By Nancy Thorner –
Racial tension in America has exploded. Whoever would have thought that people would march arm in arm down streets chanting: “What do you want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now!” They got exactly what they asked for when a black man assassinated two unsuspecting police officers while they sat in their patrol car, declaring the murders an act of revenge.
After the assassination of two patrol officers on a Brooklyn street on Saturday, December 20, wary NYPD cops are now letting minor crimes side. They are writing almost no summons and making arrests only when they must. Naturally concerned about their safety, law enforcement officers want to go home to their wives and kids after their shifts end.
The issue of race has become a primary focus in this nation. The catalyst for the protests that erupted across this nation last month followed a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, in a St. Louis suburb. Following on the heels of the Michael Brown decision, a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the choke hold death of Eric Garner, another unarmed black.
In the aftermath of these two incidents, protests grew in intensity along with demands to increase scrutiny of police tactics. President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and so-called civil rights leader, Al Sharpton, were largely responsible for the escalation of the tension.
When President Obama was asked a few days ago in an NPR interview whether the nation is more racially divided than it was six years ago, he responded: “No, I actually think in its day-to-day interactions it’s less racially divided.” Obama seems to be living in an alternative world as he wants to see it, one that is divorced from reality.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once marched with a positive message of peace. His leadership resulted in accomplishments that eventually led to this nation electing its first black president. Ironically, under President Obama’s leadership, racial tensions have increased with riots, chaos and hatred. Absent is a strong black leader with the heart and spirit of Dr. King to unite us.
The individual facts of the Brown and Garner incidents do not matter to those who turn out to protest. Instead, it is the occurrences themselves that reinforce what the protesters believe to be true. This truth is based on perception, which often becomes reality. Presently the African-American community (more than 40 million) perceives itself as the targeted victim of white police brutality and that the entire white-dominated and controlled justice system is fixed against them making it clear that blacks will never get justice. If this is true, how is it possible that Barack Obama was elected twice with the support of millions of white voters and that the head of the federal justice system, Eric Holder, is an African American? And what about the Homeland Security Secretary who is an African-American? African-Americans are serving in Congress. They have also been elected as big city Mayors, members of City Councils, members of State legislatures, admirals, generals, university professors, journalists, TV anchors, CEO’s, famous artists, movie stars, athletes, senior police officials, etc.
Despite having made significant strides over the decades,it is disheartening that the perception of millions of African-Americans dates back to the old practices prevalent during the dark days of legally sanctioned segregation, with all the lynchings, Ku Klux Klan violence, and open intimidation against Blacks. Not to be dismissed is that police have been known to use excessive force. When killings of Black Americans by police officers have not been justifiable, police officers should be held accountable for their actions just like everybody else. It’s a stretch of the imagination, however, to conclude that isolated instances of while police misconduct should lead to the widely shared perception that white police brutality is systemic and that more than 40 million black Americans are now targets of excessive use of force that includes deliberate killings.
With the election of President Obama in 2008, even those who were not happy campers hoped that the election of the first black president would go a long way in helping to heal the country’s racial divide that still existed. But this wasn’t to be. Belong long the political weapon of skin color was used against those who disagreed with President Obama’s agenda.
Such race baiting has led to harming this nation’s culture. No longer must a reasonable level of scrutiny be met in order for a divisive racial narrative to be put forth and bolstered by the media. This has resulted in the inability of the many Americans to view accusations of racism responsibly and objectively when they really do occur.
This is not a racist country. According to a recent Bloomberg Politics poll, a majority of Americans, 53%, believe that race relations have worsened under America’s first black president. It is a small group of individuals who are invested in driving a narrative that whites are against blacks. This minority is likewise using poor blacks in urban areas to serve the interest of black leaders, such as shake down artist Al Sharpton. Sharpton has latched onto the tragedies and pushed the theme that any scenario that results in a black person being killed by a white person is murder attributed to racism. For Sharpton it’s open season for killing black men. The killings of Brown and Garner by white cops are being touted by Sharpton as the norm, instead of the isolated instances that they are. Facts and statistics never stand in the way of Sharpton’s oratory.
Saner heads do recognize that the deaths are tragedies and that institutional racism is not to blame. Tragically this is not so, especially among young people. They have been taught through academia and the media that America is still a fundamentally bigoted country. Given this false narrative, it becomes virtually impossible for society to have an open, mature discussion about race.
Black American Jason Riley, Editorial Board member of the Wall Street Journal, had this to say in this excerpt from his book, “Please Stop Helping Us”, in regard to what the left won’t tell you about black crime:
The shooting is not because of drug or gun laws. The problem is primarily cultural — self-destructive behaviors and attitudes all too common among the black underclass. The problem is black criminal behavior, which is one manifestation of a black pathology that ultimately stems from the breakdown of the black family. Liberals want to talk about what others should do for blacks instead of what blacks should do for themselves. But if we don’t acknowledge the cultural barriers to black progress, how can we address them? How can you even begin to fix something that almost no one wants to talk about honestly?
It is not an easy road to hoe for individuals like Jason Riley who advocate that people in black communities look in the mirror at themselves, even suggesting that there might be a reason why blacks are often racially profiled.
It is not an easy road to hoe for individuals like Jason Riley who advocate that people in black communities look in the mirror at themselves, even suggesting that there might be a reason why blacks are often racially profiled. Former Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani noted that people should also be talking about the problem of black-on-black crime. Although Giuliani did place some responsibility on the police department to train their officers better and make their police departments more diversified, he further noted, “But I think just as much, if not more, responsibility is on the black community to reduce the reason why the police officers are assigned in such large numbers to the black community.” When Giuliani assigned police officers with Commissioner Bratton and Commissioner Safir, he do so based on statistics and not based on race. Said Giuliani: “If I had put all my police officers on Park Avenue, and none in Harlem, thousands and thousands more blacks would have been killed during the eight years I was mayor.”Some facts: On the eve of the 2010 Census there were 40 million black Americans, the nation’s second largest minority group in the first decade of the 21st century. The Hispanic minority population ranked first. In 2010 Cook County, Illinois had the largest black population of any county (1.4 million) in this nation.
Black genocide is happening in America, but not by white cops. Although the black population of this nation stands at 13%, one-half of all murders are committed by blacks.These three factors contribute to black genocide in America:
1. Black on black murder – over 90% of young black men are killed by other young black men.
2. The absence of fathers in black households – over 70% of black babies are born to a single parent. Prior to 1960 and the War on Poverty the percent was reversed – at least 70% were born to two parent households. It is not surprising that one of the leading indicators of poverty is single motherhood
3. Abortion – black mothers are five times more likely to abort their babies than white mothers. A recent report stated more black babies were aborted than born in New York City.
Not to be forgotten is the creation of the Welfare State (President Johnson’s War on Poverty Program in the 60’s) and failed Democratic policies which failed to reduce the rate of poverty among blacks.
When will we be able to engage in civil discussion about racial divisiveness in this nation? Unfortunately civil discussion will remains impossible to conduct until the Left admits it has a problem, that of black-on-black crime. There is not an epidemic of white cops killing young blacks men. In inner city black ghetto neighborhoods, it is cops who prevent these areas from becoming the wild, wild, west.
Yes, black lives do matter, but have the lives of young blacks living in Chicago and many other inner cities really matter to politicians? And what about the lives of law enforcement officers who put their lives in danger day in and day out. Do they not matter?
Nancy J. Thorner 