OK. We have Brother Cornel West arguing that our collective tears shouldn’t be shed only for the “vanilla” victims at Sandy Hook. Black kids are also being murdered in greater number and nobody says anything about it.
As the 500th murder occurred in Chicago this year alone, Tribune columnist John Kass challenged President Obama to attend funerals of the hundreds of young black and Latino kids who get killed every year. Kass told CNN’s Don Lemon:
We make the Sandy Hook – which was a tragedy – a big deal. Why don’t the politicians come to the funerals of the dead African-American and Latino kids who get killed by the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds,” asked Kass. “The media has ghettoized these children, these homicide victims.
Let’s unpack some of this.
1.) To compare what happened at Sandy Hook to the isolated, small scale events that occur every single day in Chicago and other cities is to compare Hurricane Sandy to an isolated Oklahoma tornado that tears up a few houses and perhaps causes a few casualties. We’re talking about scale and how events – manmade or natural – effect the national psyche.
2.) If the spotlight was placed on the murder of black and Latino youths then the conversation would quickly turn to the culprits of those murders. Black and Latino men would be criticized, and Brother West does not want that. The police, the media, and the President don’t want to have to address the topic of black criminality, so they avoid making direct comments on it altogether.
3.) All of this reminds me of a piece that made the rounds of some of the soft social justice websites I read. A writer made the bold statement that she wishes her mother had aborted her. The mother gave birth and burdened herself and then led a poor existence as she struggled to make ends meet. The daughter felt guilty about this and rationalized her own abortion. This is a common liberal viewpoint – a Malthusian critique of people who have children beyond their supposed means. Because of their anti-birth rhetoric, pro-abortion activists are often pitted against the black community because of the high rate of irresponsible births in the community. And as we know, the creators of Planned Parenthood and other groups had eugenicist sympathies.
When I hear that a kid in a non-violent area is murdered, I feel more sympathy than I do for a kid who is murdered in a violent locale. Why? I look not only at the life that was lost but also the decisions of the people who brought that person into the world. I can’t fathom bringing a kid into the world right now, and that’s only because I’m worried about having enough money to pay for extra tuition and college down the road. Many people in more violent environments bring children into the world on a whim and without as much forward thinking. They make a choice somewhere along the way (don’t they?) to ignore the violence prevalent in their environment and then bring that child into the world. Every single red light on the interface was blinking emphatically to tell them of the danger that could befall their offspring, yet the parent chose to ignore the warnings and did it anyway. If Cornel West and others complain about the high rates of violence in black communities, why are they not also trying to convince the residents of those communities to discontinue re-creating the same worn wheel?
This is a stylized argument. Individual cases where people in violent areas lose their lives will tug at my heart strings. But in general, when I think of the lives lost by children who were not only innocent themselves but also were born to people who made conscious decisions to bring their children into only safe environments – and were brought into the world only because of the precondition of safety – then I feel that much more for the child, the parents, and the community involved. I get the sense that people in places like Newtown place a higher value on the individual life of the children there than do the people in the more violent places that West and Kass have in mind.
This has nothing to do with race. It just so happens that white people tend to rationally decide when and where and with whom to have children. Blacks are less oriented to the long-term. Chalk that up to genes or environment or whatever.
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The man’s name is Cornel West, just one ‘L’. Sorry, proper spelling is one of my conservative traits.
Cornel West is playing the standard black game. It goes like this: (1) accuse whites of something; (2) Watch whites backpedal, explain, apologize, reassure, concede; (3) feel deep satisfaction at being, through an accident of history and unbeknownst to him not permanently; a totemic item of pity and status-joeckeying in today’s Weimar West.
An unexpected response to (1) is what you’re doing here, or ignoring it, or — my favorite — Agree and Amplify.
It is good that the discussion vibrant brutality is being surpressed. That means the only people that have answers will be WNs. Listening to the MSM or some respective conservative swill is useless. It increases the bifurcation; sheep listen to ZOG, wolves read racist sites. Surpression increases the strength of a desire.
As for some negro putting out his hand for more charity and pity, just play the record again. It’s the only card they have. My only concern is the attempts of certain vibrants to get accepted into the white community and the foolish whites who let them in. Those whites will be destroyed just like the modern liberals will be.
black lives are in fact worth less than white lives
I’ve read news stories about house fires in ghettos, where the mother escapes unharmed and the kids perish. I want Cornel to address that.
“Black kids are also being murdered in greater number and nobody says anything about it.”
And this is a problem?
Nice post. The biggest problem would be #2 since it would reveal what the media tries desperately to cover up. Auster has continuously spotlighted the media’s deception wrt crime reporting. To discuss the daily shootings would focus energy from white liberal activists not to finger pointing at straight white male violence but to the high frequency ghetto violence. They can’t have that.
Actually I think he’s right in this case. This would draw attention to who is committing these murders. That’s something that’s long been needed because the media does, in fact, cover up crimes in the black community. Hell, the media doesn’t even let you know the race of the perps when they’re on the lam and being chased down by cops. How are people supposed to avoid criminals without knowing skin color? Height?
Anyway, more black victims and perps in the news would provide a much-needed reality check for the “blame white privilege” crowd that used the recent mass killings as an excuse to bash white men. Some perspective is needed, numerically speaking. It would also show that things like the Duke fake rape case are aberrations and crime rarely crosses the color divide when it’s white-on-black.
If all you knew about American was what you read in the papers the last week, you’d think whites did all the killings. The mainstream media does, in fact, need to focus on the mayhem in the black community.
I’ll also say that I don’t think West quite knows the Pandora’s Box he’d be opening if the media did this and would wind up crying racism as soon as the coverage started.
Part of the disparity in coverage over various murders is purely the result of media political economy, the perspective I reflectively indulge when faced with these circumstances.
Actually, this view supports the alt-right view, not to mention objective stats, on crime disproportion: the fact that Sandy Hook incidents are so rare has everything to do with their media prominence; the sad flipside, of course, is that one ‘mo inner-city murder, when there’s already 500 and counting, just doesn’t transfer well into ratings-driven media priority in terms of ratings and sensationalism.
I lived in Chicago during my grad school days; I lived a few blocks away from what’s arguably one of the worst urban ghettos in the western world; what’s scary is that the 500 figure and official shooting coverage may not be even close to the actual total: there are hundreds of missing individuals in poor neighborhoods in Chicago, and many of them are very likely deceased; furthermore, there’re many people who’ve endured gunshots and never got medical treatment, or dealt with free clinics and other peripheral ways of treatment.
On a weekend evening, I would routinely hear gunshots; a common enough but quite true tale.
edit: “REFLEXiVELY indulge…”
Nickrit, you took me up on my challenge to provide a scenario of “compassionate but not suicidal” approach to helping NAMs. My hypothetical scenarios, as you remember, were (1) a draconian but eugenic paternalism involving the reproductive sidelining of most black males; (2) an Apartheit or Jim Crow-style caretaking of blacks while letting them do whatever they want in their segregated communities; (3) Frederick Douglass’s complete hands-off / separation approach.
@PA
“game” is right. Classic shit test. Jumping through the hoop only sets up the next shit test: “Awww, you only report on the projects when there’s crime! You never talk about the good things we do here! We have a PROGRAM that EMPOWERS young black men to derp derp derp…think of what we could do if we could just get the FUNDING derp derp derp…”
i’m much too young to have nose hairs this damn long
You’ll be 40 in a blink of an eye. Trust me. And then you will either feel like you spent yout thirties well, or you will have some regrets. One of the biggest regrets of people 40/50 and up is that they didn’t have any, or have more children.
“One of the biggest regrets of people 40/50 and up is that they didn’t have any, or have more children.”
No shite, brah; talk about regretful angst!
“2.) If the spotlight was placed on the murder of black and Latino youths then the conversation would quickly turn to the culprits of those murders. Black and Latino men would be criticized, and Brother West does not want that. The police, the media, and the President don’t want to have to address the topic of black criminality, so they avoid making direct comments on it altogether.”
Of course this is the key. But…
…there is always the Blame The White Man, The System etc excuse.
So even with a focus on black and latino perps they would still go for the old root causes excuse and say essentially that even the black and brown shooters./killers are victims of the larger society.
But still this is why they love the Zimmerman/Martin scenarios because they have a supposed black victim and a supposed White Devil.
Best of both worlds.
Remember that guy who had to pay out money to the relatives of 9-11 survivors? Kenneth Feinberg.
http://www.tnr.com/book/review/kenneth-feinberg-who-gets-what-fair-compensation-tragedy-upheaval
He had to place actual monetary values on the dead. He would figure their worth in future earnings. Most of the murdered black kids in the ghettoes would have values equal to absolutely nothing, in the negatives actually, or petty crime earnings or drug dealing earnings for a few years, possibly a one in a million chance of being a hugely successful rapper, but their value compared to the ultra privileged Sandy Hook kids would be minimal indeed. It is truly hard to figure out why I should be bummed out by another dead gangsta. After all, the left is constantly telling us that children are or future and that we should be investing in them. Should we divest our support in kids whom we know are going to make our futures miserable? Stomp in our heads as opposed to becoming “health care workers.” Oh wait, I guess they make jobs by stomping on heads. Lots of MRI techs needed.
We just had a case a couple of weeks ago where 2 white girls got killed in a drive-by
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/crime-law/two-men-charged-murdering-teen-girls-oakland/nTZWY/
40 rounds were fired at them. The police just made arrests in the case and blacks are already bitching that the case has been solved only because the girls were white. Of course we had another case in San Francisco where a black guy was murdered and his girlfriend almost killed,
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Prosecutors-Charge-6th-Defendant-in-Bound-and-Gagged-SF-Case-185086941.html
and 6 arrests have been made in that case. Blacks are really, really talented at projection and nearly incapable of introspection. The truth is, they are the ones who don’t feel bad when whites are brutally raped, murdered and lynched, so they assume that whites don’t care about black peoples’ murders. The opposite is true, whites care too much about other races, to the point of self destruction. Also, we can admit that a lot of white people are evil, blacks can’t admit the same about members of their own race. They are too worried about what white people think and to admit that some of their ilk are pieces of unadulturated, iredeemable, predatory crap is just to difficult for them. A lot of them are just walking zombies, not even smart enough to be considered animals, just brain dead creatures roaming around in search of sensations.
An example of that is the continual refrain that pedophiles are mostly white men. Black women routinely have unrelated men living with them and their daughters, who are raped and impregnated by these men on an hourly, daily basis. I believe/know that these men are also raping the boys as well. Boys don’t get pregnant so it’s not as obvious, but if you count the numbers of black men who act out sexually later, there is a clear pattern of abuse. If you know what goes on in prisons and juvenile detention facilities you know that many black guys will fuck a snake if you hold its head. Here in Oakland, black robbers have begun to routinely sexually assault female victims while robbing them.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/crime-law/armed-duo-robs-two-victims-sexually-assaults-femal/nThjH/
Sorry if I sound bitter and am ranting. I am just sick and tired of it all.
PA says,
“Nickrit, you took me up on my challenge to provide a scenario of “compassionate but not suicidal” approach to helping NAMs.”
Of your three choices, I’m down with choice no.1; in fact, I try to induce as much culturally at work; if I have anything as specific as a work mission or creed, option no. 1would be about the closest i could get to a missionary statement.
I do realize that said scenario will likely never come about via voluntary work ‘missions’ like mine —– but I fear, of course, counterproductive results if we had the kind of racially coded top-down enforcement that you, uhh, prefer. lol!
I workwith ghetto kids, and every time something bad happens to them, it’s a tragedy. All kids deserve a safe, loving home, and the number of serious injuries, kids who experience dreadful neglect and kids who could explain to you in great detail how to give a blowjob is more than you can imagine.
I’m often jealouse of the mothers here. Unike them, I actually like kids, want kids and want to take good care of my future kids. If our student loans were paid off and we had enough money toinsure that our children would neverend up in a classroom or on a street with kids likethe ones that I teach, we’d have 6 babies yesterday.
And the amount of wealthand energy that goes to raise the kids of the people who don’t even love them in a true sense of the word isinsane. I wouldn’t need free lunches, welfare,government provided counseling, reading specialists or behavioral &discipline specialists for my children. Wouldn’t need after school home work centers, clothing drives, “Bathe Your Child” posters and church/teacher providedschool supplies either. But I do need a safe neighborhood and a schooling option where it will be generally assumed that students are suposed to act in a civilized manner.
Misha 12/29/2012 at 4:43 pm
We just had a case a couple of weeks ago where 2 white girls got killed in a drive-by…
Hey, they could have been Obama’s daughters.
Oh, strike that.
Looking at the slightly longer term, the media has been less circumspect about identifying the race of criminal suspects – sometimes they won’t say anything but they’ll run a picture, which makes it obvious (most of the time); and radio reports of “suspect at large – armed and dangerous” almost *always* include race data (and even “light-skinned” for lighter-skinned blacks). This is a noticeable change from the turn of the century.
The other change I’ve noticed is that when the press interviews friends and neighbors of the perp, if the perp is white, they’ll say things like “he was always such a troublemaker”, or “he always seemed a little off”, “he fell in with a bad crowd”, or something, while blacks *still* say shit like “he was such a nice boy”, “he’d never hurt a fly”, or whatever. White people used to say shit like that, but don’t anymore. When it’s a Mexican perp, the press doesn’t interview anyone for quotes like that because the reporters don’t speak Spanish.
So there’s some change, and people are getting some data to at least convince their subconscious selves of the realities of the world. I’m not sure the cognitive dissonance will break down anytime soon (look at Sailer’s post about Urbanbaby.com), but I could see liberals eventually coming around to allowing whites to segregate themselves from blacks, as long as we keep shoveling money at blacks. And since we’re already shoveling ridiculous amounts of money that way, that would be a net gain.
Blacks have many children
whites have few children
Black Men impregnate white girls more and more every year
SUCK IT
Anti-Racist:
I think that you have the last two words transposed. It should read instead: ‘It Sucks’.
‘Black men impregnate white girls more and more every year.’
The reason for this being that more and more white guys are impregnating Asian and Latina girls every year—having given up completely on the hopeless Ameroskank. And if you really believe that black men are benefitting from getting white women—whom white men don’t even want—just look at how badly the black communities have deteriorated since black guys stopped wanting black girls!
isn’t the black fertility rate roughly equal to the white fertility rate?
that was directed toward anti-racist
Jimmy Conway: In the USA, yes. Globally, no.
I don’t know. I work armed security in the hood everyday (think 64th and King or 73rd and Ashland). The areas are war zones and continuous coverage of it would probably lead to numbness. People make choices about were they live. I continuously ask people ‘why do you stay?’. Normally I get ‘I don’t know’. Violence where violence is common is not news. Violence where violence is not common is news. Death is part of the land’scape in Englewood and Roseland. Any interpersonal exchange can lead to death in those places. I shit you not. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason. Continually I hear ‘I wouldn’t be treated like this at a white store’, or, ‘thats what I get from a nigga store’. Lots of self hate there. I don’t know the reasons. All I know is that my gun hand always has to be ready.