By "the past," they mean 1965, when black people had a larger problem with racism and segregation than they did with—wait for it—"black-on-black crime." And to make it even worse, the author of this Daily Beast article—where he decided to channel his inner Geraldo—is, you guessed it, a black guy. John H. McWhorter, that is, who also saw fit to appear on CNN with—how did you know?—CNN's champion in the epic fight against drooping pants and the best straight man ever for Donald Trump's wacky wacky witticisms, Don Lemon.
Lemon: I think you said "They're living in 1965, 2015 activists are living in 1965," why do you say that? McWhorter: Because there's this idea that the black communities biggest problem is the "one white cop." And that's a real problem. But that "one white cop" is a bigger problem than the fact that the black guy who was killed is in much much more danger of being killed by some other black guy in the neighborhood. Everybody wants to focus on the white cop only out of sense that our job is to fight racism, which it was in 1965. Today if we're talking about what ails the black community—racism is one thing, there is racism that is involved in what happens between black men and the cops, I'm not against Black Lives Matter at all, but there's another huge problem which is black people killing each other. But we've got this whole punditocracy that's teaching us that it's a bad thing to even talk about black-on-black crime. Lemon: I'm going to just read this: "Yes, black lives taken by cops matter. But so do black lives taken by other blacks. BLM won't win over America until it acknowledges this. You say the group "wants to talk about racism, but it's no interested in the truth" and the truth is this is not the biggest problem facing black America because here is [sic] the statistics. You said, "This year alone, in Chicago almost 80 percent of the killed have been black. In Baltimore is 216 people versus 11 white, in Philadelphia 200 people versus 44 white, mostly by other black people. You think Black Lives Matter are willfully ignoring this, or maybe it's just not their mission? McWhorter: It should be their mission. I mean, to have an organization in 2015 fighting only for the black lives that are taken by whites is totally arbritrary because we're trying to improve conditions in the black community and when it comes to murder, ok these people can't do everything, they can't change all sorts of things, but if we're talking about murder why would we only be focusing on the murder by the occasional white cop? Because of a sense that racism is the main thing, because we're stuck in the notion that to continue the struggle of 1965 we have to focus on what white people are doing wrong but in this case there's this beautiful argument that a lot of smart people make that "it's the state murdering, rather than citizens and it's more important when the state does it." No, that's just throwing a political science term around. Imagine telling a woman in Philadelphia who's lost two boys to gang warfare, "Well that's really sad Mrs. Williams but we're more interested in what the state did." It doesn't make sense.
This is so incredibly wrong-headed, clueless, and blind that it's gob-smacking. It's really simple and the fact that this guy doesn't get it is really sad. It goes like this: You can't stop black-on-black crime with a racist police force that's in the midst of perpetrating cop-on-black crime. In fact, when you have a highly bigoted police force, the very last thing it's going to do is put a lot of effort into protecting and fairly policing the black community. It's not about which problem is numerically larger; it's that you can't fix Problem B. (black-on-black crime) until you fix Problem A. (cop-on-black crime). Frankly, telling Black Lives Matter what they "should be" focused on is like telling a gay rights group that what they really should be talking about is abortion because that's the "bigger" problem. It makes just as much sense. On top of all that, he's got the wrong point of reference for the past. In 1965 the Civil Rights Act had already passed and the Voting Rights Act was already on the way. The year he's likely thinking of is 1955, one year after Brown v. Board of Education, and when Emmet Till was murdered. That, by all intents, is when the American civil rights movement truly began. Keep reading below for video and more.
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It's not a coincidence that in each of the cities he says have a high rate of black murders, the police force is essentially corrupt to its core. In Chicago you have police holding prisoners in a secret black site illegally, and taking pictures with people they're holding as if they were animals taken in a hunt. It's as if they aren't even dealing with people, just wild animals that need to be put down, stuffed and mounted on a trophy wall.
Chicago Police have beaten, threatened, and intimidated members of the supposedly "independent" Police Review Board in order to force them to whitewash their acts of brutality. The Philadelphia Police are under investigation by the FBI.
The FBI is now investigating six former Philadelphia narcotics officers, according to police. In December, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams wrote a letter to Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey stating that the testimony of the six officers would no longer be accepted. So far 270 of their drugs cases have been thrown out of court.
And when it comes to Baltimore, that police department is a giant hot mess of corruption, as we can see with the disgusting treatment of whistle-blower detective Joe Crystal. He was harassed out of the department, even getting a rat left on his windshield for reporting a case of brutality. And then there's the case of Sgt. Michael A. Wood Jr., who has come forward to talk about the systemic racism and brutality he saw as a Baltimore officer.
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As Wood describes (and the Chicago and Joe Crystal situations prove), this really isn't about "one white cop" who might occasionally go a little too far. Cop apologists might claim that 99 percent of our police are good, hard-working, honest, clean, and pure and only one percent are mean, nasty, vicious, and racist. But yet again that's missing the point, which is that even if it's only one percent that is the problem, it seems as thought the other 99 percent aren't willing or capable of doing anything about them. The other 99 percent ignore, white-wash and cover up their excesses. And then prosecutors refuse to indict, charge, and convict them. If we didn't have video tape to show us what really happened to Tamir Rice, and what really happened to Eric Garner, and what really happened to Jonathan Crawford, and to James Dubose, all we would have is the claims made by officers at the scene. As we now know, they have all massively lied about what really happened and other officers have backed them up in those lies. These cops simply do not have the best interest of black people as their top priority. That's the issue. This post described how the clearance (arrest) rate for the crime of murder against a black citizen is tragically low. Nationally, when you look at the most accurate murder stats, the rate of white people arrested for killing whites is 62 percent, with 24.8 percent of the offenders unknown and not arrested, let alone prosecuted and convicted. In the case of murdered black people, that average is just 55 percent with an additional 40% remaining unknown, uncaught, and unprosecuted. So while McWhorter likes to proclaim "most black people are killed by black people," that actually can't be proven because the police aren't catching almost half of the perpetrators. Now there can be two sides to that problem. One: Racist Police don't really care about black people killing each other, and two: Black people don't have any confidence or trust in what they perceive as a racist police force. Take your pick. Either, or, and possibly both situations may be in play. My point is you can't expect problem two to just go away on its own until you've done something about the perception and reality of problem one. Here's what's puzzling: Unless McWhorter expects that the Black people who are being shot and killed are going to take up arms and shoot back vigilante-style, I'm not exactly sure what he thinks the black community is supposed to do to protect themselves without the aid and cooperation of trustworthy police. (Admittedly, that's already been happening and was one of the motivations for the formation of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and, also, the Crips.) In fact, it seems that he's not actually out to answer that question at all. He's more interested in brow-beating the left for being so "fixated" on race and racism.
They want to soften hard-hearted America up for a revolution. In other words, using the word “race” is a euphemism, felt as a necessary prelude to a radical proposition. Crucially, however, that radical proposition is not truth. It is an idea cherished by a certain intelligentsia and affiliated community of activists in and around Black Lives Matter, and beyond it. Namely, the idea is that the black left and its fellow travelers have moved leftward of what unbiased observers, urgently seeking justice and dignity for black people, regard as politically and even morally convincing. Many of us think America does not need to “talk about” racism in the sense that a certain wing of the intelligentsia thinks we should. It’s not that we don’t know racism exists or shouldn’t be fought where it is the obstacle. Rather, we think that racism alone is no longer the only, or often even the main, problem black people have.
McWhorter goes on to voice the common right-wing complaint that black people should stop worrying about white cops so much, and worry more about other black killers. This, of course, ignores the fact the several of the officers who killed Freddie Gray are black. So they don't count, since that makes it "black cop-on-black crime."
Some object that most people of any color are killed by someone of their own race, but it’s the proportions that are important—why do so many more black guys kill each other, numerically and proportionally? This is dismaying—we want to fix it. Yet the good-thinking dialogue on “race” in America has classified it as behind the curve to dwell on this issue. Instead we are to focus on the Darren Wilsons and Michael Slagers as black America’s supposed biggest problem regardless of actual homicide statistics because, because… well, what we get are such rickety defenses. One is the idea that somehow “the state” killing black people is worse than black people killing black people, which is one of the most infantilizing propositions imposed upon black America in its entire history. Blow, again, finesses it with fine language: “the state is representative of the totality of America.” But try telling the black Philadelphians dismayed at their nearest and dearest killed by their peers that their loss is somehow not as “totalic” as if a cop had done it. Elsewhere another finessing is to call attention to Stop the Violence marches in black communities while turning a blind eye to the fact that indignation about cop murders is so vastly hotter and more sustained. Or, one is to say that racism is why black kids kill other black kids (implication: This will only stop when racism is gone—what a creative prognosis!). But that argument sounds better in one sentence than it does when you actually try to explain it. Does a teen kill because society doesn’t love him or he has trouble finding a job? That’s better as a rap than as a diagnosis. The War on Drugs is closer to the real reason (which is why I support ending it). But say that the drug war is based on racism and history gets in the way: Michael Fortner’s new book The Black Silent Majority nicely shows how black leaders have with good intentions been part of the warp and woof of the drug war.
It's pretty clear from this that McWhorter has no damn idea why there is violence in the black community. Not. A. Clue. He seems to feel that Black Lives Matter is the only black organization that currently exists, when it seems to me the Jesse Jackson Rainbow/Push Coalition has been attempting to focus on black communities helping themselves for decades. That's documented on their issues page:
Gun Violence Gun violence is a cancer spreading through our urban communities. It disproportionately affects our young people. It takes lives, permanently injures, disrupts families, communities, and schools, and takes a staggering economic toll. We must stop the gun flow and reduce the violence. Through advocacy, education and direct action, we are working to end this senseless slaughter that threatens the foundation of our communities.
It's also a plank at Al Sharpton's National Action Network:
Anti-Violence NAN promotes an agenda of anti-violence and the organization has been in the forefront of the movement to end gun violence. On a national level NAN has worked for stricter gun control laws and has played a key role in organizing gun buy back programs across the country. In communities across the United States, NAN has led “Occupy the Corners against gun violence movement which includes NAN members and chapter leaders taking over the most violent corners to take back the streets with peaceful rallies and vigils. NAN leadership sits on the White House Anti-Violence task force and task forces in regions where NAN chapters are located. Reverend Sharpton and NAN have brought together leaders in government, the community and youth groups to work persistently to stop the violence and foster positive change in the community to end violence.
You can also find similar initiatives at the Urban League:
SAFETY The Los Angeles Urban League’s goal for the Safety Initiative is to measurably reduce the overall crime rate in the Park Mesa Heights community. The Safety Initiative is demonstrating its effectiveness, as LAPD Year-to-Date statistics for 2008 show that crime within target area has been reduced by 29%, as compared to 2007 Objectives the safety includes four objectives: 1. To establish partnerships with law enforcement agencies and engage the community in safety solutions. 2. To reduce gang related crime and violence by increasing youth development opportunities. 3. To reintegrate ex-offenders into the neighborhood with positive opportunities. 4. To improve the environmental conditions that promote neighborhood safety.
It's also a part of the President's My Brother's Keeper initiative:
Keeping Kids on Track and Giving Them Second Chances All youth and young adults should be safe from violent crime; and individuals who are confined should receive the education, training, and treatment they need for a second chance.
All of these organizations, and others, have been focused on the issue of urban violence for quite some time. It's not for lack of focus or lack of effort that this remains a vexing problem. It's the lack of having a cooperative and effective partner in the police that holds back progress. There's only so much people can do on their own. McWhorter's complaint seems to be that Black Lives Matters seems to have so much more energy, vigor, and their protests are so much "hotter and sustained" than the efforts of these other groups. But I would argue that media focus is much hotter and sustained when it comes to Black Lives Matter because they are so new, and so young. Also, they're somewhat loud. They have managed to get the attention of and direct audiences with several presidential candidates—not because they politely asked, then sat in the corner and waited their turn, but because they demanded it. When Jackson or Sharpton have previously demanded action, they've been accused of grandstanding, then misconstrued and ignored. BLM is getting results precisely because they're new and aren't part of the tired civil rights old guard. Even this complaint isn't new. The same complaint McWhorter throws at BLM now has previously been thrown at Jackson, and Sharpton, and people like Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Urban Policy Roundtable, or Michael Eric Dyson when they dare to discuss police bigotry, or hiring and lending discrimination. They are frequently accused, usually by the right-wing, of being "race hustlers," and ginning up false grievances against innocent whites while black communities burn themselves down. McWhorter has simply added more fuel to that charge and predictably, his arguments have already been taken up by the usual suspects, like Newsbusters and Breitbart. Yet the charge is as false against them as it is against Black Lives Matter. It is a diversion. It is designed to make us take our eye off the ball. Yes, the drug war is a contributing factor as it helps to criminalize behavior by black people. White people are largely given a pass, even as nearly all studies show that white people actually use drugs more often than black people do.
White Americans are more likely than black Americans to have used most kinds of illegal drugs, including cocaine, marijuana and LSD. Yet blacks are far more likely to go to prison for drug offenses. ... Nearly 20 percent of whites have used cocaine, compared with 10 percent of blacks and Latinos, according to a 2011 survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration -- the most recent data available. Higher percentages of whites have also tried hallucinogens, marijuana, pain relievers like OxyContin, and stimulants like methamphetamine, according to the survey. Crack is more popular among blacks than whites, but not by much. Still, blacks are arrested for drug possession more than three times as often as whites, according to a 2009 report from the advocacy group Human Rights Watch.
The difference here is not in the behavior of black people, it's in the behavior of police. Look, there are a lot of good police and only a few bad police. However, hardly any of the "good" police will ever do anything about the bad police. As a result the urban community which is being repeatedly harassed, stopped, searched, cursed at, abused, assaulted, and murdered by bad cops who are being backed up by "good" cops—who either stand by and do nothing, or help lie to cover for them—really isn't going to go running to the supposedly "good" cop with a tip or evidence about a murder and expect those cops to protect them. Let's be blunt: That shit just doesn't happen. And consequently, those murders of black people don't get solved, and the people in that community live with that trauma, they internalize that trauma, and eventually it starts to come out as inappropriate aggression as a result of, IMO, undiagnosed and untreated PTSD from years of living in a violent war zone. People get all up in each other's faces, sometimes they get physical, and the next thing you know teens are shooting each other over tennis shoes. It's a perpetual downward spiral. This isn't new. This didn't just suddenly start happening. The tennis shoe—and it's not just tennis shoes, it's about Jordans— thing has been going on for decades. It has, in one way or another, been happening since 1965. Since before that, because Malcolm X talks about his youth when he was a Zuit-Suited little gangster and eventually went to prison before he converted to Islam in his autobiography. This was an issue back then. Black culture does have a lot of internal problems and issues, but simply saying that over and over again without a plan to address those issues doesn't help anyone. Well, anyone other than racists who would rather black people stare internally, rather than turn a spotlight onto them. It would help if we could catch more than 40 percent of the people killing black people. It would help if we made it standard to do follow-up trauma counseling for the survivors and family of violence victims. It would help if we had effective ways to pull black kids who've been disproportionately tossed out of school a new pathway besides a short and violent life of crime, drugs, and/or gangs. All that would be peachy. If John McWhorter wants to personally try and take all that on, nobody is stopping him. Go for it, dude. But for him to sit there and try and lecture Black Lives Matter on what they "should be" doing, while he himself is hardly doing squat? Or worse yet, when he's known for things like this:
[McWhorter's] the one who writes that African Americans undermine their own progress by subscribing to "a cult of victimology" that leads them to loaf through school, mistake minor inconveniences for crippling racism, and embrace an anti-intellectual culture that frowns on serious scholarship.
His previous books include Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, which makes it clear that his current criticism of Black Lives Matter isn't really a new epiphany, or a sincere critique intended to help the movement be more influential and effective. Instead, it's part of a long-running narrative of blaming black people first, rather than actually coming up with workable solutions for the unique challenges and difficulties they face. Particularly when those challenges are complicated and exacerbated by biased, bigoted, abusive, and deadly law enforcement.