In terms of educational, economic and social success, there have always been at least two schools of thought within the black American community. The first of which:
What can we do for ourselves and what are we waiting for?
This perspective, I believe, is beautifully illustrated by the words of Frederick Douglass given in a speech in Boston in 1865:
“[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us…I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!…And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!…[Y]our interference is doing him positive injury.”
Douglass’ sentiment here cares not to be judged on the basis of his race but by his character, his intelligence, interests, physical attributes and abilities, skill levels and his motivation to succeed.
Thankfully, American history is mired in examples of enormous black achievement amid the most racially pernicious time periods. History, that is often—purposefully I think—dismissed, omitted and outright lied about.
As early as the 1850’s blacks had a win, win attitude towards the interests of public service and took full advantage of what was an inherent embrace from a welcoming Republican Party.
1867- John F. Cook, a black Washingtonian, is named Chair of the Republican Party.
1870- Of the 23 blacks elected to the United States Congress, 13 were former slaves and all were Republican. Please allow me: 1865, you are a slave, 1870, you are a sitting U.S Congressmen: http://www1.law.nyu.edu/davisp/neglectedvoices/index2.html
Education Public and Armed Service:
In the area of educational excellence, there exists—arguably—no greater American educational legacy than that of Dunbar High School and Thomas Sowell a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University has chronicled that story: “From 1870 to 1955, most of Dunbar High School, (Washington D.C.’s first public school for blacks) graduates went off to college, earning degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Williams, Wesleyan and others. As early as 1899, Dunbar students had higher scores on citywide tests, than students at any of the District’s white schools. Dunbar’s attendance records were generally better than those of white schools and its rate of tardiness was lower. Latin was taught throughout the period from 1870 to 1955 and in the early decades, Greek was taught as well. Large classes were the norm, 40 students per teacher. It was more than 40 years before Dunbar had a lunchroom, which was then so small that many children had to eat lunch on the street. Blackboards were old and cracked. It was 1950 before the school had a public address system. Most of the parents of Dunbar students worked in unskilled and semiskilled occupations. White-collar and professional parents totaled 17 percent. http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html
“Yet the dogma marches on that a middle-class background is necessary for academic success,” Sowell opines.
These and many other “black success stories” aren’t isolated incidents of academic and political accomplishment, that led to upper-class living standards but to the contrary, these occurrences were the norm and more importantly the culturally expected standard for our grandparents and great grandparents.
The second school of thought did not take root until the onset and coupling of the “social engineering of the 1960’s.” and the eroding of personal responsibility within the black community. The message that blacks should “not work, don’t save and not get married,” was baked in and permeated black neighborhoods and soon enough, the aforementioned successes of blacks began to become over shadowed by what were alarming and distressing statistical rates within the black community.
The second school of thought is more an “article of faith” than anything else:
What can the government, “the man,” “whitie,” or the “system,” do for me and why is it taking so damn long?
All too often intellectuals and second-hand intellectuals, for that matter, make the case that the existential threat to black achievement and the overwhelming reason for black underachievement is the “system.” As I stated in “part one:” “because of America’s racist past the system is forever rigged, most blacks are poor, there is a racist at the heart of all whites, and that because of these things, regardless of class or opportunity, no black American should be held to mainstream, (white) standards of morality or ‘academic achievement.’”
This “I am forever a victim” way of thinking and its cultural acceptance has doomed us all.
Nonetheless, numbers don’t lie:
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. According to the U.S. Centers for Dieses Control, blacks make up 12% of the population (36 million), but 35% of the abortions in America. The CDC reports that since 1973 there have been approximately more than 13 million aborted black fetuses in America. Blackgenocide.org
Black on Black Crime Rates
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 94 percent of all blacks killed nationally between 1976 and 1999 were killed by other blacks.
On October 17th 2007 Chicago tribune columnist Clarence Paige reported that “Today’s young black males kill more young black males in a year than the Ku Klux Klan killed in its entire history. Paige chronicles that between 1882 and 1968, historians have documented more than 4,700 lynching of African Americans, mostly in the South. In 2005, the latest full year of FBI statistics concludes, “almost 8,000 black Americans were murdered, mostly by other black Americans.”
Black Dropout Rates
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics shows that black students drop out of high school 11 percentage points fewer than they did in 1980, but still maintain a national average of 8.4 percent, 3 percentage points higher than their white counterparts.
Pregnant Unwed and Out of Control
The National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 2007 nearly 72 percent of the births to black women were out of wedlock. Mothers were unmarried in about 51 percent of Hispanic births and 28 percent of non-Hispanic white births.
A 70 percent illegitimacy rate among blacks (90 percent in some inner cities) easily makes the point that there is a serious lack of accountability and responsibility. And the notion of blacks killing each other, whether by gun or by abortion doctor appointed visit, at a higher rate than the Ku Klux Klan could have ever dreamed of accomplishing is beyond disgraceful. And to know these facts, as many “civil rights leaders” and intellectuals and blacks in general do or to pretend that it is not truth (as ugly as it is) “or that “systemic” forces are more responsible than blacks themselves is knowingly to lie to oneself.”
From the moment of emancipation our forefathers and mothers accomplished and secured for themselves the very best education, the highest positions in politics, armed services and the private sector, through hard work and an unflagging spirit of determination.
But their successes or shortfalls for that matter were not contingent upon some “black agenda.”
“Black America,” can we please stop wasting everyone’s time and end the loud debates and arguments based in denial and perpetual falseness?
Let us simply have an agenda, wherein we remove ourselves from the “table,” get up and go to work.