It
is very important, in a Democratic society, to question the status quo
and to review the value systems that govern the fabric of our function as
a free and righteous people.
Americans are accustomed to doing this with
a regularity and a passion that is certainly commendable.
The
problem - and this is a very big problem - is that our attitude and methodology
with regard to self-criticism as a people, has become a parody. We are becoming a country of people
that criticizes for the sake of criticizing and self loathes and self agonizes
in order to cater to our individual as well as collective senses of inequality,
false "open mindedness", easily bruised notion of
"fairness", or the often-mentioned “justice”.
In
this process, the national psyche has become one of intense hypersensitivity
on particular button issues with apathy and ignorance for other
cases that stand clearly in the face of reason. We are becoming a culture
of people who pass blanket judgment in very complex, multi-variable
situations while glossing over and ignoring stark and obvious ones. We have become so concerned with the
ideals of "JUSTICE" in certain
cases when the media, Hollywood and tried and true politicians inflame
our Constitutional sensibilities, but completely look the other way when
justice is truly failing us _ repeatedly.
We are not a nation of thinkers and doers. We are a nation of reactors, responding to what we are being
fed based on what we have been preprogrammed to say, think and even feel. We are drawing parallels where there
are no parallels, becoming enraged by misinformation that we don't dare scratch
the surface of. Common sense is
done. We deal in hyperbole,
conjecture, rumor and quickly forgotten headlines.
Our
concept of justice
has been gravely corrupted. In the
wake of the Zimmerman not-guilty verdict on July 13, 2013 I watched people in
the streets of the major cities of my country screaming for "justice"
and destroying property while professional athletes and celebrities ran their
mouths about what a “sad day" it was for America. Then there were the inappropriate
comparisons to actual injustices.
But for me, the real gem out of all this is the fact that none of these
concerned citizens says anything when one child after another gets mowed down
by some banger in Chicago, Detroit, Oakland or LA. None of these folks sparks a protest when some five-time
(black) loser kills an innocent black kid in Atlanta. Where are Jay-Z and Beyonce when black babies and innocent
black teens are being torn to shreds time and again in our cities and
towns? Where are the brave leaders
who purport to represent the heart and soul of black America? They all seem to be silent when a group
of black teens beat the life out of a white guy completely minding his own
business while out for a run after work or when two black teens shoot a baby in
the face while robbing his mother, as we witnessed in recent months.
"Injustice"
is apparently when a half-Hispanic guy who has been tasked with watching his
neighborhood approaches a black teen and the whole thing gets out of
control. Forget that the teen
attacked him and beat him bloody. Forget the rash of burglaries committed in
that Sanford community which had terrorized everyone while the cops slept on
it. Forget the fact that the
neighborhood watchman mentored black children, had a black business partner,
took a black girl to his high school prom and forget that a thorough FBI
investigation (ie. witch hunt) prompted by the Justice Department found that
race had nothing whatsoever to do with this altercation. It was racism and someone has to pay.
“Race-based”
crimes only seem to be committed AGAINST blacks by others according to the
media-at-large in this country. If
an attack is black on white, black on Hispanic or black on Asian it receives
stunningly little coverage. And a
great number of such crimes are far more heinous and violent than what happened
down in Sanford, Florida.
Nonetheless, they are glossed over. Over the last four decades, violent crimes committed by
blacks against people of any color including their own have not received a
fraction of the news media attention compared to crimes committed by whites,
regardless of how outlandish or terrible the crimes themselves. This is not my opinion. It is a well-vetted statistic. Black crime is grossly underreported
even if the perpetrators were clearly motivated by race.
Let's
be real here. Black people murder black people every day in our cities. I’m not downing black people. I’m stating reality. Go talk to hard-working, law-abiding
black people across this country and they will be the first to tell you:
they’re sick of it and they’re fed up with all the excuses given by liberals. Are black on black murders LESS of an
injustice because of the color of the perpetrators’ skin? Apparently so: they don’t lead to
protests, violent riots, retaliation killings and endless mainstream coverage.
Almost
no one I have talked to about the Trayvon Martin case in the last year thought
Zimmerman was anything but a trigger-happy white guy out for black blood. The consensus was: white guy with gun
shoots black teenager = cold-blooded murder. Sounds like the level of justice civil rights advocates used
to concern themselves with in the old, deep, Jim Crow South, doesn’t it? The kind where the verdict is
determined before the facts are sifted through and the evidence is presented.
The
mainstream media, for the most part, supports and drives home the notion of
racial injustice with carefully contoured subheadings during broadcasts and a
parade of angry guests demanding “justice” while, for the most part, avoiding
the examination of facts and circumstances, statistics, and even the very
testimony of those who counter the status quo. Take for instance Elouise Dilligard, the final defense
witness in the George Zimmerman case. Dilligard, a black woman, warmly talked
about "my neighbor George" and went on to describe his broken, bloody
nose immediately after the shooting. You won't see this woman or hear her side
of the story on the news. They will nary show any black person with anything
other than the NAACP talking points in the mainstream media in a situation like
this. Without digging, it's tough
for anyone to find the story behind the story. The media knows this. The race-baiters like Al Sharpton and
Jesse Jackson know it and most Americans are all too sold on the rush of
something to be angry about to think straight. A majority of people who are either on the fence or who can
see things more clearly are afraid to speak their minds for fear of being
labeled a “racist”.
It’s
the new cure-all for any argument or position not in line with the left wing
agenda (case in point: Obamacare).
When all else fails, scream “racism” and start pointing fingers. You win. “Wait, you don’t agree with me on all of these big
government policies and new taxes?
You just don’t like Obama because he’s black!!”
And
one of the biggest ironies in the current storm is that most of the people
rioting or protesting were born and raised recently enough to have never
experienced true racism. They’ve
just been programmed to be hypersensitive and hyper-reactive. They are truly looking for something to
be upset about.
It
was so refreshing to see the recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed by Jason Riley, a
black man who said in a July CNN live interview, "If America has it out
for blacks and shows contempt for blacks _ twice electing a black President is
a funny way of showing it. By the
way, Zimmerman voted for Obama..."
Riley's
Op-Ed was in direct response to the NAACP media onslaught coming from Ben
Jealous and Tavis Smiley addressing the “race-influenced” verdict and its
apparent “deeper meanings”. Smiley
had recently been on CNN and insisted, "...for many Americans, this was
just another piece of evidence of the incontrovertible contempt that this
nation shows and displays for black men...”
Apparently,
Mr. Smiley has a very twisted definition of the word "evidence" on a
number of levels and expects the justice system in this country to convict
people based on hurt feelings rather than facts. Would he be okay with the system actually working that way
when a black man was on the stand for murder? Would it be acceptable to convict a black man without
evidence of the crime he was indicted for?
Smiley
was very quick to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous quote; "I
look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by
the content of their character."
All the while, Smiley is in favor of judging Zimmerman by the color of his skin. He also refused to
acknowledge something else Dr. King said in 1961 which was: "Do you know
that Negroes are 10% of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58%
of its crimes? We've got to face
that. And we've got to do
something about our moral standards."
Obviously, Dr. King was a racist. Or was he rather intelligently assessing the different issues in more clear terms?
Yes, there is true prejudice. Far less outward prejudice now than in King's time but it still exists. As part of the human condition, it will always be a fact of life in one form or another. Prejudice is an ugly function of any society's failure to see the commonality in all of us and the good in others. Deep-seeded prejudice is anti-human but there are also real problems that exist, independent of racial prejudice, that add greatly to our discord and are not correlated to the foolishness of those who see their neighbors as less-than due to their color or ethnicity. Would anyone in the black community argue that black people kill black people because white people are prejudiced? Yet, these crimes overwhelmingly make up the violent crime in America. Who is to blame and why are black leaders not outraged?
I
was pleased to hear former NBA star Charles Barkley pipe up in a July 2013
interview with Maria Bartiromo. He
made a very good point. Barkley
pointed to the fact that the old Civil Rights Movement, the one headed by the
great Dr. King, emphasized personal responsibility. He said that the old way of thinking was "We, as black
people, need to get our act together notwithstanding all the racism" and
that the new way of thinking is, "Until we eliminate racism, don't blame
us for anything."
In
separate interviews Bill Cosby echoed a similar sentiment in response to the
rioting and looting across the country, pointing to the absurdity of it all.
Again,
these voices are the minority among celebrities, athletes and the Hollywood
elite.
We
have become programmed: programmed what to think; programmed what to react to
and how to react; programmed what to say when challenged with facts. One BANG and we’re off to the races.
Zimmerman
got off. Peoples’ feelings were
hurt. Children are being told at
school that the justice system doesn’t work and that we live in a racist
country.
The
deepest prejudice we suffer in America is the prejudice against reason.
