Tonight I watched a Bill O’Reilly episode on Fox News, and was intrigued by the dialogue that took place between two guests over the recent rallies in Oakland honoring Lovelle Mixon, the man who fatally shot four officers before being killed by Oakland police last week. The purpose of the rally was reported to also have been a condemnation of the police. As the story is well reported I won’t belabor the details, but what was intriguing about this exchange was the clear contrast between these two black guests: one a talk-show radio host looking forward, and the other a Ph.D. still looking backward though he has risen from a similar situation as Mixon.
James T. Harris, a conservative talk-show radio host in Milwaukee, WI, condemned those in the rallies honoring Mixon, saying they had a “collective mindset” that was legitimate 30-40 years ago, but is simply illegitimate today. He cited the breakdown of the family and the declining role of religion as the true reasons that many black communities continue to be mired in poverty and crime-ridden neighborhoods. Harris goes on to say that while solidarity was a necessary and helpful thing 40-50 years ago, it is now destructive because it continues to aim at past inequities that no longer exist to any wide extent.
On the other hand, we have Marc Lamont Hill, who holds a Ph.D. (with distinction) from the University of Pennsylvania. Hill is considered one of the leading “hip-hop generation intellectuals” in the country. Hill argued that those taking part in the rallies were not celebrating Mixon, but simply responding to “police terrorism” that has been endemic to their community for decades. O’Reilly responded, rightfully, that this was an inappropriate forum in which to voice their concern, particularly since Mixon was a rape suspect and a cop-killer who left three widows and ten children without a father. But Hill was undeterred. He said that Mixon had a right to “fundamental humanity,” so his life deserved to be celebrated though his actions clearly didn’t. O’Reilly wasn’t buying that either.
Harris then attacked Hill’s very premise that there was such thing as “police terrorism” in the black community. He argued that the “cups of sorrow” from previous generations continue to be propagated needlessly in the black community into the current generation, looking for terrorism where it doesn’t exist. He continued that blacks are now free, but too many continue to look to the past though times have clearly changed. O’Reilly graciously gave Hill the last word, which Hill used to blather on about how the rallies were challenging a “repressive and oppressive police state.” Thank goodness O’Reilly pulled the plug, as I had had enough of Hill and his whining. Hill is legitimate proof (as is Obama) that a black man, through hard work and determination, can achieve whatever his mind can conceive if he applies himself and accepts responsibility for his own life and his own family (ironic that I borrow a bit of phrasing from Jesse Jackson). This same opportunity is available to our brothers and sisters in Oakland if they would simply accept responsibility for their own communities.
So there you have it, one black man who acknowledges our horrid past of slavery and Jim Crow, but demonstrates thankfulness for what we have overcome, and is looking forward to the future (amen to that). Yet we have another black man who has achieved a high degree of success himself as an intellectual who writes, speaks, and appears on national television, but continues to look backward and rail on about inequities of the past. I think the only thing Hill really demonstrates in this exchange is the double standard too many blacks hold towards whites. We want them to treat us with decency and respect, but we don’t have to return the same when it suits us because of past wrongs. Those rallying around Mixon have no defense, as their cause célèbre is indefensible, but Hill sure gave it a hell of a try. Certainly, he could apply his Ph.D. training to defend causes that are actually of some benefit.
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