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The "Fist of A Champion" - a sculpture in downtown Detroit dedicated to legendary fighter Joe Louis - is a city icon. It was updated a few days ago to reflect the reality of the city as it prepares for bankruptcy. An artist added a massive replica of a can of Crisco. Heh. Bend over and brace yourself, Detroit.
Surprisingly enough, the city government does not see the humor.
House Democrats under Nancy Pelosi today held a hearing on "Race and Justice" in America. No Republicans were invited. The speakers were limited to race baiters who make their living off the grievance industry. No mention was made of the dysfunction in the black community, unwed mother birth rate over 75%, rampant criminality, substandard education, poverty, joblessness, etc. The entire focus of the hearing was the supposed ever increasing racism in America. And not surprisingly, the attendees came to the collective conclusion that the only way to protect blacks is to elect Democrats to the House.
The racial grievance industry and the Democrat left that is wed to it has, over half a century, proven immensely harmful to our nation - and to the black community, it has been an utter disaster. At this point, these two groups jointly pushing a canard for money and power is beyond merely immoral - it is evil.
I've been talking about the problems of race for years now on this blog. Rare is the person on the left who likewise addresses the problems head on. But hats off to CNN's Don Lemon who has indeed waded into the mud with brutal honesty:
While I appreciate the comments, the canard that the right only brings up the problems of the black community when "they want to stick it to the black community" is just off the charts ridiculous. One, every time someone on the right with a public voice brings it up, they are met with a full scale attack from the racial grievance industry. Two, in the most recent instance, the right has brought it up in response to the race hustlers' calls for the lynching of George Zimmerman. That was not to "stick it" to the black community, it was to finally start pointing out that the black community is being tremendously ill used. And that is a message that needs to be shouted from the rooftops every day.
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Rob Miller at the Watcher's Council invited me to contribute to the Council's discussion on the question of whether "President Obama has deepened the racial divide." My response is below:
Historically, nothing has more poisoned our society than racism and the "racial divide" caused thereby. Today, half the equation - white racism - no longer prevails in society. But the "racial divide" is still deep. It is a divide carefully tended by the far left. For some of the blacks who have bought into it, there is money and power. There are the race baiters like Al Sharpton and Jessee Jackson. There are the tenured professorships at every university in ethnic studies programs that teach nothing but racial grievance. And there are the far left politician, every one of them of whatever color, including President Obama. They depend on keeping that racial divide wide since it is, for them, not merely a route to political power, but a foundational element of it.
Blacks, starting with Goldwater's incredibly ill advised opposition to the Civil Rights Act, have been convinced that their interests lay with the left. And blacks have ever since proven to be a monolithic voting block like none ever before seen in our nation. Over 90% of every black vote since the mid-60's has gone for Democrats. If the left ever loses that block of votes, they will be in deep, deep electoral trouble.
So is it any surprise at all that President Obama has tried to poison the well of race relations at every turn? No administration in history has ever played the race card like the Obama administration. Want to prevent voter fraud - you're racist. Oppose Obama's spending - you're a neo-confederate "tea bagger." Oppose Obamacare - you might as well be standing next to Bull Connor in Selma setting the dogs loose on MLK.
When Obama had a chance to actually address the problems in the black community a few days ago, he told us that Trayvon Martin was Baracky Jr. He told us how bad it was, based on his personal experience, to be a black man in America and be 'profiled' because of his skin color. Lest there be any question that he was saying that racism - as opposed to rationality about black violence and criminality - was the cause, Obama expounded further. As to dysfunction in the black community - the violence, single mothers, cyclical poverty, substandard education - Obama told us that those things must be put in "historical context."
There is no question that, in the short run, Obama has worsened race relations in our nation. But I would submit that, in the end, the efforts of him and his administration is only adding straws to a proverbial camel's back. At some point, it will break - to the immense benefit of our nation and the black community in particular. It has to because all the imperatives that gave rise to the black Civil Rights movement have flipped.
In the 1960's, blacks were the subject of white racism. In 2013, racism has been wholly driven from mainstream society. Our society has revolutionized, and done so in only three generations, like no other in recorded history. To the extent racism exists today, it is on the margins. When you see a woman at one of race hustler Al Sharpton's rallies hold up a sign that says "Racism's stll alive. They Just Be Hiding It," that tells you all you need to know about the absence of racism in mainstream society.
Two, the moral high ground no longer rests with blacks. The most significant problems besetting black society - criminality, violence, breakdown of the family with three out of every four black children born to single mothers - those are problems internal to black society. They are not caused by white racism. Moreover, to the extent that the government contributes to the problems of the black community, it is ultimately because, one, addressing the problems of black society honestly would break the monolithic voting block on which the left relies, and in the case of education, would mean taking on teachers unions that provide the single greatest source of funding for the Democrats. That still, today, so many blacks refuse to acknowledge this is surreal. The real travesty of all this is that Republicans, despite the urging of such luminaries as Thomas Sowell, have not made any concerted effort to point out these truths to the black community and seek their votes.
Lastly, since whites make up the majority of society, the success of the racial grievance industry ultimately rests on the existence of white guilt. But with racism no longer endemic to society, white guilt is fast fading. The race card is becoming ever less effective, and at some point, the constant claim that anything the left doesn't like is motivated by conservative's racism is not merely going to be ineffective, it is going to engender outright anger.
We are inexorably moving to the day when blacks stop their monolithic support of the far left. That will mean that they have joined American society and are no longer claiming to be perpetual victims of it. It will be the day the racial divide ends - and President Obama, with his administration's overuse of the race card, will have, wholly unintentionally, done his part to end it.
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It is not exactly a secret, at least among those outside the racial grievance industry, that Florida's Stand Your Ground law played no role in the Zimmerman trial. It is perhaps less well known, but equally true, that blacks are disproportionately the beneficiaries of self defense and stand your ground laws since, unfortunately, they are most often the targets for violent crime. Regardless, the uniform complaint from the grievance industry is that the jury verdict was wrong and unfair, racist laws must somehow be changed. Megan McArdle, in her most recent effort, has done a superb job of explaining self defense laws, how they impact on the burden of proof at trial and laying out the case for why they should remain unchanged. In her estimation, such laws strike the most fair and just balance that we, in our imperfect world, can make between punishing the guilty and allowing the innocent to go free. My own take on all of this was that the calls of the racial grievance industry are merely an effort to incite blacks into believing that they are under attack from an America that is 1965 Mississippi writ large. I did not take their calls for changes to the law seriously. But Instapundit goes the extra analytical step. He sees the calls to redo the law as both real and insidious. Says he:
But, to be fair, many of these people would be happy with special rules for black youths, or battered women, or whatever, so that they get the result they want. And if the categories don’t fit, well — you can always re-arrange them ad hoc, as the media did when they turned part-black, part-hispanic George Zimmerman into the reincarnation of Bull Connor.
Hughey Newsome, a black businessman who lived in Detroit for the past ten years, looks at how the race card is used by blacks in the grievance industry and in government, from our President to Detroit, and its impact. This from Mr. Newsomee in the Daily Caller:
Living in the Detroit metro area most of the last decade, I have experienced many of the events leading to its bankruptcy.
Take, for example, the 2008 State of the City address by then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. With Detroit facing a perilous fiscal future and him facing ethics complaints, Kirkpatrick highlighted race. He sparked controversy by using the “n-word” while referencing an insult he received from some random person.
Kirkpatrick vowed to stand strong against this attack, and asked citizens to stand by him against a “lynch mob mentality.” He essentially used that slur to leverage racial tension, inciting and dividing the mostly-black city against mostly-white suburbs. After all, it was the people in the suburbs — many who either worked in Detroit or had economic ties to the city — who were frustrated with mounting city corruption and mismanagement.
The citizens of Detroit rallied behind their mayor. It was racial politics — pure and simple.
Five years later, Detroit is in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, and Kilpatrick – who resigned six months after his controversial address — was convicted of a series of felonies that may put him in prison for the rest of his life.
Kilpatrick is not the one bad apple who destroyed Detroit. Using race to cover for failure is commonplace. . . .
There are many similar examples of corruption and divisiveness involving city leadership where race is has often been used to rouse and incite but – most importantly – to distract from ineptness and unethical behavior.
Why is this dangerous?
Playing on peoples’ sensitivities and fears distracts attention from holding elected leaders accountable. Detroit’s political class understands this, and regularly delivers racial division rather than doing the hard work of attracting investment in the city. . . .
It’s not just Detroit where this game of racial division is played. This trick is played at the highest levels of government. . . .
George Zimmerman was found not guilty the same week Detroit declared bankruptcy. In the former case, too many — and too many who are too powerful — cast Zimmerman as a bigot despite no evidence validating this claim.
In his surprise address to the press about the Zimmerman verdict on July 19, President Obama mentioned the real bias that black men face on a regular basis. But rather than channel this concern into a productive conversation, he sought to leverage the racial tension he created to criticize “stand your ground” laws (which played no actual role in Zimmerman’s defense) and promote gun control. Obama’s question — “[I]f Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?” — is particularly disheartening. On what evidence is this based? Does he not know that over 30 percent of Florida’s “stand your ground” claims are made by blacks and are 55 percent effective for blacks in court? Obama’s words of division and distrust – to advance a political agenda — diminish an opportunity to address real biases principally driven by media and entertainment. Too much time is spent complaining about and looking for the overt racism that has largely been banished from our society. Perversely, this effort to protect minorities from the bigot under the bed promotes the “soft bigotry of low expectations” that Obama’s predecessor sought to stamp out. . . .
Ms. Martin:
Regarding your speech at the National Urban League, let me first say that I sympathize with your overwhelming grief at the loss of your son. I can assure you that, despite what some are asserting, the loss of your son's life resonates deeply throughout all of America, irrespective of politics or skin color. In that, please accept my heartfelt condolences.
Ms. Martin, it is apparent that in your grief, you are looking about for anyone or anything to blame for the death of your son. You are looking around for something to give some greater meaning to your son's death. No one can begrudge you that. We would all react similarly.
That said, Ms. Martin, you are being used. While no one can have even the slightest doubt that your grief is real, it is grief blind to reality, and you are being manipulated by those of your skin color who have staked their careers on furthering racial division and the canards that this is still the America of Emmett Till, that America of today is 1950's Mississippi writ large, that blacks are under siege and threat from white racism.
Who is it, Ms. Martin, that is telling you that, but for Florida's Stand Your Ground law, your son would be alive today? I ask because that person is shamelessly lying to you. I hope you realize that what was at issue in your son's case was not the Stand Your Ground law - your son was on top of Zimmerman, pummeling him. Zimmerman had no opportunity to retreat. What was at issue in the trial was the ancient right of self defense. I am sure, at some level, you realize this.
Yet you are being invited to inveigh against Stand Your Ground laws as if it was what caused your son's death, let alone what allowed Zimmerman to be found not guilty. You are being invited to inveigh against the law as if it is a racist construct.
At some point, you will look back on this and, I hope, realize that those who are urging you on are doing a great disservice not merely to you, but to your son and to the black community. If there is to be meaning to your son's death, then you need to ask why your son, that night, decided to beat a "creepy ass cracker." What led him to make that criminal and fatal mistake? If you really want to honor your son, may I suggest ma'am, that no matter how painful, you take a cold, hard, and realistic look not merely at your son, but the people now inviting you to speak at their gatherings to blame, ultimately, race for your son's death.
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From Dr. Krauthammer:
If there’s an iron rule in economics, it is Stein’s Law (named after Herb, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers): “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Detroit, for example, can no longer go on borrowing, spending, raising taxes, and dangerously cutting such essential services as street lighting and police protection. So it stops. It goes bust.
Cause of death? Corruption, both legal and illegal, plus a classic case of reactionary liberalism in which the governing Democrats — there’s been no Republican mayor in half a century — simply refused to adapt to the straitened economic circumstances that followed the post–World War II auto boom. . . .
. . . The legal corruption was the cozy symbiosis of Democratic politicians and powerful unions, especially the public-sector unions that gave money to elect the politicians who negotiated their contracts — with wildly unsustainable health and pension benefits. . . .
McArdle's post-mortem finds a tsunami of causes. She is certainly right about the number of contributing causes, though I think that, from the standpoint of simple math, Krauthammer has it right. That said, this from Ms. McArdle:
If you listen to the interwebs, the answer is “terrible, Democratic-run urban politics.” Or “union-busting anti-labor policies” in Southern states that transformed solid middle-class jobs in the Midwest into near-minimum-wage jobs in states such as Alabama and Tennessee. Or maybe “racism.” Or “the urban underclass.”
All of these answers are impossibly reductive. The city of Detroit has no one problem; it has a constellation of them. Here, in no particular order, are some of the most important factors. . . .
The factors she lists:
- The decline of shipping along the Detroit River.
- The claim that the South stole high paying union jobs by allowing for non-union near minimum wage pay is a falsehood. There is little wage disparity between Michigan UAW workers and non-union workers in Southern Right To Work states. The three killers have been expansive health and pension benefits for UAW retirees, deeply inefficient union work rules, and competition.
- Post-WWII UAW Pattern Bargaining tactics failed when competition came to the auto industry. This was at least as big a problem for the UAW and the auto industry as the availability of jobs in Southern right to work states.
- Middle Class flight: This was a real problem for Detroit caused by a huge increase in crime during the 50's and 60's. It picked up even more in the wake of the 1967 race riots - the most violent in the nation.
- White Flight and Reverse Racism: A large chunk of the white population fled after the race riots. Those that were left were subject to a series of deeply anti-white black dominated city governments.
Today's good news comes from Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to make public sector union membership voluntary and limit their collective bargaining rights has borne fruit. This from JSOnline:
Wisconsin's public employees are leaving their unions in droves, which should be no surprise: With passage of Act 10 in 2011, public unions in the Badger State lost many of their reasons for being. . . .
The "budget-repair bill" pushed through the Legislature by Republicans and signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker limited bargaining to wages only, and then only up to the cost of living; it also required unions to recertify each year and barred the automatic collection of union dues. . . .
Relying on federal financial records, the Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice found union membership has declined by 50% or more at some unions, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 48, which represents Milwaukee city and county workers. It has gone from more than 9,000 members and income exceeding $7 million in 2010 to about 3,500 members and a deep deficit by the end of last year. . . .
One would think this a success story both for the people of Wisconsin and public sector workers. But the rest of the article gives voice to critics, with the biggest complaint being that it hurts the Democrat Party. While Democrats are utterly focused on giving effected people a "choice" when it comes to abortion, that is where their support for "choice" of any kind ends.
What the left wants with forced unionization is really nothing more than indentured servitude. Moreover, nothing is more corrupting than public sector unions that have a political agenda and keys to the public treasury. Detroit is a perfect example of the end result of this blue social model.
Wisconsin public workers now have more money in their pockets, the state budget is balanced, and people are exercising their choice whether to fund a union. Only a leftie could be unhappy.
Have you ever heard of the pucker factor? It is actually an unofficial scale developed by the military used to determine the tightness by which one clenches their posterior hole. 1 is normal. 5 is air tight. 10 is a point of atomic lock - where not even a single atom could pass from one side to the other, nor could it be forced to unclench with anything short of dynamite. I once hit a 10 in the middle of a parachute accident at jump school. But many things can cause a 10 on the pucker factor scale, such as . . . . .
(H/T Maggies Farm)
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Racial profiling - the suspicion that a person of a particular race is more likely to be a potential criminal threat - is the bete noir of all the race hustlers. They spit out the words "racial profiling" as if it were itself the most vile of criminal acts. They harp on it to inflame the passions of blacks. And indeed, Obama spent a good part of his Zimmerman speech tugging at the heartstrings on this issue.
But blacks are exponentially more likely to commit crime, and particularly violent crime and robbery, than any other racial group in the U.S. When it comes to murder, blacks are ten times more likely to commit such an act than whites or hispanics combined. That is cold, hard reality.
The NYPD has instituted an aggressive stop and frisk policy - one that they carry out primarily in the high crime, majority black areas of the city. Call it what you will, it really is racial profiling writ large. It also makes common sense. By far the most important aspect of the program - it has worked phenomenally, saving thousand of lives, mostly black.
The NYPD program is under attack in both federal courts and the court of public opinion. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly took to the pages of the WSJ to address the latter:
Since 2002, the New York Police Department has taken tens of thousands of weapons off the street through proactive policing strategies. The effect this has had on the murder rate is staggering. In the 11 years before Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office, there were 13,212 murders in New York City. During the 11 years of his administration, there have been 5,849. That's 7,383 lives saved—and if history is a guide, they are largely the lives of young men of color.
So far this year, murders are down 29% from the 50-year low achieved in 2012, and we've seen the fewest shootings in two decades.
To critics, none of this seems to much matter. Sidestepping the fact that these policies work, they continue to allege that massive numbers of minorities are stopped and questioned by police for no reason other than their race.
Never mind that in each of the city's 76 police precincts, the race of those stopped highly correlates to descriptions provided by victims or witnesses to crimes. Or that in a city of 8.5 million people, protected by 19,600 officers on patrol (out of a total uniformed staff of 35,000), the average number of stops we conduct is less than one per officer per week.
Racial profiling is a disingenuous charge at best and an incendiary one at worst, particularly in the wake of the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. The effect is to obscure the rock-solid legal and constitutional foundation underpinning the police department's tactics and the painstaking analysis that determines how we employ them.
In 2003, when the NYPD recognized that 96% of the individuals who were shot and 90% of those murdered were black and Hispanic, we concentrated our officers in those minority neighborhoods that had experienced spikes in crime. This program is called Operation Impact.
From the beginning, we've combined this strategy with a proactive policy of engagement. We stop and question individuals about whom we have reasonable suspicion. This is a widely utilized and lawful police tactic, . . .
As a city, we have to face the reality that New York's minority communities experience a disproportionate share of violent crime. To ignore that fact, as our critics would have us do, would be a form of discrimination in itself.
Photo taken from American Digest
The expression that a picture is worth a thousand words just does not do justice to the above photo of a black woman in Chicago at a rally to have George Zimmerman lynched. The photo neatly sums up the state of race in America today. It puts into perspective not merely the history of the last half century of the civil rights movement, but also its state today, its success and failures, and the focus of the racial grievance industry on George Zimmerman at the complete expense of focusing on all of the real problems in the black community.
The History
The woman in the photo is holding up a sign decrying racism. We have been seeing pictures like that since the 1950's and 60's, when the movement for black civil rights was finally gaining unstoppable momentum. The movement was one of moral clarity and purity - nothing less than a demand that America finally and fully live up to its premise, that "all men are created equal," and its promise, that each person have a level playing field on which to pursue "life, liberty and happiness." Many of the blacks of that era felt themselves, as a group, victimized and denied that promise. Rightly so.
In many areas of 1950's America, racism, often violent, still held sway, and nowhere more so than in the Democrat controlled South. Lynching and violence were hardly rare. It was Mississippi of the era that gave America the brutal murders and subsequent justice denied in the cases of Emmett Till and Medger Evers. It was Alabama of the era where the name of Democrat Bull Connor became infamous. Martin Luther King Jr. shamed America with his brave, non-violent demand for full civil rights for blacks. MLK's goal for the movement was a colorblind society where each person would be "judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin." Amen.
Republicans and Northern Democrats both were deeply involved in pushing forward the civil rights movement in the 20th century. It was three white Republicans who gathered together to start the NAACP. The NAACP would later argue Brown v. Board of Education before a Republican dominated Supreme Court, resulting in the landmark legal decision that spelled the end of segregation. It was Democrat President Truman in 1948 who fully integrated the military. Republican President Eisenhower oversaw the passage of two major civil rights laws and faced down Alabama Democrats in the Little Rock Nine incident.
But then four critical things happened in the 1960's. One, Barry Goldwater, figurehead of the Republican conservative movement, decided to contest the 1964 Civil Rights Act because he believed it was beyond the bounds of federal commerce clause authority. He was right on the law but utterly on the wrong side of history. Republicans gave massive support to both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it didn't matter. Because of Goldwater's opposition, he, and ultimately all Republicans, were painted as the vile racists that Southern Democrats actually were.
The second critical event was the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. With him died the purpose of the Civil Rights Movement as one for equality.
The third critical event was the rise of 1960's radicals. Steeped in neo-Marxist philosophy, they are the far left that now controls the Democrat Party. After the death of MLK, it was the far left that commandeered the civil rights movement, fundamentally altering its nature. They imprinted the movement with identity politics, grossly distorting the movement's goal of a level playing field for all Americans and creating in its stead a Marxist world of permanent victimized classes entitled to special treatment. It has had profound implications for blacks and our nation.
And the last critical event, following Goldwater's highly impolitic stand, was the creation of the single greatest monolithic voting block in our nation's history. Blacks, who had never before been monolithic with their votes, became and have since remained one for the Democrat Party. Indeed, that monolithic vote is utterly essential to the left - they would be politically massacred were it to stop today.
Race Currently
The woman in the picture decries racism that apparently even she admits does not seem to exist. She explains that away by claiming that racism today is just in hiding.
What happened over the half century since the 60's has been nothing short of revolutionary. The efforts undertaken by both right and left to combat racism bore fruit. For the right, racism became an object of utter scorn, not to be tolerated. For Democrats, the party of slavery, Jim Crow, separate but equal, the KKK and lynchings, the transformation from the font of racism to, ostensibly, champions of blacks was overnight once they saw the political and monetary benefits of such a change. But it was not a complete break with their racist past. What many on the left did was merely submerge their hard racism, substituting for it the soft racism of low expectation.
The success of the civil rights movement has been a problem for the far left - the group that controls the Democrat Party today. Keeping blacks as a monolithic voting block has required a lot of effort along three parallel lines. One, convince blacks that all non-lib whites are irredeemably racist. Two, meet any effort to contest a left wing policy or criticism of a black politician with charges of racism. Indeed, the use of that charge since 1965 has been so ubiquitous and successful that "playing the race card" has become the single most fundamental tactic of the left. And lastly, brutally punish any black who refuses to tow the line. Nothing will get you lynched in the square of public opinion by the left quicker than the crime of being black and questioning far left / race grievance industry dogma.
Keeping blacks convinced that our nation is, fifty years on, still Mississippi circa 1965, is increasingly hard. The "black community" receives a constant stream of messages that they are still, today, living in Biloxi of 1965 writ large. They are kept divided from society and taught to nurse their grievances. Major colleges have embraced this with Black studies programs - nothing more than intellectual training grounds for the race grievance industry. Those programs have given us such gems as Critical Race Theory and the theory of White Privilege while Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates makes ludicrous calls for all non-whites to pay reparations to all blacks for the original sin of slavery.
Yet as blacks have taken part in an ever more integrated society, they are ever more seeing the absence of racism in white middle class America. That is a real problem for the left's narrative. It is why the woman in the photo above claims that whites today "just be concealing" their racism. And it is why you have Prof. Gates pushing the utterly ludicrous and despicable theory of "color blind racism." When in 1960 the narrative expressed the reality of racism in America, the gap between the narrative and reality has steadily grown until today it is separated by yawning canyon. Almost as important, white guilt at past racism has receded with racism's ever shrinking presence in our society.
The Far Left / Racial Grievance Industry's Attempted Lynching Of George Zimmerman
Which brings us to Zimmerman. The racial grievance industry has locked onto the Zimmerman like a drowning man grabs onto a life preserver. That was understandable at the start since the optics initially promoted by the media seemed perfect for them. An innocent black child is profiled, stalked and murdered by a racist white. A racist judicial system then refused to even arrest or charge the killer. This was Emmett Till and Medger Evers. This was a God send, a chance for the race hustlers to reassert their narrative based on an anecdotal - but real - case.
But it has all gone bad. None of the narrative holds up in the light of day. Many of the facts have come out in a fair, televised trial. Others have made there way into the media.
To begin with, George Zimmerman was neither racist nor white. He was predominantly Hispanic with some white and black DNA tossed in - thus leading to the first canard of the Zimmerman narrative, the creation of a wholly new racial category - that of White Hispanic.
As to Zimmerman's racial attitudes, he was Mother Theresa. There was no hint of racial animus in his background. To the contrary, all indications were that he was color-blind. He tutored black children, he dated black girls, he befriended all in his community irrespective of race, and he launched a one man crusade in support of a homeless black man who had been beaten up by the white son of the local Chief of Police. An FBI investigation into his background searching for racial animus turned up, after more than 40 interviews, nothing.
As to racial profiling, when Zimmerman called the police on Trayvon Martin, he sited activities that were suspicious as the basis. He only identified Martin as possibly black when prompted by the 911 operator. And any inference of racial profiling goes out the window when you look at Zimmerman's other calls to police over a three year period. Two were to alert police to the presence of a black man wanted for burglary. One was to alert police to a black seven year old child wandering unsupervised in the road because of concern for the child's safety. Zimmerman placed three calls about black men acting suspiciously, one of which was Trayvon. He had previously made five calls about whites and hispanics acting suspiciously in the neighborhood. Listen to the calls and the descriptions of why Zimmerman was suspicious, and the inference is that Zimmerman acted reasonably and did not profile on the basis of race.
Evidence at trial suggests that Trayvon Martin could have, during a three to four minute interlude, simply gone to his home a stone's throw away. Instead, he ended up assaulting Zimmerman, battering him and leaving Zimmerman in extreme panic. The jurors found that Zimmerman acted in self defense, which means that Zimmerman acted in reasonable belief that he was in imminent danger of great bodily harm.
The racial grievance industry, outrageously supported in all of their assertions by President Obama, utterly refuses to acknowledge any of the facts that have been broadcast to the world. Just as the grievance industry is founded on the canard of rampant racism in society, so is their Zimmerman narrative founded on a complete ignoring of the facts. Indeed, to hold onto their narrative, the race baiters are agitating that Zimmerman be charged under federal law because he was motivated by race to kill Martin. They want a lynching - a sacrifice on the alter of race - in order to justify their narrative.
But there is some hope. Rev. Al Sharpton, the nation's most prominent race baiter, arranged for demonstrations in 100 cities last week to forward the narrative. It speaks volumes that the crowds were small indeed, with most being in the hundreds or lower, in double digits. I am hopeful that this is a sign that blacks are waking up to the fact that the left and their leaders in the race grievance industry are taking them for a ride, with the only winners being Al Sharpton and the Democrats.
Detroit, The Blue Social Model & Failed Education Systems
Detroit is a city intimately caught up in politics of the left into which racial politics are fully integrated. And today, Detroit has utterly failed, it is a city in ruins. It is a city that that has been run wholly by the left since the 60's, from whence its decline began. Today, it is bloated public sector union pensions and health care costs that have eventually caught up to the city's treasury.
Michael Barone grew up in Detroit and was a friend of Mayor Cavanaugh in the 1960's. He writes today:
[Detroit Mayor] Cavanagh was bright, young, liberal, and charming. He had been elected in 1961 at age 33 with virtually unanimous support from blacks and with substantial support from white homeowners—then the majority of Detroit voters—and he was reelected by a wide margin in 1965. He and Martin Luther King, Jr., led a civil rights march of 100,000 down Woodward Avenue in June 1963. He was one of the first mayors to set up an antipoverty program and believed that city governments could do more than provide routine services; they could lift people, especially black people, out of poverty and into productive lives. Liberal policies promised to produce something like heaven. Instead they produced something more closely resembling hell. You can get an idea of what happened to Detroit by looking at some numbers. The Census counted 1,849,568 people in Detroit in 1950, including me. It counted 713,777 in 2010.”
There are a thousand things to write about on Detroit, but the one that stands out for the purpose of this essay is the unholy alliance between public sector unions, local government and the education available to blacks.
Education is penultimately the key to giving black children a route out of poverty and into the mainstream of American life. Yet, in every city run by the left, public sector unions have a lock on public education. And inevitably, it is the education of students that suffer. Detroit is the poster child for this. Detroit's public education system has produced a population that is near 50% functionally illiterate. Those are third world numbers. And the people so afflicted, largely black, will never be able to fully compete in the American marketplace.
Blacks as a whole have not yet figured out that in the pantheon of the left, public sector unions are valued above the education and well being of black children. Unions hold the trump card - they are valued for the money that they pump into the Democrat Party while the left already has the monolithic vote of blacks in their pocket.
The clearest example of this pecking order comes from President Obama. When he first took office, Washington D.C., with the worst public schools in the nation, was running a voucher program to allow poor black D.C. students to attend the same private schools where Obama had enrolled his daughters. At the urging of the teachers unions, Obama ordered that program terminated.
The bottom line is that the Blue social model is failing. One important aspect of that model, the one that directly implicates blacks, is that the left embraces public sector unions at the expense of blacks. This is one of the reason the left keeps blacks firmly fixed on imaginary white racism.
The Black Community Today
In the photo at the top, the woman's sign reads "Racisms still alive. They just be concealing it." This really says it all about the lack of racism in society, the fact that many in the black community still wish to blame racism for their problems, and a demonstration of the failed education system to which many blacks have no other recourse.
The civil rights movement has had its great successes and its stunning failures. Chief among its successes has been in driving racism totally from acceptability in the public square. Racism has receded from the mainstream to the very fringes of society. That this has been accomplished in but a few decades is truly amazing. But it also speaks to the moral imperative of the civil rights movement for blacks. It is a reason for all people in our nation to take pride.
The most glaring failure of the civil rights movement is that the black community has been, and ever more continues to be, ill served by the left and its ally, the racial grievance community. While many blacks have been able to use the decades since the 60's to work themselves into the mainstream, it is a fair argument that such has been in spite of, not because of, left wing policies that have contributed to a horrible breakdown in the black family and left in its wake intractable problems of poverty, joblessness, poor education and criminality running rampant through a large strata of the black population.
The true disconnect here comes from the left and a racial grievance industry that lays these problems in the black community at the feet of imaginary racism. These intractable problems of the black community are inexcusable and obscene in the 21st century. Yet blacks in the grievance industry simply will not face these problems on their merits, nor will they tolerate any on the right raising these issues. That will bring out the race card at the speed of light. To do so threatens their power base.
Nothing has thrown this into such a harsh light as the Zimmerman case and its aftermath. Will it make any difference?
Update: O'Reilly gets it. Kudos to him for his Talking Points Memo tonight
This from Bill Whittle, making the point that George Zimmerman is being lynched by the race grievance industry while painting a fact based picture of Trayvon Martin the likes of which we have never gotten from the MSM.
In my post below, responding to the race grievance industry's (and Obama's) generalized complaints about racial profiling, I wrote:
In 2011, blacks made up 13% of the population. Yet according to FBI Crime Statistics, in not a single category of crime - with the exception of DUI - was the number of total criminal incidents committed by blacks equal to or below their proportionate representation in society. In 2011, blacks in the U.S. were responsible for 49.7% of all murders, 55.6% of all robberies, 32.9% of all forcible rapes, and 33.9% of all aggravated assaults. The FBI does not publish - or at least I could not find - like statistics for victims, but looking at the numbers, blacks were just as likely to be the victims of crime out of all proportion to their representation in society. In 2011, 49.9% of all murder victims were black.
According to the left, this "disproportionate problem," as Obama called it, of criminality in the black community is the problem of . . . [wait for it] . . . a racist criminal justice system. They never quite indicate whether they think all of the black men in jail are actually innocent or whether the police just spend too much time catching actual black criminals. Either way, this from Heather McDonald:
The criminal law regularly announces that black Americans are “worth less than other Americans,” Cardozo Law School professor Ekow Yankah wrote on the New York Times opinion page this week. It wasn’t activists who “injected” race into the discussion, scoffed The American Prospect’s Jamelle Bouie on Monday, the “criminal-justice system” is “already” racial. An e-mail alert on Wednesday from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School proclaimed: “An ugly truth rears its head again: Racial disparities are alive and well in our criminal-justice system.”
The idea that the criminal-justice system discriminates against blacks — and that this bias explains blacks’ disproportionate presence in custody — is a staple of civil-rights activism and of the academic Left. Every effort to prove it empirically, however, has come up short [See Is The Criminal Justice System Racist]. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Alfred Blumstein has found that blacks are underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their arrest rates. A meta-analysis of charging and sentencing studies showed that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms, according to criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen.
This is not merely something the left and the race grievance industry want to studiously ignore. They want to use the Martin trial to push the utter canard that what blacks have most to worry about are racist whites out to stalk and kill them. In the dark fantasy that the race hustlers push, our nation is 1950's Mississippi writ large. That is why they are so deeply committed to painting George Zimmerman as not merely Bull Conner reborn, but as a metaphor for all "whites." But, as Ms. McDonald notes:
In fact, if a black parent wants to radically reduce his son’s chance of getting shot, he should live in a white neighborhood. New York’s crime profile is typical of urban-crime disparities across the country. The per capita shooting rate in predominantly black Brownsville, Brooklyn, is 81 times higher than that of predominantly white and Asian Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, according to the New York Police Department. Blacks in 2012 committed about 75 percent of all shootings in New York, and whites a little over 2 percent, though blacks are 23 percent of the city’s population and whites 35 percent. Blacks are 60 percent of the city’s homicide victims. Their killers? They aren’t white.
The picture is the same nationally. . . .
Update: The Faculty Lounge blog has an exceptional post up on Zimmerman's calls to police over a period years, with the vast majority being in his capacity of neighborhood watch. Evaluating whether Trayvon Martin was subject, in any degree, to "racial profiling" is made easier in respect to the entire log of Zimmerman's calls. The picture the log paints of Zimmerman is of someone who was racially neutral - which would fit with his life story - and who in fact keyed on aspects of suspicious behavior by people of any and all races.
- Zimmerman called police on three occasions to report people identified as black acting suspiciously, one of whom was Trayvon.
- Zimmerman called police twice when he noticed a man who fit the description of a person wanted for burglary. The man happened to be black - and indeed, the burgler in question.
- Zimmerman called police out of "concern for the safety" of a seven year old black child wandering unsupervised in the road.
- Zimmerman called police five times to report suspicious activity by whites and hispanics.
Do read the whole post for much more detail, particularly into what actions Zimmerman reasonably deemed suspicious. This provides another piece of the puzzle of which I was unaware. Many blacks describe the Zimmerman case as a replay of the brutal lynching of Emmett Till. They are right, though it seems that the more facts come to light, the more it appears that Zimmerman is the one being brutally lynched.
Tweet
Well, don't I feel embarrassed. It would appear that I have been wrong all along about George Zimmerman. I have portrayed him as an exemplar of a post racial, color blind society. The reality is otherwise.
A recent tip sent to the DOJ tip line has made public beyond question Zimmerman's long standing membership in an organization with deeply racist ties. The contents of the tip were published by Patterico:
Dear Department of Justice, As a concerned citizen, I feel I must answer the call for tips regarding your civil rights investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin. It has come to my attention that recently acquitted George Zimmerman has ties to an organization that fought against the emancipation of slaves, opposed the 1964 civil rights acts, and spawned the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws. Members of George’s sordid organization don’t limit their bigotry to African Americans, and indeed have disturbingly backwards views of Indians as well as Jews. This organization has even promoted injustice and voter intimidation on the basis of a person’s skin color, damaging our very faith in our democracy. . . .
You can follow the link for the video and documentary evidence. It would seem that Obama, the NAACP and the CBC have been right all along.
Obama made an appearance at today's White House Press Briefing to weigh in on the Zimmerman trial, race and racism in America (text and video here Many on the left, such as the NYT, were laudatory of the President's remarks. Others, such as Charles Krauthammer were highly critical.
Dr. Krauthammer is on the right track, but he is not critical enough.
Obama spent the vast majority of his speech pandering outrageously to the racial grievance industry, justifying, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, their vile race baiting directed at George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin. Obama reached a disgusting nadir in his remarks when he claimed that if Trayvon had been white and Zimmerman black, the "outcome and aftermath might have been different."
The narrative of the grievance industry is that George Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin, then stalked and murdered him because he was black. The narrative continues that the jury trial resulted in a travesty of justice. According to the NAACP and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, there is no difference between what George Zimmerman did and what happened in the savage racial murders and subsequent denial of justice to Emmet Till and Medger Evers, incidents that occurred over half a century ago in Mississippi. In the fantasy painted by the racial grievance industry, America of today is 1950's Mississippi writ large, and all non-progressive whites are as racist as the Democrat Bull Conner.
Obama used his remarks to bless off on all of it.
Obama made no attempt to correct the outrageous narrative. To the contrary, he justified it by saying that the "African- American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away." In other words, he explained the genesis of their fantasy without even the slightest criticism of it.
Obama then turned to "racial profiling," giving example after example of how people react with fear aand trepidation at the approach of black men that they do not know. The inference he left was that racial profiling is pervasive, that it occurred in the Zimmerman case, and that such fear is unreasonable.
Well, the reason non-whites and blacks, including such luminaries as Jessee Jackson, react that way at the approach of young black men that they don't is because it is a fact that blacks are exponentially more likely to commit crimes, and especially violent crime, including murder and robbery, than other racial groups.
In 2011, blacks made up 13% of the population. Yet according to FBI Crime Statistics, in not a single category of crime - with the exception of DUI - was the number of total criminal incidents committed by blacks equal to or below their proportionate representation in society. In 2011, blacks in the U.S. were responsible for 49.7% of all murders, 55.6% of all robberies, 32.9% of all forcible rapes, and 33.9% of all aggravated assaults. The FBI does not publish - or at least I could not find - like statistics for victims, but looking at the numbers, blacks were just as likely to be the victims of crime out of all proportion to their representation in society. In 2011, 49.9% of all murder victims were black.
So if the presence of blacks, and particularly young black men, causes such an unfortunate reaction in others, it is not because of the other's racism, its because of the reality of criminality. That is not a fault of whites, nor for that matter, of Jessee Jackson.
Moreover, in bringing up racial profiling as he did, in remarks on the Zimmerman case, Obama's unstated message was that the race baiters are right, that George Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin. Facts and findings at trial don't matter to the racial grievance industry, nor do they matter to Obama who, even in his capacity as President, keeps one foot squarely in the racial grievance camp.
As to whether Trayvon Martin received justice in the trial of George Zimmerman, Obama threw the racial grievance industry this nugget:
The African-American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.
So, Obama is saying that it is understandable that blacks would believe the verdict unjust, irrespective of the facts established at trial. He does this with no criticism, thus sanctifying this belief.
Later in his remarks, Obama made all this crystal clear. In his most outrageous moment, Obama claimed as fact that if Trayvon had been white and Zimmerman black (he actually is in part, and indeed, he is less white than is Obama), then the "outcome and the aftermath" of the incident would have been different. That is a race hustler's indictment of our nation and our entire criminal justice system.
Unfortunately, Obama did not take questions. One that should have been was whether he felt the same way about Roderick Scott and Christopher Cervini.. Roderick Scott's case was a photo negative of the Zimmerman case. Scott is a black man in Rochester, New York who came upon three 16 year old white boys whom he believed were stealing from cars in the area. Brandishing a gun, he ordered them to stay in place until the police arrived. According to Scott, one of the boys, Cervini, charged him, saying that he was going to "get" Scott. Before the boy so much as touched Scott, he lay dead of two gunshot wounds that Scott claimed he fired in self defense. Unlike Trayvon Martin, the person Scott shot had no history of any troubled past. Like Trayvon Martin, the boy's parents are inconsolable, believing their innocent son was murdered. Scott was acquitted of manslaughter charges within the past week following a jury trial.
Obama did pay lip service to the grossly disproportionate criminality in the black community/ He then said that his remarks were not "to make excuses" for the criminality. But then he launched into a litany of excuses, intimating that this violent culture exists because of historical white racism. Moreover, he justified the hysterical reaction of the racial grievance industry to the Zimmerman case on the grounds that non-blacks are insufficiently willing to drown themselves in guilt for past historical sins that they did not commit.
All of this was a preamble to telling blacks, in so many words, that there was not going to be a prosecution of George Zimmerman for a violation of Trayvon Martin's civil rights. I would be surprised if that is announced officially a day before the 2014 election.
That said, Obama did have other bones to throw the racial grievance industry, suggesting changes to laws on racial profiling and Stand Your Ground. Given that neither racial profiling nor Stand Your Ground laws were implicated in the Zimmerman case, this is Obama's way hoodwinking blacks into believing that he and the rest of the racial grievance industry are standing up for them. And therein lies the true irony of the racial grievance industry. The demands of Obama will, if pushed forward, have their most clear and negative impact on one identifiable racial group - blacks. The racial profiling laws would make another Chicago of New York City. Taking away Stand Your Ground laws would most hurt the black population, those most subject to violence and those most likely to rely on Stand Your Ground in defense. That pales in comparison, though, to the fact that while more black teens will murdered and more blacks put in jail for defending themselves, at least more money will flow into the coffers of the NAACP and the members of the Congressional Black Caucus will have a better chance of reelection. It's obscene.
Towards the end of his remarks, Obama said that the reality is that racism is on a decline, that there must be help given to black boys, and that our goals should be to judge "based on not the color of their skin but the content of their character." All laudable. But Obama did not stop there. He concluded his remarks by say "those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions." The hypocrisy left me speechless.
Obama ran in 2008 on a platform of "healing the racial divide" in America, and many a person pulled the level hoping that he would do that. The reality is the opposite. No President in the past century has played such a negative role in regards to race in America. That will be a large part of President Obama's legacy. It is tragic both for the black community and our nation.
Obama appeared at today's White House Press Briefing to weigh in on the Zimmerman trial, its aftermath and racism in America. Some of what he said was good, some was bad - but unfortunately, the most important of his points were simply utterly outrageous. Here are his entire remarks:
Here are the test of those remarks with comments in blue:
The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week, the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling. I gave an — a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday, but watching the debate over the course of the last week I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.
First of all, you know, I — I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation. I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s — it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it.
I think it horrendous that, at no point does Obama similarly mention George Zimmerman, his family or parent, nor the mountain of death threats being made against them.
The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there are going to be a lot of arguments about the legal — legal issues in the case. I’ll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues.
The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The juries were properly instructed that in a — in a case such as this, reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict. And once the jury’s spoken, that’s how our system works.
But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African- American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African- American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away.
According to the racial grievance industry, our nation is still 1950 Selma, Alabama writ large. Outrageously, many in the racial grievance industry - including the NAACP and members of the Congressional Black Congress - are comparing the Zimmerman case is to the savage racist murders and subsequent denial of justice in the cases of Emmet Till and Medger Evers. Emmet Till, a 14 years old Missippi boy, was tortured and murdered in 1955 by a group of white men for the crime of flirting with a white girl. Two men were acquitted by an all white jury at trial, after which they bragged of their act of murder. Medger Evers was a former soldier and civil rights activist assassinated in 1963, Mississippi, by a member of the KKK, Bryan de la Beckwith. Two trials held at the time resulted in hung juries. Beckwith was not successfully prosecuted for the murder until 1994.
Obama just blessed off on that viewpoint as, at least, not unreasonable. That is absolutely outrageous.
There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.
And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.
And you know, I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.
One, Obama is suggesting that Trayvon Martin was racially profiled by George Zimmerman. Wow. No one on either side of the trial claimed that by the conclusion of the trial. Nor is there a single bit of evidence of that. But Obama just gave it a wink and a nod.
Two, there is a reason people, including blacks such as Jessee Jackson, react that way at the approach of young black men that they don't know. It is because, statistically, blacks are exponentially more likely to commit crimes, and especially violent crime, including murder and robbery, than other racial groups. In 2011, blacks made up 13% of the population. Yet according to FBI Crime Statistics, in not a single category of crime, with the exception of DUI was the number of total criminal incidents committed by blacks equal to or below their proportionate representation in society. In 2011, blacks in the U.S. were responsible for 49.7% of all murders, 55.6% of all robberies, 32.9% of all forcible rapes, and 33.9% of all aggravated assaults. The FBI does not publish like statistics for victims, but looking at the numbers, blacks were just as likely to be the victims of crime out of all proportion to their representation in society. In 2011, 49.9% of all murder victims were black.
So if the presence of blacks, and particularly young black men, causes such an unfortunate reaction in others, it is not because of their racism, its because of the reality of rampant black criminality. That is not a fault of whites, nor for that matter, Jessee Jackson.
Three, this plays right into the claims that there should never be racial profiling. Now, after listening to many in the racial grievance industry speak about "racial profiling" this past week, it seems that what they mean is they don't want anyone not black to feel suspicious about a black person, irrespective of how they are acting. That is not merely a philosophical argument - it is as real as the crime and murder rate differentials between NYC and Chicago. New York City, under Nanny Bloomberg's aggressive 'Stop & Frisk' policies, something the same racial grievance industry claims is racism - now has less than a third of the murder rate of Chicago where, if you are black, it is statistically less safe to live than it is to be a soldier in Afghanistan.
The African-American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.
This is an attack our criminal justice system without adjusting for the reality of grossly disproportionate black criminality relative to population. Further, it is a back handed slap at the Zimmerman verdict. Regardless of the facts at trial, Obama is saying that it is reasonable that blacks interpret it as a racist incident. Just horseshit.
Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that fact, although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.
This is a non-sequiter. There is no ":historical context" for massively disproportionate criminality in the black community. The racial grievance industry interprets the plight of all blacks through is the utter canard that all whites in the U.S. are racist. We - and in particular those on the right - are all Bull Connor Democrats. That is not a "historical context. That is an incredibly destructive fantasy,
We understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.
No, black violence is not born out of a "very violent past." That is not merely an excuse, it is false. It is born out of a breakdown in the black family unit that has gotten worse, not better, since Daniel Patrick Moynihan's landmark report of 1965. It there is ever going to be a true "dialogue" on race that has a chance of improving the plight of blacks as a whole, that is where it has to begin. In fairness, that dialogue would, as Moynihan pointed out, have to acknowledge the role of racism in current situation of blacks. But we arrived at that point in the dialogue in 1965. Any and every attempt to continue the dialogue since then has been met with the 'race card.' .
And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration. And the fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African-American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.
I think the African-American community is also not naive in understanding that statistically somebody like Trayvon Martin was probably statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.
So — so folks understand the challenges that exist for African- American boys, but they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it or — and that context is being denied. And — and that all contributes,
So, if I understand this argument, unless non-blacks are willing to drown themselves in guilt for past historical sins that they did not commit, then the racial grievance industry is justified to be frustrated..
I think, to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.
This is the single most outrageous statement that Obama makes - one that undergirds the whole racial grievance industry, It, to use the words of Obama, painting America with a "broad brush." He condemns our society and our legal system as irredeemably racist. It means that we are still the America of Till and Evers. And that is pure bullshit.
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Two cases come immediately to mind - O.J. Simpson and Roderick Scott. Simpson was given the same treatment that the murderers of Till and Evers were given. That case was a travesty of justice, but leave it aside. Roderick Scott is of particular note. His case, decided just days ago, was a photo negative of the Zimmerman case. Scott is a black man in Rochester, New York who came upon three 16 year old white boys whom he believed were stealing from cars in the area. Brandishing a gun, he ordered them to stay in place until the police arrived. According to Scott, one of the boys charged him, saying that he was going to "get" Scott. Before the boy so much as touched Scott, he lay dead of two gunshot wounds that Scott claimed he fired in self defense. Unlike Trayvon Martin, the person Scott shot had no history of any troubled past. Like Trayvon Martin, the boy's parents are inconsolable, believing their innocent son was murdered. Scott was acquitted of manslaughter charges within the past week following a jury trial.
Now, the question for me at least, and I think, for a lot of folks is, where do we take this? How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction? You know, I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests, and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through as long as it remains nonviolent. If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family.
Again, Obama portrays Martin as an innocent victim. Trayvon's death is a tragedy, but what did he do on that night he died for which he should be honored? The only possible inference is that he is a martyr to racism.
But beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do? I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here. Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government — the criminal code. And law enforcement has traditionally done it at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.
Obama just told the racial grievance industry that, try as they might, there will be no federal civil rights case filed against George Zimmerman. It is called burying the lead.
That doesn’t mean, though, that as a nation, we can’t do some things that I think would be productive. So let me just give a couple of specifics that I’m still bouncing around with my staff so we’re not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus.
Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it’d be productive for the Justice Department — governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.
You know, when I was in Illinois I passed racial profiling legislation. And it actually did just two simple things. One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped. But the other thing was it resourced us training police departments across the state on how to think about potential racial bias and ways to further professionalize what they were doing.
And initially, the police departments across the state were resistant, but actually they came to recognize that if it was done in a fair, straightforward way, that it would allow them to do their jobs better and communities would have more confidence in them and in turn be more helpful in applying the law. And obviously law enforcement’s got a very tough job.
So that’s one area where I think there are a lot of resources and best practices that could be brought bear if state and local governments are receptive. And I think a lot of them would be. And — and let’s figure out other ways for us to push out that kind of training.
Along the same lines, I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations.
I know that there’s been commentary about the fact that the stand your ground laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.
On the other hand, if we’re sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?
And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I just ask people to consider if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened?
And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.
Given that neither racial profiling nor Stand Your Ground laws were implicated in the Zimmerman case, this is Obama's way hoodwinking blacks into believing that he and the rest of the racial grievance industry are standing up for them. And therein lies the true irony of the racial grievance industry. The demands of Obama will, if pushed forward, have their most clear and negative impact on one identifiable racial group - blacks. The racial profiling laws would make another Chicago of New York City. Taking away Stand Your Ground laws would most hurt the black population, those most subject to violence and those most likely to rely on Stand Your Ground in defense. That pales in comparison, though, to the fact that while more black teens will murdered and more blacks put in jail for defending themselves, at least more money will flow into the coffers of the NAACP and the members of the Congressional Black Caucus will have a better chance of reelection. It's obscene
Number three — and this is a long-term project: We need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African-American boys? And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about. There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?
This is the only redeeming part of Obama's remarks. It is the thousand dollar question. It is unfortunate that Obama only gets to it after reinforcing all of the canards of the racial grievance industry. And because of that, it is why nothing will happen under Obama's watch to change the dynamic in the black community. That is the real tragedy of what will be President Obama's legacy.
You know, I’m not naive about the prospects of some brand-new federal program. I’m not sure that that’s what we’re talking about here. But I do recognize that as president, I’ve got some convening power.
And there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front. And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African-American men feel that they’re a full part of this society and that — and that they’ve got pathways and avenues to succeed — you know, I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation. And we’re going to spend some time working on that and thinking about that.
And then finally, I think it’s going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching. You know, there have been talk about should we convene a conversation on race. I haven’t seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations. They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have.
On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there’s a possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can; am I judging people, as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin but the content of their character? That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.
And let me just leave you with — with a final thought, that as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. I doesn’t mean that we’re in a postracial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated. But you know, when I talk to Malia and Sasha and I listen to their friends and I see them interact, they’re better than we are. They’re better than we were on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.
And so, you know, we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues, and those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids these days I think have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did, and that along this long, difficult journey, you know, we’re becoming a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.
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