Black People and Personal Responsibility

I saw this posted on one of my friend's blogs on Multiply:

"My aim is not to provide excuses for black behavior or to absolve blacks of personal responsibility. But when the new black conservatives accent black behavior and responsibility in such a way that the cultural realities of black people are ignored, they are playing a deceptive and dangerous intellectual game with the lives and fortunes of disadvantaged people. We indeed must criticize and condemn immoral acts of black people, but we must do so cognizant of the circumstances into which people are born and under which they live. By overlooking these circumstances, the new black conservatives fall into the trap of blaming black poor people for their predicament. It is imperative to steer a course between the Scylla of environmental determinism and the Charybdis of a blaming-the-victims perspective."

- Dr. Cornel West

In response to that, I posted this:

I would like some knowing person to tell me how to address the needs of those disadvantaged people so that they can hold their own while teaching them to teach their children how to avoid being disadvantaged in the first place.

Is it education? Why do our children score so much lower even in predominantly black schools? Is that racism? Who is teaching them to be victims there?

Is it job disparity? Probably, but who is working to keep solid jobs from going overseas? Is that a racist ideal when they are farming those jobs to even poorer, more disadvantaged people than those here? It would seem that it is a business model rather than a racist model; a model allowed to be followed by our government.

Is it lack of business opportunities within our communities? Do we support our own business structure which is at the same disadvantage as any other community going up against the Wal-Mart, Targets, et al, who by their sheer size can suppress prices and keep them low by suppressing wages as well. Where are our Black cooperatives who can buy in enough quantities to make their products and services competitive?

I can understand the lingering vestiges of slavery and racism and their effects upon the psyche of our folks, but by the same token, who is stepping up and actually leading black people to a better reality which does not allow for complaining about those from outside the community and address those from within who drag us down, not by perceptions of those from the outside, but their criminal and pathological actions from within...when they prey on the rest of us.

Why are we allowing our sub-culture to represent us? Who says that white media giants like Viacom have to tell us who we are when we don't put pressure on TVOne and RadioOne to tell the truth about our capabilities...in a manner which allows us to believe it and then pursue it.

There is a fine line being tred here, Rip. We acknowledge and do not deny the effects of racism but we seem to be waiting for the racist to stop being racist before we take our next steps.

We need to be personally responsible for our next steps...and we need to, as a community, protect and enhance our self-image so that the next steps are the proper ones to ensure a racial identity that does not allow for someone else to dictate that for us.

Who cares who or what Clarence says or does when we can follow a construct that is just as positive in an American way that does not point to him as the model to follow? We have enough heroes out here that we do not acknowledge or support and that lack of support is enough to make the most naive disadvantaged black person believe that there is no hope.

Since none of us are leaving this country to go to another or form another, what do we do while WE are here ... for ourselves?

If Dr. West does not want us to go through the blame-the-victim thing, does he have a solution that WE can put into effect?

I would like your thoughts...