Black mobs and the second law of race and crime (part 4)
May 11th, 2011 by Unamused
Colorlines is a great bastion of liberal lunacy, including but not limited to race denialism, anti-white bias, and illegal-immigrant advocacy (see “Your ideas are stupid and so are you (part 3).”) Since we’ve been talking about black flash mob violence in Philadelphia lately, I thought it would be fun to show you their take on the matter. It’s five sentences long, and it’s going to take me the rest of this post to break down everything that’s wrong with it.
For your consideration: “4 Campaigns Holding Big Media Accountable for How It Treats Us.” The third campaign is called “Philly Students Fight Back.”
Fight back? That’s odd. I didn’t realize the aggressor could do that.
“Sensationalized”
Black and brown youth in Philadelphia have gotten an especially bad wrap [sic] in recent years, thanks in part to often sensationalized media coverage of “flash mobs.”
The word “especially” implies that black and brown youth in Philadelphia have always gotten a bad rap; that is, that the news media are biased against black people. It’s one of those liberal talking points that everyone is supposed to accept unquestioningly. It couldn’t be more wrong.
It’s my second law of race and crime: the news media are biased in favor of black people. The coverage of flash mobs in Philadelphia is a spectacular example. Far from sensationalizing it, the media have been downplaying their increasing size, frequency, and severity of violence, and almost universally censoring the fact that the rioters are always black. In fact, just by putting the words “black and brown youth” and “flash mobs” in the same article (let alone the same sentence), Colorlines is giving the race angle more coverage than ABC, NBC, AOL, the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Digital Journal… put together.
“The scourge of this country”
Maybe I’m not being fair to Colorlines. Sure, they didn’t bother to present any evidence of anti-black media bias, but maybe it’s out there somewhere. Let’s track it down.
Armstrong Williams is a conservative black commentator, and author of “The Media’s Bias Against Black Men in America.” He claims that certain “negative statistics” are being used to “consistently cast black men as the scourge of this country.” He accepts that they are “not altogether erroneous,” i.e. true. However, he says,
a statistic cannot give balance or provide a larger context to the story. The statistics often do not cover the remarkable advancement many American black men have made in the last half century, nor do they report on the collapse of many white men in the same era.
It is not clear why newspapers should be covering the advances of American black men (or the supposed collapse of many white men) in the last fifty or a hundred years. History textbooks? Yes. Encyclopedias? Sure. But newspapers?
What I really want to discuss are his statistics, which are supposed to prove the collapse of white men in America. Actually, there are only two sets of statistics: the race of young adult cocaine users, and the race of serial killers.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, a white adolescent male is four times more likely than his African-American classmate to be a regular cocaine user. Whites are 66 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds, and yet they are 70 percent of drug users in that age group. Blacks are 13.5 percent of persons in that age group and only 13 percent of young adult drug users…
And Hispanics adolescent males are twice as likely as whites to be regular cocaine users — fascinating stuff. Unfortunately, according to the Office of Applied Studies (OAS) of the US Department of Health and Human Services, blacks “significantly underreport” cocaine use, which has “important implications [for] racial/ethnic comparisons.”
A 2009 report by the OAS put the overall rate of illicit drug use (all drugs, all ages, both sexes) at 10.1 percent for blacks and 8.2 percent for whites (PDF). Did Mr. Williams just browse through combinations of drug and age group until he found a pair (cocaine and 18-25) that favored black men over white men? I don’t know. What are these statistics supposed to prove about media bias? I don’t know that either.
On the topic of serial killers, Mr. Williams has this to say:
Approximately 9 out of 10 serial killers are white males between the ages of 20 and 35. Yet we never hear these statistics repeated over and over again in the mainstream press, making these crimes synonymous with one particular race as is the case with blacks.
His statistic is wrong. According to research by the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology and Radford University, “[a]fter controlling for demographic changes across decades, the race of serial killers seems to mirror that of the United States.” Blacks make up 20.4 percent of serial killers (PDF). (It’s also deceptive to use the number of serial killers per race instead of the rate by race. There are, after all, many more white people than black people.)
This is all a red herring anyway. Serial killers, of any race, are responsible for a negligible percentage of violence in the United States. Ghetto blacks, on the other hand…
You see, statistically speaking, the crimes that are “synonymous” with blacks include robbery, assault, rape, and murder. This is especially the case with interracial crime: blacks target whites. (Blacks are over 100 times more likely to rob whites than vice versa, and almost 60 times more likely to commit any kind of violent crime against them.) The media try their best to avoid it, as we’ve seen, but you can’t always cover up the color of crime.
Media bias against blacks? I remain unconvinced. Try to find the evidence yourself. You may want to compare it to this series, or to Ian Jobling’s “Liberal Media Bias and the Myth of White Racism.”
“Public dancing”
Let’s get back to Colorlines and look at the second sentence.
The mobs, known for being spontaneous and sometimes confusing displays of public dancing, were widely reported as being violent and, sometimes, deadly.
… Wait, what?
First, it is a fact that the mobs were violent. This is indisputable. Second, it was never reported (let alone widely reported) that the mobs were deadly (i.e., killed someone). (See parts one and two of “Black mobs and the second law of race and crime.”)
Third — ah, this is quite clever of them. Flash mobs are overwhelmingly non-violent and often involve dancing. But the campaign isn’t complaining that those flash mobs get “sensationalized media coverage,” which in turn gives “[b]lack and brown youth in Philadelphia… an especially bad [rap].” Between “public dancing” and “widely reported as being violent,” the subject changes from flash mobs in general (public dancing) to black flash mobs (vandalism, robbery, and assault).
Colorlines is lying to you.
Crackdown
And they’re going to keep lying to you.
Lawmakers in the city have since cracked down on the city’s youngest and most vulnerable residents, imposing city-wide curfews that, if broken, can lead to [hefty] fines.
So now that they’ve tricked you into thinking the black kids were just dancing, which confused those lame white people so much they called the police, Colorlines brings city-wide curfews and hefty fines into the narrative. I thought Footloose was better. Oh, this was supposed to be non-fiction, wasn’t it?
The curfew was already in place well before the riots. The police just announced that they were going “step up enforcement,” and “tighten it if there is another incident” (The New York Times). Now why would they do that? Maybe it had something to do with the violent flash mobs, which tend to happen at night, and are mostly made up of teenagers.
Technically, the city’s youngest and most vulnerable residents are infants, toddlers, and the like, who are unlikely to be affected by a nighttime curfew. The residents in question are teenagers — all teenagers, regardless of race. See, the blacks started a bunch of riots, so white kids have to go home early. Thus, “vulnerable” acts as a code word for “criminal, but black, so it must be society’s fault somehow.”
Okay, here’s the plan
Philly-based Media Mobilizing Project has helped counter the negative attention. They’ve documented how young people and students with the Campaign for Non-Violent Schools is calling for non-violence, more jobs, and better access to quality education.
That’s a good plan, you young people and students. First, shout out “don’t be violent!” Wait, I thought the mobs were just dancing, and the violence was a lie told by the media to make us hate black people. Why do we need to call for non-violence? Or does this have nothing to do with the flash mobs?
Next, demand that the government create more jobs out of thin air. More jobs will certainly keep these teenagers off the streets at night… somehow. Except we already decided the teenagers weren’t the problem. How are new jobs going to reduce media bias? I’m starting to think this Campaign for Non-Violent Schools isn’t addressing the problem of flash mobs at all. Why are they in the Colorlines article?
Finally, call for better access to quality education, the idea being that white society will not permit ghetto black teenagers to get a quality education. The sad truth is that a lot of them — specifically, the kind of blacks, and the kind of teenagers, who like to form violent flash mobs — will not permit anyone to give them a quality education (source). They don’t seem to want more jobs, either. And they certainly don’t seem susceptible to the “please mister, don’t rob, rape and/or murder anyone” approach to crime prevention.
If I had to give a parsimonious explanation for the behavior of this subset of ghetto black teenagers, I would suggest that they do what they do because they want to do it. They want to do drugs, sleep around, collect welfare checks, and riot in the streets. Call it a “lifestyle choice,” if you like.
If someone has another theory, I’d love to hear it.
I gotta say, this series has been an excellent analysis of the black flash mob epidemic. Kudos.
Have you ever had someone say, upon you telling them that blacks commit more crime, this:
“so you’re saying because of their skin color, they commit more crimes?”
I always love this one and I get it a lot… As if it’s the skin that makes them commit more crime. These people are either completely obtuse or so PC they cannot, actually, will not acknowledge reality. Basically, for those who are PC, they are saying that skin color has nothing to do with it and do not accept biology and evolution when it comes to race. We all know what this argument is meant to do.
I’m sure you have encountered this ridiculous, insane and anti-intellectual argument before. I would like to hear your answer to this.
I hear it all the time. It’s from a very common form of race denialism: the “race is only skin deep” myth. It’s easy enough to disprove: I did it in section 4 of “Black and white,” and that’s just by summarizing all the other times I’ve disproved it.
Race is in your bones (literally). Race is in your brain (not to be confused with “in your head”). Most of all, race is in your genes.
Yet there are still people out there, digitally modifying white people’s faces to look black or brown, then smugly declaring that race is just skin color. (And hair. And maybe facial features…)
Anyway, when it comes up in the form you mentioned, it’s a trick. They try to make race realism look ridiculous by combining the fact that blacks commit more crime, with the fiction that race is just skin color. Of course, this doesn’t change crime statistics. It just deflects attention from them.
It also appears as if the Colorlines article is trying to close ranks with Hispanics by including them with those who are partaking in the flash mobs. Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t all the flash mobs composed of black people? I can’t recall one that has involved a sizeable number of Hispanic people. To me, this appears to me another lame, and not so subtle attempt to try to shore up an imaginary rainbow coalition of oppressed minorities.
So what you’re saying is, people who have hair in which water beads off, commit more crime? I don’t see the connection!
Thanks. I was just wondering how you deal with it. I know most who make this asinine argument are just PC to the bone…
Of course Uganda’s anti-gay legislation is blamed on guess who by this commentator:
“Whether you look forward (Rick Warren) or backward (British colonialism and history of propping up puppets and terrible dictators), the face of most African problems is pink.”
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/walkout_by_female_mps_delays_ugandas_kill_the_gays_bill_until_friday.html
Colorlines is irredeemable. There are hundreds of examples like that one. It’s some of the worst reality-denying, white-hating propaganda I’ve ever seen, and it’s hardly a fringe group.
Yes, all the flash mobs I’ve discussed so far seem to have been 100 percent African-American.
There was a shooting in a racially diverse flash mob in LA last month, but there was only one shooter, so it wasn’t a violent mob. As always, it’s impossible to find out the races in the papers, but police say the shooting was gang-organized, and there was Facebook chatter about Crips and Bloods beforehand.
It certainly looks like every violent flash mob in America has been all black, or very nearly. Yes, I know: how dare I point this out.
I might start posting there as an African American annoyed about Hispanics taking low skill jobs. I wonder how that would go down?
I posted over on that Colorlines link. I asked for links to the written discourse about homosexuals in pre-colonial Uganda. I wanted to see the back and forth among their legal scholars and philosophers. I wasn’t even rude! They’ve permanently banned me.
…
They can’t produce it because they have no such thing. They didn’t even have a written language(!).
Of course they banned you, JJT. Colorlines has no interest in science, history… facts… reality. None at all.
Nothing you say can change their minds, because they literally don’t think about their beliefs. It’s like they have the words “no matter what they say, you are right, and they are evil” tattooed on the inside of their eyelids. They just blink to refresh their indoctrination.
They will say and do anything to achieve their goal, which is to kill capitalism, kill Christianity, kill all the whites, and turn America into a black/brown socialist dictatorship. They may or may not realize that they’re trying to destroy civilization and bring about a new Dark Age. They may or may not care.
They are no more honest and no less evil than the communists they evolved from.
You’re right. Totally right.
My spouse and I are in the process of obtaining Italian passports via our family. Great things are happening in Europe. I know when to bail on a sinking ship. I suggest others do similar.
Christianity is substantially responsible for this ugly situation we’re in. Its “love thy neighbor”, “turn the other cheek”, “forgive seventy times seven” and let’s not forget “original sin” inculcates a sense of guilt which must be expiated. The crypto-Marxist left didn’t breed this horse, they just found it convenient to ride.
A society which manages to purge itself of the leftist self-hate will be substantially less Christian.
I don’t see how loving your neighbor, turning the other cheek, and forgiving a lot, can cause guilt.
As for the doctrine of original sin: the great thing about Christianity is that, like conservatism, it has what Thomas Sowell calls “the constrained vision” (here). (The similarity is not a coincidence, either.) Christianity says we are all flawed by nature. We are neither perfect nor perfectible. All we can do is try to overcome that.
It’s a metaphor for human nature. Acknowledging human nature (in particular, acknowledging that it exists) is the core of conservatism. Denying it is the core of liberalism. Communism tried to perfect us, while denying our nature. “Anti”-racism and feminism are the same (“blacks are the same as whites” and “women are the same as men,” respectively).
The left in its entirety is — and I think this is obvious — not a big fan of religion. They’re not using Christianity except insofar as traditional values make us conservatives reluctant to smack them upside the head when they spout their stupid, pretentious, hypocritical garbage.
[...] Mobs and the Second Law of Race and Crime (Part 2)“, “Part 3“, “Part 4“, “African Culture, or: Aunt Libby Was a Witch So We Burned [...]
Great series. Keep it up, kid.
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