Kanye doesn’t read books so he doesn’t realize that the radical “new” self reliance program is the same old platform promoted by Black Republicans for decades. Zora Neale Hurston was an advocate of this philosophy. Hurston thought that the Brown v Board decision was an admission that blacks could not complete. She felt that accepting white help was a failure. The truth is that blacks were canaries in the coal mine. Black schools were underfunded. Whites fled to the suburbs to avoid blacks. In doing so, the tax base that supported urban schools decreased. Legislatures spread the underfunding of black schools to majority white schools. They also let wages for teachers stagnate. Now society is coming to grips with the economic stress faced by public schools. Teachers have to pay out of their own pockets for student supplies. So-called self-reliance looks good on paper, but fails to educate a significant number of students. 

The article points out one tactic that has been used by Conservatives for decades. Conservatives find one black who agrees with their nonsense and label any opposition to that black person as suppression of free thought. This tactic, in essence, says that the majority of blacks are stupid because they do not agree with the Conservative position. We are supposed to ignore that California improved after raising taxes and Kansas is crashing under Republican tax cuts. Republicans love the “free-thinking” black.

The Coates piece is fantastic, and so much bigger than Kanye West.