Here's a fun fact

Morning folks. Here's a quote that commenter Nquest and lot of us on the Obama bus will find interesting:

He has ventured into areas of criticism only he could get away with, unabashedly calling problems of individual conduct that bedevil the black community and the quality of urban life by extension. No white politician could presently challenge black people to get off drugs and raise the babies they make, to stop being lackadaisical in public school, to work their way out of problems rather than merely whine as they sullenly accept their conditions. Any white politician so bold would be shouted down as racist, or as one given to dangerous generalizations... He therefore has more than meager appeal to whites...

White conservative meditating on the effect of Bill Cosby telling black folks to stop blaming the white man? New York Times columnist reflecting on the impact of Barack Obama urging black America to take responsibility for its own problems?

Not quite.

More like black writer commenting on Jesse Jackson as he ran for president in 1988. Sorry I don't have a hyperlink. My man Jelani Cobb dug this up for a book he's working on. Most of you know I've been critical of Jesse--though not for the same reasons as most conservatives. Still, quotes like this serve as a useful corrective to this noxious notion that black people have, post-1968, been held captive by victimologists toting around a "culture of failure." More likely, media likes the victimology narrative because it offers a nice easy counterpoint to "individual responsibility." It also has the luxury of fitting in snug with the established, if crude, right/left paradigm. Of course this narrative does have one significant drawback--it ain't true.