#BlackLivesMatter and the politics of force

There’s an episode of "Doug" from 1993 called Doug’s Big Brawl where Doug Funnie and another boy get into a situation where they’re both expected to fight each other and Doug’s dad tells him:

"Show me a man who resorts to violence, and I'll show you a man who's run out of good ideas.”

With that in mind, I turn your attention to last Saturday’s disruption of a political rally where Bernie Sanders was prevented from speaking by several Black Lives Matter protesters. In this case there was no violence, but there was indeed a great amount of force.

My preference for political change is to reason with people and convince them with words. I understand that people reach a lot of their opinions through selfish justification and emotions, but I still feel that better arguments and better ideas are the morally superior approach and the one I support.

Black Lives Matter activists regularly uses force as their primary tactic, such as disrupting a symphony, an award ceremony for WWII vet and even shutting down highways. They are not trying to reason with people, but get their attention or intimidate them by using force.

But let’s not kid ourselves, Black Lives Matter embraces violence and destruction along crude utilitarian lines. It gently refers to riots as “uprisings” and while its members only occasionally directly instruct people to riot, the activists openly defend and justify violent riots. The “No justice no peace” slogan is not merely a threat of noise pollution.”

Black activists tried to convince us for years that there is a widespread problem with American police killing not just violent black men, but upstanding young black men too. The problem was finding an example and they seized on the death of Michael Brown to make their case. A family member called him a "gentle giant" and one Deadspin article specifically said "By all accounts, Brown was one of the good ones."

That famously blew up in their faces when the early credulous, alarmist reports fell away and the public learned about Brown’s strong-arm robbery just before he put down while trying to kill a police officer. The foundation of the Black Lives Matter campaign turned out to be a hoax.

While paragons of humility like Jonathan Capehart took back their initial embrace of the Michael Brown narrative and admitted they were wrong, Black Lives Matter instead chose to keep telling the same lie and keep chanting “Hands up Don’t shoot” and act like nothing ever happened.

A Rasmussen poll released on Aug. 13 showed 53% of respondents believe the Ferguson riots are mostly criminals taking advantage of the situation, not actual protests.

Black Lives Matter activists failed to convince the public of the importance of their message with compelling arguments, but have had some success through the use of force. That was firmly on display on Aug. 8 at the Seattle event where Bernie Sanders was supposed to speak to the crowd.

As you can see from the footage and the transcript, the activist pulled themselves on stage and immediately started hurling threats like “If you do not listen to her, your event will be shut down right now! Right now!” She later bragged about shutting down a Christmas tree lighting celebration, claimed the shooting of Michael Brown was really a murder and called the crowd racists and white supremacists for booing her obnoxious, blubbering rant.

The American left was in disarray following the Seattle disruption, as two of its large factions were put in direct conflict. Initially, some people on official-looking Black Lives Matter social media accounts claimed the Seattle protesters were not legitimate members of Black Lives Matter, but those same accounts later took those statements back and said they were not authorized to speak. 

The Sanders campaign originally promoted that angle before the correction came in, as it nullified any need for left-wing soul searching. Some people still insist they were not legitimate protesters, or were enemy agents hired by the right. That’s conspiracy-theory nonsense, but even if it were true it would be irrelevant because most Black Lives Matters leaders and sympathizers have embraced the Seattle disruption.

This also puts me in a tough spot, because I have a handful of black friends on Facebook who have embraced the hashtag from time to time. Every last one of them is gracious, gentle, kind person, and I’m puzzled why this group resonates with them.

Especially since Black Rights Matter is very much a movement against civil rights.

Before we go any further, I need to address the limits of what is and what is not a free speech issue. Free speech is commonly defined by educated people as freedom from government restrictions on speech, but not one of private limits. The most common example is if someone stops someone else from commentating on their blog or Facebook page, that is not a violation of the person’s freedom of speech. I completely agree with that example, but I do think private entities can do certain things that is on par with opposing free speech.

The obvious example is using illegitimate force to block a speaker from sharing ideas with an audience, which is exactly what we saw a mob of 100 people do at the University of Toronto in 2012, such as physically blocking the doors to the venue, pulling the fire alarm and making noise to keep people from hearing a lecture.

Which is exactly what happened in Seattle. The novice observer believes that Sanders was the victim of the Black Lives Matter protesters, while the more experienced observer understands that the audience’s right to listen to Sanders was violated, and the activists are 100% guilty of violating the civil rights of a very large group of people.

Which has been pretty consistent with the loathsome tactics used by the Black Lives Matters goons. While a lot of the focus has been on the police officers murdered and horribly wounded by Black Lives Matters activists and supporters, the group’s victims also include a lot of innocent bystanders who were just trying to drive to work, attend a public event or take an ambulance ride to the hospital.

I am not saying that Black Lives Matter has failed to have any influence, as there are a lot more police body cameras in operation today. I’m also not saying their actual influence is always negative, as I see the police body cameras to be a good thing. I am saying their influence comes from their willingness to use force on people who don’t deserve it and I don’t consider the death, destruction and violation of rights they have caused to be an acceptable trade-off.

In a particularly craven move, Sanders caved in to their demands, announcing the hire of a Black Lives Matter activist and adding some of their issues to his campaign platform. He and the staff at the Seattle event were unwilling to stand up to the activists, but I don’t think it’s because of who they are.

Sanders seems to be morally opposed to having hecklers and disruptors dragged out of his events, such as his superhuman tolerance for several rabid anti-Israel shouters at a town meeting event last year. I suspect he doesn’t want to see people cuffed or dragged away, which is too bad for his actually supporters who want to hear him speak uninterrupted.

Contrast that with Bill Maher’s legendary response to a group 9/11 Truthers who started shouting from his audience, where he told security to pull the riff riff out and ended up storming into the crowd to get lend a hand. That is what leadership looks like, not hand-wringing and instant surrender.

There was a recent episode in Utah where animal rights protesters attempted to use force to shut down a pig wrestling event by standing in the ring. A pig wrestler picked up one of the protesters and dumped them over the fence. I can understand why the police were considering charging the pig wrestler with assault, but to be honest I find it to be a superior response than giving the protester the microphone like Sanders did. Twice.

I don’t think Sanders is competent to serve on a municipal zoning board, let alone be president of the United States, but the principles at stake here are the issue, not the details of this example. That’s why I find it incredibly irksome to see so many arguments putting down the disruption by saying Sanders was an unworthy target and the activists should have done the same thing to other politicians.

Ken White recently reminded us that embracing vile tactics against our political opponents is not only immoral, but it also gives your opposition permission to use the same tactics back on you.

Don't think for a second that Black Lives Matter protesters would accept being on the receiving end of disruptions. Look at last month's Ohio incident where reporter Brandon Blackwell ignored an order for all white people to leave their event. Not only did the activists threaten him and make a scene, their supporters moaned that he was disrespectful and should have left the event when told to.

Pardon me, I think my irony levels are getting dangerously high.

Black Lives Matter activists don't use force because they have had a hard time getting their message out to the public or because they are beaten-down serfs with no other possible course of action. They do so because they don't have a strong enough case to convince people through legitimate means. The use of force comes from a place of weakness, not of strength.

The worst defense I hear for the brute tactics of Black Lives Matter protesters is that nothing else works. That's not true for most other causes. Perhaps the reason mainstream tactics don't work for Black Lives Matter is that their ideas are flawed. To return to what Doug’s father said, their embrace of force is an open admission that they are out of good ideas.

Read more...

Bill Maher's natural experiment in hypersensitivty

Following good advice from Ken White, I try to avoid categorical thinking and tribalism, such as concluding that my intellectual and political opponents are guilty of more bad behavior than "my side," as it's very natural for people to wrongly make that assumption. He's right, and this post is not absolute proof of that effect.

But as an anecdote, it sure does raise eyebrows.

Bill Maher likes to say what he really believes, and last week he insulted the rabid fanatics who are dominating the discussion of the Michael Brown case. He called out people from both sides who are leaping to conclusions that compliment their own world views. In particular, he said:

You know what else I find disturbing is that everybody in America just sides with their own people and doesn’t look at the facts… The cops,I saw on the news a couple of weeks ago,were wearing bracelets or something that said, “I am Darren Wilson.”Why do you want to throw your lot in with this plain murderer? 

And Michael Brown’s people. I’m sorry, but Michael Brown’s people say he is a gentle giant. Well, we saw that video when he was in that 7-11. No, he wasn’t a gentle. He was committing a robbery and he pushed that guy. He was acting like a thug, not a gentle giant. He certainly didn’t deserve to be shot for it.

Notice that Bill Maher is reaching conclusions about an ongoing investigation and declaring that police officer Darren Wilson was not justified in the shooting, as opposed to my stance to withhold judgment until the trial is conducted and all the facts are presented. Still, he did cast a pox on both sides.

So which side had more freak-outs and calls for his head? The left, which was initially invested in presenting Brown as a law-abiding citizen. As Maher said, his crimes did not warrant a street execution, but that didn't stop the angry essays and calls for boycotts from the left.

I am not merely idiot hunting this and saying a few people on social media represent all of the left, like some critics have done. In fact, the majority of the left have said nothing about this issue, and it's important to separate the leftwing criticisms of Maher for the Michael Brown remarks and criticism of his recent remarks on violent Islamic extremists.

My point is not that the left as a whole has reacted foolishly to this, but that this anecdote brought out more hypersensitivity from the left than the right in this single case. It's not definitive, but it's not nothing.

Read more...

Michael Brown's supporters made the robbery relevant to discussions

Last week I had a Facebook discussion about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, during which I responded to a friend who was saying Michael Brown was an upstanding citizen with no police record who was killed by police for an incident that started because he was "walking while black"

I compared that to the early Trayvon Martin accounts from ThinkProgress.com that later turned out to be false, and I wrote in part:

You're taking a gamble by saying that Brown was an upstanding citizen outside of the shooting, which is both irrelevant and is not proven. 

Even if Brown was a career criminal, it would not justify an unprovoked shooting by police... 

[The early Trayvon activist articles online] falsely portrayed Trayvon as a honor student who never got in trouble. When that turned out to be false and people wrote about his suspensions, theft and pot dealing they were accused of victim blaming when they we really setting the record straight. 

If we hold Brown up as an angelic figure the same thing could happen.

Well, that gamble blew up in their face, which is a complete shame for intelligent discussion.

We now we have security footage that Brown's family has agreed appears to show him assaulting a store clerk to steal $50 worth of cheap cigars just before the shooting.

Ken White at Popehat wrote a great piece explaining why this revelation should not be used to justify the shooting. If indeed police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed a suspect who had clearly surrendered then he is guilty of a great crime.

I agree with White that the biggest impact this revelation should have on the case is as something to consider when trying to figure out Brown's mindset when he interacted with Wilson, as police have said Wilson did not know Brown was a violent robbery suspect.

But unlike White I think the robbery does deserve a place in the public discussion because Brown's character was something his supporters frequently brought up, including his family who knew better. They are now saying discussion about the robbery and his gangsta rap attempts are character assassination, but they are really just setting the record straight. The issue is only on the table because one side put it there, but they lost control of the facts and now they want it off the table. Too late.

When they brought up Brown's alleged non-violent disposition, some supporters said what they thought was true, but those who knew him lied to the public or exaggerated. Which is normal, as people usually only say nice things about the recently departed, but the rest of us should have known better than to repeat it as gospel.

Talking about Brown's character in the media is not the same as factoring it in to a legal decision, so let's not conflate the two. Bad people are able to be victim's of abuse of authority figures just like anyone else, so let's not conflate the realm of public opinion with that of the judicial system.

Read more...

Maggie Anderson is not an economist

I was curious to whatever happened to the Buy Black scheme from a few years ago, officially called the "Ebony Experiment" and later changed to the "Empowerment Experiment. The idea was for black people to only buy from black-owned businesses. Most people got so upset about the upfront racial discrimination that they forgot to ask if it actually helps enrich the black community.

A Google search revealed that Maggie Anderson, the wife in the couple behind the campaign, wrote a book and has a website that introduces her as "Author, activist, speaker, economist..."

While Maggie Anderson may make claims about economic ideas, she is no more an economist than creationist Ken Ham is a biologist. Anderson's classic mistake was to only look at what black merchants stood to make in profits and ignore about the higher costs and other difficulties experienced by black customers. She doesn't understand mainstream economic thinking, in fact, she is oblivious to it and relies on novelty and gimmicks.

She received the highest honor bestowed on a pseudo intellectual-earlier this year - she was invited to present a TEDx talk.

She made one compelling point - that white people can also choose to shop from black merchants (most likely out of guilt). While this fails to help the economy as a whole and will create a net economic loss, the section of the economy she cares about will benefit.

The last time I saw her, Maggie Anderson's group was operating an ignored Facebook fan page. The page was filled with spam posts for get-rich-quick swindles peppered with assigned updates asking followers "Did you EE today?"

Now she has become an evangelist on the stage, making the same tired old promises that if we only agree to buy a few products here and there at an inflated price we would save the community by creating jobs. It's an old claim polished up with an ebony coating, and the core is as hollow as ever.
Read more...

FBI cans left-wing busy bodies

This is a subtle, but important news story. The FBI stopped linking (and therefor, stopped endorsing) the Southern Poverty Law Center on the FBI hate crime webpage. Along with the Anti-Defamation League,

The FBI had no comment and offered no explanation for its decision to end their website's relationship with the two groups, leaving just four federal links as hate crime “resources.” The SPLC had no comment.

The SPLC does good, important work by identifying hate groups like KKK offshoots, and black nationalists. I give them props for labeling black nationalists as racists, something I've seen too many left wingers decline to do, but their recent opposition to men's rights showed how low a threshold they have for outrage.


Read more...

Would you?

I've seen a few segments from ABC's What Would You Do passed around online. Most of them are good to watch. They're anecdotal examples, not hard data about human behavior, but they always make for great discussions.

This one is different. It's inspiring, and each one is better than the previous one.





I like to think I would have said something, but that's because I'm an opinionated loudmouth who enjoys conflict.
Read more...

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A dozen years ago I took a public speaking class where the instructor told us not to use "sexist" language in speeches. By this she meant gendered terms like "waitress" and "waiter" or "mailman," not language that trivializes a person based on accidents of birth.

Prejudice is so reviled today that talentless political hacks know they can score cheap points by twisting something an enemy said into a vestigial organ of racism or sexism.

This week we were treated to two beautiful examples. One was MSNBC's Martin Bashir who is claiming that Republicans trying to tie President Barack Obama to the ongoing IRS scandal makes the word "IRS" a secret code for "nigger." The other is a brainless post from a gender studies graduate who is accusing a gay rights advocate of being a racist when she didn't like First Lady Michelle Obama's response when she tried to steal the stage from her.

When interviewed after being escorted out of the fundraiser, Sturtz said of the First Lady, “She came right down in my face. I was taken aback.” 

...Notice the language Sturtz uses to describe the encounter. Rutgers Anthropology Ph.D student Donna Auston emphasizes that Sturtz’s word choice of “taken aback” is one of distinct privilege; Sturtz sees herself as above reproach in this situation. As Auston inquires, why was Sturtz surprised at Obama’s response? “Is it because you did not expect her to exercise agency? Did you not expect her to assert that she is your equal?” Auston asks. Either black women are supposed to tacitly accept maltreatment and disrespect, or when they do exercise their agency, they are branded as the “Angry Black Woman.”

Issues like this are obvious examples of false flags, where racism is invoked for a situation just because one of the participants was black. What I find more troubling is the expanded definition of words like racism and sexism for issues of insensitivity.

For example, it's insensitive to assume that all black people like hot sauce. There is a stereotype that most black people enjoy putting hot sauce on food. There's nothing degrading or unworthy about enjoying food with a little kick to it, but it's still a stereotype.

Say I had a few people over and we were eating French fries and one of them was black. It would be insensitive for me to ask only the black person if he would like some Sriracha sauce. It would also be somewhat insensitive if I only thought  to get the Sriracha bottle out for everyone to use because there's a black person present.

Both of those are examples of acting on stereotype, but there's nothing hostile or malicious about it. While we still need to address those issues, it's deceitful to compare a host who wants to make their guests feel welcome with a KKK member who wants to harm other people and thinks of them as inferior.

This could be part of a vast spectrum, as a host who offers fried chicken to a guest is clearly acting on a stereotype in a way, but there is also a different context here. Taunts about fried chicken and watermelon have been used maliciously for years. That's not true for hot sauce.

By blurring the line between acts of malice and hate and insensitive acts that may even be kind, we are watering down the term "racism" to the point it is useless. This vague use of language allows some progressives to declare that no major advances have been made in terms of race relations over the past 50 years because "racism" is still alive, even though things are clearly better. We no longer tolerate rhetoric and attitudes that were socially acceptable two generations ago.

But notice how quickly the rhetoric snaps back to the original definition when needed. Suddenly, "racism" means the old definition again and anyone guilty of the modern definition of racism  is going to hate rallies and burning crosses on lawns. It's just like how anyone critical of third-wave feminism is painted as opposing the first-wave.

We have two reasonable choices here. Either use new terms such as "racial insensitivity" or declare that racism isn't that bad.
Read more...

What privilege could be

I had two immediate reactions in college when another student brought up and explained the essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" By Peggy McIntosh.

The first was that no one could come up with a subtitle that awful without a lot of effort. The second was that it was a complete surprise that the article actually made some really good points.

White privilege is a series of things I don't have to think about but a person of another race does. Privilege examples are always compiled in lists. I don't find some of the examples compelling, but others are undeniable. Here are some of the better ones:

*I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race. 

*I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 

*If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race. 

*I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race. 

*I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race. 

*If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

This really opened my eyes to the idea that a black person has no choice but to "be black" all the time, whether they like it or not. There are situations that can be troublesome for other people that I am completely oblivious to. The essay title is still awful, but there is real wisdom here and privilege is an entirely legitimate concept.

Unfortunately, that valid point has nothing to do with the way privilege is typically used in modern discussions.

Claims of white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege or some other variety has become a way of silencing dissent on discussions about identify politics not by refuting arguments, but by attempting to disqualify the speakers based on accidents of birth.

Say I were to criticize a policy supported by some feminists that would give money to mothers who leave their husbands, saying it creates a financial incentive that would break families up. A supporter could respond by defending the policy and attempting to show it will help more families than it hurts. That's the old-fashioned, legitimate way to discuss an issue.

Using the "vulgar privilege" tactic, the supporter would simply say that I have male privilege I am unaware of and declare the discussion over. What's worse, in that person's mind, that's a compelling argument. They would walk away believing that was a perfectly reasonable way to defend their view.

Only a person who can't fathom that their beliefs could be wrong can use this tactic. What's more, they are suggesting that personal experience is more important than logic, reason or research.

The type of privilege being invoked is often completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. Brandon K. Thorpe wrote a great essay about the politicization of the Trayvon Martin shooting within the gay community, calling out writer Akiba Solomon on her wandering criticism of Kevin Naff. Naff said gay groups were jumping on the Trayvon bandwagon and Solomon wrote:

Essentially what Naff has done is cast the struggle for LGBT human rights and equality as window dressing for his own demands for white male privilege... 

I don’t know Kevin Naff so I’m not going to accuse him of pandering to angry white males. But I know this much is true: LGBT organizations belong in the conversation about racial profiling. No amount of his seething white male privilege masquerading as gun control advocacy can change that fact.

Thorpe didn't miss those wild shots about "male privilege" in the Trayvon Martin case. He wrote:

Note the last line, with its telling use of the word “masquerade” and the out-of-nowhere use of the word “male.” Unless Solomon mis-typed, she is accusing Kevin Naff of masquerading as a citizen concerned about firearm proliferation and the stand-your-ground law so that he may surreptitiously go about his real work — venting anger toward black people and women.

Yes, women. Otherwise, the word “male” in Solomon’s paragraph is meaningless. Note that Naff never mentioned sex or gender in his article. The presence of the word “male” in Solomon’s says less about Naff’s opinions than it does about a common pitfall of identity politics: Get too far in, and you start piling cant atop cant until the accumulated weight crushes whatever good point you began with.

I talked to Thorpe shortly after he published this piece and he said that people sometimes get on a roll when they start talking about privileges, which is why you see Solomon swinging so wild.

The legitimate point about the concept of privilege is being unfairly tainted by the simpletons mucking up the word. The unfortunate association between these two different uses harms the reputation of the valid version. Cries of "privilege" has become the thoughtless bleating of sheep, an automated reply for people too lazy or too slow to draft a serious argument.
Read more...

Does it matter if Schrödinger’s Rapist is black?

There's a well-known blog post titled Schrödinger’s Rapist from a few years ago that I finally read. I was surprised to find that I agree with it, but I'm equally surprised more leftists don't take offense to it.

When I got a motor scooter a few years ago, I learned the mindset one needs to drive one is to be constantly on alert for danger. I was told to check my mirrors every eight seconds and be prepared to move out of the way of cars. If I let my guard down and a car strikes me, even though the other driver would be at fault, I will be hurt and they will not. If I let my guard down, I am at their mercy.

According to the Schrödinger’s Rapist post, this is essentially how women go about their lives while walking a city street or out on a first date with a man. They don't know if he's going to try to attack her and they want to avoid any situation where they will be at someone else's mercy. There's a classic asymmetrical information problem where the man may know he's harmless, but the woman doesn't and it impacts how she spends her free time, so buck up Chuck and be accommodating.

I get it. I'm happy to say that looking back, I have adjusted my behavior as a man to make sure women weren't put in a position where they had to trust me.

There's also one time when I was in rural Maine walking along the side of the road to my parents' house. There were two young women ahead of walking much slower on the other side of the road in the same direction. It was daytime and there were about a dozen houses within a quarter mile and a few cars drove by every minute. The timing just happened to work out that when I needed to cross the road to enter mom and dad's driveway, the two women were there too. From their perspective, I crossed the road to walk right at them. They saw me coming and immediately walked diagonally to the other side of the road. I said nothing and walked down the long wooded driveway where my parents live. They thought I might be coming for them, but I was just going home. No words were exchanged.

I felt a little insulted, but I understood what their motivation was. It then occurred to me that if I had been a black person, I would probably feel more insulted and I would record this as an example of racism, even though unbeknownst to me the same thing would have happened to a white guy.

That's where I'm surprised the Schrödinger’s Rapist post does't attract more criticism from the left. It makes the case that being in an elevator with a stranger becomes a fearful scenario the moment that stranger turns out to be a male. That is not considered sexism or a violation of political correctness. It doesn't matter that sexual assaults in elevators are extremely rare. We're willing to cut women some slack for believing myths because the fear they feel is very real.

If being fearful of unknown men in elevators is acceptable, what happens when that unknown man turns out to be black?



Baseless terror of black men in elevators has been mocked for decades, so why is fear of all men in elevators acceptable? Saying we should accept that someone is afraid of another person because of demographics, baseless or not, is problematic.

It's incredibly uncomfortable to say, but minority members are more likely to commit sexual assaults. There's plenty of people trying to disprove this by focusing on the relative rarity of interracial rapes, but that assumes women of all races are victimized equally.

From a 2006 U.S. Department of Justice report:

Whites (37%) and blacks (35%) accounted for higher percentages of rapists than Hispanics (23%).

When you factor in that the 2010 census reported 72 percent of Americans are white, 13 percent are black and 12 percent are Latino, you can see some unfortunate conclusions: The average black or Latino male is more likely to commit a sexual assault.

A New Mexico sexual assault prevention statistical analysis reported: "While the greatest number of rapes/sexual assaults occurred among Whites, the rate of rapes/sexual assaults per 1000 persons was greater among Blacks and Hispanics."

These numbers make us all uncomfortable, and may be explained by the correlation between crime and poverty instead of any biological genesis. They may also be skewed by which sexual assaults are reported, but the numbers are there, and what's more, women believe them.

A woman on the street is much more likely to be attacked by a male stranger than a female stranger. Schrödinger’s Rapist suggests this makes it acceptable to be distrusting of men on the street. Does it make the same allowance for race that it does for gender? The subtitle "A guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced" doesn't sound too PC when that guy is black.


Make no mistake, I'm guilty of the same double standard that being suspicious of men is more acceptable than being suspicious of certain races. I'm just having a hard time justifying it to myself.
Read more...

YH&C is now a minority blog

I've decided to get more in touch with my proud heritage after reading Elizabeth Warren's inspiring success as a closeted visible minority member.

You see, like Warren, I too am more than just a white person who appears to be doing alright. I am, in fact, a mix of white and red, thanks to the Native American heritage of my Great-Great-Grandmother.

That's right, I am 1/16 American Indian. If you wish, you may call me by my ancient spiritual name, Runs-His-Mouth.

I wasn't native enough to get government wampum like free tuition at a state college in Maine or a monthly check in the mail, but Warren is a mere 1/32 Native American and look what she went through, as told by Mark Steyn:

How does she know she's a Cherokee maiden? Well, she cites her grandfather's "high cheekbones," and says the Indian stuff is part of her family "lore." Which was evidently good enough for Harvard Lore School when they were looking to rack up a few affirmative-action credits. The former Obama Special Advisor to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel now says that "I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am," and certainly not for personal career advancement or anything like that. Like everyone else, she was shocked, shocked to discover that, as The Boston Herald reported, "Harvard Law School officials listed Warren as Native American in the '90s, when the school was under fierce fire for their faculty's lack of diversity."  So did the University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania.

I am twice the American Indian Warren is, and therefore, twice the victim. From now on, I can proudly use the important lesson I've learned from the last three years of American politics:

If you disagree with me, you're a racist.


You may think you're disagreeing with my support of free markets and limited government control, but in my heart and with no further proof offered, I can now confidently say you are motivated by a deep hatred for 1/16th of the way I was born.


Every negative reply I receive is a smallpox-infested blanket. Every insult is a broken treaty. From now on, know that your disagreements with any opinion I hold are blazing a new trail of tears.
Read more...

I don't know what happened to Trayvon Martin

...and I seem to be the only one. Everyone else seems to think they know exactly what happened.

For me, the case started two weeks ago when a friend posted a ThinkProgress link claiming to tell all the important facts of the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman shooting. The post began with the statement:

On February 26, 2012, a 17-year-old African-American named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida. The shooter was George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white man.

It included statements like "Martin’s English teacher described him 'as an A and B student who majored in cheerfulness'" and "Martin had no criminal record." There were also claims about Zimmerman having an assault charge on a police officer in the past (which was later dropped), making 46 calls to the police since 2004, "Zimmerman was not a member of a registered Neighborhood Watch group" and "According to neighbors, Zimmerman was 'fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.'”

This painted a clean good-versus-evil story, where an obsessive neighbor attacked and shot an innocent honor student just for being black in his gated community. But as Tyler Cowen warned us about telling good-versus-evil stories, real life is never as simple as black and white.

In this case, it wasn't even black and white, as Zimmerman was quickly revealed to have a Latino mother - and based on his last name, a Jewish father. ThinkProgress amended the list and continues to add to it, with no mention that the racial introduction has been amended. I recall a line originally about Trayvon never getting in trouble at school, but this was found out to be false and I believe, removed with no admission it was ever there.

This was the first great revision in the case. There were many more. It turned out the photo everyone keeps using of Trayvon is from when he was 12. Trayvon was 17 at the time of his death and fully capable of causing bodily injury to someone like Zimmerman, as could be seen in the modern photos of Trayvon that turned up.

Then one of these updated photos turned out to be fake, and was at one time posted on a white power website. Some of them were legitimate, it turns out, and a white power hacker (who knew there was such a thing) said he had hacked Trayvon's social media accounts and posted screenshots of Trayvon setting up a cocaine drug deal, speaking of women in the crudest of terms and a friend praising him for taking a swing at a bus driver.

Of course, screen shots are easy to fake. I could pull it off with MS Paint in a few minutes if I wanted to. Instead of trying to check the authenticity of the screenshots, the Trayvon activists switched gears: How dare anyone carry out these "character assassinations" of a shooting victim?

This one is transparent; they were trying to have it both ways. We were sold a story that Trayvon was a squeaky-clean boy, but it quickly came that was not true. He was previously suspended for having a prying tool and a bag of stolen jewelry and at the time of his death, was suspended for having a marijuana baggie in his backpack. Talking about these facts is being mischaracterized as saying drug possession makes someone free game for target practise. No one said this, of course. Apparently, correcting the activists on their falsehoods was off-limits.

Other stupid things happened. Geraldo Rivera said dressing like a thug makes people perceive you as a menace, which is true, but went on to that wearing a hooded sweatshirt was as much to blame as Zimmerman. That was idiotic, and the Trayvon activists seized this single statement that no one else supported and acted like it was a pivotal defense of Zimmerman.

The race baiters and bigots came out to get Zimmerman as well. People like Spike Lee tweeted what they thought was his home address, then apologized for sending the lynch mob to the wrong house, but not for sending a lynch mob in the first place.

The racist New Black Panther Party put a reward out for Zimmerman's address. CNN's Anderson Cooper called them on it, saying the authorities have not called his arrest and any agency they turned him over to would release him. Their spokesman countered that yes, the white man's law has not found him guilty but he has been found guilty by "street people law."

There is nothing wrong with demanding a more detailed investigation than the one Flordia police initially performed. I hold that position as well. It's another thing entriely to say because the innitial investigation was not conducted transparently and did not reach the conclusion ones limited grasp of the facts implied, that lynch mobs are now justified.

Reasonable people have also spoken out against Zimmerman. I have a lot of respect for John McWhorter and he has a record of calling out black activists for making phony cries of racism. In this case, he's taken the position that racism against black boys created the incident.

Zimmerman said he followed a suspicious person, even after the dispatcher told him to stand down. That's very different than if Martin had jumped him for no reason. However, disobeying police orders is not on par with murder. Despite what ThinkProgress implied, Zimmerman was the captain of a neighborhood watch program (which explains all those calls he made to the police). If it's not accredited, should we say it was an "undocumented" group?

What happened next in the narrative is murky. Zimmerman said Martin attacked him and beat his head in a little and he shot him to save his life. People are saying Zimmerman is automatically guilty for shooting someone who was unarmed. Infact, it depends on the situation. If someone does indeed attack you and prevent you from running away, why should you be honor bound to engage in "fair" combat with them when your life is very much in danger?

A few days later a blurry video in the police station didn't show Zimmerman bleeding from the head. Then a few days after that we see in an enhanced screen shot what looks like a wound to the back of his head that was cleaned up by paramedics.

With the public's view of the story changing again and again as new evidence and narratives come forward, MSNBC's Chris Hayes said:

We've all been baited into essentially litaging, trying the case on the facts. and we don't have the facts. Right? So now it's, oh here's the video... and it shows... it contests the family members of Zimmerman's account...

All of this vaccumm is created by the fact that... the way that we establish facts in this country is we have an arrest and a trial. Right? So all of this is flowing into the vaccum that has been created by the absense of the legal process which is the way that we deal with this. Right? He can go before a jury... he can say all these things, but instead it's being tried in the media.

Sorry Hayes, but you don't get it. We don't assume people are guilty until a trial clears their name. Instead, we investigate and if there's enough evidence to prove guilt, we take it to trial and let a judge or jury reach a decision. Hayes thinks the weirdness in the case means Zimmerman should be assumed guilty and locked away until a trial occurs.

Instead, Zimmerman should be free unless the police conclude he should be arrested to stand trial, because that's the proper order of operations. The strength of my position is revealed by how it's remained unchanged even as new information came out. Here's what I wrote on March 20 when my friend posted the ThinkProgress link:

These things have a habit of being distorted, and we should be prepared for that. This is what trial by media looks like. After the Richard Jewell case, we should caution people from conducting their own advocacy trials. It's one thing to press authorities into investigating a case, it's another to reach a conclusion and try to ruin someone's life before a trial happens. This is not a defense of Zimmerman. It is a defense of the presumption of innocence our court system uses.

I'm glad to see there are a few other people out there who are avoiding reaching a premature conclusion, including lawyer Ken from Popehat, journalist Piers Morgan and even President Barack Obama, who deserves credit for trying to stay out of this story as long as he could until forced into making a vague comment.

The good news in all the mess is that all of this attention to the Trayvon Martin case has completely knocked Kony 2012 off the radar.
Read more...

Jim Crow and the minimum wage

I was rereading one of Dylan's post on racial issues over at Blindsight 20/20 and I got to thinking about how any legislature that impacts blacks negatively more than other groups - crack-cocaine punishments, welfare reform, public housing cuts, etc. - are presented as racist in nature and motivation.

Under Jim Crow laws, this was absolutely the case. Legislation that said in order to vote, you must ace a difficult voting test unless your grandfather was a voter was designed to target blacks without actually mentioning them.

Jim Crow laws were a horrible blight on our record, which makes it politically convenient for some lefties to invoke them to smear modern laws that would impact blacks more than whites.

So with that template in mind, shouldn't minimum wage laws fall under the 21st century Jim Crow umbrella?

I've added emphasis to the minimum wage entry on the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:

At current U.S. wage levels, estimates of job losses suggest that a 10 percent in crease in the minimum wage would decrease employment of low-skilled workers by 1 or 2 percent. The job losses for black U.S. teenagers have been found to be even greater, presumably because, on average, they have fewer skills. As liberal economist Paul A. Samuelson wrote in 1973, “What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2.00 per hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?”

This has been well-understood for a long time. The white labor unions in South Africa under apartheid pushed for minimum wages to push blacks out of jobs. It doesn't matter that the proponents today are no longer motivated by racism when the results are identical.

If one is in the habit of calling racism on any legislation that makes things difficult for minority members more than anyone else, than they should see the minimum wage as nothing less than a Jim Crow law.
Read more...

FBI: Blacks more likely to commit hate crimes than whites

CNN offered a quick summary of a new FBI hate crime report. Of course, CNN was quick to point out that 62.4 percent of the offenders were white, while 18.5 percent were black.

What they forgot to include was a population comparison. Whites make up 74.8 percent of the population, while blacks are only 12.4 percent. That means that an average black person is 78.9 percent more likely to commit a hate crime than a white person. That's not a shame all people of a race should be burdened with, but it should dispel some of the popular views in our culture.

In addition, Jews were victims of 71.9 percent of the religiously-motivated hate crimes, while Muslims were 8.4 percent. Between 1.2 and 2.2 percent of the population is Jewish, and between 0.6 and 1.6 percent is Muslim.

Every hate crime is a problem, but it's good there were only 6,600 in the whole country in 2009. The crimes against gays lined up with the popular opinion, but the idea of the white hate monger and the anti-Islamic bully did not. The public underestimates the problem of Antisemitism and minority hate mongers, and how can we stop a problem if we don't understand it?
Read more...

"Buy black" campaign makes the same errors as "buy local"

Now that 2009 has come and gone, there's one national story that stands out as something I should have written about.

It's not the Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois corruption crackdown, because a Democrat who hides his greed behind noble fables isn't news.

It's not the far-right push to replace the Federal Reserve with the gold standard. History lesson - we had both during the Great Depression, and the Federal Reserve's big mistake was not following its own rules. This issue attracts more flies than anything else.

It's not the Joe Wilson "you lie" outburst and its aftermath, because I covered that already, although I forgot to mention that if Wilson's point was that emergency rooms will still cover illegal immigrants because the Democrats took out measures to check for immigration status, then he was correct.

No, the story I missed is the birth of a "buy black" campaign out of Chicago (Don't act all surprised - you read this entry's headline). John and Maggie Anderson started "The Empowerment Experiment" to drum up support for black businesses. The idea is they would only purchase from businesses owned by other black people to make the black community richer.

It's unfortunate that this experiment involves such a touchy subject as race, because all of the criticism has been along racial lines. Critics have called this a discriminatory campaign, and it's very difficult to avoid following that lead. John Anderson attempted to defuse that angle when he told CNN:

"We're not advocating that anybody make purchases along racial lines. OK, that's not what we're advocating. What we are advocating, though, is that African-American do have a higher sense of duty to support black businesses that are investing in the community."

Unfortunately, that's not what the campaign has been telling people to do. It really has been advising people to purchase from black-owned stores - regardless of what those businesses do with their profits. I'm aware there are some serious ethical concerns here, but that distracts us from an important question. People have been so hung up on race that they haven't been asking if this plan will actually help the black community.

In a word, no. This is the same fallacy as the "buy local" movement, but instead of limiting purchases to the immediate area, participants are limiting their purchases along racial lines.

Like the "buy local" movement, the "buy black" movement looks at the increase in business the merchants will undoubtedly receive and calls that a success. What they are forgetting is the difficulties the black customers will experience - higher prices, inconveniences and lack of choices - and all in the name of an aesthetic choice.

The gains to the merchants will be smaller than the sacrifices paid by customer, due to lack of economics of scale and higher transaction costs. This campaign will make the overall black community poorer - not richer.

Don't believe me? Look at the first four paragraphs of the Associate Press story that got the whole thing started:

"It's been two months since 2-year-old Cori pulled the gold stud from her left earlobe, and the piercing is threatening to close as her mother, Maggie Anderson, hunts for a replacement.

It's not that the earring was all that rare—but finding the right store has become a quest of Quixotic proportions.

Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only black-owned businesses. The "Empowerment Experiment" is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey.

'We kind of enjoy the sacrifice because we get to make the point ... but I am going without stuff and I am frustrated on a daily basis,' Maggie Anderson said"

Unlike localalists, the Anderson's report they have to drive 20 minutes to get groceries even though they live in a big city. So in a way, it's worse. Localists at least have the convince of buying from stores in the immediate vicinity. Black-owned businesses can be spread out pretty far. This does, however, give black-only consumers the ability to buy things online and have things mailed in.

Otherwise, the major economic errors are there. Broken window fallacy - check. Mercantilism - check. Protectionism - check. I don't see any of the hyper-nationalism of the buy local movement, but that's because the artificial lines on which stores to buy from are drawn in a different pattern.

I also haven't seen any Luddite tenancies from the "buy black" crowd but there's no reason the philosophy can't embrace them.

Since the year is up, it's reasonable to start expecting the results to pour in from The Empowerment Experiment. However, the web presence of the movement has been spotty. Their official web site hasn't been updated. Their Twitter account dropped off in July and their YouTube channel last put up a video in August. They have a fans page on Facebook, and I've seen Maggie Anderson post on the wall, but its content is limited to links for black businesses.

Just like the "buy local" movement, a campaign that promised to make the entire group wealthier spiraled into a mere advertising scheme for its merchants.

Now that it's 2010, I'm interested to see how the Andersons think their experiment went. However, as we've seen before with the "buy local" movement, it's very easy to call a campaign a success because of its fanfare when its original goals were never met.

Read more...