You can tell someone is being a useful idiot if they’re asking you why you’re talking about this and not talking about that, even when what they really mean is “will you please shut up now?”
And that’s what this crap is. Every time someone comes on your teevee and tells you that people ought to talk more about black-on-black crime, what they’re really saying is “Shut the Fuck up about Trayvon.”
I got the hint the first time, I just chose to ignore it because it comes from a dishonest and dishonorable place. Black folks rally about gun violence in their neighborhoods on a regular basis. I’d say that the media just don’t cover it, but they actually do cover it a lot of the time. I can remember many, many times that I have seen Channel 6 Action News here in Philadelphia do stories on rallies against gun violence. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg of what goes on. There’s anti-gang activity. There work being done to improve neighborhood safety. There’s pressure to increase after-school activities and improve education generally. There’s work being done to attract businesses and jobs. A tiny bit of research will yield a ton of information about what black folks are organizing to do in an effort to improve the lives of their children, keep them safe, and give them more opportunities. I’m a little out of the loop after living in the suburbs for several years, but I used to have first-hand knowledge of what was going on when I was working for ACORN in North Philly.
It’s really stupid to suggest that black parents aren’t talking about black-on-black violence. If kids were getting gunned down in your neighborhood on a regular basis, would you mention it to your spouse or neighbors or coworkers or fellow parishioners?
It’s not an easy problem to fix. Try passing a gun control law in Pennsylvania. And even if you succeeded, the guns would just come in by car from Virginia or some other place. Try fixing broken neighborhoods with no resources. Try educating your kids with no resources. Try keeping your kids on the straight and narrow when there are no jobs. But it’s easy to judge. I can see that.
You know what would be easy? Arresting George Zimmerman and giving him a fair trial. I think people are going to continue to talk about that until it happens. Telling us to shut up isn’t going to work.
Great point. Same thing in Chicago and every place else I know anything about. Here, it’s primarily the black constituent that got the gun ban that the courts recently shot down. As I recall Obama caught some flak for bringing up the subject.
I think people like Buchanan are so used to only talking about white girls in danger and ignoring what happens to black kids that they can’t stand all this talk about Martin. It puts their agenda too clearly in the spotlight.
The only thing I don’t get about the diary is, what’s useful about Buchanan? The other part is right on, however.
It’s not just Buchanan. Rich Lowry and Juan Williams have come out with the same crap. (TNC had a brilliant takedown of Williams and this nonsense today.) Geraldo is surely not far behind.
Frank Luntz must have put out a memo.
“Useful idiot” is about right. Also notable is the phenomenon of people who have zero contact with black America (and I include Williams in that) lecturing black America on what it “should” be doing. I’m sure these guys have no idea how patronizing and offensive that is, but then, that’s not who they’re talking to anyway. They’re busy whistling to their dogs.
Other favorites: rush to judgement and all the facts haven’t come out yet.
If your response to a young black tragedy is to spout crime statistics in the black community… let’s just say racial harmony is not your overriding goal.
Again, progressives need to really start pointing out how much conservatives are bad faith actors in this conversation. Not because they are all white. Black conservatives will rush to defend them. Its because conservatives see the black community as what we are … adversaries. So, like liberals and environmentalists and feminists and union members, they spend much of their time mocking, laughing, targeting and punishing us for not voting for them.
So when something like this happens it gets them out of their natural position of opposition. Its hard to have empathy for a group you love to demonize. So much so they’ll gladly jump in the bed with Zimmerman.
The other thing that bothers me are the crime statistics. This seems like the favorite retort of any conservative when it comes to any black person or any sort of progressive solution to any unfair injustice. It’s not really an argument. It’s just a putdown. And it really pisses me off.
We can have a discussion on crime statistics in the black community. But don’t feign ignorance when I want to have a conversation about white privilege, institutional racism, critical race theory, sentencing disparities, racial profiling, SCOTUS-mandated exemptions to police power limitations when it comes to arrest powers and search/seizure. Embrace the full context. If not, shut that shit up.
We can talk about black-on-black crime. But what is Eric Cantor offering to do about it? What’s he willing to bring to the table besides put-downs and lectures? And then we have Newt telling folks to grab a mop.
Yeah. Fuck them both. That is not the solution but again that’s the point right? They have no solutions. Only resentment to peddle.
they don’t give a shyt about Black-ON-Black crime unless it can be used to disparage the Black community.
guess what?
I’m complicated enough as a Black person that I can
1. protest Black on Black crime in the morning
and
2. Don my Hoodie for Trayvon in the afternoon .
it’s not an EITHER/OR proposition.
what I will not stand for is mofos, who have never given a rat’s ass about the complexities of Black-ON-Black crime trying to use it as some deflector shield against talking about an unarmed teenaged boy being hunted and murdered for the crime of WALKING WHILE BLACK in 2012 America.
they can kiss my entire Black Ass.
What pisses me off isn’t the suggestion that you can’t do both things at the same time, but that your aren’t doing both things at the same time. And I don’t know about you specifically, but black political activists tend to be the people who, you know, are engaged politically in their community.
Black folks rally about gun violence in their neighborhoods on a regular basis.
Geov mentioned this, but here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates making that point in great detail.
Until anyone advocates, or at least is willing to debate the merits of the following (in good faith), they should be cast aside as annoying concern trolls who, as Polar states, like to bring up black-on-black crime to mock and bring down the community rather than care about it:
a.) Giving felons the right to vote, or at the very least giving ex-felons the right to vote immediately once they leave prison (not some bullshit petition).
b.) Liberalization of our drug laws, which includes outright legalization.
c.) Our ridiculous gun laws.
d.) Funding schools with tax redistribution, not local property taxes.
e.) Getting rid of mandatory minimums.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, we’re not allowed to discuss such things; many of these are mocked in our own party. But at least you can point to things many in the party are doing in good faith. These fucks? They bring it up, as you said, to distract. Kind of like the Zionists who always bring up other conflicts in the region. “Why do you focus so much on Israel!?!?! YOU’RE AN ANTISEMITE!”
They’re usually from the same tribe, it seems.
You know who can tell me I need to pay more attention to crime in black neighborhoods? People who have spent several years working to draw attention to the issue of crime in black neighborhoods.
Not freaking Pat Buchanan, or Rich Lowry, or Bill O’Reilly and his mofo’ing iced tea.