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Welcome to Thinking Out Loud, a blog that contains postings from The Tampa Tribune’s Editorial Board and from various Tribune Community Columnists. Unlike the unsigned editorials that represent the newspaper’s institutional voice, the blog postings offer personal perspectives on the issues, personalities and events of Tampa Bay. We invite you to participate by posting your comments. We’ll do our best to respond.

Contributors:

Joe Guidry

Joe Guidry is the deputy editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune. He is a Tampa native and a graduate of the University of South Florida. He is married and has an adult son.

Jeff Stidham

Jeff Stidham grew up and lives in Bartow. He has been with the Tribune for nearly 22 years, the last 10 on the editorial board.

William Yelverton

William Yelverton is a Tribune editorial writer who has worked for the paper nearly 22 years. He lives in the Dade City area.

Jim Beamguard

Jim Beamguard is a Tribune editorial writer. He is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of Davidson College. He and his family live in Brandon.

Jackie Papandrew:

Jackie Papandrew is a freelance writer and editor. Her syndicated humor column appears in publications in the United States, Canada and India. She lives in Largo with her husband and children. Visit her website at www.jackiepapandrew.com.

Camille Beredjick

Camille Beredjick is a senior at Chamberlain High School, an avid musician and a scribbler with a quirky sense of humor. In the fall, she will be attending Northwestern University to study journalism, political science and music, and she plans to pursue a career in journalism.

Jim Harnish

Jim Harnish is in his 17th year as Senior Pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa. He and his wife, Marsha, have two daughters and two grandchildren. He is a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and received the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bethune-Cookman University. He is the author of six books and numerous articles and studies. He enjoys playing with his grandchildren and cheering for the Florida Gators.

Angela Hunt

Angela Hunt is a novelist living in Pinellas County with her husband and two 220-pound mastiffs.

Sheryl Young

Sheryl Young was a Tampa Tribune Community Columnist in 2005-2006. A freelance writer since 1997, including the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Tampa Style Magazines, St. Pete Times and nationally in Better Nutrition, Today’s Christian Woman and more. She’s received a First Place Amy Foundation national "Roaring Lambs" Writing Award, and has lived in Tampa Bay with her family for over 20 years.

Christie Gold

Christie Gold teaches English and journalism at Freedom High School in Tampa where she advises Revolution, the school newspaper. She has been both the Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year and Florida Journalism Teacher of the Year. She lives on a small farm in Wesley Chapel where she trains as a competitive equestrian.

Natalie D. Preston

Natalie D. Preston is a karaoke singing, only-child pouting, Seminole Tomahawk waving, newlywed bride blushing, 50-state traveling, girlie girl who loves to shop, read, run and jump up and down on her soapbox.

Fernando Figueroa

Fernando Figueroa is a researcher, educator and lives in Riverview.

Gary Beemer

Interests include humor, politics, economics, community and world affairs, finance, people, religion, music, sports, current events, the arts and education.

Nicole Yunger Halpern

Nicole Yunger Halpern is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where she studies everything she can get her nerdy little hands on. Desired major: life. No, not necessarily biology. Life.

Kris DiGiovanni

Kris DiGiovanni is a Tribune Community Columnist, Huffington Post contributor, Daily Kos diarist, and teacher, who recently moved from NW Hillsborough to another planet - a small beach community in Pinellas County. She also blogs at www.sandscript.wordpress.com

H. David Braswell Jr.

H. David Braswell Jr. is an Information Systems Professional. He is a native New Yorker and a lifelong NY Giants fan. He attended college in California (Cal State Northridge) and moved to Tampa in 1998.

Sean Marcus

Sean Marcus teaches creative writing, journalism and reading at Chamberlain High School. He has one son and is expecting a daughter in early March. He can be reached at wuizabug@gmail.com

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Retreat From Greatness

Posted Aug 1, 2010 by H. David Braswell Jr.

Updated Aug 1, 2010 at 06:44 PM

With the advent of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs of the 1960’s the fortunes and future of black America seemed destined to rise to levels our forefathers – whether black or white – would have never imagined possible.

By the mid-1970’s virtually all government enforced/endorsed segregation had been eliminated. Public schools, colleges and universities, workplaces, offices and neighborhoods were more integrated than ever before. The doors that had been closed for so long to our parents and their parents were now opening to the generation of black baby boomers.

I was among that fortunate group – the first person in my entire family tree to earn a college degree. The first to wear a suit and tie to work and carry a briefcase instead of a lunch pail. The first to sit at a desk in an air conditioned office, instead of standing before a machine in a hot, sweltering factory. Many of my high school classmates were also the first in their families to go through that experience.

The future looked so bright we all probably felt we’d need the strongest of sunscreen and the darkest of sunglasses for what was to come. From there it was going to be full steam ahead, onward and upward, both for us and the generations of blacks to follow.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was unfolding before our very eyes, and we were the ones living it and making it happen.

Flash forward to 2010…

I look around and I do not see the widespread prosperity, success, advancement and record of achievement I envisioned when I graduated from college. What I see instead are a people – my people – who seem to have made a u-turn somewhere “back there” and launched into a full-scale retreat from greatness.

Black teen pregnancy is viewed as being no more serious than a case of the mumps. Thuggish behavior, accompanied by repeated arrests and brushes with law. Failure to put forth any effort whatsoever to succeed in school is accepted all too readily. Sloppy, slovenly dress, vulgar language, disrespectful and anti-social behavior, horribly bad personal hygiene, complete lack of any work ethic are glossed over or swept under the rug.

Many in the black community seek to attribute these failings to the government, law enforcement’s targeting of young black males, the schools, the lack of jobs, the lack of understanding of “black culture” and/or “the white man”. The fact of the matter is the blame belongs squarely on young blacks themselves, their parent(s) and the black community.

We no longer see the unwavering, iron-fisted parental control over the behavior of their children that was so commonplace for my generation. Teens today seem to dress as they please, talk as they please, behave as they please and treat their parent(s) as they please, with little fear of negative repercussions from school officials, our courts, relatives, other family members and, most importantly, their parent(s).

Multiple generations of blacks who shunned education, hard work and self discipline, and thereby locked themselves into a life of poverty, have instilled in the subsequent generations (their children) the same self-defeating values. It brings to mind the lyrics of a song by the Temptations from the mid 1960’s - “Like a snowball rolling down the side of a snow covered hill, it’s growing.” The ranks of the poor, uneducated, unemployable, unaccomplished blacks grow larger with each successive generation, and at an accelerating rate.

Bill Cosby is not a lone voice in the wilderness crying out for a community-wide and family based attack on the attitudes and behaviors that are destroying black America. There are thousands like him preaching the same sermon, delivering the same message and begging our people to turn inward and begin making and working for the changes needed to “right our ship” – before it’s too late.

Alas, he, and they, have been, and are being, largely ignored.

Everything within me, every shred of reasoning, tells me we are doomed. I can neither see not think of anything that can stem this tide.

Some would say “Things can’t get any worse.” I say “They can, and they will.”

Unless…

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