I have little interest in the Newark Riots or Uprising or Revolution, or whatever people want to call that crisis. I was living in Manhattan at the time. Channel 13 [WNET, a Newark station stolen by New Yorkers] has talked about the riots in Detroit as the most important event in that summer's tumult. You have to remember that in 1967, there was still a lot of influence by a COMMUNIST Fifth Column on U.S. domestic political events. The Cold War was very much in play; indeed, we were in the midst of a hot war, in Vietnam.
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NEVER did blacks assume responsibility for the mess they made of their lives — not in 1967, not now. it was much easier to blame whitey, even tho the bulk of problems in black neighborhoods had nothing to do with white people, who were NOT THERE. Blacks STILL do not accept responsibility for the mess they have made of their lives and neighborhoods. White people provide free schools, free books, and free in-class supplies, but black pupils (not "students") do not USE the resources GIVEN to them to allow them to make something of their lives. To this day, an appalling proportion of urban blacks drop out, tune out, hook THEMSELVES on dangerous, life-ravaging drugs, and otherwise do everything in their power to make a mess of their lives and the lives of the children they should never have had unless and until they were willing to provide WELL for them, financially, intellectually, and morally.
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Blacks have been PERMITTED to destroy the bulk of the great cities of the United States. If outside invaders had done to Detroit and Newark what Southern blacks have done, we'd have called out the military and EXTERMINATED the invaders. But white Americans were not allowed even to THINK of regarding blacks as enemies to be exterminated, or even arrested and compelled to change, as in "boot-camp" programs to retrain their brain and establish new habits.
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Liberals were told that they must not judge, must not hold blacks (and Latinos, and other poor people) responsible for their own bad choices. How contemptibly paternalistic: blacks are not to be held responsible for their own behavior! Why not? Why are whites not given a pass for their personal failures, but blacks must be?
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Conservatives did not identify with the humanity of their impoverished and screwed-up fellow-citizens, to help them reshape their present and future, but just turned away (tho I would not say "turned their back on" them, because that could be suicidal).
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Here, as in so many matters, nobody did the right thing. Everybody acted stupidly; nobody acted intelligently; and nothing has changed drastically for the better. Oh, there has been incremental improvement over the DECADES, but only incremental — and sometimes reversible. All these "protests" over this and that of late, all these demonstrations about one abuse or another, end up setting us BACK, not moving us forward.
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It is very difficult, for intelligent people, to see how STUPID everything is. It seems that no one ANALYZES what the problems are and solutions might be. As a Nation, we are pretty good at complaining, but not at all good at sustaining interest in social problems, nor in coming up with ideas to address the problems. There are private organizations, foundations, and civic-action initiatives that do wonderful work, but their scale and impact are trivial. You have presumably seen those values.com PSA's ("Public Service Announcements") about this and that, which continue the work of similar PSA's by "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" (the Mormons). Governmental policy just about everywhere in this country is, alas, appallingly inappropriate, irrelevant, ineffective, or counterproductive.