Y'all Don't Wanna Hear This

Folks Taking Shots At Booker T. Washington Again

There are few phenomena that irk me more than people who talk about Pan-Africanism and don't mention Marcus Garvey. Also high on the list are people who dismiss Booker T Washington because of that Atlanta Exposition speech. A post on Counterpunch did the latter yesterday. Ware and Buhle do what a lot of “intellectuals” do, they discuss the economic problems of Black America and then dismiss those who had provided the solution to the problem because it involves work on self rather than obsess about white people.

2: No More Respectability Economically, Black America is in a state of emergency. We have the highest rates of poverty per capita in the United States. A white household has 13 times more wealth than a black one, and as of July 2015, unemployment is at 10% for blacks compared to 5% for whites.

It’s not supposed to be this way.

Why wasn't it supposed to be this way?

A central tenet of the American Dream is that if you work hard you can succeed. Booker T. Washington embraced this idea. He gave his (in)famous “bootstrap speech” at the Atlanta Exposition in 1865. He tells black people:

Cast down your buckets where you are… In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Washington essentially tells black people to accept segregation. Work hard and you will earn their respect. Accept subjugation…for now.

Of course Booker T. Washington said no such thing "essentially" or "literally". Booker T Washington understood a couple of things that escapes most of his critics. I wrote in my earlier defense of Booker T:

With this in mind I had to revisit why Booker T. Washington would say the things he said to white audiences. Imagine, 1881 in Deep South Tuskegee Al.. There are no black billionaires. What black there are in congress will soon be removed. White people control all economic activity in your area and you need to fund a school for blacks. What do you do? You could indeed go and talk about equal rights, equal opportunity and the like but it is highly unlikely you're going to get funding from those people. So you do what you have to to secure your funding. Does that make his speech any more palatable? No. But it puts it in perspective.

Secondly, I find it questionable that Booker T. Washington did not foresee that when blacks in the South or elsewhere obtained economic and institutional self sufficiency that they would not be able to or desire to go enter (or re-enter) politics. In contrast I look at WEB DuBois and see that for all his academic work, he did not build and [sic] institution. Even worse, from my perspective, he lent his great intellect to a white institution, Harvard. To be more critical, DuBois was lobbing his critique of Washington from the relative comfort of the North, where Marcus Garvey noted: they talk a good game, but when the train crosses the Mason-Dixon line and the conductor asks that they (northern black leadership) move to the segregated car, they all do so.

This institution building is what is actually necessary to address the economic issues facing Black Americans. But so called intellectuals who make their living off the largess of white educational institutions (Ware makes his living teaching philosophy and coordinating diversity at Oklahoma State University) feel free to speak ill of Booker T Washington who was trying to run and finance a school in the deep south. Booker T Washington like Garvey understood how power flows and how nations and communities develop: via the Sequential Equation:

+I;S;E;P;M

The positive intellectual transformation (+I) informs the positive social transformation of society (+S). This is the educational foundation that Booker T was trying lay at Tuskegee.

The positive social transformation(+S) of society informs the economic transformation of society (+E). You cannot have positive economic growth in a community without the +I and the +S. Why does Ferguson have so little employment? -i and -s. the -i manifests as a lack of regard for education, impulse control and future time orientation. This leads to the -s which manifests itself with high levels of crime and general anti-social behavior. Neither of these things lead to or sustain economic growth. This is where the current movements lose. They are interested in the E and P but fail to deal with the I and S, because that would force them to deal with root issues. Continuing:

W.E.B. Du Bois was having none of this. Foreshadowing rap feuds, Du Bois had beef and went to war on paper. He wrote in the Souls of Black Folk:

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission…[he] practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races.

James sided with Du Bois:

Du Bois marked a great stage in the history of Negro struggles when he said that Negroes could no longer accept the subordination which Booker T. Washington had preached.

James, like Du Bois, understood an undeniable existential truth: black people cannot attain collective economic self-sufficiency in a culture stained by white supremacy. To say “bloom where you are planted” is akin to planting a flower in poisoned soil and wondering why it withers and dies. Washington’s statements were a precursor to what we now call respectability politics.

OK lets dispense with the pleasantries and tell the "truf": The negro IS inferior! If the Negro were “superior” the Negro would never have been hauled off in slave ships across the Atlantic. The African would not have seen his homeland carved up by people from thousands of miles away. The inferiority of the negro is and was evident to anyone who's eyes are working. The European and the Asian have put people in space. The African has not. The European has put people on the moon. The African has not. The European and Asian can build their own cities including piping water to various parts of their countries. The African must contract out to the European and Asian to build his stuff (including the headquarters of the African Union! The European and Asian can provide medical care to its citizens, The African has to depend on Europeans to do volunteer medical work for their citizens. I could go on, but to those who notice, we know the deal. In fact most negroes today believe the negro is inferior and show it by not working at Negro colleges and universities (like Ware).

When Garvey said rise up and do what you will it implied a state of inferiority. If we see two teams playing and one team is consistently outplaying the other, we say that the team consistently losing is inferior to the one that is winning. We would not say that the teams are equal. If you want to be considered equal then you do equal stuff. This is what Garvey and Booker T was saying. This is a bitter pill to swallow for many who's ideas of self worth are tied into being seen as equal.

Of course what we are talking about here is a situational inferiority rather than innate inferiority (which is posited by other folks). If the authors are going to write about the economic problems of black people then they are saying that black people are inferior to those groups who are not experiencing economic issues whether they realize it or not.

Booker T Washington understood that as a group the new freedmen and women were incapable of competing in the economic marketplace having very little in the way of assets.

There is another problem with their analysis, what of the non-white, non-blacks? If White Supremacy is indeed the “poison soil” for those deemed “non-white” then the relative success of Asians (who are non-white) would need to be addressed. I suppose it could be argued that the “poison soil” is selectively poisonous. Without that argument it would be impossible argue against:

For years black youth from working class backgrounds have been told: “pull up your pants” and “graduate from college.” They are told to work within unjust societal arrangements. This advice is given as a way for them to circumnavigate an unfair system—not challenge it. The assumption is that if you behave in a respectable manner, your life and livelihood will be safeguarded against a white supremacist culture.< P /> This is untrue.

Untrue for who? These two are seriously arguing that those who “pull up your pants” as in “grow up” and “graduate from college” as in get more than a high school education do not do better than those who do not? Exactly what data do they have to support such an idea? None. It is people like Ware and Buhle, with a shameful assist from Counterpunch why so many black men waste their youths on some “I can't do anything because of racism” bullshit. Nobody said it would be easy but then again, nothing worth doing is easy.

Are there obstacles that even educated/skilled black workers face? Yes. Of course had we been doing what Booker T. and Garvey told us to do: build our own institutions we wouldn't have to worry about it so much. But it's easier to disrespect Booker T when managing diversity at Oklahoma State rather than educating black minds at Tuskegee. Having established the error in judgment about what Booker T was about and the actual issue of economic problems in various (but not all) black communities, lets go back to their first point:

Overt expressions of racism were replaced with hiring practices guided by nepotism. Human resource offices and college admissions departments may not have had “whites only” at the top of their applications, but the makeup of those in the workforce and on campuses expressed that sentiment. Redlining, started in the 1940s, concentrated minorities in impoverished districts thereby diluting the power of the black vote.

Apparently it has been lost on the authors that rigged districts actually created “safe” black seats, thus increasing the number of black representatives. Had these “concentrated minority” districts not existed many black representatives would not exist. If we were to follow their logic and sprinkle minorities into “majority” locations, they would be outvoted (majority rule) at every turn, and these two would be complaining about that.

Also you would think that those involved in colleges and managing diversity would mention the number of applicants that simply do meet entry requirements.

Then began the war on drugs.

Almost overnight communities of color became targets of police officers hungry for drug busts. Instead of policing centered on solving specific crimes, officers began focusing on geographic areas.

Of course the authors fail to mention that is was black folks, both middle class and working class who were the victims of the gun play and other violence that accompanied the drug dealing in their neighborhoods who BEGGED for police intervention in their neighborhoods. Such inconvenient facts go umentioned in the author's need to place blame on anyone but a black person.

Derrick Jensen Discovers the New Left Crow

Writing in Counterpunch:

For the past decade or so, deplatforming—the disinvitation of a speaker at the insistence of a special interest group—and blacklisting have been, to use the word of an organization that tracks the erosion of academic freedom through the increased use of deplatforming, “exploding.” Between 2002 and 2013, disinvitations from universities went up six times... Things are much worse than I’ve so far made them seem. Brown University recently held a debate about sexual assault on campus. In response to the very existence of this debate—and this time it’s not The Onion reporting, but rather The New York Times—the college set up a “safe space” where those who might be made uncomfortable, or to use the politically correct parlance, “triggered,” by the debate could remove to relax with “cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma.” A student gave her reason for using the safe room: “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs...” And I just read an essay by an instructor in which he mentions an adjunct whose contract was not “renewed after students complained that he exposed them to ‘offensive’ texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students’ ire and sealed his fate.”

The Ghost told you about the New Left Crow some time ago.

In addition to that the New Left Crow has an entitlement complex. Just as Jim Crow operated to keep the undesirables in line, the Left Crow increasingly leverages the law to enforce it's on privileges. No longer is it the case that you should leave those one dislikes or disagrees with alone. One must also endorse that which they do.If you do not you are to be sanctioned. Do you own a store that happens to make wedding cakes. If you don't make one for a gay wedding you get to have a day in court and possibly get run out of business. Is it because you told the gay couple to get out your store?

Derrick will soon figure out that it goes far beyond the university.

Chairman Of What?

And y'all wonder how Rachel got away with it for so long.

The Megyn Distraction: The Rule Of Vagina Politics

For those who watched the Donald Trump Show AKA Republican Debate you know that Trump was asked an irrelevant question AKA: Personal smear question by one Megyn Kelly. It was a classic example of Cuckservatism and the Feminist Party (AKA Democratic Party) total surrender to gyno-politics and an blatant attempt to distract the US voter from possibly the most important comment made that night.

Megyn Kelly asked trump about his comments about women he does not like:

“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,”

Let's stop here for a moment. I don't know anyone who speaks kindly of people they do not like. So asking someone about the unkind words they said about someone or people they don't like is like asking whether air has oxygen. The purpose of that question was to smear Trump and to attempt to use gender issues to break him and by extension any man who does not toe the feminist line.

“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump interrupted with a sneer, earning cheers from the crowd.

Lets stop here as well. It is well known that Rosie O'Donnell and Trump do not like each other Why is this even RELEVANT to a presidential campaign? It is not. Again this is an attempted smear on Trump.

“For the record, it was way beyond Rosie O’Donnell,” Kelly said – before launching into a laundry list Trump’s most misogynistic moments:

Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on the Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president? And how do you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton – that you are part of the war on women?

I no longer watch The Apprentice due to Trump's actions in regards to Obama's birth certificate so I don't know of the comment. I do know that when I did watch the show he has said some pretty harsh things to "losers". Even if the charge is true how does that equal "war against women"? Particularly given that women have been given equal access to his Apprentice show including is daughter? Even though the Apprentice is a show with "show" expectations it's outcome is generally a matter of merit. You either made the goal as team leader and won or you missed your goal as team leader and got sent home. If anything The Apprentice is about performance, not gender. No wonder Clinton, who thinks she is owed the presidency because she possesses a vagina would have a problem with it.

“What I say is what I say, and honestly, Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be based on the way you’ve treated me, but I wouldn’t do that.”

Why did Donald say "I've been very nice to you, althought I could probably not be based on the way you've treated me"? Well it's not like that twit Donna Brazile said on This Week, that is was because Megyn wasn't sucking up to Trump like a little girl. No, it was because Trump saw it for the smear attack that it was and responded in kind. And the problem with that is, that these Cuckservatives and the Feminist Party aren't used to men standing up to them. That's why none of the male panelist told Brazile that she was full of shit for that comment. Worse than that, these people on This Week even proposed that women as a class cannot be insulted by any man. Seriously. Apparently for them "equal treatment" means "special treatment".

And here's the other sexist thing about Megyn's question. There was no commentary about insults to men. Trump has called men, politicians and others, all kinds of things. Yet that isn't even up for discussion. No, it's only a problem if a woman gets insulted. Then it's an attack on all women. Utter bullshit.

Of course the GCP (Grand Cuck Party) loves the fact that attention is being paid to Megyn and her bullshit question because while people are talking about that they are not talking about the comment Trump made about donors.

FOX News Brett Baier (talking to Trump): Now, 15 years ago, you called yourself a liberal on health care. You were for a single-payer system, a Canadian-style system. Why were you for that then and why aren’t you for it now?

TRUMP: As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here.

What I’d like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I’m negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid.

You know why?

Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians, of course, with the exception of the politicians on this stage. (uneasy laughter) But they have total control of the politicians. They’re making a fortune.

Get rid of the artificial lines and you will have…yourself great plans…

BAIER: Mr. Trump, it’s not just your past support for single-payer health care. You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies….You’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, and Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business-related favors. And you said recently, quote, “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”

TRUMP: You’d better believe it.

BAIER: — they do?

TRUMP: If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I’ve given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.

TRUMP: I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?

TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you what, with Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why?

She didn’t have a choice because I gave. I gave to a foundation that, frankly, that foundation is supposed to do good. I didn’t know her money would be used on private jets going all over the world. It was.

BAIER: Hold on…..We’re going to — we’re going to move on.” (Transcript: Read the Full Text of the Primetime Republican Debate, Time)

Never before has a debate of presidential candidates has it been said outright to the voter how the donor system works. Yes, those of us intensely interested in politics knows this but the average voter doesn't. And you'll note that none of the persons on stage denied what Trump said because they knew he was right and if they claimed otherwise he'd release the receipts.

This was the bombshell on the stage. This is the issue that actually unites the left and the dissident right. They both know what the donors do and they both object to it but are too locked into their ideologies to join forces to dismantle the growing corporate donor state partnership.

I guess Megyn Kelly can be proud of the service she has rendered for the nation. Vagina never fails to distract Americans from important things.

Recasting A Harriet Tubman Quote

Reading Black Agenda Report's latest I saw the following oft quoted statement attributed to Harriet Tubman:

“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

Obviously a reference to literal slave times in which I actually find it hard to believe that people didn't actually know they were slaves. I would hazard to guess that the objects of Tubman's ire knew full well their social (and economic) status but for whatever reason were comfortable with the situation. Furthermore; for whatever reason those who declined Tubman's offer it is quite possible that what Tubman offered was, to them, not a better option.

You'd be tempted to say that with all the abuse and whatnot, why wouldn't freedom from that be a better option than a state of enslavement. I would point you right back to Tubman's quote. Did she say that they were afraid? No. I'm sure it's there somewhere but this quote only speaks to the state of bondage and convincing someone that they are IN that state, not that the person was afraid of the consequences of trying to remove themselves from that state.

All that to point out the obvious that today, 2015, unless you are incarcerated, there is no black American in a state of slavery. And those who find themselves in state sanctioned slavery AKA incarcerated, it was most likely due to their own behavior rather than at the hands of kidnappers and slavers. So I'd like to update Tubman's quote for the modern era. I could have freed a thousand more if only they opened their eyes and saw they were free.

Why Are Black, Crime and Poverty Always Hanging Around Each Other?

One of the things I highlighted in yesterday's review of the New Yorker's piece on "The Cop" was their admission that where there are relatively high numbers of black people there are also high levels of crime and poverty. One of the people interviewed in the piece discussed the decline of his neighborhood noting that the loss of and absence of jobs as the primary causes of the crime problem. Lets look at this issue.

As a Garveyite I note Garvey's note of the difference between the UNIA-ACL and the NAACP. The UNIA was primarily concerned with the economic development of "African Communities [League]". Much like the much maligned Booker T. Washington, it was Garvey's idea that once the African developed himself to stand as an equal among nations by running all aspects of their own nations (and communities) then political power would naturally acre and exploitation by others would cease. In contrast the NAACP had as it's goal the social acceptance of Africans first and foremost, with politics being the tools by which this could happen, particularly for the talented tenth. The clear evidence of this was the attacks on the Black Star Line Inc. by Dubois via the NAACP print organ (and personal discussions with Liberian "leadership"). This is not to say that there weren't serious issues with the BSL, but you'd think that the NAACP would have spent more time trying to help out rather than trash it. But this lack of an economic uplift program by the NAACP and others has lead to the issues discussed in Ferguson and elsewhere.

Let us go way back in time and observe. When white folks colonized America who "gave them jobs"? Serious question. The mantra of the various liberal "intellectual" is that no one will give black people jobs. Remember, as a Garveyite the question isn't "who will give us a job" but rather "Where and how can I make my own job?" The former question is one that is taken from the mind of the dependent. The latter question is one who takes responsibility for his own future. When white folks colonized America they were in full responsibility mode. We must work and build to survive and provide for our offspring. Things were much different for the enslaved African.

The enslaved African in early America was a tool, no different than cattle. Sorry, but it's true. The only purpose for Africans in America was to do work for other people. In general the African lived a life that consisted of "who will I work for...?" In the case of skilled Africans such as those in and around Charleston South Carolina, where the skills allowed the African to contract other business outside of his primary owner it was still with the permission of said owner who expected a cut of those earnings.

Even after the African was "emancipated" from physical bondage his situation was still largely one of dependency. No 40 acres and no mule. Money was in the hands of the former owner and the rest of the non-black population so that's where the employment was.

What does it take to build and maintain a modern community? You must have businesses that cater to the immediate needs of those in the community. Food stores, gas stations, electricians, plumbers, banks, schools, clothing stores. After the basics are taken care of you can have businesses that are not directly related to human "needs". These businesses generally build the wealth of a community. This is why there is usually a "downtown" or "main street" in any relatively well off town. There may even be a couple of them. The more there are, the more likely that the community is "wealthy". Of course I'm generalizing here so please don't send a note about what I missed.

With these requirements in mind, look at Ferguson or just about any black neighborhood. How many of these things exist? Where they exist WHO is it that built and/or run them? Often it is not the members of the communities themselves. And this is UNLIKE any other community you'll walk into. Go to a Chinatown and see who's running the establishments I mentioned. Go to any other ethnic or racial enclave and observe.

Now I went to university in Tuskegee AL, Lansing MI and Ithaca NY. Tuskegee was the ONLY "college town" I was in where there wasn't a vibrant community built up around the college. I'll be honest. I was shocked. One supermarket and no shopping whatsoever. If you wanted to do anything other than buy alcohol and pig intestines you had to go to Auburn or Montgomery. I'm only slightly exaggerating.

What is consistent is that in black communities whether they are rich or poor, is that the same "enslaved" mentality exists: "who will I work for...?" Remember that the black middle class is disproportionately made up of people who work for local, state or federal government entities. As Frantz Fanon pointed out, the black middle class, where it exists is a false middle class because unlike the middle classes of other groups it consists of those who's income is derived from wages rather than self-employment or some other enterprise.

The other problem is that often when black people DO start businesses, they do not employ anyone. They are sole proprietorships with emphasis on SOLE. So when you have a community full of people who are thinking "who can I work for?" with no one creating job creating businesses you have a community that is dependent upon other people.

For real though, how many white people go looking in black communities for jobs? Now how many black people go to white ones to find work? going deeper, how many go to Chinatown for work?

A couple of months back I discovered that Oprah's business Harpo doesn't even have black people running the top level of the business. Jay-Z's Tidal music streaming service is run by white people out of Norway (or one of those way north countries) with nary a negro in it's employ (on the technical front). If black people cannot even expect the multimillionaires of us who are actually creating jobs to employ us, then how can we seriously expect anyone else to do so?

And so we see why most cannot grasp why Black, Crime and Poverty keep hanging out with each other. Poverty cannot be alleviated when the thinking is "what can someone else do for me" or "they will not hire me". Poverty is alleviated when the thinking is "What can I do to advance myself?" and "How can I be independent of them". The latter kind of thinking leads to future time thinking. It leads to planning. It makes the thinker evaluate the consequences of choices like strong arm robbing a convenience store.

And these rich negroes need to step up to the plate. We know that it's hard to get financing for businesses if you have no or garbage credit. Oprah and these other entertainers (who are the large portion of black multi-millionaires) need to start seeding businesses in these communities and do less charity work. White communities were not made nor are maintained by charity. They are maintained by property taxes and sales taxes.

Lastly, we have to stop being sympathetic to the law breakers in our communities. We know who they are and we know the damage they do. It's time to put 'em out if they don't shape up. One suggestion, A kid gets arrested, word goes out to the community leaders. Leaders go to the home where that kid's parents are and make it clear if that kid doesn't cease and desist, the parent will be made to pay. Pay could be eviction from the premises. I know it's harsh, but folks have to be made to understand that the community will NOT tolerate the bullshit. Take some of these failing HBCUs are turn them into boarding schools for the hard headed. They get removed from their parents and put into these places to shape up by those better equipped. It's better than prison. Cheaper in the long run too.

So when we get serious about business building and dealing with the criminal class, Black, Crime and Poverty will have a parting of ways. Until then expect more of the same.

Notes On That Darren Wilson Interview

So the New Yorker has an interview with Darren Wilson of Ferguson fame. I first heard about it through Gawker *spit* which of course did it's best to do the "Look! Racist!" shtyck that doesn't work on me. So I got a chance to read the article and there are a few items I wanted to point out (this will be lengthy).

Many Americans believe that Wilson need not have killed Brown in order to protect himself, and might not have resorted to lethal force had Brown been white. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his new book, “Between the World and Me,” writing of the psychological impact of incidents like the Brown shooting, says, “It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding.” Coates also notes, “There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country.”

Many Americans are total idiots.

That aside it's pretty funny to see people armchair quarterback a life or death situation in a high crime area when they have exactly minus zero experience in gun use, law enforcement or even the basics of self-defense. I wonder if these "many Americans" think that trying to rob a convenience store "need not" have happened? Or if physically assaulting a police officer because he told you to get out the street "need not happen"? This goes to agency and whether one believes that black people ought to be held to the same standards of behavior as everyone else. What part of Michael Brown's actions were "necessary"? Ta-Nehisi Coates needs to have a seat. That is all. The "whims of our country" is: Don't rob people. Don't hit police (generally speaking). Apparently this ass has a problem with law abiding behavior.

en Wilson applied for a police job, he focussed on the northern portion of St. Louis County. The towns in what is called North County tend to be poorer, and to have a higher percentage of black residents, than other towns in the St. Louis area—such as St. Peters, the broadly middle-class, white town where Wilson grew up. North County also has more crime. Wilson felt that working in a tough area would propel his career. “If you go there and you do three to five years, get your experience, you can kind of write your own ticket,” he said. [my underlines]

So by the New Yorker's admission: More blacks, more crime and more poverty. Is that racist to write? Is it racist to say? If a police officer notices that the more blacks there are in a location there is more crime, just as the New Yorker just wrote, would he or she be punished?

McCarthy had spent two years working as a police officer at a predominantly black middle school in the city of Normandy. (Michael Brown attended the school, but not when McCarthy worked there.) McCarthy told me that police officers he knew often disliked working in North County schools, because many students had an “us versus them” attitude. But he loved talking with the kids and “investing in the community.”

Why do students have an "us versus them" attitude? If you're school age and doing school things there shouldn't be a care either way about police. If you're concerned about what the police are doing it seems to me that either you've been trained to have a certain attitude about police or you're doing something which would make police presence a "problem".

He recalled, “I would do the adopted-student program—take them to basketball games and things of that nature.” Many of the kids confided in him about the stress of having to be “man of the house” when a parent worked nights. McCarthy said that his openness made the students more respectful: “I wasn’t the police to them, because they knew me on a personal level, rather than what that badge stood for.”

In other words he was a man who can guide and punish. Exactly what a father is supposed to be. Of course these boys are missing fathers. All those women talking about not needing no man but fucking up their children. Go on with that.

Too many cops, he went on, weren’t interested in understanding the “root causes” of crime; they preferred to “go on calls, handle the call, and leave.”

Or perhaps they didn't feel like being parents to other people's kids for a living 'cause that's not what they signed up for.

Wilson recalls hearing “old-timers” talk about racism in Jennings’s past, but their stories didn’t make a vivid impression on him. McCarthy, however, said that in the seventies and eighties the Jennings police “did not play.” He added, “Basically, they’d beat you.” During that period, many blacks from St. Louis moved to North County. Numerous towns there went from being majority white to being majority black. The police forces remained almost completely white.

Generally speaking when a black person tells you that so and so "don't play" it means that when it comes to whatever it is, they don't mess around. So if black residents knew that the Jennings police did not play, then they knew that they couldn't carry on with whatever bullshit they were carrying on with in their own neighborhood. And why did blacks move to Jennings? Because they were escaping the nonsense they were doing in St. Louis. Of course that goes unsaid in the article.

McCarthy showed me several police logs from those decades, and many entries documented bigotry on the part of Jennings authorities. In April, 1973, a lieutenant described a holdup that had occurred near the police station. The suspects were two black males. At the bottom of the entry, someone had written, “Men, you better leave your wallets at home. Niggers are going to come in the police station next and rob us.” An entry from December, 1979, described an eighteen-year-old black male who was believed to have been involved in the shooting of a police officer but was then released, “due to his lack of mental capacity.” Below this, someone had scrawled, “Kill the Fucker.”

Excuse me for being more concerned about the hold up (near a police station!!) and the shooting than the names police officers called the criminals that did those things.

“We have to fix what’s happening now. That’s my job as a police officer. I’m not going to delve into people’s life-long history and figure out why they’re feeling a certain way, in a certain moment.” He added, “I’m not a psychologist.”

I think Wilson has a point here that should be addressed. What is the job of the police officer? Is it to be substitute father's for boys who lost their way? Isn't that a social worker's job? If there is agreement that a lot of what Wilson saw was a result of social issues, then I would agree 100% that there needs to be social services directed at those individuals. Question though: How far would the public allow that to go? Removing children on the table?

“If you live in a high-crime area, with a lot of poverty, there’s going to be a large police presence. You’re going to piss people off. If police show up, it’s because it’s something bad, and whoever’s involved can’t figure out the problem for themselves.”

Police are where the crime is. Simple. Drop the crime rates, drop the police presence. A informs B.

“When I left Jennings, I didn’t want to work in a white area,” Wilson told me. “I liked the black community,” he went on. “I had fun there. . . . There’s people who will just crack you up.” He also liked the fact that there was more work for the police in a town like Jennings—more calls to answer, more people to meet. “I didn’t want to just sit around all day,” he said.

"I didn't want to sit around all day." So there is so little crime in non-black areas that police sit around all day. It stands to reason then that if police are very active in your hood, it means that there are a lot of people doing things they shouldn't be doing AND it's likely that those persons are not white. Don't be mad at me, this is what is written in the New Yorker. Now if Wilson is full of shit, then the New Yorker should have shown that in fact in white areas police are not sitting around all day.

Barb had been working in Ferguson for seven years, as one of three women on a force of roughly fifty officers. “I always thought it was easier to work with guys, because they’re not as catty,” she said.

I'm certain she meant "bossy".

uly, 2014, Wilson visited the home of Scottie Randolph, a sixty-seven-year-old African-American man, after Randolph reported hearing gunfire. Randolph says that shootings often occur in his neighborhood when “the teen-agers are out of school.” The frequency “depends on whether they’ve got a drug war or a gang war going on.” His neighborhood had fallen into disarray because of “the economic meltdown.” He added, “A lot of people lost what little they had.” Young people who couldn’t find work resorted to selling drugs. Randolph told me that he needs the police for protection, but—echoing the Justice Department’s findings—feels that they target blacks for fines: “I kind of resent the fact that they’re using minorities as a cash cow.”

Scottie is so used to the gun fire that he knows the difference between gang conflicts and drug conflicts.

:-/

As for the jobs situation, it reminds me of Frantz Fanon's comment on the native middle class and it's failures. I'll let you look it up.

I asked him if he agreed with Randolph that the neighborhood’s main problem was the absence of jobs. “There’s a lack of jobs everywhere,” he replied, brusquely. “But there’s also lack of initiative to get a job. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” He acknowledged that the jobs available in Ferguson often paid poorly, but added, “That’s how I started. You’ve got to start somewhere.”

There are some who blew their top at the lead the horse to water" comment. Of course the full statement is far different than how it was portrayed. That said though there are a couple of points to make here:

1) If a person drops out of school then getting a job is going to be hard. A lot of young men who are unemployed are so because they failed to finish high school.

2) With immigrants taking a lot of construction jobs (I see them all the time) poor and uneducated black men have very few avenues to get jobs in a field that can result in wage growth. But you don't see the local Black Lives Matter group discussing reducing legal immigration and a total end to illegal immigration. Too busy filming police I suppose.

3) It must be admitted that there are a lot of young men who want that quick cash. I've seen plenty of documentaries where young men and boys said that they wouldn't take a minimum wage job when selling [whatever] gets more money. So you can lead that horse....

Good values, Wilson insisted, needed to be learned at home. He spoke of a black single mother, in Ferguson, who was physically disabled and blind. She had several teen-age children, who “ran wild,” shooting guns, dealing drugs, and breaking into cars.

We should ask the New Yorker straight out if it disagrees with the "good values" advise. Forget the single mother for a minute. Is ANYONE going to argue that teaching values to children is not a top priority for parents?

If he caught the kids, he checked them for weapons, then questioned them. He recounted a typical exchange: “ ‘Why you running?’ ‘Because I’m afraid of getting caught.’ ‘Well, what are you afraid of getting caught for?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Well, there’s a reason you ran, and there’s a reason you don’t want to get caught. What’s going on?’ ” Wilson said that he rarely got answers—and that any contraband had already been thrown away. Once, he arrested some of the woman’s kids, for damaging property, but usually he let them go. In his telling, there was no reaching the blind woman’s kids: “They ran all over the mom. They didn’t respect her, so why would they respect me?” He added, “They’re so wrapped up in a different culture than—what I’m trying to say is, the right culture, the better one to pick from.”

"I don't know". Every time it's "I don't know" and "I didn't do nothing". Every damn time. For real though. If you're going to do a crime and get caught at least learn how to say something along the lines of "I decline to speak until I see a lawyer." When you are caught in the act of committing a crime and say "I don't know" and "I didn't do nothing" to the police, who will be on the stand repeating your words to the jury, you are instantly considered a liar with no credibility. At least the person who says "I'll speak with my lawyer" comes off as somewhat bright.

I saw a lot of people fall out over the culture comment. But you cannot escape that there is a criminal class with a criminal code, a culture if you will. We know it. The police know it. It's not racist to point it out. And it's hypocritical when you live a "law abiding culture" life to be upset when the police point out the culture of those who's behavior you choose not to engage in.

I met a man from St. Louis named Sean Bailey, who had been stopped by the Ferguson police in 2005. He had parked his mother’s car outside a Chinese restaurant, left a friend in the car, and run in to get take-out food. The police issued three violations, charging Bailey a hundred and two dollars for parking in a fire lane, and citing him for failure to register his car and driving without a valid license. Bailey, who was unemployed, couldn’t afford to pay, and when he missed deadlines he was charged additional fines. He has since been arrested half a dozen times for having outstanding fines, and has spent three weeks in jail. He says that, cumulatively, he has paid hundreds of dollars, but the city says that he still owes another hundred and fifty-eight. He has little hope of paying the debt, because he and his four-year-old daughter are homeless.

Lets count up the mistakes:

1)Parked the car in a no parking zone (fire lane). These things are marked. You know the risk when you park there. But that's a compound on...

2)Driving an unregistered car. This car shouldn't have been on the street ANYWAY but this fool not only puts it on the road but also parks it in a no parking zone. You'd think in the interest of discretion he'd make sure not to park it somewhere where police would have a legal excuse to investigate it. But that's a compound on....

3) No license. So this fool has no valid license. No registration (and I'll assume no insurance) and STILL took his behind to a store and parked the car in a no parking zone.

What kind of special stupid are we dealing with here? And wait. He's unemployed to the extent that he cannot afford to pay the fine that he practically begged to be given, but has enough money to purchase take out food when EVERYBODY *should* know that home cooked meals are far cheaper? What kind of special stupid are we dealing with here?

Look, I'm sympathetic to the man being homeless and it's sad that his daughter has to suffer for his mistakes but this guy walked straight into this problem on his own. It wasn't the city's fault his dumb ass drove on an invalid license in an unregistered car and parked it in a no parking zone while buying food he couldn't afford. His choices landed him in the situation. Lets treat this man like the adult he is and stop blaming the police and courts for his predicament.

The Justice Department found other examples of systemic racial bias in Ferguson. From 2012 to 2014, the Ferguson police issued four or more tickets to blacks on seventy-three occasions, and to whites only twice. Black drivers were more than twice as likely as others to be searched during vehicle stops, even though they were found to possess contraband twenty-six per cent less often. Some charges, like “manner of walking in roadway,” were brought against blacks almost exclusively.

This paragraph makes the same assumptions the DOJ report did, that each group, blacks and whites commit offenses at the same rate. We know this is not the case nationally, or in any town or city where statistics are kept. And I'll say from experience in various mixed environments that walking in the roadway is almost an exclusively non-White, non-Asian thing. In my experience while whites will jaywalk across a street as frequently as anyone else, black youth far outnumber any other group I've seen walking down the street in a manner to disrupt car flow.

Just before noon on August 9, 2014, Darren Wilson was heading for a lunch date with Barb when his radio announced that there was a “stealing in progress” at the nearby Ferguson Market and Liquor. The dispatcher offered a description of the two suspects. Wilson radioed back: “Do you guys need me?” The dispatcher replied that the suspects had “disappeared.” [my underlines]

So Wilson knew what the suspects looked like when he came upon Mike Brown who literally "fit the description".

Brown, Sr., recalls worrying that his son’s physical stature might make him a target for the police. “We had a conversation about just following orders,” he said. “After you thought that you were being disrespected, get a name and a badge number, so your parent can reach out to the police department and file a complaint.” Most important was a simple directive: “Obey.”

I'll take Sr. at his word. It's too bad Mike didn't listen to his father.

Each spring, Duane Foster, a music teacher at Normandy, who knew Brown in passing, tells his seniors, “Since you’ve been a child, you have known every year, from August to June, that you’re going to go to school. . . . For the first time in your life, you won’t have anything set in stone. And that should make you scared.”

Please stop this Foster fellow from giving this speech. If the school and parents have done their job, then the lack of structure shouldn't be scary at all. It should be looked forward to. It should have been prepared for. In fact before it even happened, the youth should have been given enough responsibility so that the transition is from guided freedom to complete freedom and full responsibility. If your kids are scared at the new freedom and responsibility then I suggest you have not done your job properly.

“How do I compete with somebody struggling with poverty? How do I come into a classroom and say that you don’t need to be selling drugs or participating in gang-like activity?”

The above is so sad. An adult, responsible for moulding the minds of young people doesn't know the answer to drug selling and gangs. I think Foster should stick to teaching music and leave the rest to more qualified people.

Michael Brown’s father played an active role in his life, but this isn’t always the case for Normandy students. A third of Foster’s students have a father in jail. Many of them believe, rightly or wrongly, that their father is innocent, and this inevitably shapes how young people in Ferguson view the police.

Suggestion: If papa is in jail, he probably did something wrong. That's what we call a teachable moment. He's your dad but he fucked up. Don't do what dad did. There shouldn't be any confusion here.

Dorian Johnson told me that, before entering the market, he and Brown “never talked about stealing things.” Johnson claimed that they were instead immersed in a discussion “about the Bible and God—how you’re supposed to be as a human going through life.” After Brown stole the cigarillos and they left the store, they resumed this conversation. Johnson also claimed that he didn’t even acknowledge that the theft had taken place, because he didn’t want to rub Brown “the wrong way.” He told me, “I was being a real good friend and staying with him, even though I know he committed a crime,” and added, “It wasn’t like he robbed the store—like he held it at gunpoint or anything—so I didn’t think the guy was really gonna call the police.”

When I did my write-ups on the incident I wrote that Dorian Johnson was one of the best witnesses for Wilson. I honestly think Dorian is and was a person of conscience who was caught between a sense of loyalty and knowing right from wrong. A lot of brothers are put in these situations Johnson has his own issues, but I see him in a far better light than Brown and had HE been shot instead of Brown I would probably feel far more sympathy. As this paragraph shows, Brown was entirely indifferent to the fact that he had tried to (or did) rob a store and assault the manager. I've known people who thought that their criminal activity was normal and it was proper to just go along with your boys when they do criminal shit.

Jonathan Fenderson, who is a professor of African-American studies at Washington University, in St. Louis, told me that young black men are inclined to see the police as an “occupying force.” Intentionally or not, Wilson’s decision to blockade the street sent a message: You will defer to the power that I exhibit, or I am going to force you back into place.

I'm going to hope that Fenderson had more to say than that. Of course it is a power move as well. Police shouldn't exercise power? African-Americans aren't supposed to be subject to the same police procedures as everyone else? There should be special procedures for black folks? Am I reading DailyStormer or The New Yorker? Lets be clear here: Either you think black people are homo-sapiens sapiens with the same capacities as everybody else (A Garveyite position) or you think black people are somehow different than everybody else and need special black[people] codes. Make up your mind 'cause you absolutely cannot have it both ways.

According to Wilson and several witnesses deemed credible by the Justice Department, Brown reached into the Tahoe’s open window, grabbed Wilson, and punched him. This narrative, the report says, is supported by bruising on Wilson’s jaw and samples of Brown’s DNA found on Wilson’s collar, shirt, and pants. It’s not known why Brown did this, and many have speculated that Wilson provoked Brown somehow.

I'd like to know whether the New Yorker deems the witnesses credible. If they do not, I would like to know on what basis they find those witnesses non-credible.

Secondly I'd like to know what people have speculated Wilson to have done that justifies Brown hitting him particularly given the fact that Brown had just finished robbing a store and assaulting the manager. Clearly his prior behavior and his nonchalant attitude about it shows that it is Brown who is most likely prone to violence and provocation rather than Wilson.

Melissa Harris-Perry, the commentator on MSNBC, noted that Wilson’s use of language—much like his use of the word “demon”—was dehumanizing, and conformed to the “myth of the black brute incapable of pain himself bent on inflicting pain on others.” She added, “Americans long have had difficulty in understanding, acknowledging, and having empathy for the pain of black men.”

Melissa- Harris-Perry. Sigh.

Yeah Mz. Harris-Perry, never you mind that this particular black man had just finished robbing a store and assaulted the manager and punched a responding police officer in the face. Let's talk about racial code words.

Aldridge talked with residents, gathering firsthand accounts of what had happened.

As the DOJ report showed a lot of people claiming to be witnesses didn't witness anything at all. So the correct way to present this would have been to say Aldridge spoke with residents, gathering what [they said was] first hand accounts of what [they thought} had happened.

A few days later, he returned and watched, horrified, as looters ransacked a store. He and several others formed a raggedy line of defense. Some looters walked away, Aldridge says; others didn’t. “Some called us house niggers,” he said, his voice cracking.

Guess what I'm called for writing all this truth?

Aldridge told me that, based on what he had heard and read, he believed that Brown was in “surrender mode” when Wilson shot him. When we spoke, he admitted that he had not yet read the Justice Department’s report on the shooting. It was hard not to notice a parallel: both Aldridge and Wilson had turned to the report that buttressed their own world view. It was as if the two Justice Department reports had come to present opposing realities.

So Aldridge, like a whole lot of people simply went with whatever narrative fit their personal views of police, poverty and black folks. The justice department had not presented opposing realities. It presented a reality that a large number of people are unwilling to accept because it shatters the mythos' that they abide by. The DOJ report doesn't support Aldridge's position on what happened between Brown and Wilson at all. He cannot admit it. He like far too many "educated" black people have completely dropped the critical thinking skills that they have acquired for some two bit movement that they believe represents the best interests of the black collective. In a sense they are like Dorian Johnson who didn't want to rock the boat with Brown by pointing out he was a crook who just committed a crime. Instead these people want to behave as if no crime had occurred.

Legitimate questions linger about the shooting. If Brown was unprovoked, why did he reach into the police car and punch Wilson in the face? Why did Wilson fire ten shots? A young activist in Ferguson, Clifton Kinnie, said, “The story doesn’t make sense. Black youth don’t fight police—we run.”

Except when black youth shoot at cops.

In May, I posed this question to Brittany Ferrell and Alexis Templeton—a charismatic black couple who are two of the most visible activists in Ferguson. Templeton said that the two Justice Department reports “pretty much contradict one another,” adding, “You have to say, Damn, if the Ferguson Police Department is racist, and Wilson works in the Ferguson Police Department, that means he might be racist, too.” She said, “They need to open up and relook at this case.” Ferrell said, “The system is going to do whatever it has to do to protect itself. And if that means protecting Darren Wilson, the officer who represents that system, they’re going to do that.”

So if the police department is generally "racist" then one should suspect that everyone in it is racist. OK. Soo....

Since black folks commit crimes at a rate 7x that of the white population, and by the New Yorker's own writing, where there are large numbers of black [and poor} people, there is a lot of crime, we should assume that all blacks are criminals.

Or...since most black males who commit crimes, wear baggy jeans and oversize t-shirts, any black wearing baggy jeans and oversize t-shirt should be assumed a criminal.

See generalizations, group blame and stereotyping works in a whole lot of ways. Do we REALLY want to take it there?

. He urged me to consider what might have happened if Wilson had known Brown, or Brown’s grandmother, and was able to say, “Does Miss Jenny know you’re out here?” Such a question, Reverend Wilson said, has a more potent moral authority.

Clearly Brown didn't give a damn about what his granny or daddy thought. And the Rev should see Wilson's story about the blind, disabled mother. I'll also remind the reader that one grown up in the Canfield apartments saw Brown walking down the street and said to himself that Brown ought to get out the street, but he didn't go out and say that to Brown himself. Why? Why do we expect more from [white] police officers, than we do our own black neighbors?

Michael Brown, Sr., also feels “resentment” toward Wilson, and feels that nothing, not even Wilson’s going to jail, can rectify what happened. When we spoke of the day of the shooting, I asked him what he believed had happened at Ferguson Market and Liquor. “That’s just out of character,” he said. He also insisted that the video didn’t “show all the facts,” though he wouldn’t elaborate. His son, he said, “was an average kid that did teen-age things and had fun and tried to live his life.”

Yet another parent in deeeeep denial about what their kids are doing and are capable of doing. The tape says Brown did it. Johnson was there and said Brown did it. Yet Brown Senior thinks he knows more than the tape, Johnson and the guy who Brown assaulted. Just a reflection of the deeeeeep denial that is afflicting many who are still talking about hands up don't shoot.

Manufacturing a Magical Reality

Magic is the art of deception. The phrase "watch the hands!" comes immediately to mind whenever I see a magic show. No. Chris Angel is not floating in the air. No the person was not cut in half. No, no and no. When we see these tricks what we are seeing is manufactured reality. We have deception, distraction and optical illusion used to create a reality that the viewer has "witnessed" and cannot be told didn't happen.

The current Black Lives Matter movement is much like a magic trick. It's entire purpose is to get the viewer to believe the manufactured reality that they are presenting in order to push an agenda that does not square with the facts. The Black Lives Matter movement is a lie of the worst kind in that it uses a kernel of truth, that there are police that abuse their power and sometimes kill black persons, and gets the people watching to believe that if somehow the police were "brought under control" that black folks as a whole would somehow be better off. Left leaning publications keen to show that they are not "racist" fail to question and critique this movement but allow their publications to be used as a means of manufacturing this reality. Here is the latest example. Over the past 3 days I have received e-mails from the Guardian in regard to what they felt was important US news

So from Friday until today the top stories as it relates to the Black Lives Matter movement were "Campus Police...", "July is Deadliest Month of 2015 for Police-related killings", "Philadelphia Police-related Deaths Plunge, But Is Reform Enough?"

Lets focus on the second title. July the deadliest month of 2015 for police related killings. Well OK. What ELSE has happened in July 2015?

Worst in 43 years?

Hey Guardian did anyone over there think ANY of that is relevant to the "July the deadliest month of 2015?" No one at the Guardian thought that was an important "US News" report? I mean if you want to discuss police killings and police are usually where the crime is happening; why not report on that too?

With their deaths, this year's homicides reached 189, far outpacing the 119 killings by July's end in 2014. Nonfatal shootings have soared to 366, compared to 200 by the same date last year. July's total was the worst since the city recorded 45 killings in August 1972, according to The Baltimore Sun.

And

Perched on a friend's stoop, Sherry Moore, 55, said she knew "mostly all" of the young men killed recently in West Baltimore, including an 18-year-old fatally shot a half-block away. Moore said many more pills are on the street since the riot, making people wilder than usual.

"The ones doing the violence, the shootings, they're eating Percocet like candy and they're not thinking about consequences. They have no discipline, they have no respect — they think this is a game. How many can I put down on the East side? How many can I put down on the West side?"

So it's not police doing the shooting. Probably explains the lack of "Black Lives Matter" protests. And this is why I call this the manufactured magical reality. No sane person who really thinks black lives matter would be spending this amount of time on the police. Sane people know who kills the vast majority of black people. They know that it is those killings that bring police attention to the various places where black people meet their maker at the hands of the police. If you solve the first problem you simultaneously solve the second. But you CANNOT solve the latter before and without solving the former. It's like putting an empty cake pan in an oven having not made the batter. Don't care how long that oven is going, you get no cake.