Former Congressman Joe Walsh has advice for black Americans. The self appointed mentor to the black community spouted off a pretty outrageous list of issues he thinks African-Americans need to address on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
On his radio show, Walsh played the comments of Fox News contributor Juan Williams who in response to a question about whether Martin Luther King’s “Dream” has been realized said, “[There isn’t] any question that [African Americans] have come along way. I think that if you look at the realities of today, you’ve got to talk about things like family breakdown. You’ve got to talk about the fact that 70 percent of black children today are born out of wedlock. I think Dr. King would cry.”
This of course was the jumping off point for Walsh who notably was absent from his own children’s life and embarrassingly was sued for back owed child support while he was in office.
Not deterred by the obvious hypocrisy Walsh shared his own ‘dream’ saying:
I have a dream that all black parents will have the right to choose where their kids attend school.
I have a dream that all black boys and girls will grow up with a father.
I have a dream that young black men will stop shooting other young black men.
I have a dream that all young black men will say “no” to gangs and to drugs.
I have a dream that all black young people will graduate from high school.
I have a dream that young black men won’t become fathers until after they’re married and they have a job.
I have a dream that young unmarried black women will say “no” to young black men who want to have sex.
I have a dream that today’s black leadership will quit blaming racism and “the system” for what ails black America.
I have a dream that black America will take responsibility for improving their own lives.
I have a dream that one day black America will cease their dependency on the government plantation, which has enslaved them to lives of poverty, and instead depend on themselves, their families, their churches, and their communities.
Walsh is certainly arrogant to be in dishing out advice for black people, when his own life doesn’t meet these standards but his racialization of problems that impact all communities is particularly offensive.
Black people aren’t the only children born out of wedlock, black children aren’t the only ones who are not graduating from high school en masse, and black women aren’t the only women having premarital sex.
Furthermore, the complete lack of acknowledgement of structural factors that lead to this disparity in outcomes is par for the course for Republicans.
This fact doesn’t even address the backwards Puritanization of American ideals that is requiring every family to meet a heteronormative archetype, or that the failures in public education and social services for low income communities or all colors is exacerbated by the very Tea Party budget cuts that Walsh supported while in Congress.
The idea that black people and not corporations are on a proverbial government plantation defies logic.
Thankfully, Joe Walsh is now just a conservative radio talk show host, with no responsibility to make and set policy. His political career lasted a measly two years, before he was soundly defeated by Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and let’s hope American’s ‘dreams’ can be fulfilled over the next 50 years, while Walsh goes quietly into the night.
Follow Zerlina Maxwell on Twitter at @ZerlinaMaxwell.