’s shameful. Everybody knows it, but few will publicly admit it.

If black Americans in 2007 are this delicate and overreact to the slightest insults with this much unrighteous indignation, it’s pretty safe to say black people are not made the way they used to be, of stronger stuff, able to withstand truly demeaning and criminal treatment at the hands of true oppressors. It’s sad to know that the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of people who faced actual oppression are so much weaker, much less discerning, and much more undignified.

People like Jason Whitlock and John McWhorter and Michelle Malkin have expressed my own sentiments about the matter very well. I won’t be posting anything else about this subject, and there will be no discussions on this blog about it. If I decide to cover it in an op-ed, I’ll link to it. Moving on…

[Update 2:47 p.m.: This dumb Imus discussion has gone on for what...over a week? I've stayed out of it until this morning, adding my obligatory statement to the fray in the hopes that people will leave me alone about it...and Slate picks up the statement. "Power of the blogs," I guess.]

Booker T.

It’s been a long week for me. Keeping up with work and offline responsibilities while following the dramatic news of the former Duke lacrosse players’ exonerations has been exhausting. And it’s not over yet! I’m scheduled to speak this morning at a Celebrate Booker T. event. High schoolers from New Orleans are in the area to receive scholarships. I’m one of the featured speakers at the conference, along with Jesse Peterson of BOND, who has done wonderful work counseling at-risk boys and others. Peterson is doing his part to help rebuild the broken down black family by “rebuilding the man.” Read more here.

After that, I’m attending the afternoon session of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast as a guest.

XM Radio

Tomorrow morning evening from 8-10 a.m. EDT 5-7 p.m. EDT (sleeping in – woo hoo!), I’m co-hosting my libertarian pal’s radio show, “Casey at the Bat!” Casey Lartigue can be heard on XM radio on channel 169. We’ll talk about the Duke case, maybe Don Imus (cringe), and other topics. Read more about Casey.

Walter Williams is scheduled to appear during the second hour. I’ve never co-hosted a radio show before, so it will be strictly amateur hour for me!

Somewhere between-after all this, I’ve got a column to file for Monday. Have a nice day!

I’m up to my eyeballs in work, but I wanted to post a couple of quick links this early morning.

First, NPR’s Juan Williams, author of Enough, is still catching it for his “conservative” views, if this op-ed (free reg. req.) is any indication.

In “The Hard Facts of Black America,” he lays out…hard facts. For the privilege, he’s called a turncoat, Uncle Tom, traitor — the usual stuff you’d hear from unimaginative, narrow-minded, limited black folks.

Quoting the 70 percent illegitimacy rate statistic, drop-out rate, poverty rate, prison rate, criminal culture, etc., doesn’t play too well with leftist blacks because of the “dirty laundry” stigma. There’s no stigma against getting knocked up or having served time in prison, but if you talk about how much of it goes on in the black community in front of white people, ostracism and insults, baby.

I’ve learned in my four years of blogging and writing that to name a thing is worse than being the thing. Haven’t figured out how that works yet…

Well, what is the brother doing besides talking and writing about it? What is he doing for his community?, ask the critics.

Talking and writing about these things, pushing them into the public debate, and encouraging people to discuss the issues, think critically, and solve their own problems is a worthy public service, in the opinion of this blogger. Check out my review of his book.

In other news, “Why the left fears free speech on campus,” written by David French, defender of academic freedom, is another must-read for the day.

Last week I wrote about raging white leftist idiots at Columbia University in “Rude and Intolerant Liberals at Columbia University.” They stormed the stage in “protest” against members of the Minuteman Project, a group of patriots willing to do what the federal government, including the Bush administration, won’t do: protect our freakin’ borders.

I read that Jim Gilchrist’s glasses were knocked off and broken, among other things, and someone (or more than one) called black Minuteman Marvin Stewart a “nigger.” He’s suing the university. The video is at YouTube. Hat tip: Independent Conservative, who has more video.

French says this about campus leftists:

The protesters hide behind tactics of the ’60s to lash out helplessly at a culture that seems (to them) to be inexorably moving right. With every branch of government in conservative hands, with the rise of conservative media and with the increasing influence of religious conservatives, the radical left feels under siege. To make matters worse, the conservative movement is now taking aim at the left’s last cultural bastion – the nation’s colleges and universities – in an effort to reopen the marketplace of ideas on campus.

In the ’60s, the excesses of campus radicals eventually led to a cultural backlash that ushered in the Reagan era. These same excesses committed in an era of blogs, YouTube downloads and talk radio lead to a much more immediate response. So, rather than reveling in last week’s momentary triumph, Columbia’s leftist radicals find themselves on the defensive, blaming others for the violence and begging the administration not to search the Internet for clues about the protesters’ identities.

I hope the idiot-students and the school remain on the defensive and are forced to account for their uncivilized behavior. Bored white fools at Columbia University have nothing to hang on to in their empty, godless lives, so they fill the void with outdated, irrelevant rants about racism, attack the people trying to defend their freedom to rant, and call a black patriot a nigger because he refuses to think and act the way they believe he should.

I’d love to see Stewart face to face on the street with one of those snotty kids. The words loose bowels and soiled underwear come to mind…

Update: Mychal Massie on the folly and tragedy of Section 8.

Update III (9/13): Did you land here from a search on “Juan Williams Enough?” Follow this link to access my review of his fabulous book.

Update II (9/1): Juan Williams on Getting Past Katrina.

Commenter Tracey writes: “Our problems start in the home with the family. “The Man” doesn’t make Black men be irresponsible and bail on Black women. ‘The Man’ doesn’t make Black women devalue themselves by settling for dishonorable males and then being second generation of welfare recipients with too many mouths to feed. ‘The Man’ doesn’t make us glorify rappers as heroes and put down the Juan Williams, the Bill Cosbys, the Rev. Jesse Lee Pattersons and the La Shawn Barbers who demand that we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

“I get so frustrated hearing my fellow Black man or a Black woman say how we are so disenfranchised and too weak to go vote (by voting machine according to Cynthia McKinney), get an education, get employment and to stop having kids out of wedlock.

“I am ordering my copy of this book now and I can’t wait to read it. I plan on giving it to a couple of my bitter, liberal “revolutionary” friends that I met in college who still have those beliefs.”
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Just finished an interview with NPR’s Juan Williams, author of a new book, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — and What We Can Do About It.

The interview will be excerpted for my Washington Examiner column and incorporated into a separate book review.

As a registered Democrat, Williams (whose son is a Republican) is quite brave for going against the flow and writing a book that’s highly critical of black so-called leadership and the current state of black America. He’s also very gracious. I asked him about blogs, of course. Can’t wait to share. Check the blog for links to the interview and review.

In other news, Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker dissects an article about skin color diversity in the University of California system. He notes that so-called diversity programs are aimed at the wrong group:

The whole edifice rests on doublespeak because the aim is to help certain groups at the expense of other groups…There is no majority population in California. Whites are a plurality, but they are under half of the population. So the euphemism “underrepresented minority” is employed. Falsely. You see, because Asian-heritage students excel at academics, they now outnumber whites at the top UC campuses. Caucasians account for a substantially smaller share of UC enrollment at the elite campuses than their share of the California population.

That means that whites are by definition an underrepresented minority! But you will never see UC including whites in the various schemes to benefit groups on the basis of race. Nor will they admit that the net effect of their efforts at racial engineering, should they succeed, would be to penalize hard-studying members of a racial minority…Fortunately, California voters passed an initiative banning the state from preferences based on race. So the bureaucrats are forced to resort to nonsense language and stealth to implement their agenda. In the process, they damage the university, penalize those who work hardest to achieve, and waste time and money.

Emphasis added. Good — and true — stuff. Will whites in California start clamoring for skin color preferences? Interesting!

California is a rogue state, and some of its judges follow suit. Despite state law, approved by 54 percent of the voters, that prohibits the use of race in public hiring, education, and contracting, a state court judge says, and I paraphrase, “So what? I’m not bound by state law.”

Gail A. Andler decided from on high that race may be considered when setting school attendance boundaries.

Update: March Hare blogged about Asians at UC and affirmative action last year. Check out Part I and Part II.

If I had my laptop with me, I’d live-blog this event. See Moral Reconstruction post below. But I’m on the Treo. Blogging this is difficult. One cool thing so far: John M. called my name before I approached him. He remembered meeting me two years ago and knows my work.

Update (6:20 p.m.): Great event. I’ll update with a summary and photos (I’ll also post photos here) tomorrow and open the post for commenting.

Update II (7/27 @ the crack of dawn): Moral Reconstruction: A Model for Urban Transformation was a refreshing diversion from typical discussions about race, culture, inner cities, poverty, etc. Although participants shared the view that many problems in inner cities are exacerbated by immoral and destructive behavior, each had slighly different ideas about solutions.

Spiritual Solutions

Reverend Jesse L. Peterson, founder of Brotherhood Organization for A New Destiny (BOND), which counsels boys and men and helps them build good moral character, is not popular among black liberals for obvious reasons. Last year he got to the heart of the Katrina problem and blamed the people for not helping themselves. Either “Moral poverty cost blacks in New Orleans” (see his column archives) or one of his other Katrina columns was widely disseminated and discussed. A white Congressman made news and was branded a racist after he e-mailed the piece to various people.

Peterson is the author of SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America (reviewed here and here).

Reverend Grant Storm (pictured left with Ward Connerly) is a minister and activist in New Orleans who believes, like all Bible-believing Christians, that man is dead in his sins and needs spiritual cleansing. Without addressing spiritual poverty, there’s little point talking about “morality.” Without God, what is morality? Whose morality is it? Storm, Peterson, and I believe that people are responsible for their own behavior but agree that government dependency makes it easier for people to give in to their sin nature.

Storm is white and ministers in a predominantly black community. He’s been called a racist for laying blame at the feet of the people.

Patrick Fagan, a fellow in Family and Cultural Issues at Heritage (research link), believes, as all Bible-believing Christians do, that sex was designed for the marital relationship. Outside this relationship, sex is a sin. The Bible calls it fornication. The problems in the inner city are legion, and sex outside marriage is one of the culprits. It leads to out-of-wedlock pregnancy, fatherlessness, AIDS and other diseases, welfare dependency, unstable communites, etc.

Social science research has shown that children reared in two-parent (a man and a woman married to each other) homes are much better off than children who are not. They are less likely to be poor or engage in premarital sex. They also do better in schools. Boys especially benefit from having a father in the home. I’ve written about this subject many times. See Baby Daddy and Black Marriage.

Government is ill-equipped and unqualified to address moral issues.

Kerr Johnson (pictured right, between McWhorter and Fagan), a married father of five (all by the same woman!), is living proof of how the cycle of pathology can be broken. He came to BOND as an angry, fatherless, trouble-making 15-year-old. Jesse Peterson helped him deal with his anger toward his absent father and taught him to forgive. A boy who once seemed destined to spend most of his life in prison is now a loving and committed father, husband, and Christian.

Non-Spiritual Solutions

John McWhorter (who recently became engaged; so much for the “advice,” readers!) is the author of several books, including Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America. Although John is not really a conservative, he’s called a conservative because he focuses on issues other than white racism. In fact, any black person is deemed “conservative” if his first reaction to a crisis in the black community is to look within instead of without.

[Read his latest, Making Do With Table Scraps.]

As an academic, he’s seen firsthand the self-defeating behavior in the black community and among some of his black students. He wrote about it in Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.

John is not a Christian, so his approach to “moral reconstruction” is not based on the biblical model. He’s more moderate than black liberals think. He’s not opposed to some form of race preferences and believes in a kind of “leader” model for cultural change. John says we need to reach the people who need to hear the moral reconstruction message through the medium of TV and/or the celebrities they relate to, like popular hip-hop types. He also believes this group could be reached through a charismatic, under-50 black conservative woman with a TV show.

John places more of the blame on government than the people, a point challenged by Storm and Peterson. He talked about black communities at various points in time (1925, 1967, and now) and reflected on changes in family structure, male behavior, community reaction to unacceptable behavior, and how government made it easier for men to neglect their parental duties.

Ward Connerly (pictured below), author of Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences (which I reviewed in 2003), founded a group called the American Civil Rights Institute.

Vilified for his opposition to skin color preferences, Connerly led the charge against race- and sex-based preferences in public hiring and admissions in California. Proposition 209 was approved by 54 percent of California voters.

Connerly is the engine behind an effort to end preferences in Michigan. Despite strong opposition of a few groups, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (announcement) will appear on the November ballot.

The voters, and not the courts, will decide.

Connerly was raised by his grandmother and aunt, and his father figure was his aunt’s husband. He was nurtured and inspired by teachers and other authority figures growing up. Connerly concedes that fatherlessness in inner cities is at epidemic levels and believes we need to cultivate new role models. (He used the phrase “new institutions.”) No one and nothing can take the place of a loving, committed, residential biological father, but since too many black kids don’t have one, we need to seek alternatives.

As a Christian, I am biased. I believe profound and deep-rooted changes like Kerr’s take place only when Christ changes the heart. No government program or community revitalization plan will ever build moral character or inspire people to sacrifice for the good of others.

The panelists discussed many issues, and the audience asked good questions. This summary is my recollection of events, so don’t quote me. Instead, listen to the entire conference by downloading this MP3 file. (Right-click and select “Save As” to download it to your hard drive.)

• Previous post: Moral Reconstruction
• Related report from Rob Redding

If you’re in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday swing by the Heritage Foundation for a discussion about what people really need to focus on: morality. I’ve blogged time and again that immorality, not racism or any other “ism,” is the most pressing problem in “inner cities” and urban areas.

Drug and excessive alcohol use, criminality, illegitimacy, government dependency, refusal to work — unless people are willing to give up these destructive things, there is little point in talking about economics, or entrepreneurship, or raising the academic bar. When destructive factors disproportionately affect a racial group, that group must be honest about what’s going on and individuals must consciously make an effort to change and reverse the generational pattern.

That’s what I think, anyway. Nothing else seems to be working, so at this point, my ideas are just as valid as anyone else’s.

Panelists for Moral Reconstruction: A Model for Urban Transformation Conference include John McWhorter (latest op-ed, Ending Victim-Like Thinking — also see these must-reads: Mainstreaming Men and Defined by defiance) and Ward Connerly. Location: 214 Massachusetts Ave NE. Date: July 26. Time: 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The blurb:

Our nation’s Gulf Coast Region continues to face serious and ongoing problems in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This Town Hall style Conference will focus on solutions to these vexing policy issues. Transformation of the human spirit, however, is a key ingredient, because the destruction of this spirit is at the heart of the great breakdown witnessed during and following in the wake of these natural disasters. Our conference will seek to outline options and identify solutions that could serve as a model for rebuilding, not only the Gulf Coast, but also for transforming America’s inner cities and urban areas.

Hope to see you there.

Related posts:

• Vanguard
• Star Parker’s Forum At The Cato Institute
• Individuality
• Cowboy Capitalism
• How Not To Be Poor
• Black Conservatives and Black Liberals: What’s the Difference?
• New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi, on Lockdown
• The Burden of Acting White
• Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
• Baby Daddy
• Black Marriage

I found an “old” essay written by Shelby Steele, author of recently released White Guilt. The main topic is individuality. I thought you might enjoy it. An excerpt:

Not long ago C-SPAN carried a Harvard debate on affirmative action between conservative reformer Ward Connerly and liberal law professor Christopher Edley. During the Q and A a black undergraduate rose from a snickering clump of black students to challenge Mr. Connerly, who had argued that the time for racial preferences was past. Once standing, this young man smiled unctuously, as if victory were so assured that he must already offer consolation. But his own pose seemed to distract him, and soon he was sinking into incoherence. There was impatience in the room, but it was suppressed. Black students play a role in campus debates like this and they are indulged.
…

Here is a brief litany of obvious truths that have been resisted in the public discourse of black America over the last thirty years: a group is no stronger than its individuals; when individuals transform themselves they transform the group; the freer the individual, the stronger the group; social responsibility begins in individual responsibility. Add to this an indisputable fact that has also been unmentionable: that American greatness has a lot to do with a culturally ingrained individualism, with the respect and freedom historically granted individuals to pursue their happiness–this despite many egregious lapses and an outright commitment to the oppression of black individuals for centuries. And there is one last obvious but unassimilated fact: ethnic groups that have asked a lot from their individuals have done exceptionally well in America even while enduring discrimination.

Now consider what this Harvard student is called upon by his racial identity to argue in the year 2002. All that is creative and imaginative in him must be rallied to argue the essential weakness of his own people. Only their weakness justifies the racial preferences they receive decades after any trace of anti-black racism in college admissions. The young man must not show faith in the power of his people to overcome against any odds; he must show faith in their inability to overcome without help. As Mr. Connerly points to far less racism and far more freedom and opportunity for blacks, the young man must find a way, against all the mounting facts, to argue that black Americans simply cannot compete without preferences. If his own forebears seized freedom in a long and arduous struggle for civil rights, he must argue that his own generation is unable to compete on paper-and-pencil standardized tests.

Emphases added.

Update: A libertarian on individual rights and the Duke rape case:

The Duke case presents, in a microcosm, a clear picture of life in a future United States in which the Politically Correct world of the college campus becomes the legal standard for everyone. That is a world in which all events are viewed through an extremely abstract prism in which there are only “group” or “collective” rights, and where all individual rights are destroyed. Ultimately, it is the world of the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin’s “Show Trials” of the 1930s, in which we saw this whole thing in full flower.
…
The Duke case is an outrage on many fronts, but I argue here that the real battleground is abstract, but also very real, and that is where individual rights go against the zeitgeist of “collective rights” that are all the rage among our intellectual and political classes.