Slain World War II vet Delbert Belton honored at candlelight vigil [photos]I know there are those who think there's a need to rebalance public opinion after the distortions that surrounded the George Zimmerman case, which skewed racial discourse in this country over the past year, but it's a terrible idea to go looking for incidents in where the killers are black and the victims are white and to exploit them in what seems like an effort to undo the distortions. I saw this happening earlier this week over the Christopher Lane murder, I labeled it "counter-Trayvonistic," which was a too-subtle way to say: Don't fight skewing with skewing in the opposite direction.
Conservatives have rested on the principle of colorblindness for a long time, and they've taken abuse for it. Look at how left liberals abuse Chief Justice Roberts for writing, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." They consider that kind of talk naive (at best). They push the perceived sophistication of what Justice Blackmun said back in the first affirmative action case: "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way."
Those are the 2 well-defined and socially presentable opinions in this country, and decent, sincere Americans have argued from these positions for decades. Now, we're seeing some conservatives who seem frustrated by this taking account of race that's been done on the left. They seem to think it's a good time to spotlight violence committed by black people. This is not a good idea! It's fine to mourn Shorty, but these candlelight vigils are intended to stir hearts the way hearts were stirred at the Trayvon Martin demonstrations.
Trayvon Martin — an individual human being — was used by demagogues to score points about the suffering of black people in America, but this is not a game, and it is delusion to imagine that there is a need to score points on some imagined other side. This is not a game. There is no score. And we are all on the same side.
To paraphrase the Chief Justice: The way to stop skewing public opinion based on race is to stop skewing public opinion based on race.
To stir hearts counter-Trayvonistically is to nurture feelings that white people are oppressed by black people. This alternative to colorblindness is profoundly stupid. 1. It abandons the easy to express, principled position that many people perceive as the high ground. 2. It steps into the arena of taking account of race, where the left liberals would love to take you on. And 3. It gives air to the white supremacists among us. These people have been outcasts for a long time, but they exist, perhaps not quite yet recognizing what they are.
What sparks catch fire in that candlelight vigil for Shorty?
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140 comments:
I sort of agree but it is hard to fight a bias with neutrality and I understand the temptation to apply a counterweight instead. In most cases the idea is not to engage in the opposing bias, but simply to point it out by noting the difference in the way the opposing stories are treated. I think most people kid themselves though if they think their opponents are going to understand their argument and do a mea culpa.
Now, we're seeing some conservatives, who are frustrated by the taking account of race from the left who think it's a good time to spotlight violence committed by black people.
Who are "some conservatives"? Drudge? Limbaugh? other bloggers? Commenters?
I think the problem with conservatives maintaining the high ground as you describe it, is that it leaves fairly costless for the government to continue to unfairly discriminate.
To this day, the Justice Department threatens to further prosecute Zimmerman.
A very naive post, Ann.
The other side will NEVER stop drumming up Trayvon type agitations, and if we simply leave the field to them, their lies will be all the low info voters ever hear.
We need to take the same tactic here, that we are taking to expose the risible War on Women. OK Left, you want to pretend there is such a thing as a War on Women? Then "We'll see your binders full of women, and raise you a Weiner/Filner".
It will eventually work, because as with abuse of women, THEY are the true abusers, so with race-on-other-race crime, THEY are the true hate criminals.
I'm afraid this issue, as it does for Kirsten Powers, exposes your soft underbelly.
Just stop defending the indefensible. You KNOW why there is disparate pathology. You just desperately don't want to go there, or for it to be true.
Hence your desire for us to shut up about pointing it out.
Nice concept you have there. So conservatives remain colorblind and get bitch-slapped by race-pandering leftists for another 40 years. What's not to like about that?
Another reason that many conservatives are engaging in "counter-Trayvonism" though is that the facts are on their side with regard to violent crime (pretty overwhelmingly- black men are so highly overrepresented as perpetrators of violence.) I think this is why the left-sided media narrative of the Zimmerman case was so galling.
However, what these conservatives need to consider too is that most of the victims of those violent crimes are black as well. The false idea that seems to be taking hold among some white conservatives, that recent high profile black on white murders represent initial shots in a race war, or that all black on white crime is now a result of the Zimmerman verdict, is quite disturbing.
"Who are "some conservatives"? Drudge? Limbaugh? other bloggers? Commenters?"
I'll refrain from naming names. Last time I said, you'd be a fool to say X, I had a whole lot of people step up to tell me how outraged they were that I'd called them a fool.
I prefer to make a statement like this that gives people an opportunity to think about what they are doing and stop.
But if I had to name one person who is doing this, I'd say Drudge.
@Hari I say push back on the distortions but insisting on the truth. Don't throw out countervailing distortions in an effort to get to normal.
"In most cases the idea is not to engage in the opposing bias, but simply to point it out by noting the difference in the way the opposing stories are treated."
It's not "simply" pointed out. It's ridiculously not simple. If you want to keep it simple, stay on the high ground.
What do you mean "go looking" for cases of black on white violence? Nobody has to "go looking" for them, because you can't step into most neighborhoods or open a newspaper without tripping on it.
In the Lane case, there is pretty reliable evidence of race hatred as a motive not just for that shooting, but for other crimes as well.
We also have a number of instances now of black mobs beating white people citing Zimmerman's acquittal.
It's silly to think that honestly and accurately confronting these facts is "giving up the moral high ground." It is no such thing. And one in no way has to abandon the fundamental opposition to racial discrimination as referred to by Justice Thomas in order to point that out.
At another level, the media and lefttard community have been grossly hypocritical and corrupt in their treatment of the Zimmerman case, and many others like it. It is useful and appropriate to rub their noses in it.
Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
This is why.
I'm trying to tell you.
You're asking conservatives to speak about race in a way that does not square with their feelings.
Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
This is why.
I'm trying to tell you.
Ridiculous. When the lefties do similar things, why do they not need to worry about being toxic?
Right wingers feel "toxic'' lefttards the same way sunlight feels "toxic" to mildew.
IMO the gang initiations by killing strangers orthe killing the helpless folks standing on the streets in robberies are really not racial incidents so much as tribal culture incidents. Parental/patriarchal authority is what is missing.
During frontier days of Commanche and Navaho raiding, some level of peace was kept with a "cutting coup" notion that was the you kill one, then we kill one back approach. Maybe ending of vigilantes is a luxury we could afford once. But the times are changing as the youth under 30 find themselves left with no resources except forming " gang raiding parties".
In a gang there is the security that other gang member swill not rat you out since they are all criminals too and there is a strict death penalty for snitches. That is why gang initiation is often to commit a random murder.
The Gran Torino movie dealt with this issue as only a Clint Eastwood's realist approach could.
Ann said:
Don't throw out countervailing distortions in an effort to get to normal.
I've only been paying cursory attention to this pushback, but I did see twitter quotes from one of the attackers in one of these cases that indicated that it quite probably was racially motivated. Would you still oppose pointing that out even if it really were the truth? Even just to rub the progressives' faces in their own double-standard?
"Colorblindness" includes holding whites and blacks to the same standards of behavior. That is what's not being done by the media in these black-on-white violence cases.
"It gives air to the white supremacists among us."
Where are they? Are they the ones doing all the race hoaxes?
I'm not sure it's a distortion. One of the "young men" who killed that Australian ballplayer was bragging that he'd "knocked out 5 woods" since Trayvon. Wood being slang for peckerwood, a derogatory term for whites.
It seems to me that the left has fanned the race issue to a fever pitch, and now we're reaping the whirlwind.
Drudge is doing the right thing by pointing out this black-on-white violence. It really pisses people off when it occurs but the police and media ignore it, instead preferring to pretend it's "random". Someone giving attention to it releases steam.
"Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
This is why."
Check your privilege, Althouse.
Ann - Please explain your "ever wonder why" statement further. I can understand the lefties view as motivated by: a) the conservatives holding the high moral ground; b) the conservatives getting pissed at being called racists; c)the conservatives pointing out facts about race. None of these make any sense to me.
Highmindedness works when it is recognized as such; if it is not, it appears to be confusion or weakness. Thus, "taking the high road" would work on people would praise that more than partisanship....but these days, I feel such people are dwindling in number.
I generally agree, and I don't want to see conservatives racializing things. But it really is true that blacks are more likely to kill whites than whites are to kill blacks. The data on this are readily available. Part of what was so offensive about the presentation of the Zimmerman case was that it was pointing to a single case as if it were representative of a larger pattern, but the larger pattern doesn't even exist (whites kill blacks at lower rates than other racial combinations). So these kinds of cases are at least more common than anything like the Zimmerman-Martin case. Many of the problems with highlighting particular cases and interpreting them in a specific way -- especially in a political rather than an academic context -- are still there, though.
1, its not balancing the scales, its working under one set of rules. Not two.
2. What makes you think these were not race motivated?
"So, it’s just fake to pretend that the association of young black men with violence comes out of thin air. Young black men murder 14 times more than young white men. If the kinds of things I just mentioned were regularly done by whites, it’d be trumpeted as justification for being scared to death of them."
We live in a country where there is more cries of racism over a rodeo clown mocking the president than outcry against black vigilantes killing white people.
Since when has golden silence ever won a political or cultural debate?
These are the wages of the horrific race baiting the the Obama Administration has engaged in over the last few years. Many white are sick and tired of the left using things like the Martin case as a club to beat them over the head with the charge of racism while the alarming amount of black on white crime goes totally unnoticed.
Remember, the Martin case and the way it was reported was as much as anything about giving white liberals an excuse to feel superior to other whites.
The problem is that conservative and working class whites are getting awfully tired of the hate directed at them by white liberals and blacks who are being egged on by white liberals. Worse still, they are fighting back by resenting blacks rather than the white liberals who so richly deserve their scorn.
White liberals are going to keep doing this until we finally have a real white identity movement in this country. And that will be a disaster, especially for blacks.
The media are almost always 'colorblind'. When they don't mention the race of the perp it's always safe to assume he is black.
They are already occupying the 'high ground'.
It was our tax dollars that created Trayvon Martin. It was Obama that needed something in the news cycle to deflect from the forthcoming IRS scandal.
Now, why can't we rub Obama's face in the mess that Obama created??
Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them? This is why. I'm trying to tell you.
Well said. But the way of the missionary is a thankless one, as I'm sure you've noticed.
Ann, I agree that colorblindness is the best strategy for conservatives, and I'd go further to say it's the morally correct strategy.
But, I must say that I see some value to pointing out these cases -- not to counter the Travon Canonization, but to point out the absurdity of what was done by liberals and the press (but I repeat myself) in that instance. Yes, we're angry about it -- seething, I'd say. That's going to get an outlet somewhere, and a little in-your-face payback of this sort is a lot better than some alternatives.
In the few minutes of Rush that I heard yesterday, I thought he stumbled on a brilliant line that hits exactly the right note of mockery: "If I had a father, he'd of looked like Shorty."
The Republicans have been occupying the high ground since Abraham Lincoln. It serves them well sometimes, but the low ground is good for Democrats, too.
As a conservative, I have no interest in being liked or respected by leftists as they reject my core values and are dedicated to the elimination of all of us who hold those values. Rush Limbaugh has it right, we must defeat leftism, not reach an accommodation with them. The Enlightenment values of individual rights and equality under the law are the enemies of the left. They are what I order my life by. Why do you, professor, feel the need to accommodate the ideas of these people?
"Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
This is why.
I'm trying to tell you."
-------------------------
And you keep trying, and they keep rejecting you for your efforts. Left liberals see this toxicity in rightists in regard to most human rights issues. I can't agree with you that rightists are colorblind. All the voter suppression legislation of late is designed to supress whose vote?
Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
This is why.
I'm trying to tell you."
My Internet skills are nil so would someone please post the famous Jack Nicholson scene from a "Few Good Men"? It might get the point accross.
Kinda begs the question of whether there are really more black-on-white crimes and whether that increase, if it exists, is driven by the Zimmerman case and the apparent indifference of the civil rights leadership.
I'm less worried about the weight of public opinion being shifted by post-Trayvon pushback among conservative pundits than I am about being killed by somebody who lives in a world where black men are thrown in jail for every reason in the world except having committed crimes.
White liberals are going to keep doing this until we finally have a real white identity movement in this country.
Until we have one? We've always had one. In fact, the underpinnings and motivations of much of American history, particularly in the South, can be described as a white identity movement. Part of that historical context is inevitable for simple demographic reasons (like westward expansion at the expense of the American Indians - someone had to win or lose there), but let's not claim that this is something new and only a response to modern liberalism.
As some other commenters have hinted, perhaps without realizing it themselves, what's fueling this nascent "counter-Trayvonism" is that there is a very real movement of black-on-white violence as revenge for perceived racism. That's something we need to take account of, before it becomes a secret war that feeds paranoia and bigotry on both sides.
What was so offensive about the Trayvon Martin case was that the media made up a totally different case than what the evidence on the ground showed, just to fit their "narrative."
(Not a criminal case, but note that Oprah's "The Butler" does the same thing; it is supposed to be based on a real White House butler's life, but this person did not fit their "narrative," so they made the movie butler into someone quite different. The movie is a phony.)
And that is why I am quite happy to not have any liberals go near me any more. I am too old to put up with this crap still.
Here's another way to look at this, this time in the light of perhaps the greatest and most tragic irony since our founding.
In 1968, MLK saw his people of good character, harshly judged by the color of their skin, and longed for the reverse.
But in reaction to his assassination, his people tragically took what I call The Turn (to the self-destructive Left).
Instead of continuing their assimilation (e.g. Rock/Pop + Black culture = Motown), they listened to the Leftist multiculturalist and 'moral-equivalants', and embraced made up Kwanzaas, destructive Rap 'music', anti-learning, confront-me-I-dare-up attitudes, and responsibility free promiscuity and propagation.
Since 1968, non-Blacks have made triumphant strides away from color-of-skin judgements, culminating in a twice-elected Black President - unthinkable in 1968.
Meanwhile, content-of-character in the Black culture has raced to the shameful bottom, until we now find ourselves in that great Irony.
Judged by the content of their character, it looks and feels to Blacks, and looks to folks perhaps like yourself, Ann, that nothing has changed since 1968, when, in fact, everything has.
The racism I see in America is all on the left.
The endless lies, omissions and half-truths spread by the dominate leftwing press over the Martin/Zimmerman witch hunt did nothing but inspire racial tension and rage. The media's purpose and agenda-- racism by spreading lies to promote hatred.
Zimmerman has black ancestry and helped the black community. The dominate leftwing press (the press) ignored all of that.
See here.
Care to watch this and comment?
Now Treyvon Martin revenge killings are taking place across the nation and innocent people are dying. So of course pointing out that FACT and placing the blame squarely where it belongs – on our horrid horrid leftwing media- is just more racism by conservatives.
I refuse to buy that load of crap. Racism is all on the left. Own it.
Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
More importantly, reactionary conservatives are toxic to the moderate/independent voters that the GOP needs if they want to win the presidency.
A big reason for Reagan's success was that he didn't come across as an angry, reactionary conservative. The example is clear, but it seems many conservatives are more interested in venting steam than in engaging voters who are not in their camp to win elections.
@Althouse: Excellent post. IMO, in the top 1% of all the ones I've read since 2004.
The graveyard of history is littered with the mass graves of those stellar souls who maintained the moral high ground in the face of violent aggression. I'm sure their purity of heart was a great comfort to the descendants they failed to propagate or protect. Humans have tribalism stamped on the hindbrain, at the root of all our thinking, for a reason.
"Colorblindness" includes holding whites and blacks to the same standards of behavior. That is what's not being done by the media in these black-on-white violence cases.
1. its not balancing the scales, its working under one set of rules. Not two.
The left consistently promulgates a double standard for society. It is totally destructive to accept that construct. The Treyvon Marin case encapsulates a one sided, distorted and false set of standards. We can point that out and argue for a more even handed set or we can illustrate the consequences of adopting the standards the left promulgates.
Ann, I appreciate your concern for the polarizing standard that can emerge but I fear that “neutrality” is not an effective counter.
Disagree with Althouse. Playing the race card and "mau-mauing" various white people out of careers for the slightest something they said has gained the Democrats the black herd, the gay herd, the Jewish herd...all without consequences.
When one side is actively practicing divide and conquer, a conservative and even centrist American policy of practiced&willful "blindness" to race, gender, class warfare being done to destroy them as viable voices is in effect - submission to those Ruling Elites of the Left.
With classes and races now divided, with women actively being wooed to divide as well with "Julia" and "War on Women" rhetoric....the proper tactic is to challenge the divisions and reveal them as phony and anti-American tactics.
Tactics no different than the Jewish Bolsheviks and National Socialists used as warfare to initiate sweeping change and (with them at the top) government control of all aspects of a person's life.
The proper defense is a counter-offense. The radical Left, racist black element that is orchestrating this stuff is as small a slice of America as the Jewish Bolsheviks were of Tsarist Russia, and ex-WWI Freekorps were in the Weimer Republic. They are a small element, demographically.
You call them out.
You make it an US OR THEM issue
"Are you with the black thugs, or with law-abiding, decent Americans?"
"Are you with the progressive Jewish post-communist intelligensia of Manhattan and other hangouts, or with the thoughts and culture of regular America?"
"Or you with the people that beieve in democratic change, or with the mob that seeks to mau-mau people that think "incorrectly"?"
If Travon had managed to finish what he started, and successfully left George dead or with a skull fracture we wouldn't know his name. Now I ask you, how many extreme white on black crimes go un-sensationalized?'
And I don't appreciate your using the term "distortion" as a blanket descriptor of events that are not in any way equal.
If you think that killing in self defense, and killing for pleasure/revenge then you truly have fallen victim of the post modern intellectual belief that there is no objective truth.
Anne, I'm confused by your toxic comment. What is the "this" you're referring to?
Not trying to be argumentative. Just not understanding.
I don't much care for the losing game rules I'm being asked to play by. I don't think it needs to be a constant and intense effort but in response to the Treyvon incident as led by the president's campaign style rhetoric, highlighting reality is going to happen.
It gives air to the white supremacists among us. These people have been outcasts for a long time, but they exist, perhaps not quite yet recognizing what they are.
There are about to be a lot more of them. Ann do you really expect that whites are just going to forever let liberals abuse them and hold them up as the one class of society for which open hatred is not just tolerated but rewarded? You don't think that is eventually going to produce a backlash?
The only way to stop the backlash is to get liberals to stop using race as a way to feel smug. The only way to do that, is to come back with counter examples that expose facts that liberals don't like and don't fit their narrative. It is the only thing liberals will understand. You can't use appeals to reason with irrational people.
Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
No! I don't really care to be "near THEM" either with their sanctimonious self-righteouness!
ref: "And we are all on the same side"
High-minded, noble-hearted, politically desirable...sure. But actually true?
'Fraid not.
But unchallengeable, as John Derbyshire found out from his speedy defenestration after posting his version of "The Talk" last year.
First off, living in 80% white, less than 8% black Mad Town is already quite a privileged perch, and some part of that latter 8% is likely a function of dubiously legal race-based affirmative action in admissions at your university:
"The odds ratio favoring black law school applicants [at UWISC Madison, specifically] over similarly qualified white applicants was 61 to 1."
(N.B., AA admissions there are only 50% likely to graduate).
There's an increasingly popular saying out there, unsavory and un-PC as it may be, "If it's true it ain't racism."
I don't feel oppressed by blacks, (or browns or pinks or whites) I feel oppressed by lying left-wingers and the dominate leftwing press.
Everyone is cheated by our lying in-bed-with-one-party press.
Look at what happened with Benghazi. The entire mess was blamed, falsely, on a youtube video.
Again, everyone is hurt by our dishonest press. Everyone is hurt by a dishonest administration covered by a dishonest press.
When the common denominator is 'No Peace', whatever it is over 'No Peace', the “high ground” over 'No Peace' does not cancel out.
More Math, Less Fighting.
I agree Althouse, because otherwise conservatives might get labeled as "racists".
Ann,
I think we need to start from the idea of sex-blindness. So, we all need to agree that men are accused and convicted of rape more often than women because the society, the courts, and the criminal justice system are all sexist. Further, the real root of the problem is that all women are sexist. If you have a vagina, you are the problem. You need to get your head right, and stop locking your car doors.
How do you like it, up here on the moral high ground?
The smartest thing a Republican can do is fight to de-racialize the census. Refuse to divide Americans by race. Refuse to count people by race. This will wreck havoc with the left, which relies upon racial data for all sorts of government programs and discriminations.
Althouse is exactly right. The high ground on race is colorblindness. I would extend this metaphor to a war. We want to be on the high ground. It's easy to fight a battle if you are fighting from high ground.
What is so evil about race, and racism, is how dehumanizing it is. People start reasoning from statistical models. This is fearful and stupid.
Strip the government of its ability to count people by race and divide people by race, and we can start to put the whole shoddy episode behind us.
I generally agree, and I don't want to see conservatives racializing things. But it really is true that blacks are more likely to kill whites than whites are to kill blacks. The data on this are readily available.
Stop counting the "data" and people will stop spouting this racial nonsense. You can't base individual human behavior on statistical models. It's idiotic. And offensive. Stop collecting pigmentation data. I'm tired of fuckwits talking about their pigment, and I'm extremely annoyed that our government is subsidizing this pathology.
The liberals wanted George Zimmerman sent to jail for the rest of his life. I can't think of a celebrity, black or white, or a single news person (exclusive of Fox) who publicly said that this was patently wrong. The way to push back on the Trayvon Martin case is to push back on the Trayvon Martin case, but just try to do it and you're in trouble. I remember what happened o the white juror who expressed reservations about Rachel Jeantel.
Ann Althouse said...
"Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
This is why.
I'm trying to tell you."
When I was a child living in Africa, I recognized that if I spent time worrying about whether other people liked me, I would be forever manipulated by those people. From then on, I have limited myself to people I love and respect. Whether the left likes me or other conservatives is immaterial to me.
"It's not "simply" pointed out. It's ridiculously not simple. If you want to keep it simple, stay on the high ground."
I don't follow your argument. How do conservatives give up the high ground by pointing out that racism is extremely prevalent among American Blacks or that Black on White violence is much more common than White on Black violence? Perhaps you could help us out by explaining what you consider the high ground?
I don't have to go very far to find counter examples to the Trayvon narrative. My niece was riding in a car with her window open when a black man whom she didn't know suddenly reached in and struck her face so hard he broke bones. A family friend has a grand-daughter who was raped by a group of black men. These things happen, are we taking the high ground to pretend they don't?
I don't read much political blogs and don't know shit about Drudge.
So I am curious...why point out Drudge? Specifics would be insightful.
"Slain World War II vet Delbert Belton honored at candlelight vigil [photos] I know there are those who think there's a need to rebalance public opinion after the distortions that surrounded the George Zimmerman case, which skewed racial discourse in this country over the past year, but it's a terrible idea to go looking for incidents in where the killers are black and the victims are white and to exploit them in what seems like an effort to undo the distortions. I saw this happening earlier this week over the Christopher Lane murder, I labeled it "counter-Trayvonistic," which was a too-subtle way to say: Don't fight skewing with skewing in the opposite direction."
We shouldn't skew the story to suggest that blacks are going after whites in record numbers (even though statistically they are) but I have no problem with us using these types of stories to hammer home how the racial merchants have poisoned racial dialog in this country. So asking why the civil rights leaders are so silent on these types of issues is an indictment of them and their bomb throwing. And that is totally permissible.
One of the killers of the baseball player claimed in his tweet that he already knocked out 5 whites because of the Trayvon trial. If he's telling the truth then people like Sharpton are to blame for egging punks like this on with their racial paranioa, and blood is literally on their hands.
The same thing happened with the Crown Rights rights back in the 80's. Sharpton and crowd egg on the crowds with talks of white interlopers and inherent injustice. Next thing you know, people are dead and building are on fire. And the racial mongers go on to the next cause, where they rinse and repeat.
Screw that. Obama needs to have his nose held to his shit. If he's going to inject himself into the case for racial purposes then we have every right, and even a responsibility to call him out on his hypocricy.
Ann,
Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?
This is why.
I'm trying to tell you.
What the hell is "toxic" about a candlelight vigil for a frail, elderly man evidently beaten to death for no reason? What is "toxic" about drawing attention to the killing of another man, also apparently for no reason beyond a couple of kids' boredom? What is "toxic" about reporting on the death of Joshua Chellew, chased into traffic by four much younger men and killed by an oncoming car? What is "toxic," for that matter, about people drawing attention to the Newsom and Christian murders?
I would be surprised if any of these crimes were to get no media attention even if all the accused (and convicted, in the Newsom/Christian case) were white like their victims. They have in common multiple young thugs setting on inoffensive people doing nothing to provoke them, with stated reasons either indiscernible or wholly inadequate. There seems to be no motive at all beyond hurting someone.
Stranger murder is, as you know, fairly rare. Stranger murder of men (four of the five victims in these four cases were men) without robbery as a motive is very rare indeed. You don't think that the killings of Chellew and Lane and Belton, coming so close together and exhibiting the same profile irrespective of race -- meaning, "multiple teenagers set on a man they don't know and kill him, without any attempt to rob him or any apparent motive beyond wanting to kill" -- you really don't think three such cases in two months wouldn't draw some attention?
Is it the level of attention that such a cluster would have gotten had, in each case, a Black man been killed by multiple white teenagers for no apparent reason? No, it isn't, Martin or no Martin. Is that the most salient fact here? No, it isn't.
"Now, we're seeing some conservatives, who are frustrated by the taking account of race from the left who think it's a good time to spotlight violence committed by black people."
Make them live by their own rules. You want racial division and need for dialog. Well then lets have one. Why is the media so silent all of a sudden? They don't care about dead white people and hate crimes?
Yeah, the bitch inside me wants to take revenge for all the assholes scapegoating white men.
Why bother? Life is good. Everybody's jealous of white guys. What the hell? The jealousy is probably justified. Most of us white guys were reared by great dads who demanded performance and responsibility. We grew up in communities that respect the law and demand good manners. We are very fortunate!
Accentuate the Positive!
Peace of mind is the reward!
Ann:
You said "Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them?" like that was a bad thing.
That is a feature, not a bug
Those on the left have a confused view of reality that makes them dangerous to be around. The same confused thinking that places them on the left also makes them impervious to persuasion.
I would rather distance myself from them than associate with them. Thus, feature, not bug.
Also, amen to SomeoneHasToSayit. You are often naive and this is one of those times.
Jason wrote:
We also have a number of instances now of black mobs beating white people citing Zimmerman's acquittal.
The shooter bragged about how he beat up five whites and knocked them unconcious after the Trayvon trial. Shoudln't someone in the media ask the Sharpton's of the world if they feel a bit responsible?
Shouldn't we be mocking Obama's insertion into race and say things like "If Obama had a son, he would look like the shooter". Why is that more or less insipid than what was already done by Obama.
Is it below the belt? Sure. But that's the type of fighting we're dealing with. And you don't bring a knife to a gun fight.
It's really irritating to me that so many people want these crimes prosecuted as hate crimes, when the whole idea of a hate crime is antithetical to conservative ideals.
The state can't really know what's going through the criminal's head at the time of the crime. Did I kill that guy because I hate Frenchman, or because he was wearing a green shirt and I really hate green, or because he stepped on my favorite sidewalk crack and must die?
You can't know. So punish the crime, not the mental state.
The only benefit I could see in pointing out the LACK of hate crime prosecution in these cases is that they could conceivably be used to get rid of hate crime legislation all together, if it turned out the law was being applied unevenly to members of different racial groups...
Ever wonder why right wingers feel "toxic" to lefties, why they don't want to go anywhere near them? This is why. I'm trying to tell you.
It would be hard for me to identify any group in American politics whose opinion of me and the views I hold means less to me than poo on my shoe if it isn't the lefties.
Implicit in your statement is the notion that we should all t-t-try to g-g-g-get along and that on some glorious day, the libruls will quite possibly awaken to the truth and we'll all clasp hands and weep joyously in our new brother and sisterhood
Ahhhhh..........no
Meanwhile, yet another brainless unaccountable and unelected leftie federal judge has used her perch of unassailable power to cripple the NYC stop-and -frisk program on the profoundly retarded notion that minority neighborhoods were disproportionately impacted. That is until you make the simple observation that minority neighborhoods are disproportionately impacted by crime that this program has very significantly reduced.
To the lefties, race politics is the gift that keeps on giving. I'm missing the part, Ann, where I should be remotely concerned about how "toxic" they think conservatives are when the libruls have so thoroughly poisoned political discourse for decades.
- Krumhorn
Ann Althouse wrote:
I prefer to make a statement like this that gives people an opportunity to think about what they are doing and stop.
You didn't make this statement during the Trayvon trial. Why not? Do the racial merchants not have to think about what they are doing and stop when they make a statement? Or is criticism of their narrative what one must be silent about?
Also, if they didn't know not to do it when it came to Trayvon, what makes you think they will listen to reason now.
"this is not a game, and it is delusion to imagine that there is a need to score points on some imagined other side. This is not a game. There is no score. And we are all on the same side."
That's a nice sentiment. How many of those "lefties" you refer to believe in it, do you think? Your argument seems to be, "Hey, conservatives! You guys have to be the adults in the room, because we can't count on blacks or white liberals!"
somefeller,
If (as I presume) you self-identify as a "leftie", or at least don't reject that label, could you walk us through how this works from your perspective?
In particular, the questions to address are..
IF it's not just a case of some newsperson grabbing a murder of a "white" person by a "black" person and demagoguing it, but rather one in which the killer explicitly stated they had racial motives,
1. Is it wrong to point this out?
2. If so, why? And how does reflect badly on "the right"? (Note as a reference point that the skinhead who murdered Mulugeta Seraw and I are both presumably "white", and it trouble me not one iota to refer to the perp's motives as racially based.)
3. OR is it only a problem if the person pointing it out goes on to generalize it to more than just the instant case?
Every case that's picked up by the media becomes a case encompassing everything. Trayvon is not just a guy that got shot. No, he's Emmet Till killed by white racism.
A gay guy who gets beaten up becomes a victim of gay hatred and all that it implies(from most likely white conservatives against gay marriage)and we must have a dialog about tolerance and hatred of gays, even if the case ultimately ends up being about two guys who got into a fight and one of them called the other a fag.
So, if that's the dynamic that's being used, what's wrong with Drudge or anyone else using the same dynamic to push back against the same old narrative.Blacks are killing whites statistically far more than whites are killing blacks.
And here's a sensational trial that shows just that. Now lets have a racial dialog about how blacks are racist and violent.
If you don't like that, then we shouldn't let the media get away with always having the conversation that presumes that white men are racist by defualt and this specific case hightlighted by the media proves what everyone already knows.
But since they already had that conversation, now we need to push back with a different narrative. One that shames some of these racial merchants as racial agitators and those who are hypocrites about calling out the violence from the white communtiy while ignoring the far more prevalent violence in their own community.
Professor Chaos,
I generally agree, and I don't want to see conservatives racializing things. But it really is true that blacks are more likely to kill whites than whites are to kill blacks.
But of course they are. They would be more likely to do so even assuming there were no such thing as racism.
Suppose there is a gene present in 10% of the population. Call it Q. It has no function that we know of, and isn't expressed in any way we can see. It's just a genetic marker.
Suppose further that Q is evenly distributed among the population. No one actually knows who carries the Q gene, and no one has any reason to kill Q (or non-Q) even if they did know.
Suppose a fraction of this population consists of murderers. What fraction of murders of a non-Q would you expect to be by a Q, vs. murders of a Q by a non-Q? 9/10 of the Q's potential targets are non-Q; 1/10 of the non-Q's potential targets are Q. You see the likely result for Q-on-non-Q vs. non-Q-on-Q violence stats, yes?
In real life this is complicated by the fact that Black violent crime rates are higher than white ditto, and that almost all violence is intraracial, so much so that the exceptions loom a lot larger than they ought. But higher percentages of Black-on-white crime than white-on-Black crime is what we ought to expect, quite apart from any bias.
Prof. Althouse, your understanding of what "color blindness" means in this context differs from mine. I understand color blind justice to mean that we must not judge a person or an action by the actor's race when race is irrelevant. Thus, it was wrong to assume, as too many did, that because Zimmerman was "white" and Martin was black, Zimmerman's actions were motivated by racial hatred. There was no evidence of this, and much evidence that Zimmerman acted, as he claimed, in self-defense.
IF, contrary to fact, Zimmerman HAD acted out of racial hatred, then "race" would have been relevant to discussions of the case.
The other problem with the way too many people discussed the Zimmerman-Martin case was that they drew conclusions from this one incident about ALL black-white relations in the US. That aspect of the public discussion would have been wrong even IF Zimmerman had acted out of racial hatred. If a particular "white" person acted hatefully, that doesn't prove that all white people are hateful. One data point is insufficient to support broad conclusions about an entire society.
In at least some of the recent murders of white victims by black perpetrators, there is actual evidence that the crimes were racially motivated. It isn't "color blind" to ignore that evidence; it's just plain blind.
It would, of course, be wrong if commenters about these recent crimes were saying that the perpetrators are representative of all blacks, or all black men; it would be wrong if they were claiming that we should presume that any particular black man is violent or hateful because these perpetrators are violent or hateful. I haven't heard any "conservative" commenters say such a thing, and I would condemn it if I did. I think "color blindness" is still a virtue of the American right in contrast to (much of) the American left.
This is not a game.
True!
There is no score.
B*llsh*t
And we are all on the same side.
Delusional. Utterly delusional.
The problem with your mindset is starkly illustrated with your phrase "nurture feelings that white people are oppressed by black people." That is so far out of line I don't see how it can be brought back. There is a reality which is all about young black men responding to each and every situation -- including boredom, apparently -- with violence. I don't see how that gets fixed until the problem is acknowledged.
There are people who enjoy the poverty, misery, and violence of the black inner city and all of them are lefties.
"To stir hearts counter-Trayvonistically is to nurture feelings that white people are oppressed by black people. This alternative to colorblindness is profoundly stupid."
First of all, white and Asian people are oppressed by the blacks and Latinos through Disproportionate level of crime and through 'affirmative action'. The best weapon against liberal racism is to tell the truth.
And yes, Zimmerman's action as well as the police actions are better explained when it is pointed out how much violent crime is committed by blacks.
Althouse, you complain that conservatives are telling the truth. It's an inherently weak position.
Anyone interested in real numbers can go here and compare the number of black people lynched between the end of reconstruction in 1882 and 1968 (3446) with the number of people murdered by black people in 2011, which is the most recent year for which the FBI has statistics (2958). Draw your own conclusions, Althouse.
"''I prefer to make a statement like this that gives people an opportunity to think about what they are doing and stop.' You didn't make this statement during the Trayvon trial. Why not? Do the racial merchants not have to think about what they are doing and stop when they make a statement? Or is criticism of their narrative what one must be silent about?"
Your questions are all based on a false idea of what I said throughout the Zimmerman events. I suggest you click on the Zimmerman tag, read those old posts, and ask me some questions based on what I actually said.
I'll bet you'll be floored by how consistent I've been on these issues!
I challenge you to read all those posts, with understanding, to think about all that, and come back and contribute to the conversation constructively.
I am trying to be constructive. I'm working very hard at this, very consistently, and over a stretch of almost 10 years. It behooves you to know what you are talking about.
"And you keep trying, and they keep rejecting you for your efforts. Left liberals see this toxicity in rightists in regard to most human rights issues"
Inga, you and your party support discrimination against my children simply based on their skin color. Why should your inion on "human rights" matter to me? .
'I can't agree with you that rightists are colorblind. All the voter suppression legislation of late is designed to supress whose vote?"
Suppress the vote of people like this guy...
http://archives.savejersey.com/2008/11/18/video-philly-man-confesses-voting-multiple-times-to-cnn.aspx
Anyway, if you think that the law requiring people to show picture ids are designed to suppress black vote, then would you say that the laws which require people to show multiple ids to buy guns are aimed to disarm black people?
Gandhi was successful using the high ground because his opponent respected the moral high ground.
Do progressives have any respect for truth or square dealing? They are the perpetrators of "fake but accurate," nasty racial hoaxes, and tolerating sexual predators. Bottom line, we have little confidence the high ground will work against racists of the left.
Ann, but are you co.or blind yourself? I remember reading your article some time ago about the obamaphones and how wrong it was for rush Limbaugh to p.ay the recording of an Obama supporter talking about her love of Obama because he gave her a free " obamaphones". apparently you thought it was wrong to do so because that woman was black. I guess you are not color blind all the time, right?
conservatives must indulge the left just as whites indulge blacks...condescension all around.
"The conservatives' high ground on race is colorblindness and they'd be fools to abandon it."
-----Althouse
"I will not be neutral as between the fire and the fire brigade."
-------Churchill
Hyphenated American,
First of all, white and Asian people are oppressed by the blacks and Latinos through Disproportionate level of crime and through 'affirmative action'.
Affirmative action (of the college-admissions kind, and to a lesser extent of the hiring kind) I'll grant you. I am pretty vocally against these things as well. But the primary victims -- the overwhelming proportion of victims -- of Black crime are other Blacks. Some members of an ethnic group partake of a culture that makes the lives of their neighbors a living hell. As most of us are not, in the physical sense, their neighbors, we can sit back and tsk-tsk about all the carnage from a good distance.
For practical purposes, Black crime isn't a terribly big deal for most people who aren't themselves Black.
I'm trying to remember my lifelong brushes with crime.
(A) A scammer who hit me up for cash on the grounds that she was in town for divorce proceedings and someone stole her purse and now she didn't have bus fare home, and sure she'd repay the money. (Hey, I was 16 and new to the Bay Area; I didn't realize how common this was until people tried it on me three more times in the following two months. Thankfully I fell for it only the first time.)
(B) My college roommate the second semester of my freshman year. The phone account was in my name, and she always called her SoCal parents collect -- until the last bill but one came, at which point she immediately started dialing direct, secure in the knowledge that when the last bill came, she'd be safely home. There are times when it's helpful to have a lawyer for a dad. We got the money for the frightful bill back out of her parents. Eventually.
(C) The guy who tried to snatch my bag when I was on the way to review a concert. It was my birthday, and someone had given me a bouquet, and I had my hands full. To his surprise and mine, I held onto it until he let go.
(D) The guy who held up my husband as he tried to turn into our parking lot. Got his wallet, but didn't try to take the car, or the viola inside it that was worth more than the car.
(E) The person who broke into our car, taking something of little value (the stereo? I forget), but leaving the screwdriver s/he broke in with. We have that to this day.
(F) The people who broke into our house in broad daylight and ransacked it, stealing a laptop, my husband's grandfather's pocket watch, and a few other things. (They were perfectly hapless thieves. They tried to make off with a Casio keyboard, but didn't bother unplugging it before walking off with it, so it was still where it was when they got to the end of the power cord. And they emptied out a suitcase of mine preparatory to loading some of my CDs in it, before they noticed that they were all classical.)
For the record, A through D were Black, while E and F were never seen or apprehended, so who knows? But I would wager that if you were a Black person in a Black neighborhood, hearing my pathetic tale of woe, you'd burst out laughing. Small stuff!
I generally agree, and I don't want to see conservatives racializing things. But it really is true that blacks are more likely to kill whites than whites are to kill blacks. The data on this are readily available.
Saint Croix - "Stop counting the "data" and people will stop spouting this racial nonsense. You can't base individual human behavior on statistical models."
---------------
Saint Croix is "admirably color blind" and QUITE STUPID if he places himself and loved ones in situations where he is willfully blind to facts and statistics.
Yes, you walk white and proud to be a partying tourist at 3AM through a NOLA ghetto vs secure and watched over Bourbon Street, Saint Croix, then ultimately yes, it will be an "act of individual human behavior" that leaves you beaten and robbed....not per se your heedlessness of statistical models. Like the model that says avoid places black thugs rule with impunity.
Another way of looking at it is to imagine antelopes had bigger brains than they do, and could articulate well as "species blind" critters seeking to gain prestige from being "species blind", or realistic critters. As is , they have natural instincts that tell them to be far more concerned with lions in the grass by the watering hole than by elephants.
The liberal antelope will say the necessary risk of getting water and living life being unavoidable, they can't in good conscience treat elephants any different than lions in approaching the drinking pool.
That elephants, particularly rogue ones, HAVE been known to kill antelopes, though 100 times less likely to than lions. So it would be WRONG for a liberal antelope to smear lions by treating them with more caution - since dead fellow antelopes are purely the cnsequence of individual elephant or lion behavior.
That does weed out the antelope that cannot or will not discriminate from the gene pool.
Which does explain why subsequent antelope are far more likely to have a natural instinct avoid and dislike lions than elephants.
Perhaps white people getting killed by black people is becoming just as newsworthy as black people getting killed by white Hispanics.
Just go here.
It's one week, in one city. It's easy to get worked up over individual cases, but the truth is that the victims of homicide are mostly black, and mostly young men. I find it much more useful to focus on murder victims than on perpetrators. They don't often get national coverage, but they are still dead. It's hard to deny the problem when it's framed this way.
The important thing to remember is not the race of the perpetrators, but the race of the victims. Somehow the homicide rate for black men has remained very high, particularly in certain large urban areas. Why?
Please explain how "the way to stop skewing public opinion based on race is to stop skewing public opinion based on race."
We might agree that public opinion is already very skewed on matters of race. In practice though, that means that a lot of people have systematically false beliefs.
Continuing to ignore and encourage those false beliefs doesn't seem like a good way to end them. At some point, for their to be true understanding, that truth has to enter into the discussion.
How do you go about unskewing them?
Some of those truths, such as the probabilities of interracial crime, are unpleasant, but that doesn't mean they're any less true.
To demagogue the issue, is, I agree, bad, but it's also bad to obscure the truth of where we're at. It's certainly not holding the moral high ground to collectively stuff our heads in the sand and pretend there's no issue when there clearly is one.
I believe our hostess, along with the rest of the Goodthinkers, is consumed with fear that the public airing of a fact or two will drive the degenerate non-professorial whites to a frenzy of genocide. Or something.
" I find it much more useful to focus on murder victims than on perpetrators."
It depends whose behavior you wish to change, that of victims or perpetrators.
"The important thing to remember is not the race of the perpetrators, but the race of the victims."
Why? Are you trying to say its the fault of th victims?
I think some conservatives and libertarians are tired of holding the high moral ground and still losing the contest for public understanding. They are thinking maybe they ought to fight dirty like the other guys do.
Maybe they should.
"For practical purposes, Black crime isn't a terribly big deal for most people who aren't themselves Black. "
That may be true, but is it really relevant? We see an increasing tendency of black racist crime directed at whites and Asians. It may not be as much a killer as, say, cancer or car accidents, but it's worth talking about. Right?
Don't fight skewing with skewing in the opposite direction.
The difference is that in the latter cases the violence followed the racial rhetoric of the original skewers, not just the usual race hustlers, but President Obama himself.
You know that would have been enough for the media to imply a causal connection to that rhetoric had the roles and sequence been the reverse.
Individual dignity. What a novel concept. Its recognition requires ending "diversity" programs, and other institutional efforts to prosecute discrimination; and to recognize the intrinsic (i.e. unearned) value of human life.
Are Democrats prepared to divest of their political, economic, and social power, which was and is extracted from exploitation of differentials and gradients?
Are they prepared to acknowledge that a human life evolves from conception to death, and that elective abortion is premeditated murder without cause or due process?
As long as the Left revels in a selective ideology, then their efforts to denigrate individual dignity and devalue human life must be exposed. While regarding labor as a commodity is of question character, regarding human life as a commodity (i.e. interchangeable and disposable) and is despicable.
I read somewhere that young black males commit murder at a rate 14 TIMES that of young white males. No, I don't have a link. But the real problem is not media coverage of interracial crime, but the pathologies that afflict the black community, primarily a generation of fatherless young men raised without discipline or conscience. Note that this is not ALL young black men, just as not all Muslims are terrorists; we're just talking about a statistically significant subgroup.
Cedarford:
There is a fine line between using statistics to manage risk, and extrapolating from individual circumstances to form general conclusions. Profiling should not be the issue when done in an appropriate context (e.g. time, place). However, the Left's general exploitation of differentials and gradients in order to advance their political, economic, and social standing is simply despicable. They are intentionally exploiting a strategy and tactics which sponsors corruption and engenders development of generational prejudice.
For the left, this is a zero-sum game, and they're in it to win, not to reach some kind of accommodation with the right.
The right lost the African American vote probably forever when they opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s -- remember Wm. F. Buckley's support of the maintenance of segregation? The left does, and will never, ever let African Americans forget that.
I'm not sure leftist intellectuals and leaders really believe in their hearts that conservatives are racists, but they'll use this history to bring others over to their side.
Don't know if conservatives can ever fully combat this, but it surely makes sense to never go anywhere near anything that has the potential to stir up racial hatred.
What we should be doing right now is continuing to highlight things like the vile way Zimmerman has been treated, with the rabble-rousing Obama in center stage. That should be the focus, not the killings of whites by screwed-up young black men.
Black males between the ages of 16 and 26 are the most dangerous demographic in America. It's time to speak the truth about that.
If the black community is worried about its law-abiding young men being stigmatized by the statistics, it's leaders need to clean up the trash instead of denying its existence.
Hyphenated American,
We see an increasing tendency of black racist crime directed at whites and Asians. It may not be as much a killer as, say, cancer or car accidents, but it's worth talking about. Right?
We do not, as a fact, know what you are asserting as one: that these are racist crimes. I explained above to Professor Chaos that you would see the fraction of crimes that are Black-on-white much higher than the fraction that are white-on-Black even absent any racial motivations, income disparities, &c., simply assuming that any random person was equally likely to attack any other random person. If you are Black, 7 out of 8 people are non-Black. if you are non-Black, 1 out of 8 people are Black. Suppose you get to throw magic bullets into the air that will kill some random person somewhere else. How many Black bullets will kill non-Black people? How many non-Black bullets, Black people?
We have here a handful of cases where teenagers, in all cases not acting alone, seem to have killed men unknown to them for no apparent reason beyond fun.
Does it matter that nearly all the teens were Black, while all the men were white? Yes, it might. Could there be a racist motive here? Of course there could, and in the case of the killers of Lane it seems clear that there was one.
So conservatives must be bound by Marquis of Queensbury rules, while liberals sling mud and back stab and slander and libel? What does it say about you that the truth is toxic to you?
And, Inga, take your tired talking points and stuff them. Asking for ID to vote is not voter suppression.
n.n. - "However, the Left's general exploitation of differentials and gradients in order to advance their political, economic, and social standing is simply despicable. They are intentionally exploiting a strategy and tactics which sponsors corruption and engenders development of generational prejudice."
Agree.
And eventually those who use that tactic, from the Jacobites to the Jewish Bolsheviks that launched the Red Terror, to the National Socialists, to hopefully soon the Muzzie Salafists - reap the blowback. Get slaughtered in bunches by the very people they targeted with such tactics There is that solace.
If a true race war comes, war will probably be different in moving past battles where all on one side face the other in huge slaughter...to precision warfare that would target the main influencers.
Such a race war would be over very fast if it is not the black underclass targeted in the tens of millions for containment or elimination...but only a few 10s of thousands of some influential black leaders and mainly, leftists in positions of power and influence over our media, academia, our legal system.
"We do not, as a fact, know what you are asserting as one: that these are racist crimes"
One of the criminals wrote very specifically that he did not like white people and that he attacked a number of white folks just for the thril of it. But more generally, we see a quick rise of black gangs simply running around towns and assaulting random white and Asian people for the thrill of it. As for your statistical claims....
" If you are Black, 7 out of 8 people are non-Black. if you are non-Black, 1 out of 8 people are Black. Suppose you get to throw magic bullets into the air that will kill some random person somewhere else. How many Black bullets will kill non-Black people? How many non-Black bullets, Black people?"
If this theory were correct, then we would see that Jewish people are far more likely to assault or even kill blacks than the other way around. Same for any individual white ethnical group. Same should also hold for Indians, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Arabs, Persians and Vietnamese, if your clam were correct then you would be able to see that individuals from these groups are far more likely to attack blacks than the other way around. If on the other hand, it can be shown that blacks commit more attacks on all these minority groups than members of these minority groups against blacks then you do not have a case.
Now you could make an argument that there is much more attacks by blacks on all non-black groups specifically because the crime rate among blacks is much higher than among any other group.
Very well said, Professor. Bravo!
"And we are all on the same side."
I wish this were so, but I really can't see it that way. What side is that? On the side of equal justice? Laughable, as you correctly note that the left is against colorblindness even in principle.
On the side of peace and harmony? I think there is a very serious faction of the left for which racial harmony would be disempowering and unwelcome. I don't think that's all that debatable, either.
Black rioters in L.A. launched a pogrom against Koreans 20 years ago. Women were shot, stores burned, the police abandoned the area. The leftist media generally refused to address that situation, covered it up, explained it away. Because identity politics demand that members of some races are always to be excused, and members of others are always to be disregarded.
I really don't see the left anywhere near my side.
Exactly right!
I think that there's a possible parallel to our present situation. Back in the 50s and 60s Blacks were told, "Things are changing, but you can't expect it to change all at once. Stay positive. Give it time." This was the path of MLK. On the other hand, there were some who demanded justice immediately. "I'll be damned if I play along with the system so long as I see injustice." I think they were foolish and did damage to the country, but more particularly to themselves. The riots in Detroit and Watts were cathartic I'm sure, but they did terrible damage to the black community in both the short and long term.
Right now, I see terrible injustice. For conservatives to be blamed for racism and bigotry is an injustice. For liberals to preen as defenders of civil rights is an affront to truth. For the media to lie as easily as they breathe is loathsome. Demanding justice might seem like the thing to do. Isn't it necessary to get a little dirty in the fight for truth? But it's always better to do what's right. And maybe it pans out, maybe it doesn't. But there's no surety in catharsis either.
(In all this I think it must be noted that the stronger stance, the more difficult one, is to take a pass on emotional catharsis and to do the morally correct thing even if it seems like the weaker thing to do.)
Inga--
Passing laws trying to prevent voter fraud will not suppress any minorities from voting. Your claim that it does is just one more example of how many on the Left exploit racial tension. You should be ashamed, but you won't be.
You are part of the race-baiting Left the good Professor is taking to task here.
Hyphenated American,
I am not making the argument that you think I am. I am countering the argument that if the percentage of Black-on-white crime is much larger than the percentage of white-on-Black crime, it proves that Blacks are committing racist attacks on whites. It doesn't; given no other facts, the fact that there are many more whites than Blacks guarantees that there would be a much larger percentage of Black-on-white crime than white-on-Black crime absent any racial animus at all. So the presence of that disparity is evidence of nothing.
The reason this is complicated is because there is also a much larger crime rate among Blacks than among whites and Asians, and though the vast majority of it is intraracial, not all of it is. My own guess is that a white or Asian person is more likely to be victimized by a Black person than chance would suggest, and another Black person far more likely.
Ctmom4, open your eyes and take your fingers out of your ears. YOU can be fooled into thinking that voter suppression laws are merely voted ID laws. Do you know what happens when an entire class of people feel they are back in the bad ol' days in which they had to march and protest and fight to get their vote? They come out in droves, in much higher numbers because now they have been energized by the threat to their rights as citizens.
Talking points indeed.
The left certainly isn't on my side.
Black people are quite scarce in Albuquerque, so I cannot say that I know or understand what it is like to be Black.
How many others who follow this blog are in the same position if they think about it?
As scarce as they are here, I think there has always been at least one Black family on the blocks where I have lived, and they have always been at least average good neighbors.
We should be careful about believing or unconsciously accept what we read in the newspapers or hear on TV. As is stated ad nauseam, those outfits are almost without exception of the "progressive" persuasion and live in constant fear that Black people will stop voting 95%+/- Democrat. That has more to do with the bias of the reporting than anything else.
It is ironic that the party that from the end of the Civil War to 1972, except for a few years during the Great Depression, depended entirely on the Solid South to win national elections, now is equally dependent on the "Black vote."
It is regrettable that not only are we "White" people accepting so much of this mis-information, but so are so many "Black" people. Today, at the 50th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, even supposedly responsible people, like MLK IV and others, were repeating the Trayvon Martin tripe as if there never had been a trial with the evidence presented and televised.
It is not too surprising that weaker minds and especially the young people around the country then also buy into it and act up.
Ann, while I mostly identify with libertarians, when I was younger I would have been considered quite a liberal American, minus the leftism usually associated with that term.
I have always been anti-racist, believing that the American Dream belongs to us all, as long we're honest people. I have always believed that the colorblind approach works best in how to treat each other.
The racism of the Democrats while I was growing up in the 1960s is one of the big reasons I am a Republican.
Sometimes taking the high road does mean refraining from speech. B
ut, I also believe that you have to call out racism when it occurs.
It is high time that the open anti-white racism that infects the black community, or any other minority community, is taken on and called out for what it is.
This anti-white racism is enabled and promoted within the black community by white liberals and black racist agitators, who overwhelmingly support the Democrat Party.
The precepts of this anti-white ideology is promulgated and taught in our Universities in the cultural Marxist African American or Black Studies Departments. Whites are evil oppressors, blacks are victims, merely reacting to Evil Racism.
Just like they used to promote anti-black racism, the Democrats are promoiting anti-white racism in the black community for the votes a racist divide and conquer strategy brings them. They scare blacks into thinking whitey is always out to get them and only Democrats can protect them.
The lefts isn't making arguments, nor are they interested in a discussion. They want to always have the race card to trump opposition. They want to win.
I will not shut up about their racism anymore. They need to be called out, just like the KKK was called out.
I have noticed, but only in the lasw week, that MSM is slowly starting to leak out the news that B on W crime is much more common then W on B.
Remember how the Duke lacrosse case was all about evil white boys? And turned out to be a hoax. The Oberlin case? A hoax. That Zimmerman was pure caucasion? Then white hispanic? A hoax. That he was motivated by racism? A hoax. The left has to invent racist incidents by whites to get any.
The B on W mureder ratio has already been mentioned. Let's talk another violent crime of interest to women- rape. The number of black women raped each year by white or Asian men (and I think Hispanic, the invented catagory)- usually zero as reported by the FBI. The other way around? A l9t more then zero.
I don't believe in the category of "Hate Crimes". But- if prosecutors are going to charge whites with hate crimes, then blacks, especially those who have openly admitted to their motivation in social media, tweets and Facebook and the like, need to be also charged.
Oh, and Inga, ensuring that only people who are legally elgible to vote are voting is not voter suppresion- it's election integrity. It is largely heavily Democratic overwhelmingly black districts which turn out 100% and sometimes more of elgible voters in presidential elections. Districts where you can't get 1% of the parents to show up for parent teacher night at school. Where civic organizations such as BSA, GSA, Kiwanis, Lions, etc. are non-existent. But yet, every 4 years, everyone knows where their polling places are and shows up. Yeah, right. Fraud, and everyone, including you, Inga, and our hostess, know it.
"Black rioters in L.A. launched a pogrom against Koreans 20 years ago."
It is more accurate to say that they *tried* to launch a pogrom. It was a miserable failure as the Koreans had armed themselves.
I was there in 1992, amongst the first National Guardsmen to hit the streets. The Korean neighborhoods and businesses sustained the least amount of riot damage, due to their exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.
That was the other reason the news didn't want to report it; guns were used for self defense in an extreme emergency situation.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx
The "Civil Rights Movement" has gone from Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr. to Al Sharpton, Sandra Fluke, and now Pfc. "Chelsea" Manning.
Is it about to run out of even the farce phase?
"That may be true, but is it really relevant? We see an increasing tendency of black racist crime directed at whites and Asians. It may not be as much a killer as, say, cancer or car accidents, but it's worth talking about. Right?"
The "increasing tendency of black racist crime" is only an "increasing tendency" if you completely make up data.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2005/
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2006/index.html
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/index.html
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/index.html
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/index.html
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2011
Do you know what happens when an entire class of people feel they are back in the bad ol' days in which they had to march and protest and fight to get their vote?
Except that they really don't have to march or protest or fight to get their vote, do they? All they have to do is get some id, the same amount of id they would have to show to cash a check, board a plane, buy some alcohol, etc., etc.
The B on W mureder ratio has already been mentioned. Let's talk another violent crime of interest to women- rape. The number of black women raped each year by white or Asian men (and I think Hispanic, the invented catagory)- usually zero as reported by the FBI. The other way around? A l9t more then zero.
You are just making stuff up. The FBI doesn't publish expanded offense data for offender/victim breakdown by race in the UCR. I've pointed out two years of expanded offense data in links below.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/offenses/expanded_information/index.html
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded
Inga saith, "Do you know what happens when an entire class of people feel they are back in the bad ol' days in which they had to march and protest and fight to get their vote?"
Herewith the left, preferring feelings to facts.
Aaron said...
You are just making stuff up. The FBI doesn't publish expanded offense data for offender/victim breakdown by race in the UCR. I've pointed out two years of expanded offense data in links below.
****************
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6 Took me 2 minutes to find the breakdown of perps/vitims by race for homicide.
I've seen similar tables for rape statistics. Couldn't find them is a qucick search of the FBI site- but the statistics are kept. google white rape of black females. If not true, it's something a whole lot of people believe and republish. And as one site pointed out- it's getting harder to find the officail statistics. But I cannot think of any reason at all why Attorney General Eric Holder would want to hide those statistics. Can you?
Except that the next time a black felon is killed by a white citizen or cop we'll be right back on All-Tray-Tray TV. I know it, you know it, and the people planning on taking advantage of it again know. What else can we do but push back?
Taking the high road doesn't work when the half of the population already in the gutter never sees you up there.
"Do you know what happens when an entire class of people feel...?"
Do you know what happens when you legislate/prosecute/assign social quotas on "feelings"?
Ann objects to the candlelight vigil held for Delbert (Shorty) Burton, an 89 year-old World War II veteran who was wounded during the Battle of Okinawa. Her argument is that such vigils "are intended to stir hearts" in a bad way. "What sparks", she asks, "catch fire in that candlelight vigil for Shorty."
Suppose Shorty had been killed shoving a small child out of the path of an out-of-control car. Would Ann have objected to a candlelight vigil honoring him under these circumstances? Of course not. Her objection is not to candlelight vigils per se, but only to those vigils held for a white victim of black violence, or for a black victim of white violence (although it is interesting to speculate whether she would have objected to a candlelight vigil for Emmitt Till).
Vigils like that held for Shorty, she says, "nurture feelings that white people are oppressed by black people."
Ann's position raises two questions. Why should a small community, that in good faith and with the best intentions, wants to hold a candlelight vigil to honor and pay tribute to a much-loved World II veteran who died a violent death, be held hostage by a tiny minority of whackos who may be given "air" for their supremacist views? (Contrary to Ann's suggestion, there is no evidence that the organizers of Shorty's vigil "intended to stir the hearts the way hearts were stirred at the Trayvon Martin demonstration.")
Second, even if some attending the vigil begin to think seriously about the mindless black on black and black on white violence that seems to be increasing, why is this a bad thing? What is wrong with calling attention to an obvious pathology that is infecting a part of the black underclass? It cannot be denied that the both blacks and, to a lesser extent, whites are "oppressed" by this pathology. Isn't it about time to begin to focus on causes and solutions?
Liberals, together with President Obama, dismiss Thomas Sowell's historical studies, and see the cause as the "legacy of slavery". Conservatives see the cause as the complete break down of the black family coupled with the effect of a violent rap and hip hop culture on fatherless black youth. As a direct result of these destructive forces, conservatives point to a generation of young black under class males with no moral compass and few, if any, positive character traits.
This is the true "high ground" where a real "conversation on race" can take place.
Nice try, Aaron...
But who amongst Althouse's readership --overwhelmingly not-NAM, presumably-- does not have at least second-hand knowledge of at least one woman friend, female acquaintance, or family member being criminally accosted or sexually assaulted by non-white perps? I myself can name three or four without half-trying.
Yes, anecdotes collectively don't equal data, but why would it be that the Feds are so studiously uninterested in disaggregating their own non-anecdotal data? Or at least not publishing it, if indeed they have so disaggregated their data?
I have almost zero hope that Obama ever will do anything to help race relations, not because he would not want to, but because he is clueless. However, if someone could somehow get the following words from Ann words to Obama, it would be great for the country:
"Trayvon Martin — an individual human being — was used by demagogues to score points about the suffering of black people in America, but this is not a game, and it is delusion to imagine that there is a need to score points on some imagined other side. This is not a game. There is no score. And we are all on the same side."
"The "increasing tendency of black racist crime" is only an "increasing tendency" if you completely make up data."
Yap, I surely believe the over meant characterization of what, constitutes "hate crime" , given that jihadists in fort hod as called " workplace violence, while the judder of Chris lane won't be called '"hate crime" even thoughts on of the guys who did it confessed in targeting white people. Up,,dude,,seriously, next thing you will try to tell me that obama irs does not target conservative groups.
Ann, but are you co.or blind yourself? I remember reading your article some time ago about the obamaphones and how wrong it was for rush Limbaugh to p.ay the recording of an Obama supporter talking about her love of Obama because he gave her a free " obamaphones". apparently you thought it was wrong to do so because that woman was black. I guess you are not color blind all the time, right?
Lol. I'm color-blind enough to understand that the low income phone program was started in 1984 and expanded in 2008, making it hard to blame on Obama. But others prefer a different, Obama-associated narrative, for some obviously innocent and completely color-blind reason, of course.
Michelle Dulak Thomson wrote:
"Suppose a fraction of this population consists of murderers. What fraction of murders of a non-Q would you expect to be by a Q, vs. murders of a Q by a non-Q? 9/10 of the Q's potential targets are non-Q; 1/10 of the non-Q's potential targets are Q. You see the likely result for Q-on-non-Q vs. non-Q-on-Q violence stats, yes?"
Given 100 murders, a uniformly random distribution would produce the following expectations:
Non-Q murders Non-Q: 81/100
Non-Q murders Q: 9/100
Q murders Non-Q: 9/100
Q murders Q: 1/100
Q-on-non-Q and non-Q-on-Q rates are identical, which is not what you assumed and is inconsistent with your conclusions.
Michelle wrote:
"I explained above to Professor Chaos that you would see the fraction of crimes that are Black-on-white much higher than the fraction that are white-on-Black even absent any racial motivations, income disparities, &c., simply assuming that any random person was equally likely to attack any other random person. If you are Black, 7 out of 8 people are non-Black. if you are non-Black, 1 out of 8 people are Black. Suppose you get to throw magic bullets into the air that will kill some random person somewhere else. How many Black bullets will kill non-Black people? How many non-Black bullets, Black people?"
It would be an equal number, using the same logic as above. If it's 1 out of 10 instead of 1 out of 8, suppose there was 100 bullets proportioned into B/Non-B. Nine of the 10 B bullets will kill non-B people, and 9 of the 90 non-B bullets will kill B people.
@Rhythm and Balls Why are you assuming I am in the group I'm addressing with my advice?
Hi Ann,
I wasn't addressing you with my comment or assuming any affiliation on your part as I was simply responding to the comment (which I quoted, in italics) by Hyphenated American.
He or she was responding to you but I was simply responding to what was in the content of their comment.
Ok I see. If it was your contention that it was wrong for Limbaugh to use that "Obamaphone" clip then we are actually in agreement as apparently some did pick up on an association there between race/color and policy which did not exist when Reagan or W. Bush signed or expanded that policy into law. Those were white presidents signing legislation passed by largely white legislatures that Limbaugh and others tried to tie to Obama (erroneously) in an effort to associate him and his race with hand-outs. So of course it was wrong and just goes to show, via Hyphenated American's comments, how many people DID ratify this erroneous association, and ran with it in a way that can only bolster (or was done in order to bolster) unfairly demeaning stereotypes of black people and black presidents.
Right. So let's all fight to remove "hate crime" laws from the books. Then we can get back to trying to achieve the ideal of color-blind justice.
Conversely, look at how a piece of legislation opened the doors to skewing our entire justice system, even in cases that don't reference the laws.
"Lol. I'm color-blind enough to understand that the low income phone program was started in 1984 and expanded in 2008, making it hard to blame on Obama. But others prefer a different, Obama-associated narrative, for some obviously innocent and completely color-blind reason, of course."
Sounds like you are not familiar with the facts of the matter. The person making the argument that Obama is a great president and should be reelected because he gives minorities free phones was made by a liberal intellectual, who was recorded on th video and Rush Limbaugh played the recording multiple times.
I realize that you are embarrassed that this liberal Intellectual and Obama supporter is a complete imbecile,but don't blame Rush for revealing the truth.
Anyway, here is the link o the video, enjoy it.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtpAOwJvTOio
"Those were white presidents signing legislation passed by largely white legislatures that Limbaugh and others tried to tie to Obama (erroneously) in an effort to associate him and his race with hand-outs. So of course it was wrong and just goes to show, via Hyphenated American's comments, how many people DID ratify this erroneous association, and ran with it in a way that can only bolster (or was done in order to bolster) unfairly demeaning stereotypes of black people and black presidents."
Wait a second, the person who made this association was a liberal activist, not Rush Limbaugh. Blame her for being a racist. Come on, it's not Arusha limbaugh's fault that DNC relies on the vote of stir racist people, depending on handouts.
No, the new high ground is to recognize race as an illusion and the people who take account of it any other way as stupid. It's no longer sufficient to be colorblind. Obsession with color must be identified and mocked. The people who advance color obsession for fame and fortune must be condemned as hucksters, illusionists, con men, and shamed.
Colorblindness is no defense against people declaring a race war. Instead of ignoring their declaration, we must disarm them, point and laugh.
Maybe a bit of Tai Chi, reflect their own stupidity back at them when they raise their fists against us, without taking on their stupidity as a tactic. No harm in that.
I can't speak for Ctmom4, Inga, but I don't have to be fooled into thinking that voter ID laws aren't voter suppression laws. Because the simple fact is, they're not. There is no rational argument to be made against the requirement that people identify themselves in order to vote.
I don't know if you put any credence in opinion polls, but those polls show overwhelming, across-the-board support for voter ID laws. Blacks support them, Hispanics support them, Democrats support them, Independents support them. The only people who don't support them, it seems, are the people who want to demagogue the issue and flog the race horse.
I think some conservatives and libertarians are tired of holding the high moral ground and still losing the contest for public understanding. They are thinking maybe they ought to fight dirty like the other guys do.
ken in sc nails it here. See, professor, it's been tried your way, for the last 30 years. Things aren't getting better in race relations; they're getting worse.
Perhaps a different approach is needed.
conservatives don't need to fight dirty. They just need to tell the truth. colorblindness has meant actual blindness to horrific crimes when the perpetrators have been of a protected class or race. This is wrong and insults the victims. when a white couple kidnapped tortured raped and murdered the case deserves coverage, and the perpetrators deserve to be labelled as the monsters they are (even if they are black) .
I disagree that conservatives are claiming victimization but rather that they want the media to report the facts of black on white crime, instead of whitewashing them as they do now. I mean, really, why don't they specify race when they give descriptions of suspects? Why is the race of flash mobsters never given? Everyone sees through these politically correct evasions.
I disagree that conservatives are claiming victimization but rather that they want the media to report the facts of black on white crime, instead of whitewashing them as they do now. I mean, really, why don't they specify race when they give descriptions of suspects? Why is the race of flash mobsters never given? Everyone sees through these politically correct evasions.
It's not about being victims. It's about pointing out the double standard. As long as they keep doing it, I'll keep pointing it out.
The "obamaphone" issue - I didn't know about the free phones until the Rush clip, and as noted, the liberal owner of said phone named it that. If one infers that it's racial, it's not because of whites.
Voter ID. When I can buy cigs, beer, sinus medicine, fly, etc. without ID, then I'll agree, no ID to vote. Otherwise, stupid argument.
Colorblind. Hard to be so when race is endlessly discussed, except when the perps are black.
High road - already noted: no point walking the empty road.
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