Character Or Color?

In his column today William Raspberry argues, persuasively, that Bill Cosby’s crusade for more responsibility in the black community is carrying on the tradition of Martin Luther King.

Adjusting for the fact that one is a comic and the other was an unusually eloquent preacher, Cosby was saying what King said a generation ago when he demanded that we be judged not by what we are but by how we behave — “by the content of our character.”

King, obviously hoping white people were listening, was saying: If we do what we have to do to limit our behavior-spawned problems, then you must learn to look beyond our skin and see our behavior. Cosby, whose target is low-income black America, is saying: White people can’t save you if you won’t try to save yourselves.

King wouldn’t have argued that black people had overcome the problems associated with what we used to call the “culture of poverty,” only that white people must learn to see us as individuals. Cosby wouldn’t argue that white America has laid its racism to rest, only that today what we do is a more powerful determinant of our success than what is done to us.

Perhaps in a future column Raspberry will explain how affirmative action, with its insistence on special treatement based on color, can lead whites “to look beyond our skin” and “learn to see us as individuals.”

Say What? (19)

  1. Stephen January 18, 2005 at 8:01 am | | Reply

    Mr. Rosenberg:

    I keep wondering why whites are supposed to have a sentimental attitude toward black people. I mean, why are we sitting around discussing whether black people are getting it together or not? That’s their problem, and whether or not they are has nothing to do with whether people should be treated equally before the law. While I have no animosity toward black people, I don’t spend any of my time worrying about whether black people are getting it together. Please explain to me why it is considered a social obligation to at least pretend otherwise.

    It’s time to dump this part of the racial hustle game.

    This is a capitalist, or at least mixed economy, based on competition. While I do not wish harm to my competitors, I don’t sit around weeping over them either. The theorists of racial difference have convinced themselves that whites cannot compete in basketball. Notice that European whites haven’t seemed to have gotten this message.

    I’m a competitor. I’m against race and sex quotas because they punish me and constrain my ability to compete. I ignore the weepy stories and sentimental posturing about black people. If I were to post weepy stories about my family background, I’d be told in short order by blacks and white liberals to stuff it. So, my response to blacks and white liberals is, stuff it. My interest is solely in furthering the ambitions and wealth of me and my family.

    So, why does every posting you make defer to this notion that we must be weepy and sentimental over blacks?

  2. notherbob2 January 18, 2005 at 11:44 am | | Reply

    Stephen, Stephen, Stephen. And exactly how does commenting on this blog aid you in your “sole interest” in furthuring your ambitions and wealth? I think you have other interests. If not, then you’d best be about getting off making comments on the internet and furthuring those interests. I, for one, would miss those comments, but one must make a buck, eh?

  3. Stephen January 18, 2005 at 12:09 pm | | Reply

    notherbob2, you are a tough one.

    Let it be stated that I am also motivated by a desire to introduce some sanity into a debate made stale beyond belief by all the ritualized obligations attending to it.

  4. nobody important January 18, 2005 at 12:43 pm | | Reply

    Whites should care about and have an interest in the problems of black Americans. Not because they are black, but because they are Americans. In a highly competitive global economy, we Americans cannot afford to be operating only on 3 cylinders, riven by irrational bigotry.

  5. Stephen January 18, 2005 at 12:51 pm | | Reply

    nobody, I am in complete agreement, although I’d like for you to identify the 3 cylinders that are working. The 4th cylinder is …?

  6. James January 18, 2005 at 1:53 pm | | Reply

    Is Stephen the same idiot that encouraged white posters on this site to (and excuse me because I’m paraphrasing) to prepare themselves for Armageddon by “lifting weights and punching blacks (like Cobra) in the nose” during street confrontations. I can hardly believe that serious people would respond to any of his postings. The guy has some serious issues. Stop encouraging him.

  7. John Rosenberg January 18, 2005 at 2:31 pm | | Reply

    So, why does every posting you make defer to this notion that we must be weepy and sentimental over blacks?

    I wasn’t — and, in fact, still am not — aware that every post I make defers to weepy sentimentalism. Or, for that matter, that any of them do.

    Perhaps you have a hitherto undetected reading problem.

  8. notherbob2 January 18, 2005 at 5:18 pm | | Reply

    Well, I looked up

  9. The Education Wonks January 19, 2005 at 2:59 am | | Reply

    Extra Credit Assignment: Great Reading..

    Once again, I’ve put on my electronic walking shoes and have taken a little stroll around the Education Mini-Sphere to see…

  10. nobody important January 19, 2005 at 1:09 pm | | Reply

    notherbob2,

    No, I don’t have a doctorate in Middle English; in fact I only have a HS diploma. I can’t imagine where I picked up that word. Perhaps, from “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power” in Reader’s Digest? Or in a Tolkein novel?

  11. Michelle Dulak Thomson January 19, 2005 at 1:34 pm | | Reply

    notherbob2, I’ve seen “riven” many times in ordinary written English (though “rive” itself is pretty well obsolete). It does, however, have a Tolkienesque vibe to it, and I have a feeling the first time I encountered it was in Tolkien somewhere.

  12. Cobra January 20, 2005 at 1:04 am | | Reply

    This thread of commentary is so deliciously surreal, even I’m at a loss for words.

    –Cobra

  13. Claire January 20, 2005 at 2:30 pm | | Reply

    I think the word was meant to be ‘driven’, not ‘riven’.

    Sounds like your keyboard has spelling problems, too. I’m trying to train mine, but it just keeps fighting me…

  14. Michelle Dulak Thomson January 20, 2005 at 2:59 pm | | Reply

    No, Claire, “riven” makes more sense in the context. It means “split apart.”

  15. Richard Cook January 21, 2005 at 11:44 am | | Reply

    This is only news to the willingly blind. As Americans wanted, originally, to be entitled to the rights due Englishmen, King wanted blacks to have the rights due American citizens. Not extraordinary rights and not legalized racism (Affirmative Action).

  16. nobody important January 21, 2005 at 2:04 pm | | Reply

    I wrote riven as I intended.

  17. Laura January 21, 2005 at 7:30 pm | | Reply

    “It does, however, have a Tolkienesque vibe to it, and I have a feeling the first time I encountered it was in Tolkien somewhere.”

    Are you thinking of Rivendell?

  18. Michelle Dulak Thomson January 22, 2005 at 2:13 pm | | Reply

    Laura, obviously that’s one place it turns up (I have a hazy recollection of the glossary of the Silmarillion giving the etymology of “Imladris” such that it translates into something like “deeply cloven valley,” i.e., a “riven dell”), but I think he uses the word on its own also, several times.

  19. Decision '08 January 22, 2005 at 8:29 pm | | Reply

    Miscellanea – Buckley’s Bad Hair Day Edition

    William Raspberry thinks MLK would approve of Cosby’s crusade (hat tip to Discriminations)…

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