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Friday, October 28, 2016

Who’s Racist?

As published at Unz Review, OpEd News and Intrepid Report, 10/28/16:





Over three days last week, at least 150 blacks attacked whites at random around Temple University. Victims were surrounded, punched and kicked. Wallets and phones were stolen. Rocks were thrown at passing cars. When cops showed up, one was knocked from her bike and a police horse was even punched twice in the muzzle.

Most of the assaults took place on Friday. On Saturday, Joe Lauletta, a father of one victim, reported on FaceBook:
I spent last night in the ER at St. Mary’s HospitaI. I received a call from my daughter Christina after my sons football game. She was crying, I couldn’t understand her, my heart dropped, I became scared, I said what is the matter? Dad, I was jumped, I’m beat up pretty bad. Where r u? Temple, they stole my phone. We’re heading to the police station. I do not hear from her until she gets to her apartment. Rage is running through my mind the whole time. She said she is getting a ride home and wants to go to St. Mary’s. I find out that her and her 2 male friends where badly beaten by a group of 30-40 black teenagers on their way home from the Temple football game. This happened after they got off the subway at Broad and Cecil B Moore. These sick animals held her down and kicked and stomped on her repeatedly. Thank god, the people from the pizza place intervened. They arrested 2 people at the scene. I have not let Christina out of my sight, she is resting. Every part of her body is badly bruised, it makes me cry just thinking about it. No broken bones. If you have children at Temple, tell them to be careful. Please keep Christina Lauletta in your thoughts.

CBS Philadelphia describes another victim’s ordeal:

He says around 9:30 Friday night he was leaving work when he saw what looked to be at least 200 juveniles walking in large groups.

He said he overheard police saying the kids were playing the knockout game.

He says a juvenile around 10 years old started shouting obscenities at him and grabbed his phone out of his hand. The student says the juvenile then came back and threw the phone at him, striking him in the face.

Around 15 minutes later, the student says he was walking with his girlfriend when they were approached by at least seven juveniles. The student says he went to hit the Temple Police alert button when his girlfriend was struck by one of the juveniles.

As the student was chasing them away, he says he was struck in the face by a someone he estimates to be eight years old.

This is not new. In 2014, five black girls, aged 17, 15, 15, 15 and 14, committed three separate attacks on random white people at Temple University. Struck across the face with a brick, a 19-year-old white student suffered a fractured jaw and nearly had her teeth knocked out. Her 15-year-old assailant, Zaria Estes, was given a 2 ½-6 year sentence.

Across America, gangs of blacks have beaten random people for decades, just for the sport of it. This cathartic recreation has been dubbed wilding, catch and wreck, knock out game or flash mob, and it can happen at parks, shopping malls, state fairs or even your living room.

In 2012, a mentally-handicapped woman was relaxing on her stoop in Chester, just outside Philadelphia, when she was attacked by six black teenaged girls. When the terrified woman tried to flee inside, they rushed into her living room to continue the savage beating. Had these girls not posted their exhilarating workout on FaceBook, they might never have been caught.

A white bartender at my neighborhood dive was attacked, just outside her front door, by a group of black kids around 12 years old. After throwing a rock at her head and knocking her down, they kicked her a few times as she curled up on the ground, then they scattered. “Just like that, it was over. All I could do was go inside and cry.”

Not surprisingly, the latest incident at Temple University has received scant media attention. Though AP did cover it, it never pointed out that these were racial crimes. As usual, only “teens” are fingered, with their race not mentioned. Had mobs of whites attacked random blacks, the entire world would have known about it by now.

Locally, a black writer editorializes in the Philadelphia Inquirer that gentrification is ultimately responsible. In “Behind Temple attacks, rage often comes with exclusion,” Solomon Jones explains:

In a city where poverty is concentrated outside the universities, we can’t truly expect the poor to watch jobs and wealth and excess pass them by without any reaction at all.

To be sure, violence is the wrong response. And the kids who engaged in it will surely be prosecuted, as they should be.

But I believe those teens are expressing something that has long simmered beneath the surface. They are expressing the rage that comes with exclusion. They are expressing the hurt that comes with invisibility. They are engaged in the inevitable push and pull of change.

Temple University, my alma mater, has reached out to the community with scholarships for local youth, according to spokesman Ray Betzner. They’ve put reading programs in place, tutored high schoolers and even talked to their own students about respecting longtime community residents. But Temple would be wise to reach out into the community with an eye toward creating stronger relationships and greater opportunities for the young people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development.

The community would be wise to reach back.

So these attackers are among “people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development.” Like many urban universities, Temple is surrounded by black ghettos, but these are being gentrified thanks to a steady influx of white suburbanites and immigrants.

If you’re barely treading water, and your rent jacks up because of gentrification, you’ll be pissed too. Who wants to be evicted? Blacks, though, are always the victims, and never agents, of any neighborhood’s improvement. Why is that?

In Detroit, a post-apocalypse ghetto of burnt out houses, gutted factories and urban raccoons, Mexicans revived a section near downtown. Unlike the rest of Detroit, there are plenty of restaurants and shops in Mexicantown, and it’s perfectly safe to walk around.

If there were fewer Mexicans, blacks would have more jobs, obviously, so why are our borders wide open? In “Race and Crime in America,” Ron Unz suggests that Hispanics are being imported to replace blacks. They can do the same jobs, sans mayhem. In 1992, East Palo Alto had the highest murder rate in all of America. Then a transformation happened as Hispanics flooded in. Ron Unz:

Over the last twenty years, the homicide rate in that small city dropped by 85%, with similar huge declines in other crime categories as well, thereby transforming a miserable ghetto into a pleasant working-class community, now featuring new office complexes, luxury hotels, and large regional shopping centers. Multi-billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife recently purchased a large $9 million home just a few hundred feet from the East Palo Alto border, a decision that would have been unthinkable during the early 1990s.

The more blacks there are in a neighborhood, the more crimes, the lower the housing values and the more dysfunctional the public schools, and everyone knows this, including, say, a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant from Mali or Bangladesh. Black maladaptation is only getting worse.

What you have, then, is a group that will largely be excluded from better jobs, universities and housing. As long as the United States shall last, blacks will be an underclass. Their symbolic successes, as in having a half-black president, can’t gloss over the fact that the majority of them are barely afloat.

The in-state tuition for Temple University is $15,688, and the school accepts 56% of its applicants. It’s reasonably priced and easy to get in. Only 13.1% of Temple students are black, however, in a city with 44.1% blacks. Before you charge racism, do consider what Walter Williams has to say:

Among high-school students who graduated in 2014 and took the ACT college readiness exam, here’s how various racial/ethnic groups fared when it came to meeting the ACT’s college readiness benchmarks in at least three of the four subjects: Asians, 57 percent; whites, 49 percent; Hispanics, 23 percent; and blacks, 11 percent. However, the college rates of enrollment of these groups were: Asians, 80 percent; whites, 69 percent; Hispanics, 60 percent; and blacks, 57 percent.

Though all races are being admitted to college too liberally, blacks benefit the most, for only 1/5th of blacks in universities should even be there. Feeling out of place, blacks across the country are demanding separate dormitories.

Blacks are also given preferred treatment when it comes to government jobs and contracts, so the academy, state and media are all in their favor, yet their failures have only increased.

In Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell observes, “The [black] race as a whole has moved from a position of utter destitution—in money, knowledge, and rights—to a place alongside other groups emerging in the great struggles of life. None have had to come from so far back to join their fellow Americans.”

Having achieved not just civic equality but, at times, even favored treatment, blacks still often find themselves on the losing end of life’s struggles. If you dare to suggest that individual blacks should bear at least some responsibilities for their failures, however, you will be branded a racist.

So I’m a racist for writing this, Walter Williams is a racist for pointing out that most blacks attending college shouldn’t be there, and Joe Lauletta is a racist for calling his daughter’s attackers “sick animals.” Everyone is a racist except those 150+ blacks who attacked whites unprovoked.

To many black apologists, blacks can’t be guilty of anything, be it murder, rape, a brick across your face or even racism, because everything they do is just a response to relentless white racism. I’ll insist, though, that these black apologists are the worst racists of all, because to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal.

As for the media, their steady suppression or excuse of black misbehavior is an encouragement of even worse. This has to be intentional. They’re enabling more riots, more catch and wrecks, more knock out games.

Teaching in Germany, I showed my students the Philadelphia Police Department’s YouTube channel, without comments. One video after another had a black person assaulting or robbing somebody. When a Hispanic criminal suddenly appeared in the 9th video or so, some students couldn’t help but grin, for they were fleetingly spared of the monotony.

Since the students wanted to learn about the US, I gave them an authentic, unedited glimpse. At their local cinema, Straight Out of Compton was playing. It’s very cool to act black in Germany.

Of course, black apologists will claim that American blacks only rob because they’re oppressed and poor, though I don’t see how this explains the 22,000+ black-on-white rapes/sexual assaults reported yearly, as compared to zero white-on-black sexual attacks. (See table 42 of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Victimization in the United States reports for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, the last year available.) Oh yes, white women are so fetishized, blacks can’t help but rape them. None of them can help doing anything, I get it. What a gross insult this is to decent blacks.

Again, to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal.






.

24 comments:

destroytheuniverse said...

the black-on-white rape statistics you present are grim yet strange to ponder the not so distant past when it was white-on-black rape that prevailed

Linh Dinh said...

These numbers are astounding. Though rape statistics are always inexact, the racial angle is still very revealing.

In the end, it's not that surprising considering how violently sexual so much of black music has become. Sit in a ghetto bar for a while and you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Linh

LJansen said...

So Linh. You're probably right--I think when people listen to black music it does make them go crazy and commit crimes. But it'll sure help if you keep showing people cop videos of black crimes. Whatcha gonna do? Form a vigilante group and go after some of these black criminals. Or are just sit on your butt & whine about it?

Linh Dinh said...

Hi Linda,

Are you going to form a vigilante group? When did I ever advocate forming vigilante groups?

I'm very surprised you think of my article as whining. I'm a writer, so I present ideas and argue, and I tend to write sitting down.

Are you sitting on your butt and whining?

I showed my German students cop videos to challenge some of their naive notions about American society. That was not the entirety of my teaching, obviously.

As a teacher or a writer, you're supposed to take people out of their comfort zone. Dishonest, hypocritical platitudes will destroy mind, soul and society.


Linh

Linh Dinh said...

Hi Linda,

In your neck of the woods, the Tuba Man was killed by three black kids a few years ago for no reason, and there have been so many incidents like this.

I just emailed Ali Razeen, "Too many people cherry pick facts to prop up their worldview, but one should always form one's worldview based on facts, no matter how ugly," and the fact is that black Americans commit way too much violence while celebrating it. I'm not saying there are no systemic factors, but there are other reasons as well, and personal responsibility, i.e. moral agency, should never be disregarded.


Linh

Elizabeth said...

I was just reading the comments to this piece on Unz Review. Some are pretty reactionary, and I think many entirely missed your point, even though you repeated it twice: "to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal." Instead, what I saw there was the idea that blacks really ARE animals.

I live in a neighborhood that's about half black. It's no ghetto, and a lot of blacks rent apartments here so their kids can get out of the ghetto schools a few miles north. Generally, most blacks around here are friendlier and more respectful than my fellow whites, and have no interest in making excuses for violent behavior of any kind. Down at the rapid station, which really is in a black ghetto, people are also respectful and friendly.

Apologists for black violence allow this creepy reactionary racism to resurface. Yet the charge of racism will be placed on your head, Linh.

Linh Dinh said...

Hi Elizabeth,

Here's a new comment at Unz: "I work with a guy–another nurse, here in So Cal–who is from Philadelphia and he went to Temple. We talked about this violence two nights ago. He says it’s been like this there for years. It’s just something most locals understood but that many white students from outside the Philadelphia area were completely ignorant of. He used the phrase “sitting ducks”. And this guy’s a “liberal”, incidentally, but even he admitted to me if the situation were reversed it would be huge national news."

Yes, most people of any race are good, but not every group is the same. We all have different values. Every group is different.

It hasn't always been this way, but contemporary American black music celebrates violence very openly. It's turned into a hyper masculine culture that celebrates endless fucking and fucking people over. Many people, including many whites, are impressed by this. The net result, though, is the destruction of the black community.

Linh

Linh Dinh said...

Hi Elizabeth,

Many of commenters at Unz attempt to probe the issues behind this. Over all, they are worth reading.

Linda above could not come with anything more than weak sarcasm, as in "I think when people listen to black music it does make them go crazy and commit crimes."

I never said that. Music, though, reveals a culture's value. It is a window into what people are thinking, what they value, what they think is beautiful.

Lester Young, Fats Waller and Duke Ellington, etc, represent black culture from the 1940's. If you can't see how insane black culture has become, then you're not paying attention. Yes, white culture has also gone mad, but the levels of misogyny and violence are just not the same.

I'm only seeing and saying the obvious. Above all, I don't patronize anyone or any race like these sanctimonious hypocrites. They are the true racists.


Linh

Linh Dinh said...

Hi Elizabeth,

By saying that blacks in your neighborhood are more friendly and respectful, i.e. more civil, than whites, you are also making a value judgement. If people cite their own experience and disagree with you, are they racist?


Linh

Linh Dinh said...

Most of these young attackers don't have a father. The bastard rate among black babies stands at 72%, as compared to 40% for all Americans.

Temple is in North Philly, so if you want a more in depth look at it, check out this Postcard.

North Philly's Dark Lo, “I fuck your girl once or twice, I don’t keep her / Naggin’ stalkin’ ass bitch, I don’t need her / Pussy has a funny smell, I don’t eat her.”

How do you think Dark Lo's kids are going to act?

Elizabeth said...

I don't see how I'm making a value judgment. If people's experience in some other geographical area is different, they aren't disagreeing with me. They're just saying things are different where they exist, which is fine--more information for me. I despair of understanding "how things are" without talking to people who have actually experienced a situation, whether that be street crime in a particular neighborhood or international politics.

I cannot imagine a better album than Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. It is like contemplative silence put into musical notes, a most amazing paradox that actually soothes and awakens simultaneously. When was the last time such music was made, if ever? Then in the 90s, all of a sudden, the GD radios and MTV decide to glorify the worst crap--why? Bottom up, they say, but I'm thinking the other way.

I think I can agree with you for the most part without flinging all I've perceived about black culture and its problems (as well as its virtues)out the window.

From what I can tell by actually talking to people, most black people are quite intolerant of this "forgive them of all violence because they are oppressed" stuff. It reflects quite badly on them. It makes their lives more dangerous, both because of the backlash and because they have to live among violent people, cops and drug lords both.

Why are so many black children born to single mothers? One reason is that under welfare in "the Great Society," the poverty of black people was assuaged somewhat by a monthly check to a mother--as long as there was no man around. This developed into a way of surviving, and still hasn't been entirely stamped out--you still benefit from being a single mother under the poverty line--and for many, that's the better deal. It's now a time-honored way of life, not just for black people, although they get most of the attention.

Also, those most helpful progressive social workers figured black girls were getting pregnant early because they needed sex ed classes so they'd know where babies come from. Absolutely absurd! But it played. I remember a couple of decades ago listening to NPR; a social worker made the astounding discovery that those girls were getting pregnant for the money!

If I say all this to a progressive I'll be reviled forever; if I say this to someone from generations of welfare, they'll say "you got that right."

As for the standard exam results you cite, I'm no believer in IQ. The reasons for the disparities, I'm convinced, have little to do with biology.

Linh Dinh said...

Hi Elizabeth,

I have never brought up IQ tests in my articles. That said, there are obviously biological differences among groups. How one measures intelligence can be debated, but not everyone, or every group, is equally intelligent, obviously.


Linh

Elizabeth said...

Sorry, I was thinking of the ACT entrance exams. Of course there are biological differences among groups, and people are not of equal intelligence, but I think the largest difference in such scores is a matter of curiosity and a belief in school learning's value.

I do agree with Hank the Christian Constitutionalist that black culture has in many ways been fucked with [sorry Hank for the vulgarity], that the media fixation on race has stoked a hostility toward the larger culture, and that the black culture's worst products are the ones that get all the play--and the results show up among black children early. It makes them really resistant to learning anything a teacher has to say. That's been my experience. I'd talk to my students about why they are so uncomfortable using standard English. They'd say, "that's not our language." My God, it's not that different! But the kids think talking white or being studious, or even attentive, is traitorous.

I certainly agree, with most black people, that the violence you cite in your essay shouldn't be swept under the rug. One thing that has really bothered me this erection season is the bringing up of black "superpreditors," as H Clinton spoke of in a speech back in 2008--which the identity politickers took as her racism and the racists as affirmation that black men are superpreditors. The fact got lost that the black community itself was calling out for help against the really vicious few the ghettos harbor--but instead they got an intensification of the drug war and huge increases in mass incarceration for victimless crimes.

Linh Dinh said...

James Howard Kunstler:

True, there are various dialects of English among us, but it must be obvious that they have different merits and disadvantages. There is such a thing as standard grammatical English. It evolves over generations, for sure, but it shows a certain conservative stability, like the rule of law. It tends to be spoken by educated people and by people in authority. This implies people in power, of course, people who run things, but also people at large in the professions (medicine, engineering, etc.) and the arenas of business and government. Standard grammatical English tends to be higher status because competence in it tends to confer the benefits of higher living standards.

It also must be self-evident that there is such a thing as a black English dialect in America. With perhaps a few lingering regional differences, it is remarkably uniform from Miami, Florida, to Rochester, New York, to Fresno, California. It prevails among the so-called black underclass, the cohort that continues to struggle economically. Despite its verve and inventiveness, this black dialect tends to confer low status and lower standards of living on those who speak it. In popular mythology and culture, it is associated with violent criminality and other anti-social behaviors. If you don’t believe this, turn on HBO sometime.

I argue that black people who seek to succeed socially and economically would benefit from learning to speak standard grammatical English, not solely because it is associated with higher status and living standards, but because proficiency with grammar, tenses, and a rich vocabulary helps people think better. After all, if you employ only the present tense in all your doings and dealings, how would you truly understand the difference between now, tomorrow, and yesterday? I submit that it becomes problematical. You may not be able to show up on time, among other things.

Linh Dinh said...

James Howard Kunstler again, from another article:


For the moment, while the racial grievances of 2014 have chilled on the polar vortex, and no unarmed black teens have been shot by cops for a couple of weeks, it might be a good time to continue that honest discussion about race that the media nabobs — such as Charles Blow and Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times and Don Lemon of CNN — demand when some incendiary event goes down and tensions across the country become unbearable. That demand, of course, is a political booby-trap because any discussion not founded on the presumption of white malice is instantly deemed inadmissible and “racist” — which is just cheap demagogic despotism designed to shut down the very discussion they asked for. So that is exactly what I expect in response to this essay.

I bring these matters up because it seems to me that the long, arduous, costly battle for “civil rights” which began in my childhood a half century ago is beginning to look like a lost cause. The movies and TV are full of black / white buddy stories, and commercial images of a shared American experience as if there really was a common culture that blacks and whites felt an equal investment in. These stories and images are largely wishful, though I believe the dream of a common culture that would nurture all types of people in America stood at the heart of civil rights idealism of the sort represented by Martin Luther King and the white public figures who marched in solidarity with him.

Something went terribly wrong in the early going, and I don’t think there has ever been an honest discussion about it by American social thought leaders of any race, though I have raised the point more than once in passing. It was the paradoxical rise of black separatist politics at the exact historical moment of civil rights triumph when the two landmark civil rights bills were passed: the Public Accommodations Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Black separatism had been around since the late 19th century as a counterpoint to the earlier post-slavery idea represented by Booker T. Washington, which proposed that black earnestness would eventually be recognized by white America and rewarded, at least with economic participation. That idea was opposed by less patient, younger figures such as W.E.B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey who promoted what was then called “Pan-Africanism.” But the debate was superseded by the crises of the Great Depression and Second World War. By the early 1960s, black separatism had revived, personified first by Malcolm X (assassinated by rival Black Muslims, 1965), and the disillusioned former Freedom Rider Stokely Carmichael, who coined the slogan “black power,” and then by scores of public players and followers.

What I think happened is that the sudden prospect of true legal equality produced deep anxiety across black America, so that opting out provided a comfortable alternative. I saw it play out at my college in 1970 when the “militant” black students organization demanded a separate black student union. In the face of the civil rights acts passed only a few years earlier, this should have been regarded as a sort of outrage, but pusillanimous college administrators caved in and bought a house for that purpose. And of course the same thing happened all over the country, so that a new form of separate-but-equal was reestablished by popular demand.


Linh Dinh said...

[continues]

That blunder by academic leaders set a tragic tone for the forty years that followed. To rationalize the new separate-but-equal ethos, these people of liberal good intentions constructed an elaborate ideology of “multiculturalism” and “diversity” that had the tragic unintended consequence of obliterating the foundational idea of a common culture that had animated the struggle Dr. King gave his life to, as well the basic notion of what it meant to be an American.

A common culture did exist in America before the 1960s, at least in terms of manners, standards of decent behavior, and even language. It was what allowed people of good will in the 20th century to believe in “one nation indivisible.” Hence, the question America needs to ask itself: do we have enough moral focus to revive the idea that a common culture actually matters? If not, expect unending strife.

Elizabeth said...

"A common culture did exist in America before the 1960s, at least in terms of manners, standards of decent behavior, and even language. It was what allowed people of good will in the 20th century to believe in 'one nation indivisible.'”

Now here's where I call bullshit. Here and elsewhere Kunstler is positing pre-60s halcyon days of decency and respect, referencing MLK--all the while forgetting what MLK had to say about the exclusion of blacks from motels, restaurants, theme parks, water fountains, most employment, etc; as well as the simpering hypocrisy of the white clergy. Sure, it looked indivisible, once you divide a good chunk out. Plus the fact that the FBI tried to get MLK to commit suicide and, failing that, had him shot in the head, according to the civil trial nobody wants to talk about. I think I'll watch another early episode of Andy of Mayberry.

Linh Dinh said...

Kunstler never denied there were segregation and inequality. A key point he's making is that integration has caused so much anxiety among blacks, many are resegregating themselves, "What I think happened is that the sudden prospect of true legal equality produced deep anxiety across black America, so that opting out provided a comfortable alternative."

Before the 60's, blacks named their children John, Joe and Jack, like whites, but now they're inventing an infinity of unique names. This is one telling index of their wilful rejection of mainstream society.

If you reject society, society will reject you.

I came to the US at age 11, so decided I didn't want to change my name, but Vietnamese born in this country are rarely given names that separate them from mainstream society. This simply shows a desire to fit in.

Similarly, immigrants do not insist on broken English as a right.

Am I not communicating to you in standard English, something I had to learnt very willfully over many days, up to today?

I don't insist on a Vietnamese variation of English. This does not make me an Uncle Tom.

Even before I arrived in Italy for two-year stay, I tried my best to learn Italian. Though I never got beyond sounding like a retarded infant, I tried.

Learning grammar is not being an Uncle Tom.

The black family was much more intact, and black values were much more sane in the first half of the 20th century.

Africans in China learn Chinese.

When I was in Italy, my friend Niccolo told me he tried to study English for an hour every day. His English was already fluent, but he wanted to get better at it. Niccolo is living in Japan now. He speaks and writes Japanese.

Being studious is not being an Uncle Tom.

Elizabeth said...

You know, we're not really disagreeing. I've seen very clearly through the decades that there's a core of poor blacks in the US who have chosen segregation in terms of having their own dialect and thumbing their noses at booklearning, to their own detriment. Surely it's true that "If you reject society, society will reject you." The difference is that you are accentuating what they should do and I'm more interested in why many black people reject assimilation. The eloquence of a Baldwin essay is a haunting reminder of "how far we've come." But then, remember, even Baldwin finally left the US in disgust of the "negro problem" he'd wanted to avoid but could not get past.

I did go back and read all those Unz comments the day before last, and what bothered me were all the comments that at least implied that violence in the black world as attributable to biology. Higher testosterone levels, possibly greater physical strength and bigger dicks (the latter one got a lot of observation). The KKK fear-mongering that, given half a chance, they'll rape your wife and daughters has morphed into anxiety that they're seducing your wife and daughters all across the globe!

Once you start with these explanations it's really an easy slide into Murry's "Bell Curve" theory that the problem with our black population is that too many stupid black women had too many babies under welfare. That easily slides us back into the neo-Darwinian theories Steven Jay Gould raged against, the ones my father no doubt learned at Yale. Then it's really easy to say that the problem isn't cultural and we're tired of hearing that crap anyway. Maybe some offshoot of the Genome Project can figure out how to tinker with fetuses' brains so they won't become violent teenagers.

Linh Dinh said...

Just the latest in my city:

Several injured by juvenile “flash mob” attack, Philly police say

PHILADELPHIA — Six people, including an off-duty police detective and his wife, were injured after a “flash mob” attack by some among a crowd of juveniles in downtown Philadelphia, police said.

Police said a large crowd of juveniles were at 16th and Walnut streets, a popular spot for dining and shopping, at about 6 p.m. Saturday when some people began randomly assaulting people on the street. News of the assault comes after several were arrested in October for similar assaults by mobs of juveniles near Temple University. A witness to that attack said he overheard police saying the kids were playing “the knockout game.”

In Saturday’s attack, a 55-year-old off-duty police detective saw a 20-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman being assaulted and tried to arrest one of the offenders. He was punched from behind by several people, police said.

The detective’s 53-year-old wife splashed water on the offenders to try to stop them from attacking her husband, and she was punched in the face, police said. All of the offenders then fled. The four victims were taken to a nearby hospital.

Immediately afterward, there was another assault by several juveniles nearby, and two 16-year-old youths were arrested, police said.

In all, six people were injured.

The police detective had an orbital fracture to his right eye while the others had minor injuries.

One man told WPVI-TV that he feared for his safety when the large group of teens appeared, and he saw other people running into nearby stores to escape.

“It’s crazy out here,” said Dwight Magood. “I don’t know if they were trying to protest or ‘flash mobbing.’ But it’s not the right way to do it, whatever it was.”

Anonymous said...

Linh

Since you are a writer and, by extension, by necessity, a reader, you must have read Chester Himes.

Even so, and for the benefit of those who haven't, I suggest picking up Lonely Crusade. In it, Himes really nails down some of the cruxes of the "negro problem" and why the black american's want something more than they are getting, that they believe they are entitled to something more than being given a fair chance, equal play, and honest deals. Well, Himes drifts a little. But who can blame him? This is an incredibly difficult topic to discuss, analyze, and answer.


Leo

Linh Dinh said...

Hi Leo,

Thanks for the recommendation. I have never read Himes, actually.

With my pinched budget, I rarely buy books anymore, but I'll keep Lonely Crusade in mind.


Linh

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you're describing the victimology of black liberation theology. The psychological totalism of perpetual victimhood as an identity, a sacred science.

Black Liberation Theology as Marxist Victimology
[..]
The overall emphasis of Black Liberation Theology is the black struggle for liberation from various forms of "white racism" and oppression.
[..]
James Cone, the chief architect of Black Liberation Theology in his book A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), develops black theology as a system. In this new formulation, Christian theology is a theology of liberation -- "a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ," writes Cone. Black consciousness and the black experience of oppression orient black liberation theology -- i.e., one of victimization from white oppression.
[..]
In 1979, Cornel West offered a critical integration of Marxism and black theology in his essay, "Black Theology and Marxist Thought" because of the shared human experience of oppressed peoples as victims. West sees a strong correlation between black theology and Marxist thought because "both focus on the plight of the exploited, oppressed and degraded peoples of the world, their relative powerlessness and possible empowerment." This common focus prompts West to call for "a serious dialogue between Black theologians and Marxist thinkers" -- a dialogue that centers on the possibility of "mutually arrived-at political action."
[..]
Black Liberation Theology, originally intended to help the black community, may have actually hurt many blacks by promoting racial tension, victimology, and Marxism which ultimately leads to more oppression. As the failed "War on Poverty" has exposed, the best way to keep the blacks perpetually enslaved to government as "daddy" is to preach victimology, Marxism, and to seduce blacks into thinking that upward mobility is someone else's responsibility in a free society.

The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology
http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2008/04/02/marxist-roots-black-liberation-theology

Anonymous said...

Linh


I'll send you a copy soon. Its up your alley.



Leo