The Recognition We Deserve

Once again, Flint is getting publicity for its psychotically high murder rate. This isn't anything new or surprising to me, but I figure that it's always good to have Yahoo! backing up statistics on this shithole:

"1. Flint, Mich. 

Violent crimes per 1,000: 23.4

Population: 102,357

2011 murders: 52

Median income: $22,672

Unemployment rate: 18.9%

According to the FBI, no city with more than 100,000 residents had a higher violent crime rate than Flint. In 2011, there were 2,392 incidents of violent crime in Flint, which has a population just above 100,000. That same year, there were just 1,246 violent crimes in all 10 of the safest cities in America — which have 13 times as many residents as Flint among them. Flint has the second-highest murder rate and the highest rates of aggravated assault, burglary and arson in the nation. According to Flint Mayor Dayne Walling, “there are too many guns on the street and it’s easy for individuals with evil motives to take another human being’s life.” 

Though the violent crime has long been a problem in Flint, in 2010 the city laid off 20 of its 140 police officers, a decision that diminished both the police’s street presence and response times to crime." 

Flint's favorite son feels that its murder rate is caused by a surplus of guns and, more importantly, 'individuals' with evil motives. At face value, I agree that the problem is caused by individuals with evil motives having guns. Classification of these individuals is where Dayne and I disagree--Blacks with guns are the reason Flint is the most dangerous city in the US.

But enough about Walling--let's see if anyone else can tell us why Flint is the way it is:

"Notice how all these cities have high populations of subsidized housing and projects. Those are deadly to crime preponderance. Obviously, they are a symptom of deep social problems, but the connection is more than coincidence. By the way, New Orleans also had lots of subsidized apartments. Gruesome." 

 I can think of something else all these cities have a lot of!

"You can buy a nice house in Detroit for less than 20k.....that's the reason why."

And here I was thinking that affordable housing would stop Black  crime!

"Top Ten differences between White Terrorists and Others"

Essentially, Juan Cole finds it suspect that the media calls people like James Holmes or Wade Page "gunmen" whereas the archetypical "terrorist" is Middle-Eastern. He feels that Whites should be properly classified as terrorists, hinting at that oh-so-subtle thing we like to call White Privilege. 

Leeeeeet's take a look:

1. White terrorists are called “gunmen.” What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists.”
2. White terrorists are “troubled loners.” Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.
3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion.
4. The family of a white terrorist is interviewed, weeping as they wonder where he went wrong. The families of other terrorists are almost never interviewed.
5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.
6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.
7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.
8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.
9. White terrorists are alcoholics, addicts or mentally ill. Other terrorists are apparently clean-living and perfectly sane.
10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.

 As much as I love snarking all up and down on a numbered list, I feel there's one solid, end-game point to be made here: that's our word. "Terrorists," for as long as I've been alive, have been the bad guys that live between Africa and Asia. Of course, it's more complicated than that--what I want you to walk away with is that "terrorist" is an English (White) word, used by English speaking (White) peoples to describe our foes. They get to call us infidels.

As it stands, White people can't be terrorists in the same way that Black people can't be racist; it's only a terrorist attack when a Brown person slaughters White people. Not when White people slaughter Brown people. Not when White people slaughter White people. The same can be said for Asians and (Non-Muslim) Blacks.

White people, when they haul off and kill a bunch of innocents, usually are individuals acting out in rage, or depression, or anxiety, or some other crazy thing. Whites aren't usually spurred to mass murder by religious or political doctrines--and when they are--aren't usually acting out against White culture or religion. How then, could they be terrorists?

They could be terrorists if we called them terrorists. Then, by definition, we'd be able to snap up a lot more of them. This is what bothers me most about Juan Cole's train of thought. Terrorists are subject to all the wonderful civil rights loopholes available to the US government in a way that lone gunmen are not. And what exactly do people like Cole define a lone gunmen?

 "A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US?"

I'm given to understand that Juan Cole is a cool guy otherwise, so no hard feelings.

Mark Adomanis on John Derbyshire

I've kept quiet about the The Talk--and John Derbyshire's blacklisting--in no small part due to laziness. The greater part, though, is due to an apathy inside me that has seen this before. James D. Watson was met with a similar backlash after a similar comment on the hereditary nature of IQ, which I talk about in (a little) more detail here. Setting aside direct discussion about The Talk, I'd like to put part of an article from Forbes contributor Mark Adomanis on the table:

"It utterly baffles me how, in this day and age, anyone, even the most obtuse or egotistical, could possibly think that you would not be put out to pasture for authoring such a humorless, ill-informed, poorly written, and sophomoric screed about the mortal peril that white and Asian children face from African Americans."

I would disagree with the notion of Derbyshire's being ill-informed, but I'm sure that his time at Harvard/Oxford left Mark with a much more intimate understanding of Black Americans than mine. The poor writing accusation won't stand as well, considering just how fresh-out-of-college and overly-horny-for-a-big-article his own writing is. Yes, Adomanis knows how the game is played, as is demonstrated by the article in three major ways:

1) The most integral part of any left-leaning article is to make your opponent's political incorrectness known as often and as pompously as possible. Your opponent is a dim-witted, evil dickface. Mark follows the formula to a tee, using the words "racism" and "racist" a collective thirty times in-between dropping loads of shit much like the one in quotes above. 

2) Ignore the big, ugly truth about Blacks in the US, and reiterate that your opponent is a racist--therefore stupid, therefore a liar. Be sure to leave it at this, because delving into statistical detail will only encourage your opponents and may confuse your audience. Mark wrote an article about how Conservatism is hurt by racist assholes like Derbyshire rather than one on whether or not The Talk could actually save lives. 

3) Use words that will make people think you're smart. Like "screed." Screed, screed, screed.

I also really liked this:

"** I am not (let me repeat not) arguing that the conservative base is uniformly racist. Far from it. But the conservative base does have a much higher tolerance for harsh rhetoric provided that that rhetoric comes from other conservatives. This “us versus them” mentality is very much a basic part of human psychology, but does seem to be particularly well developed among contemporary American conservatives who will countenance almost any sort of conduct provided the person is part of their team."

Translation:

"I'm not saying that all Conservatives are racist--it's just that, on average, they're more likely to be racists. "

Liberal Interpretations of Fact and Rhetoric

I've noticed an increasing number of pseudo-liberals pointing out that "more Whites are on welfare than Blacks." Most of the time, they bring these facts up as a counter to Republicans saying the exact opposite. As is to be expected of their ilk, they don't bring these facts to the attention of Republicans, opting instead to parade the information around in front of other liberals so that they may bask in their moral enlightenment. Check out the graphic:

When I see this point being made, I try and point out two things: what the Republican rhetoric really means, and why "more Whites are on welfare" is a bad argument for the welfare state. Starting with what is meant by the rhetoric, I feel like this is just a case of liberals quoting the dumbest people they can find--trailer park interviews, most likely. Anybody with some sense knows that there are more White people on welfare simply because there are more White people. What is meant by "more Blacks" is a matter of proportion.

If we take a look at the 2010 census, we see that Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites--as the three major recipients of SNAP welfare--comprise roughly 13%, 16%, and 78% of the US population, respectively. Putting this in the context of the graphic above, we paint a much different picture:

78% of the population received 34% of SNAP--White
13% of the population received 22% of SNAP--Black

16% of the population received 16% of SNAP--Hispanic

It seems to me that Blacks receive nearly double the amount of welfare than Hispanics, despite comprising less of the US population. Whites, as a much larger part of the population, receive significantly less than both when accounting for population size. I'm no stranger to the fact that there's a difference between White people and White trash, so I sort of understand where the liberals are coming from--evil Republican racists just want to shift the focus towards Blacks so they can feel better about being such ignant, racist bigots. The idea is that Republicans--all of them--are the same White trash losers as the majority of SNAP beneficiaries. 

This allows for these liberals, whose sole motivation in politics is moral posturing, to ignore any real problems that minorities have while at the same time looking down on other White people. Confronted with the real statistics, the usual response is "that wasn't even what I was talking about." If they acknowledged that more blacks are, per capita, on welfare, then they would be wrong. This can never happen.

Moral Posturing, Part I

As will be the case with a great many of my posts, sleep is going to have to take the back seat for my rage. Take a look at this photo from the tumblr of one Alexis Marie, self-described poet/actress/black woman/writer/human. Her protest sign reads:

"13% of the population (Black people) have always known how fucked up the system is, 86% just learned this… together we are the 99%"

For the type of SWPLs who comprise the OWS crowds, as with any other facet of their lives, the name of the game is moral posturing. As a running definition, we'll call moral posturing the device by which one liberal asserts a kind of passive-aggressive superiority over another. Since it is potentially racist, sexist, or some other -ist to assert superiority by tangible means, moral posturing is the primary dominance tool in most political discussion.

For whites, the moral superiority ceiling stops at holding all the right opinions. This is not the case for our protester, pictured above. Being both black and a woman, she holds something whites can never have: tangible moral authority. Where whites can improve their moral stature by taking on positions of vehement anti-racism, she's its victim.

So even though she's at a protest which demands economic equality, there's still the nagging desire to let everyone know that she's more equal. Never mind the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually on affirmative action programs--forget about the whole 'black' president thing--until black people have no crime or poverty, some form of institutionalized racism is still at work.