Michelle Singletary has done pretty well, with her unique brand as a black female financial columnist. Her talent is picking interesting topics to write about. The problem lies in the execution.
Invariably, somewhere in the piece will be either a glaring omission, or a huge factual error.
Here's a recent example, from her column entitled "Rage, rage against the financial sector fuels protest."
You'd think that a financial writer might use a few words to explain the government's culpability in creating the ongoing crisis—starting with absurd mortgage policies that strong-armed banks to make ridiculously bad loans. Then, her sympathies with the Wall Street protesters would have at least been put into a better context.
Moreover, these sympathies are in stark contrast to her usual posture of "work hard, save, and don't abuse credit," inasmuch as most of the protesters seem to be little more than aimless bums.
However, the real point of the piece is that great things can happen from small civil protests.
Throughout history, great change has evolved from small civil protests.
It took a Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, to inspire the Montgomery bus boycott that eventually resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation was unconstitutional.
Now, she's rewriting history, or worse, ignoring it completely. More's the pity that she is ignoring Black history. The Supreme Court decision she refers to is, of course, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Rosa Parks' actions took place in 1955.
Thus, the principal contribution of Parks, and many other protesters, was to force the local authorities to finally obey the law. Although the buses in Montgomery were desegregated in 1956, it would not be until the mid-1960s that de jure segregation was mostly eliminated. De facto segregation will probably exist forever.
Parks continued to be honored throughout her life, and perhaps this clouded her judgment. It is difficult to understand why she served as a member of the Board of Advocates of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for many years. After all, "legal" abortion has killed many more Blacks than all the lynchings ever performed, and has done untold damage to the Black family structure.
All things considered, being alive is preferable to remaining seated on a bus, don't you think?
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