Ward Connerly. Basic Cultural Change. MCRI
In an interview in Madison, Wisconsin, Ward Connerly remarked,
“The larger problem is how to get more eligible black students with a 40 percent high school dropout rate in California. They don’t know about the importance of education (and) why it’s so important for them to accept responsibility for themselves. There is a basic cultural change that has to take place among black people,” said Connerly, who is black.
Similarly, Shelby Steele, Juan Williams, and others have observed the necessity for a profound change of approach and direction on the part of the black community. Indeed, Steele’s book White Guilt penetrates to the core of the problems of race in America. Both whites and blacks need to let go of the master, slave relationship, move beyond its perniciousness, struggle together to be free of the past iniquities that have harmed us all. Whites as well as blacks need a “basic cultural change.”
All the legal tinkering, Proposal 2, the battles at the level of the Supreme Court, will fail to set us free if we allow the radical elements on all sides to set the agenda, spend our energies merely reacting to the intrigues of racial demogogues and manipulators of hate.
Again, I call on my alma mater, the University of Michigan, if it is truly interested in the equal opportunity and success of black students, to organize, fund, and promote a conference, a summit of people of wisdom, people who have two feet on the ground, as soon as possible, with the following keynote speakers, hosted by U of M Professor Carl Cohen, if he is willing: Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, Bill Cosby, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Juan Williams, and MSU Professor William Allen.
Together, black and white, we can set a new tone, for now and the future. The 14% of black voters who approved MCRI might step forward and make their voices known, speak to all of us, let us know your experiences, why you voted as you did, what led you to believe as you did and do, help us to learn together from your insight and understanding. Do not let the worst elements of both races set the program for the future, which already has become clearly more recrimination and hatred, division and bitterness, exploitation and blame.
Frederick Glaysher
Why Voters Should Approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
http://www.fglaysher.com/MCRI/