Bill Cosby

How much does racial discrimination explain? So far as black poverty is concerned, I’d say little or nothing, which is not to say that every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated. But let’s pose a few questions. Is it racial discrimination that stops black students from studying and completing high school? Is it racial discrimination that’s responsible for the 68 percent illegitimacy rate among blacks?

“How not to be poor” is classic Walter Williams. When I first started writing my little column, I wrote about the same things and got plenty of hate mail for the trouble. What should be common sense is often viewed as “self-hatred” by black liberals. I argued that blacks’ biggest problem was their own behavior, which is true for any other human being.

I’d get e-mails with questions like this one, usually from black women who called themselves taking me to task: “You mean to tell me you don’t think racism still exists?”

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I’ve heard/seen all sorts of epithets for black conservatives, but porch ni***er is a new one. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Mike Seate was castigated for committing the crime of publicly criticizing blacks in a column titled, “Brothers, Don’t Go Messing Downtown.” In the column he wrote:

There are few times when I can recall actually being embarrassed to be black. One was when political writer Ward Connerly embarked on a campaign to end affirmative action (ah, the selflessness). Another came a few years later, when XFL running back Rod Smart jogged onto the field in the short-lived football league’s opening game wearing a grammatically challenged shirt reading “He Hate Me.”

Those infractions were relatively easy to recover from. But not shooting people in downtown Pittsburgh. That’s a screw-up this city and I might never fully get over.

If you brothers hadn’t noticed, Downtown isn’t exactly looking like floss city these days. Bums use abandoned storefronts for bedrooms, toilets and everything else. We lose new stores faster than shoplifters lose security guards. If y’all hadn’t noticed, a good bit of the city’s economic decline is your fault.

Yup. We have met the enemy, and he’s wearing corn rows, a Lakers jersey and a 9mm Glock shoved into his waistband. We can’t blame this one on the white man, an unfair economic system, or 400 years of slavery and oppression. This is our mess.

That’s some bold talk, Mike. Embarrassed by your brothers and sisters for their unruly and uncivilized behavior? And in the presence of whites who might be reading your column? And you say the enemies of black America are blacks killing other blacks and not rich, white Republicans from Texas?

How refreshing!

In today’s column, Seate writes:

People, don’t blame the messenger. Neither Bill Cosby nor I ever shot anyone Downtown. While I can’t speak for Mr. Cosby, I have not intentionally influenced black kids to drop out of school, dress like gangsters, carry guns or hang out on street corners instead of educating themselves and seeking jobs.

According to our critics, any crime or anti-social act committed by a black man is not his responsibility: “Africans were a peaceful people until the evil white man came and stole us away and remade our minds in his savage image,” one reader railed. “If we kill or rob, it’s not our fault. We’re only reacting to what the white man has taught us.”

If black people are this uncomfortable about staring our problems in the face or even discussing them, we’re in big trouble.

Excuses and scapegoats will always be easier than painful self-examination. Even Fat Albert could tell you that.

“Self-examination? What about white racists doing a little self-examination,” I can almost hear liberals whine.

Just a few minutes ago, I got an e-mail from a race preferences proponent who shared what he considered evidence of racism. An employer instructed a receptionist to mark job applications by race. Based on this episode, the e-mailer implied that applications filled out by blacks and Hispanics went in the garbage, though he couldn’t say so because he has no proof. For all he knew, the employer was marking applications to make sure he stuck to his race quota so he wouldn’t get sued.

The e-mailer concludes: “I realize affirmative action is not the perfect solution. But until we can wipe out the entrenched racism that is rampant in this country, or until someone can come up with a better solution (I’m all ears) it is a necessary imperfect solution.”

Here’s your answer, so lean in closer. Until people stop blaming others for their failures and accept some good old-fashioned responsibility, we can’t begin to address the problem of “racism.” Dealing with race discrimination, perceived or otherwise, is secondary to individual accountability.

If and when certain people engage in a little self-examination, per Seate’s advice, that’s all the answer you’ll get from me.

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Clarence Page is finally making some sense. He comments on liberal Harvard types whining about black immigrants outperforming black Americans. This column, I can deal with.

You probably read about this a few weeks ago in the New York Times (registration req.). Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and others are facing the unintended consequences of their precious skin color preferences. It seems that immigrant blacks outnumber American blacks at Harvard. Gates wants to know why and plans to “study” this phenomenon. What is the secret of black immigrant achievement? Rocket scientists, get ready!

“We need to learn what the immigrants’ kids have so we can bottle it and sell it, because many members of the African-American community, particularly among the chronically poor, have lost that sense of purpose and values which produced our generation,” Gates said.

Why he needs a study for this, I don’t know. Isn’t it common sense? Doesn’t it go without saying? Isn’t the question rhetorical? Clarence Page writes:

I was not surprised by those findings. Like many other African-Americans, I have been noticing for years how the children of black immigrant families tend to be much better represented among high school honor-roll achievers than their native-American black counterparts are….

A bigger question to me is this: Why are black students whose families have been in America for generations being left behind by newcomers, including black newcomers from other countries?

Gates plans to organize a study group around that question. I can offer the group one easy possibility, no charge: Immigrant kids work harder.

They work harder, in part, because their parents work harder – and their parents work harder because of their relentless optimism: Where others might see a dead-end job, immigrants of all colors see an entry-level opportunity.

There you have it. Plain, old-fashioned optimism and hard work from freedom-loving people. Maybe such information coming from someone other than a conservative (like me) will have a positive impact on liberals who just can’t make up their minds which dogma they want to use to justify race discrimination: an elusive, amorphous definition of “diversity” or the making-up-for-past-injustices scheme.

If they wanted skin color diversity at Harvard, they got skin color diversity at Harvard. As for “past injustices”, I’d like to hear from black, middle class American-born-and-bred college-bound 18 year-olds who’ve suffered from the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Please, feel free to comment on this blog.

Clarence Page had better watch his step or he’s going to earn a reputation as……………..a conservative! Eat your heart out, Bill Cosby.

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Michael “Cobb” Bowen, fellow Conservative Brotherhood member, is a much more temperate writer than I am. He deftly addresses criticism of Bill Cosby’s latest remarks and explains his position well without the edge I utilize in my writing. I invite you to read his excellent post, “The Problem with Civil Rights Politics.”:

The Civil Rights Movement is over. It was, despite continuing rhetoric to the contrary, a complete success. All that is required from this point on is a modicum of vigilance. We should act as if it’s done because it is done. Nobody is going to roll back the clock. Nobody is going to steal the money that Robert Johnson made from BET. Nobody is going to firebomb any churches, sic dogs or use firehoses on blacks who want to vote or otherwise use the American system. Nobody is going to keep blacks out of the stock market, public universities, hospitals, the officer’s ranks of the armed services, government employment.

The first step to a solution comes from loosening the grip of the politics of Civil Rights on your attention and then redirecting your attention to the politics of Social Power. Part of the problem is that too many African Americans don’t feel as though there are any politics appropriate for them aside from those of Civil Rights. That is the problem we in The Conservative Brotherhood are trying to address. Even by being boldly if sometimes even foolishly contrarian, many outspoken blacks are trying to say that there is another way for African American political interests. It’s damned hard to get that message out there when most of the media engages in a(n unconscious) conspiracy against independent black political voices.

Independent black political voices. I like the sound of it.

(Hat tip: Booker Rising)