Telling It Like It Is
I don't often agree with Juan Williams, but his column today is magnificent:
[M]iddle-class values . . . benefit people, black or white.
To encourage the black poor to adopt these values is not evidence of self-hate but offering good news about how people can help themselves and their children to succeed. It is good news to know that if you stay in school and at least graduate from high school, then stay in the job market and don't have a child until you are in your 20s and married, you have little chance of being poor.
It's a must-read.
[M]iddle-class values . . . benefit people, black or white.
To encourage the black poor to adopt these values is not evidence of self-hate but offering good news about how people can help themselves and their children to succeed. It is good news to know that if you stay in school and at least graduate from high school, then stay in the job market and don't have a child until you are in your 20s and married, you have little chance of being poor.
It's a must-read.
posted by LadybugUSA at 6:09 AM
3 Comments:
It seems as if Williams is suggesting that to adopt middle class values is somehow a slight against black culture. I hope this is not the case, as they are values that will benefit any who adopt them. If the black community has been avoiding these values out of some notion that they are "white", it doesn't make sense. It's not that they are "white" values, but that they are values that benefit.
My late father got a job and worked. Built a house and raised a family. Not easy, but life is not easy. Why are there so many excuses given about color?
Marshall,
Of course it doesn't make any sense to a White American man who has enjoyed the greatest unearned privilege in the history of human civilization. No one can expect you to understand the plight of dealing with poverty and being a part of a race so vilified by the majority it may take yet more centuries or a dissolution of your Union to make it right. These "values" Williams speakes of are not White "values" but values (as I am sure Ms Liebau can point to thousand of White people in Missouri that are miserbale failures as human beings that deserve far more disdain for what THEY have allowed themselves to become than the Black lower classes) that lead to success and they lead one down that path if and only if barriers are lifted and the playing field is balanced. Not tilted in favor of one group or another.
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