Thursday, June 25, 2020


If Black Lives Really Mattered...

If black lives really mattered for something other than attracting attention to the rare incidences of police officers killing black criminal suspects, more attention would be paid to failing schools run by Democrat supported teachers unions and other deeper problems in black communities.

Defunding police departments, the de rigueur action step advocated by many on the left and BLM activists, makes no sense. This is because, at the local level, police spending is dwarfed by education spending, which amounts to 40 percent of local government spending nationwide, versus just six percent for police. Their return on education spending is indeed criminal. Attention should be also given to the epidemic of fatherless black households in America where boys turn into violent gangsters by the time they reach puberty.

There is an increasingly ignorant, hyperbolic push by progressives to capitalize on the recent police shootings of black men. CNN’s Don Lemon has stated, "It depends on the nutrients in the soil. So if you grew up in America, you came out of American soil. Considering the history of this country ... how can you not be racist? How can you not have racial blindspots, how can you not see that the factory reset in America is whiteness?" It is interesting that Don Lemon espouses this jaded perception. In an early interview with actor Morgan Freeman, Freeman dismissed Lemon's emphasis on racism limiting opportunity, saying, "look at you and me."

Freeman went on to say if you talk about it (racism), then it exists. On the Senate floor, Tim Kaine, the Democrat Senator from Virginia boldly stated: “The United States didn’t inherit slavery from anybody. We created it.” Kaine is a perfect example of Freeman’s statement, if you talk about it (racism), it exists. Kaine will create and perpetuate racism and slavery as long as it serves his political ambitions.

Those in the black community advocating for peaceful protest and change should toss the Democratic politicians out on their heads since the most violent cities in America are consistently run by Democratic politicians, from city councils, to mayors to legislators to governors, to the U.S. Congress. If these mindless hacks produced an automobile, no one would buy it. As Barton Swaim has pointed out, “The transformation of American society into a civil-rights regime…was carried out by decent and well-intentioned people. Were they right? Was it true that only massive federal spending and coercion could bring about racial parity between blacks and whites? The evidence around us leaves reason to doubt.”

Hard Data

Actual facts are irrelevant to the BLM movement, and attacking the police is an elite progressive luxury. Underlying facts don’t attract media attention and newspaper headlines. From 2012-2015, blacks in America committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations. That amounts to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites including police, on the other hand, committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimizations. When five Dallas police officers were ambushed and murdered in 2016, the best our mixed-race president could muster was, “African-American parents are right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.” Veiled racism was a recurring theme in the rhetoric of Obama and continues to fester and erupt in American society as Democrats and liberals intentionally use it to push America towards socialism. Yes, if you continually talk about it, it exists.

In truth, much of the hyperbolized “white officers killing innocent black men” is apocryphal. In 2019, police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most were armed or otherwise dangerous. Two hundred thirty-five African-Americans amounted to approximately 25 percent of those killed by cops. This ratio has remained stable for the past decade and is less than what the black crime rate would predict because police shootings are a direct function of how often police encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, black males made up 53 percent of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and committed about 60 percent of robberies. This stands in the face of the fact that they are only 13 percent of the population. As Heather Mac Donald concludes, “a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.”

Perhaps the most comprehensive study of police shootings comes from Michigan State researchers, Caroline Brooks & Joseph Cesario who conclude: “We found that the race of the officer doesn’t matter when it comes to predicting whether black or white citizens are shot. If anything, black citizens are more likely to have been shot by black officers, but this is because black officers are drawn from the same population that they police. So, the more black citizens there are in a community, the more black police officers there are.” Sadly, the left-leaning Democratic politicians and community organizers which include BLM, Black Visions Collective, Campaign Zero, Justice Collaborative, Justice Coalition and Reclaim the Block, all ignore these inconveniently true statistics and embrace the false narrative about “feelings and pain.” Again, if you continue talking about it, it exists, so forget the facts!

During the George Floyd and Rayshard Books riots, much the same constituent burned, looted and killed. Here is the essence of black lives really mattering, something that has been neglected by Democrats since the Civil Rights Act passed in 1965, 55 years ago. The way the BLM cohort can prove that black lives really matter is to quit blaming others—the police, conservatives, President Trump and his administration.

Solutions

Senator Tim Scott, a star in the Republican Party, says that “In our society we spend so much time on the ‘root causes’ and disadvantages that we forget to talk about the solutions…” Scott believes that family formation requires having two parents in the household...If you have two parents in the household you reduce poverty by 85 percent. That’s a stunning truth that needs more oxygen. Use the money you get from organizations and federal and state government to achieve four things.

First, instill programs in the black communities and churches that place value and insist on two-parent homes so that black children grow up with fathers.

Second, if you feel like demonstrating for something really meaningful to help black lives, do so nationally against marginal or failing school districts that have a symbiotic relationship with liberal teacher unions and demand placing a premium on excellent education like that in most charter schools.

Third, follow the likes of Senator Scott, Thomas Sowell, Dr. Ben Carson, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter and countless other black men who were born poor, yet had the parental support and studied hard to become successful role models for black children instead of gangstra criminals. This means lobbying your local politicians to provide nonunionized charter schools.

Fourth, elect local and state government candidates who are committed to inner-city law and order enforcement and who are passionately committed to do whatever it takes to get drug dealers and drugs off the streets.

Coopt BLM and other likeminded organizations to support these efforts. If they don’t, black lives obviously don’t really matter to them.

SOURCE 







There Has Been A Slew Of Violent Attacks Against White People. None Have Been Prosecuted As Hate Crimes. Why Not?

A white Macy’s employee was brutally assaulted by a black man in the middle of the store a few days ago. Video shows the assailant, Damire Palmer, punching the man in the head as he crawls on the ground begging Palmer to stop. The assailant’s brother, who filmed the crime and posted it proudly to social media, claims that the victim used the N-word. Even if true, that wouldn’t remotely justify felony assault. But it isn’t true. Macy’s investigated and confirmed that the attack was “unprovoked.” Also, the N-word claim is absurd on its face. A Macy’s employee is not going to casually refer to his black customers as racial slurs. If he had that habit, he would have been fired a long time ago.

What actually happened, from the looks of it, is that the Palmer brothers selected a victim based on his race, beat him mercilessly, and then slandered him. They damaged him physically and then tried to ruin his life. If the “hate crime” designation has any meaning, this should fit the bill. Yet, to this point, no hate crime charges have been filed, nor has there been any public discussion about filing them.

It should be noted that a man who assaulted a Macy’s employee last year was charged with a hate crime because he used anti-gay slurs during the attack. The prosecutor in that case said that the attacker “subjected [the victim] to offensive physical contact” and that this was done “because of his perception of the victim’s sexual orientation.”

Well, was this latest Macy’s assault not “offensive physical contact” due to the attacker’s perception of the victim’s race?

This, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. Recently there has been a slew of horrific physical attacks against white people. Last week, a group of African-American men attacked a white man in a gas station parking lot in Texas, punching him, knocking him to the ground, and then stomping on his head. In New York, a black man pushed a 92-year-old woman to the ground. She bashed her head against a fire hydrant as she fell. No hate crime charges have been filed.

In another attack against the elderly, Jaden T. Hayden of Michigan repeatedly beat a 75-year-old nursing home patient in the head as he lay helpless on his bed. Hayden has YouTube videos where he claims that “the black race is supposed to rule the Earth.” No hate crime charges were filed, but try to imagine the same outcome if a white man with similar professed views about the white race were to film himself brutalizing an elderly black man.

There are more examples. During the riots in Rochester a few weeks ago, a white woman was attacked by a group of black men. She was punched in the face repeatedly and beaten with a wooden board. In Ocean City, where violence has been rampant of late, a white man was knocked out while sitting on a park bench. Again, no hate crime charges.

And hate crime charges aren’t the only thing missing. There has been little public attention to, or condemnation of, these attacks.

I am not personally a proponent of the hate crime designation. I don’t think prosecutors can look into a criminal’s heart and accurately assess whether a crime was motivated by hatred or not. And even if they could, I’m not sure why a crime of hate should be considered any more severe than a crime of greed, jealousy, anger, or boredom and indifference. Is it really worse to shoot a man for his race than for his wallet? Haven’t you treated him as less than human either way? Isn’t his family mourning him just the same?

But if we are going down this road, and if we have gotten into the business of doling out special punishments for hate-based crime, then equal justice under the law means prosecuting crimes against white people with all the same gusto as crimes against non-whites.

SOURCE 







BLM Leader: Statues and Stained Glass of Jesus Are 'White Supremacy,' Must Be Torn Down

On Monday, Black Lives Matter leader and former Bernie Sanders surrogate Shaun King called for the demolition or removal of all statues, murals, and stained glass windows of “white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends,” i.e. the Twelve Apostles. He said religious imagery was a symbol of “white supremacy” and oppression.

“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down,” King tweeted.

“Yes. All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down,” the leftist added.

King’s comments came after CPAC leader Matt Schlapp warned that, in the Cancel Culture iconoclasm of the Black Lives Matter/1619 riots, “statues of Jesus are next.” Some activists made it a “separation of church and state issue,” saying they would topple government-funded Jesus statues. King took it one step further in branding Jesus statues “white supremacy.”

Mobs had already toppled statues of Confederates, then Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson; then Ulysses S. Grant (who helped defeat the Confederacy and ending slavery in the U.S.), Francis Scott Key (writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner”), St. Junipero Serra (the leader of Spanish missions in California), and Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote and a former slave); and then Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement, and the Robert Gould Shaw 54th Regiment monument, which celebrates the first all-volunteer black regiment of the Union Army during the Civil War.

The targeting of religious art and iconography seemed to follow in the progression. If mobs will vandalize the statue of black Union soldiers, what would prevent them from tearing down statues and stained glass windows of Jesus? Now, Shaun King has given them a racial reason to do so.

Yet King is utterly, inexcusably wrong about Jesus being a symbol of “white supremacy.” Jesus firmly condemned racism, crossing racial barriers to make the Good Samaritan the hero of one of His parables and speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well. His disciples would teach that “there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus.”

When white Europeans and Americans adopted their pseudoscientific racism — what King rightly condemns as “white supremacy” — they rejected the center of Christianity, which teaches that Jesus died to offer salvation to people of all nations, all classes, all races. European racism developed in part as an excuse to oppress black people and native Americans — oppression that many Christians condemned from the start.

Yet the “white” depiction of Jesus dates back further than any European pseudoscientific racism. What King describes as a horrific tool of “white supremacy” emerged about 1,000 years before the first tremors of “white supremacy.”

In 2018, a Christian origins professor argued that the most common portrayal of Jesus — a thin white man with a long beard, flowing locks, and a long robe — is based not on the carpenter from Nazareth but on paintings of the pagan gods Zeus and Apollo.

“That image can probably be traced back to the Byzantine period when artists had to make choices on how to represent the ‘son of God,'” Joan Taylor, a professor of Christian origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London, wrote in her new book What Did Jesus Look Like? “And they were probably inspired by existing godly figures like Zeus and Apollo.”

The Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai in Egypt boasts the magnificent “Christ the Pantocrator” painting, dating back to the 500s or 600s A.D. Most of the earliest surviving art depicting Jesus does not suggest a specific skin color, but what Shaun King would condemn as a “white Jesus” dates back at least as far as the 600s A.D., a time long before any “white supremacy” when people of different skin colors interacted frequently in the Mediterranean world.

Shaun King’s decision to contrast Egypt and Denmark proves rather interesting. Yes, Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt to escape King Herod’s murder of babies after Jesus’ birth, but that does not suggest that Jesus had dark skin. Egypt and Judea were both part of the Roman Empire at the time, while Denmark most certainly was not. The Holy Family fled for refuge to a close geographic area, not to a place where they would necessarily “blend in.”

Modern scholars are divided on the race of Egyptians, with many insisting they were “white” or pale-skinned and others insisting they had darker skin. Many peoples in the Mediterranean world had olive skin as well.

Just as the four Gospels do not focus on Jesus’s race, so ancient texts are not clear as to the skin color of Egyptians. Even if Egyptians were jet black, that would not prove that Jesus’s family sought refuge there for reasons of skin color. They did not intend to “blend in,” they intended to save their baby boy from death at the hands of a tyrant in Judea.

Shaun King’s argument is absurd, but it illustrates the destructive mob logic of the 1619 riots. This mob will justify destroying any statue or public monument in the name of equality, even if that monument celebrates the sacrifice of black Union soldiers who fought against slavery.

Shaun King encouraged roving bands of rioters to target churches, smashing stained-glass windows and altarpieces in the Black Lives Matter crusade. He would have black Americans condemn Jesus art dating back to the 600s A.D. as a symbol of the “white supremacy” that oppressed black Americans in the 1700s-1900s.

The truth and the real meaning behind such statues don’t matter to these crazed rioters. Black Lives Matter! Burn it all down.

SOURCE 






Australia: 'Fire me!' Kerri-Anne Kennerley defends her VERY controversial television rants and says she 'can't resist' making politically incorrect comments

Kerri-Anne Kennerley says she 'can't resist' making politically incorrect statements that have landed her in hot water over her long and lucrative television career.

The Australian presenter appeared on Sky News' The Death of the Aussie Larrikin? on Tuesday night, which looks at social media's impact on Australian culture and whether political correctness has killed off humour. 

The 68-year-old is no stranger to making outlandish comments, perhaps none more infamous than her rant about climate change protesters in October last year.  

The Studio 10 panel were discussing the Queensland government's plan to introduce tougher sentences for unruly protesters, some of whom glued themselves to roads in Brisbane.

Kennerley said she supported tougher sentences. 'Personally, I would leave them all super glued to wherever they do it,' she said at the time.

Referring to a protester who attached a hammock to a bridge in Brisbane, she said: 'The guy hanging from the Story Bridge. Why send emergency services to look after or get a moron down?

'Leave him there until he gets himself out. No emergency services should help them, nobody should do anything, and you just put little witches hats around them, or use them as a speed bump.

'Is that wrong? Put them in jail and forget to feed them. Put them in some of the aged care homes around Australia, that would really sort them out.'

On Tuesday night, host of the Sky News program Rowan Dean questioned Kennerley about her controversial comments and whether she ever takes a step back before speaking her mind after widespread backlash last October.

'They really pray I do. They really go, ''Now, you know, maybe, we don't want you to pull back, but you know, maybe'' and I go, ''Oh what the, so fire me!'' she said.

'If I'm on Studio 10 and I'm having a cheeky day, and something like [political correctness] comes up, I can't resist it.'

She explained her comments about Extinction Rebellion protests were just a 'joke' and were made because 'I thought they were funny'.

The television personality said it's fine if people disagree with her comments, but it becomes a different issue when they become 'vicious'.  

Kennerley called on the 'silent majority' to 'speak up'. 'There will always be an echelon of society who don't really know you and really want to play darts, and it would seem most of those people use social media,' she said.

'And it's very powerful, but it's also not as big as the silent majority. So silent majority, could you just speak up a little bit? Just a little bit more? Thanks. It'd be very helpful.'

Kennerley was joined by comedians Paul Fenech, Vince Sorrenti and Emma Malik, actor Delvene Delaney, who all agreed 'political correctness is killing the larrikin'.

Last year, Kennerley came under fire following a heated argument about protests against Australia Day with Yumi Stynes who labelled her a 'racist'.

Kennerley said Indigenous protesters and their supporters should be more concerned with the dire state of many Aboriginal communities.

'The 5,000 people who went through the streets making their points known, saying how inappropriate the day is - has any single one of those people been out to the Outback, where children, babies, five-year-olds, are being raped?,' she said.

'Their mothers are being raped, their sisters are being raped. They get no education. What have you done?'

After a pause, Stynes fired back at Kennerley. 'That is not even faintly true, Kerri-Anne. You're sounding quite racist right now,' she said.

Kennerley responded by stating she was offended, but Stynes doubled down on her insult. 'Well keep going then, because every time you open your mouth you're sounding racist.'

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here
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