[20PearlGirl]

Originally posted by ramrod
Well, I'm flat out saying he was wrong. However, he did back off of the some of sweeping comments a few days later on Tavis Smiley so that shows that even he knows he went a little too far.
Here is a direct quote from the speech just to let everyone know what I had a problem with.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. (clapping) In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye (laughing). And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.

I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (clapping) Where were you when he was twelve? (clapping) Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? (clapping) And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?"

The middle and upper class are just as apathetic when raising their kids as the poor. These comments, rather his entire speech was directed to poor black folks. These parenting issues and education issues exists just as much in affluent households as they do in the poor. But yet he targeted poor folks. I was at Constitution Hall when he made the speech and he never once criticized the part that the middle and upper middle class play in this. Like I said in my earlier post it's really easy to make a speech condemning poor folks to an audience of middle and upper class blacks. If Colin Powell (a brother who I have personally worked with in the community a few times) had made the exact same comments Jesse, the NAACP, the Urban League, every black multi millionaire preacher along w/their 50,000 member congregations would have criticized him along w/myself because the comments were bottom line offensive. To imply that these social ills are only problems in our poor communities is ridiculous. This is an example of well off blacks being just as classist as the white republicans they regularly criticize.

Ramrod,

I hear you but, the problem is the same. It doesn't take money to become involved in your children's education. It doesn't take money to kiss your child before he goes to school and to tell him that you love him...you would be surprised how much those simple acts would allieviate (sp?) some of the pain that disadvantaged children feel. I was very fortunate in that way. My mom though married, raised my sister and I alone, and she made sure we knew we were loved and she was very involved in the PTA at school. Alot of us need to turn off Maury and Jerry and visit a library or volunteer in the community. Become involved and stop spectating.