Buckdancing Negroes and Conservative Groupthink About Black Folks

I almost titled this, "Buckdancing Negroes and Conservative Groupthink About Black Folks."

I almost titled this, "You're obviously not trying to convince Black folks talking like that." I decided the original title was more to the point.

Pseudo leadership and black groupthink
Armstrong Williams
October 5, 2004

Black groupthink and the pseudo leaders that tout it are destroying the black community.

The black pseudo leader is the community activist who is dedicated solely to getting us to pay attention. Nattily dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, he stands tall at phony press conferences, studding his speech with racially charged words that solicit knee-jerk reactions from the crowd.

The black pseudo leader is a parasite. He nourishes himself on the suffering of others. He exists by satisfying the mob's voracious appetite for excuses and easy solutions. If there is no easy solution for the complex problems of racism in our country, the black pseudo leader will create one. In a calm baritone he will talk about reparations. Sure, that causes people in the crowd to pump their fists in support. But what does it actually do to affect progress?

Racial revenge fantasies do not confront the fact that the tenets of liberalism have failed us by putting us in the mindset that we need handouts in order to be successful. Racial revenge fantasies do not confront the fact that black Americans no longer need the Democrats to broker public policy for them. Racial revenge fantasies do not focus us on political activism because it is consumed with the notion of retribution for past crimes. We need to support choice and market-based reforms that will prepare us to achieve the American dream. Instead, our leaders spend all their time cleaving to century-old crimes and stirring racial tensions because this is how they make a living. That is why we've been held back. Every leader that comes forward has his or her own agenda. Like the old saying goes, "easiest way to control the mob is to agree with them."

Posted by Prometheus 6 on October 5, 2004 - 9:49am :: Race and Identity
 
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I think that you have to keep in mind that Br. Williams, despite his protests to the contrary, is primarily engaged in what John Hendrik Clarke called "show business leadership," which is precisely what he so inelegantly accuses those so-called black leaders whom he and his conservative brethen love taking to task for good or bad reasons. His choice of words and phrases is so over the top that I half expect him to begin calling them "lackey running dogs" and "liberal insects" who "prey on an unsuspecting and trusting people." I don't know a lot of black people who have racial revenge fantasies or perhaps they do but choose not to let me have a peek at what lies deep in their hearts. The case for reparations may suffer, to a degree, from a lack of internal consistency and may ultimately prove impossible to implement but for Williams to argue that a large percentage of black peope and their leaders are actively hitching their star to this issue is patently absurd and dishonest.

I believe there is a reasonable and persuasive case to be made against those leaders whom Williams holds in such contempt but I have never read anything written by him and his fellow travelers that makes that case at least in a way that leads me to think that what chiefly motivates them is their fond regard for the souls of black folks en masse. I always come away from reading their diatribes with the feeling that is not me whom they are intent on addressing but someone else in another community, another city or, perhaps, another country that draws their true devotion.

Posted by  PTCruiser on October 5, 2004 - 9:07pm.

I believe there is a reasonable and persuasive case to be made against those leaders whom Williams holds in such contempt but I have never read anything written by him and his fellow travelers that makes that case at least in a way that leads me to think that what chiefly motivates them is their fond regard for the souls of black folks en masse. I always come away from reading their diatribes with the feeling that is not me whom they are intent on addressing but someone else in another community, another city or, perhaps, another country that draws their true devotion.

Dead on point.

And I think Molotov at Booker Rising is determinedto be an apprentice.

Posted by  Prometheus 6 on October 5, 2004 - 9:09pm.