This surrender must also acknowledge that blacks are Americans living ina Euro centric culture, but one which could not have been built without them.They should feel free to adopt Western culture, reject it, or meld it with somedesired level of Afro- (or other) centrism. But they should make that choiceaware of its consequences (and, of course, free of coercion fromgoaltending Blacks and their apologists). In a recent book called a Hope in theUnseen, a striving black youngster from the ghetto claws his way to BrownUniversity only to find that the Afrocentrism of his neighborhood educationleft him knowing all the words to Lift Every Voice and Sing but clueless as towho Churchill and Freud were. He was also sorely lacking in the academicbasics. That youngster had mainstream aspirations but was impeded by hiswell-meaning black teachers in availing himself of that to which hiscitizenship entitled him and for which he had worked so hard.

Blacks must accept that they are a numerical and political minority and mustmaster the dominant bodies of knowledge even as they fight for the inclusion ofworthy multicultural knowledge. As rational adults, they should concedethat, forced to choose, it should be Churchill over Patrice Lumumba, the InchonLanding over the Zulus' David vs Goliath victory over the British. Of course,they shouldn't have to choose; the goal should be to expand the base ofcultural literacy, one sinew of a strong nation, not play a zero sum game inwhich one nugget of western civilization must be jettisoned for everymulticultural nugget included. For the same reason that all schoolchildren needto master algebra whether they think they'll ever use it or not, blacks mustmaster the Master's world. They needn't embrace it or even believe it; theymust simply render unto Caesar the things, which are Caesar's. And then subvertit from within.

This black surrenderis not defeat. It is not an admission that either the racists or the politicalconservatives were right all along. It is the mature acknowledgement that,right or wrong, the past is as rectified as its ever going to be, the futuretheirs to claim. Black surrender is both honorable and justified because it isoffered as a response to whites' surrender of the right to exploit and oppressthem or to appease those who do. In short, they've surrendered their right to awhiteness defined as control over non-whites, as a preordained spot at the topof every pile, from character, to intellect, to beauty, to talent.

In order to makefuture progress possible, blacks have to give up on the past. Tomorrow is theironly option.

This is pretty strong stuff, and for the most part I approve.I immediately take exception to the chosen language in places…"surrender" is notan acceptable metaphor when a great number of the people such a statement needsto reach conceives of themselves as being at war…but overall I was inclinedtoward giving her book the benefit of the doubt.