By Amir Pars
I will lose many friends over what I’m about to say.
I will possibly be called a racist or even a white supremacist (even though I’m a brown man, who’s been beaten to a pulp by neo-Nazis wearing steel toed boots).
But maybe, just maybe, the fact that I am getting 100% of my information from the black scholars in the picture – The Great Thomas Sowell, Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, John McWorther, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster and Thomas Chatterton Williams, allows me some room for thought?
I’ve been watching the narrative play universally over the heinous killing of George Floyd, and the complete and utter lack of facts about African Americans in The US has been infuriating.
Unfortunately, anyone who doesn’t submit to the dominant narrative will be called a heretic, a racist, a whites supremacist etc. Still, I can’t stop myself.
Black Lives Matter don’t care about black people
Want evidence? Name me a single time – just once – when they’ve protested against black people being killed by other black people? Whether in America or elsewhere?
Why is this relevant? Because the biggest cause of death for black men aged 15-45 in USA is… other black men. Compare to white people, where it’s traffic accidents for the younger portion and heart attacks for those over 35.
Or how about the black lives in Sudan, East Timor, Libya? Why do we only ever hear from BLM when it’s a white person killing a black person?
Speaking of which – imagine if white people started doing the reverse. Imagine every time a white person was killed by a black person, there’d be protests, riots, looting and social media campaigns. First thing to notice is that it would be more frequent, because African Americans kill more white people in the US than white people kill African Americans. Now what? Should we really start applying the race card every time there’s a murder involving more than one pigmentation? Where will it end?
Police killings
The video of the murder of George Floyd is so visceral, by showing the casual evil with which officer Derek Chauvin kills George Floyd. People are rightly outraged, and no one can honestly defend the officer, who rightly has been arrested and hopefully will spend his remaining years behind bars (although the prosecutor has been idiotic in moving the case from 2nd degree to first degree murder – a burden of proof they will most likely fail to provide).
But… The only reason people are up in arms about these is that the social media and MSM attention focuses disproportionately on these incidents when the victim is black and the officer isn’t. Don’t believe me? Let me prove it:
You’ve all heard of Tamir Rice – a 12 year old black boy who was murdered when brandishing a toy gun. It was all over the news, there were riots and marches, hashtags and universal condemnation all over the media.
But how many of you have heard of Daniel Shaver? A white man who was showing his friends a scoped air rife used to exterminate birds who entered his store, and was killed for this?
You may remember the case of Sam DuBose, a black man who was shot dead for driving his car away from from the police. The exact same thing happened to before that to Andrew Thomas, a white man driving away from the police. None of you have heard of him.
Alton Sterling was a black man shot dead by the police when reaching into his pocket for his wallet – a travesty. The same thing happened to a white guy named Dylan Noble. Sterling made national headlines, none of us heard a word about Noble. Loren Simpson was a white teenager who was shot dead by the police in eerily similar circumstances as George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. You’ve not heard of the former, but demanded justice for the latter. You’ve not heard of James Boyd, Alfred Redwine, Brandon Stanley or Mary Hawkes.
But you’ve heard of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Because the only times police killings make the news is when the victim is black and the officer isn’t.
Here are the FBI, NCJRS and BJS statistics:
For every 10, 000 black people arrested for violent crime, 3 are killed by the police. For every 10,000 white people arrested for violent crime, 4 are killed by the police.
In 2019, 49 unarmed people were killed by the police. 9 were black. 19 were white.
The likelihood for a black person being shot by the police is as high as being struck by lightning. Yet, we are seeing riots, every single post on Instagram and Twitter is in support of Black Lives Matter and denunciation of police in America…
“Systemic Racism” / “Institutionalised racism”
Sound good, don’t they? Such powerful words… and completely inaccurate. First, let’s see what the claims being made are:
Both insinuate built-in racism within various official institutions (police, law, governments etc). Yet, when they are challenged, by asking the proponents to provide *evidence* for these, nothing is provided. Name one single law that is targeting exclusively black people. Just one. There isn’t one. If the police is “systematically” anti-black, explain how it is possible that 20% of the Police Force in America is black (African Americans in America constitute roughly 14% of the population, meaning that blacks are *overrepresented* within the police force!)? Now, imagine how incredibly racist it is to say that the 100, 000 plus black police officers are too stupid to know that they are working inside and within a racist institution? That really is racism. And none of them have come out and said anything??? None of them have gone on 60 Minutes and said “We are being trained to be racists”? Seriously?
How about governments? Well, let’s leave aside the fact that America just had a two-term black president (whose second name was Hussein, by the way). Some of America’s worst run cities have black mayors, black governors and majority black councils. Look at two of the worst cities in America to be black in:
Baltimore and Chicago. Why is it that a place where the people in power are black can be *worse* for the African American Community, than cities that aren’t run by black politicians? This is a knock-down argument.
Disparity
People often look at the economic disparities between blacks and whites, and claim it to be evidence for institutionalised racism. It says something about the power of a narrative, when it has been debunked decades ago – by BLACK ECONOMISTS (like The Great Thomas Sowell) – yet the myth persists.
First of all, at no point in human history has any two groups of people had the same level of wealth or income as each other. It would be an absolute miracle to expect that people with different backgrounds, cultures, histories, values and ethics to have the same level of wealth.
This is even true within so called races – compare for example Black Americans (generational) vs Black Immigrants… particularly the ones from West Indies (Jamaica, Barbados etc.).
You couldn’t tell these people apart, just by looking at them, and whatever racism is in place for one group must by definition be applied for the second group. But what they have is completely different values and work ethics (the Jamaicans arriving in the US does so commonly to achieve greater heights than what he or she can in their home country). Whatever level of systemic racism exists, they are subjected to it as much as the African American.
Yet, already in the 1970’s (!!!), when racism was far more prevalent than it is today, Black Americans from the West Indies were earning 58% more than the Black American whose generations go back centuries in the United States. How could that be, if there’s supposed to be such a thing as “systemic racism”?
Disparities are only proof of disparities. Just because Group X doesn’t have the same as Group Y, doesn’t mean that it’s explained by racism. And why does this so called “White Supremacy” only run against one group of Black Americans? Why doesn’t it run against Asian Americans, who out earn White Americans by over 60%? Why doesn’t it apply to Jewish Americans? Or Indian Americans, all of whom earn more than… White Americans??
Maybe there’s something else going on…?
In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan published his report “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action”, where he saw that African American households were 25% single mothers – a frightening statistic that would have devastating consequences. Since then, Jim Crow laws and Red Lining have all been removed from the books, Martin Luther King Jr. and The Civil Rights Movement made tremendous strides and we’ve now even had a black two-term president.
But, today, black households with no paternal figure, and only a single mother constitute SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT of all black households in America!!! SEVENTY FIVE!!!!
Now you tell me, which is the better explanation for young black children ending up in a life of crime – the lack of a father figure, or the mythical, non-explainable entity known only as “institutional racism”, which for some reasons doesn’t apply to Nigerian immigrants, to black immigrants from West Indies, to Indian people, to Jewish people, to Asian Americans…?
Criminality
“Why are blacks being disproportionately imprisoned? There’s a racist Prison Industry Complex!”
The key word here is “disproportionately”. Because it most certainly is true that African Americans make out the majority of prisoners in America, but what is the evidence that this is disproportionate? It’s non-existent.
Let’s look at the stats:
Black Americans constitute roughly 14% of the population in America, yet they commit 50% of all the murders. But, this is misleading – because it’s not the elderly, nor the children nor the women who commit the murders. It’s almost exclusively the young men (15-40). That constitutes about a fourth of the black population, which means that about 3.5% of the American population are responsible for 50% of all the murders!
Read this again: 3.5% of Americans are responsible for 50% of all murders.
You will find similar astonishing figures for drug related crimes, armed robberies, breaking and entering and gang violence.
So, even though it is true that black people make up the majority of the prison population, the incarceration rates are only proportionate against the crime rate, not the population.
History of slavery, Jim Crow and Red Lining
“Well, that maybe so, but it’s because of the history of slavery and Jim Crow!”
I don’t doubt the good intentions of those making these arguments, but they don’t actually see how it is a classic case of Racism of Lower Expectations.
No one has been able to provide a logical link between historical racism and the plight of people today.
First of all, what’s unique about racism in America (and Britain, for that matter) is that these countries abolished slavery when they did! They were among the first countries in the world to do so, and America even fought a bloody civil war to implement the 13th Amendment. Almost every country in the world practiced slavery, and there are many – particularly in Subsaharan Africa – who still do to this day.
And it most certainly is true that racism didn’t end with slavery, and evil practices such as Jim Crow, segregation and Red Lining were practiced until the 70’s. But – and here is the most astonishing fact of all – African American’s had *more* wealth and less unemployment during those times than today, when such practices have been abolished and are rightly considered moral evils.
Now, before anyone makes the nonsensical claim that “You’re saying we should oppress them then, because they had it better!?”, let me explain that correlation does not mean causation. But just as facts don’t care about feelings, reality won’t comply with narrative.
“America is a White Supremacist society!”
This is one of the most egregious claims out there. First of all, compared to what? Show me a country where blacks are a minority, but still get to be elected presidents, have more than 50 Mayors, congressmen and women, run city councils and have had multiple presidential candidates. Show me one.
America (and Britain) are two of the least racist societies on earth and in history. For god’s sake, look at the response from the murder of George Floyd! Just look at the outpouring of support for black people, the universal condemnation of racism from exactly all corners of the political spectrum, the complete solidarity from every white person with a social media account.
“Black Lives Matter”
This is a big one. Because I don’t know of many organisations who care less about black lives than Black Lives Matter. 93% of all killings of black people are done by other blacks – BLM are completely silent on this. BLM has never – not a single time – had a march or campaign black people being killed en massé in places like Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia or Libya.
Instead, what they have done is to have chants like “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon” (about the police), which inspired a lunatic in Dallas to murder 3 police officers.
During the current riots, a 77 year old, black former Police Captain – David Dorn – was murdered by rioters. BLM has not said a word.
BLM reject Martin Luther King Jr.’s sentiment that people should “…be judged based on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin”. If you’ve actually listened to the “I have a dream” speech, that line is the one which got the loudest cheers and applauses. BLM believe people who aspire to apply this principle of colour blindness are racists.
Conclusion
I can go on and on. I’ve provided my sources below, and I can point to the works of economists and criminologists and historians for further data. But I don’t [think] it will matter – the narrative is too strong, and people are too emotionally invested. Facts don’t stand a chance.
People are so keen to use the tragic murder of George Floyd to wave their anti-racism badges and flags. It makes them feel good. Black friends of mine, who are incredibly successful in their fields, are talking about how they’ve been victims all their lives, even though they are some of the luckiest people who have ever lived, regardless of race.
All I ask of you, if you’re reading this (and I doubt many will, certainly not to the end) is to ask yourself “What if what Amir is saying is true?”
That’s all I can hope for.
References:
Source: SOTS
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