Shame on you, President Obama. You were elected president of the United States by a simple majority of people of all races, colors, and creeds. The message of your campaign and our hopes was that America had finally cast off the original sin of racism. All of those who voted for you (and not a few of those of us who didn’t) looked to you to lead us to a better place. We fully expected, or at least hoped, that with your election and reelection, we could finally be a post-racial nation, looked at by the world as a model of comity and interracial harmony.
We were fools.
Instead you went back to the well of racial grievance that was Chicago politics. Not realizing that you were now the chief magistrate of a great, continental Republic, you first immersed yourself back in 2009 in a little police matter in Massachusetts involving your old friend Henry Louis Gates. You didn’t realize that the president of the United States has more pressing concerns than wondering about police procedures in some far-away municipility. As a professor who taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, you should have know that we have Separation of Powers for a reason and that within this doctrine other seperations exist: between cities and counties, between counties and states, and between the several states. Governors know better than to interfere in local bond issues or to second-guess the local constabulary. You should have as well. To your extreme good fortune, the case of which I am referring resulted in nothing more than a mere embarrassement with no long-lasting results or damages.
Unfortunately, you didn’t learn your lesson when you injected yourself and your Justice Department in another local case involving the local constabulary. I am referring to the unfortunate death of Trayvon Benjamin Martin, who savagely beat a man whom he may have thought was stalking him (possibly for homosexual purposes). The beatings administered to his victim were severe and life-threatening. Martin, who was straddling Zimmerman while administering the blows to the latter’s head did not know that his victim had a gun. Zimmerman did what you, me or any desperate man who feared for his very life would have done and used his gun.
These are the bare facts of the case. The police in Sanford, Florida looked at the entirety of the case within the quickest time possible and came to the conclusion that Zimmerman acted in self-defense. He was released. That should have been that.
But it wasn’t. Thanks to odious race-hustlers like Jesse Jackson, and the truly contemptible Al Sharpton, frenzy was whipped up in the African-American community and the Mainstream Media, the result of which was that the governor of Florida, Rick Scott, felt obliged to appoint a special prosecutor. In the meantime, we learned that the Department of Justice whipped up even more media frenzy behind the scenes at the very same time that the FBI was using its resources to find out what really happened. Like whether George Zimmerman was a racist who profiled Trayvon Martin intending him harm. Guess what? The FBI found no such evidence. Indeed, friends, acquaintances, and relatives came forward lauding George as being anything other than racist. We went on to find out that Zimmerman was a liberal, a Democrat who voted for Barack Obama, a tutor to young black teenagers, and who at one time came to the aid of a homeless black man who was being harassed by a gang of young white toughs.
In the never-ending search by the Liberal Media for The Great White Defendant, Zimmerman, with his German name, should have fit the bill to a “T.” The Mainstream Media did what it could to further the narrative of a hulking white man shooting an unarmed little black boy whose only crime was walking while black. The first photos shown were of a beatific little boy juxtaposed against a large, overweight man posing for a mug shot. Unfortunately, there a problem: the “murderer” had very obvious, mestizo physiognomy. In time, more recent photos of the victim came to the fore, ones which showed him posing in menacing fashion mimicking as best he could the animals known as gangsta rappers. Oh, and he was a whole head taller than George Zimmerman.
You and I see men who look exactly like George Zimmerman working on construction crews all over these United States. Put an orange vest and a hard hat on Zimmerman, and we wouldn’t look twice at him as drove by him in our cars. This, how shall we say it? presented a problem for the Mainstream Media. It would have been much better had Zimmerman looked like Brad Pitt or Kevin Bacon. Perhaps a skinhead from the Aryan Brotherhood with swastika tattoos. No such luck. Not to worry though, The New York Times came to the rescue and came up with this curious, never-before-heard phrase, Zimmerman you see, was a “white Hispanic.” Even though George Zimmerman was of mixed Jewish, African, and Indian ancestry, he would be White Enough for their purposes.
Into this unfortunate case, you, the most powerful man in the world, decided to interject himself. Ignoring all jurisprudence, you condemned the assailant and all but beatified the thug who tried to kill him, in essence calling him your long-lost son. You became the High Priest of the Cult of St Martin. Thus, you set in motion a whirlwind which forced the governor of that State to appoint a special prosecutor, a certain Angela Corey, whose leftist ideology was exceeded only by her ineptness. Thanks to you, America was introduced to the first show-trial of the new millennium. Think of the irony: a real-life “community organizer” (George Zimmerman), was now transmuted into a racist, trigger-happy, vigilante. Feeling her oats, Corey foolishly over-charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder when any sane man would have seen that nothing more than manslaughter was called for (if that).
The agressor in the meantime was endlessly portrayed in the media as an angelic little pickaninny. Gone were the menacing pictures of him posing as a thug-wannabe. Gone was his Twitter identity (“@nolimitnigga”). Gone was his police record, his burglaries, and his two school suspensions. Left unsaid was the fact that on the night he was killed, he was seen walking right up the houses of that gated community, looking inside the windows, possibly casing said houses for future “adventures.” Left unsaid was that the community which Zimmerman was patrolling had been ransacked by burglars several times within the previous months, in every case by young men who looked like the deceased.
The trial itself proved to be nothing but an opera bouffe thanks to the searing incompetence of the Prosecution. When the State’s star witness –a sullen, obese Rachel Jenteal–waddled up to the stand and answered the lawyers’ questions in grunts and snorts, it was all over. I think the Prosecution knew it as well. Hence the laughable special pleading at the eleventh hour for “third-degree murder” and/or “child abuse.” Angela Corey not only couldn’t make the case, she forever beclowned herself in the legal community and will be a laughingstock in law schools until the end of time. Under even the most bizarre circumstances, the jury delivered the only possible, just verdict –not guilty.
And into this tempest, one which should have never been allowed to transpire in the first place, you stride yet again. For what purpose? To try to rouse black unity in time for the 2014 elections? Or is it to comfort black people in their collective MSM-created delusion that Trayvon was a a saintly child, innocently gunned down by a white vigilante like so many others? To accentuate the myth that The Black Man can’t get a fair shake in America? Are you talking about this America, the one which passed sweeping Civil Rights laws and established racial quotas in order to level the playing field? Or is it to get them to ignore the many failings of your administration? That job growth is anemic and that African-Americans have borne the brunt of it? How do you sleep at night knowing that you and your incompetent Attorney General (who has the blood of Mexican and American policemen on his hands thanks to Operation Fast and Furious) are ginning up more black rage and anger? Why are you doing this knowing full well that even as I write these words innocent white people –and not a few Hispanics–are being randomly killed by black teenages shouting “Justice for Trayvon!”. What about the dozens of actual black children who are shot daily in Chicago’s housing projects by other black “children”? Does this not matter to you? That it matters not a whit to odious race hustlers such as Al Sharpton is regrettable but beside the point; we expected more from you.
And now, thanks to you and evil acolytes such as the Black Panthers, Spike Lee, and assorted professional athletes, an innocent man and his family have gone into hiding rightly fearing for their lives. Think of it: not once in American history has a president used the power of his office to hound a single individual in such an open and capricious manner. The only presidents who came anywhere close to what you are doing are Lincoln, Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. And they acted tyrannically only because the nation was at war and their victims were viewed as traitors or collaborators. How will the history books will remember you, Sir?
Please understand, I write these words out of regret, not malice. Last year, when it came to my attention that a local Jewish newspaper in Atlanta had published an editorial openly questioning how to remove you from office –by violence if necessary–I condemned them in the strongest possible language. I stand by that. I worked overtime to legally evict you from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue but you are still president. Every Sunday I cross myself during the Litanies of my church when the priest prays for you “and all civil authorities” and say “Lord have mercy.” I bear you no ill-will. You recently hosted my younger son at the White House, honoring him for his service to his fraternity and for this I thank you. You twice won election to the highest office in our land. I consider myself to be a member of the Loyal Opposition. But I cannot stand by while I watch the full force of the government brought to bear against one man and his family, or while you stand aside and let the mob exact racial vengeance. I will lend my voice to those others who have called you out on this. And I will pray that you come to your senses.
Tread carefully. You have sown the wind. Now you will reap the whirlwind.
As the pastor of a racially integrated parish in racially divided Chicago, let me mention the great distress I feel at the current political exploitation made of that young man’s death in Florida.
The execution of John Brown, before the Civil War for armed resistance against slavery, (however feeble) was highly manipulated in the media in both the North and the South. It further fanned the fervor for a tragic war, which was actually fought over vastly different reasons. The camel swallowing and gnat straining done by the mass media over a common criminal trial does appear to be really aimed at a piece of paper. The need to suspend totally and forever the Bill of Rights, and Constitutional Rights with a fascist socialist police state replacing it, seems the only likely advantage to a Continuity of Government which sees it is under intense distrust and dislike. These gooses stepped us into war with Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya. .Obama is as dishonest as Bush, and is hell bent on dominance as the neocons. We mimic Stalinist Russia, and the Nazi with even further, bursting at the seams invincible arrogance. These spiritual chimps are not going to stop. They have to be made to stop, and no one has the will or the military might. We have become the iron beast of the Holy Prophet Daniel. Don’t seed your children out to fight for this monster. Jesus Christ will ask you why, you judge this God’s Will to kill somebody else’s enemies, who did you no harm. The Royal Law is not a game. It means what it says it means.
Well, ok, except in this case the trial proceeded normally, the judge did a decent job, the prosecution had troubles with the case, the burden of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt”, and the jury decided the case. This goes on in every courthouse in this vast land every week.
Next week, next case.
I’d say the Republic did fine on this case. My advice is not to listen to the news as much.
And John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave.
From Obama lovers: “Once upon a time ago a few mistakes ago, I was in your sites. . . the blame is on me, cause I knew you were trouble when you walked in, so shame on me. . . Now I’m lying on the cold hard ground. . . . Ohhh! Ohhh! Trouble, trouble, trouble!”
(Don’t criticize me for the Taylor Swift lyrics. I have a LONG commute and you can only listen to talk radio for so long! Ohhh, Ohhh!!!!)
My youngest sibling was going through the university system when Africana Studies was a new and emerging department of studies in most universities. At the university she was attending on the East Coast, many of the courses in this department where cross listed with history, sociology etc. and rightfully so since they had common themes and could cover requirements for both departments with relative ease.
She took a course on the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The great majority of the students in the course where of African descent. The professor, also of African descent. He very kindly agreed to let me sit in on some lectures. I was very impressed with his knowledge, eloquence and objectivety concerning key historical figures and events that we both had experienced first hand and we would meet after lectures over coffee to discuss our own memories, common friends and divergent view points on issues and their significance in shaping the progress of American culture and the political scene (this was in 1979 – 1980).
This professor was tough, but kind. A true mentor to all his students. He made them work for their grades and he didn’t let them romanticize any historical figure. One thing did strike me though and I pointed it out to him and we had a lengthy discussion about it in private. Whenever a student of African descent raised their hand he would say to them “yes my brother” or “yes my sister”. Whenever a student who was not of African descent raised their hand, it didn’t matter if they were Latino, Asian, Native American or your good ol’ standard WASP it was “yes sir” “yes miss”. Still polite, still respectful, still attentive, but distant. He acknowledged very clearly that there was a chasm between himself and some of the students and that created anxiety for some students and whisperings. They assumed that they were doomed to get a worse grade, they questioned his ability to be objective. The truth was, he was acknowledging an objective reality. He is black and they are not. When he gets into an elevator with a white female, it does not matter how well dressed he is, how eloquent, or how educated, she will still clutch her purse closer to her side and start to feel nervous waiting for the door to open because in the back of her mind is “black man = thug druggie rapist” just they way that they media portrays white man = “oppressive fascist nazi pig”.
Let me make it clear, I understand the facts of the Zimmerman case, I don’t disagree with an iota of what you wrote Mr. Michalopulos. Now American society is feeling the after-effects of it’s sin.
Ain’t payback a pain?
Of course they are. We live in a fallen world, not Eden but After-Eden. What would you have us do? The Lincoln Option, which was to compensate the former slaves and send them back to Africa? Or in retrospect would it have been better had the Federal Government raised the debt limit, borrow the necessary funds, compensate the slave-owners, financially endow the slaves and move them to western states where they could have had their own territory? Slavery is evil but lets not forget that it is endemic to the human condition. It’s making a come-back in Africa and the Muslim world.
My critique was a warning to the President as well. By re-immersing himself in this case and whipping up racial anger (and very real murders against whites and Hispanics as a result), it’s going to end in tears for him.
Mr. Michalopulos,
I wouldn’t have either of those options. They are inadequate and insufficient.
There is nothing and no way to satiate the mind or soothe the soul of individuals who have made a conscious decision to be governed by their passions. They can not be brought to right reasoning. They have to hit a spiritual “rock bottom” and from the darkness of their pits of despair, like ones “long in the grave” “cry unto the Lord” that He extend His mercy and pull them out of the grave of their passions and sins.
We do not have to live in a fallen world. We can transform it. I understand your critique of the President. It is a fair one. I don’t disagree at all. It’s not going to end in tears just for him but for all of us. I’m remembering the LA riots. The real pity is that I am pretty certain that people like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton could care less about Trayvon Martin. He is just a poster boy of convenience for them. The pity is if they weren’t exploiting his death, someone else certainly would (in fact, he did…oh yeah, the President of the United States). That the American people are stupid enough to fall for it is pitiful. Now that is something to cry about.
Nit,
in my first response to you, I overlooked the glaring fallacy of that distinguished professor’s attitude. And that is that he was justifying the separate-but-equal ideology of the later Segregationists. It’s all very simple: if he cannot treat all his students equally because of the color of their skin, then he’s repudiated Martin Luther Kingism. Don’t get me wrong, by the way you describe him he seems to have been an admirable man and a distinguished scholar but his actions justify the Supreme Court’s Plessy v Ferguson decision.
As for the black man getting on a elevator with a white woman and her clutching her purse, this brings us to another conundrum, that is that women and men are fundamentally (ontologically?) different. Anyway, Billy Graham had a solution for this, whenever he was alone on an elevator and a woman got on, he immediately got off.
Just a general question, do we begin now to see the morality of the cultural constraints our forefathers labored under?
“…financially endow the slaves and move them to western states where they could have had their own territory?” ??? Do you still imagine the “western states” which actually in 1860 were still mostly territories were void and empty of people, just waiting for colonization? The lands west of the Mississippi were populated by many groups, tribes and cultures of a people still largely invisible to whites – The First Nations, The First Peoples, Native Americans. A vast influx of freed slaves in to the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains would have been no more welcome by the native populations already inhabiting those lands than the migrations of great numbers of white settlers into the area, and just as devastating to the culture and livelihoods of the native people.
Miss Albert, while I agree with you that the interaction between the indigenous peoples and the non-indigenous was traumatic for the Amerinds, the fact remains that the vast majority of the Rocky Mountain states were largely empty. Otherwise, the Mormons couldn’t have made a go of it in Utah. In fact, several of these states are still astoundingly empty. The creation of a largely black state (say in Colorado) would not have resulted in massive disruptions between the Amerinds and black freedmen. In fact, a peaceful transition might have prevented the near-genocidal wars perpetrated by the U S Army against the Plains Indians. There were no massacres for example perpetrated by the Mormons against the Utes, mainly because they were concentrated mainly in the Great Salt Lake Valley while the rest of Utah was largely uninhabited. Could not a similar happenstance been envisioned in another Territory?
There is an infinitude of possible “alternative histories”; indeed, this is grist to the mills of whole branches of science fiction. Human beings can’t avoid these speculations, especially if they wish things had been different.
Who can possibly argue about these countless things that did not occur? Any “happenstance” at all can be “envisioned in another Territory”!
Indeed, I do this all the time in my daydreams. I usually play a prominent role in major events…..
Not really sure why you’re blaming Obama for what you are seeing as racial politicking. Most of your examples seem to be not about this case or involve actors other than Obama.
Besides, it wasn’t the NYT or the MSM or “liberals” that got thousands of blacks out on the street for this case early on as well as more recently, and around the country. It was black people themselves who did it, spontaneously. Racism isn’t just white/black and throughout history ‘white’ is as often as not defined as ‘not black”; also, the Uncle Tom figure (among others) shows racism can be rooted just as deeply within black people and those discriminated against. The racism felt by blacks is exemplified in this case by their being constantly suspected of wrong doing (“driving while black”, for instance) and being faced with authority and force commensurate more with what is irrationally feared rather with what is realistic or based on personal (rather than group) cause. This single case doesn’t prove that, but it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for black folk and to miss that is to miss the real message behind the frustration expressed.
Whether Zimmerman was racist or not, the self-appointed guardian (vigilante) put himself in harm’s way and was then scared about the harm he stirred up and overreacted. And now he’s afraid of armed vigilantes. Rich. In more colorful language:
http://theochlophobist.blogspot.com/2013/07/cowardice.html
Your writing here seems to too often be up against if not crossing the line between simple political opinion and quasi-populist demagoguery, all under the mantle of “not being political correct”, a narrow view of what liberty and law require, and Christianity. It’s the admixture of this kind of language with Orthodoxy that makes this site essentially the flip-side of Stan’s, and that not’s good for Orthodoxy. One is entitled to a personal opinion and blog, of course, but it’s not wise if you’re trying to do anything good for Orthodoxy.
I must disagree. I remember the events as they unfolded last year in real time. Martin was killed on Feb 26 and the only mention made was a few days later when charges against Zimmerman were dropped. It looked like a clear case of self-defense. About a week later, the Revs Jackson and Sharpton took up the bullhorn and MSNBC ran with it.
As for Zimmerman being a “vigilante” that’s ridiculous, unless you call all watchmen who voluntarily patrol their neighborhoods “vigilantes”. And anyway, what crime did Zimmerman actually commit when he confronted Martin? Did he not listen to the police dispatcher and turn away to go back to his car?
Make no mistake, the underlying mandate here is to force law-abiding working-class people to cower in fear from aggression.
A number of months ago, there was an “On the Media” NPR program that discussed the role the media had in making the Zimmerman case a national story. As I recall, the thrust of the discussion was that, but for certain national media personalities, the case would have remained a local story. For lack of a better word, the “appeal” of the story was its racial aspect. A racial aspect that has not been proven in a court of law.
So, how to explain all the anger and hysteria? I think George makes a compelling argument.
SAM
So, “the Revs Jackson and Sharpton took up the bullhorn and MSNBC ran with it” so “Shame on you, Barack Obama”? I’m guessing Obama’s failure to deliver on a post-racial America was also the cause of all the racist tweets over Marc Anthony at the MLB All-Star Game, too?
The vigilantism was the he ignored orders not to follow but did anyway. He tried to act like a cop, wasn’t, Martin wouldn’t have known he was acting in some sort of official capacity, he was being followed at night, we have no idea what Zimmerman did or didn’t do or say, we don’t know if he had his gun out, etc. That’s not to say Zimmerman did these things, but he never should have been following the kid, never should have had a gun to do neighborhood watch work, and shouldn’t have assumed some black kid in a hoodie was up to no good because other black kids had been suspected of being up to no good. The marches early on were all about that initial racial profiling, the other issues simply exacerbated that initial wrong choice. And, in most other states what Zimmerman would have done would have resulted in a manslaughter charge, so it’s understandable people in most states would think lack of charges an outrage. Even in TN the concealed carry law would have resulted in Zimmerman being convicted (see http://bit.ly/12BlLoX). And, it was exactly the SYG law that precluded the police from making an arrest in a case that could possibly be self-defense. It matters little that the law in its entirety wasn’t triggered in the trial. In fact, the defense feinted that it might invoke SYG but then didn’t so as not to have to share discovery with the prosecution, so it was a shrewd tactical move that leveraged the existence of SYG in FL.
The underlying mandate is to to force people of all classes not to take the law into their own hands. This whole gun culture, SYG stuff isn’t about working class people, it’s about pudgy suburban men who’ve watched too many westerns and cop shows and like to pretend their tract home is on the lawless frontier.
The race component to this event was never in contention in the trial. Just like OJ Simpson, Zimmerman was merely found “Not Guilty”, not “Innocent”.
Found “not guilty” because presumed innocent and because under our law the prosecution must prove its case beyond a reaosnable doubt and if found not guilty and presumed innocent then we are to see the acquitted defendant as such after the trial is over and henceforth. This is not only the rule of law but that of love.
To live otherwise is to bring judgment on ourselves. Our Lord warned us not to judge, lest we be judged and St. Paul echoed it when he asked “Who art thou O man that judgest, seeing thou dost the same things.”
lxc
“This whole gun culture, SYG stuff isn’t about working class people, it’s about pudgy suburban men who’ve watched too many westerns and cop shows and like to pretend their tract home is on the lawless frontier.”
Okay, who are you, Owen’s Mini-Me?
Oh, please, Obama has basically stated the SYG law in FL is not framing how people in a civilized society need to interact. If you are slamming such a statement; perhaps you need some philosophical or religious introspection.
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the trial outcome; you must certainly agree that the interaction between Zimmerman and Martin was not Christian in any fashion.
And neither of them behaved in a Christian fashion at all. Zimmerman was emboldened to stalk Martin because he carried a gun and Martin, probably out of fear, assaulted Zimmerman. Neither men behaved as Christ would tell us. While you might say this is conjecture on my part; we all know this is what went down. Zimmerman was trying to catch Martin breaking into a house; Martin didn’t like being followed by a stranger.
At the end of the day, SYG is not how people in a civilized society ought frame their interactions. If a guy on the street picks a fight with you and you defend yourself and he shoots you dead; all he needs to say is the other party started it. One good black eye and he walks? If you don’t see a problem here, there are plenty of optometrists around.
I should point out that Zimmerman’s defense was not based on the Stand Your Ground Law, but on self-defense. In our country a person is innocent until proven guilt. The prosecution did not prove him guilty to the jury’s satisfaction. We do not try people in the streets or the media, but in a court of law. Zimmerman was tried in a court of law and was acquitted. That should end this matter.
In his speech, Obama did not mention why so many white people are afraid of young black men. The statistics show that they commit most of the crimes. Thus, there is legitimate reason to fear them. He also did not mention the fact that black on black crime is the most serious problem faced by blacks and that most blacks who are murdered are killed by other blacks. If he really cares about young blacks being killed, as we all should, he needs to address the issue of black on black crime and murder. There is something seriously wrong with a sub-culture that listens to obscenity filled gangster rap and thinks that it is stylish to walk around with your underwear showing to imitate a person in prison without a belt.
In Jackson, Mississippi, St.John Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church was located in an area that became predominately black. It was so dangerous that they had to hire an armed guard when they had services. They finally had to move to another part of the city to be safe. So those of us who fear young black men are not hallucinating.
All of what we both said is right. You fail to mention root cause for black incarceration. It is economic disparity. Economic racism is still rampant; driven by poor schools and poverty and missing fathers.
As far as defending one’s self, both men created the necessity through ill conceived notions of mistrust. This was not what Christ would have wanted. As you well know, Christ said if you are struck offer the other side of your face. That Gospel is conveniently omitted here. Zimmerman was beat up a little, but here in Mn, he probably gets man 1 for disorderly conduct resulting in death.
Did Zimmerman say stop it or who are you, I’m the watchguy? This is how people san guns behave. Trayvon would have gotten jailtime or told Zimmerman, I’m visiting my dad.
To your points, the pants down in prison was related to prison sex and is thoroughly disgusting.
Please stop it with this “economic disparity” nonsense. Every other minority group suffered through such economic and cultural (i.e. not knowing the language) disparity as well. Chinese were brought to Hawaii and the West Coast as little more than slaves themselves. It’s time for the black churches to step up the plate and condemn misogyny, immorality, and criminality. And for “civil rights” leaders to stop blaming others and fostering the culture of victimology.
Attempting to analogize ethnic immigrant experiences of the early 20th century to the centuries of black experience in America is a doomed endeavor. A couple decades of tumultuous change in an urban melting pot is not the same as a century of slavery followed by a century of societal, economic and political repression before it started to get better. Not get fixed, just get better. Those that did escape the misery of the South in the Great Migration to a working class existence in the cities still ended up being lower on the totem pole than the immigrants you refer to, and thus were the first on the chopping block in the Great Wheel of Economic Progress. Gangsta culture, saggy pants and rap music did not cause the urban industrial decline of the mid-20th century.
Please, it’s like a No True Pulpit argument. You think black churches don’t sermonize on these topics? Constantly? Doing so more than already they are is not a magic wand that fixes the other systemic issues involved that you don’t seem to want to acknowledge exist. I would love, love to take a group of black pastors who have been doing for decades what you lament they aren’t, show them your condescending and patronizing words, show them the republished essays of white nationalists you post, and have them sit down and try to explain to you that, ills in contemporary African-American culture aside, you are also part of the problem. Not that it would fix anything, but at least I’d get the pleasure of watching their exhortations bounce off that skull of yours and utterly fail to register. The only thing more entertaining would be them trying to patiently explain to John Morris that he has a view of the welfare state frozen in 1985.
I can’t even charge you with being disingenuous with your comparison here because it is just so stupid. The Chinese workers brought in in the mid-latter 19th century had it worse off than white workers, but everybody in that working class could be regarded as being “little more than slaves”. There was a reason American had that ‘little’ spat of labor unrest, union movements and legal reform in the subsequent era. At any rate, it was a tiny minority comprised almost entirely of men. And then Chinese immigration was basically banned for like sixty years, which resulted in a predictable demographic stagnation and retreat into a handful of urban enclaves. Which didn’t start to change until around the 1960s. You’re comparing them to a multi-generational established ethnic group comprising about 12% of the American population at the dawn of the 20th century, where something like 90% were concentrated in one geographic region of the country where they’d been subject to a century and a half of institutionalized repression and discrimination, many locked into grinding poverty in an agrarian economic role. Just like the Chinese! Perhaps you will lament if only they’d have opened more laundries!
I think the cleansing antidote to this unfortunate essay and the equally unfortunately “Do as I Say, Not As I Do” would be the recent Ta-Nehisi Coates essays Trayvon Martin and the Irony of American Justice and The Banality of Richard Cohen and Racist Profiling
Two hundred and forty six years of manstealing, family-destroying, education-denying slavery (1619), at first just a trickle in this English colony but soon enough, a raging flood. From Bacon’s rebellion to 1865 was almost two full centuries. My own consciousness of one of the more nauseating ironies, if that’s the right word, that have wafted up like acrid smoke from some of the discourse on this blog was what led me to post again here — while being forced to hold my nose, a lot. To try to reason with some of these holy people. Trying to get to and hack at the root of the problem, of which American slavery and its consequences have been particularly egregious, world-historical symptoms.
I refer to the recent discussion wherein we Yanks were (anonymously) instructed that the Civil War was all about, or essentially about, “states’ rights to secede.” Not the “peculiar institution” of slavery, not the extension ever westward in Manifest Destiny’s bosom, of slavery. Nothing really to do with that at all! Yankee lies. No, it was a great and noble duel, fought over a disagreement, among Christian gentlemen (mainly*), on a matter of high principle — one of freedom. If you can believe this. I myself had a great deal of trouble believing what I was reading. I mean, if I were on stormfront, I might expect to read such things. But sure as hell, not on a nominally Orthodox Christian blog in these latter days. Even among Dixie Orthodox — at least not in public. That kinda threw me. I really wanted to see the faces of these writers while they wrote — to see if they were straight faces. Hard to picture.
Anyway, another twisted irony distinct from but not unrelated to those whiffed in that clinically fascinating apologia, by Christians, for the Lost Cause — and, not even all that implicitly, of slavery — is the fact that many of those same people were weighing in indignantly about “gay marriage,” too. Did they know that marriage and family and education and the protection of law were denied to human beings on “high moral principle” for 2.5 centuries, probably by their own ancestors?
Folks, the empires of Athens, Sparta, Rome old New and Third were one thing. The commonwealth of Israel built on the foundation of the law and the prophets is something else. When is this Fact going to register in many thick Christian heads? So many reasons to marvel at the manifold blindness.
Some of you like to piously quote Romans 1. Way too often with little enough evident insight into even its surface meanings much less its depths or heights. But I seldom if ever hear a word about the next chapter, or much hint that some of you have much clue what Paul was saying there or in the rest of the book. It’s a masterpiece of Reality Instruction. I highly recommend it.
[*some very high-profile exceptions.]
Nathan, I appreciate and salute your efforts here.
“. . . Did they know that marriage and family and education and the protection of law were denied to human beings on “high moral principle” for 2.5 centuries, probably by their own ancestors?”
Make that 3.5 centuries, for education and anything resembling equality under law. Mea culpa.
Mike, I categorically reject yours and Mr Trost’s narrative. One hundred years ago, when 80% of black Americans had direct memory of slavery, there was so very little of the pathology among black Americans that is so rampant today. Just 50 years ago, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his magisterial book, the black family was largely intact (although definitely heading on a downward trajectory). This was before Affirmative Action, desegregation, full voting rights, etc.
I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to come up with another excuse. I have mine: free and easy Welfare (which is presently destroying white family formation), a grievance culture, indoctrination in victimology, abrogation of a culture of virtue, are places to start.
George, I was merely riffing on Nathan’s takedown of one of the many glaring absurdities in this “essay.” I’m curious what exactly it is in my “narrative” that you’d reject. Please be specific, if you can.
I take it you know that until last year, rates of violent “street” crime had reached a 20-year low since their peak in ’93. White-collar crime, however, and breathtaking corruption — well, not so much. We’re at world-historical levels there.
Mike, forgive me for conflating your take-down with Mr Trost’s comment. You’re right: “violent ‘street’ crime” is at a 20-year low, but only because the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. And the highest implementation of the death penalty, exceeded only by China and Iran (as if that’s something for a liberal to be proud of). One-quarter to 1/3 of all black males under the age of 40 are part of the penal system in some way, either as convicts, ex-convicts, parolees, arrestees, to say nothing of being the overwhelming victims of violent crimes (esp. murder). These statistics are nothing to write home to Mother about.
Interestingly, this brings us to another tangential point: there has recently been an uptick in liberabls/progressives using the “20-year” benchmark, with 1990 being “year zero” in the calculation of criminal statistics. For some reason, they won’t push it back to 1965 when a confluence of Ted Kennedy’s disastrous immigration law went into effect, along with increased criminal rights, an abeyance of the death penalty, the subsidization of illegitimacy, etc. all started going into effect. By carefully cherry-picking a random date it makes things seem better in proportion.
As for corporate malfeasance, throw the book at them for all I care.
My simple response to this assertion:
Is that the drop in violent crime over the past few decades has been a worldwide phenomenon in the developed world. And of course, Ted Kennedy and Miranda likewise can’t be blamed for past historical global trends in the other direction.
So, your list of casual factors is woefully insufficient. Failing to acknowledge the complexity of interwoven societal, economic and political factors to let yourself sit in a comfortable worldview constructed by cozy beliefs rooted in your own prejudices, rather than serious data and research might feel good, but doesn’t really make your citizenship a positive contribution to the Republic.
As time goes on, while it is hardly a sole factor, it is also increasingly apparent that a strong casual factor of violent crime has turned out to be environmental. As we entered the mid-20th century, we began seriously contaminating our surroundings and exposing ourselves and most importantly, our children to highly elevated levels of the 82nd element on the periodic table. This build-up was most concentrated, understandably, in urban areas. We damaged a lot of young brains in a fashion that made them more prone to violent behavior. It is not by any means the only factor, but it is a very large elephant in the room that again, has absolutely nothing to do with The Great Society, welfare, rap, or Ted Kennedy.
The US prison population exploded in recent decades, but it was not an explosion fueled by locking up violent offenders. From those liberal hippies at Reason magazine:
Perhaps the biggest area of growth in the dreaded Leviathan isn’t where you constantly seem to think it lies (welfare), but rather is being fed the most by the shovels full of your tax dollars going into voraciously expanding governmental and increasingly private-sector criminal justice/prison industrial complex.
Do I really need to point out that even in 2013 America, who goes into The System versus who does not for the same offense is still disproportionate by race?
As usual, a lot to chew on. Again, you don’t answer my point that though violent has fallen to 1990 levels, it hasn’t fallen to pre-1065 levels. Also, take crime statistics with a grain of salt. Ever since Prohibition when there was an explosion of arrests because of people being arrested for what was previously a non-phenomenon (alcohol consumption), prosecutors’ offices all over the US went into overdrive to find ways to cope with the massive increase in arrests. One way to do it was by inventing the “plea bargain” and the downsizing of crime. Before that there was only murder, manslaughter, and justifiable homicide. After we had 2nd degree murder, 3rd degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, etc.
Trayvon Martin was just such a statistic. The Miami-Dade PD chose not to recognize his two burglary arrests, taking them down to misdemeanors. This had a salutary effect on crime statistics. It did not erase actual criminality. It’s like when Chamber of Commerce boosters call a section of town “urban” or the city has a “vibrant” night life. That’s usually code for “ghetto” and “mayhem.” Or the area is “in transition.”
One thing laymen don’t understand as well is that emergency rooms have gotten tremendously better at treating gunshot wounds. Plus EMT response times are faster. Two weeks ago, when 70+ teens were shot in Chicago and only 12 were actually killed, hardly any mention was made because the survival to death ratio was as great as it was. Had this happened say 30 years ago, more deaths would have occurred. 100 years ago, perhaps 90% of those shot would have been killed. We need to keep that in mind.
I don’t disagree at all with your assertion that there has been a tremendous growth in federal spending vis-à-vis incarceration. That only brings us back to the chick-or-egg argument: why has the federal government seen fit to shovel even more money into incarceration. Part of it of course is because of unions representing prison guards (just like the Dept of Education was created to keep public school teachers fat and happy) but we can’t overlook the fact that between 1960 and 1990, street crime exploded.
As far as your “environmental” thesis, I’m intrigued. There may be something to that. However we must ask if that’s the case then how is it possible that Lead is infecting only children in the inner city? You assert that Lead was “mainly” concentrated in the inner city. If true, where are the statistics that back this up? As I remember, lead-based paint was used everywhere as it was durable, cheap, and plentiful.
To assume that drug offenders are “non-violent” is a bold assertion. While I would like to see us revisit drug prohibition (and decriminalize marijuana at the very least), the idea that there is no violence surrounding the drug-selling culture is ludicrous. This certainly wasn’t the case during Prohibition when the Mafia, Murder Inc, and the various Irish gangs took off like a rocket. Speaking as a pharmacist (and one who’s been held up on more than one occasion), I can tell you that the legal drugs (Oxycontine, Vicodin, Soma, etc.) have not resulted in no criminality at all.
Violent crime is not down to 1960 levels…yet. But it is basically down to 1970 levels. To make an apples-to-apples comparison, you have to account for population growth. If you take the Census data and the UCR data and use it to generate a violent crime per 100,000 population table, you end up with this:
1960: 160.86
1970: 363.25
1980: 593.49
1990: 731.83
2000: 506.53
2010: 405.27
Saying “it has fallen to 1990 levels” isn’t correct: 1992 was the peak both in absolute numbers and per-100,000. 2011 is on-par with 1979 in absolute numbers and probably on-par with 1971 in per-100,000 numbers.
You would have to qualify this statement a great deal more before I could possibly agree with it. If you said “crime statistics from the first half of the 20th century”, I really have little to quibble with. It takes a lot of refining work to attempt to build usable data from that era. There’s a reason the UCR only goes back to 1960. In 2013, if you’re saying take data in UCR, NCIC, NIBRS, etc with a grain of salt, *that* I would take severe issue with It’s also worth noting, for example, that systems like NCIC were only established in 1967.
Why is this relevant? There is no question that there was a violent crime increase all through the 60s (even before 1965) until 1992. However, especially in the 1960s, one should take into account not just a growth in ‘new’ crimes, but a growth in crime reporting. The United States used to be a very big place. Computerization and networked communication to centralized recordkeeping fixed that. Get arrested (not even charged, much less convicted) in a tiny town on one coast on Monday, fly to the other coast on Tuesday, get stopped in an equally small town and guess what the officer is going to see when they punch your name in the computer? On top of that, the latter half of the 20th century saw a broad general trend of “professionalization” of law enforcement. And by professionalization I mean operating under the standards we tend to expect in *developed* countries at this point in time, not developing ones. If you think reporting of black-on-black crime by say, various Sheriff Departments (especially in, oh, certain regions of the country) were as thorough or accurate in 1963 as they are in 2013. Well, I have some exciting investment opportunities to share with you!
Your terminology is not correct. There is no such thing as “failing to recognize” an arrest. You are arrested or you are not, and if you are, you go into a database, regardless of whether or not you are a minor or are actually charged, much less convicted. I presume you are referring to two school suspensions. These are not the same as being arrested, or being charged with a crime. If he had been charged with burglary, it would have been a felony. There is an interesting aside here about the mere possession of a screwdriver being potential grounds for a felony charge of possessing a burglary tool in the state of Florida, but we won’t go down that rabbit hole for now. What does interest me even more, is that you seem almost eager to bring out (seemingly incorrect) information about Martin as it relates to crime statistics being watered down while omitting including the similar example of George Zimmerman, who as an adult, was actually *arrested and charged* with felonies for “resisting officer with violence” and “battery of law enforcement officer”, only to have those charges later reduced and then dropped.
GSW survival rates would only be relevant if homicide was reflected in UCR violent crime statistics but not incidents of aggravated assault. Except aggravated assault is, so it isn’t.
While lead-based paints weren’t a great idea, it appears the real problem was: tetraethyl lead. That half a century of exhaust-pipe output had to go somewhere. And that output coming out of cars in increasingly crowded cities in the 1940s and 1950s was quite a bit different from a car from 2013! There are papers that have been coming out on the subject, and some treatment in media. Also not surprising: you can find significant overlap between the poorest neighborhoods and highest lead levels.
By non-violent drug offenders I was including and specifically referring to the the recreational users. I was hardly trying to suggest that organized criminal drug gangs and cartels weren’t violent.
Violent crime is down to 1990 levels, not 1970 levels.
Mr Trost, I truly appreciate the hard work you put into crunching the numbers but the reality is far different for those who have families. America is truly a more dangerous place than it was even now (when violent crime has descended to 1990 levels). Just pick up your local paper and you’ll see what I mean.
When I was young (1960s), we stayed out all day long during summertime and only came home to eat supper. Doors were left unlocked. We walked or rode our bikes to school. We knew who our neighbors were and fear was unknown. These happenstances were universal all over the US. For a family to enjoy this type of life now they have to move to a suburb/exurb and even then it’s not the same thing because of the distances children must be chauffeured back and forth to play-dates, sports events, etc.
I can see your point about tetraethyl lead coming from exhausts but this would impact those who live within the central business district (“downtowns”). In most major cities, the majority of the people who lived “in the city” or “downtown” lived in the neighborhoods that ringed the central business district (CBD) rather than actually in it. Speaking for my hometown, Admiral Blvd separated “North Tulsa” (which had the highest concentrations of African Americans) from Tulsa. (The Arkansas River separated Tulsa from West Tulsa.) Anyway, the city regularly set up meters to see which streets got the most traffic (and hence, the most funds). Most black neighborhoods registered significantly less traffic. This is so for a variety of reasons: 1) because they were poorer and couldn’t afford cars to the same extent that whites could, 2) because there were no decent shopping areas on the north side, and finally, 3) because white people with their cars (never on foot) didn’t venture into the north side. From my own observations, I would see far more trucks on cinder blocks and/or abandoned on the side of the road in those neighborhoods than I would see in other areas.
However, I am eager to read those reports that show how tetraethyl lead can lead to hyperviolence and other inner city pathologies. It is intriguing to say the least and may explain why said pathology is far worse than it was pre-Great Society days.
Lead-based paint on the walls and especially on window frames in old, poorly maintained apartment buildings in many big cities peeled badly, and children often ate it. Kids tend to put anything in their mouths. And as Nate pointed out, tetraethyl lead-laced exhaust fumes were another huge and ubiquitous source. My guess is anyone who grew up in east LA or the Inland Empire or Phoenix before the mid-70s (when TEL was phased out) were at high-risk of lead poisoning. Particulates settled on soil and so it got into food grown in it, too. Lead compounds are serious neurotoxins, particularly in developing (young) nervous systems.
Well, yes. The key word here is “ubiquitous.” That means that it affected everybody who ingested it. It must be proven (not asserted) that the denizens of the inner cities were more affected and that the overwhelming percentage of residents of the inner city were black. From about 1900 to 2000, over 3,000,000 Jews lived on the Five Boroughs of New York City, one of the most heavily congested and densely populated cities in America. The CO/CO2 percentages from the innumerable buses, taxis, and cars that congest that city for the over a century now have not led to any appreciable depletion in Jewish cultural or social attainment.
Ubiquitous was a qualifier for TEL particulates. Lead-based paint peel was mostly found in poorly maintained apartment buildings. Rented by poor people. In high population centers (i.e., big cities, often the inner city). Kids ate it. Lots of intake, lots of neurotoxicity. Lots of proof.
Not only poor blacks lived in such places, who said that?, but plenty of them did for sure.
If I could make a final suggestion, Michalopulos: Put those words in 360 pt. bold font in front of your desk and meditate upon them every time you’re tempted to excrete your really sorry static into cyberspace. KK?
Good God, what a freakin’ bozo. I’m done with you.
So you have the actual demographic stats? That is how many people in a specific “inner city” were black, white, Asian, Hispanic, or other? And how many of those tenements had lead-based paint?
Whether you’re done with me or not is of trifling concern. I would caution you however that if in future you want to engage in lively debate, you really shouldn’t make fun of your interlocutors. I certainly haven’t made fun of you, nor will I. (Although I could, as any gratuitous statement can be responded with an equally gratuitous statement according to rules of debate.) Therefore I won’t call you a limp-wristed, unpatriotic, socialist windbag who can’t take the heat and must go running home to Mommy. That would be unChristian of me.
I say it is down to 1970 levels. You say it is down to 1990 levels.
In essence you are arguing that 405.27 is closer to 731.83 than it is to 363.25. Your anecdotes about playing outside in the summer do not trump basic arithmetic. Even in absolute terms: 1,203,564 is not more than 1,820,127. This data is not hard to acquire.
My turn to anecdote as if such a thing were actually more meaningful than data! In my neighborhood all the things you describe still occur! I see white, black and brown children doing such things out my window on a daily basis. Of course I live in a neighborhood of working class families and retired elderly.
I would posit to you a thought experiment, and offer the suggestion that one factor in the decline of such behavior isn’t necessarily that suburban neighborhoods really got more dangerous, it’s that parents became much more risk averse. Remember that when your parents came of age, childhood mortality was a much more common tragedy than it is in our era. It hasn’t even been a century since the son of the President of the United States died from a simple infection. I would suggest that one side effect of a culture becoming less used to children dying or becoming crippled from health afflictions is that it becomes less tolerant to any perceived risk to a child’s health, no matter how improbable. Humans aren’t very rational creatures, and middle class America is probably a wee bit irrational about its children. I suppose that is to say: those cultural changes you lament are as much a result of decadence and paranoia as actual danger. Stranger Danger was always a bit of a crock.
You want a peek at that indoctrination. Take a look at some of the latest from our President’s former pastor:
http://www.studentprintz.com/hate-speech-comes-to-hattie-1.2133673#.UfKNrBbB_pF
Don’t really want to wade into the slavery thing again, but are you saying that it was wrong for a group of states to secede from the lawful authority because they were jealous of their institutions? That’s what the 13 Colonies did when they rebelled against their lawful king. And let’s not forget that every one of these Colonies had legal slavery. To somehow state that they were “conflicted” about it and that they were eventually going to get around to resolving issue is wishful thinking. Very little is inevitable as far as societies go. Don’t forget, the Christian empires of Europe eradicated the Arab slave trade in Africa in the nineteenth century. It’s making a comeback presently in the Sudan and has been reported in Indonesia.
As for the “man-stealing, family-destroying, education-denying slavery” that existed before 1865, being responsible for the horrible pathology we see today, I must ask two pertinent questions: 1) are you certain about those facts? and 2) if true, then how was the African-American population so miraculously able to rebound and have intact families and communities? Is it possible that the slaves not only embraced the nuclear family structure of their European masters voluntarily but that they were encouraged to do so by these same masters? Wouldn’t it have been in the interests of the slave-masters to have intact families working for them? Remember, in the South, only 6% of the white population actually owned slaves. And of these, the vast majority owned a single black man and woman who lived in house next to theirs. This was no different than what obtained in ancient Greece when a single family owned a thrall. The thrall did the heavy lifting (pushed the plow) while the citizen served in the militia. The thrall’s wife assisted the citizen’s wife in organizing her household.
Either your proposition is false (except for “education-denying” but then again “book learnin'” was never an urgency in the South even for whites) or the first generation of freedmen were nothing short of supermen and women who built intact societies from the ashes of slavery.
As for your assertion that the Hebrew commonwealth was more merciful than ancient Greece and Rome, that’s a very controversial statement. Slavery was common in ancient Israel and Judah as was helotry.
Good Lord.
Don’t have time at the moment to deal in detail with this confused mess, or all the ignorance and worse it betrays. Just a few points for now.
Yeah, butcha are, George, ya are. Y’all just can’t help yourself, clearly.
To respond, I must request clarification first as to the antecedents of the two 3rd person plural pronouns. I do so with some trepidation, if I intuit the point you’re going for accurately . . .
And yeah, all 13 had legal slavery, and even after Congress had outlawed importing slaves in 1807 and chattel slavery as such had been driven underground in every state of the US North and NW territories (some lawless holdouts, though mostly of white slavery), indentured servitude, for Africans and European immigrants (and poor Americans) remained. And that could certainly be horrible enough — in some cases far worse than typical conditions for Southern slaves under more benevolent “owners.” For example, cf. the recently discovered 19th century mass graves of Irish immigrant laborers in Philadelphia, who, having fled the economic devastation wreaked by the English, were worked to a speedy death building the westward lines of the Penn RR, for just one example of that.
A case of grotesque ignorance on display here. They were practically all out-in-the-openly ambivalent and “conflicted” about it. And some took quite a few steps to prepare the ground for ridding the US of slavery. Unfortunately, not nearly enough. John Jay, Governeur Morris and Washington were in the vanguard here, along with Franklin and Hamilton, of course, but Jefferson, Madison and many, many others were rather obviously “conflicted.” Most of them felt guilty and hypocritical, and confessed as much publicly. Lots of evidence for this. Jefferson was especially schizoid and dissonant on the issue, all over the map. His attempts at rationalization and self-excuse, both for himself and the colonies as a whole, are mesmerizing.
Didn’t assert that, was implying something else, but since you’ve put what I did say like that, maybe it’s a topic to chat about some day. Check out the Torah details on slavery; they’re in Deuteronomy mostly.
What I meant was this: the essentially narcissistic, secular notions about virtue, and ethoi concerning slavery, found among the Mediterranean ethnai, were one family of things. The teachings in the Scriptures and oracles of Judah and Israel on these matters were something else entirely and came from a very different worldview and spirit.
From the perspective of the Gospel of Grace, the Commonwealth of Israel is a Pauline charter, sanctioned by the Apostles, and, together with Judah, Levi, Benjamin and the tribes scattered abroad, included believers called out from all ethnicities. By Paul’s definition, again, one sanctioned by Peter and James, all faithful Christians are therefore citizens of the Commonwealth. Therefore, this, along with all the teaching about slavery, exo- and esoteric, in the NT, should have dynamited the peculiar institution within one generation, or two at most. We see it took 17, and a civil war.
Maybe I’ll get around to dealing with the contentions and special pleading that follow this later, if I have time. I hadn’t mentioned Jim Crow, on top of all that. Do I have to, really?
Yeah, except for that, strictly enforced by law in the deep South, with terrible penalties. Sometimes inflicted on white children, many of whom instinctively rebelled against something so unnaturally unjust. Oh, and except for the menstealing, too. Obviously. Between 500,000 and 600, 000 imported stolen goods (human beings), and the many millions of their descendants (many of them children torn from their mothers) sold in trade once here, until Emancipation.
WRT to the family-destroying you claim to contest, in the future you may want to consider some home-schooling of your own, before catapaulting such cosmic and unfathomable stupidity in public. In the meantime, however, exercise a minimum of imagination on how that might have worked. A genuinely incredible case of denial on your part. Or something — maybe you’re merely lying, and you actually know better in your heart? Almost regardless, one of your more unclean posts in some time, George, all in all. Which is saying something.
Tell me about it.
Jim Crow came after slavery and after Reconstruction. And it was terrible, sharecroppers tied indefinitly to the land, often receiving no pay, sporadic schooling, being forced to live on the other side of the railroad tracks, etc. Yet even with the advent of Jim Crow you saw little of the pathologies afflicting the black communities of the post 1876 to 1960 pathology that one sees today.
My point is why is the pathology found ca post 1960-2013 so much more horrible than that which obtained between the years 1876-1960? Why were the first three generations of freedmen so much more capable of maintaining intact families, communities, and even townships under a legal regime that solidified thin second-class citizenship but the two generations since 1960 which are over a hundred years removed from slavery have sunk into moral anarchy?
I merely ask some simple questions: the first one being that maybe the institution of slavery was not as damaging to family formation as we have been led to believe. The second question was perhaps government intervention via LBJ’s Great Society might have exacerbated sloth and indolence as well as the breaking up of the family.
I take it you haven’t been in too many black parishes. I’ve been in a few. I’ve never heard preachers preach against illegitimacy. Not to say that they haven’t but I’m not cognizant of any.
A thought experiment: Where have the two most famous black pastors (Sharpton & Jackson) been on the issue of morality and virtue? In which parishes and from which pulpits do they preach to the faithful?
Any discussion of these issues will almost always devolve into taking sides based upon ideological/political prejudice. I will be bold and simply say, unless you have visited Fr. Moses’ museum and taken the tour, you need to consider being a little less sure of your position.
There are layers and layers of sin and redemption in the whole saga of slavery and race in the United States that intertwine in time and in our hearts. Until we allow God to penetrate the hardness of our own hearts on this, pretty much anything we have to say will be wrong and only adding to the darkness.
Michael, I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be an apologist for slavery. It is, was, and always will be an abominable institution, especially as it was practiced here in the Western Hemisphere.
What I was objecting to was the facile and diarrhetic assertions that the pathology that currently afflicts blacks in America is due solely or largely to slavery. I have asked that if this is in fact the case, then why didn’t we see this same pathology during slavery, in the immediate aftermath of slavery (i.e. Reconstruction/Jim Crow), and during the decades before the Great Society? The numbers as recounted by Moynihan speak for themselves. All I’m asking is a simple question.
As for Fr Moses’ museum, you are right, I do owe him (and indeed have promised him) a visit. In the meantime, I helped organize a lecture here in which he was the keynote speaker. He brought several artifacts from his museum, including ball-and-chain, bullwhips, etc.
You dropped the sociologist Moynihan’s name and mentioned his book. Are you aware that he himself thought and argued in the book you cite that many generations of slavery and Jim Crow were probably the greatest contributing factors in the unfolding of the social pathology you condemn? It’s another example of your dissonance to cite him and his “magisterial book” as an expert witness for the defense of your crap, but then most strangely to contradict his conclusions, due to your own apparent ignorance of a major aspect of his argument. But then this is merely typical of you.
He did famously write:
“From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles,” wrote Moynihan a few months ago, enlarging on his report for the Jesuit magazine, America, “there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future–that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder. . .are not only to be expected, they are very near to inevitable. And they are richly deserved.”
And who’d deny the basic truth of that? So, if you want to keep telling yourself that AFC (which dates from the thirties, incidentally — did you even know that?) and its successor AFDC are primarily responsible for this, knock yourself out. Maybe his words will comfort you in your self-righteous complacency. I seriously doubt that much of anything could deter you from your schtick of petty moralizing.
I am familiar with Moynihan’s thesis that slavery may have contributed to the present pathology (as of 1964 when he wrote that book). It may very well be the case that slavery was responsible for that pathology. You and I are writing fifty years after Moynihan’s magisterial work and there has been more time to absorb and analyze additional data.
Even so, Moynihan suggested slavery as the engine of black pathology. He didn’t prove it. And anyway, in the interim between 1865-1965 –i.e. 50 years close to slavery–the pathologies that he gingerly described were not nearly as rampant as they are now.
That’s all I’m saying. How come blacks who are eighty now have a memory of an intact family, knew who their grandfathers were, and even the names of their great-grandfathers? Not only is fatherhood presently an anomaly, but the concept of a grandfather is fantastical to modern young men.
And yes, I agree with Moynihan that matriarchy is a major part of the pathology.
Mr. Fall all of the things you mention can be linked to the effect of THE GREAT SOCIETY and their decimation of the black family; a culture that encourages fornication, discourages education as “too white” and the gangs such an outlook breeds.
Much of the bad stuff can be avoided if folks complete high school and don’t start having children until they are married
Busing destroyed the neighborhood schools and, IMO, actually increased the racial segregation in school systems which teacher’s unions have helped maintain.
Economic disparity is real. Educational disparity is real north south even.
If you don’t believe in economic disparity; you’ll have to explain the 3 black men that worked at the Andersen Corp in Bayport, Mn in the 90’s amongst me and the other 2000 whites.1.5/10th of a percent….hmmm. Must be that they are lazy….right.
Disparity is real. If you need citations I could start, but this was about how Christians interact.
As for educational disparity in the deep south between whites and blacks, I can tell you from extensive first hand experience and observation the the greater part of that disparity is self inflicted. The hurdles against young blacks who want to get good educations are not erected by the white community.
That said there is another thing present in our culture that was much less prevalent in the 1960s, which I think has contributed much to the decline of families and communities, both black and white.
Call it fallout from the law of unintended consequences. One of the big changes of the late fifties and early sixties that turned American society upside down was not music, or integration, or civil rights battles, Viet Nam, or the train wreck called the Great Society…rather it was one of our great engineering successes, one of our high-water marks of commerce and connectivity. I mean the Interstate Highway system. The effect of its arrival was like the that of the railroad, squared, or even cubed. The Highways made moving out of small/difficult/struggling communities so easy in order to follow whatever opportunity was hoisting it’s flag in the breeze that the extended family was broken apart, shattered for almost everyone. Grandma and Grandpa saw their kids scatter across the map to get education, and jobs and whatever. Those kids found wives and husbands (or not) got a tract house in the burbs, lost all knowledge of who their neighbors were, with the nearest relative at least 500 miles away…and that could be some second or third cousin that you met once at a last gasp family reunion 25 years before.
So over a couple of decades the extended family evaporated for most, and since then the nuclear family has been evaporating, and now we have a great number of single parent, or “new” families and “mixed families” where one group of half-related kids has three or four mothers and three or four fathers between them…or more, not all of which may be active in their lives. How long before we cease to need any other permanent personal attachment. You live for yourself, hook up when it suits you, and as soon as technology allows, inconvenient babies can be “exported” to fetus farms and cared for by the state or a private enterprise for a nominal monthly fee (tax deductible of course).
It was the highways the functionally hollowed out communities as communities leaving them basically aggregation markers for territorial government offices. With families created and raised in isolation from aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents…and all the support mechanisms that provided both in pragmatic (survival/sanity) terms and in terms of cultural and familial identity and loyalty…for many if not most it is a way of living and thinking that fell into disuse in their great grandparents time (insofar as they are aware people actually have great grandparents).
So…..while there’s plenty of “community” and individual blame for things gone wrong in our society, much of it…especially the speed of its exacerbation I think is one of the unforeseen consequences of our vast highway system. They flushed away familial rootedness…and the rest of the story is floating in the wind.
Walter Russell Mead:
The Once and Future Liberalism: We need to get beyond the dysfunctional and outdated ideas of 20th-century liberalism
“Whether Zimmerman was racist or not, the self-appointed guardian (vigilante) put himself in harm’s way and was then scared about the harm he stirred up and overreacted.”
Wow, that is quite a packed statement. Try mineral oil.
“not once in American history has a president used the power of his office to hound a single individual in such an open and capricious manner”
I would include Mark Basseley Youssef (formerly Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) on the list of those who were specifically (and unjustly) targeted and publicly hounded to incarceration by the Obama Administration.
Fr Mark, thank you for your correction. I completely forgot about that poor fellow, who I believe is still sitting in a jail cell, put their because Herr Hillary needed a scapegoat.
Ahhh, according to my reading, that fellow was locked up for using 60 bank accounts in a check writing scheme and more than 12 aliases to do so.
I kind of like what he did to be perfectly honest, but it probably did make governing our embassies in those places more difficult-you think? So, do you really believe he’d not come under any government scrutiny? It would have been the same deal if Bush had been in office, but nice try at the political spin.
Where is that Scooby Doo?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/18/203374030/detroit-files-for-bankruptcy
This posting is nothing but SKATA! Zimmerman had a gun and followed Martin to confront him. He was told NOT to do so. HE was the aggressor who attacked Martin. As Martin fought back, Zimmerman murdered him in COLD BLOOD. Zimmerman won’t escape his sin. He will be executed in “self-defense.” He will be looking over his shoulder the rest of his short life. Obama has nothing to do with it. Racists will succumb; one way or the other.
That is not what a duly constituted jury found. It is what the prosecution failed to prove. If you are Orthodox I only want to say you have no grounds to be passing judgement. This whole unfortunate situation demonstrates clearly why we are not to judge and the spiritual peril that arises from doing so.
Mr Jones, as far as the law is concerned, we live in a quantal universe. If a man is adjudged “guilty” of a specific crime, he is guilty. If he is adjudged “not guilty” he is innocent. We also abide by Anglo-Saxon Common Law, there is no “Scots’ Verdict” –not proven.
The State of Florida, in their craven idiocy accused Zimmerman of a crime which they failed to prove. The burden was on them (thank God!) not on the accused to prove his innocence. They failed to do so.
George, are you happy with that verdict? If it were a neighbor or relative of yours who was killed in a similar circumstance would you be saying that it it was a ‘craven idocracy’ that was afoot by the procecution?
West, I am “happy with the verdict” in this sense only: the State (over)charged and the jury wisely saw that they could not meet their own burden of proof. I do not believe in political trials and definitely don’t believe that the job of juries is to gild the lily, that is to say to come up with a verdict that will please the polity but has nothing to do with the facts of the case. That would be travesty. Ever read Herman Melville’s Billy Budd? Or the New Testament for that matter? (“Better that one man should die…”)
Thomas Jones writes, “Zimmerman murdered him in COLD BLOOD.”
This would have been useful information for the jury to have, Mr Jones. Your testimony could have cleared up the whole thing and saved us all a lot of grief. Why didn’t you come forward with this information?
Fr. Patrick, I think Mr. Jones may have intended his apparent rant as a parody. If so, his post still pales before your superior satire!
Parody only works if it is ridiculous in its extremism. Sometimes it fails because it is not parody but only imitation. like Weird Al parodying DEVO. If this post was parody it failed because it was too close to what is being saidv
I hesitate to weigh in on this idiocy, but there is one fact beyond any doubt. Zimmerman called the police prior to his cold-blooded, race-motivated murder. With racist malice toward his intended victim and itchy finger on the trigger, eagerly awaiting the fulfillment of his hatred and lust to kill, he picked up the phone, called the police to apprise them of the situation, and then continued with his crime.
This clearly follows the pattern of every racist murder in history, as Mr. Jones well knows.
I suspect that Brian is satirical. But, I am not sure; maybe he means what he says. ???
Obviously, the irony was lost on Incredulous. Racist murderers have no pattern whatsoever of calling the police prior to the commission of their crimes.
It was good to hear Pres. Obama speak on this yesterday. As he said, “What happened to Trayvon, could have been himself some years ago.” Again, Martin was murdered in COLD BLOOD by Zimmerman as he was walking home. Zimmerman was clearly the aggressor carrying a 9-MM Glock and was told not to follow, but wait for police. Instead, Zimmerman already assumed the black kid in the hoody was a criminal and murdered him. The 6 ladies on the jury were either very stupid; bribed or bigots like many of you here. When the ladies went into deliberations, 2 wanted 2nd degree murder, 2 wanted manslaughter and 2 wanted not guilty. What happened in that jury room? Who got to them? How much $$$ was transferred into retirement accounts? By whom?
Father Webster suggests that Mr Jones is, perhaps, a kind of agent provacateur.
Charity urges us to consider that interpretation. Mr Jones can’t be serious.
Where is Truman Capote’s ghostwriter when we need him?
You might be right, perhaps his real name is Barrack and he has been lurking on this site.
Mr. Jones did you have the same spirit of outrage when OJ Simpson was acquitted?
The murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman where really carried out with malice aforethought.
Clearly you neither know nor care about the truth. You want blood. Is your blood cold?
Even if Zimmerman did all that you say and your interpretation of his purpose and state of mind are accurate (as unsupported by the actual evidence though they are ) are true, your suggestion shows far more malice and desire to harm.
It is possible your words could be considered terroristic threats and criminally actionable. Certainly possible if any harm were to come to Mr. Zimmerman or his family.
Obama and the DOJ are fomenting racial war to take the public’s minds off Benghazi, the NSA scandal, the IRS scandal, the Obamacare scandal, and the incipient financial Depression—not to mention the shameful unemployment rate among young blacks—but they gulled you, so I suppose they are succeeding. Apparently, it is impossible to be too cynical in politics. (Look, a squirrel!)
Our privacy is gone. Our civil rights are gone. Our livelihoods are gone. Our republic is gone. Our rule of law is gone. If I was living under a tyrant, he would look like Obama. Justice for Trayvon!
On a much more optimistic note:
What Do the Microscopic Rallies for Trayvon Mean?
“…the turnout was somewhere between minuscule and puny — maybe, at best, fifteen thousand people nationwide in a country of 314 million.
…So what are we to make of this astonishingly low attendance after non-stop coverage on cable news and elsewhere, as if this trial were the only serious issue confronting our country?
Could it be that the citizenry, including African-Americans, supposedly so greatly injured, have seen through the media hype … and themselves realize this case is simply an accidental, anomalous one-off…?”
Mr. Jones,
What is missing from your statement is the likelihood that Martin was afraid of the person following him, who did not identify himself and rather preferred to watch from a distance to capture Martin doing wrong. And that Martin, out of fear or anger at being followed, likely took a first strike at Zimmerman.
Two wrongs do not make a right, but the item conveniently overlooked by most of those that dislike Zimmerman’s actions is that Martin probably physically assaulted Zimmerman, and had Zimmerman not shot Martin, Martin would probably have ended up in jail for a & b, and we would have never heard about the story.
My statements do not suggest the adult in the interaction acted in a wise fashion. He could have identified himself to Martin-most likely did not for the catch him in the act fun he was seeking. And he might not have identified himself to Martin while being pummeled. And, of course, without the gun, he may have taken the 911 dispatchers advise.
The most interesting thing about this story is how people take such polarizing views about it. It is either all Zimmerman or all Martin for almost everyone I discuss it with.
Neither of them acted wisely; especially Zimmerman.
If everytime a kid walks home from the store he is followed by strangers, I’m guessing a lot of bad societal interaction will happen.
For all of you Zimmerman fans, you better rethink the idea of having a black guy follow your kids home because the black guy is carrying a gun and is an off duty neighborhood watchguy and thinks your kid might be stealing car radios.
As for “ONE”, the President has not made a statement to deflect from Libya, but I enjoy the sarcasm.
Bill Whittle on YouTube : The Lynching
Let’s put this way, Blacks have been killed by Latinos in La for some years but never reach the National Media. Ziggy a Latino on the mother side form Peru.
Latinos have been killed by Blacks also, it goes both ways.
Don’t blame me. I voted for Mitt Romney.
Are you sad now tht Mitt was not able to save our land?
Only God can save this fallen world, including America. Those who put their trust in Prince Obama, and in the sons of men in whom there is no salvation, are damned. At least Gov. Romney would have RESPECTED the OFFICE of the Presidency. But what do you expect from a “community organizer”? He organized the black Chicago community… and now he has brought that “riot consciousness” to the White House.
Well, those who voted for Mr. O, and who still promote him along with Jesse and Al congratulations you have brought our country to a new low or let’s say your actions are like the foomph bird which flies in descending concentric circles until you hear the inverse flatuant sound of foomph when the head of the bird travels through his sphincter.
Hello friends:
I think it is an example of a jury, when all was said and done, following the judge’s instructions on the criminal burden of proof – beyond a reasonable doubt – quite closely. When they went into the jury room and took the initial poll, my instinct is that the two voting for acquittal had absorbed the instructions more completely and more readily applied them to the evidence before them, and that the other four came around in the course of deliberations.
The government’s choice to prosecute Zimmerman, and its failure to meet the very stringent criminal burden of proof, tends to lead shallow thinkers and reactors to the false conclusion that the jury found Zimmerman was in the right. Not so!! it only means the toughest burden of proof our system employs could not be met by the prosecution on this set of facts..
Had there been civil trial, as we saw in the second stage of the whole OJ travesty, where the normal civil burden of proof was applied and a large verdict rendered – i. e. “more likely than not” instead of “beyond a reasonable doubt” – I think this jury is telling us they would have found Zimmerman in the wrong.
sincerely,
Fr. George
Fr. George, it appears to me that it is unlikely that any criminal act occurred in this tragedy but quite likely a wrongful death. Perhaps this case belonged in civil court all along?
Of course civil court can cost the plaintiff money. Still someone would surely taken it on contingency.
This is all very ugly. All of it. The entire tragedy from beginning to end is a heartbreak that should never have happened. I don’t know if George Zimmerman is a racist; I rather doubt it. I don’t think he went out with a plan to commit murder. But if he had listened to the advice of a police dispatcher and simply stayed in his van he could have done his “job” as a watcher and avoided killing a young man who under no circumstances deserved to die that night. If Trayvon Martin had lived, how does anyone know what marvelous influence his older brother might have had on him in the years to come? That young man (his brother) was an example of hope for young people black, white, Latino, and others who are trying to move from poverty into the mainstream through hard work and education. If Trayvon had lived, he might have been one of the first to be influenced by that role model. We will never know. And that’s part of the tragedy.
Then there is the unspeakable tragedy of his bereft parents.
Never mind the fool Chief Executive and his political gang (and those on the other side of the political spectrum, too). They are not what really matters here. What matters is the wasted life that can never be replaced because someone chose not to listen to reason. George Zimmerman’s real fault that night was hubris. He made his 911 call and didn’t listen to good advice. If he is a good man, that will weigh on him for the rest of his life.
Well said.
Sorry Ivan,
You obviously have been drinking the lamestream media koolaid, and listening to the plethora of inaccurate statements and distortions put out by the media. A major one: GZ was never told not to get out of his car by the dispatcher. You are coming to the conclusions that these manipulators want you to come to, because you have not looked at the actual evidence, only the media reported distortions.
Go back and watch the video The Lynching, by Bill Whittle. The link is above. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Or you can go to American Thinker and read all the tweets and facebook notes (suppressed in the trial) which pretty well indicates what kinds of problems Travon Martin had been involved in. Hubris? Travon had plenty of that on tap.
Martin could have gone on home. The timeline indicates as much. Instead he circled back and jumped Zimmerman. He assaulted him, Zimmerman did nothing to elicit the sucker punch that broke his nose and dropped him to the ground. But the media posture is to blame Zimmerman, although Martin had plenty of opportunity to avoid this confrontation. Instead Travon precipitated it, with a person that happened to be armed. Had Zimmerman not been, we never would have heard anything about this at all, but Zimmerman could be dead or brain damaged.
Publicizing that would not have been a useful political ploy, however.
Whatever you have to say about the various judgment displayed by both Zimmerman and Martin in this case, it was a case of self defense – simple as that. Your argument about staying the car is a specious as those who claim a woman “asked” for the rape because she was out at night alone.
I am sure that GZ will carry this death with him the rest of his life. That would be true even without this media and political circus. Oh, and BTW, he risked his life today getting some people out of an SUV that was upside down after an accident. The risk was not from fire, or explosion. It is from lunatics and black racists who won’t accept this jury’s decision, and would harm this man as a result of the lies that have been told by the media and the government. It is likely that he will live with the threat from such as these for his remaining days.
For what it’s worth, it was reported yesterday that George Zimmerman came to the rescue of a family of four, pulling them out of their overturned SUV. Where are those people who said he shouldn’t get out of his car to help his community now?
Please ignore the following if they have been brought up already.
1. Zimmermann is thinking about/will sue Al Sharpton, NBC and the lawyers for the Martin family. http://www.examiner.com/article/zimmerman-s-lawsuit-against-al-sharpton-nbc-and-the-martin-family-attorneys?cid=taboola_inbound
2. Trayvon Martin may have been a user of Purple Lean or Purple Drank, which has unpleasant affects, http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2012/05/24/update-26-part-2-trayvon-martin-shooting-a-year-of-drug-use-culminates-in-predictable-violence/
3. Zimmerman defense lawyer, Mark O’Mara has vowed legal action against Angela Corey and Bernie de la Rionda for violations of the Brady rule by withholding exculpatory evidence. http://www.examiner.com/article/mark-o-mara-goes-after-angela-corey-and-bernie-de-la-rionda
A little poem I wrote a few years ago that George kindly invited me to post. It comments upon the double standard in our society on questions of race, and what I felt regarding the legacy and history of my people being defamed and erased and the only socially acceptable posture was to pretend not to notice.
The Fearory of the Game
The fearory of the game is this
You will call me names
And I will say “yes” its true,
Even if I must lie.
On the days you celebrate
The X-ing of your name,
Your regularly scheduled rage
(it will be televised),
I will not dare to ask about
The X-ing of the day it was
the street it was
the intolerable X it was.
That is the cross you must bear
To illumine the night
Crouched upon my welcome mat
As you shout “my brother,
my sister
(and do not mean me).
Let us huff and puff and pound
Upon his walls
Until like a groundhog
Roused in February
He comes to blink
And if he dares to gaze upon his gray shadow
It will be four more months of winter
That he must sit alone
Till we howl again outside his door.”
On the days that you celebrate the X-ing of your name
I will doze alone remembering in my comfy chair
Listening to the splatter of names
I do not receive as my own
While the History Channel flickers soft
Across my eyes till I must look away.
That is the fearory of the game.
Part of how we view the incident depends on what we think happened between 7:09 and 7:17 on that night?
If one believes that Zimmerman followed Martin for all of those 8 minutes, basically tracking him, and Martin finally lashed out at Zimmerman – it would not be too hard to believe that Martin was actually trying to defend himself from Zimmerman.
If one believes that Zimmerman followed Martin for some of those 8 minutes and then was returning to his truck when Martin finally lashed out at Zimmerman – it would not be too hard to believe that Zimmerman was actually trying to defend himself from Martin.
It is pretty obvious Zimmerman was tracking Martin for some or all of the 8 minutes. But to suggest taking a first strike at Zimmerman is defending one’s self is a stretch.
What would most people do if a stranger was following them for say just 4 of the 8 minutes? Call the police…..it would be good to understand why Martin did not call the police, but it doesn’t matter much now.
Like I’ve said before, these two men did not behave as civilized people ought, and absolutely not as Christians ought.
Lead-based paint on the walls and especially on window frames in old, poorly maintained apartment buildings in many big cities peeled badly, and children often ate it. Kids tend to put anything in their mouths. And as Nate pointed out, tetraethyl lead-laced exhaust fumes were another huge and ubiquitous source. My guess is anyone who grew up in east LA or the Inland Empire or Phoenix before the mid-70s (when TEL was phased out) were at high-risk of lead poisoning. Particulates settled on soil and so it got into food grown in it, too. Lead compounds are serious neurotoxins, particularly in developing (young) nervous systems.
Riverside and San Berardino had small populations in the 1970’s, I grew up in the La and Orange area and had been out to the Inland Empire in the 1970’s, it was rural or suburban in those days not much of the inner city. East LA is a different history it was pretty Hispanic in those days but probably got less lead paint problems than South Central. As for Phoenix it was mainly a European American city, few Hispanics until around 1988.