Betsy Newmark was impressed by Juan Williams when she saw him speak about the topic of his new book, Enough, this summer. and evidently Betsy’s daughter is a chip off the ole’ block. La Shawn Barber thinks Williams has the right idea, too. Don’t miss her Examiner piece about Williams’ approach to the problems of blacks in America.
Black leaders must stop painting blacks as powerless victims, says Williams, and use their energy and resources to help poor blacks equip themselves to compete in a global economy, which has little regard for historical (and outdated) racial grievances. Today’s leaders “misinform, mismanage and miseducate by refusing to articulate established truths about what it takes to get ahead: strong families, education and hard work.”
In a fluid prose style, Williams provides a panoramic view of post-slavery black leadership, which emphasized high moral character, hard work and self-sacrifice, revealing a sharp dividing line between leaders like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, and corrupt post-civil rights “leaders” Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and big-city mayors like Marion Barry.
Blacks did not make enormous gains during their struggle for full citizenship and equal justice by playing put-upon victims. They made those gains by harnessing the power to control their own destinies.
Good for Juan Williams and other people who want to expose the leaders of whatever “victimhoodism” that tries to convince people that they are more powerful as long as they can identify themselves as victims.
The leaders of these victim movements derive their power from the member’s perception that they are constant victims. Unfortunately, it is only the leaders of these movements that have any power, while the members are being exploited. Personnally, if I were a member of one of these movements, I would question the leadership that has been in power for decades, why you can’t do more to help me out. When the victims are gone, so goes the leadership’s power.
While some people may disagree with her, Tammy Bruce has done some interesting writings and speeches addressing the power in the feminist movement and all “victimhoodism” movements. She was a hardcore feminist for years and does not speak highly of the leadership.
Many black conservatives are now doing a good job of reframing that paradigm.
Which is why it’s unfortunate that, after slave owners, CONSERVATIVES (Dem and Rep) were the primary force in the actual, literal victimizing of african americans. And conservatives (Dem and Rep) were the most zealous, vitriolic defenders of mainting that human rights abomination, Jim Crow, as long as they could until liberals dismantled it.
Which is why many african americans don’t give two shits what conservatives have to say on this matter. It’s unfortunately, because this time, the conservatives are right.
Lost and Soldout!
Filthy rich negros who have lost their collective souls. How soon we all forget, it was those UNEDUCATED, POOR, men and women who boycotted the apartheid southern establishment into economic submission. Yall take for granted eating at a restaurant, watching a movie in a theater, staying at a hotel of your choosing. Those illeterate Negros built the bridges that you walked across, the ones that you take for granted. They are not the doormats that you can just wipe your collective black underclass shame. Shame on Juan Williams, of all people, Mr. Eyes on the Prize! One of the true test of literacy is reading comprehension. How could he or any one of yall read the history of Southern Louisianna, with it’s auction blocks and slave ports, Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson.
Yall need to educate yourselves. Don’t read some propagandist, recycled, negrophopic, opinion history; afterall, it’s 2006, read the primary sources in the original text.
And next time you see some uneducated, white-haired, toothless, little old lady in a wheel chair sitting for three days helplessly on an interstate overpass, thank her for the freedoms that you enjoy today.