Soon Remembered Tales: Guest Review: Enough

Guest Review: Enough

During the month of November I will be featuring a serial of book reviews done by different writers. Aside from this introduction- everything will be scripted by the guest reviewer. Please enjoy and plunge into some books I haven't had the chance to get my hands on yet! - Erica

Guest Reviewer: Jon

Hi, my list is Jon, and I'm really excited that Erica invited me to compose a guest spot for Soon Remembered Tales.

I've been an avid reader all of my life, mostly of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I started writing book reviews to deal with my friends in 1995. Just this year, I began blogging at The Steel Bookshelf about the books I'm reading, and I desire to be reading and telling folks all around it for a long time to come. Juan Williams has been in the news recently, with his release by NPR, and so I decided I should probably learn something he's written. The full style of this word is Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movement, and Refinement of Failure That Are Undermining Black America - and What We Can Do About It. The full volume is more or less a leaf on the themes that Bill Cosby raised in his controversial speech at Constitution Hall on the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Training of Topeka decision that forced integration of public schools in America.Critics said that Cosby was beating up on poor black people, an easy target. But Williams, who interviewed the comedian extensively for his book,says that Cosby's charge was that black cultural and political leadership have misinformed, mismanaged, and mis-educated by failing to separate black people about what it takes to get ahead in America: strong families, a good educations, and laborious work, instead focusing the spotlight constantly on alleged systemic racism as the case of all of the black poor's woes. Williams even suggests that it's in the best interests (especially financial) of these leaders to keep the status quo, sacrificing the good being of those they call to champion. Williams, and Cosby, both think that the behaviour of many of the black poor today, disgraces and dishonors the sacrifices made by the generations of black civil rights leaders who fought for the exemption they enjoy today. The pop culture that embraces thuggish behavior, encourages indiscriminate sexual behaviour and bearing children out of wedlock, and discourages blacks who try to graduate from high school and go on to college as "acting white", would be incomprehensible to those like Fredrick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks. Williams attacks the theme of reparations for slavery that has been drifting around Congress for days now. He calls it a "flashy distraction" from the actual process that must be done by black people to acquire advantages of all the opportunities in America. Like lottery winnings, the money would presently be spent, most likely frivolously, and things would stay as usual, but with whites, and the government, feeling that the "debt" had been paying and that no farther effort would be required to serve the black poor. In his speech, Cosby said "What the Hell good is Brown v Board of Instruction if nobody wants it?" Black mass before, during, and after slavery had regarded education as their way out, a fortune to succeed. ".in a thirty-year period, between 1880 and 1920, the part of black people who could understand and write jumped from 30 percent to 70 percent. This . took place despite a deficiency of schools, frequent defense of the good to vote.run for office, including seats on the school boards that controlled funding for negro schools." In 2004 only 50 percent of negro students who introduce the 9th grade later graduated with a regular high school diploma. Only 43 percent of black males graduate. Even worse, the children coming out of many big-city schools are not set to contend at the best colleges, as the choice of high school education there has declined. Cosby said in a pillar in the Los Angeles Times, "What we want now is parents sitting down with children, overseeing homework, sending children off to train in the morning, well-fed, clothed, rested, and set to learn." One quotation from Williams that I found amusing. With regard to the ground a disproportionate number of black males are prison. "The fashionable theory was that America's poor, disproportionately black and hard in big cities, did their drug deals and robberies on street corners where lazy, racist police had an easy time arresting them." I merely get this mental image of a pair of good ole boy cops, eating donuts in the team car, and one says to the other, "Let's drive downtown and get our quota of arrests for this week - won't bring us very long." Williams also mentions that the mayors of big cities "understand the usefulness of having an attractive black police chief to handle . misconduct by officers (such as the brutal beating of Rodney King) or charges that law are inattentive to crime in black neighborhoods." Isn't it sad that appearances are all that actually count? Williams believes that black Americans want to make up their own war on drugs and crime, which undermines the advances in racial justice and opportunities won by the civic rights movement,as a matter of personal responsibility. One minor inaccuracy, in my opinion, appears in this section. Williams repeats the calumny that William Bennett said on his radio show that the crime rate in America could be reduced if all black babies were aborted. I believe Bennett was actually discussing a statement made by the authors of Freakonomics. The authors claimed as a consequence of their studies that the reduction in crime in the inner cities that was seen at a special time came almost as a resolution of Roe v. Wade. When abortion on demand became readily available after the Supreme Court decision, it decreased the act of children born significantly in the next decade. Most of those children would have been teenagers or young adults during the decade studied for its decrease in crime. Statistically, young males are more potential to commit crimes, and again, statistically, black males are more potential to be arrested for crimes, therefore the reduction in crime rates during that point could be attributed to the growth in abortions of inner city (black) babies. Williams talks quite a bit near the result of gangster rap music. He says that "it leaves young black people, especially poor kids searching for identity, with the poisonous idea that middle-class normalcy and achievement are 'white' while 'authentically black' behavior is fastened to violence, illiteracy, and drug dealing." The misogynistic lyrics of rap music also demolish the self esteem of new negro women, who are referred to often as "bitches and hos", and encourages them to think that their just prize is as sexual objects. "In the existence of rap, only suckers believe that America is a commonwealth of opportunity." In Chapter 7, Williams gives a detailed account of what civil rights workers did after Brown to draw the issues of consolidation in the world schools, and voting rights for blacks. Martin Luther King, in a language in 1958, even criticized blacks for some of the same types of conduct that Cosby would criticize nearly 50 days later. He said that grim crime rates were too high and that drinking too often and spending money on luxury items (can you say "bling"?) was wasting black potential for creating positive change, and he criticized sloppiness and personal hygiene. "Even the most poverty-stricken among us can buy a ten-cent bar of soap. even the most uneducated among us can induce high morals." Williams and Cosby both think that the wretched black community cannot look for the issues of systemic racism, which modern black leaders decry, to go away. It will be far too deep for young blacks by then. The way out of poverty is available to all, and the pattern is simple. It begins with finishing high school, though finishing college is better. Next, get a job and save it. Third, get married after finishing school and acquiring a job. Finally, avoid having children until you are over 21 and married. This convention applies to disastrous and white poor alike. This is a great read, really. I felt in some ways like Williams was "preaching to the chorus" with me as an audience, as I firmly believe in the measure of a sound education, a hard work ethic, and supportive family. I've seen friends and class struggle in their lives when any one of those foundations were not in place, and I've seen other people with those qualities present succeed like gangbusters.