Wednesday, September 7, 2016

BLM v. The Truth

I'm still suffering from Child-Induced Murderous Cold Syndrome. So today might not be the best written article ever. What I'm going to talk about is an article I saw in the New York Post which rips the Black Lives Matter movement to shreds. The article is written by Heather MacDonald and is titled "The lies told by the Black Lives Matter movement."

The article begins by noting the black celebrities, e.g. Beyonce and Colin Kaepernick, who are supporting the propaganda of the BLM movement and notes that the Democrats have been feting them and sucking up for months. Then the article dives into the meat:
"Yet the Black Lives Matter movement is based on a lie. The idea that the United States is experiencing an epidemic of racially driven police shootings is false — and dangerously so.

The facts are these: Last year, the police shot 990 people, the vast majority armed or violently resisting arrest, according to the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings. Whites made up 49.9 percent of those victims, blacks 26 percent. That proportion of black victims is lower than what the black violent crime rate would predict. Blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants in America’s 75 largest counties in 2009, 57 percent of all murder defendants and 45 percent of all assault defendants, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, even though blacks comprise only 15 percent of the population in those counties."
So think about that for a moment. That means that cops are statistically more likely to kill a white defendant than a black defendant. So much for racism. And don't forget, the head of the San Francisco Police Union noted that 8,000 blacks were killed by other blacks in the last two years. Compare that figure with the 990 shootings multiplied by 26% reduced for justified shootings. 8,000 versus a dozen, which is worse? So where is the real place to focus to protect black lives? Rogue cops or black on black crime? Apparently, black lives only matter in some instances.

Moreover, lets be honest about these figures. If 57% of murder defendants are black, but blacks only make up 15% of the population, then the obvious problem is black violence... not cop violence.

Consider these facts also from the article:
"In New York City, where blacks make up 23 percent of the city’s population, blacks commit three-quarters of all shootings and 70 percent of all robberies... Whites, by contrast, commit less than 2 percent of all shootings and 4 percent of all robberies, though they are nearly 34 percent of the city’s population.

In Chicago, 80 percent of all known murder suspects in 2015 were black, as were 80 percent of all known nonfatal shooting suspects, though they’re a little less than a third of the population. Whites made up 0.9 percent of known murder suspects in Chicago in 2015 and 1.4 percent of known nonfatal shooting suspects, though they are about a third of the city’s residents."
Again, an unbiased observer could draw only one conclusion here. It is ludicrous to pretend otherwise. In fact, I would argue that it promotes the very thing BLM claims to want to stop. When "whites" (Western society) have had problems in the past, western society set about changing attitudes. In the 1960s, western society told whites it was no longer acceptable to be racist or sexist. In the 1970s, we ran campaigns to stop littering. Antisemitism was fought in the 1980s. Old ageism in the 1990s. And so on. When something bad exists as a value in the community, the community works hard to change hearts and minds to eliminate it. Soon, the behavior becomes socially intollerable.

There is one exception however. For my entire life, it has been considered "racist" to offer criticisms of the black community. Point out that black ghettos are full of crime and broken families... you're a racist. Point out that black intellectuals are racists... you're a racist. Point out that all lives should matter... you're a racist. Point out the corruption of black leaders, the abuses of black teachers in Atlanta, the rapes of Bill Cosby, the dead end of Ebonics, the insanity that the University of California will let blacks have a black dorm to segregate themselves, and you are the racist. Not only that, you are the racist who oppressed the ancestors of black people and thereby is responsible for the failure of every single black person who needs an excuse.

Do you know what this does? It keeps blacks people from openly and honestly addressing their problems and fixing them. And the result is that the black community has decayed and can't fix itself because it cannot admit failure.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think any instance of police abuse must be examined, punished and stopped. And what I said above was a generalization and, as such, does not apply to everyone. But it applies to enough, and the police are not the problem. They always tell alcoholics that the first step in fixing a problem is admitting that you have a problem. Until the black community does that, nothing will change... because it can't. You can't stop 8,000 murders by shifting the blame to a handful of unrelated incidents and stifling debate.

34 comments:

ArgentGale said...

The article looks just fine to me, with the last three paragraphs really nailing it. As long as this cycle of victimization groupthink continues and as long as attempts to bring these points up get dismissed as racism and/or privilege things are just going to keep getting worse. It's sad to see since the people this crap is hurting the most could do so much better than this.

- Daniel

Anthony said...

Kind of like murders themselves, protests against black on black violence never rise above the level of local news (and they often don't rise that high) unless there is an unusual element (including but not limited to celeb involvement).

https://missouridemocrats.org/event/march-opposing-black-on-black-violence/

Meet at the northwest corner of Hickman High School. The march will then proceed to Douglass High School and on to the Courthouse Plaza.

New First Ward City Councilman Clyde Ruffin will speak as will City Manager Mike Matthes.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/former-gang-members-community-rally-against-gun-violence-nyc-n368036

Decades ago, Shanduke McPhatter was one of the first groups of young men to join the infamous New York Bloods. But this weekend, he was the moving force behind a march against senseless gun violence in his neighborhood.

McPhatter, founder and executive director of Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes Inc., a nonprofit he founded behind bars in 2008 and established after his release the following year to prevent youths from going down his former path, pleaded for an end to senseless killings.
-------------
Of course, more important than protests are people working on the ground. Those are the sorts of people that don't get covered because they aren't doing anything newsworthy (the media is infinitely more likely to give an interview to someone likely to provide them with incendiary quotes).

Unfortunately, more important that people working on the ground are parents, and as I've noted many times here, there are a lot of crappy parents in the black community. That isn't a problem the government can solve.

As for it being off limits to criticize the black community, you must be joking. If you are conservative and/or Republican, its par for the course and has been for decades (ever since the Republicans gained the South and lost blacks after Goldwater).

As for the notion that government sanctioned violence (or any other action) shouldn't be weighed differently than ordinary violence, that is a stance I disagree with.

Government: We just wasted 10 billion dollars, but people spend more money than that on selfie sticks so until selfie stick spending falls the public can't say anything to us about how we spend its money!

Public: Sounds reasonable. We were wrong to question you. Well then, carry on!

-----
That being said as I've noted before, squirrelly police shooting are very much the exception to the rule.

Nowadays they are generating more coverage than before thanks to the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and the existence of a network that allows videos to instantly be viewable by billions of people. The best solution is more cameras. Those will save the good cops (the overwhelming majority) and damn the bad ones.

Anthony said...

OT, but judging by the Huffpo complaining about the moderator, Trump won yesterday's debate. I admit I chose to rematch the 'meh' Taken 3 rather than watch the debate.

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, I thought the article was excellent. The left really works hard to make it almost illegal to criticize groups like BLM and that's a problem for everyone. Though, honestly, it's mainly a problem from blacks because I think Americans as a group have decided to move on from this.

In many ways, blacks have become like the angry spinster friend of the family who just complains about everything and makes herself so miserable, yet no one tries to help anymore because you know you can't help people like that and you're sick of trying. Basically, you just stop inviting her to parties and you balance your checkbook or watch TV on mute whenever she calls on the phone to complain about the latest atrocity in her life.

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, I didn't see the debate, but the lack of an obnoxious victory lap today tells me that Trump must have crushed her.

tryanmax said...

As for it being off limits to criticize the black community, you must be joking. If you are conservative and/or Republican, its par for the course and has been for decades

I don't know what you think "off limits" means, but I would suggest it includes having ideas summarily rejected or dismissed, being publicly excoriated and held to apologize for those ideas, and being outright punished for those ideas, such as loss of career or career opportunities and--specifically to politics--not being voted for or being voted against, as the black community overwhelmingly does toward conservatives/Republicans.

tryanmax said...

I missed it, but it wasn't a real debate. It was two separate town halls in two separate locations at the same time and concurrently broadcast. I suspect the format was chosen in order to cut-away during Hillary's coughing fits. I may try to find a recording online to watch later.

AndrewPrice said...

As for it being off limits to criticize the black community, you must be joking. If you are conservative and/or Republican, its par for the course and has been for decades.

See tryanmax's response above.

As for the notion that government sanctioned violence (or any other action) shouldn't be weighed differently than ordinary violence, that is a stance I disagree with.

I don't recall anyone saying that.

In terms of there being local protests about black on black violence, there certainly are, but when you consider that "black culture," black academia, black politics, and their liberal exploiters focus entirely on shifting the blame, that's a bit like pissing into the ocean.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I wouldn't surprise me if it was meant to help "produce" Hillary's responses. She's horrible on television, especially unscripted, and she does seem to be having health issues.

BevfromNYC said...

Hillary/Trump talk-off. Matt Lauer is taking alot of heat from the Left about why he grilled Clinton for 15 minutes on emails and completely ignored that Trump was for the Iraq War in 2002 and against it in 2016...hmmmm. And yes, Clinton's camp would be crowing if she was stellar. Instead they are stuck with "Waa..Waa Matt Lauer was mean to Hillaryasking her relevent questions about an ongoing issue and not questions that we specifically told him to ask (w/answers that were rehearsed)! Waaaaaaaahhh".

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, Not just Clinton's campaign. There's an army of little drones out there at Huffpo and Vox and WashPo and Yahoo and MSNBC etc. who are all prepared to write worshipful whitewash after every debate. The fact they didn't must mean she got destroyed. All I'm seeing is a generic, "That Trump guy is dangerous and stupid!"

That suggests it went very poorly.

AndrewPrice said...

P.S. Liberals attacking the media is both the biggest joke and a sign of disaster. That's like Democrats attacking their own campaign staff.

BevfromNYC said...

As for the subject of this post, until the Black community as a whole starts taking the same kind of highly publicized street action against violence/fatherless children/low expectations of children in education within their own communities and accepting the real underlying reasons, it will never get better.

I have watched this since I became aware of racism as a child...they are the same issues, but turned into a never-ending blame-game "It's not our fault; it's the fault of institutional racism that keeps our kids from learning to read/achieving". No, it's not. Ever wonder why Kanye West/Chris Brown et al. are the great heros, while Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., Stephanie Wilson, Ronald McNair, Michael Anderson were/are high achievers who are never mentioned? Or why every single Black Republican is allowed to be called...well, I won't say it?

tryanmax said...

Liberals attacking the media is an a̲m̲a̲z̲i̲n̲g turn of events! Trump went on the offensive against the media early on, and they continue to be the villain in his narrative. Not long ago, it was agreed in pundit circles that Trump's continual attacks on the media made him look weak. Now Hillary's camp is doing it, too!

Actually, Hillary isn't really following Trump's lead. While Trump has verbally attacked the media, his deeds belie his supposed animus against them. Hillary's campaign on the other hand has physically restrained the media! And then there is her refusal to hold a press conference for 278 days. That reveals a real animus that must be hard to keep tamped down.

It would certainly make for an interesting election run-up if both sides seem to agree that the media is a common enemy.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, What I find fascinating about the anti-Lauer stuff is how biased it is.

When conservatives complain about media bias, they generally complain about unfair assumptions in questions which define conservatism as wrong or evil and define liberalism as good, personal attacks against conservatives, and the ignoring/downplaying of liberal scandals.

In this case, the attack seems to be that Trump is evil and needs to be brought down and Lauer didn't respect that. Lauer actually did his job as a journalist and went after both, and he hit Clinton on her weakest spot. There's no sense that the attack on Clinton wasn't legitimate, it just wasn't helping the cause.

I find that fascinating because these articles really read like, "How dare Lauer hurt the cause! He should know Trump needs to be stopped!"

Anthony said...

Tryanmax,

That sounds like a very liberal definition of off limits to me. My own definition of off limits would be something that is not done and the few who do it pay a cost.

From where I stand in conservative and/or Republican circles most everyone does it, especially among the pundit class.

Along those lines, I disagreed with some of the examples offered up by Andrew as evidence. Pointing out the rapes of Bill Cosby wasn't common until recently because until recently there wasn't much evidence out there (in no small part to hush money to victims and threats of lawsuits to journalists) and because he had a benign public image and few enemies.

Once he entered the culture wars via the Pound Cake speech, he won admirers (mostly though not only on the conservative side of the aisle) and enemies (mostly on the liberal side of the aisle) and a heightened level of scrutiny which ultimately unveiled his horrible treatment of women and made him a pariah among everyone, though he hasn't gone to jail yet.

I could be missing something, but I don't see how race factored into that equation in a way that protected him or stifled debate. Celebs (regardless of color) routinely tend to be forgiven stuff or assumed innocent A) because people kid themselves that their public statements/image reflect the real person and B) because sometimes people seeking attention or money manufacture stories, particularly if the celeb is controversial for one reason or another.

To go to a second example Andrew cited, let's look at Ebonics. That is a concept which some districts in California messed with as a teaching tool in the mid-90s for a hot minute. The notion it was something teachers should recognize rather than correct was laughed out of existence and denounced as insane by all and sundry back then.

It now is a concept (a characterization of the poor English poorly educated blacks speak) rather than something anyone tries to teach and is still in popular use only because comedians love it.

So citing ebonics as an example of things associated with the black community (though I suspect the proponents were white academics) and thus being beyond criticism doesn't make much sense.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I've had something I've been thinking of writing about, but haven't. My stepdaughter is half black and we had an incident that truly pissed me off. She's an amazing, bright young girl who has dreams of going to MIT and becoming a famous engineer. I am, of course, doing everything I can to help her get there.

Well, she spent a couple weeks with her father's family last summer -- ghetto blacks. And her aunt, a racist black religious freak, took her aside and tried to talk her out of it. Why? Because "MIT isn't for black people." She also tried to tell her that white people should not be trusted. Then another one of the family told her that she needs to not use the "big" words she uses because it offends people when she "speaks like that." "You sound like you tryin' to make us look stupid." I assure you, they need no help with that.

The offending word she used was "imbecile," which she had applied to her loser cousins who will all be in jail before they finish dropping out of middle school. The attitude of that part of the family is stunning. They're all in jail for selling drugs or beating each other up or on welfare and it's all whitey's fault.

And this f**ing woman tried to tell my daughter that she shouldn't try to succeed because that's for white people!! If I had been there, I would have beaten her, and I mean that.

Fortunately, my daughter is an amazing, bright and wise kid and she's already told me she wants no part of them because "they're racist losers".

BevfromNYC said...

Andrew - You know what, my Dad just recently confessed how secretly ashamed he was when he was young that his Mother was illiterate. But that illiterate immigrant woman did everything in her power to make sure that her son valued education and got the education that she never got to have because she started working at 12 yrs. old.

That's what it's really about - valuing education/skills and the doors and world's it can open. It is not the fast and easy road, but it is the most long-lasting. The best way out of poverty is through education, not legislation. The more skills you can draw on, the more valuable you can be and that translates into increased $$$ to take care of your family.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, My father joined the Air Force out of high school and we lived in a trailer park when I was young. My parents knew the value of education though. So my father got a college degree at night and worked his way up to comfortably middle class over the years. At every step of the way, he and my mother made sure that my sister and I "got it"... the right values, the importance of education, self-respect.

My daughter's family are shit. Ultra selfish victim-wannabes who victimize everyone around them, who scream racism about everything but have never once done anything to improve their own lives or the lives around them, and who poison everything and everyone they touch.

You have no idea how super proud I am of my daughter. She's an amazing girl who told me that at age 3 she decided to invent her own moral code by doing the exact opposite of everyone around her. And what she cobbled together fits perfectly with the finest traditions of Western culture.

She has hopes of saving some of the cousins, but I suspect she's fighting too many negative influences for that. We'll see.

AndrewPrice said...

BTW, Bev, Bringing them to Colorado helped immensely. For one thing, the schools are much better. There's no racism here because this isn't a ghetto city like the city they came from in Washington state where white trash and ghetto blacks fought it out for influence. They are encouraged by their teachers to excel, not wait for everyone else. And they see people use manners all around them.

The other kids are all middle class kids and so fitting in has meant upping their game in school -- stupid is a bad thing here rather than a badge of honor as it was there, dropping the ghetto talk because nobody talks like rappers here, and losing the reality TV behaviors in favor of classic values (things like don't gossip, don't be condescending, don't be oversexed, etc.).

When the younger one got here, she was a B student in Washington but she assessed at 15% percentile on Colorado statewide tests. Shocking. Now she's an A student here and she assesses at 69% percentile and rising. And she's gone from wanting to be a hairdresser to insisting she's going to be a pediatric surgeon. Very proud dad! :D

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, How do you recall the ebonics debate going down? Do you recall it as some weirdo suggesting it and everyone saying, "Nah, not a good idea" and it just went away?

tryanmax said...

Anthony, I don't think our definitions of "off-limits" are too very different. As with all things, context matters. What I see you doing is selecting a context in which the subject of black responsibility is not off-limits, i.e. among conservatives. However, conservatives are a subgroup to American culture in general, and an outgroup to African-Americans. So the question becomes, is the subject off limits in this broader context?

BevfromNYC said...

All one has to do to understand "off limits" on need look no further than at the state of institutions of higher learning.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev and tryanmax, "Off limits" is simple. It doesn't mean, "no one does it," which is a philosophically extreme definition that makes the phrase meaningless -- after all, murder is clearly "off limits" and yet it happens. What it means is that you will face some sort of sanction for doing it.

Your mention of education is a good one, Bev. When I was in school in the 1980s, if you pointed out that blacks were in prison at higher rates than the population without adding that the reason had to be white racist juries, you would be told that was a "racist thought" (even though it was a fact, not a thought) and you might find yourself sent to the principal's office.

Every Republican politician who mentioned anything where blacks had problems -- education, crime, family breakdown, was routinely smeared as being a racist. Black politicians and white liberals would line up to condemn and the liberal media would pass this on as fact and liberals everywhere would mindlessly parrot it.

Prosecutors and cops and juries were routinely accused of racism by black defendants and then joined by NCAAP chapters.

It got to point that trying to talk about "inner cities" and everything else became code words for racism. That's off limits.

Now, over the past decade, conservatives have basically said forget it, I don't care anymore, but a great many people were ruined for expressing the wrong ideas or repeating inconvenient facts.

There's even an article making the rounds now (written by a Democrat) lamenting the fact that the racism label isn't working on Trump because the Democrats used it against every Republican pro forma whether or not it was true.

Anthony said...

I recall it as a group of academics in part of California and maybe some liberal intellectuals embracing the notion that it should be part of the education process of some black students. Not necessarily taught, but recognized and worked with) rather than corrected.

The widespread reaction was it was an idiotic idea, which is why it never left California and didn't live there long.

Does it still exist in some weird foundation or something despite being decisively knocked down? Probably. What doesn't? But nobody is crazy enough to teach it to kids or claim that it is inevitable or what have you because there is little if any public support for such a move.

Comedians keep ebonics in the public eye at this stage.

Anthony said...

Tryanmax,

Accusing me of cherrypicking because I used conservatives as an example in a conservative forum strikes me as an odd move, but I'll play along and name another group: blacks (who as a general rule aren't conservative).

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2016/02/hundreds-people-marched-peace-compton-weekend-probably-didnt-hear-news/

As the Black Lives Matter protests spread across the U.S. last year, one criticism constantly got thrown at people who took to the streets or spoke out on social media: why don’t you care about Black on Black crime?

While it’s just not true that Black folks don’t care about violence that isn’t committed by law enforcement officers, the myth that African Americans only care when Black folks are killed by police continues to persist. Over the weekend, hundreds of concerned citizens challenged this myth and flooded the streets of Compton to call for peace.

Prompted by the tragic death of Autumn Johnson, the one-year-old baby girl who was fatally shot while laying in her crib, Compton residents hit the streets to demand an end in gang violence.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-black-crime-glanton-talk-20151206-story.html

Are you saying that African-Americans are so immune to violence that their hearts don't break every time a black boy is shot down in an alley by someone who looks like him, lives like him and who probably one day will die just like him?
The assumptions are ludicrous. Yet you insist that African-Americans only rally against gun violence when a white police officer is involved. Maybe that's because you aren't paying attention.
Did you hear about the men of Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation's oldest black Greek-letter fraternity, marching down 79th Street last month to protest shootings in Chatham? How about the army of mothers in Englewood who gather at the scene of every shooting and patrol the streets of their neighborhood on foot? And what about the annual peace march in Grand Crossing that draws hundreds of South Siders onto the streets at the start of the school year?
This is a sample of what you overlooked while you were busy keeping tabs on the weekly death count. You need those numbers when spouting off that blacks kill more blacks than white cops do.

------------
Another subgroup I could name is rappers. One of the staples of rap music is guys denouncing the community for killing itself (that often contradicts other songs they release, but they are entertainers trying to cover a range of subjects and tones, not philosophers).

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, The widespread reaction was it was an idiotic idea, which is why it never left California and didn't live there long.

The word "widespread" is not accurate. It was eventually widespread that this was not a good idea. But that was after a couple years of liberals bashing conservatives for saying it was racist to oppose this.

Are you saying that African-Americans are so immune to violence that their hearts don't break every time a black boy is shot down in an alley by someone who looks like him, lives like him and who probably one day will die just like him?

Nobody even suggested this.

Yet you insist that African-Americans only rally against gun violence when a white police officer is involved. Maybe that's because you aren't paying attention.

Nope, that wasn't said either. What has been said is that the black community as it defines itself through its politicians, through its entertainers, its athletes, its academics, its journalists and its activists, only push white on black violence and otherwise only pay dismissive lip service to black on black crime. In fact, I can recall a good many instances where a circle the wagons mentality was generated to the effect of "don't let white prosecutors get our people."

And as for the difference between the level of influence between the culture/political machine and independent marches of a couple hundred people every so often, the culture machine will win every time.

BevfromNYC said...

I haven't read this yet, but from the title...well, let's read it shall we? Hot Air - BLM activist: White people should be excluded from discussions on race

This BLM activist and others really are pushing the "segregation" of the races idea...

tryanmax said...

Anthony, I don't believe you misunderstood what I said that badly. Now I'm not only accusing you of cherry picking, but also of distorting.

One purpose of a conservative forum such as this is to discuss the things that conservatives are barred from discussing elsewhere. As I said, it's contextual. When conservatives say in their own forum that the topic under discussion is off limits, they obviously mean it is off limits elsewhere. If it were off limits among ourselves, we wouldn't talk about it. Your feigned inability to perceive such a commonality is the really odd move here.

As for the articles you linked, I have two complimentary observations. First, they were written in response to criticisms against the black community with the intent to dismiss and censure those criticisms, tying into my earlier definition of "off limits" which you demonstrate agreement with, but say otherwise. Second, the articles highlight black criticism of black communities which, I shouldn't have to explain the last 50+ years of American politics to make you aware, is the accepted exception to the rule that black communities mustn't be criticized. (The exception to the exception, of course, is when black conservatives/Republicans criticize black communities, which is probably a good third point.)

Anthony said...

Andrew,

If ebonics had widespread backing at one time surely it would have gotten further than Oakland, Calfornia. Even there it didn't get past the proposal stage.

As for your statement the program's defenders dismissed critics in racial terms, I don't doubt it.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/06/us/ebonics-omitted-in-oakland-report-on-teaching-english.html

The original resolution, unanimously passed with little review by the board of the 52,000-student district, said all teachers should be trained to respect the ebonics language spoken by many black students.

The resolution was later toned down, and some of the more provocative language, like an assertion that African language systems are ''genetically based,'' was removed. Supporters of the resolution said references to genetics referred to language groups, not to human genetics, and did not mean to imply that blacks are genetically equipped with a particular language.

The task force's final recommendations maintain most of the elements of the report released in December. It calls for better language and reading programs, aggressive recruitment of black teachers, additional tests to measure the language skills of black students and expand their proficiency with standard English.

Left out is the politically charged language about ebonics and the suggestion that the district should pursue bilingual financing for African-American students just as it does for students who speak Spanish or Chinese at home.

--------
Plenty of public figures denounce black on black violence but the media liberal and conservative tends to ignore them unless there is a connection to a popular issue. Family of murder victim denounces gangs will get less play than family of murder victim denounces say, guns or Obama.

ArgentGale said...

Sounds pretty accurate about America on the whole moving on and the spinster comparison is quite apt. I can see why that incident with your stepdaughter's family would be so offensive, too. It's impressive that she shook all of that off and with you supporting them it sounds like they're going to succeed - and drive the next generation of college leftists insane for good measure! That would definitely be an indicator of a job well done.

- Daniel

Anthony said...

Tryanmax,

I enjoy debating, but your habit of moving the goalposts and name calling is odd to me. Call me crazy, I try very hard to be consistent and I think it's fair to expect that consistency of others.

The articles you cite were responses not to criticism of the misdeeds of the black community, but criticism of the community for complaining about police misconduct.

As for your second point, where is this elsewhere where conservatives are reluctant to discuss the problems of the black community? I don't get the sense its tv, radio, newspapers or the internet, but perhaps there is some other outlet I am overlooking...

Your third point is your weakest. Black conservatives who come to prominence in the modern era tend to rise based on their willingness to both discuss the problems of the black community (reasonable) and claim victim status for themselves and the black community (risible). Most of the high profile figures are the flipside of Black Lives Matter in that they share the belief the black community's problems aren't caused by a series of poor decisions too many individuals make everyday, but are due to a malignant outside force.

tryanmax said...

*pounds head on keyboard*

tryanmax said...

If you are conservative and/or Republican...

That's your caveat. That's what moving the goalposts looks like. The word "IF" is the tell, as in, "If we shift focus..." Starting an argument in that fashion is neither fair nor consistent with the original discussion, but very often effective for redirection. I'll give you props for that.

The articles you cite were responses not to criticism of the misdeeds of the black community, but criticism of the community for complaining about police misconduct.

First, you cited the articles. Second, that's exactly what I said! I'm glad we agree!

...where conservatives are reluctant to discuss...?

I must point out, heretofore we've been discussing what is "off limits." Now you introduce the concept of "reluctance," which may be a consequence of things being off limits, but is a change focus (goalposts) for the conversation.

I've been focused on "off limits" in terms of marginalization as described in the definition I offered and which you actively but not explicitly agree to. Even in TV, radio, newspapers and the internet, conservative views are generally relegated to their own channels or segments, whereas opposing views are treated as "the norm." And I reiterate, even though conservative views are marked as "other" and persist as such, they are still occasionally dragged before the kangaroo court of public opinion and made to issue mea culpas for not being the norm.

That said, I will not dodge your question about where conservatives are reluctant to discuss issues: Academia immediately springs to mind. Hollywood, for sure. Union shops. The boardrooms of publicly traded companies. Pretty much any organization that prefers to avoid controversy, especially those courting government dollars. I could go on.

Third point, yes, black conservatives have an easy time rising among conservatives in general. (We agree on so much!) But again, you've shifted focus (goalposts). I pointed out that black conservatives who criticize black communities are censured in the same way as white conservatives. I said nothing of what typifies black conservatism--a worthy conversation I hope we can someday have, but clearly tangential to this one.

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