“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” – Colin Kaepernick
This now infamous statement has spread to the entire NFL, amateur sports, and to almost every segment of society. While no one would deny that in American society, and on police forces across the nation, which are part of that society, there exists a level of racial bias. But is there, as the narrative goes, an epidemic of police violence against people of color? Using data from the Department of Justice and the Washington Post, the answer is not obvious.
Fatal violence at the hands of police
Last year, according to the Washington Post’s tally, just 16 unarmed black men, out of a population of more than 20 million, were killed by the police (2016 data). The year before, the number was 36. And they include cases where the shooting was justified, even if the person killed was unarmed.
Are minorities still harangued and routinely brutalized by the police?
Data from the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), provides detailed information about contacts between the police and the public. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) produces this report once a year. It is based on a nationally representative sample of more than 70,000 U.S. residents age 16 or older. If survey respondents say they have had contact with the police in the last year, they answer a questionnaire about the nature of their last contact, including any use of force. The questionnaire collects age, race, gender, etc., which can be used to break down the data by demographic groups.
Highlights:
Across the four PPCS data collections from 2002-11, blacks (3.5%) were more likely to experience nonfatal force during their most recent contact with police than whites (1.4%) and Hispanics (2.1%).
A greater percentage of persons who experienced the use of force (44.1%) had two or more contacts with police than those who did not experience force (27.5%).
Blacks (13.7%) were at least slightly more likely to experience nonfatal force than whites (6.9%) and Hispanics (5.9%) during street stops.
Of those who experienced force during their most recent contact, approximately three-quarters described the verbal (71.4%) or physical (75.0%) force as excessive.
Of those who experienced force during their most recent contact, 86.7% did not believe the police behaved properly.
The PPCS includes relatively mild forms of violence such as pushing and grabbing, as well as violence that is legally justified. Actual physical injury caused by police (kicking, punching, etc.) also seems rare, and indicates that both black and white men are injured at about the same rates, 0.08 percent.
Note: these are probably slight undercounts, because the survey does not identify people who did not experience physical force during their most recent contact but did experience such force during a previous contact in the same year.
The 2015 report compiled by the BJS notes that overall black men are less likely than white men to have contact with the police in any given year, though this includes situations where the respondent called the cops himself: 17.5 percent versus 20.7 percent. Similarly, a black man has on average only 0.32 contacts with the police in any given year, compared with 0.35 contacts for a white man. 1.5 percent of black men have more than three contacts with the police in any given year, whereas 1.2 percent of white men do.
However, there is racial disparity– 0.6 percent of black men experience physical force by the police in any given year, while approximately 0.2 percent of white men do, which is 3 times the amount.
The National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by BJS interviews victims of crime within the last 12 months. The survey collects information about the incidents, including the race and ethnicity of the offenders. Data from the NCVS survey conducted in 2015 (most recent), suggests that black men are three times as likely to commit violent crimes as white men. In most cases, police are more likely to use force against people who commit violent crimes.
There must be some bias, and it must play a part somewhere. But does it account for all of the disparity? Traffic stop data indicates some of this:
Relatively more black drivers (13%) than white (10%) and Hispanic (10%) drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop during their most recent contact with police. There were no statistical differences in the race or Hispanic origin of persons involved in street stops.
Drivers pulled over by an officer of the same race or ethnicity were more likely (83%) than drivers pulled over by an officer of a different race or ethnicity (74%) to believe that the reason for the traffic stop was legitimate.
White drivers were both ticketed and searched at lower rates than black and Hispanic drivers.
About 1% of drivers pulled over in traffic stops had physical force used against them by police. Of these drivers, 55% believed the police behaved properly during the stop.
How then do we account for the perceptions of how the police treat minorities? As various polls have demonstrated, black people are more likely to think that police violence against minorities is very common.
Note: I don’t pretend to understand the black American experience, however, growing up a lazy white teenage juvenile delinquent thug (LWJDT), I can vouch for the fact that if you put yourself in certain places, doing certain things, and the police show up, the interaction will generally be a little different than having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk in the kitchen with Aunt Bee.
While crime has continued to fall since the 1990s, polls indicate most Americans still believe it has increased. Is the same phenomena at work relative to police violence?
Racial bias, as well as racial disparities certainly exist, however the data does not support the narrative that these phenomena are widespread or exist in epidemic proportions.
Ferguson and protests by athletes such as Colin Kaepernick have brought into focus a narrative of police violence and social injustice. While the narrative may be flawed, it has led to better training and acknowledgement by police, and has re-opened the conversation. While critiquing the role of police in society has not been entirely productive, it may lead to better analysis and design relative to the wage, income and educational gaps that are currently driving the country further and further apart.
Raw data in .csv format as well as canned reports used in this story can be found here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/
https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=251
https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/main-july_2016.pdf
Paul Plante says
An excellent, informative and well-presented article.
The key glaring flaw in Colin Kaepernick’s ignorant statement above is right here in front of our eyes, at least for those of us with the ability to see:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
At the time he made that statement in 2016, Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, was president of the United States of America, or the “country” that the dog-stupid despite his college degree Colin Kaepernick says “oppresses black people and people of color,” and Eric Himpton Holder, Jr., another black man, or person of color, was the United States Attorney General, or the “country” that “oppresses black people and people of color,” in the opinion of highly paid and privileged football player Colin Kaepernick, who according to a September 10, 2017 Business Insider article was rewarded with a “record” seven-year, $126 million contract in 2014, which serves to show just how much this “country” and our flag has “oppressed” him.
According to that article, the contract gave Kaepernick a $12.3 million signing bonus and a 2014 salary of $645,000.
How many working class white people with all of their so-called “white privilege” make $645,ooo per year, I wonder?
But getting back to his ridiculous statement that it is this country and its flag that are oppressing black people and people of color, given that we had a black president and black attorney general at the time he made the statement, it would have to logically follow (Colin Kaepernick apparently never learned logic or critical thinking in college, which is not surprising) that if the statement were true, it would mean that it was black people in charge of this country who were actually oppressing other black people and people of color, not white people, since in 2016, white people were not in the White House, or heading up the United States Department of Justice.
So if what Colin Kaepernick was saying in 2016 was factually true, then it would raise the question of why black people in charge of this country in 2016 were oppressing other black people and people of color.
And are police officers in the United States of America either the “country” or the Flag?
And that answer is no, they are not either the country or the flag, so if the police in some town or village or county or even state are “oppressing” black people and people of color, that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Star Spangled Banner or the flag of the United States of America, so these football protests are not only stupid, but bogus as a twenty-two dollar bill, and all they serve to do is demonstrate that to play pro football in the United States of America, you don’t need to have even a shred of a brain in your head, just a lot of stupidity coupled with a lot of beef and brawn.
My thoughts on it, anyway, and again, thank you, Wayne Creed, for taking the time to bring some reason and sanity back to this discussion on OUR country, regardless of what skin color one might have been issued at the time of birth.
John Ricks says
Love it when white people tell African Americans what is going on and what they should be thinking and doinq..White priveledge is a wonderful thing my friend, continue to judge and stand on your high horse Master Creed and Master PlanteI mean Mr. Creed and Mr. Plante.
Paul Plante says
“As I would be no man’s master, so would I be no man’s slave.”
Good old Abe Lincoln, a white folk who set the black folks free, with the help of the father of the mother of my grandfather who died down south during the Civil War to set the black folks free, said those words, John Ricks, and I say them too, so, John Ricks, I refuse to be a slave to your narrow, bigoted way of seeing things here.
There is no one in here telling African Americans what is going on and what they should be thinking and doinq.
In fact, Wayne Creed, if you had bothered to read what he actually wrote, came right out and said, point blank, no beating around the bush, no trying to nuance things, “I don’t pretend to understand the black American experience!”
End of that story, John Ricks, because you don’t know what you are talking about, and you are making up things out of whole cloth for no other purpose than to disrupt this thread and cause trouble.
Nor did I tell any African Americans what is going on and what they should be thinking and doinq.
What I did was to call out this Colin Kaepernick on the national stage the Cape Charles Mirror presents me with as an ignorant A-HOLE who doesn’t know what he is talking about.
That’s not telling any African Americans what is going on and what they should be thinking and doinq; that is me, a decorated and disabled Viet Nam combat veteran calling Colin Kaepernick an ignorant A-HOLE in a public medium in the hopes he hears me.
If the black folks want to think some other way about it, have at it, dude, be my guest.
If you want to think of Colin Kaepernick as your hero or your Messiah, or your Mahdi, or Tai Ping, have at it, for I don’t care, and I am not changing my opinion to suit your tastes, so forget about asking me too.
And John Ricks, “white privilege” is such an A-HOLE term, it isn’t funny.
There is no such thing as “white privilege” in this country, and people who say there is, like Hillary Clinton, are just demonstrating their ignorance in public.
If there was such a thing as white privilege, why then was I born dirt poor out in the country?
Why wasn’t I born rich, instead?
Steve Parks says
No white man, alive today, has ever owned a slave. No colored man, woman or child alive today, has ever been a slave. You people have been sold a bill of goods, by liberal democrats, that does not exist. Tuck your raw nerves back in and move along.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
Mr. Ricks, I am going to jump in here and defend Paul and Wayne………both of them well and fully believe; as I do, that each and every American has the exact same opportunity to succeed, OR FAIL based on their own merits and efforts.
You, and you’re ilk believe that certain subsets of America cannot do ANYTHING without support from their betters.
And you call US racists?
It’s called ‘projection’, sir.
John Ricks says
Easy to trigger a racist I see.
Paul Plante says
Yes, you do see, John Ricks, and of course you see, because you are the racist in here who got triggered, and it took almost nothing to do it, which shows how close racism is to the surface of your skin, but that aside, since this is America, land of the brave and home of the free, sing Hallelujah, say Amen, where you can think and do anything you please without needing my permission, me not being your Massa or anything like that, help us out here if you can, John Ricks, by answering this one simple question:
In a Speech to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention on November 24, 1787, James Wilson, who had been at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, stated thusly with respect to whose lives were to be touched by the new Constitution, to wit:
Numerous states yet unformed, myriads of the human race, who will inhabit regions hitherto uncultivated, were to be affected by the result of their proceedings.
end quotes
Myriads of the human race, John Ricks, which means people of all colors in the world from the whitest of white to the blackest of black.
James Wilson was talking about “myriads of the human race” on November 24, 1787, because he was intelligent enough to know way back then that regardless of skin color, which is an incidental no one has control over, all people on earth belong to just one race, which is the human race.
So, given that there is just one race on earth, John Ricks, that being the human race, then how can anyone be a “racist?”
Riddle us that if you could, John Ricks!
Does it make sense to you that there could be such a thing as a “racist” when there is only one race on earth?
The candid world would like to know.
tkenny says
Gosh, I hate to say you’re wrong … but you’re wrong. James Wilson was in no way talking about the “myriads of the human race”. He speech was not about race or color or anything of that sort. He’s speech was about the foresight and the tasks ahead of the members of the convention and what type of government they will form. It had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with race.
Amazing how you can pull 25 words out of about a 5,000 word speech and say the speech was about race. He gave no more thought to the “myriads of race” as he did to computers in the age of the American revolution!
Paul Plante says
It had nothing to do with race, tkenny, precisely because there is only one race and that is the human race, no matter your skin color.
If James Wilson knew that in 1787, how come we don’t today with all of the idiot talk about all the different races we have in this country, as if Polish people and Hungarian people and French people were all different races, instead of different ethnicities.
Are you one of those people who thinks that way, tkenny, that Polish people and Hungarian people and French people are all different races?
The candid world would like to know.
tkenny says
No, any educated person would say that Polish, Hungarian and French are nationalities and not race.
Since we are under the article of Police Violence the FBI has 5 classifications for race – White; Black or African American; American Indian or Alaska Native ; Asian and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.
Funny, that you would in other comments you have written choose to identify Democrat vs Republican, Conservative vs Liberal, Black vs White but here the Human Race? That’s cute.
And again why mention the Wilson speech. He wasn’t talking about race relations, he was talking about the difficult choices they will make to form the government. You didn’t count back then unless you owned land. You use his words and apply 21st century definitions to them.
Paul Plante says
tkenny, I am not the FBI, nor have I ever been the FBI, and I do not control the FBI or what it does, and if they are classifying people by race, they are ignorant A-HOLES like Colin Kaepernick, for there is absolutely no scientific evidence to back it up that there are different races of people, and to the contrary that flies in the face of science, but then, who would be so foolish as to think the FBI, a political police agency, gives a damn about science?
Check out the Scientific American article “Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue – Racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out” by Megan Gannon, LiveScience on February 5, 2016 where you will find as follows:
More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people.
He spoke out against the idea of “white” and “black” as discrete groups, claiming that these distinctions ignored the scope of human diversity.
Science would favor Du Bois.
Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning.
end quote
And then, there is the New York Times article “Race and Racial Identity Are Social Constructs” by Angela Onwuachi-Willig, a professor of law at the University of Iowa College of Law, and the author of “According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family.” on September 6, 2016, where we were informed as follows:
Race is not biological.
It is a social construct.
There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites.
Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries.
Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa.
end quotes
So, tkenny, “race” is something people make up in their minds, with no scientific basis for doing so, and that includes the FBI,
But I don’t suffer from that affliction, so it is only natural that I would identify all people as human beings regardless of skin tone.
And it is equally natural that I would identify people who claim to be Democrats as Democrats and Republicans as Republicans, and Conservatives as Conservative and Liberals as Liberals when it is relevant to do so, since those are all defining sub-categories of the category “human being”, just as some dude with black skin is identified as a black person, while somebody with white skin is identified as WHITEY or OLD WHITEY, where relevant.
I’m surprised you saw fit to try and make some kind of argument there.
As to the Wilson speech, tkenny, it is his “Speech to the Pennsylvania Convention” dated November 24, 1787, and he starts by saying thusly:
The system proposed, by the late Convention, for the government of the United States is now before you.
Of that Convention I had the honor to be a member.
As I am the only member of that body, who have the honor to be also a member of this, it may be expected that I should prepare the way for the deliberations of this assembly by unfolding the difficulties which the late Convention were obliged to encounter, by pointing out the end which they proposed to accomplish, and by tracing the general principles which they have adopted for the accomplishment of that end.
end quotes
Sounds pretty straightforward to me, tkenny; how about you, what mystery are you seeing there?
And then James Wilson continues as follows:
To form a good system of government for a single city or state, however limited as to territory or inconsiderable as to numbers, has been thought to require the strongest efforts of human genius.
With what conscious diffidence, then, must the members of the Convention have revolved in their minds the immense undertaking, which was before them.
Their views could not be confined to a small or a single community, but were expanded to a great number of states; several of which contain an extent of territory, and resources of population, equal to those of some of the most respectable kingdoms on the other side of the Atlantic
end quote
Still pretty plain to me, anyway, tkenny; are you still with us, or have we lost you?
And that brings him to right here in what I thought was a well laid out logical progression:
Nor were even these the only objects to be comprehended within their deliberations.
Numerous states yet unformed, myriads of the human race, who will inhabit regions hitherto uncultivated, were to be affected by the result of their proceedings.
end quotes
Myriads of the human race, tkenny, because that is exactly what we have in this country of ours – myriads of the human race, and you know what, tkenny, I am not afraid of any of them, and I get along fabulously with all of them regardless of skin tone precisely because I treat them as fellow human beings and American citizens who are equal to me.
Perhaps you should give it a try, as well.
Who knows but you might surprise yourself.
Steve Parks says
That evil ‘White Privilege’ at work again. LOL!
John Ricks says
I see Massa Plante, you are the only one who knows what he is talking about and thank you Mr Lincoln for freeing a people put in bondage by your country.
Paul Plante says
As I would be no man’s master, John Ricks, so I would be no man’s slave, starting with yours, and never having been no man’s master, so I have never been a Massa, so I would thank you to stop intentionally insulting me by calling me by that derogatory racist term.
And “thank you Mr Lincoln for freeing a people put in bondage by your country?”
Get real here, John Ricks, and stop trying to twist history.
The reason those people were in bondage anywhere is because black people in Africa were capturing them to sell as slaves.
Go to WIKIPEDIA under “Barbary slave trade,” and this is what you will find:
The Barbary slave trade refers to the slave markets that flourished on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, or modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and western Libya, between the 16th and middle of the 18th century.
end quote
In the 16th century, this country did not even exist, John Ricks, so it wasn’t putting people in bondage, it was black people in Africa doing that, or is that some embarrassing history you like to duck, since it is inconvenient to your narrative of victimhood in the United States of America in the year 2017?
WIKIPEDIA then continues as follows:
The slave trade had existed in North Africa since antiquity, with a supply of African slaves arriving through trans-Saharan trade routes.
The towns on the North African coast were recorded in Roman times for their slave markets, and this trend continued into the medieval age.
end quotes
There was no United States of America in antiquity, John Ricks, so the United States of America in antiquity was not putting African-Americans in bondage, and that supply of African slaves arriving through trans-Saharan trade routes back there in antiquity were being captured and sold on the other end of that trans-Saharan trade route by black people in Africa.
And then go back to WIKIPEDIA, under the heading “African participation in the slave trade,” where you will find as follows:
African states played a key role in the slave trade.
Slavery was a common practice among Africans.
Chieftains would barter their slaves to European buyers for rum, spices, cloth or other goods.
Selling captives or prisoners was common practice among Africans and Arabs during that era.
In the 1840s, King Gezo of Dahomey said:
The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people.
It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…
In 1807, the UK Parliament passed the Bill that abolished the trading of slaves.
The King of Bonny (now in Nigeria) was horrified at the conclusion of the practice:
We think this trade must go on.
That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests.
They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself.
end quote
Africans selling other Africans for trinkets.
That is history, so get over yourself, John Ricks, and get real with this “thank you Mr Lincoln for freeing a people put in bondage by your country.”
Suck it up, John Ricks, it was Africans in Africa who put the black people into bondage over here.
They were slaves when OLD WHITEY over here bought them, because they had already been made slaves and sold as slaves by their black soul brothers in Africa, so get off this victim **** of yours, and John Ricks, I’m not a Democrat or Hillary Clinton-ite, so I don’t do white guilt, and no, my daddy did not own your daddy as a slave, so you have no emotional hold on me, and I’ll be damned if I will give you one.
And John Ricks, my goodness, dude, I almost forgot, have a real nice day.
Steve Parks says
Blacks vs. Whites in a nutshell.
Whites are only 10% of the world’s population, yet are the most industrious, ingenious, and innovative race the world has known. Whites have formed nations, built civilizations, assumed and administrated power, created the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Industrial Revolution, automation, technology, the space program which landed men on the moon and launched probes exploring beyond the solar system, discovered electricity, created wonder drugs and architecture and have harnessed nuclear power, have unlocked the secrets of DNA and relativity, created computer science and the internet age…… sub-Saharan Africans still cannot even feed themselves.
No pre-contact sub-Saharan African society ever created a written language, or weaved cloth, or forged steel, invented the wheel or plow, or devised a calendar, or code of laws, or any social organization, or formal religion. or system of measurement, or math, or built a multi-story structure or bridge or sewer, or infrastructure of any kind, and they never harnessed a river, or even drilled well or irrigated, or built a road or railway or sea-worthy vessel, they never domesticated animals, or exploited underground natural resources, or produced anything that could be considered a mechanical device.
Blacks are the only race incapable of caring for themselves. Whites still have to provide food, medical, financial and engineering aid to Africans. They couldn’t survive without White charity. Blacks became an out-of-control invasive species after Whites domesticated them.
Blacks lived alone in sub-Saharan Africa, a vast continent with temperate climates and abundant resources for 60,000 years; so they cannot blame racism, poverty, imperialism or anything else for their failures. How could they live with all that shoreline and never contemplate putting a sail on a ship like every other culture did?
Blacks are the oldest race, they had a huge head-start so they should be the most advanced race; but they are the least advanced race. And in fact they never did develop until they were domesticated by Whites.
19 of the 20 poorest countries are sub-Saharan African (Haiti). There has never been a successful Black country. No modern creations or civilization exists in sub-Saharan Africa that was not brought there by Whites.
There are no White Third-World nations, but all Black ones are.
Put Whites on an island and you get England; put Asians on an island and you get Japan; put Blacks on an island and you get Haiti.
Nowhere Blacks live are they considered achievers. In fact they are universally viewed as unproductive and disruptive to society.
Simply, life is an IQ test.
Laurie Wolpert says
Haiti was colonized by the French.
Steve Parks says
What possible difference does it make who brought them there?
Laurie Wolpert says
Haiti’s colonization cannot be separated from its current fate. The countries you are using as comparisons are not and, did not start out,on equal footing. It’s ahistorical to pretend that nations start out by being “put on an island” as if they are in a controlled experiment. The fates of nation exist in tension with one another and, unfortunately, that relationship is often exploitative.
Paul Plante says
If I recall correctly, “Lord of the Flies,” a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. focused on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves.
As Wikipedia tells us, and yes, I did read the book, myself, the book takes place in the midst of an unspecified nuclear war.
Some of the marooned characters are ordinary students, while others arrive as a musical choir under an established leader.
With the exception of the choirboys, Sam, and Eric, they appear never to have encountered each other before.
The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves on a paradisiacal island, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state.
So much for re-creating jolly olde England by putting some Whites on an island.
As to the Republic of Haiti, it was Spain, not France, who “discovered” the island on 5 December 1492 during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic.
As Wikipedia informs us, the island was named La Española and claimed by Spain, which ruled until the early 17th century, while competing claims and settlements by the French led to the western portion of the island being ceded to France, which named it Saint-Domingue.
In the midst of the French Revolution (1789–1799), slaves and free people of color revolted in the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804).
Afterward the sovereign nation of Haiti was established on 1 January 1804 – the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americas, the only nation in the western hemisphere to have defeated three European superpowers (France, Spain, and the UK), and the only nation in the world established as a result of a successful slave revolt.
The rebellion that began in 1791 was led by a former slave and the first black general of the French Army, Toussaint Louverture, whose military genius and political acumen transformed an entire society of slaves into an independent country.
Upon his death in a prison in France, he was succeeded by his lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who declared Haiti’s sovereignty and later became the first Emperor of Haiti, Jacques I.
The Haitian Revolution lasted just over a dozen years; and apart from Alexandre Pétion, the first President of the Republic, all the first leaders of government were former slaves.
Haiti is a founding member of the United Nations, Organization of American States (OAS), Association of Caribbean States, and the International Francophonie Organisation, and it is a member of the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
However, it also has the lowest Human Development Index in the Americas.
And who can talk about Haiti without thinking of François Duvalier (14 April 1907 – 21 April 1971), also known as Papa Doc, who was the President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971, elected president in 1957 on a populist and black nationalist platform and successfully thwarted a coup d’état in 1958.
His rule, based on a purged military, a rural militia known as the Tonton Macoute, and the use of a pervasive cult of personality, resulted in the murder of 30,000 to 60,000 Haitians and the exile of many more.
He was unanimously “re-elected” in a 1961 referendum in which he was the only candidate, and afterwards, he consolidated his power step by step, culminating in 1964 when he became President for Life after another faulty election, and remained in power until he died in 1971, to be succeeded by his son, Jean‑Claude, who was nicknamed “Baby Doc”.
Duvalier’s government was one of the most repressive in the hemisphere, and within the country he murdered and exiled his opponents; estimates of those killed are as high as 60,000, while attacks on Duvalier from within the military were treated as especially serious.
When bombs were detonated near the Presidential Palace in 1967, Duvalier had nineteen officers of the Presidential Guard executed in Fort Dimanche, and a few days later Duvalier had a public speech during which he read the attendance sheet with names of all 19 officers killed.
After each name, he said “absent”.
After reading the whole list, Duvalier remarked that “all were shot”.
Haitian communists and even suspected communists bore the brunt of the government’s repression.
Duvalier targeted them as a means to secure U.S. support in addition to the principle: Duvalier was exposed to communist and leftist ideas early in his life and rejected them.
On 28 April 1969, Duvalier instituted a campaign to rid Haiti of all communists and a new law declared that “Communist activities, no matter what their form, are hereby declared crimes against the security of the State.”
Those convicted of Communist activity were subject to execution, and faced having their property confiscated.
Duvalier employed intimidation, repression, and patronage to supplant the old mulatto elites with a new elite of his own making.
Corruption—in the form of government rake-offs of industries, bribery, extortion of domestic businesses, and stolen government funds—enriched the dictator’s closest supporters, and most of them held sufficient power to intimidate the members of the old elite, who were gradually co-opted or eliminated.
Many educated professionals fled Haiti for New York City, Miami, Montreal, Paris and several French-speaking African countries, exacerbating an already serious lack of doctors and teachers.
Some of the highly skilled professionals joined the ranks of several UN agencies to work in development in newly independent nations such as Ivory Coast, and Congo.
The government confiscated peasant landholdings and allotted them to members of the militia, who had no official salary and made their living through crime and extortion.
The dispossessed fled to the slums of the capital where they would find only meager incomes to feed themselves.
Malnutrition and famine became endemic.
Nonetheless, Duvalier enjoyed significant support among Haiti’s majority black rural population, who saw in him a champion of their claims against the historically dominant mulatto elite.
end quotes
So you can say that Haiti is its own creation, which has nothing to do with France at all.
And really, as bad as Trump is, would we want a “Papa Doc” Duvalier to come to power here and create the United States of America into a hellhole like Haiti is?
Laurie says
“Nonetheless, Duvalier enjoyed significant support among Haiti’s majority black rural population, who saw in him a champion of their claims against the historically dominant mulatto elite.”
Doesn’t that support my thesis, which is that colonization cannot be undone? The mulatto Haitians enjoyed an elite status due to their proximity towards the French during the colonial period. One evil does not condone another, so “Baby Docs” popularity is not commendable in that regard, but it can’t be separated from the conditions he arose from.
Paul Plante says
I never said otherwise, Laurie.
What I did say is that modern Haiti, with all of its many, many problems, starting with abject ignorance, is a creation of the black citizens of Haiti, not white people, or Mulattos.
I don’t know if you were alive back when “Papa Doc” Duvalier was in power, but I was, and people at that time like myself were well aware of “Papa Doc’s” Tonton Macoutes running around Haiti chopping people into pieces with their machetes.
That is what the black people who supported “Papa Doc” were supporting – terrorism – and by doing so, it was they themselves who created the miserable hellhole they now live in.
As to the Tonton Macoute, Wikipedia tells us they were a special operations unit within the Haitian paramilitary force created in 1959 by dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier.
Haitians, the black people who supported “Papa Doc,” named this force after the Haitian mythological bogeyman, Tonton Macoute (“Uncle Gunnysack”), who kidnaps and punishes unruly children by snaring them in a gunny sack and carrying them off to be consumed at breakfast.
Papa Doc Duvalier created the Tontons Macoutes because he perceived the military to be a threat to his power, and after the July 1958 Haitian coup d’état attempt against President François Duvalier, he disbanded the army and all law enforcement agencies in Haiti and executed numerous officers as he perceived them as a threat to his regime.
To counteract this threat, he created a military force that bore several names.
In 1959, his paramilitary force was called the Cagoulards (“Hooded Men”), and they were then renamed to Milice Civile (“Civilian Militia”), and after 1962, Milice de Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (“Militia of National Security Volunteers” or MVSN).
They began to be called the Tonton Macoute when people started to disappear for no apparent reason.
Duvalier authorized the Tontons Macoutes to commit systematic violence and human rights abuses to suppress political opposition.
They were responsible for unknown numbers of murders and rapes in Haiti.
Political opponents often disappeared overnight, or were sometimes attacked in broad daylight.
Tontons Macoutes stoned and burned people alive.
Many times they put the corpses of their victims on display, often hung in trees for everyone to see and take as warnings against opposition.
Family members who tried to remove the bodies for proper burial often disappeared themselves.
Anyone who challenged the MVSN risked assassination.
Their unrestrained state terrorism was accompanied by corruption, extortion and personal aggrandizement among the leadership.
The victims of Tontons Macoutes could range from a woman in the poorest of neighborhoods who had previously supported an opposing politician to a businessman who refused to comply with extortion threats (ostensibly as donations for public works, but which were in fact the source of profit for corrupt officials and even President Duvalier).
The Tontons Macoutes murdered between 30,000 and 60,000 Haitians.
Luckner Cambronne led the Tonton Macoute throughout the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s.
His cruelty earned him the nickname “Vampire of the Caribbean”.
He profited by extortion carried out by his followers.
In 1971, President Duvalier died and his widow Simone, and son Baby Doc Duvalier ordered Cambronne into exile.
Cambronne moved to Miami, Florida where he lived until his death in 2006.
Some of the most important members of the Tonton Macoute were Vodou leaders.
This religious affiliation gave the Macoutes a kind of unearthly authority in the eyes of the public.
From their methods to their choice of clothes, Vodou always played an important role in their actions.
The Tontons Macoutes wore straw hats, blue denim shirts and dark glasses, and were armed with machetes and guns.
Both their allusions to the supernatural and their physical presentations were used with the intention of instilling fear and respect.
The Tontons Macoutes were a ubiquitous presence at the polls in the 1961 election, in which Duvalier’s official vote count was an “outrageous” and fraudulent 1,320,748 to 0, electing him to another term.
They appeared in force again at polls in 1964, when Duvalier held a rigged referendum that declared him President for Life.
end quotes
As I say, Laurie, and I do not dispute your position on colonization, which is a complex subject you and I could and perhaps should spend some time discussing, Haiti is a unique situation that was self-created, and cannot be blamed on colonization, at least in my humble opinion.
And Laurie, thank you from a fellow American for having the courage to engage your fellow Americans on this complex subject which is tearing this sick and disjointed nation of ours further and further asunder.
Laurie says
I remember reading about Baby Doc in my poli sci class. A doctor described treating a man tortured by one of Baby Doc’s soldiers and failing to save his life. It was horrific and I have never forgotten it. I don’t justify Baby Doc’s election because of colonization. I merely object to ascribing some sort of racial essentialism to people’s goodness or badness. Evil is not a characteristic that comes with skin color and the idea that white= good and black= good is incredibly simplistic and unhelpful. Enough people have died because of those ideas and I couldn’t let them just sit on this thread without raising an objection. We all have to decide what we need to stand up for.
Laurie says
*Sorry, that should say black= bad.
Paul Plante says
I don’t make such value judgments, Laurie.
And on what basis?
White is white and black is black, simple as that.
There are many good black people I have met, by my value system, and there are many white people who aren’t worth a damn by my value system.
Those are all individuals, not all the members of an ethnicity.
You may have some entirely different value system of your own, as many have different value systems than mine, so there is no objective standard for judging all people of an ethnicity, period.
And once again, what I will say is that Haiti was self-created, just as the United States is self-created.
I don’t know if you recall this, or ever studied this, but just like Haiti, the United States of America were once colonies, like Haiti.
Obviously, some where along the line, we followed a different path than they did, and perhaps its goes to whom we chose to be our so-called “leaders.”
People of all skin colors reap what they sow.
And that applies to Haiti, as well.
You can ascribe good or bad to any of that, I will forego the opportunity.
When an emotional component enters into these conversations, that is where they go south in a hurry, and ascribing good or bad to a people is just such an emotional component.
With that said, I once again reiterate that I would not want a “Papa Doc” Duvalier here, nor would I want his Ton Ton Macoutes.
Why?
Because by my value system, they are not what I would call “good people.”
To the people of Haiti, they were.
See how vastly different their value system is from mine?
Is one good and one bad?
You make the call, Laurie, because I won’t.
Steve Parks says
Bless your heart…We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when liberals are afraid of the light.
Laurie says
It’s difficult to have a conversation with someone who does not participate in good faith. From popular movies such as “Hidden Figures” (which shows the behind the scenes of the space race, in which black female engineers were responsible for helping launch rockets) to candid accounts of the treatment of natives experienced by Christopher Columbus and other explorers, there is a lot of evidence which, to say the least, seriously complicates your narrative of ongoing white triumph and black failure. “Blood alone moves the wheels of history” -Martin Luther. History is not pretty, and it’s certainly not the tidy narrative you describe. Phrases like “bless your heart” seem more passive aggressive and have nothing to do with the argument I put forth, which is that you cannot study cultures in isolation as if it colonization, apartheid, segregation, and slavery did not occur. Nobody knows what the fate of African nations would have been but for those events, and pretending that we can erase that history is a futile whitewashing (in more ways than one). The reckoning is coming as people are starting to face the fact that our forefathers had serious flaws and evils that cannot be erased by the mere passage of time.
David Gay says
great quote
Steve Parks says
Speaking of Blacks, Africans were the first to sell their kin into slavery while 28% of free Blacks in the US owned slaves, in much higher proportion than free whites.
10-15 million African slaves were shipped to the New World, but only 6% (650,000) to North America. The vast majority went to South America, yet countries like Brazil don’t get hit with slavery guilt.
1.5 million Whites also fell victim to white slavery in the 19th century, trafficked into prostitution. Jewish traders were instrumental in this, being the dominant slave traders for centuries as per H. D. Brackman and others. This is why slave auctions weren’t held on a Sabbath.
Jews were also the main slave traders bringing Blacks to the US. Aaron Lopez is notable: in Newport, the biggest slave trading hub, “for over 50 years over 50% of bills of lading, concessions, receipts, port clearances carried his signature.”
In all, Jews of Newport owned 300 slave ships. Of 128 slave ships docked one year in Charleston, over 120 were undersigned by Jews of Newport & Charleston. Jews were also over twice as likely to own slaves than non-Jews.
Nonetheless, slavery is projected onto and laid entirely at the feet of White men by a Jewish-dominated MSM & Hollywood. There’s also much (buried) evidence to suggest Whites were in America before Amerindians. Look up the Lovelock Cave skulls, the Solutrean hypothesis etc.
Renegade Tribune: Destroying the Anti-White Arguments
IHR: Tony Martin
Laurie says
Hitler committed suicide at end of his evil life as the purveyor of a defunct and deranged philosophy that was responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, Russians, Europeans of all descents, and American military personel. The name of Hitler is universally abhorred and the people who secretly admire him skulk in dark corners of the Internet because they are aware that their ideas are not in vogue and will be met with resistance if publicly announced.
Do yourself a solid favor and go on a fishing trip, join a church, help the homeless, do anything positive besides admire a man who sought to enslave the world. His ideas have never helped anyone lead a good life, and can only bring you destruction. “For wide is the gate that leads to death, and many find it”.
Lenore Hart says
Mr. Parks seems to be trying to expiate the historical and contemporary guilt of white Americans in both the slave trade and the following shameful era of Jim Crow racial suppression laws with a variation on the old argument: “everybody’s doing it, so it’s not [insert name/gender/race]’s fault.” That argument would not stand up in a court of law, or a roomful of historians, just as it never stood up to scrutiny by anyone’s mother when applied to a childish argument attempting to excuse youthful bad behavior. Also, at least based on his argument here, Mr. Parks seems to believe that slavery began sometime in the colonial or era or shortly afterward. In fact, slavery is as old as humankind, and was practiced by pretty much every race and nation, from antiquity onward. It was a common fact of life in ancient Greece and Rome, in Celtic societies, in Britain, in South America . . the list goes on and is far too long to complete. In ancient to medieval eras slaves were usually obtained as “the spoils of war.” But since here Mr. Parks is mainly is addressing the era when sugar and cotton plantations were in ascendancy, and the role of Africans and Jews in the commercialized trade, I will too. Though first I must point out that Mr. Parks’ vaunted source is highly suspect, as it is in fact an online Neo-Nazi “news” site with a white supremacist and anti-Semitic agenda of its own. A site that has already been called out and censured in many countries around the world for extreme hate speech, creating revisionist history, for overt anti-Semitism and for Holocaust-denying. So consider those unfortunate facts when you read his claims here.
The Portuguese were the first slave traders to arrive in Africa. By 1471, under Prince Henry the Navigator, they had reached the Gold Coast because Europeans knew the area as a source of gold that reached Muslim North Africa by trade routes across the Sahara, as well as for ivory and pepper. Once European plantations were established in the New World during the 1500s, the demand for slave soon overshadowed gold as a principal export. The west coast of Africa became a principal source. But the insatiable market and substantial profits the trade attracted adventurers from all over Europe. Much conflict rose among European groups for control of this trade.
So the Portuguese and others established trading posts, aligned themselves with the local African chiefs, and exchanged trade goods for rights to conduct commerce and for slaves the chiefs could provide. These were often prisoners taken in wars between enemy communities.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, first Dutch, then later English, Danish, and Swedish adventurers were granted licenses by their own governments to trade overseas. On the Gold Coast, they built competing fortified trading stations and challenged the Portuguese, and at times were drawn into local conflicts as Europeans developed more alliances with local chiefs.
After they lost a principal holding in 1642, the Portuguese left the Gold Coast to the Dutch. The next 150 years was marked by conflicts and maneuvers as various European powers struggled to establish or maintain dominance in the profitable trade. The Dutch West India Company operated throughout most of the 18th century. The British African Company of Merchants, founded in 1750, was the successor to several earlier organizations. There were short-lived ventures by the Swedes and the Prussians. The Danes remained until 1850, then withdrew. The British gained possession of all Dutch coastal forts by the last quarter of the 19th century, becoming the dominant slaving power.
During its European heyday, slavery was an accepted social institution. The trade overshadowed many other commercial activities. Slavery and slave trading were already firmly entrenched in many African societies before their contact with Europe, as it was in the rest of the world, from ancient times — including in Greek, Roman, Gallic, Mayan, Aztec, and Celtic cultures. Men and women captured in local warfare became slaves. HOWEVER, slaves in African communities were most often treated as junior members of the society. As in some earlier Mediterranean societies they had specific rights. Many were also ultimately absorbed into their masters’ families as full members. Given its traditional methods of agricultural production, slavery in Africa was quite different from the far more brutal and profit-centric version in the commercial plantation environments of the New World. That of course does not excuse it, by our supposedly more enlightened contemporary standards, but it does make it a bit different in the mode of its application there.
Some slave traders were indeed Jewish. A far-flung Sephardic trade migration in the Caribbean led ultimately to the founding of Jewish communities in North America. Before the Revolutionary War, the largest settlement of Jews in the colonies — perhaps as many as 1,000 by 1760 — was in Newport, R.I. Black slaves were among the cargoes of Jewish merchants, as historical biographer Stanley F. Chyet has noted.
Christians, however, overwhelmingly controlled the slaving business in America. Rhode Island’s Sephardic Jewish merchant-shippers were known mainly for their prominence in selling oil from sperm whales used in candle-making. They tended to mainly oppress whales, not black Africans. But seriously, the real history of the participation of Jewish merchants in the slave trade is far more complex than author Leonard Jeffries has suggested when he wrote in his own book, “Everyone knows rich Jews helped finance the slave trade.” He is clearly misusing historical facts to serve his very obvious and admitted bias against Jews today. Ironically, some of the world’s most active slave traders during the colonial and later periods were Quakers. Members of the Society of Friends in England held slaves too, though Quaker business ethics and a religious belief in the concept of God within every man MIGHT have made Quaker-held servitude less harsh in England. However, these same British Christian concepts were ignored by many Quaker businessmen, from Pennsylvania to New England, as they were anxious to get their share of the large profits to be made from black slavery.
Ironically, Quakers were among the first to protest slavery and to become abolitionists, though early Quaker anti-slavery protesters did not generally attack racism or the institution itself, but condemned the TRADE of Africans as a blatant violation of traditional business ethics. So that ultimately, when Quaker slaveholders no longer made decent profits from slavery, they too attacked the slave trade. In the great American tradition . . . the tragedy for these penitents was that racism and slavery still continued long after the decline of the trade. A smaller tragedy than that of the enslaved black people who still languished in bondage.
The Friends, who were often persecuted themselves in Europe, brought to America a humanistic religious philosophy and heritage of egalitarianism. These beliefs to them, over time, made the enslavement of Africans in the New World an impossibility — at least in theory.
But in any case, to try to somehow “absolve” white, gentile Americans — both Northern slave merchants and Southern plantation owners — of fault or guilt in the cruel and abhorrent and lengthy matter of black slavery is both deceitful and absurd. No one with a decent and objective grasp of its history could so do without dissembling, making up “facts”, or outright lying. As did the source quoted here. In the end, were Jews also culpable as slave traders? Yes, somewhat. And Jews themselves were often the enslaved, as recorded in historical and religious sources, including the Bible.
One must look to the ancestry of basically every culture in the world, in order to know who really owns the terrible responsibility for slavery overall; it belongs to the whole world, and the brutal nature of human beings played out over millenia. It is not some simplistic matter to be pinned on one group or another, and thus disposed of. The finger-pointing of one group at another is, and always has been, pretty much beside the point.
By the way, if you are interested in which country still owns the most slaves now, it is our ally Saudi Arabia.
Lenore Hart
Laurie Wolpert says
Thank you for that concise and thoughtful summary, Lenore. Clearly you have a grasp of history that does not require you to lay the blame at the feet of one ethnic group and perpetuate a false sense of superiority.
Paul Plante says
Wayne, in your article, you make the statement that “Ferguson and protests by athletes such as Colin Kaepernick have brought into focus a narrative of police violence and social injustice,” and with respect to Ferguson, it is true that what happened there did spawn not one but many “narratives,” that are being used to fuel these football protests today, which are now spreading down to high school teams, as was made clear in the DAILY GAZETTE article “Members of Niskayuna football kneel for National Anthem – Several players, cheerleader take knee, a la NFL protesters” by Michael Kelly on September 28, 2017, where the team of kneelers lost 68-0.
With respect to the football protests, to its credit, Dish Network is offering a full refund on its football package to anyone who calls in and says they do not want political statements mixed in with their football, and a group of friends up this way who had paid for that package availed themselves of that opportunity and got a full refund.
And let the NFL and all of its football players go pound sand if they don’t like it with their own acts of social injustice such as beating the **** out of their wives and girlfriends.
But enough about those ignorant idiots and getting back to Ferguson and “social injustice,” the one “narrative” we never seem to hear anything about is the one that contains the truth about all the lies we are continually told about Ferguson, and that narrative comes from the United States Department of Justice itself, as was detailed in the MARKETWATCH story “Justice Department finds no evidence for ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’” by Steve Goldstein, published March 4, 2015, to wit:
“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” became a rallying cry in protests last year over racially motivated police brutality — but a Justice Department report released Wednesday says the facts don’t support the alleged incident at its heart.
The Justice Department released a report on the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson.
To be sure, the report finds “widespread racial bias” in the department and unreasonable use of force, as well as a focus on revenue over public safety.
But it did not back the narrative that helped spur the protests in the city and around the country — namely, that Brown had effectively surrendered peacefully to Wilson.
As the report states: “Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson.”
“As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time.”
“Certain other witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it, despite what they initially reported either to federal or local law enforcement or to the media.”
While some witnesses say Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward “for a brief moment,” the same witnesses said Brown then charged Wilson, according to the report.
The prosecutors “concluded that Brown did in fact reach for and attempt to grab Wilson’s gun, that Brown could have overpowered Wilson, which was acknowledged even by Witness 101, and that Wilson fired his weapon just over his own lap in an attempt to regain control of a dangerous situation.”
“Witness 101” said Brown was shot in the back, but three autopsies concluded Brown had no entry wounds in his back, the report said.
Even clearer was this footnote: “The media has widely reported that there is witness testimony that Brown said, ‘Don’t shoot’ as he held his hands above his head.”
In fact, our investigation did not reveal any eyewitness who stated that Brown said, ‘Don’t shoot.’ ”
end quotes
That is the narrative we never hear about, and the one we do keep hearing about is a pack of lies.
How come?
And at the time that United States Department of Justice report was issued, the head of the United States Department of Justice was a black man with a discernable bias towards people in this country who happened to be born with skin considered white named Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. , who was put in that position by another man with black skin, namely the Marxist and Alinsky-ite community organizer Barack Hussein Obama, who in a speech to the African Union in Ethiopia on July 28, 2015, stated “I also stand before you as the son of an African and Africa and its people have helped shape who I am and how I see the world.”
So, there are two black people in this country telling the so-called, self-identified “African Americans” what is going on and what they should be thinking and doinq, but obviously, that message got lost as soon as it was delivered, and Ferguson still remains a rallying point for all these football protesters protesting what they call “social injustice” in this country, using the thug Michael Brown as their hero.
True “social injustice” was when the howling berserkers in the mobs out there burned down the property of others and looted stores, which is thievery, as if having black skin gave them a right to do so.
Were people born with white skin to have caused all that violence, it would have been called what it is, domestic terrorism, but when done by people born with skin of a darker color, it is called “civil disobedience.”
Why the double standard in this country, if we are all supposed to be equal?
It seems the rioters and looters and arsonists end up being quite a bit more equal than the victims of their so-called “civil disobedience.”
Why?
Because people born with black skin have an innate right to smash, burn and destroy that which was built by others?
Perhaps John Ricks, who has made an appearance in here as champion and spokesperson for the “African-Americans” in America can take a moment of his precious time to edify us as to why that is.
As to this statement from the Ferguson narrative, “To be sure, the report finds ‘widespread racial bias’ in the department and unreasonable use of force, as well as a focus on revenue over public safety,” which I don’t dispute, given the source of that statement, what has that to do with either the flag of the United States of America, or the Star Spangled Banner, whose fourth verse states thusly:
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The candid world would like to know.
Lenore Hart says
Rioters looter and arsonists and bombers have a long history in the US and they come in all colors, including white. When a racial or cultural group has been oppressed, and denied a voice or equal justice, SOME of their members (not all, of course, even though that is how white supremacists like to portray things) tend to act out their frustrations in hands-on ways. Like many human beings — including, historically, those who called themselves American patriots. And they have done so throughout our history. The Boston Tea Party, the New Hampshire farmers who plotted treason (but were defended by Jefferson), the Italian Anarchists in the early years of the Twentieth century, unions who fought to end child labor and murderous working conditions in factories, the Weather Underground in the 1960s and 1970s, the abortion clinic bombers and mass shooters. I’m not in favor of violent protest, but it tends to happen for a reason that originates far up the chain from the action on the ground. The vilification of one particular group while giving a free pass to others who sport skin of the same hue always says more about the accuser — and a lack of knowledge on history and social justice which could be remedied — than it does about those who are blamed as being, ridiculously, some sort of amoeba-like, hive-minded group, instead of as individuals. Also, the poster takes care to leave out any mention of the violence done by white supremacist and NeoNazi groups like Storm Front, all over the country. They not only have repeatedly smashed and burned but also promote domestic terrorism attacks with weapons such as cars, like the one perpetuated in Charlottesville. And they don’t just swagger around posing in those Nazi uniforms and Klan robes — they go out and commit murder. Since 1996, the members of the Storm Front racist and anti-semitic hate group alone have been charged with and convicted of over 100 hate-crime murders. Thanks to the Charlottesville terror attack, they are now under FBI investigation — at last. One might ask: What took so long? So, you want to get outraged, then how about those numbers.
There is no double standard for protest, just shifting times that being forth different groups with different issues to resolve — and unfortunately sometimes not in the most rational ways. But to imply this is a “black” problem is at best ignorant of historical facts, and at worst intentionally disingenuous.
Paul Plante says
Were you to have actually bothered to read the post you are referring to, Lenore, you would see it has nothing at all to do with all this stuff you are talking about in your post above here.
If you had actually bothered to read the post, you would have seen that it dealt solely with all the LIES being propagated about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in the case of the thug Michael Brown.
When you talk about social injustice, Lenore, you are taking us right back to those lies about Michael Brown, which serve as the basis for the Black Lives Matter movement and these football protests.
If you are going to comment on something, it would be more relevant to the discussion to actually read and comprehend what you are going to comment on before doing so.
Just saying.
As to white terrorist groups, Lenore, I have previously posted in here on the white Democrat terrorist groups, their paramilitary wing, who did violent acts to deter blacks from voting in the south.
For example, right here in our own country, who can forget that in the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures by using insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the White League and Red Shirts, to disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate blacks to suppress their voting.
The White League was an American white supremacist paramilitary terrorist organization started in 1874 to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing.
Affiliated with the Democratic Party, the White League was one of the paramilitary groups described as “the military arm of the Democratic Party,” and through violence and intimidation, its members suppressed Republican voting and contributed to the Democrats’ taking control of the Louisiana Legislature in 1876.
The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were white supremacist terrorist groups that were active in the late 19th century after the end of the Reconstruction era of the United States, and they first appeared in Mississippi in 1875, when Democratic Party private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both white and freedmen.
The Red Shirts were one of several paramilitary organizations arising in the continuing efforts of white Democrats to regain political power in the South in the 1870s.
These groups acted as “the military arm of the Democratic Party” and they had one goal: the restoration of the Democrats to power by getting rid of Republicans, which usually meant repressing civil rights and voting by the freedmen, and during the 1876, 1898 and 1900 campaigns in North Carolina, the Red Shirts played prominent roles in intimidating non-Democratic voters.
So there is some good solid white American domestic terrorism for you, Lenore.
Yes, social injustice is as American as apple pie.
Especially when it is a major political party in this country that promotes it.
Lisa Barker says
Blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants in America’s 75 largest counties in 2009, 57 percent of all murder defendants and 45 percent of all assault defendants, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, even though blacks comprise only 14 percent of the population in those counties.
tkenny says
Hi Lisa, I just like keeping things on a level playing ground. Can you give us a link for that?
Because this is what I found (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fdluc09.pdf)
Nearly half (45%) of all defendants were non-Hispanic
blacks in 2009. The highest percentages of black
defendants were among those charged with robbery
(62%), a weapons offense (61%), or murder (57%). The
lowest percentages were among those charged with a
driving-related offense (28%) or fraud (32%) (table 5).
I see what you did there, omit the first sentence and add your own at the end and it sounds pretty darn bad. Using the sentence doesn’t fit your narrative. Now go iron that sheet!
Lisa Barker says
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/black-lies-matter/article/2600164
Janet Sturgis says
Lisa Barker, let’s quote some other statistics.
Hate Crime:
“There were 5,818 single-bias incidents involving 7,121 victims. Of those victims, 59.2 percent were targeted because of a race/ethnicity/ancestry bias; 19.7 percent because of a religious bias; 17.7 percent because of a sexual orientation bias; 1.7 percent because of a gender identity bias; 1.2 percent because of a disability bias; and 0.4 percent because of a gender bias.
There were an additional 32 multiple-bias incidents that involved another 52 victims.
Of the 4,482 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons, intimidation accounted for 41.3 percent of those offenses, while 37.8 percent involved simple assault and 19.7 percent involved aggravated assault.
There were 2,338 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against property, and the majority of those (72.6 percent) were acts of destruction/damage/vandalism.
During 2015, most reported hate crime incidents (31.5 percent) happened in or near residences or homes.
Of the 5,493 known offenders, 48.4 percent were white, 24.3 percent were black or African-American, and race was unknown for 16.2 percent of the offenders. The rest were of various other races.”
FBI hate crime statistics, 2015
Paul Plante says
Just curious here, Janet, as to why you refer to “other races?”
What “other races?”
Aren’t you aware that regardless of skin color, ALL people are of one race, which is the human race?
Are you one of those people who think, despite no scientific support for the position, that people with black skin are a race separate from people with white, red, yellow or brown skin?
Don’t you know that that concept was thoroughly discredited and debunked by the end of WWII?
There are no separate races, despite what the FBI might think about it.
So why do you continue to propagate a debunked myth of separate races in here?
Because the FBI does?
By doing so, the FBI is showing the world just how unscientific and behind the times it is, which is not surprising, because it is political.
Do you want to show the world you are behind the times, as well?
Just curious, is all.
Janet Sturgis says
Paul Plante
This is a direct quote from the FBI Hate Crime Report, 2015
Their wording, not mime.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015-hate-crime-statistics-released
My POINT was to refute Lisa Barkers biased, edited, out of context statistics suggesting blacks are a more violent race.
I wish you were as confratational with those spouting white supremist, neo- Nazi venom, as you are with those of us refuting their lies and slander.
Note: We would caution that the FBI list is marginally dubious, especially if it is being used to throw around terms such as white supremacist (spelled correctly). Incidents such as larceny, burglary, robbery and motor vehicle theft somehow rose to achieve ‘hate crime’ status. It should be noted that ‘intimidation’ seems to be the most prevalent event, and that the sport appears to cross racial and ethnic boundaries to include even native Hawaiian and Pacific islanders as offenders.
Paul Plante says
Anyone and everyone who spouts white supremist, neo- Nazi venom is a moronic idiot, Janet, and I have learned long ago that it is impossible to have any kind of rational discussion with moronic idiots, so I don’t bother trying.
However, if you had bothered to read any of my posting, such as THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR @ August 28, 2017 at 9:06 pm, you would know that I have confronted the issue of “white supremacy” as follows:
So what is this “white supremacy” we all keep hearing about these days, people?
Let’s take a look.
According to Wikipedia, “white supremacy” or white supremacism is a racist ideology based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore white people should be dominant over other races.
end quotes
So, it is an ideology, then, based on a belief, like the flat earth people believe the earth is flat.
And when you consider that ALL humans, black, white, red, yellow, polka dot, candy stripe, tri-color. etc., are of just one race, the human race, the whole concept of “white people should be dominant over other races” is shown to be simply stupid.
Getting back to Wikipedia, white supremacy has roots in scientific racism and it often relies on pseudoscientific arguments, which is to say, it is nothing but horse**** leavened with a large dollop of pure, refined hog**** for flavor.
According to Wikipedia, scientific racism is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority, where “pseudoscience” is defined as “a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.”
In other words, you have to be a fruitcake or half-wit or moron to believe in white supremacy, which has no political power, given that historically, which means in the past, the scientific racism the ideology of white supremacy is based on received credence in the scientific community, but is no longer considered scientific, because it is not scientific, plain and simple.
To believe in white supremacy today, you have to be ignorant, plain and simple.
To see just how outdated this whole stupid concept of white supremacy really is, scientific racism was common during the period from 1600s to the end of World War I, which was over by 1918 or so. which is 100 years ago now, and since the second half of 20th century, scientific racism has been criticized as obsolete and discredited.
After the end of World War II, which is when I came into this world of woe, scientific racism in theory and action was formally denounced, especially in UNESCO’s early antiracist statement “The Race Question” (1950), to wit:
“The biological fact of race and the myth of ‘race’ should be distinguished.”
“For all practical social purposes ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth.”
“The myth of ‘race’ has created an enormous amount of human and social damage.”
“In recent years, it has taken a heavy toll in human lives, and caused untold suffering”.
end quotes
As to these neo-Nazi idiots, I confronted that in THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR @ October 2, 2017 at 5:28 pm, as follows:
People have been made dog-stupid in this country by a so-called “education” system that doesn’t educate people at all.
Consider the Washington Post story “Alleged driver of car that plowed into Charlottesville crowd was a Nazi sympathizer, former teacher says” by T. Rees Shapiro, Alice Crites, Laura Vozzella and John Woodrow Cox on 8/14/2017, where we were informed as follows:
CHARLOTTESVILLE — A man accused of plowing a car into a crowd of activists here — killing one person and injuring 19 — long sympathized with Nazi views and had stood with a group of white supremacists hours before Saturday’s bloody crash.
The alleged driver, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old who traveled to Virginia from Ohio, had espoused extremist ideals at least since high school, according to Derek Weimer, a history teacher.
Weimer said he taught Fields during his junior and senior years at Randall K. Cooper High School in Kentucky.
For a class called “America’s Modern Wars,” Fields wrote a deeply researched paper about the Nazi military during World War II, Weimer recalled.
“It was obvious that he had this fascination with Nazism and a big idolatry of Adolf Hitler,” the teacher said.
“He had white supremacist views.”
“He really believed in that stuff.”
Fields’s research project into the Nazi military was well written, Weimer said, but it appeared to be a “big lovefest for the German military and the Waffen-SS.”
As a teacher, he said, he highlighted historical facts and used academic reasoning in an attempt to steer Fields away from his infatuation with the Nazis.
“This was something that was growing in him,” Weimer said.
“I admit I failed.”
“I tried my best.”
end quotes
“I admit I failed!”
Yes, he did, and I bet he is still drawing a good salary at the high school.
The question is HOW did this loser of a teacher fail.
Doesn’t he know that Hitler was a rug-shewing idiot who ate a bullet in a bunker in Germany because in the end, he was a loser?
Didn’t this loser of a teacher who probably has tenure let this other loser he produced know that Hitler lost?
Didn’t this loser of a teacher, and I do not give a tinker’s damn if I am making him feel bad about himself, instead of celebrating him like the so-called liberals in this country want us to do, let this loser he produced who was infatuated with the Nazis and SS, know that as good as they might have been, they were not good enough?
Don’t they have any WWII combat vets down there in Kentucky that this hand wringer of a teacher could have called upon to let this other loser know who won that war, and how?
“I admit I failed!”
You’re *** damn right you did, and people like you do not belong teaching in any kind of school, including a dog obedience school.
And yet, the Washington Post raised not a single question in that article about how and why this loser of a teacher failed, because the Washington Post itself accepts failure as the norm in this country.
end quotes
As to the FBI, by treating people of different skin colors as different races, they are simply displaying their ignorance of reality, which is not surprising, given that that agency is a political agency, and so, does what its political masters want it to do.
So there is some confrontation for you, Janet.
And have a nice day.
Lisa Barker says
All races kept slaves all throughout history.
Most of the American slaveships and American slave-markets were run by Jews. But no one blames modern Jews. Because if anyone today says anything was “run by Jews”, they’re immediately dismissed as a crazy anti-Semite, regardless of whether or not it’s true.
When the Trans-Atlantic slaveships docked at African slave-markets to buy slaves, they bought slaves who were already slaves. It was Arab Muslims and Black Africans themselves who captured members of rival tribes and took them to the coastal slave-markets to sell to the Whites and Jews. White people didn’t go into Africa and kidnap free black people. They barely needed to get off their ships to buy slaves, it was like buying McDonalds at a drive-through. The slaves were already at the slave-market in chains, ready to go.
In the 16th – 18th century, Africans enslaved 1.5 million White Europeans in the Barbary Slave Trade. African Muslims raided up the coastlines of Europe, particularly the British Isles but even as far as Iceland, kidnapping and enslaving White European Christians. The men were galley slaves, and the women were sex slaves. This was more brutal than working on a plantation or as a domestic servant.
Native Americans and Jews owned Black slaves too, but no one seems to assign a collective guilt to modern Native Americans and Jews for their slavery. In fact, Jews were the biggest slave-owners in America per capita.
Whites were the first people to stop slavery in modern times, whereas slavery still continues in Africa to this day. In Mauritania slavery was only made a punishable offense in 2007!
Less than 2% of Whites in America ever owned slaves
Only 5% of the black slaves transported across the Atlantic actually went to the modern U.S. Most in fact went to Latin America to serve Hispanic slave-owners. But we don’t look at modern Hispanics as evil slave-owners.”
Liberals have one color.
Janet Sturgis says
Pardon any misspelled words, Wayne. They were due to my reply being made in haste. Yes, supremacist, is the correct spelling. I will be more cautious in the future.
Form a previous exchange between us on social media, I think I have a fairly good idea where you stand on this issue. I am disappointed.
Several contributors to these threads have apparently cited “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks an Jews” as a source for their “ information”. This 1991 work by Louis Farrakhan, has been endorsed David Duke, and other white supremacists.
Wayne, you were quick to label FBI material as dubious, but have not questioned resources such as this.
Paul Plante, I obviously missed your comments on the white supremacist/neo-Nazi issue, my apologies.
Note: Janet, you obviously have no idea where I stand on this on any other issue; don’t presume you have the capacity to think for me. In reality, and most formally, I stand for the 1st Amendment as it applies to everyone, and as always, I question when people use half-baked data to try and label and smear people. I actually looked at the data tables the FBI used to compose the so-called article you reference, and the data does not support any of your claims. According to those data tables, almost every race and ethnicity was listed as having committed ‘hate crimes’, whatever they are. Maybe calling people Neo-Nazis satisfies you, and many other people in some way, but for others it is just shallow, wrong, counter-productive and self-serving. I am an Italian, and my family is from the American south. Given these facts, I would be willing to bet if I weren’t so cheap and paid for a 23 and Me DNA test, I would find a superior amount of African, Middle-Eastern and who knows what else crammed into the Nucleic acid double helix. Oh wait, there are 23 strands of DNA that make up the Nucleic acid double helix, and wait for it…you once said on Facebook that 23 was a known white supremacist number or something, and since I had used the number (randomly) to ridicule your premise, that made me a white supremacist/Neo-Nazi…now I think I’m the one who is disappointed.
Janet Sturgis says
Lisa Barker, cite your references concerning Jews owning the majority of the slaving ships, etc.
Janet Sturgis says
Wayne, I must have hit a nerve.
Note: Yes, you did, as Dario Fo so accurately depicts in “Accidental Death of an Anarchist”. Those were my relatives that accidentally leapt (or leaped) from the window to escape…?
Lisa Barker says
Find a search engine and do your own research on Jews and the Slave Trade. I do not wish to help you. You have been hitting raw nerves on The Shore since you arrived, but you must know that…..or do you? Maybe folks coddled you with political correctness due to their respect for the Sturgis family.
Janet Sturgis says
Lisa Barker, I have done my research.
Perhaps, your reluctance to cite credible references, is because you have none, other than hate group literature.
Your taunts and slander have no effect, other than to prove your narrow mindedness.
And Wayne, those WERE my relatives that were intentionally murdered, while those who perceived no threat from a hate group passively watched. Yea, wave a Nazi flag in front of me ( literally or figuratively) and you will get a reaction.
Sorry about your raw nerves, Lisa.
….no, not really.
Note: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants, and the absurdity of their case was satirized by Fo in his play. Try again.
Lisa Barker says
Bless Your Heart.
Charles Taylor says
The “Mirror” demonstrates that there is room for many and varied opinions and positions in this great country. The challenged actions of the football player just part of the menu; no more or less than the extreme rhetoric expressed by the comments submitted. Everybody has a perspective, and possesses a right to express it.
John Ricks says
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
Todd Holden says
You would do well to read Mr. Parks summary above. You sound like the little boy who cried ‘Wolf’. No one cares any longer what you think or how you feel. Move on, tuck those raw nerves back in. Planes, ships and trains leave every day.
john ricks says
You sound like a big mouth Trump supporter , so why don’t you go away with your hurt feelings big boy. This is typical white privilege at its best. Hope you have a great day Massa.
Paul Plante says
Really, john ricks, that “Massa” crap of yours is so, so retro, so 1950s, and so tiresome.
We don’t have “Massas” in this country today, unless of course someone chooses to make somebody their Massa for some aberrant psychological reasons.
Regardless of skin color, john ricks, in this Republic of ours, all citizens are equal.
Hence, there are no Massas.
Antonio Sacco says
I noticed my remarks on this subjects was declined, so much for “freedom of speech”.
Note: Tony, do not see any comments for you posted here. Please try again, and if it still doesn’t show, let me know.
Paula Green says
Here are a few personal examples of white privilege.
1. When I was 3, my family moved into an upper-middle-class, all-white neighborhood. We had a big backyard, so my parents built a pool. Not the only pool on the block, but the only one neighborhood boys started throwing rocks into. White boys. One day my mom ID’d one as the boy from across the street, went to his house, told his mother, and, fortunately, his mother believed mine. My mom not only got an apology, but also had that boy jump in our pool and retrieve every single rock. No more rocks after that. Then mom even invited him to come over to swim sometime if he asked permission. Everyone became friends. This one has a happy ending because my mom was and is badass about matters like these, but I hope you can see that the white privilege in this situation is being able to move into a “nice” neighborhood and be accepted not harassed, made to feel unwelcome, or prone to acts of vandalism and hostility.
2. When my older sister was 5, a white boy named Mark called her a “nigger” after she beat him in a race at school. She didn’t know what it meant, but in her gut she knew it was bad. This was the first time I’d seen my father the kind of angry that has nowhere to go. I somehow understood it was because not only had some boy verbally assaulted his daughter and had gotten away with it, it had way too early introduced her (and me) to that term and the reality of what it meant—that some white people would be cruel and careless with black people’s feelings just because of our skin color. Or our achievement. If it’s unclear in any way, the point here is if you’ve never had a defining moment in your childhood or your life where you realize your skin color alone makes other people hate you, you have white privilege.
I remember some white male classmates were pissed that a black classmate had gotten into UCLA while they didn’t.
3. Sophomore year of high school. I had Mr. Melrose for Algebra 2. Some time within the first few weeks of class, he points out that I’m “the only spook” in the class. This was meant to be funny. It wasn’t. So, I doubt it will surprise you I was relieved when he took medical leave after suffering a heart attack and was replaced by a sub for the rest of the semester. The point here is, if you’ve never been ‘the only one’ of your race in a class, at a party, on a job, etc. and/or it’s been pointed out in a “playful” fashion by the authority figure in said situation, you have white privilege.
4. When we started getting our college acceptances senior year, I remember some white male classmates were pissed that a black classmate had gotten into UCLA while they didn’t. They said that affirmative action had given him “their spot” and it wasn’t fair. An actual friend of theirs. Who’d worked his ass off. The point here is, if you’ve never been on the receiving end of the assumption that when you’ve achieved something it’s only because it was taken away from a white person who “deserved it,” you have white privilege.
5. When I got accepted to Harvard (as a fellow AP student, you were witness to what an academic beast I was in high school, yes?), three separate times I encountered white strangers as I prepped for my maiden trip to Cambridge that rankle to this day. The first was the white doctor giving me a physical at Kaiser:
Me: “I need to send an immunization report to my college so I can matriculate.”
Doctor: “Where are you going?”
Me: “Harvard.”
Doctor: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”
The second was in a store, looking for supplies I needed from Harvard’s suggested “what to bring with you” list.
Store employee: “Where are you going?”
Me: “Harvard.”
Store employee: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”
The third was at UPS, shipping off boxes of said “what to bring” to Harvard. I was in line behind a white boy mailing boxes to Princeton and in front of a white woman sending her child’s boxes to wherever.
Woman to the boy: “What college are you going to?” Boy: “Princeton.”
Woman: “Congratulations!”
Woman to me: “Where are you sending your boxes?” Me: “Harvard.”
Woman: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”
I think: “No, bitch, the one downtown next to the liquor store.” But I say, gesturing to my LABELED boxes: “Yes, the one in Massachusetts.”
Then she says congratulations, but it’s too fucking late. The point here is, if no one has ever questioned your intellectual capabilities or attendance at an elite institution based solely on your skin color, you have white privilege.
6. In my freshman college tutorial, our small group of 4–5 was assigned to read Thoreau, Emerson, Malcolm X, Joseph Conrad, Dreiser, etc. When it was the week to discuss The Autobiography of Malcolm X, one white boy boldly claimed he couldn’t even get through it because he couldn’t relate and didn’t think he should be forced to read it. I don’t remember the words I said, but I still remember the feeling—I think it’s what doctors refer to as chandelier pain—as soon as a sensitive area on a patient is touched, they shoot through the roof—that’s what I felt. I know I said something like my whole life I’ve had to read “things that don’t have anything to do with me or that I relate to” but I find a way anyway because that’s what learning is about—trying to understand other people’s perspectives. The point here is—the canon of literature studied in the United States, as well as the majority of television and movies, have focused primarily on the works or achievements of white men. So, if you have never experienced or considered how damaging it is/was/could be to grow up without myriad role models and images in school that reflect you in your required reading material or in the mainstream media, you have white privilege.
7. All seniors at Harvard are invited to a fancy, seated group lunch with our respective dorm masters. (Yes, they were called “masters” up until this February, when they changed it to “faculty deans,” but that’s just a tasty little side dish to the main course of this remembrance). While we were being served by the Dunster House cafeteria staff—the black ladies from Haiti and Boston who ran the line daily (I still remember Jackie’s kindness and warmth to this day)—Master Sally mused out loud how proud they must be to be serving the nation’s best and brightest. I don’t know if they heard her, but I did, and it made me uncomfortable and sick. The point here is, if you’ve never been blindsided when you are just trying to enjoy a meal by a well-paid faculty member’s patronizing and racist assumptions about how grateful black people must feel to be in their presence, you have white privilege.
He was getting stopped by cops constantly because he was a black man in a luxury car.
8. While I was writing on a television show in my 30s, my new white male boss—who had only known me for a few days—had unbeknownst to me told another writer on staff he thought I was conceited, didn’t know as much I thought I did, and didn’t have the talent I thought I had. And what exactly had happened in those few days? I disagreed with a pitch where he suggested our lead female character carelessly leave a potholder on the stove, burning down her apartment. This character being a professional caterer. When what he said about me was revealed months later (by then he’d come to respect and rely on me), he apologized for prejudging me because I was a black woman. I told him he was ignorant and clearly had a lot to learn. It was a good talk because he was remorseful and open. But the point here is, if you’ve never been on the receiving end of a boss’s prejudiced, uninformed “how dare she question my ideas” badmouthing based on solely on his ego and your race, you have white privilege.
9. On my very first date with my now husband, I climbed into his car and saw baby wipes on the passenger-side floor. He said he didn’t have kids, they were just there to clean up messes in the car. I twisted to secure my seatbelt and saw a stuffed animal in the rear window. I gave him a look. He said, “I promise, I don’t have kids. That’s only there so I don’t get stopped by the police.” He then told me that when he drove home from work late at night, he was getting stopped by cops constantly because he was a black man in a luxury car and they assumed that either it was stolen or he was a drug dealer. When he told a cop friend about this, Warren was told to put a stuffed animal in the rear window because it would change “his profile” to that of a family man and he was much less likely to be stopped. The point here is, if you’ve never had to mask the fruits of your success with a floppy-eared, stuffed bunny rabbit so you won’t get harassed by the cops on the way home from your gainful employment (or never had a first date start this way), you have white privilege.
tkenny says
Would be nice if you attributed the writing to Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Chas Cornweller says
Very succinctly put, Ms. Green. I have seen this somewhere else, before, but it gets to the point
of the prejudices’ (subtle and not so subtle) society has ingrained within ALL of us when we
look too closely at our differences. I still believe in Dr. King’s mantra, IF you are going to judge
and HAVE to judge (my words, not his) then judge a person by the content of their character, not
their skin color. I would go so far as to expound on that and say, judge not, lest ye be judged. In
any regard; creed, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, genetic
information, military service or disability. Only when you have been wronged by that person in
whatever form, may you warrant a negative opinion of that person. But until that happens, it is
incumbent upon one’s self to live and let live, without judgement.
Lenore Hart says
Paul Plante, you clearly don’t have a grasp of how either education or the human brain works, both together and separately. One can teach students to read and write in order to communicate, and can teach them core facts about historical events, mathematics, literature. Also teach them how to use grammar, do chemistry experiments, speak a foreign language or better use their own, and so on. You can make them take a test, or do an experiment, or write an essay and try to ensure they have taken in and remembered the knowledge offered and imparted. The student may even say they believe the new way of looking at or thinking about something. They know they will be graded, after all. But the impulse to give the right answer for a reward is NOT the same as changing how you feel or believe.
Instead, all studies of how the brain takes in and processes information show that NO ONE actually changes a long-held belief or misapprehension or assumption (say, about other religions, or people of other ethnic backgrounds, or how the weather or government works). They watch and listen to the lecture or complete assigned reading or view a video lesson, then leave the class with a new set of knowledge to incorporate. THEN they can either use that new knowledge and outlook successfully, in some useful or positive way — or not.
But the process is not akin to taking the old information out of the student’s head with an ice cream scoop, and pouring in a pitcher-full of different suddenly-accepted new beliefs and thus a changed way of behaving or talking or looking at the world. Ha! If only.
Instead, the brain tends to hold on to old, established, strongly-held notions and beliefs alongside new information, whether these previous older concepts are logical or illogical, true or false. Because they were developed over time, deeply rooted as a foundation, a way of looking at the world by that particular person. This will not change until for some reason the person comes up against an actual experience or encounter or situation where suddenly that long-held and cherished belief clearly no longer works for its bearer at all, forcing them to change their minds. Only then does the voluntary process of taking on a new set of beliefs or actions that WILL work in the changed environment or situation actually begin to occur.
This is why people who live in an isolated or segregated community — let’s say an island in the Pacific — could have strange and erroneous concepts about other places, or about people they don’t regularly interact with on a personal level or already have as friends or family members. So it might make sense to be convinced that, off your island, all other people have two heads — because once your parents told that is true, and so far you’ve have seen no reason to believe otherwise. Even if you are shown pictures of lots of one-headed people in other settings — well, pictures can be altered, right? Not proof at all.
So the person will continue to believe the old notion. This is also why it’s so easy for them to ascribe bad behavior to “the other”, people we don’t yet know or yet understand, because these things are not yet meaningful or even “real” to us. And the mindset doesn’t change spontaneously either, due to lack of will to change, no opportunity, or what is popularly referred to as sheer stubbornness or pig-headedness. Not as long as the bearer of the thoughts and beliefs thinks they are working just fine, and no change is required. Or if the new information maybe is not what they wanted to see or hear, then why believe it? The old way just FEELS better. It feels “right.”
Teachers, on the other hand, are in the classroom to impart essential and specialized KNOWLEDGE, which is useful and enlightening and gives a particular skill set to their students. As Jefferson often noted, that’s an essential component of a democracy. Without literate, skilled citizens any government is doomed to ultimate failure. If teachers could take each student and actually change his or her innermost thoughts and feelings and cherished beliefs, good or bad, they would not be working in the public schools for a pittance.
Instead of working for subsistence wages, teachers would be able to make millions in the employ of the CIA, political campaigns, advertising agencies, and televangelist megachuches, simply telling the other side, or the buyer, or the prospective convert, “Here. This is what you think and believe.” — and voila! Instant change. Then the whole idea of current “successful torture techniques” would be even more laughable, because rather than waterboarding, or applying electrodes to the more sensitive bits on the body, you’d simply need to give the victim a long lecture followed by a multiple choice test. Boom: brainwashed, info collected, done.
But as you also noted, teachers CAN’T do this sort of neurological magic. Nor can anyone else, given infinite chances. Only the person who is in possession of the brain — their own brain — can truly change their feelings, deeply held beliefs, or wrong notions. That is FREE WILL, which we all have and — no matter what the outside situation — and can exercise, internally, as much as we like. So until the owner of that brain comes up against the particular encounter or event, or revelatory relationship with a person of another race or religion, or experience at the DMV, or whatever it takes, there will NOT be any change in the old mindset happening.
So to blame teachers for failing to “unbrainwash” a student who long ago formed strong opinions, independently, and holds them dear and to be true? Unless the teacher has inadvertently arrived at that moment where the old belief no longer works for the person, it would be like assuming the temperature gauge hanging out on our front porch also must have the ability to CONTROL the weather — not just provide us with the data needed to dress properly for going outside.
So before you go pontificating again about the shortcomings of teaching, a complex profession that is rewarding but also ill paid, demanding, and fraught with encounters with people who haven’t a clue about the process, you might want to educate yourself a bit more first on brain activity and the possibilities versus the impossibilities of what can be accomplished between them.
Laurie Wolpert says
As a current teacher and former NCPS teacher, I would like to echo that comment. In any given class, you will have students who are ready to make the jump to college and other students who are ready to jump out the window. You will be responsible for connecting and teaching these vastly different human beings who all happen to be in the same class. If it sounds easy, I assure you it’s not.
All teachers, if they are honest and forthright, will tell you they are not able to reach all of these human beings on the same day, and for our hardest cases in school, the answer may be “never”. This is not because teachers don’t care or are “losers”. To truly educate even one person is an enormous task. Most people who think it’s easy have never really tried. Studies have shown that even a phenomenal teacher is only responsible for about 10% of a student’s eventual success. The parents and socioeconomic status of the child is more far more influential. Teachers must get comfortable with failure and stay optimistic in spite of the long odds, which are often not stacked in our favor.
Paul Plante says
With all due respect to you and your credentials, what you are saying could be taken as a cop-out, and long ago, in my experience with the so-called “educational” system, which turns out some really stupid people, and that is at the college level, if you ever watched Jay Leno interviewing recently graduated college students on simple questions, such as where the United Kingdom was located, and no, it was not either Disneyland or Disney World as one recent college grad answered, teachers did in fact get comfortable with failure , and accept it as a way of life, especially when they had tenure.
As to that loser in Kentucky who believed in Hitler and the SS, he was a real head case, and the teacher should have failed him and referred him to psychiatric counseling.
But all he did instead was whine and mewl and wring his hands together, crying about how he failed.
Pathetic, actually, especially if he is still in the classroom.
I knew Hitler was a loser in kindergarten, because I had a real teacher who made damn sure we knew about Hitler and the Nazis and the SS, all of whom had been beaten by the American flag, which we pledged allegiance to every day, as a show of respect to those who kept us safe as children in this country, for which we were taught to be thankful, because we could have been in a DP camp in Europe behind barbed wire, instead.
So how does someone in the 21st century here in America end up idolizing Hitler and the SS?
How does that happen, Laurie Wolpert?
You are the expert, so perhaps you could educate us on that subject, and I for one would appreciate the lesson.
And don’t repeat what Lenore Hart said about that kid having that idea fixed in his head, apparently from birth according to her model, for that is bull****.
If that loser idolized Hitler and the SS, then he had to get that fixation from somewhere, unless he actually was born with the idea fully formed in his infant brain, which I suppose is possible.
That implicates his parents, his grade school, his high school, his community, his state, and finally, this nation.
So which of them is it?
We would truly like to know.
Laurie says
Let’s keep it 100, as the kids would say.
If you chose to join a white nationalist group, and are attracted to that sort of thing, it’s not your teacher’s fault. You may have some personal or family issues that you need to deal with and sort out. We need to teach kids to take responsibility for their choices and not blame good ol so and so. There are definitely societal injustices and everybody has a story about a time when they faced injustice, but sometimes its not just one side or another. Being a victim is not a great way to go through life. Even if you have been truly victimized, part of being a healthy human being is learning to deal with your problems instead of running from them. Inappropriate blame does not help people grow.
Paul Plante says
I don’t speak baby talk, Laurie, or slang, so I don’t have a clue as to what “Let’s keep it 100” means, and I doubt any of those kids do either.
As to “If you chose to join a white nationalist group, and are attracted to that sort of thing, it’s not your teacher’s fault,” nothing in America today is ever the fault of a teacher, because they are no longer responsible for anything, starting with actually teaching children about their responsibilities as AMERICAN CITIZENS, and if you want to join a white nationalist group in the United States today, you are a whacko, or kook-a-dook or just plain head case, so you definitely have some personal or family issues that you need to deal with and sort out.
As to “We need to teach kids to take responsibility for their choices,” when do you see that process starting?
As for me, I was taught to take responsibility for my actions when I was maybe two years old, and certainly by the time I was five, so what has changed today, Laurie?
Edify us, if you would?
Paul Plante says
In the mid-1970s, after obtaining my masters of engineering, I taught for a bit at a local community college.
Two incidents impelled me to leave that profession and never look back.
The first occurred when I was selected to be on a presidential task force the school was putting together.
At the first meeting, the college president informed us that the Board of Regents in this state wanted us to teach high school math and reading to students getting out of high school, unable to read and do math, and then getting accepted into colleges, still being unable to read and do math, which made them unsuited to be college students.
I spoke up and said, are you kidding me, here we have the Board of Regents admitting that it is operating a slip shod high school system that simply passes people through, and that is an admission we should be taking to the legislature and governor.
Why are we accepting in college students who can’t read or do math?
And the answer is, that the system is a money-making mill in the guise of an educational system, and what is important is the tuition checks.
Needless to say, that was the end of my participation as a task force member, with a promise from the college president that he would try to procure some funding to build me a windmill out on the quad that I could joust with.
The second incident which sealed my fate occurred when somebody in the central office for some reason ran everybody’s marks for all their courses through a computer, and came up with a list of the average number of A’s, B’s. C’s, etc.
Immediately, the scared chickens on the faculty all started getting their heads together to try and figure out what it meant, and what they concluded was that the safest thing to do would be to have everyone mark according to that analysis performed by the central office.
So then, everyone was supposed to apportion marks according to that model, as opposed to what the student actually earned.
I said **** that and marked according to what was earned, which then earned me the enmity of the lily-livered faculty, because I wouldn’t go with their flow.
So I left, because I did not want to be a part of a mill.
And we wonder why we have so many ignorant people in this country, despite them having high school diplomas and college degrees.
Go figure.
So yes, Lenore Hart, I most certainly do understand how the so-called “education” system works.
And Lenore Hart, it is you who obviously does not understand how the human brain works.
It has been known since the 1970s that the brain is plastic, capable of rewiring itself, which means ideas are not fixed at all, except perhaps in the minds of the deranged and mentally ill, which this sick nation is now full of.
When you come out in public in such a superior manner as you do to tell other people what it is that they don’t know, perhaps it would be wisdom on your part to know what you are talking about before you voice your opinion.
Just saying.
Chas Cornweller says
Lisa Barker. I did take the time to research the slave trade of the early Americas (as distasteful as it was-both the search and the historical fact). First of all, the Portuguese predominantly controlled the slave trade from Africa to the Americas. Next, and in order, the British, the Spanish, the Dutch and the French. Looking at statistical evidence of the Jewish populations of Europe during those times, it is highly unlikely the Jew controlled or were even a large part of the slave trade. Unless aligned within banking and economics (which was largely controlled by the Habsburgs of Germany and Holland) I seriously doubt your claims stand up. Very few vessel captains were Jewish. You might want to broaden your search. Ironically, the LARGEST pro-slavery groups were Protestant including the Quakers. The Quakers had a change of heart (it CAN happen) and became the largest and most vocal group of Abolitionist prior to emancipation. Christians actually used the bible to justify slavery by referring to both Old and New Testaments. Seems to me
As far as political correctness is concerned, you might want to coddle your own raw nerve before you cast aspersions against another commenter here. Just spout your facts (such as they are) and leave it for others to respond.
Lisa Barker says
Jews were also the main slave traders bringing Blacks to the US. Aaron Lopez is notable: in Newport, the biggest slave trading hub, “for over 50 years over 50% of bills of lading, concessions, receipts, port clearances carried his signature.”
In all, Jews of Newport owned 300 slave ships. Of 128 slave ships docked one year in Charleston, over 120 were undersigned by Jews of Newport & Charleston. Jews were also over twice as likely to own slaves than non-Jews.
This is why slave auctions weren’t held on a Sabbath.
Chas Cornweller says
Lisa, please cite your sources.
Paul Plante says
And Lisa Barker, in all sincerity, and with all due respect to yourself, what possible relevance does any of that “history,” whether true or false, have to do with the topic of this thread, which is, “Is there really an epidemic of Police Violence in America?”
Do you in some way attribute alleged police violence in the United States of America today to the alleged fact that some Jewish people back when might or might not have owned slave ships?
This is how Wayne Creed started this thread, to wit:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,”
– Colin Kaepernick
This now infamous statement has spread to the entire NFL, amateur sports, and to almost every segment of society.
While no one would deny that in American society, and on police forces across the nation, which are part of that society, there exists a level of racial bias.
But is there, as the narrative goes, an epidemic of police violence against people of color?
Using data from the Department of Justice and the Washington Post, the answer is not obvious.
end quotes
There, succinctly stated is what this thread is about, that question of is there, as the narrative goes, an epidemic of police violence against people of color?
Are you suggesting a connection between this alleged violence and the Jewish slave ship owners you posit the existence of above here?
Then Wayne posed this question, and thought which form the basis for this thread:
How then do we account for the perceptions of how the police treat minorities?
As various polls have demonstrated, black people are more likely to think that police violence against minorities is very common.
end quotes
Could any of that be related in some way to these Jewish slave ship owners you say actually existed?
Is there cause and effect there, do you think?
Then, there is this critical statement:
Ferguson and protests by athletes such as Colin Kaepernick have brought into focus a narrative of police violence and social injustice.
end quotes
In what way would these alleged Jewish slave ship owners be connected to what is known today as the false Ferguson narrative that fuels the Black Lives Matter movement as well as these football protests?
Are you saying that if these alleged Jewish slave ship owners had not of brought the people of Ferguson over here in the first place, that there would not have been a mob in Ferguson to smash, loot, burn and destroy the property of others when the law didn’t give them the vigilante justice they were demanding?
And Lisa, are you aware of the key glaring flaw in Colin Kaepernick’s ignorant statement above here, which is right in front of our eyes, at least for those of us with the ability to see:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
end quote
Are you aware, Lisa, that when Kaepernick made that statement in 2016, Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, was president of the United States of America, or the “country” that the dog-stupid despite his college degree Colin Kaepernick says “oppresses black people and people of color,” and Eric Himpton Holder, Jr., another black man, or person of color, who incidentally, had some real serious personal issues with “white man’s justice,” was the Attorney General of the United States of America, the “country” that Colin Kaepernick, and now the National Football League, say “oppresses black people and people of color,” in the opinion of highly paid and privileged football player Colin Kaepernick, who according to a September 10, 2017 Business Insider article was rewarded with a “record” seven-year, $126 million contract in 2014, which serves to show just how much this “country” and our flag has “oppressed” him?
According to that article, the contract gave Kaepernick a $12.3 million signing bonus and a 2014 salary of $645,000.
So, Lisa, how many working class white people with all of their so-called “white privilege” make $645,ooo per year, do you think?
But getting away from these alleged Jewish slave ship owners for a minute, and back to the ridiculous statement of Colin Kaepernick that it is this country and its flag that are oppressing black people and people of color, given that we had a black president and black attorney general at the time he made the statement, it would have to logically follow (Colin Kaepernick apparently never learned logic or critical thinking in college, which is not surprising) that if the statement were true, it would mean that it was black people in charge of this country who were actually oppressing other black people and people of color, not white people, since in 2016, white people were not in the White House, or heading up the United States Department of Justice.
So, Lisa, staying on topic here for a moment, if what Colin Kaepernick was saying in 2016 was factually true, then it would raise the question of why black people in charge of this country in 2016 were oppressing other black people and people of color, would it not?
And, Lisa, are police officers in the United States of America either the “country” or the Flag?
And that answer is no, they are not either the country or the flag, so if the police in some town or village or county or even state are “oppressing” black people and people of color, that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Star Spangled Banner or the flag of the United States of America, so these football protests are not only stupid, but bogus as a twenty-two dollar bill, and all they serve to do is demonstrate that to play pro football in the United States of America, you don’t need to have even a shred of a brain in your head, just a lot of stupidity coupled with a lot of beef and brawn.
And what of the statement made by Wayne Creed above that “Ferguson and protests by athletes such as Colin Kaepernick have brought into focus a narrative of police violence and social injustice?”
Do you think, Lisa, that it is true that what happened there did spawn not one but many “narratives,” that are being used to fuel these football protests today, which are now spreading down to high school teams, as was made clear in the DAILY GAZETTE article “Members of Niskayuna football kneel for National Anthem – Several players, cheerleader take knee, a la NFL protesters” by Michael Kelly on September 28, 2017, where the team of kneelers lost 68-0?
Why is it, Lisa, with respect to Ferguson and “social injustice,” that the one “narrative” we never seem to hear anything about is the one that contains the truth about all the lies we are continually told about Ferguson, and that narrative comes from the United States Department of Justice itself, as was detailed in the MARKETWATCH story “Justice Department finds no evidence for ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’” by Steve Goldstein, published March 4, 2015, to wit:
“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” became a rallying cry in protests last year over racially motivated police brutality — but a Justice Department report released Wednesday says the facts don’t support the alleged incident at its heart.
The Justice Department released a report on the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson.
To be sure, the report finds “widespread racial bias” in the department and unreasonable use of force, as well as a focus on revenue over public safety.
But it did not back the narrative that helped spur the protests in the city and around the country — namely, that Brown had effectively surrendered peacefully to Wilson.
As the report states: “Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson.”
“As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time.”
“Certain other witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it, despite what they initially reported either to federal or local law enforcement or to the media.”
While some witnesses say Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward “for a brief moment,” the same witnesses said Brown then charged Wilson, according to the report.
The prosecutors “concluded that Brown did in fact reach for and attempt to grab Wilson’s gun, that Brown could have overpowered Wilson, which was acknowledged even by Witness 101, and that Wilson fired his weapon just over his own lap in an attempt to regain control of a dangerous situation.”
“Witness 101” said Brown was shot in the back, but three autopsies concluded Brown had no entry wounds in his back, the report said.
Even clearer was this footnote: “The media has widely reported that there is witness testimony that Brown said, ‘Don’t shoot’ as he held his hands above his head.”
In fact, our investigation did not reveal any eyewitness who stated that Brown said, ‘Don’t shoot.’ ”
end quotes
That, Lisa, is the Ferguson narrative we never hear about, and the one we do keep hearing about is a pack of lies.
How come, do you think?
Lisa Barker says
Why do you people want me to do ‘Your’ research for you? Take a sentence or two, copy, paste and search it for yourself. Ya’ll sure are needy.
Paul Plante says
Doing the research, Lisa, is actually very easy.
Call up Google and ask it, did Jews own slave ships.
I just did and got back 453,000 results, which of course, contradict each other on the question, which is really irrelevant to this discussion, anyway.
As to the subject, the New York Times carried this interesting letter to the editor as follows:
Jews Had Negligible Role in Slave Trade
Published: February 14, 1994
To the Editor:
Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, stated in his Feb. 3 news conference that my unpublished 1977 dissertation for the University of California, Los Angeles, on the history of black-Jewish relations agreed “with everything we said” in “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.”
That anonymous Nation of Islam book claims that the Atlantic slave trade was “dominated” by Jewish merchants (who, according to the authoritative Jacob Rader Marcus, accounted for “considerably less than 2 percent” of the traffic).
Mr. Farrakhan’s is the age-old anti-Semitic technique of distorting the work of Jewish scholars (and Jewish religious literature) to defame Jews.
His animus against me is for writing for the Simon Wiesenthal Center “Farrakhan’s Reign of Historical Error,” exposing “The Secret Relationship” as hate propaganda masquerading as history.
My doctoral thesis — while unflinchingly documenting the involvement of Jews in the slave trade — came to the same conclusion as every other reputable work of scholarship: that in the overall scheme of things it was extremely marginal.
A new charge made by Mr. Farrakhan is that my dissertation proves that the rabbis who compiled the Talmud “invented” racism by concocting the so-called “Ham myth.”
As best I could, based on English translations, I discussed racial attitudes during this period, not only in Jewish sources, but also in the writings of Hellenistic physicians and geographers, as well as the church fathers.
None of my conclusions correspond to this vicious libel.
In recent years, Ephraim Isaac of the Institute of Semitic Studies at Princeton University (an Ethiopian-born Jew) and David B. Davis of Yale University have shown that the Talmudic sages never extended their negative speculations about Ham, Noah’s son, and Canaan, Ham’s son, to Cush, Ham’s other son, identified as progenitor of the African peoples south of Egypt.
The fateful linkage between slave status and black skin as part of a divine curse was first made centuries later by Islamic writers.
They used it to rationalize the Arab slave trade, which, according to the best estimates, carried more Africans in bondage north across the Sahara and east over the Red Sea (14.4 million between the years 650 and 1900) than were shipped west in European ships in the four centuries of the Atlantic slave trade.
Mr. Farrakhan also claimed that “75 percent of the slaves owned in the South were owned by Jewish slaveholders.”
In 1860, there were about 15,000 Southern Jews and 4 million slaves.
If 3 million (75 percent) were so owned, this would mean 200 slaves for every Jewish man, woman and child, or 1,000 slaves for every Jewish head of household.
Jews owned only a fraction of 1 percent — thousands, not millions — of the enslaved population.
HAROLD BRACKMAN San Diego, Feb. 4, 1994
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/14/opinion/l-jews-had-negligible-role-in-slave-trade-183202.html
Lenore Hart says
I’m a bit surprised and disappointed that while there is supposed to be a vetting system here, it’s one that seems to freely allow personal attacks and pejorative, personal insults aimed at individuals — such as the egregious comments made by Ms. Barker against Ms. Sturgis. Some people are told to provide citations, others get a free pass. When people have no facts or logic left to present it’s not uncommon for them to resort to hysterical insults, ad hominem attacks, and personal vilification. And of course “patriotism” — “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” as Samuel Johnson noted. So if all the insults, slurs, and baiting gets through anyhow, why a pretense of moderating?
Note: We only moderate to check for profanity, and that is only because of many complaints. Other than that, you guys are free to go at it semi-4-Chan. Although, we do sometimes review data, mainly out of boredom, and it’s fun. Let the good times roll. Oh, and if we have ever asked for a citation, please remind us of where that happened so that we can delete the request. We never ask for them.
Paul Plante says
The Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, Lenore Hart, defines “patriotism” as “devotion to one’s country,” and a “patriot” as “One who loves his (her) country and zealously guards it welfare; especially a defender of popular liberty.”
So I am curious as to why you disparage the terms above here as you do?
Is it because you yourself do not feel a devotion to your country?
As to Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr. Johnson, the dude was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer, and a devout Anglican and committed Tory.
So pray tell, Lenore Hart, what can he possibly know of patriotism in the United States of America, given that there is no record of him ever having been here, and given that he died one year after the American Revolution ended, and four years before the U.S. Constitution was ratified?
Patriotism may have been the refuge of scoundrels in England, where he was in his time, with England trying to militarily crush the American colonies, but this is not England, Lenore Hart, so what applicability does his trite saying have here?
Paul Plante says
And while we wait for Lenore Hart’s response as to why she disparages patriotism in this country, according to history, as told by Wikipedia, Samuel Johnson printed “The Patriot” in England in 1774, two years before our Declaration of Independence.
“The Patriot” was a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism.
On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but the false use of the term “patriotism” by William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (the patriot-minister) and his supporters.
Johnson opposed “self-professed patriots” in general, but valued what he considered “true” self-professed patriotism.
Does Lenore Hart?
We will just have to wait and see.
Lisa Barker says
If a Republican doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.
If a Democrat doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a Republican is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.
If a Democrat is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a Republican is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a Democrat is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.
If a Republican is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A Democrat wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a Republican doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Democrats demand that those they don’t like be shut down.
If a Republican is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A Democrat non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.
If a Republican decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A Democrat demands that the rest of us pay for his.
If a Republican reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A Democrat will delete it because he’s “offended”.
Republicans respect the opposition opinion
Democrats will assault anyone who oppose them.
I don’t ask for anyone’s permission to be free.
Dana Lascu says
The same tired garbage copied from extremist literature, the same personal insults and trolls. Yes, Wayne, you MUST moderate – impartially – if you want any reasonably intelligent people to read and comment on this blog.
Note: Yes Dana, you are probably right. But, despite the bravado, I deleted and edited, checked and commented on at least 25 comments this week, and honestly, I don’t really have the time for that (unless I am not working the day job). I wish folks could moderate themselves, but that may be asking too much. As far as content, the extremist garbage on right is pretty much the same as extremist garbage on the left. To moderate impartially (there’s really no such thing), you have censor all of it, and you are left with nothing.
Paul Plante says
Amen to that, Wayne.
Sam Stone says
Your comment just reinforces every word of Lisa’s diatribe. I am not quite sure how this country’s people allow the minority to set policy for the majority, but I can assure you it will be short lived. It will not continue much longer. You people have been sold a bill of goods by politicians and liberal judges that just does not exist. Enjoy it while you can. If the President, the military and half this country were to join together, what would you all do?