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There's been a flurry of discussion of Mr. Zimmerman's acquittal of all charges relating to the death of Trayvon Martin. The Racist Reverends are urging that Mr. Zimmerman be locked up for defending himself. Some black leaders are urging that Mr. Zimmerman be murdered. Others are urging "Justice for Trayvon," ignoring Mr. Martin's probable connection with burglary, are playing up his supposed innocence, accompanied by a photo taken when he was perhaps 8 years old.
The real issue behind the Martin shooting is being deliberately ignored. As the Wall Street Journal put it on P A15 of the July 16, 2013 print issue and online:
Liberals in general, and the black left in particular, like the idea of talking about racial problems, but in practice they totally ignore the most relevant topics of any such discussion.
Any candid debate on race and criminality in this country would have to start with the fact that blacks commit an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes.
Blacks are 13% of the US population but commit more than half the murders. The black arrest rate for other crimes is typically three times their representation in the population.
On July 29, Time magazine published an article by Mr. Nutter, the black mayor of Philadelphia. He observed that 47% of homicide victims are black, and that most of them are killed by other blacks.
The WSJ ended their article by pointing out that the black crime rate has been a recognized problem for more than 50 years:
"Do you know that Negroes are 10% of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of the crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. "We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves."
Blacks love to blame "the establishment," but that won't wash. In our most violent cities like New Orleans, Detroit, and Philadelphia, black mayors are the establishment. Crime peaked in New York City under a black mayor and declined after he left office.
Given the obvious fact that a young black man is far more likely to be a violent criminal than a white or Asian regardless of who's running the place, Mr. Zimmerman's desire to find out what Mr. Martin was doing in his burglary-infested neighborhood was sensible and prudent. In omitting any mention of this fact, our media are inflaming class warfare. We seem to be splitting into two Americas based on our perception of this matter.
When Mr. Obama addressed Mr. Zimmerman's acquittal on July 19, he said, "I could have been Trayvon 35 years ago." Really, Mr. President? Did your school officials catch you carrying stolen jewelry in your back pack?
Mr. Obama alluded to the issue of black-on-black crime, but he criticized people who act nervous when they see a strange black man as if there was no reason to fear black men. That's ridiculous - even the New York Times admitted that
Based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York in 2009, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults.
Given the facts, being watchful around black men is perfectly reasonable. As one woman put it,
I grab my purse tighter when any man, black or white, gets in the elevator with me. That's because men commit far more violent crimes than women. Does that make me sexist? Or am I just being careful?
The infamous racist Rev. Jesse Jackson indulges in anti-black profiling when it comes to protecting his own hide:
There is nothing more painful to me at this stage of my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.
Mr. Obama called for new programs to help young black men. He didn't say that the help young black men need most is for the government to stop harming them, aside from implying that government should imprison innocent people who defend themselves by shooting young black men who assault them.
There are many directly harmful actions to young black men, and to all Americans, which our government should stop forthwith.
Mayor Nutter listed jobs and education in his article about black crime rates, but he put them in the wrong order. It doesn't help for businesses to make the investment needed to create jobs if nobody has the skills required. Blacks need better education so that they'll be able to take advantage of whatever employment opportunities arise.
The teacher's unions who keep the government from fixing "dropout mills" which deny education to inner city blacks are key supporters of the Democratic party. Fixing education as Mr. Nutter desires would alienate a key interest group. How likely is that?
When we asked Google for a citation for the WSJ's MLK quote, we found a Facebook page which claims to be maintained by Mike Kristoff of CNN. In addition to the MLK quote, it cited a 1911 quote by the legendary black educator Booker T. Washington:
There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs - partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well.
Mr. Blow of the New York Times asserted that this quote is accurate. He said:
Booker T. Washington was right that there are some who may not "want the patient to get well." Those people exist on all sides of the debate, and they will always be there. But they're a minority. Cast them aside. Let the rest of us start with this point of agreement: The patient is doing better but is still sick. [emphasis added]
We say, "Amen!" to the Times' suggestion that we cast aside the Racist Reverends and all those who make a living stirring up racial tensions. It's hard to make "one out of many" when so many racist leaders stir up disunity instead of bringing us together.
We haven't enough space to list all the media misstatements about this incident:
The media are so wedded to their "innocent black killed by bad white, bad white walks" meme that they warped the case to fit. In so doing, they didn't contribute to reconciliation or understanding; they ended up hardening positions people already held.
We can only hope the mainstream media are losing enough credibility that they'll go broke and we'll be rid of their evil divisiveness. Shouldn't we be four times as concerned about the four young Americans (yes, they happened to be black) who were shot in Chicago during the Zimmerman trial? Bet you've never even heard their names.
It's been known for a long time that fatherless boys get into far more trouble than boys raised in two-parent homes, regardless of race or family wealth. Fatherless males are less likely to take advantage of whatever educational opportunities exist than men whose fathers encourage them to strive.
Mr. Obama knows this very well. Before he won the 2008 election, he pointed out that the proportion of black children who grew up without fathers had doubled during his lifetime. He understands the problem, but his solution is more federal programs.
There's no way the government can fix fatherlessness - the only person who can give a black boy a father is his mother. How does a woman do that? By refusing to have sex with a man unless he marries her. If a man wants a woman badly enough, he'll grow up enough to get a job, support her, and be a father to her children. If he can have her for nothing, however, why marry her? If he gets a job, she can sue him for child support, so why work at all?
Our welfare system has been destroying black families instead of supporting family formation for decades. Liberals cheer it on, accusing critics of "blaming the victim." "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action" (the 1965 Moynihan Report) concluded:
"The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States"
As Thomas Sowell pointed out:
The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state. Most black children grew up in homes with two parents during all that time but most grow up with only one parent today.
If he really wants to help young black men, Mr. Obama should make welfare a lot less attractive so that women would rather marry than go on welfare.
The bottom line is that most of the damage to black families and to young black men is caused by well-meaning but misguided government programs that have a half-century track record of proven failure. As President Reagan put it, "Government isn't the solution, government is the problem."