Silence

 

 

“I know black contractors who have gone out of business because their black workers were not prompt or had negative attitudes. I know black workers who take pride about going to work any hour they feel like it, taking the day off when they feel like it … Many leaders who are black and many white liberals will object to my discussing these things in public. But the decadence in the black community … is already in the headlines; the only question is what should we do about it.”

 

Let this be a lesson why political correctness, (PC) is really censorship disguised as goodness and righteousness.

 

Jesse Jackson made this above quoted statement in 1976.

 

If I, as a white writer had said this, many would accuse me of racism. Many in Jesse Jackson’s community likely called him an “Uncle Tom” for saying it. Still others, cowed into silence by the PC Gestapo, read these words and nod in silent agreement; looking left then right, making sure no one sees them.

 

PC stifles spirited dialogue, differing opinions and open, honest debate. That’s its intended function; to SHUT YOU UP. Your tortured silence is then taken as agreement and approval, providing the fabrication of virtual consensus and broad acceptance in its real, actual absence.

 

Nearly 40 years after Jesse Jackson made this remark we since have had men and women of color in the highest positions of power; from the current President of the United States, former Secretary’s of State, Senators, Congressmen and women, judges in the highest courts, Governors and others across the spectrum of leadership and influence throughout the country. And with these advances, one would expect that the experience of being a black American would have realized a corresponding change as well and by any measure it certainly has. It has by some standards deteriorated.

 

The likes of the Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s of the world, (aptly dubbed the “’poverty pimps” by former black congressman J C Watts), have demanded and obtained more and more government intervention and largess, intentionally replacing the traditional family, fatherhood and self-reliance with votes in exchange.

 

Robert Woodson Sr. is the CEO of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise and a black conservative. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, he is quoted describing the current governmental infrastructure of welfare like this. “My worry and my fear is that the money and the resources will go to the same racial grievance groups, the same members of what I call the poverty Pentagon. They’ll give it to Al Sharpton and the others to do what they’ve been doing for decades, to do what doesn’t work-what in fact is making things worse.”

 

And there you have it; and only because a black man had the courage to say it and this white writer had the temerity to re-phrase it in today’s PC America.

 

What happened to our voice? Do we still own an opinion, or shall we let others do our bidding? Your silence does just that.

 

 

Bob Kingsley

Port Dickinson, NY

 

 

(Article attribution to the WSJ, Saturday/Sunday print edition, April 19-20, 2014, page A11, Opinion page, “A Black Conservative’s War on Poverty”)