Juan Williams Assails 'Phony' Black Leaders

Ronald Kessler - July 27th, 2006 - NewsMax.com

Fox News contributor Juan Williams comes out swinging against "phony" black leaders and a black "culture of failure" in his new book "Enough."

Williams gave NewsMax his first interview about the book, and he lashed out at leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who create support by focusing on "victimhood."

"That says to an individual, ‘You can't help yourself, you can't help your family, and therefore all you can do is wait for the government to do something for you," said Williams, who is also a senior correspondent for National Public Radio. "I think it is a message of weakness and ineffectual thinking that is absolutely crippling the poor and especially minorities in the United States."

Bill Cosby was the first black leader who had the courage to point out how liberals and liberal blacks are promoting failure in the black community. At least it is a reasonable argument that always blaming someone else for your problems leads to failure when that blame is not justified. I was reminded of that the other day when I was talking to a local black leader.

First he made the outrageous statement that 90% of all Republicans are racist bigots. Since 8% of the Republican Party are black, that only leaves 2% of other Republicans he does not see as racist bigots. You have to ask if that is true, why a larger percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights legislation than Democrats? That is right. Over 55% of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights legislation.

Next he insisted that he was not a democrat, but an independent. I checked, and I must say the records I saw say he is fibbing. He certainly shows as a registered Democrat. It seems that was part of an argument that he was making that he was not liberal but was in the middle of the political spectrum. Neither appears to be true.

I hope we can continue the dialog though. I would like to discuss the comments of Juan Williams, a noted liberal, with this Bertie County man. It is going to be interesting to see if like Bill Cosby, hard core black leaders condemn Juan as an Uncle Tom.