lack leaders have mastered the art of criticizing just about anything and everything except themselves and the black community—unless, of course, it is about criticizing blacks for not being sufficiently committed to the black cause against racism.  Whites, by contrast, need only sneeze in the wrong direction; and they are apt to be accused of racism. By contrast, blacks can exhibit all sort of incompetency and irresponsibility without black leaders uttering so much as a word of criticism. 

This is most unfortunate.  Why?  Because history makes it abundantly clear that healthy self-criticism is indispensable to flourishing.  Self-deprecation is one thing; self-criticism is quite another. 

Self-deprecation consists in minimizing the significance of one’s accomplishments—a reluctance to take credit for the good that one has done.  None of this is characteristic of self-criticism. 

Self-criticism involves examining one’s behavior in order to determine what has gotten in the way of progress or examining one’s behavior in order to determine what will make for greater progress. 

It has seemed to me that no community of individuals has been more unwilling to engage in self-criticism than the black community.  And perhaps the greatest proof of this comes from black leaders themselves.  I cannot ever recall anyone pointing to a constructive criticism that came from. say, Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson—except, of course, when black people are not being adamant enough about charging someone racism.  Interestingly, some of the sharpest criticisms of the black community have come from Minister Farrakhan.  And his view, in a nut shell, is that blacks should be in the business of picking themselves up by the bootstraps and not relying upon someone else for the self-advancement of blacks.  It is unfortunate that his self-help message was laced with untold venom. 

With black leaders nowadays, we have more than enough of the venom, but none of the message of self-help.  One can count on one’s one hand—and still not move all 5 fingers—the number of times that either Sharpton or Jackson has organized black people for anything other than to protest racism. 

And as I look around at blacks holding professorships, it is still incredibly rare to hear a message of self-help.  The issue is not whether racism is real.  I have never for a moment supposed that it is not.  But racism was just as real in days gone by than it is today. Yet, self-help was one of Booker T. Washington’s most powerful and enduring messages; and Tuskegee Institute was an outgrowth of that message.  The man who managed to found an institution for the education of blacks could not possibly be as self-hating as so many would suppose on account of his 1985 “Atlanta Exposition Address,” he seemed to sanction institutionalized segregation. 

Unfortunately, Booker T. Washington has been so vilified as an Uncle Tom that his name has all but fallen out of circulation.  In the oddest of ways, Washington was rather like Farrakhan without all the venom that was characteristic of Farrakhan; for precisely what Washington thought is that blacks should do for themselves what whites would not do for blacks; and that it is precisely what Washington did, sacrificing himself along the way. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the last great black leader whom anyone identified as making sacrifices for the black community.  Every indication is that other black leaders have turned vilifying whites into a form of profit-making that they (the black leaders) have enormously enjoyed. 

Constructive self-criticism occasions strength and independence.  Merely ranting about racism, on the other hand, undermines strength and independence.  Real progress lies not in your being willing to fight for me, but in your teaching me and, thereby, enabling me to fight for myself.  This way of putting the point constitutes a stinging criticism of present-day black leaders.  They no more stand as beacons of progress than a dog’s gulping down the food found on one’s plate is sign that one had indeed prepared a gourmet dinner.  

Time was when black people did far more with far less.  This shows at once that the problem of black progress cannot be simply tied to whites handing over benefits to blacks.  For there is the question of what blacks will do with those benefits.  And that question necessarily raises the issue of self-criticism.

here is no better indication of what a person is like than what the individual does when there is no accountability whatsoever for her or his actions.  And by this measure the website JuicyCampus.Com tells us two important things.  One is that there are a lot of morally bankrupt people in the world.  The other is that one can be morally bankrupt without ever pulling the trigger of a gun or plunging a knife into someone.  Utterly nastiness and derisive comments issue from none other than a morally bankrupt character. 

JuicyCampus.Com allows for complete anonymity and so entirely eliminates any accountability.  And what we find is painful.  One student visiting the site put things very aptly in response to someone pointed out that the student, too, was on the site:

Replied on: 09-25-2008

yeah i fucking check it and hope I don't see my own name on here, or my friends. I would NEVER post personal shit about other people

A student can only hope that she or he does not become the object of someone’s mean-spiritedness. 

The sexual behavior of women is talked about with reckless abandon: which females sleep around; who had an abortion.  There is speculation about the sexual orientation of students.  And there are expressions of racial hostility that make one shudder.  Names are mentioned.  And notice that all of this comes, not from the so-called naïve and uneducated, but from students in college. 

By the way, there are 412 “Juicy Campuses”; and Syracuse University is one of the most popular campuses on the site.

JuicyCampus.Com epitomizes one of the evils of the internet, namely that it allows for complete unaccountability by way of complete anonymity. 

Does this mean that human beings are naturally evil?  Not quite.  What it does mean, though, is that human beings can be shaped by their environment.  All of us feel angry and hostile from time to time.  All of us want to vent upon occasion.  These are sentiments are natural enough. 

In the old days (circa the 1990s), these hostile sentiments were held in check by the mere fact that there was no way of acting on them without exposing oneself.  So we did not act upon those hostile sentiments; and guess what: these sentiments passed; and we went on living decent and meaningful lives. 

The anonymity of the internet, coupled with the horrendously mistaken view that self-restraint is a vice, is making for a much worse society for all. 

Indeed, the very idea of freedom of speech is being perverted.  For the idea was not that a person should be able to say whatever she or he pleases and then go into hiding.  Rather, the idea was that a person would be answerable for the views that she or he presented, wherever those views were presented and whenever those views were presented. 

Free speech as we now seem to understand it amounts to no more than an entitlement to ventilate, no matter how absurd the person’s utterances might be.  And we have made matters worse by allowing that feelings alone automatically have credibility in that they properly deserve expression otherwise a person is not being true to herself or himself. 

If self-restraint is not a vice, then it has to be false that feelings all by themselves thereby have credibility.  Well, think about it.  Here is a crass example: No matter how sexually arousing I may deem another man's wife to be, it is manifestly clear that self-restraint is in order here; and that I should keep my feelings to myself. .

Or, to take a page, from the extraordinary film The Elephant Man: It may very well be that I think that a disfigured person is absolutely grotesque in his appearance.  Yet, if anything is clear, it is clear that I should not say to him: “Oh my, you are the ugliest person I have ever seen”.  I should not say this even if that is precisely how I feel about the matter.  To say such a thing would be cruel and mean-spirited beyond measure.  Again, this counts as self-restraint.

In either case: How true am I not being to myself if, in these instances, I keep my feelings to myself?  Needless to say, if being true to myself turns upon expressing my feelings in either case, then I have a major psychological problem. 

In the context of anonymity: Liberty without self-restraint is none other than a moral monster.  And sites like JuicyCampus.Com are an illustration of precisely that.  And therein lies one of the fundamental problems of modern technology. 

Unless we find a way to cultivate self-restraint in the vast moral space of freedom afforded us by the anonymity of the internet, society will invariably become worse off.  Notice that in the name of free speech privacy, on JuicyCampus.Com, has essentially been trampled upon.  What is more, there is no protection against either slander or libel. 

Finally, notice that a time-honored principle is floundering mightily.  That principle called, The Golden Rule, reads as follows: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Again, it was not too long ago that this principle actually animated the lives of people.  Anonymity is serving to undermine the moral force that this principle routinely had in the lives of ordinary people. 

There are signs everywhere that we human beings are not ready for technology.  Why?  Because increasingly we human beings are proving ourselves not to be capable of the self-restraint that is necessary in order to live well in a world that affords us both liberty and anonymity at every turn. 

The brilliant thinker Ray Kurzweil, author of the The Singularity is Near, is more than a little besotted by the reality that technology may afford human beings something akin to immorality.  And he may very well be right about that.  What Kurzweil seems to have overlooked is that immorality admits of at least two configurations.  One goes by the name of heaven.  The other goes by the name of hell.  And given the choice between death and the immorality of hell, it is rather clear to me that I would refer death. 

o what should we make of the poll informing us that some whites will not vote for Obama because he is blacks?  The correct answer is: Not much.  And this shall become even more evident later on.  Oh, to be sure, not voting for Obama simply because he is black is a morally deplorable reason.  But the truth of the matter is that any number of morally deplorable reasons for not voting for him, just as there are morally deplorable reasons for voting for him.  It is now, and has always been, a fact of life that people vote as they do for reasons that are morally objectionable. 

Suppose for instance one voted for Obama because one holds that we should exploit the African nations; and it will be much, much easier for Obama to do this, since he is black.  Well, needless to say, this is a morally despicable reason for voting for Obama.  Which is worse: not voting for Obama because he is black or voting for Obama because he is black and, therefore, with the hope that he will exploit the nations of Africa?  I take it to be manifestly obvious that it is sort of silly to suppose that one of these reasons for voting is more morally despicable than the other.  The reason for voting for Obama is just as horrendous as the reason for not voting for him. 

Not only that, the reason for voting for Obama can be easily enough construed as racist.  So it is not as if all moral criticism falls by the wayside if a person chooses to vote for Obama. 

And I wish to allow that those blacks who are voting for Obama because he is black do not really mean quite what they say.  What they really mean is:

He is black and certainly no less competent than the alternate candidate—indeed no less competent than other (past or present) presidents. 

I assume that blacks would not be rallying behind Obama if he were demonstrably an idiot.  The very idea that it would be better to have a demonstrably dumb black as president rather than a demonstrably talented white as president is, in addition to being morally reprehensible, downright incomprehensible, assuming moral decency in both cases.  It is obvious, however, that Barack Obama is no idiot.

Getting back to the poll, though, I fear that it is another instance of sensationalism.  Either that, or people are much, much dumber than I would have ever have imagined.  Let me explain.

Suppose that someone had asserted that racism simply no longer exists in the United States.  Well, I assume that all but the terribly naïve would have insisted that such a claim is straightforwardly false.  Presumably, the racism that continues to exist in the United States was in place during the primaries.  Yet, Barack Obama won the nomination for the Democratic Party.  And here is what the first paragraph of the newspaper article says:

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent," responsible for their own troubles (my emphasis).

So precisely what we know is that Obama won the nomination for the Democratic Party notwithstanding the fact that one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views towards blacks.  But this truth seems to have gone unnoticed. 

Instead, what we get is that the percentage of white racist democrats may be sufficient to prevent Barack Obama from winning the election, owing to the two and one-half percentage points that they constitute.  But it is actually worse than that.  What we get is the following inference: from the fact that (1) a person (a white Democrat, in particular) harbors objectionable views regarding blacks, it follows that (2) the person is high unlikely to vote for Obama.  Alas, this inference is far less plausible than one might initially suppose. 

There can be little doubt that at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, there were whites who admired Martin Luther King, Jr. who nonetheless harbored quite negative sentiments regarding blacks generally.  A further more substantial problem is this: There is a real and fundamentally important difference between having a critical view of life in communities and being racist. 

There is no logical incompatibility between having a negative critical view about the nature of life among blacks, very generally construed, and thinking that a particular black is ever so suitable for a given job of excellence.  Indeed, a profoundly self-respecting black, no less, could have precisely that thought. 

I do not doubt for a moment that there are whites who are racists.  The problem has to do with how do we construe being a racist, and the poll suggests that merely having a negative view of blacks counts as being racist.  Well, that is too simple-minded. 

By definition, a justified criticism is negative.  It is also the case, by definition, that a justified criticism is not racist.  The poll is not sensitive to this difference.  I have lots of criticisms of the black community.  Indeed, I hold that notwithstanding the existence of racism, many of the problems that exist in black communities is owing to blacks themselves.  In any case, not a single one of my criticisms against various black communities applies to Obama.  And not a single one of those criticisms would be a reason for not voting for Obama.  But I am black—so of course I can’t be racist.  Whew ! ! !  That was close. 

Now I ask: What is the point of the article: “Poll: Racial views steer some white Dems away from Obama”?  Not surprisingly, the suggestion is that if Obama loses the election, and the vote is close, then the explanation for Obama's losing the election will be none other than racism.   

But here is the problem: Since we are talking about only a very small margin, then any small group of individuals united by a given set of beliefs could determine the outcome of the election.  Sufficiently many Asians could make the difference.  Sufficiently many black funamentalists could make the difference.  Sufficiently many of the National Rifle Association could make the difference.  And so on.  Once it is conceded that a small group can make the difference, then it follows that any small group can make the difference.  And the folks at Stanford University who conducted the the poll did nothing at all to rule out the possibility that other small groups might make the difference.  

This is unconscionable.  The charge of racism is a very serious one that should not be made unless we have been careful to rule out reasonable alternatives.  The folks at Stanford did no such thing.  And they clearly knew better. 

Suggesting racism without warrant is as unscrupulous and reprehensible as denying racism when it is present. 

itterness and nastiness is the name of the game.  Even the pretense of truth and goodwill has taken a back seat to bitterness and nastiness.  That aptly characterizes the political life in America.  America has survived many things.  However, I do not whether it will or can survive the bitterness and nastiness that has come to be definitive of the political life.  I would, in fact, be surprised if it could.

America has become the country that values freedom above all except when things go wrong, then it is necessarily someone else fault—the fault of the system.  Bitterness and viciousness contribute mightily to this approach.  And this mindset has become characteristic of American politics. 

So in America people should be free to eat whatever they choose.  Yet, fast food restaurants are to blame for the problem of obesity—and not the individuals who frequent those restaurants.  I may be missing something, but to the best of my knowledge no one—not even poor people—have to frequent a fast food restaurant.  Indeed, it is an insult to the poor even to suggest that cannot fathom that eating 2 big Macs, or whatever, day after day will result in weight gain unless one is an extraordinarily active person. 

As for the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the simple truth is that all sorts of people are to blame; and this includes many of the homebuyers themselves who were greedy and who made irresponsible decisions.  One does not have to like President George Bush at all in order to resist, and correctly so, the view that his administration bears sole responsibility for this. 

The strength of the United States was tied to two precepts: One was commonsense.  The other was the willingness to take responsibility for one’s mistakes.  The essay “The Death of Common Sense” by Lori Borgman is so very on point. 

Parents want their children to be educated; yet, these very same parents will not accept that a school should be able to discipline their children.  And it is simply common sense that where discipline is absent in a school so will learning be absent.  Of course, anything can be abused including discipline.  Just so, refusing discipline altogether is surely not the right response to cases where there is an abuse of discipline.  That would be rather like supposing that the proper response to an airplane or a car accident is to eliminate airplane flying or driving altogether. 

I said at the beginning that I doubt whether or not the United States can survive its bitterness and viciousness.  And the 2008 presidential election puts that concern into stark relief.  This is because it is way too easy to blame whites should Obama not win the presidential race.  The presuppositions behind this thinking are stunning. 

The fact of the matter is that Barack Obama holds moral views with which a reasonable person could disagree—views with which a reasonable black person could disagree.  Indeed, some blacks publicly did just that at recent speech given by Obama at the University of Miami.

One does not have to be an Uncle Tom in order to be a black who disagrees with Obama.  It follows from this that a black does not have to be an Uncle Tom in order not to place having a black president above all else in terms of importance.  Yet, bitterness and viciousness will not allow a great many people to acknowledge this reality. 

Thus, there are blacks who label blacks as Uncle Toms for not taking a pro-Obama stance and whites as racists for not taking a pro-Obama stance.  No doubt there are whites who think the same way about whites.  I need not point out that there is no easy way to defeat the charge that one is either an Uncle Tom or a racist.  And that is part of what makes either charge so vicious. 

While I take to be obvious that there blacks who are Uncle Toms and whites who are racists, I also think that the very nature of these labels require that they be used with great circumspection—and not simply as a means of getting one’s way. 

When the charge of racism becomes none other than a vehicle for success, then what we have a most destructive level of viciousness and bitterness.   Welcome to America.

This brings me to a profound difference between Barack Obama and John McCain.  Obama is an extremely intelligent man, and so he knows very well that in point of fact he can play, and is playing, the race card.  He knows that he can be vicious in attacking McCain in a way that McCain may simply not be in attacking Obama.  What is more, precisely what we all know is that in this regard the media can be a marvelous ally to Obama in this regard. 

In effect, then, we have a most bitter and vicious undercurrent to this presidential election that does not bode well for the American society.  So it is if people are poised to make the charge of racism simply in virtue of the fact that Obama should lose the election. 

What does Barack Obama think about all of this?  Well, precisely because he is a very smart man, it is at the very least interesting that he has not in any whatsoever allowed for the possibility that he could lose the election without this being owing to racism.  Neither he nor Michelle Obama has.  There is a way of speaking to this issue that would be extraordinarily healing to this nation.  And neither has made this moral gesture.  As Alice Walker, the author of the novel The Color Purple, made so poignantly clear: Sometimes what a person does not say tells as much if not more than what the person actually says. 

If from the very start, they have supposed that the only explanation for their not winning is racism, then quite simply they are playing the race card.  What is more, they are doing so with extraordinary arrogance.  Being black entitles them to equality not the presidency.  And that is how they should present themselves.

ell me how it is even possible to prefer one’s blackberry over one’s beloved spouse.  Tell me how it is even possible to admit this—even to oneself.  Surely this is one of those moments when the expression “Have you no shame?” applies with full force.  A major crisis alarm should have gone off for anyone who even answered the survey by saying that she or he prefers the blackberry to her or his spouse.  Each person who gave that answer should have immediately had the thought: “This is not the kind of spouse that I want to be”.  That is, the answer ought to have been a rude awakening.  After all, a rude awakening beats no awakening at all. 

I am referring, of course, to the article “Technology Can be Berry, Berry Addictive”, which reports that 35 percent of blackberry owners would choose their blackberry over their spouse.  What is most important to notice is that no one deliberately chose to acquire this sort of incredibly warped preference.  Rather, this damnable preference structure has come about as a result of a desensitization that was forged. 

Let me put the point another way.  We can reasonably assume no person would choose to be the sort of individual whose psychological configuration is such that she or he generally prefers a machine over the warmth and affection of a person, be that person a good friend or a spouse.  It is one thing to want to be alone upon occasion or to prefer some moments alone surfing the internet.  It is quite another to have a psychological configuration where one generally and routinely prefers an electronic internet device to the company of a loved-one (spouse or good friend).   

Given that no one reasonable person would actually choose to be that way, the very fact that so many have come to have this warped preference—an extraordinary 35 percent—tells us something very disconcerting. 

The malleability of human beings is, at once, our greatest strength and our greatest liability.  And the article “Technology Can be Berry, Berry Addictive” poignantly points to one of the liabilities that is constitutive of our human nature: If we are not careful we who are human can become desensitized to the greatest of all human gifts, namely love and affection.  That is what the 35 percent tells us.  Notice: not 1 percent or even 5 percent, but a whopping 35 percent—a third of those surveyed: 35 percent of 6500 individuals.  That amounts to more than 1900 individuals. 

And notice that if we claim that what is normal is simply a function of how more than 50-percent of humans behave, then we have the rather startling and utterly disconcerting conclusion that preferring a blackberry to a loved-one is approaching something that is normal for human beings.  

What distinguishes a psychologically healthy human being from a human zombie, it being understood that a zombie is by definition a human being manqué?  Surely, human beings are approaching zombie status if they have a psychological configuration where they have a general preference for blackberries over the affection of a loved-one. 

This much is manifestly clear to me: The more zombie-like we become, the easier it becomes to manipulate us.  And one reason for this is that more zombie-like we become the more morally numb we become.  And to become morally numb is essentially to give evil a very form port-of-entry into the very being of our lives. 

This is the real significance of the survey.  It reveals something most frightening about what human beings might become.  Already, we can see what some have shamelessly become.  And the reality of the 35 percent does not portend a better world in that speaks to the zombie-reality in all of us. 

arah Palin is a black woman.   Needless to say: I am just making that up.  But let us suppose for a moment that is a black woman.  Then the Left would almost certainly not have much nasty to say against her.  Why?  Because there would be the specter of racism.  And as we now, the Left will trip over itself to avoid even the very possibility of appearing racist.  I should say here that this holds for the members of the Left who are white.  For while blacks have often had a field day criticizing this or that conservative blacks, such as Condoleezza Rice, most whites on the Left have kept their mouths shut. 

So if Sara Palin were black, there would be utter silence on the part of a great many who are on the Left with regard to whatever inadequacies she might have.  This silence has operated with Barack Obama, which the following example should marvelously illustrate.

It is unimaginable to me that the parents of my white students would think that I would make a suitable professor for their children if I had spent 20 years attending a church that spewed nothing but venom against whites.  Why, I would clearly be seen as bitter person full of hatred, and thus unfit to be a good mentor for their children.  And that assessment would strike me as absolutely correct.  This makes it an utter mystery to me that whites on the Left do not make precisely that assessment of Barack Obama with regard to whether or not he would make a good president of the United States.

If bitterness is an impediment to being a good professor, then it seems to me that it would be an impediment to being a good president.  And if a 20-year membership in a church that spewed nothing but venom against whites does not warrant the charge that one is a bitter person, then nothing does. 

So if Sarah Palin were black, the Left would be tripping over itself to extol her virtues.  Insofar as she was thought to lack sophistication, that would be seen as an asset.  Likewise, her lack of experience would be seen as an asset.  For her absence of sophistication and experience would be seen as serving as a conduit for a fresh perspective on issues, no matter what the issues might be. 

So while McCain clearly upset the apricot in choosing a woman for a running mate, it is obvious that he did not fully think this one through; for if he had chosen a black women to be his running mate, then the Left would clearly have abandoned Obama. 

Her qualifications or the lack thereof would have been simply irrelevant.  Why, she could have been a prostitute and the Left would have found a way to turn that into a virtue—a political asset even.  We know this because we know that the Left is convinced that Obama has more than enough experience to run the United States.   

It is not too late.  All Sarah Palin has to do is get a black ancestor and she can lay claim to blackness.  And that is not all that difficult to do.  And if she has trouble finding a black ancestor, then a Latino one will surely do.  I think that she ought to float the idea for no other reason than to mess with the mind of those on the Left.  This, of course, would be utterly mean and nasty.  But in this election, at any rate, the Left has made meanness and nastiness its raison d’être.