January 19, 2009

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ENOUGH MAL CONTENTS:

How to Reach Black America (William Raspberry, January 17, 2005, Washington Post)

A quote from Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1958 book, "Stride Toward Freedom," says something that badly needs saying as we celebrate his birthday nearly five decades later:

"In short," he wrote, "we must work on two fronts. On the one hand, we must continue to resist the system . . . which is the basic cause of our lagging standards; on the other hand, we must work constructively to improve the standards themselves. There must be a rhythmic alternation between attacking the causes and healing the effects."

The quote comes to mind because of the public reaction to what Bill Cosby has been saying: that low-income black parents are spending too much on Nikes and too little on "Hooked on Phonics," and that they are failing to instill proper discipline in their "knucklehead" children, who, by their speech and behavior, are dooming themselves to economic failure.

The words are harsh, as Cosby meant them to be. But they are not wrong. Adjusting for the fact that one is a comic and the other was an unusually eloquent preacher, Cosby was saying what King said a generation ago when he demanded that we be judged not by what we are but by how we behave -- "by the content of our character."

King, obviously hoping white people were listening, was saying: If we do what we have to do to limit our behavior-spawned problems, then you must learn to look beyond our skin and see our behavior. Cosby, whose target is low-income black America, is saying: White people can't save you if you won't try to save yourselves.


Not that there's anything wrong with Mr. Cosby stepping up, but it speaks volumes that the civil rights institutions don't do so.


[originally posted: 1/17/05]

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 19, 2009 12:03 AM
blog comments powered by Disqus
« FROM THE ARCHIVES: CHARACTER WITNESS: | Main | FROM THE ARCHIVES: ROLLING DOWN LIKE WATERS: »