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.