Matt Rosenberg at City Journal shines a bright light on the failure of white liberals and black leadership to speak out against the pathological embrace of the Thug culture among black youth. His whole column is worth reading. Here's an excerpt:
[T]he black gangsta identity-the glorification of drug-dealing, crime, and serial sexual conquest, coupled with a blithe rationalization of fatherless black children-is what really deserves condemnation and concern, and not just in black barbershops, churches, and homes. Bill Cosby excepted, however, few have raised public concerns when blacks outfit themselves in the sartorial and ethical drapery of common street hustlers. Many young blacks walk around saying n**** this, n**** that, but then take offense when others borrow the attendant stylistic signifiers, which our culture foolishly condones and celebrates as black authenticity.
One would think that of all people it would be those most concerned about erasing the stereotypes of blacks as stupid and thuggish who would be most outraged by what regularly appears in our entertainment venues as typifying the black "experience." Young blacks who dress and speak as though they are proud of being inarticulate dopes, or who wish to project a menacing image, simply ratify the convictions of whites, who may know few blacks personally, that these are not people they particularly care to know or care to have living in their neighborhoods.
The silence of black leaders on the glorification of misogyny, criminality, and sexual licentiousness in black culture is doing both black society and the cause of racial harmony tremendous harm. They stand by while their young commit slow-motion suicide. Young people think this is the persona they should adopt in order to be authentically black, but that persona imprisons them in the dysfunctional ghetto of black failure. The road out of poverty is paved with the bricks of personal virtue and those bricks are not much in evidence in a lot of what is held up for young blacks to emulate today.