The editor of the Berkshire Eagle, a community paper in western Massachusetts, is taking heat for and now explaining (with a good explanation) why the Eagle published an op-ed by a guy named Steven Nikitas, a “conservative activist” from Pittsfield.
As editor Kevin Moran explains, Nikitas is one of several people who contribute op-eds ‘from the right’ on behalf of the local Republican party. It seems Nikitas’s latest editorial on the “debased”, “immature” and “cowardly” culture of black America got a lot of people upset.
A taste of Mr Nikitas, “conservative activist” …
After the burning and looting in Baltimore and Ferguson we are seeing endless media hand-wringing that somehow “we” must all do something more to help black America. And “we” means white people, taxpayers, businesses, the criminal justice system, the universities and the government. But blacks must now pull themselves up. “We” have done far too much already with tens of trillions in handouts in the last 50 years, and it has backfired badly.
Conservatives and Republicans have offered sure-fire solutions for black America and they have been rejected repeatedly. Our advice has been for African-Americans to discard the leadership of the Democrat party and charlatans like Al Sharpton. After all, far-left liberalism has obviously failed. The proof is everywhere.
Conservatives have recommended over and over that blacks reform their culture from top to bottom by respecting marriage and the family and the law, returning to their churches, embracing education and hard work, avoiding violence and debased rap music, speaking clearly, shunning drugs and profanity, and pulling up their pants. And to stop blaming all of their problems on everyone else. That is immature, cowardly and counterproductive.
What respectable business owner would hire a young black male from the “hood” who won’t even show up for work? What successful enterprise is going to establish itself in crime-ridden inner cities? Isn’t looting and burning self-defeating?
…
On the other hand elderly African-Americans often talk wistfully about their youths in those ostensibly horrible years before “civil rights” when they were vastly more conservative people and had their families, their churches, strong fathers and mothers, respect for hard work and education and the law, and their small businesses. These were priceless natural assets that required no taxpayer subsidy. They offered a solid social foundation to build on but have been obliterated instead, with predictable consequences.
Special thanks to TPM Reader GR.
