Check out the essay here. Tell Ridley what you think here. For what it is worth I think the essay is poorly written and poorly structured. And lest someone think that black people have cornered the market on this type of ignorance, we haven’t.

But what it signifies is the degree to which black people have “drunken the koolaid” so to speak, making worn out arguments about cultural failings and using them as a bludgeon against both working class black people and those who would urge us to make government do its job. Yes people like Sharpton should be jettisoned. But as I’ve noted elsewhere they weren’t MY leaders (or anyone else i know).

Check out Mat Johnson’s take. What surprised me the most coming from Mat (and I like his blog, and the book of his that I read) was that he appeared to have liked the essay from a craft perspective. Again, from my viewpoint the essay doesn’t just have a horrible political line, it wouldn’t be published in Esquire if it were about any other social group.