NYDN columnist, jazz critic, and all-around curmudgeon Stanley Crouch really has a way with words. Oh, and racial stereotypes. He's of the "I'm black but fuck you if you think I sympathize with poor black people" school, of which Bill Cosby is also a proud member. Today's Daily News column, in which he rhapsodizes about the plight of the black man, the black woman, and the "liberal white" conspiracy. Some choice excerpts: Adults eventually became afraid of disciplining young black men

who were wearing the hooded sweatshirts, the big jackets, the drop-down pants, the expensive sneakers. The barbarism of gold teeth had yet to appear. That was part of what has surely become a cultural crisis in which young black men adorn themselves with surface trappings and take on the obnoxious vulgarity of thugs in order to meet the expectations of young black women who have embraced their own degradation, seeming to find it sexy. That degradation is expressed in the misogynistic doggerel that dominates popular hip hop recordings.

Seriously, yawn. This is the same old borderline-racist claptrap that people have been spouting for years. But wait! Perhaps we're just falling into Stanley's trap.

After all:

Added to this low-lying mix are the supposedly sympathetic white liberals, who are more than happy to submit gutlessly to the black middle class. These white liberals have been intellectually hustled into believing that the inarticulate thug and the freelance slut are young black people in their natural state.

We think that old Stanley may have grossly mischaracterized the white liberals of whom he writes. We, for example, find this position of "freelance slut" quite intriguing, especially since it seems much more lucrative than "freelance writing."

To Move Up, Kids Must Stop Being Slaves to Fashion [NYDN]