White-on-white murder is an epidemic

Dear White Folks, we've got to stop killing each other!! How're blacks supposed to see us as responsible and credible on the issue of racial profiling by police if they know damn well we're killing each other everyday in our all-white neighborhoods? How're they supposed to respect us if we don't respect ourselves? And it's not because we're inherently more violent: we're Christian, just like they are; and our white brothers and sisters in Norway, Sweden, Germany, England... you name it, aren't killing each other like animals in their streets, homes and offices like we are. We've just got to LOVE our white brothers and sisters more... And for God's sake, we got to stop selling each other meth, heroin and other opioids! Those drugs are worse than anything outsiders could do to oppress us! It's an epidemic! We have to clean up our own communities before we can expect blacks to give us a sympathetic hearing. I'm just saying, we white folks can't just be complaining all the time about the burdens of reverse racism; nor can we lay all the blame at our economic station or the condition of our all-white schools and neighborhoods. First we have to take some responsibility for ourselves and end the violence. Peace!


White-on-white murder in America is out of control
By Matthew Yglesias
February 20, 2015 | Vox


URL: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053811/white-on-white-murder

Racial media parity?

In an "ah-ha!" tone, my Republican agents have been feeding me recent news stories about the Australian white guy murdered, and the Oklahoma white guy murdered, both by "racists." Even though there is no indication these were racially motivated crimes.

Then we have FOX rushing to the scene, asking if the media coverage of the Oklahoma murder of Christopher Lane compares to the media coverage of the murder of Trayvon Martin.

None of this makes rational sense to me, I'm sorry.  I'm not being partisan here; this is just dumb.

It seems that we've moved on from insisting on some kind of "objective" left-right balance in news coverage of events, to insisting that we establish a black-white balance of media coverage of crime.

Why is this utterly pointless and stupid?

First, because you and I don't control the media.  But of course FOX and talk radio know that.  They play up the black-on-white crime, then accuse the "liberal" media of downplaying it.  Do I have to explain how self-serving and slanted that is?

Second, because so many thousands of murders escape the national media. We had more than 11,000 firearm homicides and more than 16,000 total homicides in the U.S. in 2012.  How many of them can you recall hearing about on the evening news or talk radio?  Exactly.

Third, these stories on FOX, the Blaze, etc. always mention Trayvon Martin, as in, "The media was so obsessed with Trayvon Martin... but they ignore THIS?!"  

First, refer to point #1.  Second, I challenge you to show me the black George Zimmerman. That's right, show me the case of the black man who murdered an unarmed white man and claimed it was in self-defense, despite police dispatchers telling the black man to leave that white man alone. Then the black man is set free, despite no contest that he shot and killed that white man, a white man who never bothered him or sought him out.

Yes, please, send me the link to that story, my Republican friends.  I can't wait to read all about it.

But until then, please do me a favor and shut up about race.

And fourth, most black crime is black-on-black.  That's a tragedy. Just like all crime is a tragedy. But what the hell does this have to do with the media or political correctness?

White people, stop pretending whites are an aggrieved minority and not an entitled majority who hold the keys to everything valuable in American life. Whining is un-American.

None of you whining whities would trade places with a black or Hispanic American for a minute, and that's all you need to know about race relations in the U.S.  

UPDATE (08.23.2013): OMG, this is so outrageously dumb: "A dead Australian is just the price you pay to be politically correct."  Yep, FOX's Greg Gutfeld said it.  

Oh no, I'd better stop being so liberal and PC, or else piles of dead Australians are going to start washing up on U.S. shores!....

How can black men escape profiling?

I'm re-posting this in full.  Whitlock's main point is compelling: we know what to do about black-on-black violence, but nobody -- including our black male President -- knows how to overcome racial profiling of black men.  Nobody.  Think about that.

Consider also that Whitlock is not some blame-everything-on-poverty black man: "Navigating the ghetto is difficult. But it's not remotely impossible." That comment somewhat eases upper-class white guilt without disempowering the poor.

Here's how Whitlock sums it up [emphasis mine]:

Without a shred of corroborating evidence, the police assumed and the prosecution team unwittingly conceded Trayvon Martin attacked George Zimmerman without reasonable provocation.

Imagine that. An agitated fair-skinned man with a gun followed an unarmed black boy and the assumptions drawn favor the gun-toting, non-black man.

If there's a blueprint for black men to follow that will reduce negative assumptions being made about us, reveal it.  Many of us will adhere to it religiously and focus all of our attention on the drug war, mass incarceration and the other policies that fuel black-on-black violence and the destruction of the black family.

Whitlock is a columnist for FOX Sports, by the way.  Good on FOX, I guess, for not firing him for making this commentary on HuffPo.

The Real Problem: Race Baiters' Inability to Think, Comprehend

By Jason Whitlock

July 26, 2013 | Huffington Post

Here's what the race baiters on the right fail to comprehend: There's a clear-cut, easy-to-follow blueprint for avoiding the ravages of black-on-black violence and crime. America has yet to provide us a comparable blueprint for avoiding racial profiling.

That's why it's impossible for ordinary, rational black folks to let go of Trayvon Martin and the not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial.

We know all too well the horrors transpiring in Chicago and other urban areas where the neglected offsprings of America's prison-institutionalized and prison-values-corrupted engage in a predictable war of hopelessness and self-hatred. The consequences of our drug war and its companion, mass incarceration, do not stop at prison walls.

We know that. We do also, however, know how to escape their wrath.

When my mother caught a burglar climbing through our kitchen window in 1975, she promptly took a second job and moved me and my older brother to an Indianapolis suburb.

[Nowadays a black woman would be lucky to get first job. -- J]

Willie Clark, my best childhood friend, grew up in a home just a few blocks from my old neighborhood. You could walk out his family's backyard and reach a government housing project in less than a minute. The entire area was rough.

Willie's parents had little trouble keeping him out of trouble. They raised him and his two sisters in the church. They taught him to be respectful and careful of where he went and who he befriended. They supported his athletic endeavors, kept tabs on his academic progress, demanded that he avoid drugs and nurtured a belief he could achieve something in this country.

He was raised in the 'hood. He graduated from college, opened an American Family Insurance agency, married and built a home in the suburbs for his wife and three kids. He moved up and moved out.

My dad owned small taverns (think ghetto Cheers) in Indianapolis' inner-city for 35 years. I loved the places, visited them often as a kid and socialized at them as an adult. I never once had any problems.

Navigating the ghetto is difficult. But it's not remotely impossible. If you're intent on avoiding trouble, use common sense and choose to interact with all people respectfully, you can, short of bad luck, stay clear of the nonsense. And, if all else fails and you don't want to walk the tightrope, you can do what my mother did and take the necessary steps to leave the ghetto.

For a black man, there is no game plan for escaping racial profiling. You can't run from the police. No neighborhood is safe. There's no style of dress that protects you. Your level of education and wealth are irrelevant. Proper manners and a deferential tone do not matter.

Years ago, I worked for the Charlotte Observer. I lived in Rock Hill, S.C. My picture ran inside the newspaper alongside my occasional columns. One day I was driving home from work around 5 p.m. when a police officer decided I fit the description of a black man who had pulled a string of burglaries. He pulled me over. I was in slacks, dress shoes and a button-up shirt.

He demanded I step out of the car. When I did, I discovered there were six cops and three additional police cars surrounding me and my 1985 Honda Prelude. For the next hour, I stood alongside a busy street as the lead detective berated me and accused me of being a cat burglar. I told him I was a sports writer for the local paper. He didn't believe me. He didn't let me re-enter my car and drive home until a police dispatcher called the Observer and was assured by one of my co-workers that I worked there.

I was not cited for any traffic violation. I had broken no laws. I was guilty of being black when the police were looking for a black burglary suspect.

I drove to my apartment and cried for the next two hours. It was the most humiliating experience of my life.  It's difficult to adequately convey the mix of outrage, fear and vulnerability I felt throughout the encounter.  I've never forgotten it. Twenty years later, the scar is still there. It burns every time a well-intentioned employee follows me as I shop for clothes.

Maybe this is a price the race-baiters on the right think black men should pay without objection for the privilege of living in this country. If that's their logic, then what they're really arguing is that black men are not full citizens with inalienable rights in this republic.

Or maybe their position is racial profiling is a tax all black men should pay because our criminal justice system and popular culture have judged and portrayed black men as inherently criminal.  Interesting.  Do we then retain the right to judge all white men as inherently racist and the masterminds powering a system that has dehumanized and criminalized black men for 400 years in this country?

Surely there's some middle ground. Surely reasonable men -- regardless of political bent and color -- can comprehend black people's angst over racial profiling and subsequent fear the Zimmerman verdict symbolically deputized non-black civilians to treat all black men as criminals on sight.

I don't wear a hoodie. I was never suspended from school. I never posed as a wannabe thug. But I know exactly how Trayvon Martin felt at 7:09 p.m., on Feb. 26, 2012. He felt a mix of outrage, fear and vulnerability.

The system (police and prosecution) apparently never even considered the possibility that in the rain and the dark a cowardly, wannabe cop provoked a kid he deemed an "a--hole" and a "punk" by approaching him with his hand on his holstered weapon or with his weapon drawn.

Without a shred of corroborating evidence, the police assumed and the prosecution team unwittingly conceded Trayvon Martin attacked George Zimmerman without reasonable provocation.

Imagine that. An agitated fair-skinned man with a gun followed an unarmed black boy and the assumptions drawn favor the gun-toting, non-black man.

If there's a blueprint for black men to follow that will reduce negative assumptions being made about us, reveal it. Many of us will adhere to it religiously and focus all of our attention on the drug war, mass incarceration and the other policies that fuel black-on-black violence and the destruction of the black family.