During the early 1980’s, social scientists noticed that welfare mothers were spending three to six times their official income. According to Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks in his foreword to Making Ends Meet, conservatives and liberals have been loath to admit this: conservatives because they refuse to admit that mothers cannot survive on welfare alone, and...
Decisions, decisions. Such is the life of a black man in America today. Whether to be a black nationalist, a black Muslim, an Afrocentrist, or simply a color-blind Christian—a.k.a. an “Oreo,” a traitor to the black race. Such choices are not new; they were made by black Americans in earlier generations, dramatically in the ease...
“It’s a new day, and a new way!” exulted Adelaide Sanford on television in early 1985. A black supremacist and member of the New York City Board of Education, Sanford was the candidate for schools chancellor of the Reverend Al Sharpton and “activist attorneys” Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason (both of whom have since...
According to former New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, New York City is safer than it has been in years. And if you believe that, I’ve got a great deal for you, on a slightly used bridge. Last December, the NYPD announced that violent felonies had dropped 17.2 percent for the previous 12 months, their...
What are you doing this year for Kwanzaa? T’his was once a ludicrous question, but in today’s urban America public agencies, newspapers, and businesses trip over themselves showing their unqualified support for this anomalous occasion. Presented now as a religious, if not a national event, Kwanzaa immediately follows the “Judeo-Christian” holidays. It is one thing...
“Those is the niggers that was f–kin’ with my sh-t.” “I knew that nigger was one of the niggers I could rely on.” The first speaker was a twenty-something “homegirl” from the projects, the second a drunk in his late 30’s. Both were riding on New York’s A train on different days and at different...
“There is no God, and if there was. She made a mistake.” That statement came from a colleague of mine during a class in philosophy. That is also the extent to which most public college students will hear the “G” word mentioned during their years of “higher” education. Recent polls have shown that 89 percent...
Students are becoming clients at an increasing number of public colleges. Indeed, staff members consider them “caseloads.” Programs such as “Economic Opportunity Funds” (EOFs) exist as pork barrels, doling out patronage to middle- and upper-middle-class employees, enforcing racist and sexist personnel policies, and acting as politburos. Administrators and staffers openly display their feelings of superiority...
Wap! Someone just punched me, going down the subway stairs from the elevated. Behind me, I hear girlish, teenaged laughter. No accident here. I turn to my assailant, a 12- or 13-year-old black girl and tell her she’d better keep her hands to herself. “You better keep on walkin’, I don’t talk to no white...
Downtown Manhattan is swarming with groups of educated, creative people bound to tell you who you are. Last year, for example, when I tried to catch the thriller Basic Instinct near Union Square, a gay group refused to let anyone see the film. They shut it down, by heaving stink bombs into the theater. Some...