Current Events
Revenge of the Uncle Toms. <a/> "Oreo. Uncle Tom. Boot-licking Uncle Tom. Straight-up Uncle Tom. Judas. Boy. Bug-eyed. Foot-shuffling. Sugarcane Negro. Handkerchief head. Trojan Horse. Anti-black. Pro-white. Remus. Sambo. Sambo-Tom. The Anti-Christ. Clarence Thomas supporter. Sniveling weasel. Evil. A-s-kisser. Coconut. Wannabe white. Nickering nabob of negativity. This catalog of names I've been called comes from my new book, The Ten Things You Can't Say in America. A few years ago, Rev. Jesse Jackson and I appeared on television to discuss whether blacks, at last, possess full civil rights. Jackson spoke about the wealth gap between blacks and whites, the lack of "access to capital." Problems remain, I said, but blacks now enjoy full "civil rights." Wealth, while desirable, is not something guaranteed by the Constitution. Rev. Jackson responded, "Mr. Elder identifies with white males." Typical. Dodge the merits of the argument and malign your opponent through the practiced, if unfair, use of the "if-you're-black-and-don't-think-of-yourself-as-a-victim-you- must-be-a-self-loathing-Uncle-Tom" attack. Virtually every big city newspaper has the obligatory Angry Black Writer sounding the same themes: The country screws blacks; banks refuse to lend them money; cops routinely brutalize blacks; the SAT is culturally biased; racist insurance companies practice red-lining. Addressing these issues, Sowell and Williams expose the truth, a truth far less sinister than the race-hustlers claim. The verdict is in. We now see the damage done by LBJ's War on Poverty, during which time the black illegitimacy rate grew from 25 percent to today's nearly 70 percent. Evidence shows the existence of a growing, thriving, black middle class well before the advent of affirmative action. Nor does history support the hysterical, emotional view that affirmative action accelerated the black middle class growth. Sowell and Williams urge blacks to reject welfare in favor of self-help -- breaking the monopoly of public education, privatization of Social Security, and the adherence to responsible moral, personal, and sexual behavior. So who's the Uncle Tom? Those proposing the same old "solutions," or those, like Sowell and Williams, recommending real change?" -philw (right on. brotha!)
