You won’t go broke by taking up the chastisement of “bad blacks” as a career. You may lose your soul, but you can just go buy a new one with the cash from your book deal/radio show/TV pundit gig/speaking fees.
What bothers me just as much, if not more, than the profitability of this line of thinking, is that anyone who engages in it (Barkley, Lemon, Riley or whoever) positions him- or herself as some sort of exalted truth teller, revealing the secrets black America is too afraid to face. They won’t touch the truth of how white supremacy has dictated the contours of black American life, but telling kids to pull up their pants and stop acting like “thugs” is right up their alley.
Is this true for every black person? Of course not. The only universal constant in the black American experience is racism. But it’s that racism that produced a situation whereby people were forced to go into survival mode, and more often than is comfortable to admit, survival techniques look like outlaw activities. And even more uncomfortable to admit is that black survival techniques become criminalized. Still, someone in our community persists along those outlaw lines because they understand there is no hope for anyone else if they don’t.
But instead of asking why the options for black survival are so limited, the proselytizers of respectability politics would rather reify the theories of black inferiority that excite the white racist imagination.

I don't even know why I'm quoting segments anymore, great writing.