CNN's Don Lemon offers Black on Black tough love

It seems to some -- especially in the Twitter world -- that Don Lemon stepped in it with his tough love commentary on CNN this past weekend.

Lemon not only piggy-backed on very critical comments of the black community (crime, drugs, violence etc.) by Bill O'Reilly, he opined that O'Reilly did not go far enough.

Lemon listed five ways to fix our community:

1. Pull up your pants: "If your sagging it means your self-esteem is sagging."
2. Refrain from the popular usage of the N-Word.
3. Respect where you live: Stop throwing trash/littering in our own communities.
4. Stay in school.
5. Stop having babies out-of-wedlock.

For these remarks -- and his recrimination of the Hip Hop thug culture embrace, Lemon faced an immediate backlash from twitter. Many claiming that he was blaming the oppressed for their own oppression.

I'm sorry but I gotta roll with Lemon on this one. Not letting institutional racism, societal double standards or class inequality of the hook, we have to reject behavior standards that undermine the welfare of our community. And just because someone attempts to victimize me doesn't mean I have to play helpless victim.

Once again, I have to summarize with a quote from a master teacher:

“Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.”
― Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro    

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