Customer Reviews

Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I greeted this book with eager anticipation. As a concerned African-American who is SICK of the R. Kellys, Marion Barrys, and Mike Tysons bamboozling Black folks into thinking they are martyrs instead of the fools that they are who got what they deserved from their own stupidity and of the ills stated on the cover (as well as Michael Eric Dyson deliberately and dishonestly misrepresenting Bill Cosby's message of self-reliance for cheap fame and more buck$), I expected a lot from this book from a person who feels the need as I do to STOP the self destruction.

Juan Williams talks about some of these ills in this book, but stays mainly to the futility of reparations and the defense of Bill Cosby.

The latter is excellent, but I think the Cos can (and should) speak for himself and write his own book (or put out DVDs of his recent town hall meeetings) to get his point to the public.

He (Williams) mentions some interesting incidents involving chicanery from Rep. Maxine Waters and Al Sharpton. This is interesting, but I wished Williams would have added footnotes to this and other material in the book for verification.

With that said about the presentation, I agree FULLY with the message of this book, which is the necessity for self-examination in Black America to stop the self-destruction, as well as dealing with external issues of the inequalities that remain. In short, we need some Booker T. along with the W.E.B.

I'd give it 5 for content, but 4 for presentation.

And to Dr. Cosby and Mr. Williams, I conclude with this-

"A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us that "At the Olympic games it is not the finest and the strongest men who are crowned, but they who enter the lists.... So too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world."

Robert F. Kennedy "Day of Affirmation" speech, June 6, 1966.

Count me in as one of the companions.

I am utterly speechless! Juan Williams has taken the words right out of my mouth and somebody has finally answered the question that continues to plague my consciousness: "Where are the leaders?" and "Why isn't the black commumity banding together?" Too many have criticized Bill-- Cosby of ALL people. The man not only speaks the truth, he puts his money where his mouth is!! Finally, "Enough" champions the cause and makes us face the tough questions. This is one book that should be required reading in schools and I, for one, feel that the discussion started by Cosby and others is long overdue! BRAVO!

Whether you find Juan Williams' arguments insulting or accurate, they are painful. The poorest of African-Americans are in a state of turmoil and he points out that the current strategy has ceased to yield results. He is not always eloquent in his delivery; in fact, you can hear the pain &/or disgust for what has transpired since Brown v. Board of Education. His interests are aligned with everyone in the black community, that the self serving interests of our so-called black leaders, the lack of education, the rate at which we go to prison, the break down of the family, the negative culture of hip-hop and other factors wreak horrible long-term consequences.

He nevertheless points out that racism is still amongst us and that the remnants of slavery have had lasting affects on our collective psyche. I would have liked to see bolder solutions, such as sending our top high school basketball players to HBCUs to generate money for our community, in addition to his conservative message to get married and stay in school. It's about time somebody came to the defense of Bill Cosby, who has committed more time and money to help his people than many of the pundits and false prophets who now point fingers. I have already recommended this book to all of my friends.

To understand the potential power of "Enough" readers should understand the history of the author, Juan Williams. Snippets from his NPR profile tell his story so readers can respect the story that he tells.

During his 21-year career at The Washington Post, Williams served as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist, and White House reporter. He won an Emmy award for TV documentary writing and widespread critical acclaim for a series of documentaries including "Politics: The New Black Power." Articles by Williams have appeared in magazines ranging from Newsweek, Fortune, and The Atlantic Monthly to Ebony, Gentlemen's Quarterly, and The New Republic.

Williams is the author of the critically acclaimed biography "Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary," which was released in paperback in February 2000. He is also the author of the nonfiction bestseller "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965," the companion volume to the critically acclaimed television series. "This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience" appeared in February 2003. This book was the basis for a six-part public broadcasting TV documentary that aired in June 2003. In 2004, Williams became involved with AARP's Voices of Civil Rights project, leading a veteran team of reporters and editors in the production of "My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience." The book presents the harrowing and haunting eyewitness accounts of some 50 activists who served as foot soldiers and field generals in the Civil Rights Movement.

With credentials like these, his subtitle's power can be appreciated: "The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It." Written by most any other Black man, and he would be discredited.

The writer aside, the writing is powerful because it presents facts wrapped in context rolled out in concrete ideas. For those with ears to hear, this message can save a generation. However, it is not only the young followers who must hear and heed, even more so it is the mature leaders who must put aside power plays and empire building and embrace a more positive, hope-giving model.

The only fear here is that his sometimes harsh rhetoric will create divides where Williams hopes for bridges and that his sometimes stark criticism will cause discouragement rather than the desired motivation. One also wonders if a little credence could be given to long-standing generational patterns and still-existing pockets of racism. Not as excuses, but as honest statements of reality--a reality that can indeed make "pulling oneself up by his or her bootstraps" much harder than if these realities did not exist and co-exist. In this way, an entire generation of African Americans can move "beyond the suffering."

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction," "Soul Physicians," "Spiritual Friends," and the forthcoming "Sacred Friendships: Listening to the Voices of Women Soul Care-Givers and Spiritual Directors."

Juan Williams paints an important if painful portrait of the realities facing the black American underclass. Using Bill Cosby's now-famous "Pound Cake" oration as a literary springboard, Mr. Williams leaps over the tired mantras of those who promulgate, support, and benefit from a perpetual welfare state and instead offers readers a clear, common sense formula for achieving personal and economic success. As its title suggests, "Enough" is an urgent call for personal responsibility. The author has little patience for the well-intended but disastrous "Great Society" programs that supplanted personal responsibility with federal largesse.

Anyone who cares about America (black or otherwise) should marinate their thoughts on Mr. Williams's smart and serious book.

I am a 28 year old, black male. As an early teen, I watched in utter confusion as I was exposed to the 'culture of bad ideas' for the first time. For years, I searched for a way to explain why so many young black people acted in such an antisocial, counterproductive manner. The combination of ENOUGH, CODE of THE STREET by Elijah Anderson, and SOLUTIONS for BLACK AMERICA by Jawanza Kunjufu has helped me wrap my head around what's dragging Black Culture through the mud. Too many excuses, and too little value in education, excessive crime, and ineffective family building. And if you have read ENOUGH and find yourself overwhelmed with the impulse to rattle off how many current injustices that Mr. William's book did not address, please pimp slap yourself into silence and don't bother leaving feedback. I will wager that all Black people who take their education seriously, obey the law, and responsibly distribute their sperm/eggs will find success in America. So yes, the US isn't perfect. But it never will be regardless of how much you cry about it. Get up and get out there.

Also, for more on what you can do to improve America's black youth, visit
reachingyoungminds dot blogspot dot com.

This was a painful read on the state of black affairs in America today. Juan Williams highlights the historical events, issues and major players involved in the cultural civil war taking place within the African-American community. The war is over the soul of a people who once were on the cutting edge of social justice, as well as in art and music, but are now on the path towards irrelevancy. Williams offers clear solutions that are simple, but as he states, are excruciatingly difficult to get out.

Bill Cosby is the heroic figure in Williams' book, where he elaborates important points Cosby made during and since the NAACP's 50th anniversary celebration of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. He discusses Cosby's unique position, as perhaps being the only man with the moral authority to speak openly and honestly about the real challenge to modern-day black America, which Williams describes as the `culture of failure'. Yet despite his credentials, Williams chronicles the backlash against Cosby from apologists and those who have an interest in keeping the black underclass frozen in a state of powerlessness and degeneracy.

The spirit of Williams book transcends ideological spectrums. He creates common ground between the Booker T. Washington and the W.E.B. DuBois schools of thought, bringing black conservatives and liberals together to deal with the question of black self-determination. Yet it is the inclusion of the black conservatives, in particular, that has produced the enabling silence from the far-left activists and progressive leadership of today's civil rights groups. Cosby's message sounds frightingly similar to what a Ward Connerly or (gulp) Clarence Thomas might say. Could these men, who we've been told are the Uncle Tom stooges for a white conservative racist establishment, have been right all along? To embrace Cosby means the possibility of affirming conservative methodology, which liberal activists have spent decades discrediting. It also means the possibility of relinquishing white America from their debt to black America for slavery and Jim Crow. So what did the progressive black leadership who depend on white guilt to squeeze money out of white institutions, do in response to Cosby? They excoriated him as a cranky old man out of touch with the hip realities of the underclass and a man whose own wealth has blinded him from seeing the serpentine ways of historic and systemic racism. This was unfortunate.

What is also unfortunate, as Williams writes, is that many of the old civil rights guard have told Cosby in private they agree with him but are afraid to publicly make similar comments out of fear of being labeled `old fashioned' or `out of touch'. But this is why if there is to be any hope for the fate of black America, it will come from her emerging youth who understand the universality and timelessness of Cosby's message. After all they grew up watching the Cosby Show, which was in reality, a televised version of Dr. King's dream. Within the black community, the greatest compliment one can bestow to another is, "you're like the Cosbys", which is to say that you're authentically black yet free from the pathology that is too often associated with black culture. Whose name among the present day black leadership, when uttered, evokes this much reverence and respectability?

Juan Williams has written a book that will certainly not win him any new friends among the black establishment, but he courageously speaks out for the silent black majority in an effort to influence our institutions and culture to understand the real meaning of black power.

Although those who have been engaged and are well aware of the problems in Black America will find nothing new in this book, what is new and significant is the messenger. The messages in this book have been espoused for quite some time now by the likes of Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Armstrong Williams and lately John McWhorter. All who have been easily and summarily dismissed as conservative, uncle tom, race traitors. That will not be so easy to do with Juan Williams who has 20 plus years as a documented moderate/liberal and very high visibility as an NPR correspondent and Fox News Analyst. Williams, as did Cosby before him, has the credibility to expose the underground debate that has been going on in the black community for quite some time. Unfortunately the leadership that Williams disparges in the book has been all to successful at "killing" past messengers and squelching the debate. With Williams as a new credible standard bearer, we may be seeing the tipping point where this debate will finally see the light of day, allowing real progress to be made in dealing with the tragedy that the black underclass has become. A debate that is sorely needed to save young black urban generations to come.

Juan Williams supports Bill Cosby's call to African Americans to speak out about what they see is going on in their community, the need for parents to take on parenting, the need for leader's in the community to take on the negative aspects of the rap culture and the need for the traditional leaders to be willing to take a stand and confront these issues directly. I think everyone needs to hear this message. Mr. Williams does an excellent job of making his case and bravely stands up to confront the status quo by calling attention to problems people are trying to hide. The survival of all of us and especially the educational system depend on looking at these questions deeply and acting on some ideas he presents.

Juan Williams gets A's for civility, for the most part, on the air and in his writings. His critiques in ENOUGH of "The Phony Leaders" will warm the hearts of any conservatives who genuinely pine for a colorblind society and are perpetually tired of being cussed for not embracing the Democratic Party's political solutions, but there's more to the book than that. Certainly these same conservatives (myself included) hope he will open the eyes of good-faith liberals or folks in the middle who want the same, and forces can be joined to at least diminish minority poverty in particular. Still, conservatives may find their eyes open a bit more as well.

However much I enjoy reading books in which I think that the author will agree with me (as I gathered from the cover of ENOUGH), in fact what I really hope is that I actually LEARN something new for my efforts. In particular, if I find that I have been operating under some false or incomplete premise I am most grateful to the author for putting me straight. For me, Williams delivered in two areas. First, I was only vaguely aware of some soundbites from Bill Cosby's efforts, including his famous "Poundcake Speech," which seems to be the catalyst inspiring Williams to write this book, and is quoted throughout. (I highly recommend to anyone an internet search for the entire text.) The second was a very informative account of the real struggles of the anti-segregationist movement, complete with examples that give a lot more context than the historical "White=Bad" I got in school. Being born in Norhtern Illinois in the late 1960's, I did not realize how near I was chronologically to so much of our darker U.S. history. (I might even have some sympathy for the "reparations" movement if it were only about those folks.)

I have read plenty of critiques of modern, dare I say self-anointed "civil rights" leaders who seem to me more interested in lining their pockets and rubbing elbows with the "powerful." But these more recent critiques from a Bill Cosby or a Juan Williams are not only more powerful because of those men's standings in the mainstream and on the left, but are devastating when they compare today's "leaders" to those truly brave souls who fought during the real struggles of the late segregationist era.

One reason this text is a valuable addition is that it concentrates much effort on the poor African American population. There seems to have been a shift from discussing the problems of poor African Americans, to the middle class, in the last couple of decades. This is not itself a bad thing, but, as Williams points out, Katrina in particular reminds us of this remaining cohort living at or below poverty. For them he gives basically conservative, personal solutions. For instance, finish high school (college if possible), put off becoming parents until you are at least in your 20's, and then only if you are married, save your money, spend it on things that will help you out of poverty (eg. school supplies) keep out of jail, etc.

There will be critics of this book. Some will see it as more ammunition for the genuine racists among us, but such people can manufacture ammunition out of thin air. It may also push the soft racists further towards the edge of condescension, but the discussion is worth the risk. Some will see it as blaming the victim, but Cosby and Williams are clearly speaking and writing out of genuine love for the poor, and first-hand knowledge of what can lift them out of being poor. Some will say it is light on policy, which is the conservative's point: policy is not what is needed anymore. Well, it shouldn't hold people back, but it is not what lifts them up either.

Other random thoughts:

A conservative will no doubt read this book and think, "Williams, why aren't you a Republican?" Well, you can't ask for everything. Indeed, he gives kudos to GW Bush where deserved, while criticizing WJ Clinton but (to my mind) has some interesting blind spots (hence 4/5 stars....OK I'm sensitive!), for instance accusing Republicans of doing nothing for African Americans, about the same time he mentions No Child Left Behind, and Faith-Based Initiatives, so he still has his liberal glasses on. And he makes a lot of sweeping summary judgments that will not jibe with every reader's take.

When he describes the lack of leadership, you might find yourself asking, "What about you, Mr. Williams?" Well, he's got his "social observer" hat on in the book, and I guess we need such folks too.

The Christians do not get off easily in this book. It warms my heart, and I'm CATHOLIC! Theoretically the churches could be powerful movers, but they have to take their messages of personal responsibility and helping your neighbors to the streets and homes, and beyond Sunday. I'd like to see more of that too, and less emphasis on buildings and politics. He gives kudos to the black Muslims for at least cleaning up crime. Interesting.

Reading the book, you do wonder what else can be done to combat the poverty. The "Great Society" was a failure for reasons we are still sifting through. I joined "Big Brothers" in grad school, and before long my little guy had a lot more drive to get into college, though I don't take a lot of credit for that, except I think he figured I wasn't any smarter than he so why not? I also knew kids in high school who were "losers" until they got to know the more serious students and were turned around (a bit like what happened to Thomas Sowell in college). I think some way to expose more of the poor to the better life and how to get there, at earlier ages, could be very helpful. More money thrown at schools isn't enough, or possibly even necessary except in extreme cases of structural neglect. Talking to math teachers who went to good schools themselves and now teach in "at risk" schools, it is very depressing; students are not willing to learn, and administrators often won't back up a teacher who flunks a student, even for cheating. And saying we need more teachers ignores that you necessarily dilute the talent pool.

But I digress. If Mr. Williams would further engage the conservatives and, dare I say Republicans (you know, the Party of Lincoln, and which got the original civil rights legistlation passed), I think he could do a lot more good. Maybe he could have helped President Bush get Judge Charles W. Pickering's nomination through (more proof the NAACP is about politics, not what their initials represent). He does interview folks like John McWhorter in good faith but mostly in passing. Still it is a good read and highly recommended.