In the mid-1960s, William F. Buckley had a famous debate with James Baldwin in which Baldwin remarked that, in Harlem, black people threw garbage out their windows for purposes of "protest." Buckley, incredulous, replied that this was no protest at all but merely self-injury.
This debate repeated itself last week on the Chris Rock Show. Chris Rock is a black comedian who has little patience with black-establishment orthodoxy. He greeted his guest, Jesse Jackson, with a provocation: "What do you do, Jesse? I mean, we see you at the rallies . . ." (Jackson responded, " I fight for freedom. I fight for the American dream.") Rock went on to observe that, at a rally in Chicago led by Jackson and Al Sharpton, "Brothers were marching . . . past garbage. Of course, the white people ain't giving you a damn thing -- why don't you clean up your f-- house? . . . If we straightened out ourselves, people would deal with us as human beings."
Jackson echoed Baldwin: "If you live in a certain area of town where they cut off access to capital, and cut off access to jobs -- "; but Rock would have none of it: "That don't mean you can't pick up a damn piece of paper in front of your house." No, it doesn't. Sometimes farce repeats itself as history.