A (dis)Honest Conversation About Race

Soledad O'Brien claims she wants to have "an honest conversation about race", then proceeds to lie to her audience.

O'Brien tells so many lies of both omission and comission that it would take too long to break them all down, so I'll focus on only one of them.

In a roughly 10-year period in New York [City], approximately five million people were stopped [and frisked] by police. Eighty three percent of them were black and Hispanic men... What does it do to people to be considered a suspect constantly in their own neighborhoods because of the color of their skin?

O'Brien believes that the only reason police officers in NYC - and the rest of the country - stop and arrest more blacks than whites is because police officers are racists. That's a lie. Heather Mac Donald explains why. 

Blacks commit over 75% of the shootings in NYC, even though they make up only about 23% of the population. Whites commit about 2% of the shootings in NYC, even though they make up 34% of the city's population. As Ms. Mac Donald explains, using 2011 and 2012 data...

Blacks are 53 percent of stop subjects, though they are 23 percent of the city’s population. Whites are 9 percent of stop subjects, though they are 35 percent of the city’s population. Therefore, conclude Stringer and others, the NYPD targets individuals for stops based on their race rather than on crime patterns and suspicious behavior.

...

The claim ignores the reality that the preponderance of crime perpetrators, and victims, in New York are also minorities. Blacks, for example, constituted 78% of shooting suspects and 74% of all shooting victims in 2012, even though they are less than 23% of the city's population. 

Whites, by contrast, committed just over 2% of shootings and were under 3% of shooting victims in 2012, though they are 35% of the populace. Young black men in New York are 36 times more likely to be murdered than young white men—and their assailants are virtually always other black (or Hispanic) males. 

Given such a crime imbalance, if the NYPD focuses its resources where people most need protection, the effort will inevitably produce racially disparate enforcement data.

Police departments that do their job concentrate their efforts in the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. In NYC, those neighborhoods are largely populated by blacks. Because of that, most of the people the NYPD stops and frisks are black. But Soledad O'Brien blames that on racism.

To illustrate the audacity of Ms. O'Brien's lie, think about this for a second.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 93.3% of prisoners in the US are male. Clearly that must be the result of anti-male sexism, right? Of course not! Obviously, most prisoners are male because males commit the vast majority of crimes. Likewise, the incarceration rate among black Americans is much higher than the incarceration rate among Hispanic Americans, white Americans and Asian Americans (in that order) because the crime rate among black Americans is far higher than the crime rate among Hispanic Americans, white Americans and Asian Americans (in that order).

In her speech, Soledad O'Brien stated that...

You cannot advance good if you don't confront bad, and you cannot seek renewal if you're not willing to dig into the uncomfortable truths about how we got here today.

She's right. But she also refuses to confront uncomfortable truths about crime rates among black Americans, and the reasons for them. Larry Elder doesn't have that problem.

As I pointed out before, fatherlessness is the number one correlating factor among violent criminals...

According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes. With regard to girls in particular, those raised by single mothers are more than twice as likely to give birth out-of-wedlock, thereby perpetuating the cycle of poverty for yet another generation.

And as I also pointed out in that article, and Larry Elder points out in his video, our welfare system promotes fatherlessness by encouraging women to "marry the state". Soledad O'Brien can't admit that crime rates actually are higher among blacks than whites because if she did she'd have to begin asking why that is, and as every "good" "liberal", she supports the welfare state that rewards fatherlessness and therefore promotes criminality.

In his video, Larry Elder relates the following advice his hard-working, WWII Marine veteran father, who was born in the Jim Crow South, gave him.

Hard work wins. You get out of life what you put into it. You can't control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort. And before blaming other people, go to the nearest mirror and ask yourself, "what could I have done better to change the outcome?" 

Those are the words of a man who sees himself as an active moral agent, not a passive, perpetual victim. A truly honest conversation about race would ask black Americans to go the nearest mirror and ask themselves what they could do to change the out-of-control criminality in their neighborhoods, but Soledad O'Brien wants them to blame white people for all their problems and pretend that black crime rates are no higher than anyone else's.

Apparently, Soledad O'Brien doesn't see black Americans as moral agents, which means she sees black Americans as either not fully human, or as perpetual children, which is ironic, considering that she accuses others of racism. A person who sees black Americans as fully adult humans holds black Americans to the same standards to which he/she holds white Americans, not the lower, childlike standards to which Soledad O'Brien holds them.



A truly honest conversation about race in America would include discussions about how embracing a victim mentality, a sense of entitlement and fatherlessness, glorifying thug culture, and rejecting individual responsibility can only lead to violence, poverty and dysfunction.



Jason Riley, who wrote Please Stop Helping Us, converses honestly about race in America. He explains how embracing a culture of underachievement holds black Americans back (6:36 - 9:40), and much more. Listen to his whole speech and the Q&A if you have time.



Obviously, Soledad O'Brien told some truths. The most effective lies are seasoned with truth to make them more palatable. For example, it's true that the Tuskegee Institute found that 3,446 black Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968. It's also true that even one is one too many.

But even then she lied by omission, because it's also true that - according to the FBI's Unified Crime Report - black criminals murdered 4,585 black Americans between 2014 and 2015. That means that black criminals murdered more black Americans in two years than racist Southerners lynched in 86 years.

Which is the bigger, more immediate problem; 3,446 black Americans lynched over 86 years ending 49 years ago, or 4,585 black Americans murdered over two years right now? Why does Soledad O'Brien focus on a smaller problem that ended 49 years ago, and ignore a much bigger problem that is ongoing right now?

Because focusing on the current, bigger problem wouldn't help her sell her lies.

What makes me think that Soledad O'Brien is lying, and not just wrong? She worked for CNN, and CNN devotes itself to spreading the lie that blacks are perpetual victims, whites are perpetual victimizers of blacks, and therefore blacks are not responsible for any crimes they commit. For example, CNN pushed the "hands up don't shoot" lie.

Source: News Busters

Michael Brown died because he was a violent thug who stole from a store, assaulted a store employee who confronted him, then attacked a police officer, not because he was an innocent victim of police racism. But CNN pushed the lie before knowing the facts, then, even when it was clear they'd pushed a lie, they refused to admit to their part in pushing the lie and suppressing the truth.

More recently, four black suspects (two males, two females, ranging from 17 to 24 years old) kidnapped and tortured a white 18-year-old mentally disabled man while yelling "f**k Donald Trump" and "f**k white people" at him, and live streamed his torture on Facebook.



If you have the stomach for it, you can find the whole video online, but I won't link to it here.

Chicago kidnapping & torture suspects: ABC News.

CNN's Don Lemon refused to call this horrific crime evil.

I don't think it's evil. I don't think it's evil. I think these are young people and I think they have bad home training. 

When I say who is raising these young people, I have no idea who is raising these young people because no one I know on earth who is seventeen years old or seventy years old would ever think of treating another person like that.

See? It's not their fault, even though they're well above the age of conscience. Why would CNN's Don Lemon refuse to call this horror evil? One of his guests, Symone Sanders, gives us a clue.

We’ve talked about white nationalists and white supremacists and the KKK, but there also, when this inflammatory rhetoric is out there, when someone is repeatedly telling you that your community is the worst of the worst, it brings out the worst of the worst in people. 

That is not a hate crime. Hate crimes are because of a person’s racial ethnicity, their religion, their gender, a disability, it isn’t your political leanings, because someone doesn’t like you’re political leanings and they do something bad to you, that is not a hate crime.

See? It's white people's fault. No matter what four black criminals did to a mentally disabled white man, it's not their fault, because the black criminals are victims of racist whites. Clearly, neither Don Lemon nor Symone Sanders see these four black criminals as active moral agents, like Larry Elder's father saw himself and taught Larry Elder to see himself. Don Lemon and Symone Sanders both display the same refusal to hold black Americans responsible for their own actions that Larry Elder, Chloe Valdary and Taleeb Starkes referenced in their videos.

Clearly, CNN is devoted to pushing lies about race in America, and it stands to reason that they hired Soledad O'Brien because she too is devoted to pushing similar lies.

There's another reason that Soledad O'Brien is clearly lying, and not just repeating a lie she believes. Soledad O'Brien is a professional investigative journalist with the resources of one of the world's biggest news organizations at her disposal. What's more likely; that her investigation never uncovered the facts I presented here, or that she omitted them deliberately? Is it more likely that I'm better at her job than she is, or that she omitted facts that contradict the narrative she wants to push?

The answers are obvious.

Why take the time to expose these lies?

First and foremost, because the truth matters... always. Second, because the lies that CNN and Soledad O'Brien are spreading have gotten hundreds of people killed, the majority of them black.

As Heather Mac Donald states in her video, crime rates - especially murder rates - skyrocketed in many US cities when the "Ferguson Effect" - spurred by media lies about endemic racism among police officers - caused police departments to pull back from high crime, inner city, majority black neighborhoods.

University of Missouri at St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld has had "second thoughts." Like many academic criminologists, he had pooh-poohed charges that skyrocketing murder rates in many cities in 2015 and 2016 result from a "Ferguson effect" — a skittering back from proactive policing for fear of accusations of racism like those that followed the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. 

Now, after looking over 2015 data from 56 large cities, he tells The Guardian that he has changed his mind. Homicides in those cities were up 17 percent from 2014. And ten cities, all with large black populations, saw homicides up 33 percent on average. 

"These aren't flukes or blips, this is a real increase," Rosenfeld told reporter Lois Beckett. "The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect."

It gets worse when you look at specific cities. The murder rate in DC increased by 54%. In Baltimore it was 56%. In Cleveland, 90%.

In Chicago, 768 people were murdered in 2016 (as of 27 Dec 2016), compared to 468 in 2015, and 416 in 2014.

How many hundreds (thousands?) of people - most of them black - are dead today because of the lies that Soledad O'Brien, CNN and the mainstream media in general spread?  We'll never know. And Soledad O'Brien, Don Lemon, Symone Sanders and the rest will never care.

'Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms' - Instavision

'Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms' - Instavision

The role of the KKK and Jim Crow proponents disarming black people also doesn't get a lot of attention.  "Birth of a Nation", which was a film Woodrow Wilson praised, shows Klansmen disarming blacks, and at the same time there were armed blacks resisting the Klan. 

Woodrow Wilson, by the way, was a "Progressive" Democrat.

It's really simple.  The most basic human right is the right to live, because one cannot exercise any other right if one is dead.  If humans have the right to live, then by logical extension, we have the right to defend our right to live.

If, as "gun control" proponents believe, we have no right to defend our right to live, then by logical extension, we have no right to live.  And if we have no right to live, then we have no rights.  Period.

The KKK, of course, denies the humanity - and therefore the human rights - of blacks, so their desire to disarm blacks is logically consistent with their "values".

Think about that the next time a politician tells you that you have no right to use a gun to defend your right to live.

Just Can't Please Some People

Cornel West thinks Pres Obama isn't "Liberal" enough.

“I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion,” West lamented to host Amy Goodman. “Poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people,” he continued.

West then took a stab at the president: “It’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies,” he said.

That is an incredibly racist thing to say, but because Cornel West is a Leftist "civil rights activist", he'll get away with it.

Running Out of Other People's Money

Margaret Thatcher famously said that "the problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money".  She didn't say what happens then.  Greece gives us an idea.

Private businesses have closed down in the thousands. Unemployment stands at a record 25 percent, with more than half of Greece's young people out of work. Caught between plunging incomes and ever increasing taxes, families are finding it hard to make ends meet. Higher heating fuel prices have meant many apartment tenants have opted not to buy heating fuel this year. Instead, they'll make do with blankets, gas heaters and firewood to get through the winter. Lines at soup kitchens have grown longer.

But at least Greeks are pulling together in hard times, right?

Life in Athens is often punctuated by demonstrations big and small, sometimes on a daily basis. Rows of shuttered shops stand between the restaurants that have managed to stay open. Vigilantes roam inner city neighborhoods, vowing to "clean up" what they claim the demoralized police have failed to do. Right-wing extremists beat migrants, anarchists beat the right-wing thugs and desperate local residents quietly cheer one side or the other as society grows increasingly polarized.

.....

After battering his Egyptian assistant, the mob turned on Mr Abdulbasset, who had defied police to keep his shop open...  The riot police watched on but did not intervene

The authorities will take care of all this vigilante justice, right?

Greece's sclerotic justice system has been hit by a protracted strike that has left courts only functioning for an hour a day as judges and prosecutors protest salary cuts.

At least if they get beat up, Greeks still have "universal", government-provided medicine, right?

A sign taped to a wall in an Athens hospital appealed for civility from patients. "The doctors on duty have been unpaid since May," it read, "Please respect their work."
.....
"When the pharmacies are closed and I can't get my insulin, which is my life for me, what do I do? ... How can we survive?" asked Voula Hasiotou, a member of an association of diabetics who turned out for the rally.

Keep all this in mind when politicians tell you we need to keep borrowing over $1 Trillion per year, as we have during all four years of Pres Obama's first term. 

Think this can't happen in the US?  On the contrary, there's no reason why it can't.  And if we let it happen, it'll be far worse.  The US and EU bailed Greece out.  Our population is 31x bigger than that of Greece, and our economy is the biggest in history.  No one is big enough to bail us out.

Here's one last quote from the AP article on Greece.

"Our society is on a razor's edge," Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias said recently, after striking shipyard workers broke into the grounds of the Defense Ministry. "If we can't contain ourselves, if we can't maintain our social cohesion, if we can't continue to act within the rules ... I fear we will end up being a jungle."

Not even close, Mr Dendias.  Greece is following the eternal cycle.  From oppression to revolution, from revolution to freedom, from freedom to prosperity, from prosperity to entitlement and indolence, from entitlement and indolence to anarchy, and finally from anarchy to dictatorship and oppression.

And we're heading in the same direction.

All Whites Go to Hell

You've probably heard the saying that "all dogs go to Heaven", but did you know that all white people go to Hell?  That's what the "Rev. Dr." James Lowery preaches.  Who, you might ask, is the "Rev. Dr."* James Lowery, and why should I care?  Oh, he just happens to be the pastor who Pres Barack Obama selected to give the invocation at his inauguration ceremony, 20 January 2009, and to whom Pres Obama awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom on 30 July 2009.

Rev. Dr. James Lowery spoke at St. James Baptist Church as part of a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) tour across Georgia to encourage black voters to cast ballots for Obama.

Wait a minute.  I thought pastors weren't supposed to do that.  Here's more from the "good Reverend".

"I don't know what kind of a n----- wouldn't vote with a black man running," said Lowery. "All that he did with the stimulus was genius. Nobody intelligent would risk this country with Romney."

Classy.  Use racial epithets against people of your own race who disagree with you.

he urged individuals to look at their own character and conduct.

I seem to recall a sermon I read somewhere about beams and slivers.

Lowery said that when he was a young militant, he used to say all white folks were going to hell. Then he mellowed and just said most of them were. Now, he said, he is back to where he was.

 Funny, I seem to recall scriptures that teach a different doctrine.

"I'm frightened by the level of hatred and bitterness coming out in this election," said Lowery.

There are those beams and slivers again.

Remember, ladies & gents, the "Rev. Dr." Lowery spewed his hatred inside a church, with multiple local pastors present, using the cross of Christ as a prop for his message.  If your pastor invited someone to speak at your church, and that person spewed this kind of racism, would you sit there and listen?  Would you continue to attend that church?

Forsyth Mayor John Howard, a member of St. James who opened Saturday's program, said he was "pretty shocked" by Lowery's comments. He said if a speaker had made the same comments about black people, he would have gotten up and left.

He said the Bible gives set instructions on how to go to heaven and it doesn't say anything about skin color. Hearing the comments he said he looked at the face of his pastor, the Rev. Antonio Proctor, and could tell he was real shocked too. Howard said he and Proctor talked about putting a video of the event on Forsyth Cable TV but decided after his comments that it wasn't a good idea.

I see.  The mayor knows Lowery's message contradicts the Bible, but he sat there and did nothing anyway.  And why, exactly, wasn't it "a goo idea" to put a video of the event on TV, Mr Mayor?

But wait, there's more.

Rev. Antonio Proctor, pastor of St. James Baptist Church, closed the program by saying, "I am grateful for your stopping here with words to challenge us to hold onto this responsibility."

Seriously?  Hang on; here's the best part, from Lowery's invocation at Pres Obama's inauguration.

“And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance,” he prayed in 2009. “And as we leave this mountain top, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family.”

Ah, yes, because nothing "help[s] us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family” like stating that all white people go to Hell.

I also like this part.

Speaking to the group at St. James Baptist, Lowery said he liked giving the benediction because it gave him the last word. The only thing that followed him on the program was the "Star Spangled Banner." He said it was the first time in his life he enjoyed the national anthem

Hey, that sounds a lot like something Michelle Obama said a couple times, doesn't it?

Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin today, would-be First Lady Michelle Obama said, "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

Then in Madison, she said, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."

But then, the Obama's have a long history of association with racist, anti-American, anti-Semitic pastors.

Barack Obama is a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan.

Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan "epitomized greatness." For most Americans, though, Farrakhan epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-Semitism. Over the years, he has compiled an awesome record of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler -- "They helped him get the Third Reich on the road." His history is a rancid stew of lies.

Such is the sad state of the Civil Rights movement today.  We've gone from...

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

to all whites go to Hell.

Speaking of which, I have a few questions for Lowery.  If all whites go to Hell, then...

• What happens to those who are part white?
• Does one drop of white blood condemn them?
• Does one drop of black blood redeem them?
• Do you realize that Pres Obama is half white?

Lowery is a racist nut job, so I'd never expect a coherent answer from him (not that I think he'd read my blog).  But here are a couple of serious questions for the reasonable people out there.

• Why do so many Americans, including whites, tolerate racism directed at whites?
• Is racism always wrong, or is it only wrong when directed toward certain races?

*If you're wondering why I placed "Rev. Dr." in quotes when writing "Rev. Dr." James Lowery, the reasons are that...

1. "Reverend" derives from the word, reverence: "a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration".  A person who twists the Scriptures to fit his/her own racist agenda does not revere the Scriptures or the God revealed therein.
2. The term "Doctor" is one of deep respect of which James Lowery has proven himself unworthy.  

Bill Whittle's Guide to the Election

Bill Whittle, in his inimitable way, explains the choice before us.

I highly recommend all his informative videos.