The Solution in the Black Heart

From the New York Daily News, Newt Gingrich on race:

"It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this," Gingrich...told CNN. "If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don't understand being black in America."

Gingrich...said white Americans "instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk" facing black Americans today.

"It is more dangerous to be black in America," he said. "It is more dangerous in that they are substantially more likely to end up in a situation where the police don't respect you and you could easily get killed. And sometimes for whites it’s difficult to appreciate how real that is and how it's an everyday danger."

This is just as silly and inane as Hillary Clinton's quote:

I will call for white people like myself to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-American families who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have the talk about how to really protect themselves when they’re the ones who should be expecting protection from encounters with the police...

I’m going to be talking to white people. I think we’re the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries that are coming from our African-American fellow citizens.

What Newt and Hillary won't say is this: How much of "dangerous to be black in America" is brought on by other blacks in America? When will the black community face their own issues?

Don't get me wrong. I am not saying there isn't anything to the "dangerous to be black in America" storyline. But accepting that is only one step from acquiescence, from accepting that it is ok to be a victim. It isn't.

Martin Luther King Jr. said it best in his essay, Ways of Meeting Oppression, edited below:

Oppressed people deal with their oppression in three characteristic ways. One way is acquiescence: the oppressed resign themselves to their doom. They tacitly adjust themselves to oppression and thereby become conditioned to it. In every movement toward freedom some of the oppressed prefer to remain oppressed. 

...There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion. Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up. A few years ago in the slum areas of Atlanta, a Negro guitarist used to sing almost daily: "Been down so long that down don't bother me." This is the type of negative freedom and resignation that often engulfs the life of the oppressed. 

...To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper. To accept injustice...passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. It is a way of allowing his conscience to fall asleep. At this moment the oppressed fails to be his brother's keeper. So acquiescence-while often the easier way-is not the moral way. It is the way of the coward... 

A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. 

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. 

The third way open to oppressed people in their quest for freedom is the way of nonviolent resistance...[T]he principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites, acquiescence and violence, while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both. The nonviolent resister agrees with the person who acquiesces that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids the nonresistance of the former and the violent resistance of the latter. With nonviolent resistance, no individual or group need submit to any wrong, nor need anyone resort to violence in order to right a wrong.

King would have said Newt and Hillary are both looking at the wrong aspect. So it is dangerous to be black in America. Why is it dangerous? Blacks in America need to look at why this is, and not just acquiesce to it, nor go out and kill cops. Hearing Newt admit it or Hillary talk to whites about it does nothing to help the blacks. Newt is not the problem, nor does Hillary have the solution. It can only be found in the black heart. They know what needs to be done, but they have to look inside themselves and their communities.