shorter abdul hakim-shabazz: some people accuse me of turning my back on my fellow blacks once i became successful, but they have it all wrong. in fact, turning my back on my fellow blacks is how i became successful in the first place.

bonus abdul: it's hard to know what the most obnoxious thing about this post is. the smug attitude? the fact that he does his own call and response? ("truer words were never spoken," he pats himself on the back at the end.) the audacity of rerunning it every martin luther king day, as if to flip everyone the bird while be pretends to give them advice? no—those are all annoying, but worst has to be the complete lack of self-awareness:

Recently I had a conversation with a black friend of mine and she told me something I found was a bit disturbing. We were arguing over crime and how to deal with it when she told me, "Abdul, your attitude is typical of middle-class back folk." I asked her to tell me what that meant. She then went on to say as middle-class blacks tend to move up the socio-economic ladder, they forget their origins, and treat poor blacks the same way whites do. I have to say I was a bit taken back by all this, because I was being attacked for my status in life which I had no control over.

no, abdul. you weren't being attacked for your status in life. you were being attacked for your behavior. she wasn't complaining that you were middle class; she was complaining that you treat poor blacks the same way whites do (i.e., like shit). which is what makes the following sentence from later in the post particularly ironic:

I for one have no such guilt because there's a big difference between closing the door on people because of race, which has nothing to do with behavior, and having serious concerns about people who haven't learned how to honor the social contract, which does have a lot to do with behavior.

so abdul writes that people should be judged for their behavior rather than their race or class... but when people criticize him for his behavior, he gets defensive and pretends that they're talking about his race and class. funny how that works. ¶

What gets me about Abdul's post (besides that although he asserts it is even more relevant than it was when he first wrote it, the times have changed and he seems woefully left behind) is this:
the only way people will ever make any real achievement in this world is when individuals decide they want to take personal responsibility for their actions and take charge of their destiny. And accommodating bad behavior is not the way to make that come about.
That's from the guy who was Indy Undercover. ¶

really short Abdul: "Personal responsibility for thee, victimhood for me!" ¶

The same attitude--less colorfully expressed--gets Eugene White named Indiana School Superintendent of the Year. ¶