Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Take This, Jesse Jackson
“Everybody has asked the question. . .'What shall we do with the Negro?'
I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your
doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with
us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if
they are worm eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to
fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in
any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let
them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall
also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him
alone!” Frederick Douglass 1863...................................................................................P.S. And he was standing; the fact that the literacy rate went from under 5% in 1865 to over 50% by the turn of the century (still one of the greatest accomplishments in all of human history), the fact that the black poverty rate went from 87% in 1940 to 47% in 1960 - well before affirmative action and even before the Civil Rights Legislation, the fact that the out of wedlock birth rate in the black community was less than 20% in 1940, the fact that the black unemployment rate in 1930 was actually lower than the white unemployment rate, etc., etc..
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5 comments:
Black people are not inferior, damaged beings (I bring that up because John Myste argued that they were). Affirmative Action treats them as beings of lesser stature who cannot make it on their own merits. I strongly disagree with all of that.
I was a tacit supporter of affirmative action until I looked at the evidence and a) saw how a lot of these affirmative action blacks were failing out of Berkeley, Cornell, and M.I.T. and b) considered how these very same youngsters would have probably been B+/A- students at Cal State Northridge, Stony Brook, and Keene State.
Yet another example of what Mr. Douglass meant when he said, "Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us."
If Barrack Obama possessed even a sliver of the wisdom and integrity Douglass had he would be a superb leader. Obviously he does not.
RN: I still think that Mr. Obama is not so different from Sarah Palin as many think. The main difference being that Obama is definitely a gifted orator, and has a much smoother style than Palin.
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