Product Description

Half a century after brave Americans took to the streets to raise the bar of opportunity for all races, Juan Williams writes that too many black Americans are in crisis—caught in a twisted hip-hop culture, dropping out of school, ending up in jail, having babies when they are not ready to be parents, and falling to the bottom in twenty-first-century global economic competition.

In Enough, Juan Williams issues a lucid, impassioned clarion call to do the right thing now, before we travel so far off the glorious path set by generations of civil rights heroes that there can be no more reaching back to offer a hand and rescue those being left behind.

Inspired by Bill Cosby’s now famous speech at the NAACP gala celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision integrating schools, Williams makes the case that while there is still racism, it is way past time for black Americans to open their eyes to the “culture of failure” that exists within their community. He raises the banner of proud black traditional values—self-help, strong families, and belief in God—that sustained black people through generations of oppression and flowered in the exhilarating promise of the modern civil rights movement. Williams asks what happened to keeping our eyes on the prize by proving the case for equality with black excellence and achievement.

He takes particular aim at prominent black leaders—from Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson to Marion Barry. Williams exposes the call for reparations as an act of futility, a detour into self-pity; he condemns the “Stop Snitching” campaign as nothing more than a surrender to criminals; and he decries the glorification of materialism, misogyny, and murder as a corruption of a rich black culture, a tragic turn into pornographic excess that is hurting young black minds, especially among the poor.

Reinforcing his incisive observations with solid research and alarming statistical data, Williams offers a concrete plan for overcoming the obstacles that now stand in the way of African Americans’ full participation in the nation’s freedom and prosperity. Certain to be widely discussed and vehemently debated, Enough is a bold, perceptive, solution-based look at African American life, culture, and politics today.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43954 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-24
• Released on: 2007-07-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780307338242
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
When Bill Cosby addressed a 50th-anniversary celebration of Brown v. Board of Education, he created a major controversy with seemingly inoffensive counsel ("begin with getting a high school education, not having children until one is twenty-one and married, working hard at any job, and being good parents"). Building from Cosby's speech, NPR/Fox journalist Williams offers his ballast to Cosby's position. Williams starts with the question, "Why are so many black Americans, people born inside the gates of American opportunity, still living as if they were locked out from all America has to offer?" His answers include the debacle of big-city politics under self-serving black politicians; reparations as "a divisive dead-end idea"; the parlous state of city schools "under the alliance between the civil rights leaders and the teachers' unions"; and the transformation of rap from "its willingness to confront establishment and stereotypes" to "America's late-night masturbatory fantasy." A sense of the erosion of "the high moral standing of civil rights" underlies Cosby's anguish and Williams's anger. Politically interested readers of a mildly conservative bent will find this book sheer dynamite. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
In 1963 James Baldwin emerged as an oracle on race relations in the service of transforming American democracy. A masterpiece of criticism, The Fire Next Time cast Baldwin as a modern-day Jeremiah warning the nation against impending doom posed by segregation, institutional racism and white supremacy. "Time catches up with kingdoms and crushes them," he cautioned.

More than 40 years later, prophets such as Baldwin have all but vanished from intellectual discourse, replaced by a chorus of commentators whose gaze has turned decidedly inward. Lacking the political courage and personal compassion to confront the racism, segregation, poverty and violence that so disturbed Baldwin, these post-civil rights critics observe that, for black people, the enemy is us.

Juan Williams, an NPR analyst and former Washington Post reporter, joins a growing line of such fed-up liberals and disappointed progressives (including scholar Orlando Patterson and entertainer Bill Cosby) who find the state of much contemporary black life alarming and more than a little embarrassing, considering the gains of the civil rights movement.

Williams believes that the 1954 Brown school-desegregation decision and subsequent activism and legislation virtually cured the disease of racism; that heroic era was a 20th-century watershed. For him, the remedies for racism's remaining vestiges are education, self-determination and individual responsibility. Regarding political leaders in the 21st century, he prefers mavericks in the mold of Bill Cosby, whom he considers courageous enough to "call out" the predatory behavior of the black poor. On this score, Williams laments what he sees as a black underclass mesmerized by racial hucksters playing "old school" politics: corporate blackmail disguised as boycotts, naked shakedowns leveraged by rhetorical threats and the like.

Occasionally the depth of historic and contemporary institutionalized racism faced by blacks creeps into Williams's discussion, but he is more concerned with what he perceives as black apathy and self-destructive behavior. This is disappointing: A discussion of post-civil rights racism would have added nuance to Enough's criticism of contemporary black leadership, reparations, public schools, criminality and culture.

For Williams, Cosby stands out as a prophet amid a searing American wilderness: bold enough to expose the rough truth that individual responsibility is more responsible than "systemic racism" for black crime, educational shortcomings and bad behavior. In Cosby's speeches and Williams's book, fleeting acknowledgments of racism are trumped by simplistic, at times repetitive lectures cautioning blacks to look at their own shortcomings before blaming anyone else.

Beyond Williams's polemics lies a more complex story about the political economy of racism whose effects on poor neighborhoods elude those who romanticize ghetto and "gangsta" culture. His discussions of the "stop snitching" campaigns that discourage cooperation with police and Cosby's outrage over the epidemic use of the "N" word are worthy of serious debate. But that would require the kind of rich analysis, penetrating insight and layered narrative that Enough lacks, as well as a hard look at the impacts of unemployment, racial profiling, police brutality and other features of modern-day racism, along with the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow, which continue to disfigure the lives of blacks and distort the shape of American democracy.

Unlike The Covenant With Black America, a bestselling anthology with concrete proposals for community empowerment, Enough concludes with a flurry of righteous condescension, preaching that youngsters can best avoid poverty by finishing high school, getting a job and postponing marriage and child-bearing until at least 21. Williams's praise for African Americans' creative resilience during the rough road from slavery to freedom is commendable, as is his ardor for the achievements of civil rights activists. But even as civil rights victories opened doors of opportunity, white backlash, the decline of industrial jobs and fatigue over racial conflict helped blunt the movement's more ambitious dreams: ending poverty, forging genuine racial integration and eliminating social, political and economic disparities based on race.

Like many storytellers, Williams imagines that his subject, the civil rights movement, had a beginning, a middle and an end. But it may be closer to the truth to regard the civil rights victories of the 1960s as only a historic chapter in America's unfinished saga of racial struggle.

Reviewed by Peniel E. Joseph
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
Advance Praise for Enough

“Written in the tradition of DuBois and King, Enough is an impressively powerful and courageous book. Williams delivers a blunt and bracing challenge to black America.” —David J. Garrow, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Bearing the Cross and Senior Fellow at Cambridge University

“A courageous and much-needed primer on race relations in America today.” —Thomas Sowell, author of Black Rednecks and White Liberals and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution

“Enough is a breath of fresh air and a long overdue, critical insight into today’s stereotypical nonsense that has unfortunately been passing as the new black culture.” —Donna Brazile, political commentator for CNN and former campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000

“Juan Williams has, through Bill Cosby, spoken for the quiet majority of African Americans who desperately look for some voice to articulate what they know is truth. . . . I highly recommend Enough to those who are really interested in knowing our nation’s history, and specifically the odyssey of African Americans in this country.” —Douglas Wilder, mayor of Richmond, Virginia, and former governor of Virginia

“Juan Williams isn’t afraid to give Cosby his props, showing us that a lot of what people call black conservatism is plain common sense.” —John McWhorter, author of Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Great ideas, but needs footnotes
I greeted this book with eager anticipation. As a concerned African-American who is SICK of the R. Kellys, Marion Barrys, and Mike Tysons bamboozling Black folks into thinking they are martyrs instead of the fools that they are who got what they deserved from their own stupidity and of the ills stated on the cover (as well as Michael Eric Dyson deliberately and dishonestly misrepresenting Bill Cosby's message of self-reliance for cheap fame and more buck$), I expected a lot from this book from a person who feels the need as I do to STOP the self destruction.

Juan Williams talks about some of these ills in this book, but stays mainly to the futility of reparations and the defense of Bill Cosby.

The latter is excellent, but I think the Cos can (and should) speak for himself and write his own book (or put out DVDs of his recent town hall meeetings) to get his point to the public.

He (Williams) mentions some interesting incidents involving chicanery from Rep. Maxine Waters and Al Sharpton. This is interesting, but I wished Williams would have added footnotes to this and other material in the book for verification.

With that said about the presentation, I agree FULLY with the message of this book, which is the necessity for self-examination in Black America to stop the self-destruction, as well as dealing with external issues of the inequalities that remain. In short, we need some Booker T. along with the W.E.B.

I'd give it 5 for content, but 4 for presentation.

And to Dr. Cosby and Mr. Williams, I conclude with this-

"A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us that "At the Olympic games it is not the finest and the strongest men who are crowned, but they who enter the lists.... So too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world."

Robert F. Kennedy "Day of Affirmation" speech, June 6, 1966.

Count me in as one of the companions.

Speechless
I am utterly speechless! Juan Williams has taken the words right out of my mouth and somebody has finally answered the question that continues to plague my consciousness: "Where are the leaders?" and "Why isn't the black commumity banding together?" Too many have criticized Bill-- Cosby of ALL people. The man not only speaks the truth, he puts his money where his mouth is!! Finally, "Enough" champions the cause and makes us face the tough questions. This is one book that should be required reading in schools and I, for one, feel that the discussion started by Cosby and others is long overdue! BRAVO!

This book should facilitate more dialogue
Whether you find Juan Williams' arguments insulting or accurate, they are painful. The poorest of African-Americans are in a state of turmoil and he points out that the current strategy has ceased to yield results. He is not always eloquent in his delivery; in fact, you can hear the pain &/or disgust for what has transpired since Brown v. Board of Education. His interests are aligned with everyone in the black community, that the self serving interests of our so-called black leaders, the lack of education, the rate at which we go to prison, the break down of the family, the negative culture of hip-hop and other factors wreak horrible long-term consequences.

He nevertheless points out that racism is still amongst us and that the remnants of slavery have had lasting affects on our collective psyche. I would have liked to see bolder solutions, such as sending our top high school basketball players to HBCUs to generate money for our community, in addition to his conservative message to get married and stay in school. It's about time somebody came to the defense of Bill Cosby, who has committed more time and money to help his people than many of the pundits and false prophets who now point fingers. I have already recommended this book to all of my friends.