Ice Rinks, Schools and Gangs: Liberals don't really want to fix problems...

As Donald Trump seeks to throw a wrench in the works of how government works... or more often, doesn't, we should be prepared to listen to Democrats and liberals wail at every move.  Just look at the cries that welcomed the nomination of a climate change skeptic to run the borg known as the EPA.  Remember, Trump's the guy who, after NYC wasted $13 million over two years failing to renovate Wollman Rink, went in and accomplished the task in 4 months for $2.25 million...

The reality is, Democrats and liberals rarely want government to actually improve things or solve problems... Sure, they say they say they want to improve schools, create more jobs, and reduce crime, but, they don’t really. And how do we know this? Because of the policies they advocate.

One place where this is obvious is in education. Liberals constantly advocate for an increase in education budgets, but there is a zero correlation between that spending and better performance. The United States spends more per pupil on education than any country in the developed world other than Switzerland, yet somehow American students rank in the twenties or thirties when compared to that same group.

And this is not new… Between 1970 and 2006 the per student cost of a K-12 education in the United States tripled while test scores remained flat. For the left, improving education means spending more money, not improving the actual education of students. That increase of money involves not only teacher’s and teacher salaries as they would have us think, but more ominously, administrators and non classroom personnel.  Between 1950 and 2009 the number of students in the United States increased by 96% and the number of teachers increased by 386% while the number of administrators increased by 702%! And there’s more! In 21 states across the country, there are actually more non-classroom personnel in schools than there are teachers! In Texas, over the last 20 years while the student population grew by 37% the non-classroom staff grew four times as fast, surging by 172%.

All of this increase in spending and personnel might be reasonable if students were learning more and scoring better on tests, but they're not, particularly in the biggest urban school districts where most of the money is spent. And of course it’s the big cities where liberals have a virtual stranglehold on education… But then calls for education spending isn’t about education, it’s about government jobs, union dues, and ultimately Democrat campaign contributions.

Another example of liberals not really being interested in the welfare of the people they claim to support can be seen in California where immigration advocates are seeking to have the state destroy CalGang, a database compiled over years that contains the names and information on 150,000 suspected gang members across the state - or at least put it in some inaccessible lockbox.

Why would liberals want this database destroyed? So that Donald Trump can’t access it. Still, why?Because a state auditor observed last year that approximately 13% of the database represented names that were “inappropriately included”. That includes names that should never have been added in the first place, names that should have been taken off for being “inaccurate”, or youths whose parents were not properly notified prior to their being added. In addition the database might be sexist and racist because it’s 93% male and disproportionately minority as 64.9% of its database is Hispanic and 20.5% black.

Activists don’t want Donald Trump to be able to access the information so that hen't can fulfill his campaign promise of deporting illegal aliens who have committed crimes.

Now think about that… this database of gang members, which even by the auditor’s account, is at least 87% accurate, should be “blocked from federal access” because of the possibility someone wrongly included might get deported. Nevermind that being a suspected gang member isn’t sufficient to get someone thrown out of the country. They still need to be here illegally. Nevermind that police agencies across the state are constantly reviewing the database and removing names that are not supposed to be there or no longer supposed to be included. In liberalese, if it’s not 100% perfect then it can’t be used... and even if it were, we can imagine they'd find another rationale for blocking access.

So in a world where gangs are responsible for 80% of all crime and 50% of violent crime, liberals want to mask the membership in gangs of approximately 150,000 Californians so that a president who promised to deport criminal illegal aliens can’t do so because of the possibility that 20,000 of those names maybe shouldn't have been included.  Of course that makes sense in a state where there were 1,861 murders last year... and probably half of those were committed by gangs and gang members.

So here’s the thing… rather than concern themselves with the families of the approximately 1,000 people murdered by gang members in California in 2015, liberal activists would prefer to keep the imperfect database out of the hands of Donald Trump because of the slight chance he might deport someone whose inclusion in the database was possibly erroneous! Liberals would rather protect illegal alien criminals than protect the victims of their crime... most of whom are the same Hispanics they are seeking to "protect" in the first place!  But there's not nearly as much fundraising to be had from advocating for murder victims' families as there is for leading demonstrations against government "injustice" against innocent undocumented workers who went through hell to come to America so they could make a better life for themselves only to be unjustly threatened with deportation by a racist president.  

As the next four years unfold and liberals seek to thwart Donald Trump -  the hero of Wollman Rink - at every juncture, keep in mind that their goal is never really achieving the outcomes they claim to advocate, whether it’s better education, lowering crime or virtually anything else. If it was they would abandon liberal sophistry and start advocating policies that actually work. But as those rarely increase their power, their bank accounts and ultimately their control, so don’t count on it.

Black Men and Cops: Why Race Matters...

Last week a Grand Jury in Cleveland declined to indict two white police officers in the killing of Tamir Rice, a 12 year old black boy who was shot while holding very real looking toy gun. This of course comes on the heels of a number of instances over the last few years of black men being killed by white cops.

I was listening to the radio with the host discussing the grand jury’s decision and talking about various elements of the relationship between blacks and whites and police. Many of the black callers felt they were treated in ways that whites weren’t. The host, who seemed to play devil’s advocate depending on the perspective of the caller, agreed that race certainly did impact interactions. Frankly, how could it not?

The reality is, race plays a big role in life. It is not a determinant of success or failure, but it plays a role, including interactions with police. This conversation made me think of a number of things I’d read recently. The Washington Post ran a piece that looked at the differences in gun deaths in the US based on race. Eighty percent of white gun deaths are due to suicide. Eighty percent of black gun deaths are due to homicide.

There were also a number of pieces about malls and theaters being shut down due to violence or mayhem caused by large groups of black teens. This on the heels of the “Knockout Game” we read much about and saw videos about in 2014 as well as the rioting in places like Ferguson and Baltimore. (In most, but not all, the perpetrators were black.)

There should be little question as to why cops, whether they are black or white, are more highly concerned when interacting with black men. The reality is, black men are staggeringly disproportionately represented among violent criminals in the US, according to the FBI, committing approximately 32% of all violent crime yet representing only about 6% of the population.  Compare that to non-Hispanic white males, who make up approximately 25% of the population and are responsible for approximately 45% of the crime.  White men commit violent crime at a rate of 1.8 times their size while black men do so 6.4 times... more than three times the rate.

The question should instead be, why is it that so many young black people across the country seem to engage in activity that is anti-social at best and brutally violent at worst? And this is not a white black issue. There are plenty of violent scumbags who are white, and it does happen that you sometimes see videos of groups of white “teens” behaving badly. The difference is however one of degree and the disparity of gun deaths is indicative of that problem. While white violence and anti-social behavior exists, it’s not overwhelming… In the black community it’s catastrophic. Murder is the number one cause of death for black men between the ages of 15-34. Indeed 44.7% of all deaths of black men 15-34 are murders. Compare that to white males of the same age cohort. Murder comes in at 4th place, accounting for 8% of all deaths. Even 8% is too high, but it’s tiny compared to 44%.

All of which brings us back to race and the feeling that many blacks have that they are looked at and sometimes treated differently than whites. That may indeed be true, but focusing on such an alleged disparity is focusing on the symptom rather than the disease. It is most certainly the case that most black Americans are law abiding citizens who are as troubled by black crime as whites. Indeed, given that the victims of black crime are overwhelmingly black, they are probably certainly more troubled.

Because police spend a disproportionate amount of their time interacting with black criminals and dealing with groups of black “teens”, it’s not surprising that officers are on higher alert when dealing with black citizens. That may not be fair, but it’s life in the real world with real people. If the goal is to have colorblind police officers who have no emotions, no experiences to draw on and no potential for discriminatory behavior, then we need Robocops rather than real police. There are bad police out there, and there is a need for training in some cases – as in the case Tamir Rice – but those are exceptions rather than the rule.

The solution to the problems between black Americans and the police is not turning the police into emotionless robots or meter maids, but rather creating an environment where police aren’t forced to exist on a heightened level of anxiety. If the black on black violence were to decline, if the major problems in black communities were truancy and vandalism rather than murder and assault, one would expect a less adversarial relationship to develop. The problem with trying to fix the relationship by heeling the police is that the real problems for black communities only get worse. Baltimore provides a perfect example of what happens when police are intimidated from doing their jobs… In 2014 there were 211 murders in Baltimore. In 2015 there were 344, an increase of 133, or 62%. That means that over the course of the year over 100 more black Baltimoreans were murdered than might have been had police not been intimidated into fearing to do their jobs. And that Ferguson effect is being felt around the country, with similarly tragic results for black communities. Unfortunately for the black men and women living in those communities, who are "championed" by movements like BLM and activists turned politicians like Barack Obama, actually solving community ills is much more difficult than protesting and race pandering…

San Bernardino - As Usual the Left Gets it Wrong on Guns and Christians

As usual, with the terrorist attack in San Bernardino the left gets it wrong on pretty much everything. Of course their first response was to call for gun regulation because… that’s what they do. Then when it became clear that it wasn’t a couple of white Christian Tea Party types who were responsible, they doubled down on gun regulation to try and distract from the fact that it was Islamic terror.

Whether it’s the focus on guns or the meme that it’s racist white Tea Party Christians who perpetrate most of these crimes, they are simply wrong.

Let’s take the latter first. Of the 21 mass shootings since 1990 that have taken the lives of 8 or more people, white men have been the killers in 10 of them, while minorities and or immigrants have committed the other 11. Of those 10, exactly one had anything to do with Christianity, politics or race, and that was in last year’s Charleston church murders. (See list here)

So in the worst of the worst shootings over the last quarter century, despite the left’s focus on white, conservative, Christian perpetrators, the killers actually fit the bill less than 5% of the time. But that doesn’t stop Democrats and their lefty media from seeking to further their agenda by pushing the white racist Tea Party Christian meme every time one of these events occurs.

Which brings us back to guns and the left’s goal on eviscerating the 2nd Amendment. As we’ve seen, they are not above seeking to exploit any tragedy to further their agenda, regardless of how wrong their narrative is. Despite the fact that California already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, they claim that we need more gun legislation. Their narrative is that if we could just get Americans to give up their guns – or take them if necessary – then the US would suddenly become a peaceful place.

They are simply wrong, America is already a pretty peaceful place – or at least most of it is. There are over 300 million guns in the United States. Each year 299 million of them are not involved with murders or crimes of any sort. The problem isn’t gun ownership… the problem is criminals on the street. According to a study by the Milwaukee Sherriff’s Dept., 97% of the suspects – and 85% of the victims – in non fatal shootings had criminal records. In homicides the numbers weren’t much different: For all homicides in 2011 -- those involving guns and those that didn’t -- 57 percent of the 72 suspects and 62 percent of the 66 homicide victims had at least six prior arrests. Six arrests! Baltimore has similar numbers and one would expect that they would be reflected in the rest of the country as well. So the problem is not guns, but rather criminals. And to put a fine point on the fallacy of the gun control reduces violence narrative, in Chicago, crime increased after guns were regulated… and dropped when the city was forced to begin issuing concealed carry permits.  Keep the criminals in jail and the crime rate would drop... but that would deprive Democrats of voters.

Something Democrats never mention is that in many countries with more restrictive gun laws than we have, crime rates are in fact actually much higher. Nor are they spared mass killings either. There was of course the attack in Paris last month, and the Smithsonian Magazine writes in a piece titled Outside the Americas, Knives Are Often the Weapon of Choice in Homicides:

In Japan, in 2001 a janitor wielding a kitchen knife killed eight children at an Osaka school where he worked, while a man in Tokyo went on a random stabbing spree with a dagger in 2008, killing four people. In South Korea, a disgruntled man killed eight people in a stabbing spree at his apartment complex in 2008. In Germany, a drunk 16-year-old stabbed 41 people at the opening ceremony of a Berlin train station. And last year, anti-knife campaigns ramped up in the U.K after a 13-year-old girl was stabbed to death.

In addition, in Israel today Jews are being stabbed and run over by cars on a regular basis… and there they have lots of guns. The problem isn’t guns, it’s people with bad intentions.  Get rid of the guns and they will still find knives, cars, bombs, poison or countless other ways to kill people.

Despite the facts, the left continues peddle gun laws as the solution to the problem of crime and a culture of violence they have fostered. Similarly contrary to facts, they continue to blame white conservative Christians for the massacres we see all too often see on our TVs and in our communities. We shouldn’t be surprised however as the Democrats and their media lackeys have a long tradition of manipulating and obscuring facts in order to hide from the failures of their progressive agenda. No doubt when the doors are closed lefties can be heard saying "Hmmm... If there was only a way to take the guns out of the hands of citizens the the government could simply start it implementing the social programs that would eliminate all this crime and racism and inequality and hurt feelings and..."

The founding fathers may not have been able to conceive of the notions of television or the Internet, but they sure understand human nature and the dark side of government.  Thank God - and James Madison & friends - for the 2nd Amendment.

From the Charlie Hebdo attack to your local street corner: Multiculturalism as a fount of bloodshed

There has been much commentary about the events in France over the last week. One of the major causes for the motivation behind the home grown terrorists who struck the offices of Charlie Hebdo is the fact that in many places in France, France is something of a foreign country. There are hundreds of “no-go” zones in the country where French police won’t go and French law has been supplanted by Sharia law. It is from these areas of largely disaffected, often unemployed youth on the government dole where much of this homegrown hatred emanates. These young people feel disconnected from the larger society, have little or no vested interest in the success of the larger society and often times are vocally disdainful of it.

In a very similar way, the United States is covered with neighborhoods where youth unemployment is sky high, where families spend generations on the government dole, and where there is little allegiance to the nation as a whole or the larger society. In France many of the young Muslims call themselves Muslims or Algerians and they rarely call themselves French. In the United States the hyphenated American such as African-American or Hispanic-American has replaced the designation of American for many.

While in the United States there may not be a religious component of that separation, there certainly is one similarly powerful: the cry of racism. The rallying cry of racism as the cause of the problems in various black and Hispanic neighborhoods around the country function in exactly the same way that radical Islam ideology does in France and other European nations. It drives separation. It drives anger. It drives a devaluation of the lives of others.

The separation is no accident. From Oakland’s effort some years ago to allow Ebonics in schools to Cinco de Mayo celebrations where the American flag is prohibited to college admission standards that vary by race to schools that teach American history is nothing but a chronicle of hate, prejudice and thievery against minorities and the poor; it’s little surprise that many young minorities feel like disconnected from the American Dream and larger society as a whole.

The anger is palpable. From race riots of the 1960’s to the Rodney King riots in 1992 to the recent riots in Ferguson, MO that inspired demonstrations across the country, many minority communities seem to be built on a tinderbox just waiting for spark. Extraordinary unemployment rates act as the tinder filling those boxes. In each case the spark was provided by the killing or striking of a black person by white cops. The resulting anger and destruction not only destroyed the neighborhoods of the rioters, but exacerbated the feeling of separation from the larger community as a whole. In the most recent case that anger resulted in demonstrations around the country and in New York with protesters chanting “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” Soon thereafter they got their wish.

The devaluation of lives is heartbreaking. While Islamic terrorists killed 17 people in Paris last week, across the United States, in minority communities from Boston to San Diego young men are killing one another by the dozens every single week of the year. And those are only the thousands who die. Citizens of all sorts are assaulted, threatened and forced to try to live a normal lives in those struggling neighborhoods where drugs and crime and staggering unemployment are the norm rather than the exception.

Whether radical Islamic terrorists who seek to stifle free speech and murder infidels or a thug on an American street corner who is willing to shoot someone in cold blood because they wear a different color or have something coveted, both are products of a failed policy of multiculturalism. In France the left shut their eyes as Muslim communities separated from France and became isolated islands of radicalism. In the United States the left, through their destruction of America’s schools, their overregulation of job creating businesses, their demonizing of the police and through their distilling American history down to a chronicle of discrimination against blacks, Hispanics and Indians, have created a large swath of the population that has little comprehension of what the American Dream is, few tools with which to pursue it if they did, and most dishearteningly, little vested interest in the success of the country as a whole. In either case, liberalism and multiculturalism are the founts from which much bloodshed has been spilled. For anyone paying attention this should be no surprise.

The red herring of Ferguson: The #1 cause of death for black men ages 15-34? Murder – by other black men.

One of the worst things about war is the fact that the people usually doing the fighting are those most physically capable of fighting, usually a nation’s strongest and most vibrant young men. The men most able to build or sustain a nation’s prosperity are the very ones that are going away to war and too often not coming back. As costly as war is, it’s usually undertaken because a nation, or its leaders or its citizens, think the sacrifice is worth achieving some objective.

The loss of such strong and vibrant youth is a cost that is paid not only by the families of the dead, but it’s paid by the communities and the nations that are left without whatever contributions the young men might have made to the world around him.

War is hell, as they say, and looking over a battlefield littered with a nation’s treasured youth is the perfect embodiment of that. The sacrifices always hurt, but they are to some degree understandable because they are undertaken in the pursuit of some greater good.

Which brings us to Ferguson, MO, and not just because it looked a lot like a war zone recently. No, Ferguson is important because of what sparked the riots: the shooting of an unarmed black youth by a white police officer.

To listen to the protesters is to understand that America is rampant with white cops killing innocent black men in every town or city. That is simply not true. More importantly, it’s a red herring. (Yes, white cops do sometimes kill innocent black men, but it’s relatively rare.) But why is it a red herring? Because it takes the focus off the fact that the number one killer of young black men ages 15-34 is… murder, and not by white cops or white people at all. It’s murder by other young black men! (For young black men ages 15-24, fully 50% of their deaths are due to murder!) How is it possible that in 2014 the number one killer of the most robust and vibrant elements of black America is murder? Not accidents. Not cancer. Not sickle cell anemia… it’s murder by other black men!

And this is where the connection with war comes in. During war the young men whose lives are lost are sacrificed for a purpose, for something that has been deemed in the national interest in one sort of another. Young black men who are dying on our streets and in our cities on the other hand are dying for… nothing.

Which is what makes the red herring of Ferguson so heartbreaking. Even if such protests were to ensure that no white cop ever killed another innocent black man, the scourge of death and murder that pervades the black community wouldn’t diminish by much beyond a small fraction of the total deaths.

So while the American media spent a week and a half obsessed with a burning Ferguson where protesters pelted cops with Molotov cocktails, bricks and urine, dozens of young black men were being killed in obscurity around the country by other black men. But of course it’s so much easier to throw bottles and make accusations than it is to advocate for real solutions to real problems. Problems like a dearth of fathers as 73% of all black children are born to single mothers. Problems like a crumbling education system where Democrats and the teachers’ unions keep the poorest children tethered to failed public schools. Problems like minimum wage laws that make it prohibitively expensive to hire young black men with little work experience, resulting in an unemployment rate in excess of 20% while the national rate is below 6%. Problems like a government welfare system that grows like an unbridled leviathan seeking to expand its budget rather than help the poor find their dignity, self respect and the pride that comes with being contributing member of society.

But none of those things are nearly as visually compelling as watching police square off against protesters. None of those things lend themselves to pithy sayings that are easily captured on tee shirts or cardboard signs or in 30 second sound bites. None of those things inspire media savvy “leaders” to roll up their sleeves and get busy trying to solve real problems. None of those things are easy. They are by definition hard problems to solve. It takes real work to solve them and they can’t be fixed by rioting.

Which is the tragedy of the red herring of Ferguson. Regardless of what the circumstances were, losing a son is devastating for a family. Thousands of black families across the country experience equally painful losses each year. By focusing energy, passion, angst and media on the aberration of Ferguson it takes the spotlight off of where it should be, which is solving the problems that cause thousands of young black men to lose their lives every year whose families don’t at least get the solace of knowing their sons died fighting for something of value to them and society as a whole.

Man Bites Dog, Ferguson Riots & Privileged White Kids Who Can't Get Jobs...

I’ve been told by a black friend that I, as a white person, can’t know the fear that permeates the mind of a black man when they are stopped by a cop, knowing that they can be harassed, arrested or killed simply for the crime of being black. That’s true. I can’t.

The truth is, it does happen that innocent black men are sometimes harassed, arrested and even killed by white cops. According to USA today, there were an average of 96 instances of white cops killing black men per year between 2005 & 2012. Author Jim Fisher states that 95% of all officer involved shootings are labeled “Justifiable Homicide” as when the victim had a gun, knife or some other weapon. Fisher believes that number is artificially high. Let’s assume that instead of 95% of those cases being justified, only 75% are and lets apply that to the USA Today stats. That would mean that there are 24 black men unjustly killed by police each year. That number is no doubt inflated, but let’s use it for discussion purposes.

Let’s put that number in perspective. In 2011, according to the FBI, approximately 2,200 black men were murdered in the United States by other black men. If you take that number and compare it to the inflated number from above, 24, the ratio of black men killed by other black men vs. black men killed by white cops would be approximately 95 to 1. That means for every black man murdered by the police, another 95 are murdered by other black men.

But we don’t see 95 Ferguson, Missouris burning around the country, do we? No. Indeed, the reason why Ferguson is so newsworthy is that it is an example of a Man bites Dog story rather than Dog bites Man.

Now, as another friend mentioned, getting shot by the police is not the same as getting shot by a guy in your neighborhood:

You can't compare the two! If you run into trouble with anyone else, you can fight, you can run, you can pull out a gun and defend yourself, your friends can help you.... when you are facing a cop, you can't do any of those things. Almost anything you do or say can be justification for them to use extreme force against you.

Most of that may indeed be true, but unlike the guy trying to take your lunch money or worse, cops are in the business of trying to protect people and the community. Every society needs a police force. In addition, there are community boards, inspectors general, internal affairs divisions – and sometimes even the US Justice Department – that look into every police shooting in this country. And beyond the institutional checks in place there are ubiquitous camera phone videos as well as plaintiff’s attorneys who represent the families of the dead.

As a result of all of this, cops often find themselves under a microscope like no other time in American history. But the truth is, none of what cops do is done in a vacuum, and what is seen on tape is often the final throes of a situation that has been playing out (and maybe escalating) over many seconds or minutes or even hours – The Rodney King video being a perfect example. Cops often are called upon to make life or death decisions in the blink of an eye. Every time they stop a car for a burnt tail light or are called to a domestic disturbance or see someone who seems to be acting strangely, they don’t know for sure what the outcome is going to be. But that’s their job.

Nonetheless, they do those jobs understanding the danger and the landscape they are working in. And that landscape sometimes breeds heightened caution. Black men make up 6% of the US population, but, according to the FBI are responsible for more than 50% of the murders. Black men make up 6% of the US population but according to the Census bureau are arrested for 38% of all violent crimes. Those facts exist, whether people want to acknowledge them or not. And that is the reality of the world police operate in, one that sees an average of 65 cops murdered each year and an additional 60 who die in the course of doing their jobs. Together those numbers can sometimes make for volatile, deadly circumstances, particularly in largely black communities like Ferguson, MO.

Years ago comedian Chris Rock did a great bit called “How not to get your ass kicked by the police!” It included such suggestions as “Obey the law”, “Be polite” and “Get a white friend”. As funny as the comedy piece was, there was a great truth about it. It reminded me of when I used to work as a manager at a restaurant and I would sometimes overhear young patrons complain that they didn’t get this job or that job because they were being discriminated against because of the way they looked. Occasionally I would need to interview high school or college students for a job as hostess or waiter. These applicants, largely privileged white kids, might come in with tattoos, wrinkled clothes, orange hair and with an overall unkempt look about them. And invariably they wouldn’t get the job. Usually it had much to do with how they looked. Here was the problem. I had one hour to interview X number of kids. Now, had I had the opportunity to spend an hour with each, getting to know their life story, by the time I got to know the real him or her I might have realized they were the greatest kid in the world and hired them. But that wasn’t reality. I had less than 10 minutes with each and I didn’t have the luxury of getting to know the “real them”. So I took in what I could, a big part of which was recognizing how they presented and comported themselves when they were applying for a job. I’m sure that I missed out on hiring some great kids, and that if I’d have only gotten to know their “real me” I would have recognized them for the superstar they were… but that wasn’t life in our restaurant and it’s not life on the street.

Cops have limited resources, information, time and sometimes have to make life and death decisions in split seconds, often amidst chaos. The reality is however that while being black is not a crime, crime statistics suggest that blacks will come into contact with law enforcement officers more often than others. And, again, while being black is not a crime, getting into a scuffle with police is not necessarily a good choice in most situations. Being belligerent to police is rarely a good choice in most situations, even if you’re in the right. Being uncooperative with police is rarely a good choice in most situations even if you suspect that you were stopped for DWB or Driving While Black. Cops often have limited time to figure out very complicated, chaotic and sometimes dangerous situations, both for themselves and others. They don’t always have the luxury of spending enough time with a young man to discover that “He was a good boy, he just fell in with the wrong crowd”. In dangerous situations, and those which can escalate to that point quickly, it’s probably always a good idea to do what one can to reduce the level of uncertainty and volatility and report any irregularities or abuse later. We don’t yet know the exact circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. But we’ve been told Brown and his friend were walking in the middle of the street amidst traffic. We’ve been told there was a scuffle and a gunshot may have been fired. And we can infer that Brown was likely concerned about getting arrested for a crime he had just committed. Finally we know that Michael Brown, a young black man is dead from the gun of Darren Wilson, a white police officer. That is all we know. None of those facts tell us what went on a week ago. After everything is known perhaps there will be grounds for taking action against Daren Wilson, and perhaps not. Today however, just as every day of the last week, the rioting that has occurred has done nothing to change any of the facts and has only succeeded in destroying the property of people who provide services in the community and in the long run making matters worse by for the people who live in Michael Brown’s neighborhood.

None of this suggests that rouge cops with chips on their shoulders and a bad attitude don’t exist. They do. Nor should any of it suggest that there are not truly innocent black victims of police brutality… There are, and more and more we’re seeing it on video. But like the Man bites Dog story, thankfully they are the exception rather than the rule. Most officers don’t sign up to be thugs. Most are trying to provide a service to a community, most do so heroically, often in extraordinarily chaotic and dangerous situations. Sometimes those situations turn deadly for either the cop or the perpetrator or, sometimes, an innocent person. But that is the nature of life, anywhere and everywhere. Police work is imperfect, being carried out by imperfect people in what are by definition trying circumstances. But if the concern is the save innocent black lives, to make the lives of black Americans better, the place to focus attention is not on the police with Michael Brown as the poster child, but rather on the communities and environments that have been the source of half of America’s murderers and murder victims every year for decades.

How the Trayvon Martin case showcases the plight of black America... but probably not in the way you think.

It’s been 20 years since Maxine Waters coined (or at least popularized) the phrase “No Justice No Peace”. The time was after the LA Riots in 1992 when the freshman Congresswoman from Los Angeles was defending looters as simply “women who wanted shoes for their children and bread". Of the violence that eventually claimed the lives of 53 people, Waters said: “The anger that you see expressed out there in Los Angeles, in my district this evening, is a righteous anger, and it's difficult for me to say to the people, ‘Don't be angry.’" She even went on use the threat of further violence around the country to try and extort action of some sort out of the White House. "Many other cities could go the way that Los Angeles went last night unless the president is willing to step in and take some strong action in terms of letting people know that he cares about this issue." The White House listened and indeed a new trial was brought about, double jeopardy be damned. This time two of the officers were convicted. Finally some justice! For those Constitutional sticklers out there… The argument was that double jeopardy didn’t really apply as the four were charged with civil rights violations the second time rather than assault and excessive force, so, no problem at all.

So now here we are, two decades later and again race and crime intersect to put American cities on edge. “Justice for Trayvon” has been the ubiquitous call for much of the last year. This is easily one of the most high profile – and consequently political – trials in decades. The original prosecutor declined to press charges, believing there was not sufficient evidence for conviction. Enter race pimps Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson and judicial frivolity ensued.

While one’s heart has to go out to the parents of Trayvon as their grief and sadness is very real and they have comported themselves with dignity in the most trying circumstances a parent will likely ever face, the “Justice for Trayvon” signs across the country have little to do with what went on that fateful night last year or what went on in that Sanford courtroom over the last month.

But then that doesn’t really matter because in America of 2013 the only thing that does matter is satiating the demands of raucous mobs or favored demographic groups. Just on cue, now that the verdict is in the demands for federal civil rights charges have already started. Prior to the verdict, as the Miami and Sanford police departments prepared to deal with the consequences of a potential not guilty verdict, one couldn’t help but wonder how we had arrived here in the first place.

I remember watching the OJ trial and verdict as it was read aloud. To say I was dumbfounded is an understatement. More stupefying however was the scene from a college student union filled with black students who erupted into joyous pandemonium when the verdict was read. How was it even possible that anyone could cheer a ruthless murderer getting off, just because of his skin color?

One has to wonder how did race affinity ever come to replace common sense, or self preservation among so many people? The perfect example of the latter is the movement in New York City to ban “Stop and Frisk”. Stop and Frisk has been a tremendous success in helping to drive down and keep down crime rates in crime ridden neighborhoods of the city. Nonetheless, many blacks have objected to the policy because blacks are disproportionately stopped. Perhaps, but those neighborhoods have a disproportionate number of blacks and black lives are disproportionately saved as well. And the neighborhoods in which many of those black citizens live are safer than they might be without Stop and Frisk. Safer neighborhoods help with jobs, schools and quality of life. But let’s get rid of it, regardless of the lives saved or improved.

Just as knee jerk white racism a half a century ago was irrational and ignorant, so too is the knee jerk black racism of today. The difference is, the black racism of today is part of the liberal & media fiction that the state of black America is the result of white racism. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Blacks may indeed be victims, but they are largely the victims of other blacks, not whites. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics points out – via Walter Williams – that between 1976 and 2011 279,000 blacks were murdered in the United States, 94%, or 262,000 of them, by fellow blacks. That compares to a 3,446 blacks being lynched by whites in the 86 years between 1882 and 1968!

This irrational focus on the relatively insignificant (not to be confused with nonexistent) white racism at the expense of a focus on the far greater danger to members of the black community, the black predators preying on them, is an extraordinarily expensive mistake. By focusing on the mirage of widespread white racism, many blacks cease to address the dangers and issues within their own communities, with devastating consequences. It has led to over a quarter of a million dead young black men over the last four decades. Perhaps even more damaging more is the fact that tens of millions of black Americans live in poverty, 45% of black teens cannot find a job and over 75% of black children are born out of wedlock.

If the so called black leaders of today were really concerned with the state of black America, and young men like Trayvon while they are still alive, they would put down their “No Justice No Peace” posters and turn their focus on saving black America from itself. Stop supporting murders like OJ Simpson and Mumia Abu-Jamal and start honoring men like Herman Cain, Dr. Ben Carson, McDonalds CEO Donald Thompson, American Express CEO Ken Chenault and US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, all of whom chose to build successful lives for themselves rather than bleat about the oppressive nature of a majority white society.

Instead of clamoring for never ending government programs, special dispensation in jobs and college admissions or seeing every crime or political issue through race tinted glasses, they should instead focus on reducing unwed and teen pregnancies, demanding quality education for their children and seeking relief from government regulations in order to make black communities compelling places for businesses to invest.

Don’t hold your breath however, because leadership in solving real problems is much harder work than just picking up the racism flag and waving it about so that people pay attention to you and call you a “black leader”. The civil rights movement helped destroy the scourge of white racism that had constrained the lives of blacks in America for centuries. One wonders what it will take, or how many more dead young black men it will take to remove the shackles of black racism that keep so many black Americans from enjoying the fruits of liberty that that people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers fought so hard to give them access to?