As I began to read my Christmas present to myself, a two volume set of "American Speeches," political oratory that spans from the Revolutionary War to Bill Clinton, I was reminded of a haunting, but chilling realization as I read a speech by Frederick Douglass: Black culture today, for all intents and purposes, is thug culture.
While not a blanket statement, we would be fooling ourselves if we did not acknowledge that this is the reality for too many young African Americans, regardless of economic status. For every African-American parent who spends painstaking hours trying to invoke messages of responsibility and hard work, there are larger, more influential forces overtly and covertly saying such things are reserved for "whites only."
How did we go from aspiring to excellence to glorifying debased and otherwise degrading behavior? Can this all be blamed on racism or the lack of affirmative action?
Today's so-called black culture finds its roots in prison behavior. The "sagging" of one's pants, the thick cornrows have gone from an inmate ethos to one that is now part of the status quo on the streets.
This does not mean that young whites and other groups do not engage in similar practices. What I am witnessing through personal, nonscientific observation is a black community embracing these behaviors so that they become synonymous with who they are. There appears to be no line of demarcation that separates the cultural statement de jour from their reality.
The late University of California anthropologist John Ogbu was vilified largely in the black community for his work in the Shaker Heights area, just outside of Cleveland.
Ogbu was invited by concerned parents of the middle-class black community in Shaker Heights to help ascertain why some black students in their highly regarded suburban school system were "disengaged" from academic work and performed below their white counterparts. He concluded that "the black students' own cultural attitudes hindered academic achievement and that these attitudes are too often neglected."
This, however, does not mean I support the critiques offered by Bill Cosby in 2004. Cosby severely oversimplified the problem. He was also aided by the chattering class who merely asked: Was Bill Cosby right? A broken clock is right twice a day, but that does not mean we want to live by it.
Moreover, Cosby's critiques were directed largely at low-income blacks and included comments about their moral behavior, a subject that I suspect Cosby subsequently would rather ignore given that his personal dalliances include children out of wedlock and sexual harassment.
What is certain is that prisons are doing a better job at recruiting African-American males, in particular, than institutions of higher learning, which brings me back to Douglass.
Reading the brilliant oratory of Douglass reminded me that not one African-American living today had to confront the challenges that he faced. Douglass was an escaped slave who learned to read at a time when such things could have meant the end of his life.
In 1845, he published "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave." This book, which is still read today, is a story of the triumph of dignity, courage and self-reliance over evil. It is the stories of Douglass and those of Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Henry Highland Garnett, Martin Luther King, Ella Barker and so many others who are the bedrock of black culture. It is a culture rooted in a people who started with nothing, yet created banks, universities, businesses and churches.
Black culture is not the glorification of violence, nihilism and the degradation of women, but it soon will be if those who know better do not possess the courage to stand up and say: Enough!
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or leave a message at (510) 208-6417. Send a letter to the editor to soundoff@angnewspapers.com.