Some Random Thoughts on Ferguson

• We need a national conversation on black crime, not on race.

• If this were really racism, why are these killings always happening to blacks and never to native Americans or Latinos? Why doesn’t it happen to (east) Asians? Plenty of immigrants from south Asia are quite dark, yet it never happens to them. Nor does it happen to black African immigrants. We never hear of this happening to Somalis, even though there are plenty of Somalis here. It is true that we hear about them in a different, but still disturbing, context: terrorism. But we never hear about them being shot by the police. It can’t be racism if all these other ethnic minorities never get shot by the police and only blacks do. If there was truly racism, every non-white would be targeted.

• This article from CNN talks about a study in which people were shown a picture of confrontation between two whites, one with a knife, and another picture of a white and black, with the white holding the knife. The result was that people easily identified who had the knife in the first photo, but believed that the black had the knife in the second photo. This “study” – and I think we all need to be suspicious of any study that shows exactly what leftist elites want to hear – is incomplete. Why not ask blacks to look at a picture of a white police officer with a gun and a black who does not have his hands in the air to see how many nevertheless see the black with his hands in the air? Why assume mistaken perceptions only go in one direction?

• Is Don Surber right (here) that this is about destroying the middle class? No. It really isn’t the destruction of the middle class that is going on in Ferguson, because the numbers of people of that class who are affected are too small. White middle class neighborhoods are not going to be destroyed. No, it’s the destruction of black neighborhoods that is happening. But this obviously isn’t what the left wants. What does it want? The left wants the protesters to burn businesses to show people how angry they are about racism and because those businesses are part of capitalism. Never mind that the residents depend on those businesses to survive and that from bitter experience in the Sixties we know that those businesses will probably leave and never come back.

• The Reverend Carlton Lee claims that white supremacists burned down his church (which is where Michael Brown’s stepfather attended.) But why should we believe this? Lee offers no evidence other than that he received threats, though whether he has any supporting evidence that these threats occurred, I haven’t heard. It seems more likely that either the protesters did it, since they were indifferent to what they set on fire, or that it was Lee himself who did it. After all, there have been plenty of "racist incidents" at our colleges that turned out to be by blacks themselves.

But let’s suppose it did happen as he says. It happened only because a white supremacist decided to take advantage of all the other burnings caused by blacks and their supporters, figuring that in the confusion they would get blamed and not white supremacists. But even worse is that maybe this is a turning point in the fortunes of the Ku Klux Klan versus those of the left. Maybe after this incident, enough whites will be so disgusted with the behavior of blacks (and their white fans) at Ferguson that they will swell the ranks of white supremacist groups. That is not anything I want, but I’m not going to feel too sorry about the race hustlers and their followers and the liberal media if their power decreases. They all had many chances to promote peace and calm between the races and to urge young black males to eschew a life of crime, but they threw them all away. All they seemed interested in doing was calling the average white a racist.

• Finally, let me recall a saying from the Sixties: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” I haven’t heard this saying in quite a while, but can anyone on the left honestly say they are doing everything they can to prevent black minds from being wasted when they do nothing to counter the “acting white” syndrome and the glorification of black thugs? Michael Brown, if he had grown up in a very different social milieu, would have become a decent person occupying an honest and respected niche in society, but the messages he received from those around him, messages that are supported by all leftists, made it very unlikely that that would be his fate. It is very difficult to fight the left on this matter because, of course, they will call anyone who doesn’t agree with them a racist. It is for this reason that many critics say that leftists are the real racists.

Comments

[foxmarks]

Disparate impact is evidence of racism even if every race is not equally impacted. The attitudes of different minorities toward authority also matters. Somalis do not have a couple of generations of family history getting jobbed by the system. East Asians do a great job taking care of their own as means to overcome racism against them. To count only murders is to miss the much larger and more subtle problems of systemic racism.

[foxmarks]

The messages in Brown's milieu are supported by righties as well as leftists. There's not many paths out. While I understand your theme of self-critical leftism, a self-critical rightist would also see a huge waste of not just and individual life, but of all the lives hindered by the right's inability to break into the negative messaging that lets kids grow up to be killed by cops.

[John Pepple]

People on the right support these messages? You need to be explicit. Which people on the right support the “acting white” syndrome? I’ve never heard anyone on the right say anything other than that it is a disaster for blacks. Maybe those on the far right laugh at it because they like the idea of blacks being their own worst enemies, but I’ve never actually run across anyone with that attitude. Instead, people on the right frequently talk about the problems of blacks that have nothing to do with racism. They refuse to do well in school because that would be acting white. They have turned to crime in a big way. (I don’t remember stray bullets killing black children when I was young.) Their families have been destroyed. None of this is due to racism. It is all due to bad decisions by blacks and their white supporters.

[foxmarks]

I see righties echoing the belief that black people are inclined to criminality and lesser disappointments. It's old-fashion superior race jabber. The food, the music, the styles of black culture are associated with being a lowlife.

I'm actually kind of shocked at how much this has come out thanks to Ferguson. It is a minority attitude (heh) among righties, but is more than a fringe, and is not called out very often by the non-racist majorty.

[John Pepple]

Ok, I see what you are getting at. I was thinking of columnists and not anonymous commenters. I myself have argued with these people about blacks' supposedly low IQs, by pointing out that blacks from other countries, where the "acting white" syndrome is not present, seem smarter. Plus, they are the ones who are more likely to get jobs in academia. But it's impossible to get through to those who are convinced that blacks aren't as smart.

But on the left, there is a similar idea, except that it applies not to blacks but to the lower classes, and not in terms of IQ but in terms of getting into an elite school. Leftists at the top seem to think that those who don't get into elite schools just aren't very smart. Again, it's impossible to get through to them on this.