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Aug. 25, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:17
August 25, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
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That is right, uh Johnny Donovan, and it is Walter E. Williams uh sitting in for rush, and uh Rush will be back on Monday, and um you can be on with us by calling 800-2822 882.
And uh ladies and gentlemen, in case you weren't listening the last hour, which you should have been, uh, we're in for a treat this hour.
We have uh on the on the microphone on the telephone with us is uh uh Juilliams, he's the senior correspondent for NPR, he's the political analysis analyst for Fox News channel, and you've seen him once a while on Fox.
And uh he's a panelist on the Fox uh news Sunday, and he's on with us to talk about his book uh called titled Enough.
And let me finish uh let me reach over here and get the full title.
It's called Enough, and I guess there's a colon, the phony leaders, dead end movements, and cultural culture of failure that are undermining black American, and finally and importantly, what can we do about it?
Welcome to the show, Juan.
Walter, thank you for having me.
What an honor to be on the show.
Oh, very great.
It's what it's wonderful to have you and it's really nice to get you uh on such uh short notice.
And let's talk about your your book a little bit.
Now, I think you first off you you you make a uh very reasonable argument.
You argue that while discrimination exists, and and and no one would deny it, but uh the uh the point that I've always made, and I believe you're what you're saying, is that uh the relevant question is how much of what we see today can be explained by discrimination today.
And that is one of the issues that we uh have to face, and and you're pointing out in the book that there's some issues that uh that go beyond discrimination that's devastating for black folks.
Without a doubt, and you know it's a matter of priorities.
If you're waiting for the end of racism, my goodness, you might rate for all time.
You and I would be long ago under the dirt, you know what I'm saying?
Um and so what I'm saying is at this point, given the opportunities, the doors that have opened, why is it that we are seeing fifty percent of a dropout rate among black kids in America, even worse among the black and hispanic boys, Walter Williams.
Shocking.
And and the years after Brown.
Uh yes, and as a matter of fact, uh Bill Cosby was uh taking a task for uh uh uh just you know bringing up some of that stuff and and now that you're you're bringing it up.
Well, he he was accused of not understanding the power of systemic racism.
Uh he was accused for uh being self-hating.
He was accused of being someone who was feeding the right wing in America because he was pointing out these problems and earring dirty laundry.
But you know, facts are facts.
If Bill Cosby had never spoken a word, Walter Williams, the facts would still be the facts.
But there's some people who want to run away from the facts.
That that's that's absolutely right.
Uh and as you're pointing out in the book, and it's something I've said, uh that uh the the high rate of illegitimacy among uh uh black folks just you know seventy percent.
Can you you can't talk about that being a cause by today's discrimination, can you?
No, because in fact, as you well know, based on your own research, if you go back and to even towards days of slavery, there was a much lower out of wedlock birth rate among black people.
Yeah, that's right.
And matter of fact, uh my colleague uh Tom Sowell talks about it in one of his books, and he says that in 1918 the illegitimacy rate among black teenagers was less than uh that among white teenagers.
And so we've got the the wrong trend, and obviously this is now something in the whole society, white kids, twenty-five percent of white children now born out of wedlock, fifty percent of the Hispanic kids.
This is not good for America, and that's why it's something we all have to deal with.
That's right.
And matter of fact, uh I'm very glad you pointed out the uh the illegitimacy among whites because being twenty-five percent, because the illegitimacy among blacks was twenty-five percent when when Patrick Moynihan was talking about it in the late sixties, and he was taken a task.
I mean he's called everything except the child of God.
Yeah, he was the mean, called a racist, all the rest, told that he should not be in this conversation.
He was trying to attack the black family.
Well, look at what happened.
Uh the black family is under attack from within, Walter Williams.
And and and and and and and white families are where black families were uh uh you know uh in in 1960, nineteen seventy.
So uh you you say w well it's affecting all of us what something it's something's in the water that's hurting all of us.
I think the something that's in the water is this culture and the acceptance people don't speak out people are just as you said when Patrick Moynihan the late Patrick Moynihan spoke out he was attacked he was the mean called name same thing with Bill Cosby when anybody stands up and says there's a problem here they are somehow the problem and it becomes personal you're attacked you're put down.
So it the challenge is is who's willing to stand up and say the king has no clothes.
Well uh the the only people who are willing is those people don't care about being invited to parties but but but but let's talk talk a little more uh uh about the the the one one of the devastating uh uh problems uh among uh in the black community uh and we're talking about the black community which isn't which doesn't mean it's uh uh there's uh uh we don't have these problems elsewhere but they just have a huge impact in in the black community is the devastating crime rates.
Oh my gosh.
Where and and and you find uh I was looking into I I believe at the time you were walk w uh working for the Washington Post and where there were stories where where families in Washington and Ana Costia they were serving the dinners on the meal so that the on the floor rather so uh there are a couple of families so they wouldn't get hit by stray bullets or people afraid to come to the window.
Is that tragic?
Is that and how sick and sad is that it's sick and sad.
No meet it's it's very and and the people are afraid to come out at at uh at night and and the bars the windows and they're not barring against the Klan riding through the neighborhood.
Oh no Jesse Jackson w when he said that he's walking down the street and he's relieved when he turns around and sees white teenagers he's talking about black people being afraid of other black people of young black men.
And so what you have to understand when you see that is my gosh we are in the midst of acceptance of crime in America, especially in black America and when the young people say it's just the right of passage for a young black man to go to jail, you understand how deep, how pathological this has become.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
And that's tragic.
You know, Bill Cosby and I, we grew up in the same housing project in North Philadelphia.
It's called the Richard Allen Housing Project.
And we were all poor, but they were security in the neighborhood.
That is, you found in the hot, humid nights of summer, people used to sleep outside.
If we behaved during the day, our parents let us sleep in the yard or...
People slept on balconies, and they weren't afraid for the lives.
But the same neighborhood now, you hear nighttime ringing with gunshots.
You know, especially for older folks, Walter, this is just a tragedy, that in their own neighborhood, they're essentially locked in behind all the gates and grills and bars on the windows and the doors.
They're afraid in their own neighborhood.
You know, they can't go out.
You know, the old days, if you did something wrong, all the doors, all the windows had eyes.
Everybody would come out and say, boy, you better straighten up.
That's right.
Or I remember as a kid, you know, throwing stones, and an old lady would come up to me, or,
middle aged ladies does your mother know you're out here throwing stones and and I say no ma'am and and hope that it would end there as opposed to as opposed to a whooping as opposed to yeah as opposed to her going tell my mother and my mother would deliver deliver a whip and or sometimes uh uh oh older people they just smack you in your butt uh you know get out get out of here and that and that was the end of that you know yeah but now they're fearful because these young kids can have guns.
I mean Bill Cosby when he gave the the first speech that really set this thing rolling which was on the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision he said you know why is it that the mothers now show up they see the boy there in the orange jumpsuit that's given to him by the local jail and they say oh my God what have they done to my child he says where were you when that boy was two when he was eight when he was eighteen and why didn't you know he had a gun in his hand why is he stealing the Coke from the store in the first place?
Why is he stealing the pound cake?
Where is the sanction?
Where is the adult guidance, the adult presence, where is the good parenting that's right.
And and you see and you see a kids coming home with stuff that they've stolen I remember as a kid I bring home I matter of fact I brought home a a a little small pen knife, and it it could have been anything, but my mother said, Where'd you get that?
I didn't give you any money to get that.
Where'd you get it?
And take it back to wherever you got it.
That's just, you know, that's why you're Walter Williams today.
Yeah, yeah.
When we when we come back from the break, I want to talk about education.
Okay.
Okay, we'll be back after this.
We're back, uh this Walter Williams sitting in for Russia, and we're pushing back the frontiers of ignorance, and we have Juan Williams uh on to talk about his new book, Enough, uh the phony leaders dead end movements and cultural failure that are undermining the black American, what can we do about it?
It's published by Crown Publishers and and is it available in the bookstores, Juan?
Absolutely, Walter, please have every tell everybody that they can support this book.
You want to be rich.
I don't know about that, but I would like to get this idea out there.
Yeah, I I know this it's it's very very important.
And uh you know, before we go on, we're going to talk about education a little bit, but but I wonder whether you you would agree with this following assessment.
I and I've said it uh a number of times in writing and also uh uh uh uh Arlie as well, that uh that black Americans have made some of the greatest gains over the shortest period of time than any other racial group in the history of mankind, and why would I say that?
Well, uh in you know, we if you look at uh black Americans uh and you just add up the income that black Americans earn, it would place us about the fourteenth richest nation in the face of this world.
And uh if you look at you know, uh uh the leader of the world's most powerful military was a black man, the uh Secretary of State uh with black men, uh some of the world's most famous personalities and the few black people are some of the world's richest people.
Now, neither a slave in eighteen sixty-five, neither a slave nor a slave owner would have ever thought that such progress would have have been achieved in just a little bit over a century, and as such, it speaks very well of the intestinal fortitude of a people and the struggle of a people, and it speaks very well uh of a nation in which those kind of gains were possible in the first place.
And so the question that remains today that you're focusing on in your book is how can we extend those gains to a a group of people within the black community for whom those gains uh uh appear elusive.
Exactly right.
And you know exactly right, because you have twenty-five percent.
We're not talking about all black people, we're not talking about all anybody, we're talking about twenty-five percent that remain locked, mired, in desperate poverty, Walter Williams.
Yes, yes, yes.
And you know, the very start of this book, I start out by talking about the traditions that you have just touched on.
That if you go back, there's always been a tradition of self-reliance, self-determination, self-empowerment.
Going back, I could go back to Crispus Addicts, but Frederick Douglass, what did he say?
He said to President Lincoln, we want to fight for our own freedom so that when you see black people in the Union Army fighting, you know that we are willing to shed blood, we deserve the rights and privileges of any other American citizen.
We are willing to be patriots, and then you think about going forward in time, Booker T. Washington, learn trades, learn how to educate your own children, establish schools even on wheels, much less universities.
And and matter of fact, even the style of schools at a time when it was illegal.
Correct, illegal to teach a black person how to read or write.
Yes, yes and then you come forward to the boys who talks about having to educate an intellectual uh tenth of the population so they can be a leadership class, so they can show people the direction, the right direction to go in.
And you know, can you imagine contrast that to today where you have these kids in the classroom who are striving and who are told they're trying to be better than somebody, they're trying to act white.
Or or brainiac.
Stuff like that.
And then you come forward, and even Dr. King saying the best thing that came out of the civil rights movement, people organizing, strategizing, people engaged in nonviolent social protests was that here you had black people exhibiting positive leadership, a noble cause of equality and justice for all.
No guaranteed results, but the opportunity, and that's what America is about.
And and and speaking of leaders, you uh part of your title is phony leaders.
Well, you know, it's hard to call names.
Yeah.
But it's inescapable that when you start talking about people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharps, and you have to wonder why aren't they out there at the forefront at the ramparts screaming about what's going on in big city education?
Oh, yes.
Why aren't they screaming about these out of wedlock birth rates?
Uh Well, uh I I I don't know.
And and by the way, you mentioned uh leaders, and I'm kind of getting far afield uh uh with because I want to talk about education a little bit with you.
But a lot of people have said, well, about black leaders, you know, they well b black leaders that this and black leaders and that.
And I asked them, I say, Well, who is the Japanese leader in our country?
Who who is the Irish, the Scottish, the Armenian, the uh French.
I say, you can't name any names.
And I say, well, well, what is there what kind of assumptions must one make about black people to say that we uniquely need leaders?
That is that we don't need that we don't know where to go unless we have what less w unless we're told to by somebody who's a leader.
And I think that's you know what?
That's a lot of American mass media locked into an old mindset that there's got to be a new Dr. King.
And that has been so harmful because there's always someone who says, Yeah, I'll be your Dr. King, I'll be your next charismatic leader.
Just follow me, wait for me, do what I tell you, and if you don't do what I tell you, that must mean that you're not authentically black.
You're not a good person.
That's right.
Now uh about education.
Uh now I I think that and I've said it you might have read it, I've said that if I were the grand dragon of the Klu Klux Klan and I wanted to sabotage black academic excellence, I could not find a better means for doing so than the public school system in most cities.
And you look at some of these you look at some of these public schools, and Washington DC is a classic example.
Oh my goodness.
Where the kids who do in fact graduate, that they they have an achievement level that is uh uh you know, the uh uh a seventh or eighth grade achievement level, and that spells doom for the future, particularly in the you know we're moving in a high tech society, and they can't get a job there.
They they they they're they're not productive at all.
And lo and behold, Washington East Washington, DC, they have some schools at at some of the schools, uh something like eighty percent of the kids score below basic.
That's right.
And nationally, when you look at graduating African American students from high school, I'm talking about, they're reading at about the eighth grade level for white students.
Yeah.
When you talk about an achievement gap in terms of test scores between black and white students, something that everybody says, Oh, we got the study, we've got to look at.
When they actually go and look at it, they find, wait a minute, guess what?
Who's watching TV?
Who's not studying, who's spending time at the after school job versus in the library?
Maybe that explains this achievement gap because you're not putting in the time, you're not hitting the books that would lead you then to have the achievement, the attainment on the test.
Uh that's absolutely right.
And and uh and and and books in the household, uh or if you got you know, the kind of educational enrichment that kids can get, you know, taking them to the art museum, taking them this place and that place, uh, the uh that they're just not getting it.
Well, I just think it's it's it's this is part of what I'm saying that when I'm when I when I say enough, Walter Williams, I mean enough.
I mean, why isn't the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharpens of the World addressing the key issues of our time and enlisting people of good heart across all racial lines, across you know, the sexes, the class lines, everybody I think ever good Americans want to do something about this.
President Bush wants to do something with no child left behind, yet all you hear are the critics.
Yeah.
But okay, but you know, there's a column I wrote some time ago, and I suggested that the poverty that you're talking about, the 25, 30 percent uh poverty among black folks, or poverty in general, I don't care whether it's black or white folks or Hispanic folks, it seems to me to be a no-brainer to get out of poverty, and that is uh here's the solution.
One, graduate from high school.
Right.
Two, take a job.
Yep.
Any kind of job.
Three, don't have children before you get married, and four, get married and stay married.
Absolutely.
Now now if you look at the census statistics on such a group of people that uh have these characteristics I just mentioned, the poverty rate among whites is something like eight percent and among blacks around eleven or twelve percent.
Almost no chance, and contrast that to twenty five percent today.
You absolutely have almost no chance that you would live a day in poverty in America.
That's right.
Uh we're up against the clock.
Can you hold over uh because uh you have a lot of questions up here?
I'd love to.
Thank you, Walter.
Okay, uh folks, we're on with Juan Williams.
He's just written his new uh book Enough, and I urge you to read it.
We'll be back.
We're back, and this is Walter Williams sitting in for Russia, and we're talking to Juan Williams uh about his new book, uh Enough, published uh by Crown Publishers, and it's available in your bookstores.
Um, uh we're gonna take a few phone calls.
You ready?
I'm ready, Walter.
By the way, Walter, you know that formula you were talking about?
Yeah.
That's in the book.
It is because I yeah, because I'm so taken with it, I just think that people should know.
I think people should be shouting that from the highest mountaintop so that young people of any color know they can make it in America.
Oh, yeah, yeah, uh and if you can't make it in America, you can't make it anywhere.
Well, okay.
I don't think so.
Uh let's go to uh A. B. uh in his truck, uh from uh Water, Texas on his cell phone.
Yeah, I I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.
I'd like to challenge some of your assertions though.
And that is, for example, you were talking about the difference uh how violent the people are, the children are today, but yet if you look read Carl Brown and the uh uh Man Child in the Promised Land, you read Malcolm X's autobiography, yeah or just know anything about Bill Bojangles, he was a very violent man.
I mean, as this is not to condone, but it might show why some of our children might think that we're hypocrites and not pay attention to us.
Uh just the other day, Juan, I think in the interview you mentioned, you thought we should our children should wait until they're in their twenties to get married.
Yes.
Is that right?
Yes, I did.
Okay.
Now, you expect that they also should maintain their virginity until that age too, I would assume, right?
I don't know about all that, but I think they should not get pregnant.
Right okay.
Now that's good to talk to them about birth control.
But I think that if we uh will think back about our and our parents, how old were they when they got married?
And then we're gonna compare one knock children to wait until they're in their mid-20s or thirties before they get married and and not be uh and maintain a virginity.
Uh AB, the the the marriage rate among black folks is I think it's the lowest uh marriage rate in our country today.
But at one time in the forties, uh the black marriage rate was higher, slightly higher than the white marriage rate.
And this is available on I forget the name of the book, uh Tom's written, Tom Sowell's written about thirty-two books.
Can I can I mention something about black leadership?
Well, let me let me jump in if you don't mind.
Yeah, go ahead, right.
Okay, let me just say this that when you these are different times and we face different challenges.
We are in the midst of a global economic structure here where if you really want to succeed, not only do people have to get more education and therefore they're gonna have to, it seems to me, rationally wait to marry later, but it's also the case that people are as a result older when they are ready to be parents, and that's so critical.
This is a different era.
We're not talking about what our parents or grandparents may have done.
We're in a twenty first century.
And but but even more uh more important one, the the the kind of things that A B is talking about, the the level of criminal activity and the level of ill illegitimacy and the level of uh not being people now though.
No, uh we're talking about percentages, so you're controlling for the uh the absolute number of people, but the level of criminal activity is nowhere near uh what it was uh uh you know back then uh it's nowhere near what it is uh today.
Okay, well, I I like uh I take a step on that, but uh I'd like to ask you a question.
Is there a difference between the black leadership today and the difference between Marcus Garvey, William Monroe Trotter, Booker T watching it, W. E. D. Boy?
Yeah, I think there's a huge difference because all of those they challenge each other, William uh Trotter slapped the teeth out almost out of book Washington.
So they had some violent differences.
Marcus Garvey, he took exception to Booker T. Um, and uh far as we need in leadership as if white folks don't?
What about Churchill, Roosevelt and the people who praise Reagan?
They were leaders of a nation.
Yeah, yes, that's a big difference.
It's a huge difference.
That's a big difference.
Let's let's say let's go to uh another call.
Let's take uh Dan from uh Sacramento.
Hey, how are you guys doing in there?
Okay.
Thank you for taking my call.
I got a question for Juan.
I've seen you uh quite a bit on Fox News, and uh usually uh you know you th those guys are pretty much in lockstep, and I see you up there thinking and not always going with the flow, and uh so I'm I haven't figured out what your uh political persuasion is.
Are you a liberal and uh democrat or what are you willing to disclose that?
Oh, sure.
I live in the I live in the district of Columbia, and so uh it's a democratic dominated city, and I'm registered as a Democrat.
Uh but you know it's it for me as a I mean I'm trained as a journalist, Walter Williams knows that, and so my whole thing has been I think that people, a listener, a viewer, a reader, expect that I am going to try to be honest with them.
If I am I'm not trying to come from any one political perspective to please anybody, I'm trying to tell people what I genuinely and honestly believe to be the truth.
There are people who say, for example, this book enough, they say, Oh my gosh, I think there are a lot of people on the right who are gonna like what you're saying.
I said, Well, that's good.
I hope people on the left recognize the truth of what I'm saying as well.
It's not meant to fall into any one political category, it's meant to really appeal to the intelligence and the love of country in all of us.
But uh let me let me let me uh uh ask your question now.
Uh Juan, you you didn't always hold these uh ideas about uh the b uh problems of black folks, did you?
No, you know what, Walter?
This is really the truth, and I think you're one person who would know this from the heart, because I think these things have come to me as I have watched over the years, as I've done reporting, as I have seen situations develop, and of course, this is what Cosby was speaking about when he said that he was ringing the bell.
How can you not, looking at the facts of the you know, the dropout rate out of wedlock birth rate, the poverty rate, the rate of people in jail, when you look at black Americans as 13% of the population, fifty-four percent of the arrests for robbery, thirty-seven percent of the arrests for violent crime, forty-four percent of the prison population.
How can you look at that and not say, wait a minute?
Let's look at what's going on.
Time to hold up the mirror.
How could you not say that?
Well, it's it's impossible not to say, and you're uh you're absolutely you're absolutely right.
And it you know, but and and I think that what you're saying in in your book, you're just saying that, gee, we have a major crisis at hand, and we just cannot continue the old conversations, the old uh uh solutions, we have to find something uh different.
And and getting back to this uh the education uh issue that you're talking about, the the grossly fraudulent education, it's uh I and I I don't know whether you're aware of it, but if you go to some black owned and operated and founded schools, such as Marcus Garvey School in Los Angeles, or Marva Collins Preparatory School in Cincinnati, Ivy Leaf in Philadelphia, these are all schools that are uh that are uh owned and operated by blacks.
The black kids there from low and moderate income uh households and often female headed households at those schools, eighty-five to ninety percent of the kids score at and up to three years above grade level.
Yeah.
Now, you say, Well, how do you explain this?
How do you explain this?
Well, uh you you walk into one of the schools, yeah, I I've been to every single class at Marva Collins School and every single class at uh Marcus Garvey School in Los Angeles, and you walk into the school in the morning, the kids are c the kids show up, they have uh little boys have suits on and girls are jumpers, they they're they left their knives and guns at home, they're sober, and they're listening to the teacher.
And and so you say, Well, it's no it's not rocket science.
It's not rocket science at all.
I mean, you know what?
Here's the thing you hear from people, you say, Wait a second, what about per pupil funding?
Why don't we have more funding?
Don't we need more funding for schools?
Don't we need to really make sure that the schools get more money and that that's the problem or that the testing is the problem because now you have people teach I say, wait a minute.
If you look at per pupil spending in our big city schools, that's not the issue.
These schools have the money.
The question is do we have patronage systems that make jobs and contracts and promotions really the focus as opposed to educating the kids and ending any ending any kind of social promotion or just uh phony graduation where the kids don't have the abilities, competencies to succeed in this competitive economy.
That's right.
And you mentioned the financing.
In Washington, D.C., depending on whose statistics you're looking at, they're spending per capita $13,000 to $15,000 per kid.
Unbelievable.
And and and Washington also has uh um the uh uh the uh w it has a uh student teacher ratio that's lower than the average in the nation.
So they they have all these things that that the education establishment says that they need to promote uh academic excellence, but it's not happening.
Not happening.
And so that's why I'm saying enough, Walter.
That's why it's come to the point where it like boiled over in me, and I wrote this book, because I think it's you know, Bill Cosby, it boiled over in him, and he gave that speech.
You saw the assault on him.
Yeah.
The kind of they try to do a kneecap job and accuse him of being everything but a son of child of God.
But but ha ha have they uh have you gotten any flack?
Well, you know, Walter, it just keeps coming.
Yesterday, gosh, I was I was on the air, a guy says, Well why didn't you say this thirty where were you thirty years ago?
And he then he wants to read for me from the Moynihan report and tell me Moynihan was a racist and I'm in the tradition of Moynihan, and then he wants the question where my parents came from and am I really it but Walter, it gets personal.
That's how they they don't want to deal with the substance of the argument.
They want to deal with you and pull you down and demean you in order to distract people from the realities that surround them.
Well, uh Well I I was getting ready to say, no kidding.
Join the club, uh can you uh can you hold on because we've got a lot of calls for you.
Yeah, just give I will try to hold on.
Okay, uh we'll be back with uh Juan Williams talking about his book enough after this.
Walter Williams setting in for Rush.
Um and by the way, if you visit Rush Rush Limbaugh.com, you'll find a dashing photo of Walter Williams.
And if you join uh Russia's uh 247 right now, you'll get a podcast of today's show, this very good show.
And we're gonna get back to uh Juan Williams uh and talking about his book enough.
Okay, Juan, what's the solution?
Or are the or what are the solutions?
Well, I think that Walter, the things that you outlined earlier just have to be repeated.
That in this a day and age, 21st century, how crazy is it that you have kids 50% dropping out of high school?
You gotta say to them, kid, if you drop out of high school, you're you know, you're jumping in the river with a bag of bricks on your back.
You're gonna sink.
Don't do it.
Because there's global competition, jobs are leaving this country where if you just have a strong back and a will to work, it's good enough.
No, it's not good enough anymore.
You gotta get that education, no matter what problems may exist with the school, find a way to get yourself a high school education, a real high school education, not one where you've just been passed through.
And and and another thing I think uh a very, very important thing, uh a contribution to that, is that parents have to be involved.
Oh boy.
Parenting is just key.
And you know, oftentimes people want to blame, say their low expectations coming from teachers or administrators.
But goodness gracious, Walter, uh, if you look at the some of the research that's been done on this subject, you find oftentimes the low expectations start at home.
The kids show up, and what they've been doing is from the time that they were infants is set in front of a TV rather than people interacting with them, stimulating them, using a rich vocabulary that then the child can learn.
That has got to be done.
So you gotta say, you know what, people have to put themselves in position to understand having a child is serious business, and you've got to give that child a chance to succeed before he goes to school.
But if if you have if you're a parent when you are sixteen, oh well, what chances there of that?
Because you're a child yourself.
That is absolutely right.
And and parents just have to take charge.
I I kind of I remember I was in high school.
And I used to go home for lunch, and I brought my report card, and I didn't want to bring it home because uh it was not a very nice report card.
I tried to rush my mother into signing, and she said, Let me look at it.
And it's some C's and Ds.
And my mother walked with me back at school.
I was about 16, uh, you know, and uh you know, arguing with me all along the way, and you know, it's bad enough to be seen with your mother when you're fifteen or sixteen.
And she went into the uh the science class, asked the teacher how come I got a uh C or D, I forget what it was.
And the teacher told her that I was throwing airplanes in class and stuff like this.
And the other teacher told us some other stuff, and when I got back home, she said that all of my privileges were canceled until the next report card came out and I had improved my grade.
Those are the kind of expectations we need in the home, Walter Williams.
That's right, that's right.
And so the the kids can't do it.
They they're kids, and so they need somebody to raise and raise hell with them.
And we also need teachers.
And we need teachers who they themselves can read and write.
Well, and t and and teachers have to understand that if they are held to high standards, it's not being done out of any kind of punishment, it's just because the school has got to be about educating the child.
And so you need teachers who have the skills, have the ability, and believe that the child can perform.
That's what we need.
I mean, I I think some of this stuff is, you know, so sort of self-evident, Walter Williams, but uh apparently it's worth saying what I say in enough.
That's right.
Okay, well, what what do we do about crime?
Well, I think in terms of crime, you have to stand up and say it's not acceptable.
It's not status quo.
You don't you talked about your mother.
If you showed up with anything that she said, Well, wait a second, where'd this come from?
You didn't have the money for this.
She would call you on it.
There's no acceptance of crime.
There's no, oh Walter, I know we're poor, and it's okay if you got it.
There's no Walter, uh, it doesn't matter, we're gonna make excuses for you, and the police are the bad ones, and why are they questioning my boy?
No, there is a presumption here that you are going to earn your way in this world, and we don't take shortcuts, and especially not shortcuts that result in criminal behavior, because y people might curse the existence of this larger, ever growing prison system in this country and all the black and Hispanic faces disproportionate in those jails.
But at some point you gotta say, Wait a second, the issue is here at home, and we can say no that our children don't have to go to those jails.
But they don't have to get involved with criminal activity.
But then again, we need some enforcement.
Yeah, I remember uh at one time I forget exactly where in Washington, DC, but I believe it was during the eighties when there's a lot of drugs and crime in a particular neighborhood, and the and the uh black Muslims or Nation of Islam, they sent people down there and the crime stopped.
Absolutely.
The people walked away.
And and see, and they and I I know why they walked away because the black Muslims don't feel as though they have to give Miranda warnings.
We have a curfew here in Washington now.
10 PM, and you know what the police chief and the mayor say it's about these kids that are just running while the kids walking down the street, the pants hanging off of them, the do-rags looking like they're prisoners already, uh, because you know you can't have a belt or a comb in prison.
And they they have these gangster rap fashions, and then the kids they're stealing cars attacking people.
And how can people walk around in denial instead of saying, you know what, the 10 PM curfew is a band-aid.
We need to deal with these kids, and we need to deal with them in a positive loving way that gives them a reason to understand they can have a future.
And and a lot of times uh positive loving way is a boot in your butt.
Well uh Juan, uh thanks for coming on talking about your book, uh this one is talking about uh his book Enough and we'll be back after this.
We're still pushing by the frontiers of ignorance, and now next hour you gotta stay tuned because I'm gonna talk about uh uh th the morning after pill plus I'm gonna talk about body parts.
Various body parts.
And uh and by the way, folks, uh in keeping with uh Russ's uh Russia's uh tradition, uh, this open line Friday for the last hour, you can you can call and ask uh questions, uh yeah, any kind of question.
You c you can ask well well, Walter, what's the difference between uh Einstein's special law of relativity and his general rul law of relativity?
You can ask any question, or if there's physicians among you, you can ask me uh what are polymorpho nuclear neutrophils, and I'll give you the answer.
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