Friday, August 18, 2006

The Rev. Sharpton's agenda

For a moment I thought I was going to agree 100 percent with former Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton. Indeed, it sounded so right for a second that I was about to write a very hopeful post about him.

But, alas, it was not to be...

He's right in this much (from the AP)

"We have got to get out of this gangster mentality, acting as if gangsterism and blackness are synonymous," Sharpton said Thursday at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists.

"I think we've allowed a whole generation of young people to feel that if they're focused, they're not black enough. If they speak well and act well, they're acting white, and there's nothing more racist than that."
So far, so good...preach on, right?

Well, not really... He goes way out of bounds as well:
The key to leadership is taking the initiative to change things, said Sharpton. He said his National Action Network is just one group willing to help young black leaders get into politics.
POLITICS!!??

What good is that, except to derive a short-term political gain for your godfather party?

What a hack!

If the good Reverend were truly interested in helping young blacks, he would not be thinking of ways to get them into politics. He would be telling them to work hard, get a real job, and be a model citizen (i.e. the opposite of Democratic politics).

Notice he was speaking to a group of journalists who will ignore the newsworthiness of his hacktivism and focus on what made sense.
<< Home 1 Comments:
Blogger Ruth said...

At first glance I thought that perhaps you'd taken a small blurb of his speech and blown it out of proportion --no way though! The rest of the article just as clearly shows his agenda. Another aspect grates on me; we talk about leadership, activism and awareness (on any subject from aids to cancer to racism), yet despite this all, so little is accomplished! All this is simply political pep-talk; it's time for some solid action.

7:30 PM, August 20, 2006  

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