A VIEW ON CULTURE

"Do poor blacks really need to hear 'millions more' excuses why black men can't be faithful to one woman and be responsible for the children they bear? Or why they can't get an education because white people hate us? Do poor blacks really need another venue for hip-hop multimillionaires to explain, in four-letter epithets, that blacks suffer because George W. Bush doesn't care about them? This while these moguls get richer by the day peddling black booty on BET, inspiring black kids to live the life that guarantees to keep them poor?

Despite [Louis] Farrakhan's supposed objective to 'empower' poor folks, he should understand, as more and more blacks are beginning to understand, that he, and other long-standing traditional black leaders, really promote quite the opposite. Poor blacks do not need to be 'mobilized' to turn even more responsibility for their lives over to others. They need to go to school and take care of their families. The place where this needs to take place is within a couple-mile radius of where they live. It certainly won't take place on the National Mall in Washington... The work that blacks need to do in Washington today is to reduce government interference with black individual lives, families and communities to solve our own problems... Black problems today are in individual hearts, minds and homes. This is where they need to be solved."

---Star Parker