rica’s Founders, regardless of their faults, had the right ideas. Individual liberty,toms pink shoes, freedom of expression, due process, etc., are objectively good principles, even if the Founders hadn’t intended to apply these principles to blacks. Phillips had committed the “sin” of publicly expressing gratitude for being an American, despite America’s history of slavery and subjugation. His new book, He Talk Like A White Boy, is a semi-autobiographical collection of essays about his love for this country and his respect for the “old school” values that make America strong. Recurring themes are family, faith, and freedom.Best known for his roles as Lt. Martin Kendall on The Cosby Show and Justus Ward on the soap opera General Hospital, Phillips is a rarity in Hollywood. He writes candidly about growing up speaking proper English (“talking white”), being different from the mainstream, and having his “blackness” questioned. Advertisement The opening anecdote of the 232-page book sets the tone and reveals what eventually becomes a lifelong frustration. After he made a comment in his junior high school accelerated English class, another black student said, “He talk like a white boy!” What does that mean? Phillips thought. Instead of chastising the girl or dealing with the substance of the remark, the teacher merely corrected her grammar.  “No, LaQueesha. Joseph speaks like a white boy!” The teacher had the entire class repeat the correct sentence. “[T]hat moment,” writes Phillips, “was not only the beginning of junior high school, it was the beginning of my life.”Phillips began to recognize what he calls the “tyranny of opinion”–the idea that a self-anointed group stood at the doors of culture and determined who was or wasn’t black enough. As a conservative columnist and speaker, Phillips receives his share of letters and e-mail from members of this group who sling ad hominem attacks (usually anonymously) but rarely deal with the substance of his work. “In their minds,” he writes, “I no longer speak like a white boy, I now think like a white boy.”He Talk Like A White Boy is replete with examples of this tyranny in action. Phillips recounts a nasty experience on a TV talk show called America’s Black Forum. Between segments,cheap women toms shoes, a black liberal journalist let loose with a profanity-laced,toms black wedges, personal rant against him. “Imagine if I had cursed at Deborah Mathis in front of a studio audience,” Phillips writes. “My inappropriate behavior would have signaled the bankruptcy of my arguments. To the guardians however, Deborah’s inappropriate and unprofessional behavior is seen as a righteous defense of the race.”Such a defense is considered righteous to many blacks. Criticizing negative elements of black subculture is “airing dirty laundry,” and holding opinions different from mainstream blacks is traitorous. Airing more dirty laundry, Phillips decries the emphasis on sports in the black community over academics. “Doing well in school and reading books become anti-black, joining the debate club instead of the basketball team is anti-black as well.” But Phillips doesn’t criticize others just for the sake of it. His book is textured with honest details and examples of his own faults, and he doesn’t rationalize his wrong-headed decisions.Phillips stays focused on the book’s themes while writing honestly about his anxiety over auditioning, his mother’s suicide, and his efforts to be a faithful Christian, a good husband, and a good father. In a poignant essay about his late father, Phillips laments the diminished role of fathers in the culture in general:It is a shame that as social currency, fatherhood has been so drastically devalued. A man’s honor is cheap… Boys must see the pride in their father’s smile, feel the firm hand of a father’s discipline, and hear the bite of correction in his voice. Boys will not grow into men unless men lead them…Boys do not need male role models and they don’t need father figures; they need fathers in the home.Despite the “raceRelated articles:

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