Former assistant national director of the NAACP Michael Meyers posits in a
WaPo editorial about educational programs that target Black men, that these educators aren't rejecting these programs
with the hard, nonstatistical truth that there is no such thing as "the black male," just as there never was such a thing as "the Negro."
And of course, it is the fault of you white liberals (I'm African American even though I think he said I don't exist, I think).
More below.
Meyers begins by saying that he is "sorry to report" that separate but equal is still "all the rage" 52 years after Brown v. Board of Education.
The latest of these race fads are Black Male Initiatives (BMIs)... [that] focus on recruiting, schooling and "saving" black men.
Gasp. Shocking. Simply unimaginable.
Not surprisingly, this racial identity ferment -- aka self-determination -- is proudly endorsed by white liberals disturbed by the dwindling numbers of black men on campus, as well as by many black female students for whom interracial dating is either taboo or impracticable.
So these programs are because white liberals (as opposed to the nonexistent black people or white conservatives or white libertarians) are disturbed by the dwindling numbers of black men as well as the fact that black female students won't date white guys because its taboo or because they can't take them home to Daddy?
He says that the initiatives are characterized with "male domination focus" and are linked to black men's fraternal, commmunity and pride organizations; and that they are encouraged to think about "the status and future of the race." [
More gasps. More shock. ]
When the college takes on such tasks it is only confirming and reinforcing pernicious racial stereotypes. The penchant to isolate, track and segregate black men is a deeply offensive and nasty American social habit, and programs that parrot and mirror such group prejudices are as crude as they are paternalistic.
I understood where Mr. Meyers was going at the beginning of this editorial and while it took him almost to the end to get there, his effort, to put it nicely, falls far short of the mark. He dismisses the dwindling number of black males on college campuses as if he doesn't care. He conflates affirmative action and the law of the land with any of these initiatives as separatist progams.
The worse offense of all, for this
former assistant direcctor of the NAACP is that he acts as if there is no problem in the black community. And maybe, he doesn't believe there is one, or that if we would just stop talking about the black community, "playing that race card", that those folks (I don't know what you call us and he isn't one of us because we don't exist) would pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, stop listening to that rap music, stop selling drugs and move on in to middle class America and lose the taboo of dating white women.
From NYTimes article
Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn:
Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men.
Someday, a colorblind world may exist where we all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" or celebrate our cultural differences as we insure equality for all.
But today, we "reality based" progressives recognize that a certain group of individuals with slightly darker skin tones and of a certain origin, whatever you wanna call us, are statistically behind in certain categories
and an honest analysis and series of solutions is far better than philosophical pretending that we don't exist.
An honest analysis and series of solutions is far better than any empirical effort to prove our nonexistence based on race intermingling on this land mass since the first Africans arrived in the mid 1500s or any metaphysical effort to transcend the particulars of our physical existence.
An honest analysis and series of soutions is far better than whatever the heck this "new school" group of positive mental thinking is the solution proponents, coupled with the Democrats take you all for granted, along with white liberals are responsible for your victim identity psychological bull puckey being promulgated by illegitimate blacks like Armstrong Williams that are bought off to spew a new formula of telling blacks what to think.
Disgusting.