Blacks should not wait for system
As a college educated black man myself, I congratulate Ryan
Smith for being one of the apparently few “black men who
entered UCLA this fall based on academics alone”
(“Funding for education, not prisons, vital to blacks,”
Nov. 6).
While I agree with several key points of his assessment of the
state of minority affairs, I must take issue with his oversight of
a key factor in the failure of blacks, chicanos and other people of
color to make an impact at the university level.
That factor, the lack of positive and appropriate adult
guidance, is, of course, exacerbated by the unusually high number
of our people incarcerated at this time. But it is a mistake to
wait solely for a political or judicial system to slowly right
itself and begin to take care of our people.
We must challenge ourselves to do this work on our own.
Cecil Smith UCLA UniCamp
Smith misses important factors
Judging from Ryan Smith’s Wednesday column, “Funding
for education, not prisons, vital to blacks,” you would think
the U.S. government or the Los Angeles Police Department
arbitrarily arrest black men.
In reality, these black men commit crimes in far greater numbers
than is proportional to their percentage of the society, and not
just for so-called “non-violent” crimes like drug
dealing (and possession), but also for murders, armed-robberies and
burglaries, which often leave black victims in their wake.
Smith also harps about the evils of California’s three
strikes law ““ as if third-felony criminals would be in
college save for that last mugging.
Readers should remember that black leadership called for truth
in sentencing and mandatory minimum sentences ““ like those of
California’s three strikes laws ““ to make up for white
judges going easy on white criminals.
Racist laws are blamed (but not cited) for an “exodus of
black male scholars,” as if some white man made these
“scholars” break the so-called racist laws.
Are the laws also to be blamed for the influence of an
anti-intellectual hip-hop culture that accuses and rebukes young
black “scholars” for acting white (Oreos) or a
community that praises Snoop Dogg while dissing Colin Powell as a
“house slave.”
Smith also tells the same old lie about culturally-biased
university admissions tests without offering any proof, as if the
mere repetition of the charge makes it true. He fails to mention
more relevant factors to blacks’ underachievement: black
youths watch more television than any other ethnic group, have
sub-par reading levels and come from more single-parent homes than
any other ethnic group.
In fact, Smith offers no balance whatsoever in his simple-minded
diatribe, making it easy for another generation of black men to
avoid any responsibility in their futures or their education. I
just wonder how you beat the odds? Makes me think that if one black
man can do it, many of them can.
Jeffrey Abelson New York City