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Maybe I should get with this guy

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on May 6, 2006 - 3:53pm.
on

Race in Your Face
In an interview with Mark Oppenheimer, Algernon Austin takes liberals and conservatives to task on race and racism
Fair Haven's Algernon Austin says that many famous black intellectuals are getting it all wrong.

Algernon Austin is what you might call an intellectual entrepreneur. He's trying to earn a living by trafficking in ideas. A resident of the Fair Haven section of New Haven, Austin left a tenure-track job at Wesleyan University to start the Thora Institute (thorainstitute.org), a one-man think tank that he hopes will become influential in American debates about race. He's the author of two books. The first, Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century, was published this month by NYU Press; the second, Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals Are Failing Black America, will be published in June.

In a sense, Austin is the best kind of intellectual-he's mad at everybody. He believes that liberals and conservatives talk about race in equally uninformed ways. Conservatives complain that blacks are mired in a "culture of poverty"an assertion unsupported by the evidence. And liberals, eager to paint a desperate situation, collude in the belief that blacks are faring worse than ever. In fact, Austin says, blacks are getting less poor, and better educated, with time.

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I am not alone!!! 
Submitted by DarkStar on May 6, 2006 - 9:56pm.

I am not alone!!!

 

You never were!!!
Submitted by ptcruiser on May 7, 2006 - 7:54am.
You never were!!!
Off-topic (and thanks for
Submitted by Nmaginate on May 7, 2006 - 10:42am.
Off-topic (and thanks for the find)... Have you guys seen this >> http://www.project2019.com/faques4.htm
Not off-topic, really.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on May 7, 2006 - 11:15am.

Not off-topic, really. (Black folks tend to make ugly websites...THAT is off-topic...)

Anyone that starts out with "What Jesse Jackson Doesn't Tell You" is obviously trolling for Black Conservatives, but the educational parity thing is a necessary starting point.

Well, to be honest... the
Submitted by Nmaginate on May 7, 2006 - 3:08pm.

Well, to be honest... the first time I came across that site... I missed the whole Jesse Won't Tell you crack. And, to me, that's immaterial. I usually break it down like this...

http://www.reddingnewsreview.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?
board=news;action=display;num=1145762369;start=0#0

All their BS aside, they at least articulate in an accessible fashion what's at issue, IMHO. Not that I agree with any of their underlying ideological assumptions. It the questions they've assembled and raised that, to me, makes for an interesting and possibly even productive format for discussion or reflection... whatever.

 

I stopped reading at the
Submitted by DarkStar on May 7, 2006 - 4:17pm.

I stopped reading at the Jesse Jackson line.

Anyone who believes that Jackson has the power to get Black people to think as he does, is a fool.

 

So true... But it seems to
Submitted by Nmaginate on May 7, 2006 - 9:11pm.

So true... But it seems to me that there are some obvious truisms to:

(3) There is no easy or immediate fix for black America's problems.

With the type of rhetoric that's out there in all directions and the sentiments out there that wished there were easy fixes and the unrealistic expectations you allude to... such a simple statement needs to be stated.  Solidly.

From the FOURTH [4th]...  I can move past all the rhetoric and note that we have always had to grapple with this:

Only Black Americans WILL fix Black America's problems.  It may not be fair, it may not be right but it is the reality... Black America is doomed until it accepts the fact that there is little White American can and, most importantly, WILL do to fix the problems...

Again, I'm looking past the rhetoric and, as emphasized... focusing on the WILL.  Our situation has always been about a matter of WILL.  Does America have the WILL? etc.  So, I see that too as, perhaps, an obvious statement that just can't be stated enough.  Not forsaking anything but there should be no delusions as to what we're constantly up against.

 

I kept reading beyond the
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on May 8, 2006 - 7:37am.

I kept reading beyond the headline because I know you can bury good analysis within a really partisan screed (having done so personally...). If I can see the contours of thought underneath, I'll dig a little. But I'll complain about the stuff I'm forced to dig through, too.

I'll complain about the
Submitted by Nmaginate on May 8, 2006 - 8:45pm.

I'll complain about the stuff I'm forced to dig through

Of course... To be expected.  

I know you can bury good analysis within a really partisan screed

I'm not even calling it a "good" analysis.  I do think that certain "contours" to actual truisms, actual questions that plenty of people would rather not consider... that those are the things that are articulated.  They don't really represent anything earth shattering.  Not even close.  But they do articulate, again, some things that too many would rather not concede.