Speaking at convocation at Hampton College, Barack Obama warned that the Bush administration has provoked a "quiet riot" in black America.
A quiet riot. Now certainly that's the best kind of riot, because no buildings get burned and nobody gets stampeded or knifed or shot. And if it's a really quiet riot, then we don't even have to listen to shouting and can continue to work or read or watch TV without disruption. It would really be nice if all riots could be quiet riots.
Here is Obama: "Those 'quiet riots' that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths," Obama said. "They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better."
Much of this I believe is pure nonsense. Obama should consult studies of self-esteem which show that young black males have the highest self-esteem of any group in the country. This may seem odd, but the reason is that self-esteem in these instances is not based on academic achievement. Rather, it is based on other things like atheletic prowess and social prowess. If you want chapter and verse, read my book The End of Racism.
Obama seems to think that if young African Americans feel better about the future, they will do better. In other words, higher self esteem leads to higher achievement. But maybe the equation runs the other way around. When a student can solve the equation and find the amoeba under the microscope, he realizes that he can do this and then his hopes for future success improve. Once people start to do better, they feel better.
Instead of giving us the usual pablum about quiet riots, Obama should be calling African Americans and indeed all Americans to study harder and work harder and achieve something great for themselves and for their country. Mass demonstrations for higher educational standards in the public schools! A riot against the teachers' unions! If Obama is ready to lead in this direction, I am ready to sign up.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 2)
1. Regarding Obama, I don't care at all that he's Black. What I do care about are his many Muslim ties and I definitely will not be voting for him for that reason.
Stephanie at 9:24AM on Jun 6th 2007
2. Who IS Ron Paul? They still need to know!!
NOBODY explains Ron Paul
BETTER than Ron Paul himself!
Here is an interactive audio archive of
Ron Paul speeches and interviews as a resource in chronological
order.
http://www.ronpaulaudio.com
goldenequity at 11:12AM on Jun 6th 2007
3. Whenever people start publicly whining about the condition of the black community, I can't help but think "Boo-hoo!" The only group that can help blacks in America is the black community itself. No government entitlement program is going to close the achievement gap. Obama is certainly not getting my vote by complaining about some vague "sense of disconnect."
richard at 1:16PM on Jun 6th 2007
4. If I may I would like to summarize D'Souza's comments.
African Americans need to study harder and work harder so that they may accomplish more. If they had just worked harder at school they would all have risen above the problems their community faces today. Their sense of despair is not derived from inequalities in funding for education. Instead, their sense of despair is derived from their laziness.
I contend that this is a very simplistic view of the world. Teachers, clergy and black leaders have been encouraging the black community to work harder for years. While many have indeed worked harder, this has not solved the social ills of our country. There are still more blacks in prison than in college and there are still more displaced blacks in New Orleans (or outside of New Orleans) than there are whites. We need to consider new ways to attack these problems. While Obama may not have the experience to lead, at least he cares enough to talk about these kinds of issues. In contrast, D’Souza simply suggests that blacks are lazy and need to work harder.
Rob at 2:28PM on Jun 6th 2007
5. I would like to summarize Rob's statements regarding the African American community.
If a person decides to commit a crime, it is not his fault that he chose prison rather than college... it is somehow the fault of the rest of America.
If a person, who is not actively being discriminated against, does not accomplish all of his or her goals in life, it is not the fault of that person for their failure... it is somehow the fault of the rest of America.
Maybe he is correct. Maybe it is America's fault for tolerating overfunded mediocre inner city schools, where administrators and union members profit and students suffer.
Maybe he is correct that it is America's fault for subsidizing and rewarding those people who refuse to work, and punishing working people with high taxes.
No wonder African Americans cannot get ahead. People like Barack Obama encourage the victim mentality, discourage individual responsibility, and seek to provide excuses for failure, while ignoring the successful.
Barack Obama is not only inexperienced, he also offers America a weak foreign policy of appeasing terrorism, and an economic policy of killing growth with high taxes and overregulation.
And the first people to suffer in a bad economy are lower income working people.
Peter at 5:15PM on Jun 6th 2007
6. Any and all comments about race by Dinesh D'Souza should be taken with a salt mine -- of all the right-wing commentators with access to the mainstream media, D'Souza is the most openly and unapologetically racist (and when your competition is a bigot like Ann Coulter, that's saying a lot).
Some of Dinesh's Klan-friendly sentiments:
"Segregation was intended to assure that blacks, like the handicapped, would be insulated from the radical racists and -- in the paternalist view --permitted to perform to the capacity of their arrested development"
“The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."
"It seems unrealistic, bordering on the surreal, to imagine underclass blacks with their gold chains, limping walk, obscene language, and arsenal of weapons doing nine-to-five jobs at Procter and Gamble or the State Department."
The above are all from "The End of Racism," D'Souza's virulently racist tome in which he writes approvingly of what he calls "rational racism" and comes out against the civil rights legislation of the sixties. At this blog, he soft peddles his hate speech (though Dinesh's recent reference to Jerry Falwell as "the white Martin Luther King" no doubt inspired a hearty "You go, girl!" from his soul mate David Duke). But one should always keep in mind that Dinesh's sole qualification for discussing racism is that he himself suffers from the disease, and that his writings on the topic should therefore be take as seriously as an essay on mental illness from Son of Sam.
richter at 5:20PM on Jun 6th 2007
7. Look, just don't vote for Hussein Obama because he's a Muslim (no matter what he says) and because he has numerous Muslim family ties. NO! NO MUSLIMS!
Stephanie at 6:58PM on Jun 6th 2007
8. great great blog thank you
cliff at 7:03PM on Jun 6th 2007
9. i have read the book, "the end of racism." its brilliant.
kana at 11:03PM on Jun 6th 2007
10. richter quoted:
"Segregation was intended to assure that blacks, like the handicapped, would be insulated from the radical racists and -- in the paternalist view --permitted to perform to the capacity of their arrested development"
>>He didn't say he approved of segregation, he just offered an explanation of why he thought the intent behind segregation. He never said this was his intention.
“The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."
>> Again, I would think that this statement is a reflection of fact and not "unapologetically racist". Slaves were treated like property and as they were quite expensive to acquire, they may have been given good care to keep the investment from dropping. He isn't saying that he believes slavery was good or that all slaves were treated well.
"It seems unrealistic, bordering on the surreal, to imagine underclass blacks with their gold chains, limping walk, obscene language, and arsenal of weapons doing nine-to-five jobs at Procter and Gamble or the State Department."
>> Ummm, sounds like a Wayans Brothers movie.
>> My whole point is this: If a discussion is to occur in this country on race issues, then people have to be able to present opposing views without people trying to stifle debate by calling people "racists". It is called a discussion. Just because someone doesn't agree with your argument, that doesn't make them evil and you moral.
Julia at 12:24AM on Jun 7th 2007
11. Obama was discussing Hurricane Katrina in the context of a "quiet riot." If any of you think that Katrina was handled well, then at the very least you are sadistic.
Stephanie, you are a flat out bigot. You should be listening to what Obama says, and not what religion YOU THINK he is...
To comment about Julia's comments:
1st Quote: Shielding from radical racists? How many thousands of blacks died from lynchings when segregation was instituted? Blacks were killed immediately after they came off the boat from fighting American wars...
2nd quote: I would be inclined to agree that saying "Slaves were treat like property" is not in and of itself a value statement. BUT, the... "which is to say, pretty well." most certainly is. Pretty well to what? "Pretty well" to the way slave owners treated dogs? "Pretty well" to the way slave owners treated cockroaches? "Pretty well" is a value statement, and in this context a disgusting one at that.
3rd comment: Clearly, Mr. D'Souza believes that culture, in this case "black culture," is an essentialistic aspect of blak people. That is, culture, amazingly, is not something built from the environment and social structures that surround black people.
I am pretty sure all black people don't wear "gold chains... and [use] obscene language." I have seen black people wear suits before. Don't those blacks that work for Proctor and Gamble and the State Department (Hey, isn't our Secretary of State black?) wear suits?
D'Souza's comments are idiotic at best.
David at 3:06AM on Jun 7th 2007
12. Regarding the first point of my last comment. Reading through Obama's transcript, when referring to Katrina, he was not implying that the actions taken by this Administration were racist.
Regardless, he still has a point. Those pictures of the men and women suffering on the roof-tops during the storm were shocking. Remember those rumors of gunshots in the convention center, as if all of those black people together would inevitably act violently? The Administration's handling of the hurricane was incompetent, and the media's handling of it was racist.
David at 3:16AM on Jun 7th 2007
13. LOL! David, you are a flat out Idiot! You can call me any name you want - I couldn't care less! However, I do care about the U.S. and I don't want to see it destroyed the way Western European countries are being ruined and destroyed by the Barbarians. Muslims = Barbarians. End of story.
Nope, I don't like Muslims! For many, many reasons. Call me any name you want - I couldn't care less. P.S. David - Hussein Obama is not going to be President, LOL! A little Newsflash for your idiot self!
Stephanie at 8:48AM on Jun 7th 2007
14. Kana and Julia: "The End of Racism" does serve one indisputably useful purpose -- as the two of you demonstrate, it serves as a sort of racial Rorshach test. If you can read its contents and NOT see the raw racism of minimizing the horrors of slavery and segregation and promoting the most vicious stereotyping of African-Americans, well, you have revealed to the rest of us more about yourselves than I suspect you intended to.
Two gentlemen who do not suffer from your moral nearsightedness are the major African-American conservatives, Robert Woodson, Sr. and Glenn Loury, who quit the American Enterprise Institute to protest that "think tank's" backing of the book. They do not suffer from Julia’s pleasant delusion that all accusations of racism are merely tactics to stifle debate. Racism in fact exists, Julia (it’s called “reality”) -- and D'Souza is unquestionably racist to the core. Indeed, racism launched his entire career, when he was editor of the Dartmouth Review and traded in precisely the same neo-Nazi racial stereotyping that reached its apotheosis in "The End of Racism."
The fact that D’Souza’s attitudes are welcomed by so many in the GOP today is a sad, sad commentary on the state of that party. It is a little remembered fact that the great civil rights legislation of the 60s passed Congress with MORE Republican than Democratic support. But it was also at that very moment that the GOP made a pact with the devil -- when the Democratic Party turned its backs on the Dixiecrat racists in its ranks, some in the GOP seized the opportunity to extend the hand of welcome to those abandoned bigots. It transformed the party of Lincoln into the party of Jefferson Davis. Thus Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign with a speech celebrating that racist codeword of "states' rights" -- in Philadelphia Missippi, best known as the burial ground of Klan victims Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. And thus the perverse professional life of Dinesh D'Souza, who peddles the ugliest of bigotry with just enough semantic wiggle room for his fans to feel comfy with his basic premise: "It's not racist to say blacks are inferior -- they ARE inferior."
But the pact has clearly run its course. The GOP hasn’t legitimately won an election to the White House since 1988, and the party that invited racists into its ranks is rapidly becoming a party ONLY comprised of racists. When the Democrats return to the White House in 2008 and the GOP is once again in the wilderness, I suspect the first step on its road to recovery will be the expulsion of the very bigots it formerly embraced – and for the first time in his life, Dinesh will actually have to look for a job. It won’t be easy – since the defeat of Germany in 1945, there haven’t been many opportunities for a man of D’Souza’s grim talents.
richter at 12:14PM on Jun 7th 2007
15. I will vote for Obama because of what I know he will do for this country. The tired old good old boys gotta go. Stephanie, you are very sad human being.
Hawk07 at 1:21PM on Jun 7th 2007