African American Columnists Roundup

Bob Herbert discusses depressing plight of the City of Detroit, once one of America’s great cities:

The city of Detroit is using federal money to destroy thousands upon thousands of empty homes, giving in to a sense of desperation that says there is no way to rebuild the city so let’s do the opposite: let’s destroy even more of it. Lots more of it.

There are plans aplenty for demolishing large parts of what’s left of Detroit, which in its heyday was the symbol of an America that was still a powerfully constructive force, a place that could produce things and improve the lives of its people and inspire the rest of the world.

Eugene Robinson writes about Republicans’ sympathy for BP:

Joe Barton is not alone. The Texas congressman’s lavish sympathy for BP — which he sees not as perpetrator of a preventable disaster but as victim of a White House “shakedown” — is actually what passes for mainstream opinion among conservative Republicans today.

Cynthia Tucker reflects on President Obama’s remarks on the fatherhood:

President Obama has always been a very credible speaker on the importance of fathers in the lives of their children. In his memoirs and in speeches on and off the campaign trail, he has spoken about his own life and how the absence of his father affected him.

His parents divorced when he was very young, and his father went back to Kenya. Obama saw him on one visit after that.

DeWayne Wickham suggests bad actors all around in the Seattle incident that went viral between police officers and two African American women:

Something has to be done about this.

And something has to be said about the bad attitude and misbehavior of people like Rosenthal and Levias, who think they can contemptuously challenge authority, even when they have committed a crime. This was not their first run-in with the law. In November, Rosenthal was charged with second-degree robbery when she allegedly punched a 15-year-old boy in the face. Two years ago, she was charged with stealing a minivan. In 2009, Levias was charged with third-degree assault for allegedly pushing a sheriff’s deputy.

The tendency of cops to mistreat blacks and the alarming way some young blacks respond to authority is what should alarm us about the Seattle incident. These patterns of behavior must be addressed so that brush fires like this don’t again spark deadly race riots.

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