Black Americans are being told to celebrate Jacob Blake, Mike Brown, and George Floyd.
All died publicly, and all had problematic backgrounds.
All of them are victims.
That is one of the reasons they are being celebrated.
Victimhood is the currency of 2020. It is the mothers’ milk of the left. It is a trap that far too many people have fallen into.
While Jacob Blake’s name has dominated headlines this month, Tyler Perry’s name is also making the rounds.
Perry is the incredibly successful director, writer, film maker, and mogul that most white Americans only know as ‘that guy in a dress.’
Forbes wrote a glowing piece on Perry this month, as it named him a billionaire.
This is, to me, the key part:
"After dropping out of high school, he gained knowledge any way he could. In his early 20s, he worked at the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, home to the annual National Association of Television Program Executives conference. The young Perry would use badges left behind in empty rooms to sneak into closed gatherings.
He began writing scripts while selling cars and serving as a bill collector. He eventually cobbled together $12,000, which he used to rent space at a community theater in Atlanta to produce a work he had drafted in his spare time.
For three months, he lived out of his car."
He was working on a play. It was successful. But he didn’t stop there. He made movies, TV, and then made the step to executive.
From Forbes:
"Perry owns the entirety of his creative output, including more than 1,200 episodes of television, 22 feature films and at least two dozen stage plays, as well as a 330-acre studio lot at the edge of Atlanta’s southern limits. He used that control to leverage a deal with ViacomCBS that pays him $150 million a year for new content and gives him an equity stake in BET+, the streaming service it debuted last September. Forbes estimates Perry has earned more than $1.4 billion in pretax income since 2005, which he used to buy homes in Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as well as two planes."
Tyler Perry started with nothing. No TV insiders’ advantage. No money. No privilege.
He is now a billionaire. Why are we not holding him out as an example?
Why, even if it is a small part of the minority community, are some people celebrating thugs and nerdowells? Why is the example victimhood rather than success?
Jason Whitlock wrote about success in his piece remembering another Black mentor to many, Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson.
Beyond a commitment to a nuclear family, the most significant contribution a black person can make toward advancing racial equality is professional success.
Black excellence begets black opportunity.
We now live in an era where young people have been convinced their social media complaints, hashtags, slogans and commitment to avenging the deaths of resisting criminal suspects are the most important acts a black person can contribute toward equality.
Why don’t we celebrate success? Particularly among Blacks? Victimhood, that’s why.
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