Quit yer whining

I know I bellyached about working last Saturday, but it turned out to be great. I got to cover a speech by Sister Souljah. Here's my article about it.
For those of you who forgot, Sister Souljah (as in, Soldier) was the little-known community activist who recorded a few tracks with Public Enemy in the early '90s. But her big time exposure came in 1992 when she answered a question from a Washington Post reporter about what was motivating the Los Angeles rioters:

I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? You understand what I'm saying? In other words, white people, this government, and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, or above and beyond dying, when they would kill their own kind? (emphasis mine)

That italicized chestnut earned Souljah the rebuke of then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who used the comment in his presidential campaign as a way to distance himself from black extremism and reassure Southern whites that he could stand up to black folks. Calling out Souljah for her racism was a little like being against terrorism or lukewarm coffee. I mean, who isn't? Now, using that kind of political grandstanding to engender solidarity with a certain voter base is known as a "Sister Souljah moment."
Anyway, back to the speech. It was enlightening to hear her speak because while it's easy to dismiss her as an extremist, her perspective resonated with most of the black audience that night. There's so much lingering resentment among black people that Souljah's not so far out of the mainstream. It's also unfair to judge her on one or two soundbites because most of her talk seemed like a sermon imploring her black audience to stand up, stop imbibing corrosive hip-hop misogyny and hedonism and take control of their destiny.