A TRIUMPH OF FELONS AND FAILURE

I was browsing at a newsstand in Manhattan recently when I came across
a magazine called Felon. It was the "Stop Snitchin' " issue, and the
first letter to the editor began: "Yo, wassup Felon!"

Another letter was from "your nigga John-Jay," who was kind enough to
write: "To my bitches, I love ya'll."

Later I came across a magazine called F.E.D.S., which professes to be
about "convicted criminals--street thugs--music--fashion--film--etc." The
headline "Stop Snitching" was emblazoned on the cover. "Hundreds of
kilos of coke," said another headline, "over a dozen murders," and "no
one flipped."

What we have here are symptoms of a depressing cultural illness,
frequently fatal, that has spread unchecked through much of black America.

The people who are laid low by this illness don't snitch on criminals,
seldom marry, frequently abandon their children, refer to themselves
in the vilest terms (niggers, whores, etc.), spend extraordinary
amounts of time kicking back in correctional institutions, and
generally wallow in the deepest depths of degradation their
irresponsible selves can find.

In his new book, "Enough," which is about the vacuum of leadership and
the feverish array of problems that are undermining black Americans,
Juan Williams gives us a glimpse of the issue of snitching that has
become an obsession with gang members, drug dealers and other
predatory lowlifes -- not to mention the editors of magazines aimed at
the felonious mainstream.

"In October 2002," he writes, "the living hell caused by crime in the
black community burst into flames in Baltimore. A black mother of five
testified against a Northeast Baltimore drug dealer. The next day her
row house was fire-bombed. She managed to put out the flames that
time. Two weeks later, at 2 a.m. as the family slept, the house was
set on fire again. This time the drug dealer broke open the front door
and took care in splashing gasoline on the lone staircase that
provided exit for people asleep in the second- and third-floor bedrooms.

"Angela Dawson, the 36-year-old mother, and her five children, aged 9
to 14, burned to death. Her husband, Carnell, 43, jumped from a
second-story window. He had burns over most of his body and died a few
days later."

If white people were doing to black people what black people are doing
to black people, there would be rioting from coast to coast. As Mr.
Williams writes, "Something terrible has happened."

When was it that the proud tradition of Frederick Douglass and W. E.
B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman and Mary McLeod Bethune, Louis Armstrong and
Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington, Martin Luther King and Thurgood
Marshall, gave way to glossy felon magazines and a shameful silence in
the face of nationally organized stop-snitching campaigns?

In an interview, Mr. Williams said: "There are so many things that we
know are indicators of a crisis within the community. When you look at
the high dropout rate, especially among our boys. Or the
out-of-wedlock birthrate, which is really alarming. Or the high rate
of incarceration.

"When you hear boys saying it's a 'rite of passage' to go to jail, or
the thing that is so controversial but has been going on for a while --
kids telling other kids that if they're trying to do well in school
they're trying to 'act better than me,' or 'trying to act white' -- all
of these are indications of a culture of failure. These are things
that undermine a child or an individual who is trying to do better for
himself or herself. These are things that drag you down."

Enough, in Mr. Williams's view, is enough. His book is a cry for a new
generation of African-American leadership at all levels to fill the
vacuum left by those who, for whatever reasons, abandoned the
tradition of struggle, hard-won pride and self-determination. That
absence of leadership has led to an onslaught of crippling,
self-destructive behavior.

Mr. Williams does not deny for a moment the continued debilitating
effects of racism. But racism is not taking the same toll it took a
half-century ago. It is up to blacks themselves to embrace the current
opportunities for academic achievement and professional advancement,
to build the strong families that allow youngsters to flourish, and to
create a cultural environment that turns its back on crime, ignorance
and self-abasement.

More blacks are leading successful lives now than ever before. But too
many, especially among the young, are caught in a crucible of failure
and degradation. This needs to change. Enough is enough.