Why Black Lives Don’t Matter to Blacks

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 8 January 2020.]

Do black lives really matter?  Well that clearly depends on whose talk and whose walk you pay attention to.  The loud talk from our congresscritters and black leaders is that black lives very much matter, and that it’s the police and white racists who are wantonly killing blacks across the land.  But by their walk and the abundant facts on record over the last half-century, these same people demonstrate that they really don’t care much about how African-Americans live and die.  They only demonstrate their concern and ire after a rare and unfortunate incident occurs where a black American is killed by a law enforcement officer.  Then it is time to gather their constituents in the streets and continue the narrative that blacks are dying in great numbers at the hands of cops and whites.

The reality is quite different in that blacks die by the hundreds every month at the hands of other blacks.  This ongoing carnage does not raise a murmur in the national news.  No black leaders or members of Congress, or media outlets express their outrage on Monday mornings after another weekend of murder and mayhem in the Democrat controlled urban ghettos.

From the conservative National Review we learn the big picture that “From 2000 to 2015, the mean African-American homicide-victimization rate, adjusted for age, was 20.1 per 100,000. That’s more than three times the Hispanic rate of 6.4 (despite disadvantages comparable to those of blacks) and over seven times the average white rate, 2.7. Moreover, … from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of the killers of black murder victims were other African Americans. In short, this is about exceptionally high as well as overwhelmingly intraracial black violent crime. White-on-white homicide is equally intraracial, but the rates are not astronomically high. … (And) in the contemporary period, from 1976 to 2014, it is estimated that (over 198,000) African Americans died nationwide at the hands of black killers. That’s (more than 5,200) deaths per year on average, roughly 19 times the annual number of deaths of African Americans in confrontations with police.” (more here)

There have been a few short-lived programs attempted that effectively reduced crime rates in our urban centers.  The most notable of these was carried out under NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a white Jewish liberal politician now running for president.  The ‘Broken Windows’ and ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ programs during his 2002-2013 tenure saved over 21,000 lives of which 90+% or over 19,000 of them would have been black.  So what happened?

The response after Bloomberg left office was immediate and disastrous.  Under leftwing Mayor DeBlasio, stop-and-frisk, which took hundreds of illegal guns off the streets, was discontinued because cops ‘unfairly’ stopped and frisked more blacks than people of other races.  As reported in the WSJ, “the rap on stop-and-frisk was that stops of African-Americans were disproportionate to their percentage of the population. That is true. But as (Mayor Bloomberg) pointed out, they were not disproportionate to the descriptions of the people committing crimes given by witnesses.” (more here)  No matter, progressive views on political correctness and social justice demanded that neighborhood maintenance was no longer required, illegal guns returned to the streets, and, as predicted, the crime rate began increasing.  And blacks again started dying at the hands of other blacks in greater numbers.

So today, the Democrats know that they have no chance against Trump without the black vote.  And for reasons no one dares to study or answer, our urban African-American populations demand policing policies that cater to proportions propagandized by Democrat politicians, instead of caring that black lives matter.  So now we have candidate Bloomberg doing a 180 on the stop-and-frisk apology circuit for having saved thousands of black lives, and promising never to do it again.

The questions no one is asking are, ‘Was it fair to blacks that an effective policing policy was discontinued, thereby again raising black-on-black murder rates?’, and even more importantly, ‘What does all this say about the priorities and/or the understanding of the black voters who year after year return disastrously incompetent and corrupt politicians to office, who then perpetuate their lives on the “plantation”?’  As reported in the Washington Post, Candace Owens has a YouTube video (here) that explains the matter – I recommend it to you.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Comments

[fish]

I’m sure the usual suspects are very upset with you now.

[Lazlo Carredas]

So boring George, time to retire. Your thinking on the root causes for black on black crime were considered and rejected years ago by real thinkers. Go back to smokin' your dope. And hoping for the neo Reagan revolution.

[George Rebane]

LazioC 645pm - Welcome to RR Mr Carredas. You're new here so you don't know the intensity of comments and emails that dot the landscape of this blog - why, even you are a reader! What you missed "years ago" was the who that rejected the "root causes for black on black crime", it was the plantation masters and their minions (you?), not anyone else with eyes and ears and sporting a 3-digit IQ. You sound like a plantation keeper. (It also looks like you don't do well with citations.)

[Walt]

Just another bullshit TROLL George. One of the regulars most likely.
https://tintin.fandom.com/wiki/Laszlo_Carreidas

[George Rebane]

Walt 719pm - Yes, I agree. He sounds like another sackhead with no ability to talk about any issue, but only come to deliver an ad hominem and congratulate himself. I may delete this thread, unless he actually says something cogent.

[L]

It's never really been about race, but class. It's absolutely certain that the majority of 'niggers' aren't black. The pejorative itself was originally directed at a group of likely Caucasians with dark hide.

Likewise, the Middle East- Three big tribes- Arabs, Turks, Persians. Smack in the middle, the Kurds and off to the left, Israel, to the right Armenians: the three little tribes. Four Muslim, one Jewish, one Christian. Been hating and killing each other for Centuries. What do they have in common? They're all WHITE tribes.

All are Caucasians, so let's leave racism out of discussions of Xing terrorist
(they're almost all WHITE too).

[L]

Put another way, race is a much overrated cause of the disputes among civilized modern people. The problem is dealing with the less civilized of whatever so-called race or skin color. Dr. King had it exactly right.

The first act of civilization is to enact and enforce laws to protect the civilized from the uncivilized. With me so far?

Democrats think otherwise. That's a serious problem.

[scenes]

Somebodyortheother: "Your thinking on the root causes for black on black crime were considered and rejected years ago by real thinkers."

lol. I can't say that there are any real thinkers working in that area. You can browse through a hundred sociology papers and you'll simply see statistics tortured to meet a preconception. Put up a scatter chart containing a line with a slight slope and voila', a 'root cause'. Producing expected results keeps the iron rice bowl full for them real thinker dudes.

While my own pet theory, that of increasing mass incarceration of people likely to murder others is lowering the murder rate over time, it's no more rigorous than those concocted by 'experts'. For all I know, the drop in murder rate was purely due to improved emergency room procedures.

Generally, I'm waiting for big data AIs to find interesting patterns in all of this mess. Until then, expect hand waving. My guess is that our Robot Overlords won't be politically correct, so someone should get cracking on bending the algorithms.

[scenes]

L : "The first act of civilization is to enact and enforce laws to protect the civilized from the uncivilized. With me so far?

Democrats think otherwise. That's a serious problem."

I doubt they desire a lack of protection, they're more gracile on average so it's rather self defeating. Our local Blue Mob seems to desire large city politics and demographics but moved far away from it, so there's a built-in contradiction erring towards personal safety I imagine.

Their conscious thinking seems obsessed with equality of outcome, so I'm thinking the criminal justice angle to this is to simply punish all groups equally, regardless of the facts of the matter. If you find yourself arresting a bunch of gypsies at the train station for pickpocketing, the obvious answer it to make lifting wallets legal. The sun will come out, and we'll all sing the virtues of Coca Cola in perfect harmony.

[scenes]

L: "Put another way, race is a much overrated cause of the disputes among civilized modern people."

I think that what you consider 'civilized modern' is such a new concept (50 years?) that it remains to be seen. Civilization fault lines have always been more than race of course, religion and language are two more components...plus the definition of 'race' from a political stance changes to suit the circumstances. It isn't like a Roman viewed a Gaul as being a member of his ethnicity even though we would tend to lump them together now.

Just wait until any kind of conflict heats up with China. They never got the memo.

On the small scale, prison looks to be an accurate laboratory for watching humans under stress.

[Bill Tozer]

Against Tribal America
Racialism, from any side of the political spectrum, is a recipe for disaster.

“Progressives assume that policies designed to help certain racial groups automatically benefit them, yet racial identity and economic empowerment are not the same thing. As Tavis Smiley has commented, black America got “caught up in the symbolism of the Obama presidency” but saw its economic fortunes decline under his administration. Indeed, it turns out that, for the most part, progressive politics do not especially help minorities. Due in part to economic and housing polices, notes researcher Daniel Hertz, some of the politically bluest cities— Milwaukee, New York, and Chicago—are also the most segregated. These places may boast socially aware political cultures, but minorities, particularly African Americans, are moving out.
Evaluating factors like income differentials, homeownership, business ownership, migration, and educational achievement, a study by the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (where I’m executive director) found that, ironically, 13 of the 15 best regions for African-Americans are today located in the old Confederacy, while the other two—Washington and Baltimore—were in border states. The worst performers were Democratic strongholds like Boston, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. Blue-state policies—including environmental regulations and higher taxes—also drive out blue-collar businesses that tend to hire minorities and raise housing and other costs. The biggest gap between minority and white homeownership rates—a critical component of the persistent divergence in wealth by race—can be found in left-leaning states like Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
Racialist ideology may be failing minorities, but it continues to gain adherents in the press and academia. The notion of white privilege has become so embedded on college campuses that schools now hold workshops on the topic, and students subject themselves to programs that accuse them of supporting “racism and white supremacy.” Some schools, worried about unequal minority success rates, even urge professors to consider racial factors over merit-based ones.”

https://www.city-journal.org/tribalism-racialism

[Bill Tozer]

Might be on topic, sorta. I am tired of posting social science stats that obscure the ROOT causes of......liberal thinking. Think that might have sumthang to do with those root causes? Nah.

LAW AND ORDER? YES, PLEASE [WITH COMMENT BY robert Cross and WALDO]

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/01/law-and-order-yes-please.php

“Edsall acknowledges that these policies are deeply controversial, but never explains why. Rather, he views concerns about crime, vagrancy, and so on as beyond the pale. He calls on an email exchange with law professor Larry Tribe to lend intellectual heft to his argument:

Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, described the thinking underpinning progressive Democratic policies broadening the rights of the homeless. In an email, Tribe wrote:

The supposed “rights” of those who are upset or psychologically threatened by the homeless, the deinstitutionalized, or others similarly situated are what I would call second-order rights, rights that a polity cannot fairly treat as having as strong a claim to protection, as trumps that override utilitarian claims as is true of genuine rights.

The derelict’s right to defecate in public is a “genuine right,” whereas your right not to have to watch people defecate in public is a “second-order right.” Presumably this is in the Constitution somewhere.

What is not clear is whether the criminal’s right not to be imprisoned for his crime is “genuine,” while your right to be free of criminal violence is “second-order.” This is because throughout his piece, Edsall conflates two very different issues: 1) the quality of life problems associated with vagrancy and homelessness, and 2) violent crime. There is overlap, of course; vagrants sometimes commit violent crimes. But the issues are nevertheless distinct.

On crime, Edsall retails the familiar myths:

The racial disparities pervasive in our justice system compound at every juncture: African Americans are more likely to be stopped by police, arrested, detained before trial, and given harsher sentences than whites.

All of this, as has been copiously documented, is because African-Americans commit far more crimes, per capita, than whites. Not to mention Asians and Hispanics; but then, when the subject is crime, liberals never do mention them.

The good news is that very few people are fooled by this lame sort of argumentation. No one wants to be victimized by violent criminals, and everyone with eyes can see what vagrancy and the refusal to enforce laws against (relatively) minor crimes have done to cities like Seattle and San Francisco. Anyone who thinks what has happened to those cities is good, is welcome to vote Democrat in 2020.

Which, of course, is what the liberals are worried about, and why they dredge up Spiro Agnew:

Republicans, in turn, are betting that the Democratic presidential candidates have moved substantially farther to the left on issues of crime and punishment than the voting public.

That’s right. Another way to put it is that trying to deny obvious realities isn’t a good electoral strategy.

WALDO ADDS: President Trump would be even better positioned to benefit politically from law and order sentiment if he hadn’t supported legislation that enabled some federal felons to be released early from prison and will result in shorter sentences for many thousands more.”

Bonus!!
LAZIO CARREDAS ADDS: “Your thinking on the root causes for black on black crime were considered and rejected years ago by real thinkers. Go back to smokin' your dope. And hoping for the neo Reagan revolution.”

Well, Law and Order is a winner. Too bad the Leftinistas are on the wrong side once again. A d their distain for LE and acknowledge EVIL exits everywhere and in all peoples of the globe. Difference of thinking like the mindset of an owner verses a renter.

And Frisco just elected a bony-fied terrorist to be the DA. Yep, L and O is a winner. Sucks to be in the outhouse.

[Bill Tozer]

Walter E WILLIAMS: Unappreciated Crime Costs

“Crime imposes a hefty tax on people who can least afford it. They are the law-abiding residents of black neighborhoods. Residents must bear the time cost and other costs of having to shop outside of their neighborhoods. Supermarkets that are abundant in low-crime neighborhoods are absent or scarce in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. Because of the paucity of supermarkets and other big-box stores in these neighborhoods, some “experts” and academicians have labeled them as “food deserts.” That’s the ridiculous suggestion that white supermarket merchants and big-box store owners don’t like green dollars coming out of black hands. The true villains of the piece are the criminals who make some businesses unprofitable. By the way, these are equal opportunity criminals. They will victimize a black-owned business just as they would victimize a white-owned business. The high crime rates in many black neighborhoods have the effect of outlawing economic growth and opportunities.

In low-crime neighborhoods, FedEx, UPS and other delivery companies routinely leave packages containing valuable merchandise on a doorstep if no one is home. That saves the expense of redelivery and saves recipients the expense of having to go pick up the packages. In high-crime neighborhoods, delivery companies leaving packages at the door or supermarkets leaving goods outside unattended would be equivalent to economic suicide. Fearing robberies, taxi drivers, including black drivers, often refuse to accept telephone calls for home pickups and frequently pass prospective black customers who hail them on the street. Plus, there’s the insult associated with not being able to receive pizzas or other deliveries on the same terms as people in other neighborhoods.”.....

https://www.dailywire.com/news/williams-unappreciated-crime-costs