Winds of Change: Black Community should be turning to Brown
By J. James Estrada (09/08/05)
“Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.”
Spoken in the wake of the terrible events which followed Hurricane Katrina? No, these words were spoken in April of 2000 in a speech called “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Janice Rogers Brown.
If the New Orleans disaster is a failure of leadership, it is a failure of Black leadership.
What have years and years of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Kweisi Infume, Julian Bond, and others, wrought? It has wrought victim-hood and excuses, well on display in the past week. It has lifted up a rap culture of anger and made heroes of dunces like Kayne West, while, at the same time, downplayed genuine success embodied by the likes of Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice and Colin Powell. When it should be making speeches like the one referenced above, it instead sinks to the ugly depths of racism and hatred: “Bush hates black people.”
It is highly necessary, then, that President Bush nominates Justice Janice Rogers Brown to fill the O’Conner chair on the Supreme Court. Justice Brown is black and she is brilliant. She should be a shining example to young blacks from New Orleans to South Beach to South Central Los Angeles. Born in Alabama, she was an associate justice of the California Supreme Court for nearly a decade, to which she famously won re-election with 70% of the vote. Democrats, predictably, enacted a filibuster of her nomination to a federal appointment. A Senate compromise allowed an up-or-down vote which placed Justice Brown in her current position on the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit.
The old guard of Black leadership needs to find a spot on the ash heap of history. It’s well past time for a new outlook and a new direction.
Copyright (c)2005 J. James Estrada
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