The Black America debate goes public

Up by one's own bootstraps
But a common theme is individualism. Each African-American must take responsibility for the future, they say, and stop focusing on racial bias as a barrier. Instead, work harder in school, build businesses and accumulate wealth, power or both.

Rice is a model. In interviews, she shrugs off the stark racial segregation of her childhood, then gets back to work as secretary of state.

Chris Rock was among the first to go on the attack in public.

More than a decade ago, he famously — and angrily — joked in his stand-up act about the difference between black people and those he called the n-word. The latter, he said, boast about taking care of their children and not going to jail. “What do you want?” Rock demanded of them, “a cookie?”

It’s a sentiment others agree with, such as those involved in the push within the African-American community for marriage. Organizers of the fourth annual Black Marriage Day — set for March 25 — lament that nearly seven in 10 black children are born to unmarried parents. Most single parents have less time and money than married ones, they say, and children can suffer.

That third-rail word
Ridley’s Esquire piece, titled “The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger,” started with: “Let me tell you something about niggers, the oppressed minority within our minority. Always down. Always out. Always complaining that they can’t catch a break. Notoriously poor about doing it for themselves.”

It quickly made its way around the online world, sparking heated, sometimes anguished debate.

Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images Director John Ridley in July 2005 in Beverly Hills, Calif. Ridley’s Esquire article, “The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger,” has sparked outcry.

Ridley said many were furious that he used a racial epithet in a white publication. “They couldn’t get past the word,” said Ridley, a longtime screenwriter and novelist based in Los Angeles.

Ronald Walters, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, said several offended colleagues e-mailed him the article. “If this was in Ebony, it would have been really different, but it’s in Esquire,” Walters said. “That’s not a legitimate part of the African-American dialogue, the intra-group dialogue.”

Bryan Monroe, vice president and editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines, said Ebony was founded “to lift up the black community and to shine an important spotlight on the black community — and some of that is tough love — but we can do it from a point of authenticity. It’s us talking about us. ... It’s an authenticity that the white media often can’t have.”

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