Juan Williams Drinks the Conservative Kool-Aid

NPR correspondent and frequent commentator Juan Williams manages to simultaneously channel Bill Cosby, John McWhorter, Dinesh D'Souza, and Allen Bloom in an editorial in today's Washington Post. Williams opens with this whopper:

If systemic racism remains a reality, there is also a far more sinister obstacle facing African American young people today: a culture steeped in bitterness and nihilism, a culture that is a virtual blueprint for failure.

Williams first doubts the existence of institutional racism, and then says that the beliefs and habits of black youth harm themselves more than systemic racism ever could. This is not only an astounding confusion of cause and effect, but a deeply warped view of black youth culture. John McWhorter first mainstreamed this kind of talk with his book Losing the Race, which argued against the importance of institutional racism in favor of "cultural" factors endemic to the black community. In so many words, McWhorter and Williams are saying, the African American community has, with self-defeating, failure-oriented attitudes, brought its plight upon itself. Williams writes,

[Black youths'] search for identity and a sense of direction is undermined by a twisted popular culture that focuses on the "bling-bling" of fast money associated with famous basketball players, rap artists, drug dealers and the idea that women are at their best when flaunting their sexuality and having babies.

But as blogger Prometheus 6 points out, boys wanting "fast money" and fame, and girls being expected to flaunt their sexuality and procreate isn't unique to African American culture; these are the foundation stones of mainstream, white, American capitalism.

The black community is home to "a frightening acceptance of criminal behavior," Williams says, without recognizing the many-fingered hands of oppression that strangle most inner cities. A total lack of public and private investment in black neighborhoods (including redlining) lead to low job growth and crumbling infrastructures; a punitive and inflexible criminal justice system plus racist drug laws and police forces sweep black youth into jail by the dozens; school systems funded almost entirely by local property taxes ensure that good teachers, books, and other resources remain in communities of wealthy property owners, while bad schools in bad neighborhoods continue to yield bad students and bad citizens. Is any of this a surprise? Is it rocket science?

UPDATE: Juan Williams' new book "ENOUGH: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It" is sensibly reviewed in the Post by Peniel E. Joseph.