Sense of Victimhood is Destroying Black America, Poussaint says.

In Thursday’s edition of the Christian Science Monitor, Alvin Poussaint, noted psychiatrist and dean at Harvard Medical School, writes that a lack of accountability is partly to blame for joblessness, drugs, lack of education and crime in Black America.

Poussaint recently co-wrote a book with Bill Cosby, “Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors.” The book discusses ways African-Americans can transform their communities and their own lives. In Thursday’s column, Poussaint says once again internal forces are decimating Black America: 

“We in the black community must look at ourselves and understand our own responsibility. We sometimes inflict ourselves with a victim mentality, feel hopeless, and do self-destructive things that make our lives even worse. Many people who are trying to make it find themselves struggling against fellow African Americans so lost in self-destructive behaviors that they bring down other people as well as themselves….These forces are decimating our communities. And they are not what Reverend King and other leaders took those whuppings for. This is not the future for which our ancestors escaped slavery or resisted it. None of our forebears sacrificed their lives so that their children’s children could call each other ‘nigger.’”

Not everyone has taken a liking to Poussaint and Cosby’s message. Many blacks have accused them of conservatism and classism. Comparing Poussaint and Cosby to Princeton professor and acclaimed author Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, one commentator on the Reformed Blacks of America blog had this to say:

“Dr. Dyson is certainly much more likeable and has more street cred. I don’t think Cosby and Poussaint are totally wrong, but they come across as patronizing and don’t seem to recognize the spiritual component in all of this. It’s going to take gospel-centered, incarnational ministry to make a dent in these problems, not preaching to the black underclass from an ivory tower.”