Ugly Truths About Prejudice
A number of commentators have pointed out the enormous focus that civil rights leaders have put on the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of a white man, while essentially ignoring the vastly more common situation of black on black murder. On an average day in 2010, there were eighteen blacks murdered in the U.S., and sixteen of those black victims were murdered by other blacks — and yet those crimes seem to be of no real interest to the mainstream media or the race hustlers like Al Sharpton.
While I agree that some of this is simply political gamesmanship, there is another part of this strange misfocus that actually does make some sense. It is based on the bitterness that many blacks feel about racial prejudice. NBC News ran a program recently in which they interviewed a number of their black employees about the sensation of being treated as potential criminals no matter where they go. I don’t doubt that they have experienced this, and that it is almost certainly racial prejudice driving this. Most guys have at one time or another have approached a strange woman in an isolated place, and seen the fear. We feel terribly ill-treated because it is apparent what she is thinking: “A man I don’t know is a rapist — or at least, there is a good chance of it.”
What causes prejudices like these? Prejudices usually have some basis to them — either personal experiences, or knowledge that we have acquired from friends or from the news. Sometimes, those prejudices are positive. A friend of mine is a Korean-American. When he was in junior high and high school, everyone wanted to sit next to him in math classes. “Everyone knows” that Asians are good at math; they could learn from him or at least copy from his tests! (And they were disappointed to discover that this is just a prejudice — he was not good at math.) There are still Americans with positive prejudices of Jews as clever, or blacks as especially talented at music (“natural rhythm”).
Even when those prejudices are based on some actual difference in the average for the group, for any particular member of the group, that positive prejudice is often wrong. We tend not to be quite so angry when we are assumed to be smarter, or more talented, or more capable because of our membership in a group, but it is still not a good thing.
The darker problem, however, are the negative prejudices: the ones that cause a store security guard to watch a black guy who enters a store; that cause taxi drivers in big cities to be reluctant to pick up blacks after dark (even when the taxi driver is black himself); that used to cause some employers to assume that women weren’t logical enough to be computer programmers. If you have ever been on the losing side of one of these prejudices, you understand the sense of injustice that is obviously driving much of the rage about the Trayvon Martin killing.
Well, the last 20 years of the music scene has certainly cleared my mind of any prejudice that blacks are inherently better at music.
If you can’t say amen, say OUCH!
“There is only one way to fix this problem of racial prejudice — and that is to reduce black crime rates to a level commensurate with the black population.”
Here’s the problem with that: black folks who are academic and politicians believe that black crime is not a problem about black folks, but about white folks, caused by white racism. Michelle Alexander wrote a book called The New Jim Crow that is based on this idea, and it has great traction in the black community, especially since it dovetails with that community’s view that white people bad and black people are good. If you think that’s simplistic, you haven’t been reading the black press I have.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) recently talked about the year Rodney King was beaten: she said
“We published a report that showed that a third of the prison population was made up of African-American males, compared to 3.7 percent of the state population, so it was during that period that all of this occurred. It highlighted the police relationship with the community in terms of the injustice of [the] criminal-justice system, racial profiling and disproportionate numbers of African-American males going to prison.”
According to Alexander and Lee, and pretty much any other black person who speaks about this as a matter of public policy, the more black folks are in jail, the more evidence it is of my own racism. So, in the minds of the black community, the only way to reduce black crime is for me to stop being a racist, for whites to engage in dialogues admitting white guilt, according to Eric Holder, and then everything will be fine.
I had a friend who was a cab driver for years – he said the reason he didn’t like having them as passengers is that they would jump out without paying the fare. People in their individual live won’t be guinea pigs for smashing black stereotypes, and as you point out, that includes black folks as well.
Threat assessments may be based on nonsense but also on reality and people will err on the side of caution. Women at night in lonely places tend to look at me with caution because I’m tall and mean looking. I don’t take it personally – even a woman I ended up living with told me that when she first met me she was scared to be with me alone, just because of the way I looked. Unfortunately, I don’t “look” like a comic-book collecting artist.
So, we have a near total disconnect about how to reduce black crime: one side says I need to stop being a jerk, the other side says stop committing crime. One side talks about whites inventing AIDs and importing drugs and alcohol into the ‘hood, the other side says control yourself.
The difference is that when push comes to shove, black folks feel a lot safer and more comfortable around whites, I’ve been around these scenarios enough to know. It’s one thing to write nonsense about whites in articles, and quite another to be on a black bus line with an Apple laptop open. Because, at the end of the day, when you make a person personally responsible for their political and social views, then all of a sudden the liberal Left becomes extremely reasonable, and Conservatives walk it like they talk it.
It’s the same mentality of a schoolyard bully who beats up other kids and claims to do so because the other kids are guilty of being afraid of him. Well, duh… Who’s fault is that??
Highly recommend Jared Taylor’s Paved with Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America – it’s an unflinching look at the realities of race in modern America. Published in 1992, it’s relevant to everything we are witness to today.
The bottom line is that there are far too many in this country with an investment in perpetuating racial division for their own ends, and the majority of those doing so are black.
There is no good end to this.
Or even simpler: From Booker T. Washington’s My Larger Education: Being Chapters From My Experience (1911):
I am really surprised that no one – maybe Limbaugh could – has challenged the usual suspects to go without talking about race for one year. By suspects I mean Ta-Nehesi Coates at The Atlantic, Tavis Smiley at PBS, Dr. Boyce Watkins at Syracuse, Melissa Harris-Perry of Tulane and MSNBC, Michael Eric-Dyson and many others.
I grew up not discussing race or Jews or dirty Indians or anything like that. We didn’t care who our ancestors were in the least. It was effortless. This is my experience of white folks. However the black Left has that one figured out now: they’ve replace real and institutionalized racism with the fact that, by not talking about race, I am in fact an enabler or racism.
Colorblindness is just another word for unwitting white privilege. The fact is, those people couldn’t stop talking about race if their lives depended on it. It is an addiction in the black community, an obsession. I had some friends who used to play a rather dirty, but as it turns out, honest trick when we would be around black folks. A pool would start and money paid out based on how long it took a given black person to mention race even though we’d bring up the least loaded subject – well, as it turns out, there is no such thing basically – the lens is the lens and the world seen through it. It was always a few minutes. This is reality.
Never in my life did I ever think the Dem Party would come to share views, that at their philosophical heart, are identical to the racialism of those who say, “I am not a racialist.” Dems used to say they’re not jellied donuts in such a setting. Now they only see racists where there are none and don’t see them where they’re stacked 12 deep.
“Blah,” and “food stamp President” have come to represent white supremacy and actual racial supremacy is touted as a “hero” at the church our own little Hitler spent 20 years at before someone tapped him on the arm and said it was wrong and by the way gay marriage right and whatever post-it notes they sprinkled on the hapless moron until he looked like some weird, neo version of the Strawman running to Oz to get a clue.
Black criminality in America will not change as long as we have a Democratic Party that depends on the black vote to get elected to office and therefore cultivates and sustains the fiction that without said party black people would drown in a sea of racism and oppression by Republican white people. Black grievance is the mother’s milk of Democrats. Democrats do not want racial healing in this country and will not allow it.
The question I have been asking is how the cute 12-year-old Trayvon changed into the gold-mouthed facebook figure we later saw. Every teen-aged boy goes through a rebellious period in which he begins to separate from his parents. During this time, he needs real challenges that allow him to prove to himself his manhood, and he needs role models. Right now, it seems that developing a threatening gangsta rap persona is all they have. The entertainment industry could do more to offer them heroes for today. They need characters just like themselves with all their insecurities who learn to overcome these and to resist the pop culture that is so deadly. They need to see 15 year olds taking care of younger kids who are also anxious and then being praised for their manly efforts. They need to see how a kid their age can empathize with the new hispanic kid in school and break through the barriers to discover common interests. And above all, they don’t need people like Al Sharpton who try to dump hundreds of years of history on their backs before they can carry it. They need a protected space where they can grow.
If a boy’s father isn’t around, he needs to make himself look scary, especially if he lives in a dangerous neighborhood. Trayvon’s father wasn’t around, so Trayvon had to look to scary to be a victim. Probably has to do with why Trayvon started doing drugs, too (“skittles” aka dextromorphan and “T”/THC/marijuana).
That ‘gold mouthed’ Trayvon Martin was NOT the same kid. That’s why this is an entirely moot question.
I’ve seen an incorrect recent picture, but his real pictures were also posted. Are you saying that Trayvon Martin did not have a “grille” and tats? Please post a link of his picture (at most six months old) that shows his teeth.
For the record, are you also claiming that he was not “no-limit-ni&&a” on Twitter?
Are you going to pretend that Trayvon Martin had gone to a convenience store to purchase candy and iced tea, and not drugs?
There’s been two pictures; the Twitter one is the dead guy’s.
I have noticed lately that lately that this whole episode has kinda slipped off the MSM or LSM news, they are on to bigger more important things like a 40 year old possibility that Mitt Romney cut the hair of a guy that might have (or might not have) been gay (queer) but all kinds of new facts are coming up and it might just be a rumor…imagine that!
Of course we will see and hear more accusations of really horrible things that Romney did but never anything about Obama even in his own words like vocal excerpts from his fake book, it is time to VET the fake man that got elected in 2008 that has no transcripts or really any history except for the last 4 years (mostly trying to ruin this country and doing a damned good job of it)!
To vb: Touche! (Don’t know how to put that little stroke above the “e.”)
You nailed it: the media is by and large responsible for the society we have today where young people act out what they see on TV and other media. And it is ALL BAD. They say that a psychotic is one who builds a castle in the air and moves into it. That is what we’ve got today – kids living in the “castles in the air” made by movie producers etc. In other words we have a bunch of psychotics on the loose. The hypocrites if questioned, will say “they are only reflecting the society around them.” No they aren’t, they are creating it.Of course they ARE creating movies etc that reflect society as it is today, but they started it and now they perpetuate it.
Send your kids to a Church Youth Group or a Youth Group run by responsible adults who can teach children how to have fun without messing up.
Who is responsible for censoring movies produced? Why is the trash that is produced allowed to be? TV censorship is a joke. Four-letter words, sexual-perversion, violence, blasphemies, murders, etc.
We, as a society, are reaping what we sow.
Functional parents who stay married would help even more.
You missed out on another very important point while trying to touch on the reality of extraordinarily high rates of black criminiality. Black people are much, much more likely to harm white people than the other way around. These numbers are off the charts. And yet, if you subscribe to the current dogma you would believe it is the other way around. The conventional wisdom needs to be seen for what it is: delusion.
Thank you for commenting on black on black crime. But please, please, if you are going to address this topic do not ignore black on white crime like virtually everyone else in the media.
I believe strongly that if black criminality dropped to the levels of other races a large amount of prejudice would disappear.
Correct. Because prejudice/stereotyping is always based on reality. If reality changes, stereotyping disappears. Of course, reality doesn’t change very often. A characteristic of blacks all over the world is a notable lack of impulse-control. The connection with higher rates of criminality is obvious. What isn’t obvious is what might theoretically change this. Leftists, environmentalists to a man, have been trying their social-engineering nostrums for the last 80 years. How long do we have to wait before we declare defeat? Rightists believe that much human behavior is governed by Human Nature. Human Nature, being genetic, innate, and immutable, is only susceptible to manipulation at the margins.
It’s a DNA thing. For whites, survival is less a collective task than an individual one. As one, I can’t help that my ancestors pursued success as individuals rather than as a ‘tribe’. You’ll notice among blacks an affinity toward color that includes, among other things, ganging-up on a victim, or simply voting in large blocks for one of their own (color).
This characteristic may have developed from eons of living with lions, hyeanas, and other predators where strength in numbers often leads to success. Team work comes naturally to such people whereas it’s a problem for others (whites) who seek to rise according to the individual effort they put into a task. At some point, building a computer becomes a team effort but we’ve seen how the concept has been individually launched by the likes of Steve Jobs, etc. and the rewards that can be had.
For some, color is the cohesive, for others it’s religion (Islam). In both cases success derives from a strict adherence to tribalism and the collective benefits that accrue. As one who works outside, one of my greatest fears is to run into an Africanized honeybee hive. Bee stings happen all the time but not at the level of severity from this set of bees. This is a ‘collective’ that I hope never to encounter as I’ve seen how far they’ll go attacking a victim.
There are ways to deal with such pests which, in most cases, means eliminating them. Hopefully, violent and cohesive groups will understand this and adapt accordingly because, well, survival is a DNA thing.
So what the previous two commenters are telling us is this:
“What you believe is no disgrace, the swinishness is in the race.”
– old National Socialist jingle
Determinism, genetic or otherwise, is a necessary prerequisite of actual racism.
The antidote is the principle of individualism. “Man is a being of self-made soul.” — Ayn Rand
And oh what a wreck you two have made of yours.
To be fair, the “it’s all racism!” folks have a point: there *is* a risk of talking candidly about race, which is that it doesn’t take long for the “it’s in their genes!” folks to come out of the woodwork. And who wants to be associated with them?
The idea of a “gene for self-control” which Blacks somehow lack is absurd scientifically, but more importantly, it’s totally unnecessary. One might as well invent a “nuclear science” gene, which only nuclear scientists have, which is the “real reason” they understand nuclear science.
How about a much simpler explanation: people who grow up isolated from society, without a family, without any education by parents and neighbors about proper behavior and self-control, then lack self-control — much like people who never studied nuclear science cannot be expected to be good at it?
At the college I attended, there was a string of assaults and robberies of students by black youths in the area surrounding the campus, culminating in the murder of an Asian graduate student. A seminar was held to address this issue, which I attended. One of the speakers was a white woman from the campus Christian association, who blamed the crime on the “racism” of the college, the “racist” attitude of the students, and the “oppression” felt by the black youths living in the vicinity of the college.
This is why black criminality is excused. Colleges are teaching our kids that only racism is responsible for the high black crime rates, so when these kids become journalists and politicians, they inevitably swallow the propaganda that basically states a white victim of black crime deserves it as a sacrificial lamb for white racism, while the full weight of societal prosecution should come down on any white person who commits a crime against a black, even in self-defense. It is the same mentality that excuses Muslim terror as a response to oppression, but any act to protect against such terror is racism.
On Campus, its the same with Islamic terrorism…
Israel, the only democracy in which Muslims are full citizens and can vote, is always somehow THE reason why Muslims are so violent.
It couldnt POSSIBLE be their own culture, child-rearing skills (or lack thereof) social priorities, character or level of industriousnes, could it?
The Islamists long ago caught on to the P/C cowardice displayed by the Universities since the 60′s, and are carving their own niche of blame to excuse their agenda.
We are long, long past the tipping point in dealing honestly and rationally with both issues. The responsibilities of Islam, and “Trevon” can no longers be questioned.
We start all conversations at the point where WE are guilty, and go from there.
There is no place on earth that is predominantly black that is anything other than a cesspool. Even places that were once viable under white control become dysfunctional when blacks take over. Examples of this fact are too numerous to have to mention. And people all over the world know this to be true. THAT is the basis for the wariness with which people of other races approach black people everywhere.
ever see the satellite images of where large populations of blacks live? it looks like a bombs went off in the areas.. check it out some time.. i’m talking about countries not just the hoods they lay in. it’s amazing to see.
Such as this nighttime satellite photo of Hispaniola. The difference between black Haiti and non-black Dominican Republic is nearly as obvious as the famous Korea photo (all of N. Korea dark except Pyongyang).
Most people I know from the DR appear to be mixed race… hardly “non-black”.
There’s no doubt that black Americans are the most racist group in America now, they have been for decades. It’s so apparent because their racism is codified, a matter of law, just look up the laws behind Affirmative Action, the federal racial discrimination law, which requires race discrimination of a certain type.
Socialism has ruined black America, and while that had already been underway since the 1930s, it got a big and racist boost after the riots in the 1960s, when the Great Society was pushed through. The reportage at the time was that the tidal shift was about white guilt; I always through there was a big element of fear in the deal, which has and continues to this day to result in the forced transfer of wealth based on race. Trillions of dollars in wealth.
For decades? Certainly not many decades.
Mr. Cramer, black people have been the majority group in practically every American city since the late 1960s. They’ve been collecting welfare checks, living in public housing, and getting food stamps during all that time. The governments of most of our major urban enclaves have been in the death grip of the Marxocrats because of black voting patterns as well, so the cities have siphoned off a disproportionate share of taxes at every level. And its been over fifty years since the Civil Rights act was passed and blacks were given the largesse of Affirmative Action at the expense of every other ethnic group in this country. I’d say that qualifies as “decades” of special racial treatment. Its time this injustice was stopped and we return to the Constitutional concept of “equal protection under law”; Nothing more, nothing less.
That’s different from the assertion made above that “blacks are the most racist group in America, and have been for decades.”
Oh for Pete’s sake, how about six decades? Is that close enough for you?
I think over this period in question we’ve seen the black community go from a type of racialism to racism. It’s hard to argue black folks weren’t legitimate in disliking a country that imposed Jim Crow. That also provides an environment that makes it easy to obsess on one’s own race, since one is reminded of it every day.
But after the Civil Rights era, babies were born, black babies. There is no reason for them to make connections by skin about whites or blacks, positive or negative. Even more to the point, today’s generation of black writer’s are complete racists and racialists, who talk about DNA-like connections to any positive thing about blacks, like jazz, and then deny that exact same philosophy when applied to anything bad, like crime or the vile culture of hip-hop.
In the same manner, those same writers make DNA-like connections that establish my guilt for slavery, but call me a racist if I say, well, I’m a moon-landing, uncertainty principling, fractal geometry inventing white boy.
The great irony is, white folks don’t even really do that. They don’t care. Nobody I knew growing said, wow, comic book illustrators, they are white and great – the very idea is an absurdity. My culture fought Nazis, not adopted their culture. White people bought black slaves from black slavers who brought them to the U.S. and sold them to white people. The motive was profit – something for nothing – not race. Why do the Mauritanians enslaving 10 to 20% of their own population even as I write this – for reasons totally divorced from why white people bought black slaves? Of course not. Evil people are evil, not of a color, but of a feather.
I have lived in 14 cities and 10 states since 1986, and I have been marginally poor for much of that time. As a result, I have often had to live is neighborhoods that were either majority black or had a significant black population. I was not raised racist in any way, in fact, I was brought up in a society and among a generation that was explicitly hostile to racist ideas and expressions; if you were to make a disparaging comment about blacks in my social circle growing up, you would be asked to leave. We were not going to be the white bigots we saw in movies and TV and heard about in the South.
After many years of struggling to make good, my ship finally came in, and I was able to purchase my first home in any part of the very large city that I live; the whole city was wide open to me.
I deliberately selected the area I wanted to live in based on the fewest percentage of blacks living there. I also chose a county that was entirely unattached to the majority black county where the city is so that the black majority could not use my home as a cash cow to force higher and higher taxes.
If I saw a neighborhood with large percentages of Asians, great, I knew they had done their homework, and there probably weren’t too many blacks around.
I could write a book about my (mis)adventures as a poor white boy working two jobs in a black neighborhood, but my investment in my home says all there is to be said–and I know that thousands of other people in my lily-white county used the same racist (but rational) methodology, though they probably used a thick veneer of euphemisms to conceal it from both their realtor and themselves.
My position isn’t negotiable; it is based on years and years of hard, unassailable facts and empirical evidence; it is a rational view and is backed up by both the evidence and the natural law of self-preservation. I am always willing to offer details when people ask, but that usually ends badly, so I smile and let people believe what they want.
I have given up on urban, hip-hop, racist, group-think, socialist black America with its idiot preachers and venal politicians, and conspiracy cult of endless victimology fueled by liars like Cornell West and Derrick Bell; we are done, parted ways, complete and permanent separation, culturally and financially. You live there and I live here works for me. I will always take refugees here into civilization: honest, thoughtful black families are always welcome, but I will never again apologize for whites not wanting to allow blacks into their neighborhoods. Civilized whites and blacks are rightfully mortified at black society and the rotten culture of violence and dependance that it tolerates and encourages.
The result of Trayvon? Thousands of whites, Asians, Hispanics, Africans, and blacks just witnessed another reason to sell their house at a loss and get as far away from the black subculture as possible–let them be angry and crazy, but over there, not here. This was also the symbolic stand where everyone else begins to fight fire with fire; the black thug culture that has been terrorizing good people with impunity for the past 30 years just got a target on their backs. That’s why black people are so angry, they don’t care about a dead black teenager, other blacks kill those every day like flies, they are afraid the rest of society has had enough, and the days of rape and pillage under the flag of white guilt is drawing to a close. I’m afraid this is just the beginning, or, as Bernhard Goetz said 25 years ago, “you don’t look so bad, here’s another.”
Spot on as for white guilt don’t have it never did theres no reason for me to feel the slightest twinge of guilt for black dysfunction
Hey, I did it almost forty years ago. By ’74, much of Atlanta, all of downtown, had become uninhabitable for sane people. I concluded that Blacks could have it and went to the Great White North. ‘Course, now it has even caught up with me here because Anchorage has areas you really don’t want to go to, though it is as much Asian and Hispanic gangstas and wannabes as Blacks. But then pretty much everybody in Alaska is armed pretty much all the time so that fact imposes some standards of behavior.
Like many others, the crime rate has made me prejudiced. However, I have found that this prejudice has much more to do with culture than color. A few years ago, I traveled to Bermuda, where I interacted with a black citizen there. He was dressed an a business suit and spoke the King’s English impeccably. Whatever feelings of prejudice I may have had instantaneously evaporated as soon as he started to speak.
I don’t see an easy fix to our current problem. Many of the failings of the black community come from the fact that there are virtually no fathers in the kid’s lives. Of course there are many similarly dysfunctional whites, as well. But it seems to be more prevalent among blacks. In any event, it took years to get into this mess – helped along by the “Great Society” – and it will take years to get out. Unfortunately, it is so much easier to destroy than build, leaving me with little optimism.
Culture, not color – that’s the gist of it. I can drive across the WW bridge to MD and find an enclave of middle-class black families. Their neighborhood looks just like mine: nice homes, nice cars, clean streets, carefully mowed lawns, the occasional boat in the driveway. A nice place to live. I know because I got lost there once. I thought I was in a “white neighborhood” because of the way the place looked; then I noticed that every single person mowing a lawn, walking a dog, washing a car, or playing catch with the kids was black. Unlike a lot of other neighborhoods in the DC area, this place didn’t make me feel nervous. No shifty characters on the street or strange looks at the lone white boy. Just people going about their business.
Nothing about this area fits the predominant cultural stereotype of black people and black lifestyles. It’s not “urban.” There’s no sign of poverty, dysfunction, or hip-hop ghetto thuggery there. The residents obviously don’t care about “keepin it real” or “acting white.” They made a choice to live a certain way – not the way society or many of their fellow African-Americans expect them to live.
I wonder how many neighborhoods there are around the country in which black families live a non-stereotypical lifestyle like this. I also wonder why no one – the media, pundits, TV and movie producers – seems interested in this lifestyle. Why do black people have to be defined by hip-hop, crime, prison, poverty, and familial dysfunction? Is it conservatives hating black people? Is it liberals obsessing over black people’s problems to the exclusion of black people’s successes? Is it black people playing the perpetual victim? Are we supposed to discount this pleasant place because it’s “not typical of the African-American experience?” And who decides?
Culture, not color.
That “culture” you accidentally stumbled into, still votes based on their “color” though.
95% of Blacks voted for race hustler Obama, because they were the same color, culture had nothing to do with it.
Because law-abiding decent citizens (of any ethnicity) living out their lives quietly doesn’t make for exciting news stories on CNN.
As they say, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
This has nothing to do with race. In the 1960s, the vast majority of college students went to college to get an education, not to riot or stage noisy sit-ins. But those students got no attention from the news media, because the story they were interested in was those who were protesting the Vietnam War, not those who were not (whom Nixon correctly labeled “the silent majority”).
I do agree with that somewhat. I think that since the 60s, we’ve basically trained our children to believe that activism is the be-all and end-all of human life. It’s not enough just to live your life, vote, participate in normal public life. The only people who count (i.e., that get attention and plaudits from the media) are the ones with a cause, the ones who are out there fighting injustice, disease, hunger, discrimination, war, or what have you. Everyone else – meh, they’re nobody. Invisible. Might as well not be alive.
I’m not saying having a cause or solving problems are bad things. It’s just that everyone cannot and should not be Batman. And having a family, doing your job, paying your taxes, voting, going to PTA – all those things contribute to society as much as more romantic things like trying to eradicate AIDS. Activists may be more interesting, but its non-activists who keep the world running. I wish the media and politicians would remember that sometimes, instead of portraying them as victims, suckers, unenlightened rubes, or what’s wrong with America.
Absolutely. Nobody I know of is prejudiced against anybody simply because of their race. It all has to do with perceived risk.
You are correct that culture is what matters; middle class blacks are generally ignored by the news media (even though they are a majority). One of the difficulties is that the culture of inner city criminality is quite powerful. Some years ago, the Wall Street Journal had a very depressing article about how middle and upper class blacks who were raising their kids in suburbs around Chicago were struggling with a problem: their kids were going into Chicago to be part of the hip-hop scene so that they could be “authentic.” These kids weren’t going to become gangsters, but there was a real risk of Malibu’s Most Wanted trappings, which would definitely create a perception of them as likely criminals.
Are you sure you didn’t stumble onto a Hollywood backlot they used for Leave it to Beaver?
Or maybe that’s the neighborhoods they pull all their actors from for product advertising? You know the smiling happy black family in a Toyota, Acura of at the local Burger King?
Personally…in all my travels I’ve never seen a neighborhood like that. But if you say so…
They exist. There are lots of black middle class families out there. But the media tend to ignore them, because they aren’t useful for political purposes.
“But the media tend to ignore them, because they aren’t useful for political purposes….”
Obviously missing the definite advantages that promoting that lifestyle would accomplish in crushing existing stereotypes. A shame.
And when that middle class starts acting like the typical middle or upper middle class folks, and aspiring for more from their life, they are accused of…acting white. The black leadership has a mind virus that is incurable and steeped in victimization. It will take at least a generation or two to eradicate it.
You’ve probably seen many such neighborhoods. You just didn’t notice them because they weren’t authentic.
Enclave is right. Even in PG County, this neighborhood must be a small percentage of the whole. And you can bet the ranch that, if you drive through the same neighborhood 20 years from now, it’ll be a sub-urban jungle. In that sci-fi movie starring Michael Rennie, and Gort, the robot, (“Earth vs the Flying Saucers”?), when I watch it now, space ships and ray guns are nothing, but a white kid running around downtown DC at night? Man, that’s too fantastic to believe!!!!
The movie in question was The Day the Earth Stood Still. A true sci-fi classic. Don’t bother with the Keanu Reeves remake of a few years ago.
Memorize that famous phrase: “Klaatu barada nickto.” It could save your life someday!
There’s an aspect of this that goes beyond culture and back to race.
If you are a black troublemaker, decent blacks may resent you for degrading the image of all blacks, and wish that you would stay well away, but if you are criticized, even mildly, by whites, those decent blacks will immediately “circle the wagons” around you. Blacks, overwhelmingly, will tolerate no criticism of a black by a white, the merits of the thing notwithstanding. Indeed, they’ll even defend black troublemakers from intelligent, sincere black critics (cf. Thomas Sowell), if they think the criticism might somehow rebound to the disadvantage of their race.
Which is really the meat of the Zimmerman / Martin contretemps.
I love Sowell because, even when he talks about race, he does it in a common sense, Aesop’s Fables way that provides context beyond merely race, but to reason.
“Anyone who has watched football over the years has probably seen at least a hundred black players score touchdowns– and not one black player kicks the extra point. Is this because of some twisted racist who doesn’t mind black players scoring touchdowns but hates to see them kicking the extra points?”
That’s not racialism, but the mind of someone divorced from such considerations, indifferent to it.
From Isaac Asimov, in the book “Asimov Laughs Again”:
While mowing his lawn in such a DC neighborhood (perhaps the very same one?), supreme court justice Thurgood Marshall was once asked by a white passer-by, probably looking for a helping hand in his own lawn, how much “the lady of the house” pays him to do this work.
“Wa’ll, massa” — said Marshall — “she no pay me money, but she lets me sleep wid ‘er somathimes”.
Correct.
A Black (or white or yellow or…) man dressed conservatively, acting respectfully raises no alarm or prejudice. The same individual dressed with jeans hanging down to his knees, hoodied, hip hop leaking out his ear buds just naturally raises a flag.
Embrace of the counter culture is subversive by design. The sad thing is that those most subverted by it are its practitioners.
Well said.
Often race has less to do with how the public treats you than how you present yourself to the world. A doctor or lawyer will be treated differently by the public if he or she trades the appropriate job uniform for biker gear. If you dress like a thug, people will treat you like a thug. If your kids have snotty noses people will think you are a bad parent. You might be treated like a cougar if you are a middle aged woman wearing teenager cloths. A man will be treated better if he chooses to wear a thrift store suit instead of an expensive designer ball cap worn sideways. If the outside of your house is trashed people will assume the inside is trashed. Maybe we judge too much or maybe we just read the sign people display. People treat me differently depending on the uniform I wear be it biker, businessman or farmer.
Things can be said about blacks that are true but the same is true for whites in the US. In all fairness we need to look at things that are predominately done by us white people also.
1.) Pedophiles are almost always white males (also include all the white female teachers as of late having sexual relations with their students)
2.) Serial killers, again, are mostly white
3.) Mass murderers most often white (the guy that blew up the government building in OK was white)
The list could go on but the point is let us not become hypocrites in this process.
True, but there is a difference. “White culture” doesn’t glorify pedophiles, serial killers, or mass murderers. White teenagers do not take serial killers as their role models. They don’t listen to songs about pedophiles or think it’s cool to dress, speak, and behave like mass murderers. True, there are white people who become obsessed with these criminals. But as far as I know, we don’t have an industry dedicated to worshiping them and their dysfunctional lifestyles. The news media and TV and movie producers don’t depict them as somehow typical of white people – they’re shown as horrible aberrations. When kids want to act cool, they act like ghetto thugs, not like Hannibal Lecter.
I’d like to see some statistics proving that white pedophiles, serial killers, and mass murderers commit as many crimes as black criminals of all sorts. Otherwise, your point is a little off.
I never thought about it, but we do glorify serial killers. We read books about them and watch movies about them. Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy conducted themselves like celebrities. They gave their opinions to journalists. (White) women by the hundreds asked to marry them.
The Hollywood Left’s depraved Dexter, glorifies serial killers.
I know what you mean. There are plenty of examples. Bonnie & Clyde, Hannibal Lecter, the freaks from Natural Born Killers, and of course Dexter. I think NBC depicts exactly the phenomenon we’re talking about – making media celebrities out of mass murderers. I’m not sure if it’s a satire or an attempt to make killers look cool. Dexter comes the closest to actual acceptance of serial killing – he is the “hero” of his TV show.
I would still say, though, that there’s a difference in that nobody takes the depiction of killers in these shows seriously. We know serial killing is wrong and nobody in the real world acts like this. We certainly don’t want to emulate any of these characters. The shows don’t imply that if we dress and act like them, we’ll be cool or tough or rebellious. There’s no promise of fame and fortune if we adopt their lifestyle and/or write little songs about it. And certainly no one identifies these people as exemplars of “white culture.” We have not embraced them as symbols of ourselves. No academics, that I know of, have written of them as unique expressions of “whiteness.” They’re exceptions – interesting ones to some people, but exceptions nevertheless.
Maybe you never thought about much. I don’t think white culture “glorifies” serial killers. Many have a morbid fascination with them, and most sane people have at least some interest in how another human being becomes so depraved, but white boys don’t want to be Ted Bundy or Gacy when they grow up.
And anybody who’s ever been around prisons knows that there is always a gaggle of silly, stupid women throwing themselves at inmates and to those strange creatures, the more depraved the inmate, the more attractive he is. I think it is the common “I can change him” thing gone wild.
Right – that was my point. There has always been a “true crime” industry. It goes back at least to the Newgate Calendar publications of the 18th/19th centuries. As Art said, people have a morbid fascination with crime, law enforcement, and punishment. That’s not the same as glorifying criminals.
Sure, hundreds of books have been published about serial killers. However, I’d say most of them don’t depict the killers as heroes, people to be admired and emulated. The ones I’ve read have been about a) the mystery of how an ordinary human being turns into a homicidal freak and b) the ingenious, persistent, sometimes heroic policemen who catch the homicidal freak and put him in jail.
Of course, there have been hero criminals – like Robin Hood and (in some circles) Jesse James. Lots of books and movies about them, lots of fans, lots of money changing hands. I believe this is how the hip-hop/gangsta culture tries to depict its thugs: as heroes, or at least rebels against oppression. The attitude, the gang- and prison-inspired clothes, the bling, the appropriation of the n-word, even the crime – it’s all supposed to be about getting in the Man’s face with your Blackness, outraging him, being as different from him and the way he wants you to be as possible. Yo.
The question is, why is it mostly other black people that these “heroes” and “rebels” victimize? They don’t rob from the rich – they rob from the poor. They don’t give to the poor – they invest in bitches, bling, drugs, alcohol, and rides, and they boast about it.
Never mind the bizarre women who worship serial killers and other prisoners. They are statistically insignificant. Nobody depicts their obsession as typical of “white culture.” Teenaged white girls don’t normally want to grow up to be serial killer groupies. And even if they did, the desire to “reform” a serial killer – strange and naive though it is – is better than the desire to bust a cap in some n***a’s ass.
They may not want to be Ted Bundy, but they _do_ want to be Charles Manson.
There is a huge difference between a curiosity-laden, side-show sort of fascination with the demented & the glorification of such accompanied by an internalization of said demented values. Facets of the black community is fettered by complete, unadulterated, unabashed cultural rot. I cannot imagine just what it is going to take to turn it all around. They need to start by bringing the welfare state to a crashing halt. Make these losers work for a living doing something (there really is always work to be done).
…
isare….Although, that left-wing nutjob (but I repeat myself) that tried to blow up the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring MD a year ago was of Asian descent.
You can’t be suggesting that if a black person blew up a building killing hundreds
of innocents, was caught being a child molester/pedophile that the black community
would somehow “glorify” them? Nope. But we do glorify Bonnie and Clyde, the Mafia
Culture (Godfather), etc. Just don’t be hypocrites as you delegitimize your positions that way and that doesn’t help anyone especially not our country.
The difference being that white people – as a culture – do not celebrate that filth. As a rule, we want them caught and put away forever, if not dead.
You realize that blacks are a significant minority population, right? All things being equal, you would expect non-blacks (usually whites) to make up most of the categories you identified, just by statistical measures alone. Try again.
Mostly is unsurprising; most Americans are white. Disproportionate numbers to percentage of population would be the most interesting question.
And yes, there have been a number of non-white mass murderers over the years: the PSA employee who smuggled a handgun aboard a PSA flight in the 1980s, murderered the VP of PSA that had just fired him (and with good reason), and then killed the flight crew, taking an airliner down, with the loss of everyone aboard. The Virginia Tech killer; at least one mass murderer a few years back in western Massachusetts who was that most remarkable of characters: a Korean-American neo-Nazi.
I’m skeptical that pedophiles are disproportionately white. The media ignore child sexual abuse; it has long been known to be an even bigger problem in black inner cities than it is the suburbs, and it’s a big problem even there.
Almost 100% of the immagrant population seems to have no problem raping children. Whether from Africa, the ME or south of the border, the men almost always view raping children as just something to do on a boring afternoon.
Evidence to back up this remarkable claim?
While I won’t go so far as to say ‘most,’ it has become depressingly commonplace in the West to hear about Latinos abducting or abusing children, and more often girls than boys. It’s always important to remember that what you hear on the news is always the exception to the rule–otherwise it wouldn’t be news. But it certainly does give rise to impressions that may be completely false.
But we don’t pretend otherwise, and we especially don’t say blacks are in fact doing it and finally, we don’t blame non-whites.
“There is only one way to fix this problem of racial prejudice — and that is to reduce black crime rates to a level commensurate with the black population.”
You think it’s about personal responsibility and accountability but it’s really all about the Benjamins. The status quo is extraordinarily profitable for the black “leaders”. They’ve shown zero indication that they’re willing to abandon the wholesale slaughter of “their people” if it puts the gravy train at risk. The black “leaders” are leftists first, second and third which means “their people” are really other leftists and not Black America as they pretend. The fruits of leftism are murder, mayhem, economic deprivation and slavery to the State, and that’s exactly what you see when you look at Black America. And, that’s why Trayvon Martin is so important – the slaves must be constantly roiled lest they realize who’s actually holding their shackles.
There’s nothing that the country can do because you can’t help people who are intent on destroying themselves.
“There’s nothing that the country can do because you can’t help people who are intent on destroying themselves.”
Money quote!
All we can hope to do is limit the damage they do to white Americans and America. If we took away their support from white progs that would help. But short of sequestering them in their cities or dividing America, I wish I knew how to protect America from them.
Mr. Fleming: You have said something that certainly needs saying. (Of course, had you said it on NRO, Mr. Lowry would have fired you.) The comments here have also been enlightening; thank you commenters. After reading Charles Murray’s Coming Apart, I can say we see whites falling into the same habits as the black community. (That would be detachment from the labor force, single parent (mother) homes, and other dysfunctions.) One of the things Murray pointed out was the detachment from religion, i.e., Christianity. IMHO the earlier attachment to religion kept people on the straight and narrow. There was a higher authority watching you and there was a system of ethics in place to guide you. Being poor was not an excuse for being a criminal.
I think that if the so-called reverends (e.g., Jesse Jackson) would start to preach to their flock about the ills accompanying single-parent homes, about the ills of being poorly educated, about the ills of being a criminal, we might see some progress. They also need to inculcate their flocks with the ethical ideals in Christianity and try to get them to live up to those ideals. But that’s hard work, and it doesn’t get you on TV. It’s easier to yell racism.
One of the things we as a society do that aids and abets the dysfunctionality in the black community (and now starting to do the same in the lower income levels of the white community) is to provide welfare. Welfare allows for single-parent homes and makes people dependent. I for one would simply cut off all welfare payments. Nothing concentrates the mind like imminent starvation.
Mr. Cramer – My sincere apologies for my error. When I clicked on the article, I saw Mr. Fleming’s name (he had the spot just above yours on the screen). To correct the error, the salutation at the beginning should say: ” Mr. Cramer: You have … “
Hey, there are far worse people to be mistaken for!
Astute observation and spot on. Poor white trash act, talk, think and behave like blacks because they, in their twisted minds, think they will get the same benefits as blacks. Or the same respect. The only outlier are white college students acting black for some unknown reason…
There’s no real self-analysis in the Black community about racism. None, sip, zero. Only assumptions, all self-justifying one and only one point of view: theirs.
This really isn’t true. I mentioned Cosby, who has made a point of the fact that the major problem holding black people back today isn’t white racism, but black attitudes. It gets little media attention, but there are many blacks who are trying to correct this glorification of criminality. I recall one of the historically black colleges had a bit of media fuss when some of the women attending made a point of criticizing something the college had done inviting some especially unpleasant rappers.
You left out James David Manning of the ATLAH network and lately Mike Carol of Mississippi.
Well, it’s certainly good that there are voices such as Cosby’s. But they’re all too far and few between. For (most of) the rest of the Black community, there’s this vast assumption that all of their ills are due to “White Society.” It’s incredibly dismaying, the lack of ownership over their own failures and dysfunction.
I suspect that there is a lot more awareness in the black community about this than the lamestream media dares let us know.
Also, Chris Rock — who tells it like it is. In effect he says: racism is real; but I’m not buying the “it’s racism” excuse for criminals and bad behavior. See for example his “How not to get your ass kicked”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8 .
There’s plenty of self-examination. And most of the black people I know (working people and older folks, working or not) do not appreciate thug culture. My impression is that they just don’t know what to do about it.
How many parents in the 50s and 60s thought rock ‘n’ roll was evil and wanted to stop it? How many succeeded? I’m not comparing rock ‘n’ roll with thug culture. I’m just saying once something *becomes* a culture – once it gets embedded in the larger culture – you can’t just make it go away. It has to evolve away somehow. Fashions have to change. There has to be an alternative.
The only people who can reduce the black crime rate effectively are black. While it was almost certainly true in the past — at least in some places — that the authorities turned a blind eye to black-on-black crime, today the biggest obstacle to the reduction of crime by blacks is the hostility many blacks feel towards the police and the solidarity they feel with other blacks, even if criminals.
Black crime rates will fall when the black community — which means individual blacks and black civic institutions beginning with black churches — refuses to tolerate criminals in their midst. That would mean cooperating with the police to catch and successfully prosecute them, it would mean shunning them in families and communities, and it would mean a certain amount of direct intervention, at least at the level of children engaged in petty theft and crime.
“On an average day in 2010, there were eighteen blacks murdered in the U.S., and sixteen of those black victims were murdered by other blacks — and yet those crimes seem to be of no real interest to the mainstream media or the race hustlers like Al Sharpton.”
That’s because the vermin like Sharpton would actually have to confront and successfully deal with the many problems within the black community, such as crime, single-family homes, a huge number of kids born out of wedlock, high school dropouts, rampant drug abuse, and teenage girls having kids. None of this is a recipe for success, yet you will never see people like Sharpton or Jesse Jackson admit it. It is so much easier for them to always play the victim, especially when you have the far-left and liberals feeding into this idea of victimization by funding it with literally billions of dollars in Federal aid. How many trillions of dollars have been spent since the creation of the “Great Society” in the mid-1960s on these problems and yet, if anything, these probelms have gotten much worse rather than better. If people continue to believe that they are helpless victims they will continue to act like helpless victims, expecting the Federal government to solve all their problems for them. As we can see with the black community, this has been a terrible failure, one that people are paying for to this day.
Vermin have feelings to so please dont lower vermin to Al’s level – Al is all about the money, he cares NOT for black america
“How many trillions of dollars have been spent since the creation of the “Great Society” in the mid-1960s on these problems and yet….”
I recently read a figure of ( drum roll please )…$15,000,000,000,000.00! That’s Trillions.
And yet after 4 generations…we still have the “poor” ( most of whom have flat screens, smart phones, plenty of food, and EBT cards…etc. ) and race relations are worse than they ever where under the Dem’s Jim Crow laws.
How many more wasted generations and money till the problem is finally “solved”?
Mr. Cramer’s article today, which is well referenced in the points it accurately makes, omits perhaps the most relevant point of all, however – that the relative rate of black-on-white crime (including violent and “hate” crimes) far exceeds the the same rate of white-on-black crime. This figure is not an absolute accounting but a rate (i.e. a percentage relative to the two population sizes) and it is starkly and egregiously out of parity relative to the two population sizes.
Readers wishing to familiarize themselves with these, and many other, federal race-based crime statistics are invited, once again, to visit Another Slow News Day’s blog page devoted to Black Violence.
http://anotherslownewsday.wordpress.com/blacks-violence/
I retired to Mexico, after Obama was elected, with a major reason being, few Blacks. Now, I’m the one who occasionally feels mistreated, but it’s still better than the alternative. Oh, also, I don’t have to grit my teeth, when some ‘raghead’ store clerk has to put on gloves, to scan a package of bacon.
Similar to the Israeli Security Fence, the question is whether a group can protect themselves and their women and chidlren from violence emanating from another group.
How is it prejudice for a white to fear blacks given the fact that young black males are the greatest danger whites face daily on the streets of America?
It’s not that whites “fear blacks” specifically, but that yes, Americans fear young black males who look scary. As Bugs pointed out above, you aren’t going to be afraid if you wander through many of the neighborhoods in Prince George’s County, Maryland. My nephews are half Black and I don’t think people are scared of them, except the Taliban of course. I think the Taliban fears my Marine nephew
After the Trayvon Martin debacle began, I started paying attention to the folks around me. My area has people from every country in the world so I began mentally adding a “hoodie” to every man I saw on the street, and very few black men looked scary except the young men who were tattooed and had gold teeth and wear their pants around their upper thighs.
Actually, the greatest risk that whites have in America is other whites. Most violent crime in America is within race.
It is true that interracial crime is more often black on white rather than white on black. But the greatest risk is still your own race.
I wonder if black thugs are less likely to victimize white people because of the perceived power imbalance. Maybe the perception is that the police, the legal system, and society “don’t care what black people do to each other” but will come down hard on any black person who commits a crime against a white person.
There’s also a comfort zone. Criminals of all races usually feel safer and more confident operating in their own neighborhoods or at least among “their own people.” Black criminals may find white victims unfamiliar and unpredictable, so they don’t go looking for them.
That’s my phoney-baloney theory, anyway…
America is still racially somewhat segregated. Blacks live mostly in black neighborhoods; whites mostly in white neighborhoods. A lot of violent and economic crime is opportunistic, and done by criminals who aren’t highly motivated workers. The go after those who don’t require much travel time.
During the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, the rioters/looters/thugs pillaged and burned their way right up to the border of Beverly Hills and then turned back. I have to think that at least part of that was because they were uncomfortable going into new unexplored turf (as well as knowing that BHills has its own extremely well-equipped police force).
So Jews have more to fear from other Jews, than from Euro Christians….and this deranged fascination with Anti-Semitic attacks is merely an expression of Anti-Euro-Christianism?
Please tell this to the hatefilled deranged Abe Foxman, pronto!
“Black murder rates are roughly 4.5x what you would expect for …”
Actually, I think this number and the other numbers are understated. Why?
Well, if you have included those blacks already in jail during a given year (and since most murders are committed by males — of any race — this has to be accounted for too)then you have lowered the actual rate of expectation rate with respect to race/population.
In other words, say blacks acount for 12% of the population. Aat roughly 50% male, 50% female, that is 6% of the population. If 20% of them are in jail at a given year, that’s 20% percent who caould not have committed a murder during that year. So, the percent out of jail is 80% of 6% = 4.8% of the poulation. Now what’s the murder rate with respect to 4.8% of the population? A lot higher.
Author: If you can update/confirm that would be great.
Thanks,
Your point about prisons is correct, but the male/female idea is not. About half of all blacks are male, but so are about half of every other racial group. If blacks are 13% of the population, then black males are about 13% of the male population.
I did not quite understand the point that you were making. If you mean that young black men are very disproportionately criminals, yes. So are young white men, although not QUITE as disproportionately. (Testosterone poisoning is a real problem.)
Just my experiences (which I guess you could call prejudices). I distrust people from large cities in general – particularly poor people. Folks from the country and suburbs, regardless of race, are generally more trustworthy.
Your fired Clayton.
The problem is a violent, dysfunctional sub-cultural and those who particate in it are the ones to change it. There are black Americans out there who have figured it out , but they are hated and treated like piriahs for wondering off the democrat plantation. The abuse they take from those “racially tolerant liberals” is revealing.
http://conservativeblackchick.com/blog/2012/04/21/possible-hhs-employee-calls-black-republican-woman-attention-whore-not-100-black/
Rich is right. Blacks who value their hard work, intelligence, and critical independence are treated as the worst of all possible people, it is as if they joined the guards in the imaginary black prison camp that blacks are told they inhabit. My oldest friend is a black conservative in Los Angeles. and I have seen firsthand the way he is treated by both white guilt socialists who expect black men to be idiots for their entertainment, and by black racists who think he has betrayed the revolution.
Rational people with no other evidence to go on will make an initial judgment based on your appearance and manner and the relative characteristics associated with such an appearance and manner. Thus if you have tattoos and a Harley jacket I expect different behavioral patterns than those of a modestly dressed young mother walking with her child. We have to make snap judgments to chart our path in the world. I am much more apt to be cautions around a Pit Bull than a Pekinese. It may turn out that the Pekinese has a thoroughly nasty disposition and the Pit Bull is gentle as a lamb. But my initial reaction is rational. Thus being wary when, as a black or white, I find myself walking toward a group of tough looking black teenagers as opposed to a group of young Mennonites, is rational. Making time-critical snap judgments on the basis of what you have to go on, however precious little it may be, is prudence not prejudice. Being unwilling to change your perception in the face of additional evidence is prejudice. The word ‘prejudice’ is being misused in most of the discussion above. Being cautious is not thereby being prejudiced. Being unwilling to dissociate attributes on the basis of appearance and class membership in face of evidence to the contrary is prejudice. It is also prudent to suspend judgment if one is in the position to do so. In the absence of evidence to the contrary and where one does not have the luxury to suspend judgment it is prudent to act on the evidence one has or thinks one has and adjust one’s position as further evidence accumulates.
The blurb for this on the splash page of PJ reads:”Are sky-high black crime rates responsible for prejudice in America?”
Perhaps the question that ought to be asked is: “Is prejudice responsible for sky-high black crime rates in America?”
Yes, black prejudice against education, hard work, responsibility & accountability; all activities associated with “acting white.”
If prejudice causes the sky-high crime rates, why are most of the victims also blacks?
If prejudice causes the disproportionate crime rates, then this disproportion should have dropped substantially since the 1950s, shouldn’t it?
B-I-N-G-O, Cramer!
If I go into a bookstore to buy a book, or a library to borrow one, I cannot take time to read every book to find the one I’d like to take home. I must judge the book by its cover. I look at the cover blurb and art, and decide if it’s in the catagories that I like to read; I look at the author and see if he/she is one I’ve read before and trust; I might even read a few pages to see if I like the style.
If I see a person approaching on the street, or on a bus, I know nothing about that person but what I can tell by their clothing, personal style, and demeanor. I have perhaps 15 seconds to make a threat/no-threat assessment and take appropriate action: sit somewhere else, move away, continue on my path. Consider the implications of being wrong. If the other person is, in fact, a good person and not a threat, but I mistakenly treat him as one, the worst that happens is that I inadvertently insult him. If he is, in fact a threat, I may have just saved by own life.
Humans do risk/reward calculations like this automatically and continuously. This is why parents tell their children to dress properly and act politely; I don’t know of anyone that has been mugged by a guy in a shirt and tie. It could happen, but not likely.
Life is all about probabilities and risks. “Prejudice” is actually a necessary part of human existence, given that we cannot read minds nor see into a person’s true heart. We assess threats based on current and historical situations: who was the threat yesterday, who threatened my friends last week. Quite frankly, a young black man dressed up in a hoodie and baggy pants (and, to make matters worse, a “do” rag) is setting himself up for the evil eye. He may be the most innocent person in the world, but too many muggers, rapists, and 7-11 thieves look just like that for any sane person to take the risk. (BTW, that’s not to say that I would automatically trust a white dude with a “wife-beater” t-shirt, motorcycle boots, and a mohawk either).
As long as there is peer pressure applied to young blacks, who try to apply themselves, in the form of the phrase “Acting White”, and as long as that phrase is applied as derogetory, there will be NO progress.
These comments are examples of how the country is changing. People are finally beginning to tell the truth that could not be said ever since the 60′s. White guilt is over, and it took tough times and a clearly racist and anti-white President to end it. Uburoisc’s last paragraph nailed it.
Remember P.J. O’Rourke’s liberal-damning, absolutely spot-on axiom: “Political correctness is obligatory dishonesty.”
I think another aspect of general leeriness toward American Blacks is a result of the widely publicized pronouncements of self-appointed spokesmen. American Black ‘leaders’ have slandered and attacked just about every other race living in the US. Once you’ve been officially and publicly vilified you tend to keep your distance. All of the other races and cultures in the country seem to get along relatively well with each other.
When you see a black man you don’t know in the street at night, are you afraid he might be a criminal? Sure you are. But wait. When you see a black man you don’t know in the street at night, BUT he is wearing a policeman’s uniform, or a doctor’s jacket, or a MTA’s vest, or a suit, or anything that identifies him as someone who is emloyed in a legitimate way, are you afraid then? No!
Blacks are treated as potential criminals by strangers — but only until there is something that identifies them as not criminal. The reason? Not that people think all Blacks are criminal, but that THEY CANNOT TELL if they are criminals or they are part of the subset of urban black youths which DO have a much, much higher chance of being criminals than other groups, black or white.
It is this group of young black criminals that is ruining it for other blacks, not just as their victims, but by branding them as potential criminals.
Exactamundo, Skeptic. Also, the hoodies don’t help.
Are there well dressed criminals? Yes. Ponzi schemers don’t rape or mug you though, they will take you for every damned penny you have but you at least have your life in tact to regain it all back hopefully in a court of law.
The scary thing about young, black thugs is that they have no appreciation for life…yours or theirs.
The author, to make my point clearer, is wrong about the cause of the prejudice. sure, the overall black crime rate is about 4X that of whites. But that’s not because of black middle-class folks or for that matter employed, working black people. Their crime rate is about the same as that of other law-abiding citizens. The overall black crime rate is so high because it is a lot HIGHER — perhaps 30X or more — in that sub-group of blacks, unemployed young men from the ghetto. People don’t follow black kids around in a store because they think black middle-class kids from the suburbs are criminals, but they CANNOT TELL if he IS a middle-class suburb kid or a ghetto thug.
Yup. Some years back, I worked with a black guy who had grown up in Chicago. He was very middle class, but he could sense that there was something very different about the ghetto young men who he saw in most urban areas. I pointed out to him that the absence of fathers is one of the strongest determinants of the likelihood of gang involvement–and it explained a lot to him.
Let’s not kid ourselves about a few things: black-on-white crime is disproportionately high, too, especially in the areas of violent crime. Not to make too much of an anecdote, but I’ve only been robbed at gunpoint one time in my life, and that was at the hands of a young black man. I suspect that if the stats on black-on-white crime came out, there’d be political hell to pay.
Another fact: Many blacks echo Jesse Jackson’s lament. A close black friend, a writer and editor, was ripped off repeatedly by other “respectable” blacks, including the NAACP (which owed him money for a piece he’d written). At one point he let out his frustration in an email to me: “Ain’t working for no ‘N-word’ no more!” I know how hard that was for him; he’d been to Africa on a “roots” trip back in the ’70s and always looked out for the best interests of “the race.” (Including raising two good sons in a traditional marriage.) But he was very tired of being victimized repeatedly by his own people.
Also, are positive stereotypes really bad in any way? Who, for instance, really objects to having his/her group characterized as “smarter than the average bear”? There’s no way to eliminate prejudicie — it’s a survival factor that’s wired into our DNA. The trick is to compensate for it mentally. One of the ways we do this is to identify based on external signals like uniforms of police, transit workers, etc. As someone commented above, we’re not likely to be afraid when we see a young black man at night — IF he’s in a policeman’s uniform. Or if he’s part of a mixed-race, resepectable-looking group such as office workers out for a lark.
Statistics on crime and race are readily available from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Victimization Surveys.
Yes, positive stereotypes really are bad (although perhaps not as bad). If an employer imagines that all Jews are clever, or all Asians are technical wizards, then he is more likely to hire a Jew or an Asian, instead of an actually more qualified person from a group that does not have that positive stereotype.
Learn to see people as individuals. Prejudice is just class warfare without a college degree.
Not nearly as bad, as you well know. Probably not bad at all, given that the situation of stereotyping someone into a better job than they deserve at someone else’s expense is probably pretty rare if not totally imaginary. That kind of hiring is more likely to be done by relatives than landsmen. If negative stereotypes hold some weight because they’re based at least to some extent on facts, so do positive ones.
How many Lithuanians would get offended if some stereotypist came out with the statement: “Lithuanians are not only smart but trustworthy and brave?”
I doubt that they would be offended, but if I were applying for a job that required those skills, I would be pretty irritated at the unfair presumption of Lithuanian advantage.
I’m Lithuanian and I am not offended. Yet
Positive stereotypes are bad because it’s just as stupid to ask and man to stand in a ditch because of his race as a pedestal. It’s engaging in a racialist language that’s a double edged sword when used with race.
Once it’s established I can say something good about someone by race, the way is now open to do the opposite – the likelihood it will be exactly equal to every other race is zilch. This is something the black community and their DNA triumph of creating jazz have never understood.
Over the last thirty years the most outstanding, and noticeable, feature of “black urban culture” is it’s emphasis on intimidation. The big clothes, the hoodies, the untied shoes and the tats are intended to present the wearer in the most menacing way possible. (A great deal of this borrowed from prison lore.) The visual effect is to increase the psychological size of the subject. Combine this with the stone-face and wide sweeping gestures which are part of the urban greeting ritual and you have an individual who is both intimidating and “in control” of a large chunk of psychological space.
My question is this. How can anyone be blamed for taking the individual exhibiting these characteristices “at his word” and feeling fearful? After all that is the intent that the entire presentation is going for. People on the street do not engage in far-ranging policy debates with themselves when they encounter such an individual. They instinctively seek their own safety and will automatically reason, “This guy looks dangerous and I am going to protect myself.” I feel the same way when I see a group of white kids accoutered in hoodies, big pants, etc. (Although they often also simply look ridiculous.)
I’m surprised that “Intimidation Factors and the Young Urban Personality” has not been the subject of more study.
Bingo! Your first paragraph is dead-on. Anyone who rides the DC Metro after school lets out will recognize the behaviors you describe.
I am a young white woman with blond hair and blue eyes. As a white person living in Toronto, I am now a visible minority. I can attest to overt racism directed at me based on my outward appearance. Mainly by black and brown women. The hatred towards me comes out both verbally and physically. Non-white women go out of their way to block me on the sidewalks when we pass. I catch them staring at me on the bus. Pushing in front of me at the stores. They are total strangers, yet their racist bigotry towards me is palpable.
There is an even more subtle problem with blacks, or, more specifically, with the use of the term “black” to describe a racial group. When you control people’s use of language, you control their thoughts. This is the essence of politically correct speech.
For the past sixty years, the Left and the black community have attempted to move away from the label “Negro” or “colored” to “African-American”, “black”, etc. In an especially odd twist of linguistic contortion one is now branded a racist if one calls a black person “colored”, but enlightened if one refers to black people as “people of color”. Go figure.
The specific problem with “black” is that the English language often equates black with evil and death. In the old cowboy western movies wearing a black hat was always the emblem or badge of the bad guy. In Shakespearean plays, the most evil characters such as Richard III and Macbeth are often clothed in black. Witches practiced the black arts. Finally, a bad guy is known as a blackguard.
So, in addition to whatever factors affect one’s prejudices, such as crime statistics and life experience, the label “black” has been ill advised for the African-American community.
The essence of Political Correctness is the belief changing language changes attitudes. Hence: replacing a term of oppression “Negro” with “black” and “homosexual” with “gay.” But having heard my children’s generation use, “That’s so gay” to refer to something that is stupid or silly, I am inclined to think that it doesn’t work. And that’s the point of Ayn Rand’s Anthem, and Orwell’s 1984: you can eliminate words, but the universals that underlay those words still exist.
Black often has equated with evil and death–but often with style and sleekness. I had a 1978 Camaro Z-28, black. And I don’t think anyone equated it with evil and death!
“Black often has equated with evil and death–but often with style and sleekness. I had a 1978 Camaro Z-28, black. And I don’t think anyone equated it with evil and death!”
Sir, I can only assume you’ve never met Ralph Nader, or attended a meeting of Greenpeace or the Sierra Club.
cheers
eon
Couldn’t black people work to discourage this sort of prejudice by trying to crack the skulls of white people who profile them as being dangerous?
Apparently such roaming re-orientation committees have been engaged in this for some time.
The market value of Black racism is this: Louis Farrakhan lives in a mansion bigger than Oprahs in Obama’s neighborhood, and is a frequent guest at the White House.
David Duke lives in a trailer in Mississippi.
That is all.
there is a reason that stereotypes work, and that profiling works, because it is based on what is happening in the real world, and the world of academe and politicians.
I see a black man in suit and tie, I think differently about him than if I see a person in jeans with butt showing and dressed in a hoodie, on a hot day.
Even the Rev. Jesse Jackson has commented on this.
And if blacks are going to start with the racial quotas, then they better be honest and fair and balanced and complain about the unequal and out of proportion to race are the numbers of athletes playing basketball or football.
But with race hustlers they don’t dare say that, because then they can’t be victims. But look at athletics, noone worries about color, but performance, and color evidently doesn’t matter because the best are chosen.
You note: “Most guys have at one time or another have approached a strange woman in an isolated place, and seen the fear. We feel terribly ill-treated because it is apparent what she is thinking: ‘A man I don’t know is a rapist — or at least, there is a good chance of it.’
What causes prejudices like these?”
You’ve juxtaposed unrelated issues.
Any woman who reacts with fear when approached in an isolated place by a strange man is conducting a rational threat assessment. That’s smart, not prejudiced.
Unfortunately, they are the same. In both cases, a person sees a member of a group that they know is disproportionately involved in a particular category of crime. The vast majority of members of that group are NOT criminals. But the disproportion is real, and a victim’s fear is rational threat analysis, in both cases. If, as is usually the case, the victim’s fear is wrong, working off that fear reduces risk of injury, and there is no down side for the potential victim. If the victim’s fear is rightly based (as it might be about 0.1% of the time), failure to operate on that prejudice is going to be very serious indeed.
It is a bit like saying “If Jews just stopped controlling the banks and media antisemitism would go away”
You cant argue with numbers. However I would caution that to make any sense in this argument you need to control for all of the other variables which might affect the crime rate and then compare blacks with whites or latinos in the same demographic. That would include factors such as income, education, neighborhood, family, etc.
But we are taking about perception here, not statistical reality. This is essentially a marketing concept. So all blacks need to do is call up their advertising department and be more like Cosby to get everyone to like them more.
There is a certain amount of racism which seems inherent in people. Waves may come and go but a core always seems to be there.
I am Jewish. There is hardly any prejudice more over analyzed and over discussed than antisemitism. I have a degree in Judaic studies and have otherwise spent a lifetime trying to understand it. I have experienced many outright antisemitic incidents myself, generally coming from people who did not know my background. After all of that I give up. Better to deal with things because there is no simple answer.
A little while back my son was pulled over by the police for “driving while white” in a high crime black neighborhood. He was really pulled over because he stood out and the cops are thinking “what is that white kid doing here”? I am worried about him now because he is obsessed with his favorite TV show Sons of Anarchy about a criminal white biker gang and has started to emulate some of that culture although it doesnt fit him well.
This is a complicated subject and there is no simple solution. Still things have gotten much better in my lifetime and that is a good thing.
Control for all the other variables, and the differences greatly reduce–perhaps entirely disappear (although it’s hard to gather all the variables meaningfully, including the problems of colinearity). But if you run into someone after dark in a big city, there’s no thought balloon above his head that says, “Grew up in a stable family; no history of drug abuse; no arrests.” All you can see is color and clothing style. Those turn out to be sufficiently useful proxies for the other variables that people operate on them. Unfair? Very. But the risks of ignoring these unfair proxies are high.
Concerning your Sons of Anarchy fixation: I’m sorry. Raising teenagers in a society where destructive subcultures get this kind of semiglorification is very difficult. (Somehow, my daughter survived growing up in the Bay Area.)
Tell that to Toronto Girl or the native women in Oslo.
Your better is snother’s worse.
Imagine Palestinian Muslims granted teh Right of Return and a one state solution to solve the I/P conflict. The Muslim in 20 years says, things are better now, for the Jews of Israel, not so much.
Re: Clayton E. Cramer
Attending a “black tie” affair would be another example of sleek and stylish rather than evil and morbid.
The late historian Winthrop D. Jordan argued that the equation of blackness with evil and corruption in English, and the relatively late intercourse of English culture and Africans, played a part in creating a very negative view of Africans. It certainly isn’t a silly claim, but I would argue that there are simpler explanations, tied to the problem of black slavery and its involvement in the settling of the English colonies in the late seventeenth century.
In English? You mean horror movies in Africa have people scared of the day, and 3 Am in a lonely old house has a soccer stadium kind of everybody’s here, nothing can happen kind of tone?
The only peaceful solution to this dilemma is separation. Sixteen percent of American Blacks have an IQ of 100 or above. The Black average IQ is 80 – 83. The Black average is not going to be compatible in an information tech based civilization. The only way that the majority of Blacks are going to able to procure the goods and positions that they desire is through theft or charity.
Blacks need to fulfill their destinies in a culture that they create and rule. They need to be able to enforce their cultural standards without interference.
As long as Blacks live and compete in a White western civilization, the result will be failure, frustration and violence.
There’s a reason that Abraham Lincoln abandoned such a plan early in his first term: there were not enough ships, even if you could persuade Americans (white and black) to accept it.
Another finger-wagging, typically shallow sociological dissection of race prejudice: we too often presume black individuals are criminals because of all of the crime thay they do as a group.
We, duh. This guy is the predictable product of a school system in America that has utterly failed in science education. Here is a short course in biology: Criminal=Predator and Victim=Prey. Every predator everywhwere must be expert in exploiting the most vulnerable prey, harvesting the most resources with the least risk and so criminals attack the old, the blind, the lame, the lone prey. To survive, all prey must be expert in using shorthand in sorting out irrelevant cues from the relevant. A gaggle of giggling girls dancing in broad dayling in a crowded public park is not the same as a group of young black males in hoodies approaching on the wrong side of town in the dark. Prey must make flash judgements or end up the ultimate statistic: just another pile of fresh predator crap on the ground to be cleaned up and forgotten. Justice and morals have never had anything at all to do with it.
Frankly, Toronto Girl, they hate you and other attractive white females because so many black males choose white over black, sad as that is.
It is truly a pitiful situation for everyone involved, and a prime factor in the demise of the black family, though rarely acknowledged.
I’ve shared this story once before but perhaps it bears repeating within the context of this Author’s post.
A. I grew up with many non-white friends from all kinds of background. One thing we all had in common was that we grew up poor but we all wanted to ‘escape’ our poverty and make something of our lives. THIS is how I believed all minorities thought.
B. I NEVER had a bad experience with a black person growing up. I considered blacks my equals. ALWAYS.
Flash forward into my young adult years and I realized I was so brain-washed into OVER-thinking that black people were all friendly and innocent and good (more than your average stranger of any other color) that I opened my door and allowed two HUGE young black men into my home to ‘sell me magazines’. As I sat them at my kitchen table I realized I had totally gone against my natural instincts to not allow ANY strange man in my home (no matter the color), but that is how INGRAINED I was about believing black people to be all goodness and light and brotherly love. Just naive. Embarrassingly so. Luckily, they only ripped me off for a magazine subscription I never received but I think back to that day often and wonder if GOD FORBID it would have turned out horrifically, perhaps me being raped and murdered and them going after my little daughter upstairs and raping and murdering her too.
This kind of thing goes on in Africa all of the time in majority black areas.
MAJORITY black countries have some of the highest STDs, Violent Crime rates, Rape rates.
Cont…
I guess what I’m trying to say is, many of us white people have bent over backwards to make black people feel ‘accepted’ to the point of even putting ourselves in harm’s way, by shutting off our natural instinct to protect ourselves and this has to end.
White people and other non-black people have every right to tread carefully and carry a big stick (or a locked and loaded gun) when encountering, large, intimidating black youths (especially when they are in group formation).
Amen to that Delia.
As all major street gangs and prison gangs are organized by race, uniform, and other accoutrements it is possible to identify dangers based — in part, but only in part — on race. Using race by itself is idiotic.
Recently down here, Central Florida, the feds popped a bunch of paramilitary rednecks who all had shaved heads and racist tats. They make it easy if you know what to look for. Just like Folks or the Crips, they have a look.
Even if you are not the least bit interested in this for your own protection — though everyone should be — you should make sure your child doesn’t accidentally dress like a gang-banger and go to the wrong place.
Using race by itself is idiotic?
Just like saying that more men commit crimes than women is a statistical…unfortunate reality?
I wish someone would do a study on the genetic effects of a population self-selecting for ignorance and violence over a period of 250 years, to see if the end result in today’s society is demonstrably different from everyone else. I don’t see how behavior can be changed if it’s programmed into the bearer genetically. And I really don’t see how someone with genes pre-programmed towards violence and antipathy towards education can ever be expected to fit into a society based upon a work ethic, equality, learned job skills, and peace.
—Aaaand this is the 400 pound gorilla in the room.
*crickets*
Oh, genetic determinism is indeed the gorilla in the room, but not for the reasons you think it is.
Please expound.
Cramer, regarding your Asian ‘bad maths’ story, I figure you will get a kick out of this:
MadTV – Average Asian
And nobody here has said a word about the white progressives who have made black dysfunction and violence possible. Black dysfunction would not be possible were it not for white progs paving the road for them. Black violence would not be defended were it not for white progs-for instance in Norfolk, VA with the recent muggings of two white reporters….
No we must not overlook the white progs when it comes to discussing the reasons why blacks have devolved into a largely uncivilized, anti-American sub group. I refuse to believe that any black pol like Maxine or John Lewis, or any fuax intellectual like Michael Dyson, Cornell West, or Mark Lamont Hill can say anything before checking in with their white prog handler.
What about the black dysfunction in other countries where blacks are the majority?
Old Soldier, I’d agree with your concern about people from big cities, but don’t kid yourself that country living is always safe. Drug dealers and addicts who live in the woods or on picturesque farms their families have owned for centuries can get just as stupid, mean and desperate as those who’ve never been out of the Bronx.
A social worker told me a story today of a client who was whining in group about how he is discriminated against by employers because he is Hispanic. Another social worker in this group therapy session asked if the tattoo he recently had done across his forehead (full height) of his gang affiliation might also be a factor in this discrimination.
OMG. LMAO. Un-freaking-believable!
That’s another “indicator” that people look at, like it or not, and it has nothing to do with ethnicity.
A guy I knew years ago (think late Seventies) was blond, blue-eyed, and a Vietnam veteran (mortarman, two tours with the Americal Division). He once complained to me that he was always getting the eye from cops, many of whom were veterans too.
I gently observed that they probably didn’t have long ponytails, scraggly beards, and biker tattoos (notably from the Road Saints) from the wrist to the biceps up each arm. And that always wearing a black “wife-beater” T-shirt to show them off probably didn’t help, either.
He was a heck of a nice guy, if you didn’t cross him. But he was also a bit on the clueless side.
I freely admit that when I see someone with more tattoos than “clear” skin showing, I give them the once-over on general principles. Goths i tend to classify as too “emo” to be much of a problem, unless it’s a young, fit guy with a mohawk along with it.
Obvious bike-gang tats on a guy bigger than myself, that’s another story. (And for the record, I’m not small.)
cheers
eon
I learned prejudice while in the USMC. Gangs of black Marines were roaming around and beating on one white Marine when they would find one alone. And had to attend racial sensitivity training (Watermelon U.) to be called racist and cracker. Just got back from Philadelphia and was informed by a bus driver, who was black, to stay out of certain areas of Philly because I was white. I look at most blacks now as criminals who would beat me just for fun, except for the bus driver. He was very congenial and sincere. He told me he had been robbed numerous times by his own kind and was lucky to be alive.
About the fact that blacks commit most inter-racial crimes: that’s expected by sheer chance. Blacks are a minority. Suppose 20% of the population is black, 20% is criminal, and criminals are randomly divided by race and chose their victims randomly too.
You’d expect, out of every 100 crimes:
20 crimes by blacks: of which 4 (20% of 20) are against other blacks, and 16 against other whites.
80 crimes by whites — but of which only 16 (20% of 80) are against blacks, and 64 against whites.
So, you’ll get blacks, @ 20% of the population, committing a whole 50% of inter-racial crime — sheerly by chance.
Not convinced?
Suppose there are only five black guys and a billion white ones in the country. You’d expect one black criminal — whose victim is virtually certain to be white; while the 20% of white criminals are very likely to find no black victims at all. So FIVE black guys in the entire country the size of China, and they commit ALL inter-racial crime! Shocking, but just due to pure chance.
Things in real life are more complicated than this sketch, but nevertheless it shows how junk statistics, repeated from one mathematical ignoramous to another, become “shocking facts” that “prove” whatever thesis one wants.
I admit to some prejudice which, I feel i learned ‘fair and square’ by living in northern Virginia, teaching in public schools, and volunteering in my reirement at a homeless shelter. I could observe the smoke of Washington burning from my front steps, saw people who had been deprived of the alligator shoes “all men had”, looting expenxive shoes. None of he tutorees I was preparing for the GED ever took the test and I did that for four years. Not one of those deprived people ever showed up to take the GED test which, presumably would have given them a leg up in the job process. That caused prejudice against a particular minority as well as prejudice about some mental illnesses. The fact that the clients in the shelter allowed elderly and often infirm white volunteers to carry in all supplies while they played games on donated computers did not improve the prejudice factor.
I have no ‘white guilt’ but I am developing great antipathy toward a certin type of person.