It can be hard, very hard indeed, to persuade the willfully disbelieving – the sort of person who demands that the evidence not be there, or that the implications not be plain and unavoidable – that something unpleasant is happening to which he must pay attention. If the subject has a relatively mild degree of significance to anyone, you can dismiss a difference of conviction as something tolerable. But if it’s a matter of real importance, perhaps even life and death, to you or someone you love, you can build up a great deal of frustration trying to crack that wall of disbelief.
Unfortunately, the greater the importance of an unpleasant subject, the higher and thicker will be the disbeliever’s wall.
Maybe it wasn’t always this way. Maybe when we were less comfortable, less accustomed to safety and prosperity and more aware of “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” we resisted bad tidings and their implications less determinedly. After all, they happened repeatedly, and to people we know. We couldn’t hide our eyes from them all the time; we had to accept their place in our world and their mechanisms of origin.
But as people’s lives have lengthened, as we’ve become accustomed to convenience, as our pleasures have grown more affordable, as medical science has refined its ability to repair our ailments and relieve our sufferings, we’ve lost a great part of that awareness. We’ve distanced ourselves from the more unpleasant aspects of temporal existence, such that when they impinge upon us we react with bafflement if not anger: Can such outrages still happen to decent people in this Year of Our Lord 2020?
Yes. Yes, they most certainly can and do – and they always will. For as long as men must linger under the veil of time, there will be pain. There will be sorrow and loss. There will be death. And there will be outrages that demand our attention and our correction, if we’re serious about considering ourselves better than the savages.
Of course, that last conditional clause embeds a question of itself.
The United States at this time is approximately 70% Euro-Caucasian, 13% Hispano-Caucasian, 13% Negro, and 4% Mongolian or “Pacific.” Those are hard numbers. They give the lie to those who claim that for America to become a “minority white” nation is “inevitable.” 83% of Americans are of the Caucasian race – i.e., white. Even if we omit the Hispanics, which some prefer to do for reasons divorced from race, and consider only Caucasians of European descent to be “white,” the figure remains at 70%: a strong majority.
Our racial troubles arise from the 13% Negro fraction of our populace. Those troubles swell to a head and burst whenever a non-Negro law enforcer kills a Negro criminal or suspect. Nothing comparable occurs when a Negro law enforcer kills a non-Negro criminal or suspect. Indeed, those killings are hardly even mentioned in the regional papers.
But hark! What have we here?
Some of the most comprehensive information we have comes from a 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics report examining incidents where police in the United States used deadly force to kill criminal suspects between 1976 and 1998. During that 23-year span, 42% of all suspects killed by police were black – a figure that comported precisely with the percentage of violent crimes committed by African Americans during that same period. This is enormously significant because we would expect that in police forces not plagued by systemic racism, officers would shoot suspects of various racial or ethnic backgrounds at rates closely resembling their respective involvement in the types of serious crimes most likely to elicit the use of force by police. And indeed, that is exactly what the evidence shows.Moreover, in nearly two-thirds of all justifiable homicides by police during 1976-98, the officer’s race and the suspect’s race were the same. When a white or Hispanic officer killed a suspect, that suspect was usually (63% of the time) white or Hispanic as well. And when a black officer killed a suspect, that suspect was usually black (81% of the time).
How about the rate at which officers killed suspects of other racial or ethnic backgrounds? In 1998, the “black-officer-kills-black-felon” rate was 32 per 100,000 black officers, more than double the rate at which white and Hispanic officers killed black felons (14 per 100,000). That same year, the rate at which white and Hispanic officers killed white or Hispanic felons (28 per 100,000) was much higher than the “black-officer-kills-white-or-Hispanic-felon” rate of 11 per 100,000.
ATTENTION: I went to considerable difficulty to preserve those links. Follow them. Always check a commentator’s assertion of fact, especially one that has unpleasant implications. Insist on confirmations from independent sources. If you can dispute his facts, you can dismiss his implications – but the inverse is also true: If you cannot dispute his facts, you cannot dismiss his implications; you must attack his reasoning, which is usually a much more difficult proposition.
So: I contend, with John Perazzo, that if law enforcement is the subject, then there is no problem of “systemic racism” as the racialist hucksters have alleged. Descriptions of the suspect overwhelmingly match those convicted of the crimes attributed to them. From the statistics above, police uses of force, including lethal force, match their needs to use force when subduing members of the recognized races.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be any outrages. Owing to the conflicts between the two autopsies performed, we still don’t know whether George Floyd’s death should be attributed to the police action in subduing him. However, let’s stipulate – i.e., accept for the sake of argument – that the knee-on-the-neck treatment really did kill Floyd. Does that incident, isolated from the statistics above, justify the hucksters’ claims of systematic white-on-black police brutality?
I say that it does not.
Despite the figures above, America is in the middle of a race war: i.e., a violent conflict founded on racial grievances, whether justified or not. While some of the rioters are white, the conflict is over race and racial animosities: if there were no racial grievances, there would be no race-related agitation and no race-based conflict. So far the violence has been semi-localized to cities with significant black populations, though it is not guaranteed to remain so.
How does a nation end a race war – an internal race war?
Does it matter whether or not the allegations of “institutional racism” are accurate?
Indeed, do the American conceptions of rights and justice bear any relevance whatsoever to the conflicts and violence of the day?
The fomenters of the conflict are uninterested in ending the war. They’re indifferent to the facts on the ground that refute the allegations of systemic white-on-black racism. Nor are they concerned with rights or justice as Americans understand them. The race war in progress is one they’ve labored mightily to evoke. It’s their tool for the overthrow of the American economic, social, and political order.
This renders any conceptually American response – i.e., rights and justice-based – to the race war ineffective ab initio. What other approaches exist that the great majority of Americans would accept? Is it possible to halt the war and restore peace without actually fighting and winning it? Were American whites to rise to the occasion, meet violence with violence, and ultimately prevail, what would necessarily follow?
Are these possibilities and considerations too ugly to address open-eyed? Is the willful disbelief evinced by the white majority insuperable? Are we irreversibly resolved to insist that if we just bar our doors, close our eyes, and wait long enough, it will all “go away?”
Only one avenue that does not involve purging or expelling the entire Negro fraction of the American population from these shores is even imaginable: seeking out the fomenters, of whatever race, and putting them to the sword swiftly and publicly. What chance does it have?
It’s been said by others that starting a riot is easy but scheduling, controlling, or ending one is not. This has the ring of truth. The riots are in progress. They have their own dynamic. The fomenters had the riots as their object. Having achieved it, they’re either working to sustain and enlarge the riots or (figuratively) watching from the sidelines. Yet even if they had an interest in shutting the violence down, how does one “foment” the end of a riot? By what technique – and this presumes that the forces of order could somehow enlist the fomenters in this cause – could an enraged mob be systematically, effectively “de-enraged?”
If you’re inclined to believe, as I do, that no such approach exists, then what remains? Only punishment. Let’s imagine that some “core group” of fomenters and organizers of the riots could be identified and captured. Would anything the American justice system could do to them have the desired effect?
That seems a longshot. I’d love to be wrong about that, as it strikes me as the last strategic possibility remaining to us that doesn’t involve eliminating the Negro fraction of the American populace. The federal government, which has blanket authority over the subjects of terrorism and insurrection, must try it, swiftly and resolutely.
Should that fail, what will remain is the hoof-and-mouth disease cure. That remedy is a terrible one. However, it has this virtue: it is effective. There is a threshold level of disruption and destruction which, should we pass it, will put it into practice.
I dislike writing about this subject. I wanted to believe in the possibility of interracial amity for many years. I’m as appalled as anyone over what has come to pass. But I’m not a dewy-eyed idealist who sticks flowers into gun barrels or believes that chanting Kumbaya can bring about world peace and human harmony. Most important of all, I respect the evidence...and the evidence tells a bleak tale.
It does not matter whether the differences between the white and black races brought us to this pass, or whether it’s a consequence of history and the exploitation of carefully nurtured resentments by evil forces. We are where we are, not somewhere else. The problem must be solved – and whereas most things commentators characterize as “problems” that require “solutions” are really only immutable conditions that express natural laws, this one is soluble. Whether we have the clarity, fortitude, and perseverance to solve it remains to be seen.
Pray.
UPDATE: A commenter has put a pointed question to me:
“If American blacks cannot be pacified, reformed, and made un-troublesome to the rest of us, they'll have to go.” I agree; now, what is your proposal to accomplish that?
I would not have it said that I lack the courage to answer such a question. What follows was – and is – my reply:
IB: The problem is stiff. It’s a lot easier to see it than to solve it. And of course, it’s very easy to prescribe a solution if you’re not responsible for implementing it...or for dealing with the unintended and unwanted consequences.Short of actually cleansing the continental U.S. of its Negro population, the only solution I can imagine is a program of exceedingly strict law enforcement that openly and unabashedly concentrates on heavily black population zones. Also, as much of the problem arises from black parents and black communities acting in concert to protect black lawbreakers from the weight of the law, particular attention must go to pursuing and penalizing “accessory after the fact” offenses. Leniency in such matters must be avoided – and any cries of “racism” must be treated with contempt.
Now: Would you want to be responsible for proposing that in public? I’m willing to say it, here or anywhere. But I wouldn't be “on the front lines” were it to be put in place. It would take qualities politicians seldom possess: honesty, moral courage, and fortitude enough to stand against the political gales for as long as it would take.
Prognosis: Poor. The problem is likely to worsen until an actual, race-based shooting war develops. At that point we'll all be “on the front lines.”
That’s my prescription. I will stand by it.
I lived in Chicago during the 70s when black crime was out of control on the South Side. I still like the city, many parts are very nice, and I keep up with what’s happening there. Here we are 50 years later and black crime is still out of control. There are shootings and murders at a horrifying rate every week, virtually all in the black ghetto. In the month of May, there were 79 shot and killed. This includes small children, mothers, and grandmothers who are caught in the crossfire. It’s awful, but somehow this never appears in the liberal media (Go to heyjackass.com if you want the details.). It’s as if Black Lives Don’t Matter except when the libs think that they can score political gains. All that really matters are black votes and the rake-off from the poverty programs that fund the Dem politicians and their camp followers.
ReplyDeleteFran, I suspect you've fallen prey to the common thinking. Skin color is largely irrelevant, except as to being a convenient marker for culture (although it's also a marker for genetics).
ReplyDeleteMajority black culture in the United States is dysfunctional, and not just slightly, but severely. Some of that dysfunction is ingrained, perhaps genetic, but I suspect a great deal of it, perhaps most, is the result of our society's imprint on them. The actions of white liberals over the past 75 or so years have not been at all kind to American blacks.
Instead of encouraging independence, achievement and personal development, our Leftist "Betters" (embodied, largely, as the Democrat Party) have endeavored to maintain a position of indebtedness to themselves on the part of blacks (much as they seem to also do with everyone else, but more succesfully with the black population).
Owing your future, and that of your family, community and society, to the presumed benevolence and largess of anyone else is not a winning position, but it's an extremely easy path to follow, and requires real work and perserverance to overcome. And, without strong encouragement, that perserverance becomes in short supply.
IB: As I said at the conclusion of the essay, It does not matter whether the innate differences between the races brought us to this pass, or whether it was the result of racial history and the exploitation of black resentments. We are where we are, and not somewhere else. If American blacks cannot be pacified, reformed, and made un-troublesome to the rest of us, they'll have to go. American whites will not tolerate the destruction of what we've built.
ReplyDeleteYes: American black "culture" is dysfunctional. However, the disease is in its terminal stage. This could have been averted by adequately forceful action at an earlier point, but it was not. The consequences have left us with only unpleasant choices.
I don't like it either. That doesn't alter the situation, which must be rectified regardless of what it will take to do so.
Amen, Fran. Black dysfunction and anti-white hatred have organic roots in the black temperament and in the psychological effect of being unable to function, as a whole, in white civilization. Some proportion can do so well but most cannot. If the organic black culture on display in Southside Chicago's shooting gallery and free-fire zone cannot rise above its daily toll of murder after decades of "uplift" and tender solicitude for every little owie or booboo of its population, you've got to conclude there's an innate inability to thrive and embrace minimal standards of civility. Africans in the mother countries have more dignity than our angelic locals but they still have not achieved anything of note without white assistance. Something is lacking.
ReplyDeleteIn the best of times then we have the Southside plus the phenomenon that in ANY city in which there is other than an occasional black presence there there will be decay, garbage, crime, fortified buildings, rampant bastardy, and fear. Guaranteed.
There is, of course, a malevolence, cowardice, and imbecility in the ranks of the white, "educated" left that we also see that creates the fertile ground for every manner of black pathology to sprout and flourish. The assault on order, decency, and logic of revolutionary socialism has exacted an immense toll and driven the West with energy, purpose, and malevolence to its present state of stupefacation at best and satanic possession at worst.
This form of political pathology has its own agenda and it uses black resentment and pathology to further its own goals. That must be understood and faced by people of good will but, first, this vicious, evil black insurrection has to be put down. It's an immense tragedy that our federal and state leaders of such weak, visionless rabbits.
"Always check a commentator’s assertion of fact, especially one that has unpleasant implications. Insist on confirmations from independent sources."
ReplyDeleteAs I've said, under my own name, this goes DOUBLY for when an article or image or meme appears that conforms to what you believe.
E.g., there was a meme "showing" CNN using a still grab from the movie "World War Z" as an actual news image. I fell for it like many did; now it looks like it's a fake.
So don't just do Francis' verification of what you see when it's the opposite side. Equal care must be taken, indeed, more than equal care must be taken, when what you see verifies what you already think. Confirmation bias is real.
More broadly, if we don't deal with the cores of this burgeoning race way, we will get the real deal. The problem is that this is hard. But as I've learned in my own life, a parable I am attempting to hammer into my children, is this:
IN GENERAL, WHEN FACED WITH MULTIPLE PATHS AND ABSENT SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE, THE MOST DIFFICULT PATH IS USUALLY THE CORRECT ONE.
And, very often, hard and painful paths often save lives in the end. I remember an article about the hedge wars in WWII. British General Montgommery wanted a slow, methodical, careful approach that avoided placing soldiers in jeopardy. Patton, OTOH, wanted a hard-charging full-on attack under the principle that getting things over quicker would result in lower overall allied fatalities. IIRC, and this is hazy, the article where I read this concluded Patton was right. But underlying it all is the desire for a "good solution" - one that doesn't incur pain or damage or whatever. And if I might opine, it is our aversion to choosing the HARD PATH while waiting for the GOOD PATH that often leads to the WORST PATH.
As to the last - "Pray." - I do, multiple times a day.
On a lighter note: A man visiting the Kotel - Western Wall - noted an old man praying diligently, all day. He was there every day. Finally the went to the old man and asked "What do you pray for"? "For world peace, harmony, the brotherhood of man..."
"Do you get a response"?
"No. It's like I'm talking to a wall."
@Paul: Just north of you across the border. Hi! As to your point - if the problems of the inner city were actually fixed, what control would the agitators have any more. They have a vested interest in NOT solving anything.
Very coincidentally, as it turns out, perspective helps. As I've mentioned, my wife is from Kazakhstan and was in Saint Petersburg when we met. A couple of years ago, desperately unhappy, she took the kids for a two-month trip "home". On the way to the airport she said "90% chance I'll stay there with the kids"! "Have a safe flight hon, you need to see your family".
Not three full days later, on the phone, "This isn't my home any more - can I come home now"? All through her two months were messages and tales and conversations of how racist, hopeless, etc., things were over there.
And yesterday in the bank parking lot I was talking with a black guy with a strong accent. Turns out he's from Kenya and I was able to use the one word of Swahili I remember. We had a short but friendly chat where he said "There is no place like America; you can go from 'grass to grace' like no other place on earth". Some of these agitators need to go "home to the motherland" for a while.
Interestingly, I just stumbled on this.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mindingthecampus.org/2020/05/19/culture-not-biology-tears-us-apart-on-race/
What's interesting to me is the relative rapidity of some changes in human subpopulations.
If genetics for things like skin color, eye color, etc., are adaptations to local conditions, then why aren't others, like intelligence, not? Except of course, they are. That doesn't mean a person should be treated differently under the law.
Side note: when my wife (Kazakh, remember) was pregnant with our first child the OBGYN looked at us both. She looked at my wife and asked "Chinese"? KAZAKH, came the firm reply. Then we had to explain what that was, as the doctor didn't know.
Then, me. "Eastern European Jew"? "Half. The other half is English and further back Scandinavian".
On the basis of that very unusual genetic pairing she recommended cord blood storage for that kid, and we've done it on both.
Kids are definitely a mix. (An amusing tidbit: my wife looks Asian, the older child has virtually none of her characteristics - even the eyes, you need to look hard to see any hint of Asian. It's to the point where, even now, my wife will look at that child, then me, then back and forth a few times, and then say YOU CHEATED ON ME!)
Thank all of now I must digest this Francis, I read often as it stirs my thoughts and makes me look at my comfort zone.
ReplyDeleteEverybody wants "something" to be done. Reality being what it is, no one has any idea what can be done that won't bite us in the butt down the road. But we'll still have to confront our present problems plus the new ones that will spring up. Worse, the solutions we were too civilized to consider earlier will still be the only choice to (possibly) preserve our lives, our way of life and any semblance of the freedom we've squandered.
ReplyDeleteWe've got some tough times and tougher choices ahead of us.
God help us!
Fran: RE: "We are where we are."
ReplyDeleteI do not contest your hypothesis; if one looks at Africa - a continent unbelievably rich in resources which exists in a culture of unending tribal conflict seemingly dedicated to self destruction, with no hope - ever - of correction, then looks at Detroit, Baltimore, South L.A. et al, one concludes that the importation of Africans to the U.S. has become the most expensive free labor the world has ever seen.
The problem must be resolved; if the default response to even the slightest discontent is to destroy everything within reach, America - Hell, any socially and economically successful country - cannot tolerate that. If one looks at the trillions of dollars spent on the problem over the last 60 years, the decision point should have been reached long ago.
"If American blacks cannot be pacified, reformed, and made un-troublesome to the rest of us, they'll have to go." I agree; now, what is your proposal to accomplish that?
IB: The problem is stiff. It's a lot easier to see it than to solve it. And of course, it's very easy to prescribe a solution if you're not responsible for implementing it...or for dealing with the unintended and unwanted consequences.
ReplyDeleteShort of actually cleansing the continental U.S. of its Negro population, the only solution I can imagine is a program of exceedingly strict law enforcement that openly and unabashedly concentrates on heavily black population zones. Also, as much of the problem arises from black parents and black communities acting in concert to protect black lawbreakers from the weight of the law, particular attention must go to pursuing and penalizing "accessory after the fact" offenses. Leniency in such matters must be avoided -- and any cries of "racism" must be treated with contempt.
Now: Would you want to be responsible for proposing that in public? I'm willing to say it, here or anywhere. But I wouldn't be "on the front lines" were it to be put in place. It would take qualities politicians seldom possess: honesty, moral courage, and fortitude enough to stand against the political gales for as long as it would take.
Prognosis: Poor. The problem is likely to worsen until an actual, race-based shooting war develops. At that point we'll all be "on the front lines."
Social pacification begins with tumbrils rolling through the streets of Washington DC taking the demonRat traitors to swift justice.
ReplyDeleteFrancis, what would you say to someone who, presented with the reports you have linked for us, scoffs that they are merely whitewashes for the publishing organizations? My view is, there is nothing left to say, the conversation is over when two sides can not agree on what the facts are.
ReplyDeleteIt will go to guns. Where else can it go?
I think you've captured the matter exactly, Daniel. I forget who first said it, but while individuals are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. Inasmuch as the difference is a matter of life and death, both for individuals and for the social order, the future appears inescapably violent.
ReplyDelete@daniel and Francis:
ReplyDeleteIf I might interject an example from a few days ago on LinkedIn.
Somehow, on my feed, popped a post from a self-appointed who takes screen caps of posts and comments they find offensive (raaaaaacist) and reports them to the person's employer in an attempt to get them fired. And does so proudly.
So I asked, in the spirit of genuine interest, how we can have a discussion when - if the topic is a sensitive one - it immediately gets used against you?
Long story short, as I have said before: I am white, my wife is not. I have autographs of such notables as Walter Williams and Larry Elder on my wall, framed, autographed to me specifically because I admire them. Yet this person said that one can admire blacks, be married to a non-white, but still be a racist.
WTF?
I agree. The future is inescapably violent, with the Left (not saying the Right is completely innocent) literally unable to process things contrary to The Narrative.
Another example: On another thread there was the whole slavery thing. OK. Slavery was wrong, nobody's saying otherwise. But context is missing. I posted, 2000+ characters discussing slavery in history, how every culture has had slaves, discussed Islamic slavery and its slaughter of blacks in Africa... but that it was the Anglosphere specifically that fought it to beat it.
Not. One. Word. in reply. Not one. No "Wow, I didn't know that" nor "That's new to me, please, where can I learn more" which are the natural reactions to a person with a non-cult-gripped intellect. Rather, a total lack of curiosity.
I fear I and my family will need to move, and probably in haste, should Trump lose in 2020.
"Short of actually cleansing the continental U.S. of its Negro population, the only solution I can imagine is a program of exceedingly strict law enforcement that openly and unabashedly concentrates on heavily black population zones."
ReplyDeleteOK, so the options are: Ship all African-Americans to other places outside the United States, or; pursue strict enforcement of all laws and regulations - which are applicable to all residents and citizens of the United States - to ensure African-Americans in the United States do not pose a threat to local, state or federal civil order.
I'll ask again: How - exactly - do you suggest we accomplish any of those goals?
Ship them out: Seagoing vessels transit the oceans daily, use them. So: To where? Will support resources be provided to wherever they land? How will The Left - who view Blacks as "their darlings" because, first, Blacks vote Left and to use as a bludgeon against anything non-Left - be sufficiently pacified as to allow wholesale export of a critical Leftist voting block ?
Enforcing the law: We're hearing demands for defunding (meaning: abolishing) police in Leftist urban areas, and in those areas not seeking police defunding "immediate release" of arrested criminals is becoming the standard practice for the criminal justice system. Even if defunding (abolishing) police in those areas is not pursued, in the current Leftist-dominated, or Leftist-strongly influenced political environment, how do you propose strict enforcement of laws be successfully undertaken? And, assuming the laws are enforced strictly, what assurances do we have that the rest of the system will support that effort?
Francis, I don't disagree with your premise, that of an officially recognized segment of society is incapable of participating in and accepting the common standards and practices of said civilized society. We cannot tolerate a substantial segment of society holding the rest of society hostage: "Give us what we want, when we want it, in the quantity we want it, or we'll destroy everything you own and demand you replace what we've destroyed and give us more of it."
Short of open and total racial civil war, how, exactly do you propose to accomplish your goals?
IB: I'm not a policy wonk or implementation expert. I'm a novelist and commentator. I've stated in outline what I believe will be required. I intend to leave it at that.
ReplyDeleteComments are now closed for this essay.