Yesterday's Sunday Times (UK) featured a piece on New York City's student pay-for-performance plan, spearheaded by Harvard economist Roland Fryer. The article also explores more generally the latest efforts to solve the crises facing America's black community, contrasting two main approaches with some expressive terminology:
The education initiative has pushed Fryer to the forefront of a national debate that has previously owed more to emotional political bias than scientific rigour. On Fryer's left is the black "ghettocracy", the angry old guard of black liberation. Led by rabble-rousing preachers such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jack-son, it tends to blame everything on racism or white malice.On his right is the "Afristocracy", the conservative black elite led by Bill Cosby, one of America's most popular comedians, who has repeatedly taken black youths to task for being stupid, ill-mannered slackers. "They think they're hip," Cosby once said. "They can't read, they can't write, they are laughing and giggling and they're going nowhere."
Interesting, as always, to see how we're viewed by our cousins across the pond.
Photo by Fran Collin from The American.
