Protesters took to the street outside the Dallas home of the N-word spewing SAE frat boys at Oklahoma, chanting slogans and, according to one neighbor, accusing the entire neighborhood of being a hotbed of racism.
Accompanying the protest were a couple dozen reporters and several cops. From CBS News:
Dozens of protesters took to the street in front of the home of a former University of Oklahoma student and fraternity member who was shown in a video leading a racist chant aboard a bus.
Dozens of demonstrators Wednesday evening marched up and down the North Dallas residential street in front of the home of Parker Rice. Watching them were about two dozen news media representatives and six police officers.
The protesters chanted, "Racism is taught," and, "Racism is a choice."
CBS Dallas reported that the group, Next Generation Action Network, says Rice and Highland Park-graduate Levi Pettit, another SAE member seen in the OU video and now also expelled from the university, made a bold statement that was caught on tape and now it time for protesters to make theirs.
Their numbers didn't pack the street, but their message was heard loud and clear. "This is what democracy looks like," they chanted. "Teach your kids another way, no modern day KKK!"
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Is this Dallas protest proper, or is it harassment -- the creating of the same sort of "hostile environment" that University of Oklahoma officials alleged in kicking two (so far) Sigma Alpha Epsilon members out of school.
Would your answer to the question change if this were a bunch of anti-abortion protesters marching in the street outside the home of an abortionist? If so, why?
"Because one is bad and the other is good" is not an acceptable answer -- not before the law and not in today's morally relativistic philosophical soup, in which your "truth" may not be others' "truth."
The fraternity-from-hell-gift-that-keeps-on-giving now is giving me flashbacks. This is the now-former Sigma Alpha Epsilon housemother at the University of Oklahoma, caught on video saying That Word over and over again as she laughs, with loud rap music playing in the background. The Internet Outrage Machine tells me this is Beauton Gilbow, who hypocritically lamented the sad state of affairs on the Norman campus and said she knew nothink, NOTHINK about any racist goings-on at the SAE house.
The Internet Outrage Machine, as it is wont to do -- and let me emphasize there's plenty to be outraged about in this whole outrageous mess -- takes just one sliver of a story, the one most likely to cause good people to lose their s***, and runs with it. That's because the Internet Outrage Machine's collective mental age is no greater than the chronological age of the World Wide Web itself, and young people usually aren't good at perceiving nuance.
So, we're told this is Beauton Gilbow, bigot and evil frat-boy enabler. I know better. This is Beauton Gilbow, a vision from my youth. Beauton Gilbow, someone who reminds me of my parents and any number of aunts, uncles, cousins and acquaintances as I grew up in the Deep South as Jim Crow faded away and whatever we have now started to take shape.
Gilbow, from the sound of her, probably grew up in Oklahoma or the South. And I know a little bit about the culture that formed her and imprinted on her heart and mind a whole host of attitudes, assumptions, unthinking Pavlovian reactions and expectations.
If her upbringing was anything like mine -- and at age 79, I assume her experience was mine on steroids -- she had been well-marinaded in a thoroughly toxic culture before she even reached the age of reason. I'm sure it's possible to completely undo that kind of psychological imprinting, but I'm not sure it's possible without violating many of the Geneva conventions.
AS I SAID, this whole thing is giving me flashbacks. I don't like them. I don't like reflecting on how many of my childhood memories, how many of the silly schoolyard songs we sang, how much of The Way Things Were was thoroughly, unthinkingly and hatefully racist. Here's a blast from my Red Oaks Elementary past, what we thought was a hilarious takeoff on the Daniel Boone theme song from TV:
Daniel Boone was a man, he was a big man, But when the bear was bigger, he ran like a n***** up a tree
Folks who grew up in the North -- or should I say grew up in the North and didn't hear the N-word 200 times a day amid a culture where racism and segregation, both de jure and de facto, was as pervasive as the air you breathed? -- generally get to remember their silly childhood songs and rhymes with a certain wistful fondness. If you're a Southerner seeking to rise above your upbringing, trying to do like Jesus said and love your neighbor as yourself, that luxury is forever denied you. You get to remember with a sense of regret and shame.
Double that if you forget yourself and find a silver of wistful fondness trying to climb over the wall you've built around it over the decades. Truly, if you're under 40 and not from where I'm from, you have no idea how pervasive -- how normal -- that word, the N-word, was. It's true enough that many white folks in the South were raised by parents who forbade them from using that word because it wasn't nice . . . because polite people didn't talk like that. I was not among that fortunate number. And even for those who were, "n*****" was everywhere. In the air, in the culture, in the hearts of too many. FOR FOLKS of a certain age and from a certain place, "rising above your upbringing" isn't something that happens. It's a life-and-death struggle forever. When you have a certain thing pounded into your consciousness from birth, deprogramming is a lifelong task. Some see the need to look hard into the mirror every day that God in heaven sends. Some drift along, thinking they're just fine -- or not thinking much about it at all.
And then one day at an Oklahoma frat house in 2013, somebody sticks a smartphone in your face and you try to be funny and hip for the young idiots you're supposed to be watching over. (Insert mushroom cloud here.) Suddenly -- maybe -- it dawns on you that you should have spent a lot more time looking hard in the mirror than trying to impress a bunch of college kids who, having been born sometime during the Clinton Administration, have no damned excuse that I can think of.
Today when I saw that video of Beauton Gilbow, septuagenarian, I saw my childhood and a bunch of people I knew and loved. And I wanted to cry.
I wish I saw more tears over this and less click-bait exploitation of this from the Internet Outrage Machine. Hateful, racist college kids don't come from nowhere.
It would be a lot more helpful, actually, if we took some of the energy required to be exploitatively outraged and put that toward figuring out why we're no further from Selma, 1965, that we seem to be a half century on.
According to its national website, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is all about the "True Gentleman Experience."
One brother from the Oklahoma Mu chapter at Oklahoma State University tells us all about it. Soooooo . . . considering what happened with the SAEs at the University of Oklahoma, the student newspaper at Oklahoma State took a look at that school's chapter. And found this in a member's room, visible from the street:
Oops. Please tell me that's not how you win SAE's John O. Moseley Zeal Award, which "recognizes the chapter that best exemplifies a model chapter in
Sigma Alpha Epsilon. This chapter excels in its operations and
brotherhood, fulfilling the vision of our Founding Fathers and its
members and by living the life of a true gentleman."
I'm guessing that being in PR for a fraternity is just a Lost Cause.
There will never be a n***** in SAE There will never be a n***** in SAE You can hang 'em from a tree But they'll never sign with me There will never be a n***** in SAE
This apparently is what it means to be a Sigma Alpha Epsilon brother at the University of Oklahoma.
So much for "tolerance" in an era when everything is permitted except loving your neighbor as yourself. The latest black eye for the Greek system in the United States -- a vile and racist little ditty by the SAE brothers of OU captured on a cell phone camera -- exploded into the national consciousness during a weekend when the nation's first black president went to Selma, Ala., to commemorate the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," when Alabama state troopers brutally dispersed a march of peaceful civil-rights protesters asking for something as unthinkable at the time as an integrated Greek system. In 1965, that would be granting blacks the unfettered right to vote. The right to be fully American.
MANY LOOK at the first African-American president speaking in the former heart of states' rights, "separate but equal" and violent repression of minorities and think of how far we've come in a half century. But you only need to look as far as Ferguson, Mo., and the partisan, race-laden rhetoric aimed at that first black chief executive to make you think twice about how far we've come in overcoming America's original sin. You only need to look as far as a bunch of hateful, overprivileged white boys in Norman, Okla., to think that, after all this time, all this strife and all this shed blood, it's still 1959 somewhere. Many somewheres, actually. OU President David Boren, to his credit, wasted no time in kicking the frat off campus, a move which followed the SAE national office, to its credit, disbanding the school's chapter. But that's just playing "whack a mole." There'll be something else somewhere . . . soon. Fallen humanity always has had a problem with The Other -- those who for whatever reason are unlike ourselves and whom we see as some sort of threat because of their otherness. That's not going to change. In fact, it's probably going to get worse as we untether ourselves from every philosophical or religious tradition that seeks to restrain our worst selves and remind us that we're not omniscient, omnipotent and righteous in every way.
We seek to be as gods, only to behave as devils.
SCRIPTUREtells us that "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." It doesn't get more prideful or haughty in spirit than Oklahoma's brothers of SAE . . . who now are disgraced former brothers of SAE.
But that's just them. What about us? If anything characterizes America today, it is our misplaced pride over just about everything and our overreaching haughtiness in spirit. Our faith in American exceptionalism is as fervent as it is misplaced, from the misplaced superiority complex of those frat boys in Oklahoma to the crusading self-righteousness of too much of our domestic and foreign policy. But there is no exception to some eternal truths, and the fall resulting from our misplaced pride -- pride writ small on our hearts and writ large in our society -- will be epic. The truth is we're all SAE wannabes, and we're always looking for the next n*****. This will not end well.
NOTE: This video shows a man being shot to death. Discretion is strongly advised.
Over on Rod Dreher's American Conservative blog, it took exactly nine comments before someone started throwing around the L-word to denigrate anyone expressing any doubt that St. Louis cops may have been too quick to turn a disturbed, steak-knife wielding individual into Swiss cheese.
Could there be any more telling example of the dangerous ideological warfare this country is engaged in? Someone had just watched a cell-phone video of a man being shot to death, and the first instinct after someone says "Whoa! Wait a minute!" was to politicize the entire thing. To start, without any evidence of anyone's actual political leanings, hurling the word "liberal" as an epithet. The video above isn't the only tragedy we are witnessing here. It's also tragic that, in a world gripped by spiritual, cultural and social crises, the only thing Western civilization (or what is left of it) has left is ideology. If that’s the way we’re going to roll these days, I suppose it would be equally “fair” to throw out the F-word — fascist — to describe anyone who’d be so damned quick to politicize a tragic death from the get-go, taking a knee-jerk position that police were absolutely, positively right to gun down a guy with a steak knife and dismissing any questioning of the officers’ actions, period.
HERE'S a thought: A world without doubt is a breeding ground for genocidal maniacs. Here’s another thought, this one specifically dealing with the "officer-involved shooting" of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis: There were people reasonably close to the officers’ line of fire. There were storefronts behind the guy that appeared to be in the line of fire. What if the cops had missed with a few rounds? What if they’d missed and there was a ricochet off of a brick wall? Most hunters know better than to pull the trigger when there’s a possibility you might hit something else if you miss your target. Many cops, it would seem, not so much.
FURTHERMORE, why not slowly back away to keep separation between you and the mentally-ill guy with a knife and buy a little time for other options? Why not put the door of the police SUV between you and the disturbed man? Buy time. Try to engage. Make an effort to calm the guy down. Why is deadly force seemingly the first and only option in such situations? And note that the officers’ guns were out the second they got out of their vehicle. I can’t say for certain whether or not the shooting was justified but, as others in the media have said, this just doesn’t look right.
I THINK the St. Louis shooting -- not to mention the egregious police misbehavior during the Ferguson, Mo., protests -- raises numerous legitimate questions that require answers and not being derided as a “liberal” — a veritable enemy of “truth, justice and the American Way.” I wouldn’t think twice if the St. Louis incident was the response of two infantrymen on the battlefield. But police officers aren’t infantrymen — or at least they used not to be. I think it raises a legitimate question of whether cops now are being trained as such and, if so, why? But there’s no room for questions in Ideological America, where the “other side” is always the Other, and we’re always spoiling for a fight. As God is my witness, this will not end well.
Planned Parenthood is absolutely right. Generally speaking, whether you're on The Pill or whatever is none of my business. I really don't want to know.
If you're expecting me to pay for your contraception, however -- particularly if doing so causes me to bankroll what my religion defines as explicitly sinful -- that makes it my business, and the sex-obsessed cultural left cannot accept that it can't have it both ways. The Constitution may give you the right to ostensibly consequence-free screwing, but it doesn't give the state the right to put a gun to some others' heads and force them to violate their sacred conscience to bankroll what they believe is morally -- and mortally -- wrong.
When that freedom of conscience is eradicated, every other freedom we possess will go with it -- including, eventually, your freedom to have sex to your heart's desire, whether you want it to end in a child or not. If your enthusiasm for contraception isn't your boss' business, it's not the state's either. If you have the state making it your boss' business -- at least as far as funding it is concerned -- it has just become Big Brother's business in spades, and that violation of "privacy" won't end well for you or for anyone else,
HEALTH CARE in general is another matter. That's everyone's business, and society has a vested interest in not having people drop dead for lack of it. Thus, we try to provide maximum access to medical care while attempting to construct firewalls between the state and your human rights -- and dignity. That is the morally correct, and practically smart, thing to do. It's a trade-off that we fervently hope doesn't blow up in our liberty loving faces. On the other hand, forcing some individuals to violate their conscience to protect other individuals from the logical consequences of unfettered intercourse is neither fair nor sustainable from a human-rights perspective. Again, you can't have it both ways. I'd suggest that Planned Parenthood declare victory and stop emoting patently illogical claptrap. No one is going to croak because Hobby Lobby -- or the Catholic Church, for that matter -- doesn't pay for her birth-control pills. But if the perpetually alarmed folks at Planned Parenthood (or those folks who love them) want to provide that stuff for free, knock yourselves out. It's a free country. For now.
Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.
For Mr. Seeger, folk music and a sense of community were inseparable, and where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action.
In his hearty tenor, Mr. Seeger, a beanpole of a man who most often played 12-string guitar or five-string banjo, sang topical songs and children’s songs, humorous tunes and earnest anthems, always encouraging listeners to join in. His agenda paralleled the concerns of the American left: He sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. “We Shall Overcome,” which Mr. Seeger adapted from old spirituals, became a civil rights anthem.Mr. Seeger was a prime mover in the folk revival that transformed popular music in the 1950s. As a member of the Weavers, he sang hits including Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” — which reached No. 1 — and “If I Had a Hammer,” which he wrote with the group’s Lee Hays. Another of Mr. Seeger’s songs, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," became an antiwar standard. And in 1965, the Byrds had a No. 1 hit with a folk-rock version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Mr. Seeger’s setting of a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Mr. Seeger was a mentor to younger folk and topical singers in the ‘50s and ‘60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock. Decades later, Bruce Springsteen drew the songs on his 2006 album, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” from Mr. Seeger’s repertoire of traditional music about a turbulent American experience, and in 2009 he performed Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” with Mr. Seeger at the Obama inaugural. At a Madison Square Garden concert celebrating Mr. Seeger’s 90th birthday, Mr. Springsteen introduced him as “a living archive of America’s music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along.”
Although he recorded more than 100 albums, Mr. Seeger distrusted commercialism and was never comfortable with the idea of stardom. He invariably tried to use his celebrity to bring attention and contributions to the causes that moved him, or to the traditional songs he wanted to preserve.
Also participating was New Orleans’ Mahalia Jackson, who played a key role in later inspiring King at the podium.
With input from advisers, King’s speech had been composed the night before at Washington’s Willard Hotel. As King delivered the prepared text — the original copy of which belongs to former college basketball coach George Raveling, who was at King’s side during the speech — Jackson prompted King to veer into an unscripted passage she might’ve heard him deliver in earlier appearances.
“He was just reading, and she just shouted to him, ‘Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream,’” said Clarence Jones, an attorney and adviser to King who had contributed to King’s text. “I was standing about 50 feet behind him, to the right and to the rear, and I watched him — this is all happening in real time — just take the text of his speech and move it to the left side of the lectern, grab the lectern and look out.
“One of the world’s greatest gospel singers shouting out to one of he world’s greatest Baptist preachers. She may have ignored the fact that there were almost 300,000 other people there, and she just shouted out to Martin, ‘Tell them about the dream.’ Anybody else who would yell at him, he probably would’ve ignored it. He didn’t ignore Mahalia Jackson.
“I said to somebody standing next to me, ‘These people don’t know it, but they’re about ready to go to church.’” The words “I have a dream” do not appear in the text Raveling owns.
AND THAT'S the way it was, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 1963 . . . 50 years ago today.
If Joan and Robert Vanderhorst had just gotten with the program 16 years ago, two U.S. airlines would have avoided a lot of bother.
Particularly in the age of terrorism, the last thing pilots, flight crews and air travelers need to deal with are unusual-looking youth with low IQs who, frankly, could be duped into carrying backpack nukes onto domestic U.S. flights in a Tehran second. That is what American Airlines was faced with Sunday at the Newark, N.J., airport, forcing the pilot and airline into quick action to ban a 16-year-old boy with Down syndrome from a flight to California and possibly avert a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001.
Or at least spare the crew and passengers from having to stare and point for hours on end at an exotic-looking male with a low IQ who, heaven forfend, would want to act all weird . . . and interact with the normal people.
This is what American Airlines bravely nipped in the bud with its bold and decisive action, action made necessary by the selfish refusal of the Vanderhorsts more than a decade and a half ago to abort the abnormal problem child and spare the world a possible terror threat at worst and certain discomfort at best.
Some 92 percent of women have abortions after a Down syndrome diagnosis, so one has to wonder what Joan Vanderhorst's problem was.
Religious freakery? Antisocial tendencies?
What, is she nuts? It would seem she'd have to be to inflict such misery on herself and everyone else.
A SOCIETY must have standards, lest mayhem rule. If we start letting the retarded live -- not to mention fly -- it won't be long before the country is overrun by huggers, smilers, wavers and Special Olympics competitors . . . to disastrous effect.
Joan and Robert Vanderhorst, of Bakersfield, Calif., said they intend to sue American over the "humiliating" incident at Newark Airport, in which they were told their special needs son posed a "flight risk."
"It's defamation," Robert Vanderhorst told the Daily News. "It's a violation of his civil rights and its defamation."
Joan Vanderhorst pulled out her cell phone and started recording the incident on Sunday in which Bede is seen quietly playing with his hat and an American Airlines official warns that she was prohibited from filming "in a security-controlled area."
At one point, Port Authority police were even called on the confused family.
"Nothing like this has ever happened to us before. That's what's so shocking. He's usually our good luck charm. Good things usually happen when Bede is with us," Vanderhorst said.
Bede and his parents had been in Jackson, N.J., visiting family and were eager to make the long return flight home. On a "lark" they had even upgraded their seats to first class, shelling out an extra $625 dollars.
"My wife said, 'oh Bede's never flown first class,' he'll be so excited." Vanderhorst said Bede, a freshman in high school, has flown "at least 30 times" through his life and has never caused any trouble.
Nothing was different before Sunday's flight, he said. Bede was sticking close to his parents and was not acting unruly, nor was he upset.
But as the family waited to board, an American Airlines official pulled them aside and said the pilot had observed Bede and didn't feel safe allowing him on the plane.
Joan Vanderhorst quickly snapped on her video camera and can be heard sobbing. "We are being singled out," she said. Robert Vanderhorst, an attorney, calmly pleads with the airline official. "He's behaving. He's demonstrating he's not a problem."
The agitated American Airlines employee instead called Port Authority police to escort the family away from the gate.
(snip)
Vanderhorst said he has spoken with his attorneys about a lawsuit, accusing the airline of violating Bede's civil rights and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
"My son cannot defend himself," he said. "I expect that American Airlines will not give their pilots the ability to discriminate against anyone; gay, black disabled," he said.
The family's trip home deteriorated even further when they were loaded into a full United Airlines flight and placed in the very back row.
"For a second time, we were discriminated against. Segregated."
SO? That's what you get when you don't take care of your problems when they're small.
They eventually let Rosa Parks sit in the front of the bus, and now look at America's inner cities. They're trouble with a capital "T," which rhymes with "B," which stands for "Bad." And "Black." Am I right? Am I right?
What the Vanderhorsts need to learn is that 92 percent of retarded-baby-bearing women can't be wrong. Just like 92 percent of white Southerners had it right back in the day and 92 percent of National Socialists in Germany before that!
Because the female breast is so unexceptional, tit libber Moira Johnston makes her living as a topless dancer at a topless bar, where cerebral gents pay good money to marvel at her sparkling personality and towering intellect.
And if a patron might get overenthusiastic about her towering intellect and sparkling personality, then grab hold of her unexceptional tatas, it of course would be no big deal. Obviously, that would be just one more way of saying "Atta girl!"
I'm sure that's how Johnston would see it, too. Because there's nothing exceptional -- or sexual -- about a woman's boobs.
But do you think she ever wonders why the most enthusiastic supporters of her tit-liberation movement are 13-year-old males?
When I was a child, all of the South was like the Mississippi of this 1966 NBC News documentary, Mississippi: A Self-Portrait.
The only thing was that Mississippi was just a little bit more.
If we all waived Confederate battle flags -- we called them "Rebel flags" -- Mississippians waived them a little bit more. Especially during football season, for the University of Mississippi was (and is) home of the Ole Miss Rebels. Today, the name remains, though the flag and "Colonel Rebel" do not, and that transition was not an easy one for Mississippians.
If we all celebrated "moonlight and magnolias" and venerated "the Lost Cause," Mississippi celebrated and venerated a little bit more.
And if there was ugliness toward blacks -- we called them "Negroes" or "nigras" or "colored," and that's when we were trying to be nice -- or racial strife to be unleashed, Mississippians did what Southerners did back then. Just a little bit more fervently.
I was born in 1961. Mississippi: A Self-Portrait aired on NBC in 1966, when I was in kindergarten in Baton Rouge. Until 1970, I attended legally segregated elementary schools.
If you know anything about the South today, watching this film will show you how far it's come in 46 years. If you know anything about the South today, you know how far it still has to go. You also know this: It gets complicated.
I was raised by white folk just like the white folk in this documentary.
You want to know the dirty little secret of that? The part that makes one both a victim and a perpetrator, brings one to the line where the difference between conscious and unconscious -- willfulness and reflexiveness -- gets . . . complicated?
It's this: Ivan Pavlov, of "Pavlov's dog" fame, was right.
Pavlov started ringing a bell whenever he fed his dogs. Soon enough, the dogs began to slobber at the ringing of a bell. We white Southerners of a certain age -- a great many of us -- were conditioned to slobber at the ringing of any number of bells, most of them cracked.
AND THAT'S what the Yankees can't take away -- what maybe even Jesus can't completely take away. We can learn morality. We can accept "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" in our minds and, indeed, even in our hearts.
We can do this. God Almighty compels us to do so; I know this. The force of our will enables us to at least attempt this.
But none of this takes away that goddamned -- God-damned, to be precise -- and devilishly cracked bell that a sick society started to ring in our ears the minute we popped out of our mamas' wombs. If we white Southerners of a certain age are honest, those of us who were neither born saints nor raised by them, we recognize that God-damned, subconscious half a second between some stimulus right out of 1966 (or 1956, for that matter) and the moral conscience that imperfectly informs our conscious mind in 2012.
Most white Southerners won't tell you that; I just did. Because that damning 1966 documentary about Mississippi -- about how old times there were not forgotten -- is pretty much how I was reared in south Louisiana back then. Hell, I remember when my eldest uncle died when I was a junior in high school (and I'm talking 1977 here), it was real important for my old man to find out whether the funeral home in Ponchatoula was "all-white."
The mortician eagerly assured him that, yes, it was. Another place in town was the "colored funeral home."
Because race mixing was (is?) an issue, even when you're dead as a doornail, sealed in a coffin and 6 feet deep in the good Southern soil.
WELCOME to my world, the one I cannot escape no matter how far afield of the South I might wander. The world that made my mind and haunts my heart. The world that gave so many of us that God-damned subconscious half second.
This weekend before America's birthday, how about we take a minute to reflect on the way things used to be -- and how far we've come in less than half a century?
This story ran in the Aug. 19, 1963 edition of Broadcasting magazine, recounting a bold advertising move made by Lever Brothers. That bold move? Integrated advertising.
In August 1963, when your 51-year-old correspondent was a 2½-year-old child, it was a risky thing for TV commercial for Wisk detergent to feature an African-American Little Leaguer.
We used to call blacks "Negroes" or "colored" then, and that's when we were being polite. And Lever Brothers, the makers of Wisk and other household products, felt the need to send "letters to its six advertising agencies informing them of its decision to 'take affirmative action' in the representation of minority races on TV."
In 1963, color television was still a big deal, too. In 1963, that Wisk ad absolutely represented being more of "your all-color station" than many areas of these United States had bargained for.
Apparently, the United States has a major Caucasian crime problem.
I mean, get a load of these alarming statistics in an opinion piece by MSNBC political analyst Edward Wyckoff Williams, recently reprinted in the Louisiana Weekly, New Orleans' African-American newspaper:
The truth? As the largest racial group, whites commit the majority of crimes in America. In particular, whites are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes. With respect to aggravated assault, whites led Blacks 2-1 in arrests; in forcible-rape cases, whites led all racial and ethnic groups by more than 2-1. And in larceny theft, whites led Blacks, again, more than 2-1.
Given this mathematical truth, would anyone encourage African Americans to begin shooting suspicious white males in their neighborhoods for fear that they’ll be raped, assaulted or murdered? Perhaps George Zimmerman’s defenders should answer that question. If African Americans were to act as irrationally as Zimmerman did, would any rationale suffice to avoid arrest?
(snip)
It seems that the media in general and white American society in particular prefer to focus on crime perpetrated by African Americans because it serves as a way to absolve them from the violence, prejudice and institutionalized discrimination engendered for generations against Blacks. It offers a buffer against responsibility, a way to shift blame and deflect cause and effect. But the truth, and numbers, tell a different story.
NO DOUBT about it,this"mathematical truth" certainly gives one pause.
I cannot conceive of any rationale that possibly could justify arresting any black American who did any damn thing to a dangerous Caucasian, the raw crime numbers being what they are. I mean, when you have a white population 5.74 times as large as the U.S. black population raping and committing larceny TWICE as much as blacks -- hell, getting arrested period twice as much as blacks -- I don't see how the government just doesn't lock up every last damn cracker on the probabilities alone.
Naturally, some people may be scratching their heads at what they see as a crazy and illogical notion, but that's just because their math is racist.
Oh . . . and as Walker Percy once famously wrote, "The center did not hold."
Whatever the Trayvon Martin shooting was in February, chances are it wasn't a hate crime.
Whatever the Trayvon Martin killing was that cold and rainy night, it wasn't premeditated. Prosecutors admitted that much by not filing first-degree murder charges against George Zimmerman.
But a lot of things being done in the young "martyr's" name absolutely have been premeditated. And they absolutely were hate crimes.
ONE OF the latest happened Saturday in Mobile, Ala. The story comes from WKRG television there:
According to police, Owens fussed at some kids playing basketball in the middle of Delmar Drive about 8:30 Saturday night. They say the kids left and a group of adults returned, armed with everything but the kitchen sink.
Police tell News 5 the suspects used chairs, pipes and paint cans to beat Owens.
Owens' sister, Ashley Parker, saw the attack. "It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed." Parker says 20 people, all African American, attacked her brother on the front porch of his home, using "brass buckles, paint cans and anything they could get their hands on."
Police will only say "multiple people" are involved.
What Parker says happened next could make the fallout from the brutal beating even worse. As the attackers walked away, leaving Owen bleeding on the ground, Parker says one of them said "Now that's justice for Trayvon." Trayvon Martin is the unarmed teenager police say was shot and killed February 26 by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida.
BACK IN FLORIDA this past winter, it's probably true that Zimmerman profiled Martin because of his age, gender . . . and race.
Given what's happened since that day in February -- not to mention the daily diet of violent-crime reports on TV and in the newspaper -- why do you think that might have been? It doesn't make profiling any less sad. Nor does it make profiling any less regrettable.
But it sure as hell makes it quite understandable.
In the real world, thugs don't get to complain about brutality. And unjust, violent mobs don't get to whine about injustice. That dog won't hunt.
Today's helpful tip for getting along in America: Don't say what you really think, if what you really think is what people really don't want to hear.
Conservative writer John Derbyshire was arrogant enough to think the power of his own intellect and the conviction with which he holds to his prejudices could save him from that simple postmodern fact of life. And mere days after he published the white man's version of "The Talk" on the Taki's Magazine website, Derbyshire has become a former National Review contributor.
"The Talk," of course, is the "cold, hard facts of life" discussion black parents have with their sons as soon as boys get within striking distance of becoming men. It concerns how white folks see black males, and how one stays alive given that unfortunate reality.
Well, as Derbyshire correctly pointed out, white parents have a version of that talk, too. And, as Derbyshire, correctly noted, it goes something like this:
(6) As you go through life, however, you will experience an ever larger number of encounters with black Americans. Assuming your encounters are random—for example, not restricted only to black convicted murderers or to black investment bankers—the Law of Large Numbers will inevitably kick in. You will observe that the means—the averages—of many traits are very different for black and white Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences.
(7) Of most importance to your personal safety are the very different means for antisocial behavior, which you will see reflected in, for instance, school disciplinary measures, political corruption, and criminal convictions.
(8) These differences are magnified by the hostility many blacks feel toward whites. Thus, while black-on-black behavior is more antisocial in the average than is white-on-white behavior, average black-on-white behavior is a degree more antisocial yet.
(9) A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.
(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:
(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.
(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).
(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.
(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.
I GREW UP in the Deep South. As bad as Derbyshire's version is -- and this wasn't the bad part -- the one I and countless other young Southerners got nearly 40 years ago was a lot worse.
When Derbyshire isn't veering off into the eugenic fever swamps -- studies apparently show the average African-American IQ is some 19 points lower than the average white IQ (Which we're supposed to address . . . how?) -- or referencing data from a reputedly racist website about blacks' propensity for violence, he occasionally veers into common sense.
In other words, don't go to rap concerts. Stay the hell out of the 'hood, particularly in the middle of the night. If a situation starts to look like trouble, it probably is. No matter how soulful you think you might be, a certain percentage of African-Americans will see it -- and you -- differently, white boy.
All of this is unfortunate. It's also the cold, hard fact of racially divided American life.
Or maybe the cold, hard insanity of eliminating the divide by exterminating white people, as broadcast on C-SPAN in 2007 via "Kamau Kambon´s most excellent speach."
SLAVERY was America's original sin. Its awful effects persist to this day. No, in too many cases, we can't just get along. And despite all the king's horses and all the king's diversity trainers, we have no clue how to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Particularly since he was never in one piece to begin with.
Not one of us knows how to undo slavery. Not one of us knows how to undo the horrific lingering effects of Jim Crow. Or the tragedy born of the disintegration of the black family and how that has influenced poverty, violence and -- since Derbyshire brought it up -- the "IQ gap," for whatever that data might be worth.
For that matter, we don't know how to undo the unfolding catastrophe that is the disintegration of the white family, either.In another 10 years, a large chunk of white America will be right where the black underclass resides.
Of course, many of "the right sort" of white folks are making a killing off of the toxic hip-hop culture that has turned into a loutish glorification of everything that -- if properly adhered to -- likely will leave one f***ed up, knocked up, locked up, dumbed down . . . or dead. But that's not important now, right?
No, just consider what a bad, bad racist John Derbyshire is. You know you want to.
Harp on all the cynical, nasty and bigoted things he has to say. Mostly, you would be correct.
But the most offensive thing in play here doesn't involve any of the truths Derbyshire stumbled upon, nor any of his "lies, damned lies and statistics." It's not even in his moral lacuna, which swallowed that place where Christian charity ought to reside.
The most offensive thing in play here is that he got a shiv in the back for being an open book while more than a few of his vocal detractors, I would wager, are living what Derbyshire merely had the temerity to write.
They are avoiding the 'hood.
They stay the hell away from large groups of black youth with pants on the ground and hoodies over their heads.
They don't go to rap concerts.
They do not settle in municipalities run by black politicians, unless they're really loaded Washingtonians and can afford Georgetown. And a hella home-alarm system.
And they're just fine.
THEY PROBABLY even adhere to the supremely cynical Paragraphs 13, 14 and 15 of Derbyshire's "nonblack version" of The Talk:
(13)In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.
(14) Be aware, however, that there is an issue of supply and demand here. Demand comes from organizations and businesses keen to display racial propriety by employing IWSBs, especially in positions at the interface with the general public—corporate sales reps, TV news presenters, press officers for government agencies, etc.—with corresponding depletion in less visible positions. There is also strong private demand from middle- and upper-class whites for personal bonds with IWSBs, for reasons given in the previous paragraph and also (next paragraph) as status markers.
(15) Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous. To be an IWSB in present-day US society is a height of felicity rarely before attained by any group of human beings in history. Try to curb your envy: it will be taken as prejudice (see paragraph 13).
BECAUSE IT'S always easier to indignantly scream "racist" than actually not be one. Take the test Derbyshire mentioned Monday in this Gawker Q and A.
I didn't do so well on the African American-European American Implicit Association Test. The first time I took it today, I scored just like Derbyshire did -- a "strong automatic preference for European American compared to African American."
The second time I took the test, after getting the hang of it, I displayed a "moderate automatic preference" for white like me. Maybe that's just how we're all wired. Or maybe -- as I continue this lifelong mortal struggle against the profoundly racist culture into which I was born, raised and indoctrinated -- the evil within my crooked, hard heart yet exceeds that which, with God's help, I have purged in my 51 years on earth.
As this Trayvon Martin mess drags on, and as black parents have one talk with their kids and white parents have another with theirs, everyone keeps talking about that "national conversation" we're all supposed to have about this stuff. I think "everyone" is full of shit.
That national conversation about race is the last thing we want to have. Not even after 400 years, and almost 150 years after slavery's end.
We want the truth? We want the truth??? We can't handle the truth.
John Derbyshire -- in his wonkish, tone deaf, elitist, racist kind of way -- almost stumbled right into that dreaded conversation. Maybe his unfortunate spasm of honesty could have dragged the rest of us into an honest airing of what divides us . . . and how we might start fixing what ails us.
That's why all the rest of us racists, the ones not nearly so honest about our multicultural hearts of darkness, had to put a bullet in the man's literary brain.
Now we return you to your previously scheduled TV news coverage of murderous black youth, mau-mauing race baiters and crackers with firearms, pickup trucks and a bad attitude about "f***ing n*****s."
Over on Rod Dreher's American Conservative blog, it took exactly nine comments before someone started throwing around the L-word to denigrate anyone expressing any doubt that St. Louis cops may have been too quick to turn a disturbed, steak-knife wielding individual into Swiss cheese.
Could there be any more telling example of the dangerous ideological warfare this country is engaged in? Someone had just watched a cell-phone video of a man being shot to death, and the first instinct after someone says "Whoa! Wait a minute!" was to politicize the entire thing. To start, without any evidence of anyone's actual political leanings, hurling the word "liberal" as an epithet.
The video above isn't the only tragedy we are witnessing here. It's also tragic that, in a world gripped by spiritual, cultural and social crises, the only thing Western civilization (or what is left of it) has left is ideology.
HERE'S a thought: A world without doubt is a breeding ground for genocidal maniacs.
Here’s another thought, this one specifically dealing with the "officer-involved shooting" of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis: There were people reasonably close to the officers’ line of fire. There were storefronts behind the guy that appeared to be in the line of fire. What if the cops had missed with a few rounds?
What if they’d missed and there was a ricochet off of a brick wall?
Most hunters know better than to pull the trigger when there’s a possibility you might hit something else if you miss your target. Many cops, it would seem, not so much.
FURTHERMORE, why not slowly back away to keep separation between you and the mentally-ill guy with a knife and buy a little time for other options? Why not put the door of the police SUV between you and the disturbed man?
Buy time. Try to engage. Make an effort to calm the guy down.
Why is deadly force seemingly the first and only option in such situations? And note that the officers’ guns were out the second they got out of their vehicle.
I can’t say for certain whether or not the shooting was justified but, as others in the media have said, this just doesn’t look right.
I THINK the St. Louis shooting -- not to mention the egregious police misbehavior during the Ferguson, Mo., protests -- raises numerous legitimate questions that require answers and not being derided as a “liberal” — a veritable enemy of “truth, justice and the American Way.”
I wouldn’t think twice if the St. Louis incident was the response of two infantrymen on the battlefield. But police officers aren’t infantrymen — or at least they used not to be. I think it raises a legitimate question of whether cops now are being trained as such and, if so, why?
But there’s no room for questions in Ideological America, where the “other side” is always the Other, and we’re always spoiling for a fight. As God is my witness, this will not end well.