Take off the training wheels

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views January 27, 2003]

The Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter is author of the new book Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority. In an article in the New York Post, (10/7/02) he offers his candid take on the " gut-level barbershop rhetoric" that Leroi Jones, aka Amira Baraka, has been spouting for three decades, and getting away with it, thanks to the praise and adulation of whites:

Stringing together visceral ejaculations does not make one a serious poet, regardless of race. This is clear to everyone when the writer is white. But a sentiment reigns, especially in academic and artistic circles, that the rules of the game are different when it comes to black people. Whites in this realm typically see it as a moral imperative to frame black people as eternal victims, too battered by the past to be subjected to serious competition.

Thus one shows that one is not a "racist" by setting the bar lower for black people, and hides behind the "diversity" line when the seams start showing. But for all the good intentions, lower standards leads to lower performance, now as always and forever. Racial preferences (granting rewards out of proportion to performance) even bar their "beneficiaries" from learning what top-rate work actually is. The only way to learn to ride a bike is to take off the training wheels. . . .

And anyone who objects that he [Baraka] is valuable as a "role model" should think again. At a library dedication the other day, schoolteachers brought black children to sit at the feet of a black figure more concerned with agitprop theatrics than seeking truth. The last thing young blacks need today is more of the message that idle rebellion is the essence of their race.

Copyright © 2008 Issues & Views