The Politically Incorrect Truth About Race and Policing

From Jason Riley in the Wall Street Journal

The Full Truth About Race and Policing

Chicago has long been one of the nation’s most dangerous big cities, and it seems determined to keep that distinction.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that 18 people were killed on one Sunday, May 31, “making it the single most violent day in Chicago in six decades.” Over the full weekend, “25 people were killed in the city, with another 85 wounded by gunfire.” None of these deaths or shootings involved police, so there will be no massive protests over them, no tearful commentary on cable news and social media, no white politicians wrapped in Kente cloth taking a knee for photographers.

Sadly, the only thing remarkable about the episode is that it occurred in the middle of a national discussion about policing. The political left, with a great deal of assistance from the mainstream media, has convinced many Americans that George Floyd’s death in police custody is an everyday occurrence for black people in this country, and that racism permeates law enforcement. The reality is that the carnage we witness in Chicago is what’s typical, law enforcement has next to nothing to do with black homicides, and the number of interactions between police and low-income blacks is driven by crime rates, not bias. According to the Sun-Times, there were 492 homicides in Chicago last year, and only three of them involved police.

So long as blacks are committing more than half of all murders and robberies while making up only 13% of the population, and so long as almost all of their victims are their neighbors, these communities will draw the lion’s share of police attention. Defunding the police, or making it easier to prosecute officers, will only result in more lives lost in those neighborhoods that most need protecting.

There’s nothing wrong with having a debate about better policing strategies, how to root out bad cops, the role of police unions and so forth. But that conversation needs perspective and context, and the press rarely provides it. People are protesting because the public has been led to believe that racist cops are gunning for blacks, yet the available evidence shows that police use of deadly force has plunged in recent decades, including in big cities with large populations of low-income minorities. In the early 1970s, New York City police officers shot more than 300 people a year. By 2019 that number had fallen to 34.

Part of the confusion stems from attempts to equate any racial disparities with racism, which is as mistaken as equating age and gender disparities with systemic discrimination. Young people are incarcerated at higher rates than older people, and men draw more police attention than women. Is something fishy going on here, or do such outcomes simply reflect the fact that young men are behind most violent crimes? When journalists break down police behavior by race but don’t do the same for criminal behavior, you’re not getting the whole story.

A recent New York Times report, for example, tells us that the racial makeup of Minneapolis is 20% black and 60% white, and that police there “used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people during the past five years.” Left out of the story are the rates at which blacks and whites in Minneapolis commit crime in general and violent crime in particular. Nor are we told whether there is any evidence that white and black suspects of similar offenses are treated differently. Minneapolis may in fact have issues with police bias, but drawing conclusions about the extent of the problem or even whether one exists would be premature based on the information provided.

Reports about race and policing that omit relevant facts to push a predetermined narrative are not only misleading but harmful, especially to blacks. We know from decades of experience that when police pull back, criminals gain the advantage and black communities suffer, both physically and economically. A common assumption among liberals is that the movement of inner-city jobs to the suburbs in the late 1960s is what led to the higher rates of crime, violence and other social pathologies associated with ghetto life. But this gets the order wrong. The business flight took place after the rioting, not before. Will history repeat itself?

The Walmart and Target stores in Chicago that were looted last week are two of the city’s largest retailers. They employ a disproportionate number of low-skilled workers, and they haven’t decided whether to reopen. If they don’t, it could mean fewer jobs and higher prices for underserved minorities. Before we divert resources away from policing, maybe we should consider the effect it would have on the willingness and ability of businesses to operate in places where they’re most needed.

All of this is just more evidence that people on the left fundamentally don’t care about the welfare of black people. They simply view them as a client group that serves their political purposes.

Oh, they have convinced themselves they care. But when push comes to shove, they side with (mostly white) teacher’s unions rather than black families that would benefit from school choice. When riots are tearing up neighborhoods, they side with the rioters, seeming not to have noticed that it’s mostly black neighborhoods being torn up.

On issues of policing, they see cops in black neighborhoods as an “occupying army” and call for “defunding the police,” implicitly, but clearly, siding with black criminals rather than law-abiding black citizens.

Marquette’s Race and Ethnic Studies Program: Stacking the Faculty with Leftists, Diverting Students into Victim Studies

Yet another of the many “initiatives” at Marquette, and like most of them it promotes political correctness in a way that degrades the fundamental quality of a Marquette education: the Race and Ethnic Studies Program.

The university website explains:

Marquette University seeks to diversify its faculty and student body. In support of these goals, Marquette is planning a new Race and Ethnic Studies interdisciplinary program, and a hiring initiative to support the program is underway.

Translation: we want to hire a lot of new minorities as professors, and we might have trouble if we simply allowed more hires in traditional disciplines, driven by the need offer a balanced curriculum or allow reasonably sized classes. So we will define positions in a way such that minorities will be most of the applicants.

Here is the list of new positions:

Marquette University seeks six tenure-track faculty members in these areas:
Assistant Professor of Marketing (tenure track)
Assistant Professor of Multicultural Branding
Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Sciences – Sociology (tenure track)
Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies
Assistant Professor of Philosophy – Africana Philosophy (tenure track)
Assistant Professor of Philosophy – Non-Western Philosophy (tenure track)

As a Catholic, Jesuit university, our history and mission call us to provide higher education to first-generation college students. New programming and hiring, and plans to become a Hispanic-serving institution are only part of Marquette’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Needless to say, first-generation students who happen to be white will get short shrift.

The links to the job listings don’t work now, but we are including them in case they work in the near future.

Whose Interests Does This Serve?

The notion that you serve the interests of black and Latino (not “Latinx,” a barbaric politically correct term) students by having them study “Race and Ethnic Studies” is not merely risible, it’s absurd.

It achieves neither the traditional goal of a liberal arts education — “the cultivation of the person’s own intellect and imagination, for the person’s own sake” — nor does it provide what parents often obsess about: preparing the student for a good job.

So why would minority students enroll in such a major? In fact, a lot will be sensible and major in something else.

But affirmative action, perversely, creates a market of this sort of major. Minority students, admitted under affirmative action, find themselves “over their heads,” especially in STEM fields, but often even in mainstream academic fields (political science, history). Thus they tend to gravitate to softer fields, such as education, communications or even the archetypal soft majors in victim studies.

There, sympathetic instructors hand out good grades, and the students marinade in a sense of victim-hood that allows them to rationalize their precarious situation, and avoid asking hard questions about public policy issues.

All this is in place of studying Plato, or Physics, or maybe accounting. These students are victims, alright. But they are victims of the politically correct campus bureaucrats who claim to be their allies.

White Liberals Think Black People are Stupid and Ignorant

What Real Allies of Black People Would Look Like

Do Black Lives Matter?

It’s not so clear that they do to the activists who use that slogan.



We are not entirely sure that “broken windows policing” is quite as effective as the hype suggests, but there is no question that it’s a policy promoted by people who really do believe that black lives matter.

Interestingly, it seems that rank and file black people (as opposed to the race hustling activists) favor such policing.

Consider, for example, a poll of black people in New York City, as reported by the leftist outlet The Root.

Despite the looming specter of police brutality, which casts shadows over street corners, neighborhoods and homes across black America, 56 percent of black voters in New York City support “broken windows” policing tactics, compared with 61 percent of the city’s white voters, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

The controversial policing style frames community disorder and signs of neglect—such as broken windows, littering and loitering—as indicators of encroaching crime that will lead to more dangerous communities and must be addressed with the full force of the law.

In theory, broken-windows policing, and its variants stop-and-frisk, zero-tolerance and quality-of-life policing, are tactics used by officers who are hyperinvested in keeping communities safe, clean and crime-free. In practice, however, they provide opportunities for racial profiling and resulting antagonistic and abusive encounters between law enforcement and people of color.

Interestingly, when participants in the Quinnipiac poll were asked whether police officers should “actively issue summonses or make arrests for so-called quality of life offenses,” including selling small amounts of marijuana or making loud noise, 60 percent of black voters said yes, a negligible difference from the 59 percent of white voters who said the same.

“It’s different where you live from what you see in the media,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Maurice Carroll. “Overall, black New Yorkers are negative about cops citywide. White voters are positive. But looking at cops in their own neighborhood, the support turns positive among black voters and heavily positive among whites.

“Does it improve the quality of life in your neighborhood when police arrest someone for a low-level offense, or does it increase neighborhood tensions? New Yorkers decide for quality of life,” Carroll added.

Contrary to the activist myth, black people don’t see the courts as excessively harsh on criminals. The following tabulation is from the National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey, combining polls from 2008 through 2012 (to get a reasonable number of black respondents).

Click on Image to Enlarge

The numbers show that while blacks are a bit more likely than whites to say the courts are “too harsh” (27 percent as opposed to 10 percent for whites) a robust majority of blacks (56 percent) say the courts are “not harsh enough.” Another sixteen percent of blacks say the courts are “about right.”

Given that rank-and-file black people don’t seem to agree with the race hustlers, how do the politically correct types respond?

The Root went to one Arlene Eisen to provide a politically correct gloss on the findings.

“If [we are to] assume the study is reliable, then you have to ask, ‘What black people?’ Generally, more middle class and professional people will prioritize protecting property,” said Arlene Eisen, the author and primary researcher of Operation Ghetto Storm, a frequently quoted study on the extrajudicial killing of black people. “Then, you need to consider the level of political education of whoever responded to the survey. This includes what a lot of people call ‘internalized racism’—where black people learn a lot of the same views of themselves as whites. Unfortunately, there is very little in the education system and corporate media to counter the hegemonic status of white supremacy.”

Thus politically correct people always end up demeaning the people they are supposedly championing. “Those ignorant blacks,” she seems to be saying, “are anti-black racists too. They just aren’t educated enough to see what’s going on.”

To whom do black lives matter?

To rank-and-file black folks, yes. To people who favor strict law enforcement, yes. To the race hustlers who would rather have a political grievance than to protect black lives, no.

Black on White Crime in Liberal Portland

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, conservative media have have been having a field day pointing out that black-on-white crime is far more prevalent than white-on-black crime (leaving aside the fact that what George Zimmerman did was not a crime, but rather self-defense).

This is good. The smug, narrow liberal perspective that insists that blacks are forever and always the victims needs to be challenged early and often.

From FrontPage Mag:

Portland is in the middle of a nasty bout of black mob violence. This time directed at bicyclists.

But Tim Oberlander does not want us to know. Oberlander says he wants to be able to live in a city that does good things for good people.

So what’s wrong with that?

Everything.

Oberlander is a news editor at KGW TV in Portland. His city is under attack from black mob violence centered around Martin Luther King Boulevard. This mob has been attacking bike riders, housewives, students, seniors, you name it. These attacks are part of a long — but quiet — history of racial violence in a liberal enclave that prides itself on racial tolerance and harmony.

But you would never know it from Oberlander.

Oberlander and his station are raising money to fix the teeth of a recent victim of black mob violence. “I want to live in a city where people do good things for other people,” Tim said. “Now we’ve raised money for Andy’s teeth, I can say that we live in a city that does good things for good people.”

Tim might be a good person. But some of his viewers say he is a bad and dangerous and unreliable reporter for leaving out the descriptions of the predators in his news accounts.

Here is what Tim’s station, KGW, had to say about a few recent attacks:

“Police were warning bicyclists in Northeast Portland to be on the lookout after two men were injured during separate attacks along Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.”

Andy Sweeney is a biker who is also the beneficiary of Oberlander’s largesse. He was riding home from the grocery store in August when a “group of teens” threw a traffic cone at him. Knocking him off his bike, leaving him with a concussion and two shattered front teeth in what used to be a winning smile.

“It’s crazy,” Sweeney told KGW. “I don’t really understand their motivation or what they were going for.”

Lots of readers figured it out, even if the KGW was determined to ignore it: “Great job ‘whitewashing’ the story,” said David Klassix at KGW’s reader comment section. “And falling to mention the attackers were black.”

Said another, Chloe Ru “Hey KGW. I will help you do something called REPORTING THE FACTS instead of hiding the truth,” said Ru. Another victim said “her attackers were a group of [AFRICAN AMERICAN aka BLACK] teenage boys and she suspects they didn’t stop with her.”

Sweeney described his attackers on Twitter: “Black kids in hoodies.”

After the sanitized version of the bike attacks became public, other victims of black mob violence in that area stepped forward as well, one at Reddit.com in response to Sweeney’s Tweet:

“Same thing happened to me once except it was a rocks being thrown, and thankfully my teeth are intact. The best you can do is just avoid being around any collection of young black males. It isn’t being racist it’s just being practical.”

Many of the attacks are centered around Martin Luther King Boulevard. Maybe local media thinks everyone already knows this is a black part of town. For the benefit of the out of towners, it is.

Some readers provided a link to the Chris Rock comedy bit:

“You know what’s sad? Martin Luther King stood for non violence,” said Rock. “And I don’t care where you are in America, if you’re on Martin Luther King Boulevard, there’s some violence going down.

It ain’t the safest place to be. You can’t call nobody and tell them you are lost on MLK.” (If you do, will say) RUN! RUN! RUN!.

Sad. Sad. Sad.?

One of the recent victims, middle aged woman, wound up in the emergency room. The other passed around a flier, warning neighbors to be on the lookout. Said KGW:

I heard some noise across the street and apparently one of the guy that was trying to vandalize the car came across the street,” said Amy Wilson. “(He) hit me very, very hard. (He) knocked me out cold. I fell back and hit my head on the sidewalk.

She suffered a concussion and needed 12 stitches to close the wound on the back of her head.

Wilson said her attackers were a group of teenage boys and she suspects they didn’t stop with her. “I’m almost convinced that it’s the same group that we’ve talked about that are going against cyclists,” she said.

Then another victim came forward to OregeonLive.com:

It was at least the second time in less than a week that a group of teenagers had assaulted a bicyclist along MLK.

Last Tuesday night, Bill Lynch, 64, had just crossed MLK as he pedaled home from a garden party when someone in a group of “three to five young people” knocked him off his bicycle on the Northeast Going Street Neighborhood Greenway.

“They were walking down the middle of the street like they owned it,” Lynch said. “I don’t know what hit me. A strong fist? Something in someone hand? It hurt.”

Lynch said he was riding past the group and the blow “came out of nowhere.”

“When I filed a police report the officer said similar nighttime incidents had occurred in the neighborhood recently,” Lynch writes in a flyer that he posted in his neighborhood to encourage people to be more vigilant. “I learned there was another attack on Aug. 19. In a couple of cases, the bicyclists were beaten and had their bikes stolen.”

And another. Chris Freeman wrote:

I was also attacked by a group of about five kids on bikes at NE 7th and Stanton at about 11pm on Aug 17. One of them jumped off his bike and tried to push me over. Luckily I didn’t lose my balance after being pushed and was able to get away.

Still another:

Bummer man. I was riding near SEI in North Portland a few years ago with my 3 year old daughter in a Burley behind me when 5 dudes (yes, they had dark skin) jumped our and threw rocks at us. Amazingly, considering how close they were and how many there were they completely missed and I hightailed it out of there, just feeling really sad about humanity.

Some were willing to point out the obvious: “There’s a lot of black-on-white animosity in NE and N Portland. Especially towards white bicyclists.”

All the suspects in all of these attacks are black.

But others in Portland, like Tim, are eager to say they live in a city without racial tension — or violence. Several commenters at the Reddit.com news site say white people do it all the time too.

“But there are dumbass white kids who dress the same that are capable of doing stupid shit like this, too. The kids in this instance didn’t necessarily have to be black, but it is what it is. Dumbassedness knows no racial bounds.”

But none of these people supplied police reports, links, pictures or even anecdotes of roving bands of caucasian youth creating violence against black people — or anyone else.

Others in Portland grudgingly admit that violence is real. But they plead guilty with an explanation: Said someone at Reddit.com identified as Kounterculture:

“I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that in the african-american community bicycling isn’t seen as a viable alternative to the automobile. It isn’t mostly racial animosity, although I’m sure some of that goes on.”

Black mob violence against bicyclists and others has been a regular — and unreported — feature of life in Portland since at least 2007. Bike Portland reported six years ago several cases of black mob violence against bikers.

The web site mentioned the race of the attackers, largely to dismiss racial violence as having anything to do with it:

I don’t think these attacks are solely about race, but I also don’t think the conversation is real and honest if we don’t mention it.

And I think any mention of race must also include the realities of gentrification in Northeast Portland. I think there remains resentment in the black community about gentrification…but whether that has to do with bikes and whites is hard to say.

Are bikes somehow symbolic of whites and gentrification to the eyes black community? I’m not sure, but it’s a question I’d like to delve deeper into. It’s certainly obvious that Portland’s cycling population could be more diverse.

For those who require some help with translation, here it is: Black mobs attack bike riders in Portland because they are not diverse enough.

More than a dozen examples of black mob violence in Portland are documented in White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence and how the media ignore it. Many of these cases are on video.

The book features QR codes that readers can scan with their smart phones to watch the violence on their smart phones as they read about it. Some recent cases:

Last year, 10 to 15 hoodie wearing black people invaded Nordstrom, stole clothing and raced out of the store. On video.

The locals were far from upset. Said one man who called himself the Crazed Sex Poodle to a local news site:

“I am actually sort of hoping that it happens more, it seems like a trend worth encouraging. Giant corporations like Nordstrom and Chevron steal everyday, taking back is something worth fostering.”

A few days before that, a mob of 20 black people chased a white couple into a convenience store. The local papers described the ensuing assault and robbery as a “fight.” The mob left when one of the employees sprayed them with “bear spray.” This too was on video, but the station has since taken it down.

A few days before that: “A large group of kids stormed” into a convenience store and stole everything they could carry. They came back later to threaten the clerk. On video.

A few months after that, a bigger crowd attacked an Albertson’s grocery store, following the same play book: Theft, destruction, intimidation. And no arrests. Despite the video.

Still, people seemed surprised when in June, a group of 150 black people — described by the newspapers as drunken teenagers — assaulted several people in a Portland park, robbing at least one of them. The newspaper — and the TV broadcast — may have shied away from describing the attackers, but the internet site of a local TV station was a little more revealing:

“Both fights involved groups of black teenagers randomly attacking people in the park.

The following night, a group of 20 to 30 black people, came upon three people on a tennis courts at the same park: “Some of the teens began throwing bottles onto the court and calling out to them. They said the teens then began fighting with them.”

In January of this year, a 14-year old white girl was beat down by three black women while about a dozen other black people took videos, shouted racial epithets, and encouraged the assault. Four people were arrested, including a mother of two of the assailants. The mother was convicted of giving police false information while trying to hide her daughters.

Taleeb Starkes describes many examples of black on white crime in his book: The Uncivil War. “Portland is one of the most liberal cities in the country,” said Starkes. “They are quite proud of that. But this same liberalism is causing them to ignore, condone and excuse black on white crime and black mob violence. People who commit these horrific acts of violence are one thing. But people who condone them by ignoring them or refusing to tell the truth about them only encourage more them to occur. Those folks are sicker than the criminals.”

It’s tempting to say that the liberal yuppies on their bikes deserve to be attacked, given their smug notions of political and cultural superiority, and their willingness to make excuses for black thuggery.

That, however, would be unfair.

But it is fair to suggest that in liberal jurisdictions, where liberal media and liberal community leaders make excuses for black crime, there will be more black crime. Where liberal district attorneys and courts aren’t inclined to punish black criminals, of course there is more black crime.

So Portland, as a community, pretty much deserves the black-on-white crime it has. Unfortunately, not all (and probably not most) of the victims deserve the attacks they face.

And then we have the fact that most black crime is inflicted on other blacks. But that doesn’t fit the narrative of black victimization by whites.

Blacks Leaving Liberal States

From The American Interest:

Two milestones in the long, painful decline of the blue social model were reached this week and reported, of all places, in the pages of the very éminence grise of the monde bleu: the New York Times.

The first was a piece of national and historical news: The Census reported that waves of blue state blacks fled the stagnant job opportunities, high taxes and rotten social conditions of the mostly blue northern states to seek better lives for themselves in the south.

The Census story is a shocker. First, according to the Times, the Blacks leaving tend to be the “younger and better educated.” Second, the three states Blacks left in largest numbers don’t just include snake-bit Michigan; the other two are Illinois and New York. Within those states, Chicago and the city of the New York (widely considered among the most successful cities in the country) are the places Blacks are deserting. 17 percent of the Black flight from Big Blue is from the Empire State; after almost a century of trailblazing social policy, New York State has succeeded in creating the most hostile environment for Blacks in the country.

It gets worse. One would think that the Blacks who choose to stay in the cold, unwelcoming North would cluster in the cities where more liberal and humane governance models mandate such generous policies as “living wage” laws and where all the beautiful features of the blue social model can be experienced at full strength.

But one would be wrong. Blacks across the North are fleeing the urban paradises of liberal legislation and high public union membership for the benighted suburbs. The Times interviewed a professor to get the straight scoop:

“The notion of the North and its cities as the promised land has been a powerful part of African-American life, culture and history, and now it all seems to be passing by,” said Clement Price, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark. “The black urban experience has essentially lost its appeal with blacks in America.” [bold italics added]

When whites leave failing blue cities and states, the pundits call this racism: all those white Californians fleeing Nancy Pelosi’s utopia for less ambitious jurisdictions where ordinary people can do things like get jobs and buy homes are clearly pathetic trailer trash hicks too dumb, too selfish and above all too racist to understand the gloriously multicultural blue beauty of California today.

So what are we going to call the young, educated Blacks making similar choices? Dumb cracker racists?

The failure of blue social policy to create an environment which works for Blacks is the most devastating possible indictment of the 20th century liberal enterprise in the United States. Helping Blacks achieve the kind of equality and opportunity long denied them was more than one of many justifications for blue social policy: it was the defining moral task that has challenged and shaped American liberalism for the last fifty years.

The Census tells us that in the eyes of those who know best, these well intentioned efforts failed. Instead of heaven, we have hell across America’s inner cities. Blue economic policy has cut the creation of new private sector jobs to a trickle in our great cities, while the high costs of public union urban services (and policies that favor government employees over the citizenry at large) impose crippling taxes and contribute to the ruinously high costs that blight opportunity. All the social welfare bureaucracies, diversity counselors and minority set-asides can’t make up for the colossal failure of blue social policy to create sustainable lower middle class prosperity in our cities.

Most Blacks of course still vote blue at the ballot box, but more and more of them are voting red with their feet. They are betting in massive numbers that southern Republicans will do a better job of helping their kids get good educations, police their communities more fairly (see this article, where NYT columnist Charles Blow blames the Black flight from New York on the racist police), offer more affordable housing and create a better business climate. Over time, this is going to affect the balance of power in Black politics and pull the Democratic Party (and the national consensus) to the right. Reapportionment is already pulling political power toward the South; New York today has fewer electoral votes than it did at the start of the Civil War and it is going to lose two more House seats in the next division.

This story has some strong implications for the “social justice” crowd at places like Marquette.

You claim to represent blacks (and Hispanics and other minorities), but the policies you favor — high taxes and government spending, strong unions, government educational monopolies, overbearing regulation of business — stiffle opportunity.

But, by some strange coincidence, they help people like you prosper.

Are your motives really so pure as you want to believe?

Two Minorities and the Recipe for Failure

From the Americn Thinker an account of one Ed Kaitz, who had quite diverse experiences in Bayou country and in politically correct academia.

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the “Audacity of Hope.” Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state.

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

“We’re owed and they aren’t.”

In short, he concluded, “they’re hungry and we think we’re owed. It’s crushing us, and as long as we think we’re owed we’re going nowhere.”

And then to another job:

After leaving the fishing boats, I attended graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I managed to get a job on campus teaching expository writing to minority students who had been accepted provisionally into the university on an affirmative action program. And although I never met him, Ward Churchill, in addition to teaching in the ethnic studies department, helped to develop and organize the minority writing program.

The job paid most of my bills, but what I witnessed there was absolutely horrifying. The students were encouraged to write essays attacking the white establishment from every conceivable angle and in addition to defend affirmative action and other government programs. Of the hundreds of papers that I read, there was not one original contribution to the problem of black mobility that strayed from the party line.

The irony of it all however is that the “white establishment” managed to get them into the college and pay their entire tuition. Instead of being encouraged to study international affairs, classical or modern languages, philosophy or art, most of these students became ethnic studies or sociology majors because it allowed them to remain in disciplines whose orientation justified their existence at the university. In short, it became a vicious cycle.

There was a student there I’ll never forget. He was plucked out of the projects in Denver and given a free ride to the university. One day in my office he told me that his mother had said the following to him: “M.J., they owe you this. White people at that university owe you this.” M.J.’s experience at the university was a glorious fulfillment of his mother’s angst.

There were black student organizations and other clubs that “facilitated” the minority student’s experience on the majority white and “racist” campus, in addition to a plethora of faculty members, both white and black, who encouraged the same animus toward the white establishment. While adding to their own bona fides as part of the trendy Left, these “facilitators” supplied M.J. with everything he needed to quench his and his mother’s anger, but nothing in the way of advice about how to succeed in college. No one, in short, had told M.J. that he needed to study. But since he was “owed” everything, why put out any effort on his own?

In a fit of despair after failing most of his classes, M.J. wandered into my office one Friday afternoon in the middle of the semester and asked if I could help him out. I asked M.J. about his plans that evening, and he told me that he usually attended parties on Friday and Saturday nights. I told him that if he agreed to meet me in front of the university library at 6:00pm I would buy him dinner. At 6pm M.J. showed up, and for the next twenty minutes we wandered silently through the stacks, lounges, and study areas of the library. When we arrived back at the entrance I asked M.J. if he noticed anything interesting. As we headed up the hill to a popular burger joint, M.J. turned to me and said:

“They were all Asian. Everyone in there was Asian, and it was Friday night.”

Nothing I could do, say, or show him, however, could match the fire power of his support system favoring anger. I was sad to hear of M.J. dropping out of school the following semester.

One might think that the moral of all of this is that the Asian model should be emulated.

But the politically correct professors don’t see it this way. They deride Asians as the “model minority.”

The Truth About the Jena 6

It’s provided a huge dose of self-righteousness for people who would like to relive the Civil Rights movement.

We are talking, of course about the “Jena 6,” six black youth who viciously beat a white student in Jena, LA.

It was, at very best, an example of vigilante justice, since the white guy supposedly had hung nooses from a tree that was a “whites only” gathering place on school grounds.

One would think that blacks have themselves been victims of vigilante justice often enough not to embrace the concept. But we suppose some people think in terms of “payback.”

Via The National Conversation, some sober thoughts on the issue from a black columnist.

Now we love Mychal Bell, the star of the 2006 Jena (La.) High School football team, the teenage boy who has sat in jail since December for his role in a six-on-one beatdown of a fellow student.

Thursday, thousands of us, proud African-Americans, expressed our devotion to and desire to see justice for the “Jena Six,” the half-dozen black students who knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped a white classmate.

Jesse Jackson compared Thursday’s rallies in Jena to the protests and marches that used to take place in cities like Selma, Ala., in the 1960s. Al Sharpton claimed Thursday’s peaceful demonstrations were to highlight racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

Jesse and Al, as they’re prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on a mountain of lies.

There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal justice system, and from afar the “Jena Six” rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s.

But the reality is Thursday’s protests are just another sign that we remain deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.

The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail.

Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span.

Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?

That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.

There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.

Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.

A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder.

Much has been written about Bell’s trial, the six-person all-white jury that convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and offered no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black.

It’s almost never mentioned that Bell’s absentee father returned from Dallas and re-entered his son’s life only after Bell faced attempted-murder charges. At a bond hearing in August, Bell’s father and a parade of local ministers promised a judge that they would supervise Bell if he was released from prison.

Where were the promises and supervision before any of this?

It’s rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in Barker’s attack. And it’s never mentioned that white people in the “racist” town of Jena provided Bell support and protected his football career long before Jesse, Al, Bell’s father and all the others took a sincere interest in Mychal Bell.

You won’t hear about any of that because it doesn’t fit the picture we want to paint of Jena, this case, America and ourselves.

We don’t practice preventive medicine. Mychal Bell needed us long before he was cuffed and jailed. Here is another undeniable, statistical fact: The best way for a black (or white) father to ensure that his son doesn’t fall victim to a racist prosecutor is by participating in his son’s life on a daily basis.

That fact needed to be shared Thursday in Jena. The constant preaching of that message would short-circuit more potential “Jena Six” cases than attributing random acts of six-on-one violence to three-month-old nooses.

And I am in no way excusing the nooses. The responsible kids should’ve been expelled. A few years after I’d graduated, a similar incident happened at my high school involving our best football player, a future NFL tight end. He was expelled.

The Jena school board foolishly overruled its principal and suspended the kids for three days.

But the kids responsible for Barker’s beating deserve to be punished. The prosecutor needed to be challenged on his excessive charges. And we as black folks need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get energized to help our young people once they’re in harm’s way.

I’ve been the spokesman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City for six years. Getting black men to volunteer to mentor for just two hours a week to the more than 100 black boys on a waiting list is a yearly crisis. It’s a nationwide crisis for the organization. In Kansas City, we’re lucky if we get 20 black Big Brothers a year.

You don’t want to see any more “Jena Six” cases? Love Mychal Bell before he violently breaks the law.

Also, check out what Juan Williams had to say on NPR. Key quote: “there’s this desire to go back in time, but it is not realistic and that’s not the struggle of our day.”

In this, as in so many issues, there is a viewpoint that makes the activists feel all moral and self-righteous, and then there are the complexities of the real world. The latter don’t feed the ego very well.

And they don’t fit the politically correct template very well. Which is why they are so rarely discussed on a college campus.

“Bizarro World” Post Resonates in Blogosphere, Talk Radio

We felt the need to chronicle the sham “hearing,” held yesterday, of the Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System.

After all, we sat through virtually all of it, and didn’t want the experience to be entirely for naught (although it was clear to us it was mostly for naught).

But it seems it has resonated with a fair number of people.

Charlie Sykes discussed it at some length this morning, and linked to it on his blog page.

As of right now, it is linked on the front page of Mark Belling’s site and WisOpinion (both links will go away over time).

And it has created quite a stir in the blogosphere. The Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger discussed it, as did Patrick McIlheran, Rick Esenberg and Dad29.

Not in response to our post, but an independent report came from Glenn D. Frankovis on the Badger Blogger.

Who also reported on the event, but didn’t bother to mention our testimony, nor that of Frankovis? Dani McClain of the Journal-Sentinel. Her article is nothing but a puff piece about the Commission.

Typical of the article is the following:

The commission has heard firsthand accounts of racial profiling, inconsistent application of prosecutorial discretion, and the classification of certain offenses as misdemeanors in suburban communities but felonies in urban areas.

“The themes have come up consistently at these public hearings,” said Ryan Sugden, spokesman for the Office of Justice Assistance, which coordinated the hearings.

One statistic was repeated several times Monday: African-Americans make up 6% of Wisconsin’s population, but 45% of inmates in state correctional facilities are black, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Sugden seems to think that since certain themes come up “consistently” they must represent the reality of criminal justice in Wisconsin.

The fact that only certain kinds of people, with certain grievances and certain agendas show up at the hearings doesn’t seem to have crossed his mind.

McClain got pretty thoroughly roughed up by people leaving comments at Badger Blogger. In fairness to McClain, she did not hear our testimony, did ask us for contact information at the hearing, and left us a voice mail today asking for an “executive summary” of our testimony, to be used “if and when” she writes further on the topic.

Being on vacation, we haven’t sent that out, but will soon.

Right now, our assessment is that she is trying to be fair, but is simply ill-informed on these issues, and didn’t know there is an alternative to the standard racial view.

But the question remains. Why has this struck a chord, especially among conservatives? It really is hard to see how the Commission is important. It was created by the Governor as a sop to some black legislators, and what it says is unlikely to have any real effect on criminal justice in Wisconsin.

The answer, I think, is that people have simply become fed up with the dishonesty surrounding the issue. The naked contrast between the harsh reality of life in the black inner city and the cosy situation of race hustling black politicians is hard to stomach. While children are being shot the politicians are wringing their hands over the fact that a greater proportion of blacks than whites is being thrown in prison.

If this was the result of real racial discrimination, it would demand a remedy. The problem is: the hustlers don’t really want to know whether it’s the result of discrimination. They don’t, in fact, actually care.

The Bizarro World of the Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System

We should have known better.

Public hearings are usually a sham. So when the Governor’s Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Wisconsin Justice System held a hearing in Milwaukee this afternoon, we weren’t expecting anything great.

But since we have just finished an article on the subject which will appear in the Fall issue of The Wisconsin Interest, we thought it worthwhile to go and, in effect, fire a shot across their bow.

The Commission, it seems, has an odd charge. They have been told by Governor Doyle to “(a.) Determine whether discrimination is built into the criminal justice system at each stage of the criminal justice continuum of arrest through parole; and (b.) Recommend strategies and solutions to reduce the racial disparity in the Wisconsin criminal justice system. . . .”

But the second task assumes a particular outcome of the first. Wisconsin should not want to reduce racial disparity if it’s not the result of racial discrimination. But among the black race hustlers and politically correct whites who are interested in this issue, racial bias is assumed. It’s the default position. Evidence is not needed.

A lot of the politicians at the hearing spoke in bland bromides. Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler told the Commission he had been “closely following your work that will determine whether racial discrimination is built into the Wisconsin criminal justice system.” He said of racial disparity that he “Feel[s] strongly about this issue. . . When one of us is discriminated against, all suffer” and “systems must administer justice fairly and impartially.” OK. Better bland than wrong.

Slightly less bland (but only slightly) was Ralph Hollman, Executive Director if the Urban League. Hollman praised Governor Doyle’s courage since it would be easy for him to “not acknowledge that the high rate of incarceration – black male incarceration particularly – is a serious problem.”

He continued: “Several areas need to be examined. Are African-Americans more likely to be involved in crime and violence?” He further noted that the stereotype of blacks as violent, when filtered through the media, sends to black youth the message that “this is what I’m expected to be.”

According to Hollman, “once in the justice system, African Americans feel that African Americans are more likely to be sentenced to prison, and when incarcerated, serve longer sentences.”

Getting the Juices Flowing

A couple of speakers got some juices flowing in the crowd. Doris Jude Porter -- the Aunt of Frank Jude, Jr., who was beaten by Milwaukee police officers, said people in the community “feel we are under siege for criminal justice racism” and “racism is like a monster – a predator.” And she added that “innocent people are sent to prison and families are broken up.”

The next speaker ratcheted up the rhetoric even further referring to the “hell-hole we call America.” She added “we are still being lynched in this country” and said that the system “place[s] black males in special education as a form of genocide getting them ready to go to prison.”

Just to make it clear where she was coming from, she added “Here we got Alderman McGee in jail. I’ve seen the injustice!” And “they got Michael McGee so chained up he can’t go to the bathroom.”

She didn’t seem to be looking to the Commission for help, however. She asserted “we don’t need nobody studying us.”

A whole parade of witnesses came to promote their pet programs (it was obvious that the group was on the side of Governor Doyle in the state budget battles), or their own volunteer activities.

“Y’all Pray for Me”

It got bizarre at times. A woman who identified herself as a former cocaine addict and prostitute told how she went to her pastor and asked what she could do. “I turned my life over to God,” she explained. She then asked the crowd “Y’all pray for me.”

We are delighted that she got the spiritual help she needed, but didn’t see her testimony as particularly relevant to the issue at hand.

A young man rattled off a rap poem about the importance of self-respect and achievement. We think he would have been a dandy motivational speaker at any inner city middle school.

Several speakers complained of how relatives of theirs had been victimized by the system. It’s possible -- just remotely possible -- that in some cases they had.

Our own talk resulted in the most supefyingly bizarre moment of the afternoon. We rattled off various analyses we have done, all of which show that the “disproportionate” incarceration of blacks in Wisconsin is the result of the fact that blacks disproportionately commit crimes.

In response, Spencer Coggs asked us “are you saying that blacks commit crimes at a greater rate than whites, as opposed to being stopped more often by police?”

We responded “yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Coggs then responded that “that’s not what the studies show.”

Too dumbfounded to produce a proper response (such as “you f**kin’ idiot!”) we just said “you’re wrong.” And further, “have you looked at data on victimization? Have you looked at those maps what show where crime happens most?” Coggs looked embarrassed, and dismissed us politely.

We got very sparse and scattered applause. We weren’t telling them what they wanted to hear.

There was one other speaker who asked that the interest of the victims be taken into account. Glenn Frankovis, a former Milwaukee cop who was actually promoted by Art Jones (one of the few whites, apparently), made a plea for the victims. Recounting his experience with ordinary Milwaukee citizens he said “these good people wanted the bad guys out of their neighborhood” and further that they were “tired of the drug dealing, shots being fired into the house.”

His final hope was that “this commission does not overlook these people . . . the true victims.”

But Commission will, of course.

It’s possible that the Commission will come out with a reasonable report. Plenty of commissions have had public hearings that were a sham, and members who were buffoons, and still produced decent reports (written, of course, by the staff).

Why Don’t Black Politicians Care About Victims of Crime?

A decent report won’t, however, change the fact that black politicians, including most of those on the Commission, seem far more concerned about black criminals than about black victims.

The reason is simple, almost jejune.

Black politicians prosper by mobilizing the black community against whites. Not necessarily all whites, but at least some “racist” whites. And if not against individual whites, then against a “racist system.”

For much of American history, this was sensible enough. All blacks did have a common interest in fighting a system that was racist, and whites most of whom were racist too.

But suppose the real conflict is between law abiding black people and black hoodlums?

How about some data?

In Milwaukee, where violent crime is concerned, three fourths of the victims of black criminals are themselves black.

Looking at the percentages another way, 97% of the black victims of violent crime were victimized by a black. (Data from the Milwaukee Police Department Incident Reports.)

So when you have black hoodlums on one side, and law-abiding black people on the other, what are you going to do?

Simple. Insist that the issue is still white racism, and that blacks need to unite to fight it. Caring about the victims muddles the message.

All this is why things like the beating of Frank Jude play into the hands of the race hustlers.

When is a new generation of black leaders going to rise up with an agenda in tune with new realities? Such leaders are long overdue, and the old con game continues to work well.

Ludacris At Summerfest

It’s been the object of a campaign of Charlie Sykes’ joined by (for example) James Harris of The National Conversation.

Rapper Ludacris has been chosen to be a headline act at Summerfest.

Sykes post on the subject gives a fair sample of the really vile stuff that the cultural elders of the city have decided to endorse.

But the disapproval shown by Sykes and Harris has not been universal in the blogosphere.

Christian Schneider of Atomic Trousers has posted something that is not exactly a defense of the foul mouthed rapper, but at least an explanation of why he thinks it’s not a big deal.

As far as I know, Ludacris didn’t shoot anybody. Suggesting that he, a popular entertainer, is in any way responsible for violence on the street has it exactly backwards. . . . And why people who usually abhor those who blame the criminal actions of individuals on society are now handing the killers a “rapper made me do it” defense is beyond me.

The nihilistic culture of violence and sexuality exists in our inner city, and Ludacris is holding a mirror up to that way of life so it can see itself. Ludacris is a byproduct of that culture - the culture is not a byproduct of Ludacris.

Rappers aren’t millionaires because they sell CDs to black people. Rappers gain fame worldwide because they sell CDs to white people. Suburban white kids eat this stuff up because it makes them feel “authentic.” If you looked at Ludacris’ record sales, I bet you’d see just as many CDs sold in Brookfield, Menomonee Falls, and Franklin as you do in Milwaukee. But where is the violence in those “white” communities? If Ludacris was such a negative influence, why aren’t all the white kids in Oconomowoc gunning each other down?

It’s simple - because the culture comes first. Fatherlessness. Poverty. Lawlessness. Those are the problems that face our inner cities - rap music just packages those themes and markets them to the world.

We left a comment on Atomic Trousers, and we’ll repeat it here.

Christian,

I agree with you about “the culture.” But what is “the culture?”

It’s probably an easy 100 things, but Ludacris is one of those 100!

So how does one improve the culture? Shunning and isolating Ludacris would be one thing. Doing the same to another dozen like him would be a dozen things.

A dozen good black role models would be another dozen good things.

Attaching some stigma to having kids out of wedlock would be a huge good thing.

Getting tough with men who knock women up and fail to take responsibility would be another huge good thing.

As for those suburban kids who are probably buying Ludacris CDs: there is a fair amount of something very close to racism about that.

Probably a lot of these kids are liberals and think that this is “authentic black culture” and that they are being “multicultural” somehow. But the truth is they are getting enjoyment out of seeing black people demeaned.

So the white kids don’t go out and shoot people (mostly)? If you have enough advantages in your life, a nasty influence or two is something you are likely to blow off. Besides, if you don’t actually indentify with the blacks in the rap videos, you aren’t likely to emulate them.

Cultural change happens when a large number of people decide they will fight to turn this or that “one thing” in the right direction. Not understanding rational choice theory, they ignore the fact that their sole contribution makes an insignificant difference.

With enough of those people, the culture can turn.

It’s long past due to turn on the racist rappers.

In fairness to Schneider, he points out that a fair amount of rap has a positive message.

Fine. Let’s all encourage that. But let’s don’t encourage or endorse people like Ludacris.

Dealing With Being Black?

White folks, unfortunately, have gotten in the habit of watching what they say about black folks.

It’s so easy to get called a racist after all.

But James Harris of The National Conversation is black, and he’s not intimidated by the notion that he has to toe some party line.

So what happens when the local stuck-in-the-60s leftist tabloid runs a story about the trials of a black woman titled “I Deal With Being Black Every Day.” Poor woman. Has to deal with white racism.

Except Harris notices that the things she actually has to “deal with” are of her own doing.

Teresa Rae Butler of Milwaukee has a problem. She has four kids, “no man in her life,” $32,000 in college debt, a worthless degree, no job and she lives in the ‘hood.’ Now that’s rough. No one would dispute the difficulty of someone in her circumstances. But when the Shepherd-Express interviewed her about her struggles, Teresa, in a moment of pure insanity, did not contemplate the stupidity of her asinine life choices. That would be too obvious. Oh, no! Teresa Rae Butler blamed her race! Her skin color!

“I deal with being black every day.”

Sweet God in Heaven. This poor soul has acquitted herself from the immorality of her own stupidity! (Four kids with no man in her life is most likely code for four kids by four different men.) A single mother with four kids is THE recipe for poverty. Going to college is nice but that in and of itself doesn’t guarantee success; Her degree is in human services. Social work? You went 30 G’s into debt for a dead-end, low-paying (albeit altruistic) job? Ouch.

“Milwaukee doesn’t do anything to promote racism; it just sort of turns its back to you and lets you die in the gutter.”

Here’s what she’s really saying: My life is not my responsibility. My circumstances are not a result of my decisions. God can’t help me and I can’t help myself because, I am black.

As we have already observed, anybody who has seen Bill Cosby give his talk before a black audience knows that he (and Harris) speak for a very large minority -- and sometimes a clear majority -- of black people.

We are talking about black folks who have clear ideas about what upward mobility requires.

We are talking about black folks many of whom are Christians and who have Christian ideas about how people should behave.

We are talking about people who worked hard to make it. In a goodly number of cases they had to work harder than whites to make it. That wasn’t fair, but failing to make it would have been way worse.

We are talking about people some of whom actually marched with Martin Luther King. And many more marched elsewhere and worked for and identified with the Civil Rights Movement. And they don’t much like the hard won political gains being thrown away via irresponsible personal behavior.

[Extra:] An earlier post of Harris’ made the “Best of the Wisconsin Blogs” section of the Journal-Sentinel website.