The Black America debate goes public

Countering tradition
Many whites celebrate the critics because they blame black failings, not white racism, for blacks’ problems, said Melissa Harris Lacewell, a Princeton University professor of political science.

“The story goes something like this: ‘Wow, that black person — John McWhorter, Armstrong Williams, Shelby Steele — they are really brave and independent thinkers because they’re willing to say something that counters what most of black America would agree with,”’ Lacewell said.

“’They’re willing to counter the traditional civil rights message. They must be so smart.’ Well, I sort of think they’re big suck-up cowards who are willing to beat up on poor and marginalized people.”

There’s also a generational factor. Most political analysts agree that younger black people, especially those in the middle class, are more politically conservative than their counterparts in earlier generations. Maybe they take the gains for granted because they’re too young to have witnessed the gruesome realities of the pre-civil rights era.

For some, the old tactics don't work
The emphasis on individual success, especially becoming wealthy, also could be part of a wider trend: Recent studies have shown that younger Americans of all racial backgrounds as a group are more interested in being well off than they were even a couple of decades ago.

But the most prominent critical black voices are middle-aged.

Lawrence Jackson / AP Bill Cosby has blasted black Americans for chronic problems: imprisonment, dropping out of high school and births out of wedlock.

They say that the nation’s race relations have greatly improved, and many of today’s racial challenges are more subtle than separate-and-unequal schools. The old tactics, they insist, often don’t fit modern realities and it’s time to reconsider them.

Williams, 52, who last year released “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — and What We Can Do About It,” thinks post-civil rights black Americans are maturing and gaining the confidence to speak out.

“When many of us were in our 20s and 30s, we were still deferring to the grandeur and accomplishments of the civil rights leaders of the 1950s and ’60s,” said Williams, whose book was inspired partly by Cosby’s speeches. “Now they’re finding their own voice. There’s a new energy in search of ideas and a willingness to discuss them openly that was previously unseen in black America.”

He added: “I don’t think this conversation would have taken root the way it has two or five years ago.

“Now, people are ready.”

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