White Lynchings, Black Murders

So 60 minutes had a piece on lynchings. I've no problem with going into that subject. History is history and has lessons for everyone. Here it is:

However there were two things that I think should be noted about this era in American history that everyone and particularly African-Americans should be cognizant of:

Bryan Stevenson: We want to call this community to repentance, to acknowledgement, to shame. We want to tell the truth, because we believe in truth and reconciliation but we know that truth and reconciliation are sequential. We can't get to where we're trying to go if we don't tell the truth first.

So far, Stevenson's team has chronicled more than 4,300 lynchings. They continue to find more.

This is in line with the NAACP report on the total number of lynchings in the US:

From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched. These numbers seem large, but it is known that not all of the lynchings were ever recorded. Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched. That is only 27.3%. Many of the whites lynched were lynched for helping the black or being anti lynching and even for domestic crimes.

So in a space of 86 years we have the statistical average of 55 lynchings per year or just under 1 every 8 days or so. Lets call it once a week.For the entire country. Indeed no one should be lynched. And we should not look upon those days as something good. However; when we look at it as murder, the carnage that black people, particularly black men do to each other makes the lynch era of the United States look like utopia.

US News and World Report noted for 2015 the following:

What we see here is that on average, between 2001 and 2015, roughly 3,000 black people were killed by other black people.Per year.That is nearly 2 orders of magnitude higher than the lynching era of the US. For those who don't know, an order of magnitude is multiplying by 10, otherwise known as moving the decimal point over one place for each order.

To look at it another way, if we look at the 15 year span we find 45,000 dead black people. That is 10 times more than the 86 year span of lynchings. And that is only accounting for 2001 to 2015. If we were to extend this back to 1969 and come forward, we would see a far far higher number. So while it is completely acceptable to discuss the lynching era as the stain the country that it is, to act as if a far more deadly (and I can say fratricidal) phenomenon is occurring right now. And no amount of staring back at lynchings is going to solve that problem. Which brings me to the second issue.

Since 60 minutes has generally ceased to be a news organization, it allowed Oprah and her guest, Walker to make the totally speculative and incorrect statements:

Stevenson wants people to understand that lynchings were not just brutal footnotes in history, they reflected a belief in racial differences that reinforced segregation in the 1950s and 60s, and, he says, has resulted in a pattern of unequal justice today.

Bryan Stevenson: And now we live in a landscape where you see young black boys and men being rounded up. One in three black male babies born in this country is expected to go to jail or prison.

Oprah Winfrey: You actually think that slavery and lynchings led to African-Americans being disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system?

Bryan Stevenson: Yes, I do. And I think, actually, it's not a hard thing to understand, you know, I look at--

Oprah Winfrey: I think it is a hard thing to understand for people who think people get locked up, people are locked up because they commit crimes.

Bryan Stevenson: About 13 percent of the people illegally in possession of drugs in this country are black. That's about our proportion of the population. You know what percentage are arrested? That's about 35 percent. That is an echo of this consciousness that doesn't value the lives of these folks.

"Black men are being rounded up". Really? Police generally respond to crimes they either see occurring or that are reported to them. When there is a dead body, there is a dead body. Suspects are rounded up. How does Walker not understand this. Ahh because he wants to run to the drugs straw man. He, and by extension 60 minutes, wants the viewership to think that all these "rounded up" men are being rounded up because of drug possession. No sir. Most possession laws result in a fine. to graduate to a prison term one has far more drugs (and more potent drugs) than a simple splif.

But even Walker's math is wrong. While African-Americans may make up 13% of the population (which is what he was trying to say earlier) black men are about half that population. Hence you have 6% of the population that commits offenses far above what their population would suggest. If we return to the homicide chart above, we see that blacks and whites commit roughly the same numbers of homicides. However; once we realize that white males are 38% of the population and that black males are 6% of the population, you realize the the 6% population is committing waaaaaay more murders than they should be if all things were equal.

Lastly, since 60 minutes wanted to discuss interracial violence and terrorism, the following two graphs become very relevant:

You'll note that by percentage of victims, in the past decade whites have been victimized by blacks more often than the reverse. Now lets be completely fair here: We are not seeing blacks go to a park and set out a blanket with their kids to watch a white person get murdered and burned. However; murder is murder.

By the raw numbers more white people have been killed by blacks in the time space of 2001 to 2015 than all blacks known to have been lynched during the US lynch era.

So to close, I agree with Oprah and Walker that there needs to be an honest discussion of racial violence in America. However; I do not think that black people are willing to have that honest discussion because as the old saying goes, when you point a finger at me, three others are pointing back at you.

Clarence Thomas: Prophet?

In pondering events of the past few years including the recent Supreme Court rulings I have come to the conclusion that it is entirely possible that Clarence Thomas is in a sense a prophet. What would make me come to this conclusion? His statement during his confirmation hearings:

This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.[63]

Of course Thomas was referring to the allegations of sexual impropriety towards Anita Hill. But we know that the reason that Anita Hill was even put forth against Thomas was because he was a black conservative. The same black folks, including me at the time, were perfectly fine with seeing Thomas embarrassed publicly and the chance to keep him off the Supreme Court while simultaneously defending Bill "first black president" Clinton for lying about receiving head from an intern (among other events). Bill Clinton was the "right kind of person". Thomas was not. But if we look at Thomas' statement in a more abstract sense we find that he was in fact telling us what was coming down the pipe.

As I've discussed before the purpose of public lynchings is to keep order(Please note that my posts from that era were done in a program that failed to honor paragraphs. That's why they look like one big run on sentence. Sorry about that). That is, whites who lynched black people who may or may not have been guilty of a particular crime (or social custom) did so to let the surviving blacks know who was in charge and to what ends those persons in charge are willing to go to maintain control.

Once you understand lynching as a tool of a larger purpose, rather than simply as an act of violence then you start to pay attention to the WHY rather than the WHAT. This is of course what Thomas meant when he said:

it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you.

The events of the past few years would justify modifying this statement to read:

it is a high-tech lynching for uppity [straight, generally male, generally Christian], who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to [the new] order, this is what will happen to you.

Isn't that what happened to the Baker? The Florist? Brandon Eich? The people on the "wrong side" of GamerGate? Tim Hunt? The UVA Fraternity members? Hell Donald Trump (who I have my issues with). If anything, we saw during the entire Ferguson episode that there was an actual lynch mob mentality as in black people actually holding signs asking for a lynching. But worse than that there was an actual attitude that if you wished to get at the facts and the truth that somehow something was wrong with YOU.

Just now there have been a bunch of black churches burnt down. Out of 7 so far, only one has been deemed actual arson with an unknown suspect. Yet news [sic] reporters keep showing people talking about how they know it was some white supremacist. Not a single one of these reporters [sic] asked basic questions such as: How do you know? Do you have proof?

Tim Hunt was fired from his job due to the tweets of a person who purposely distorted his presentation. What was worse than the random tweet was that the alleged adults that run the university Hunt worked for didn't even have the maturity to look at the entire situation to find out whether Hunt was in fact putting down female scientists or if he was actually noting how backwards his own attitudes towards women were. Hint: it was the latter.

Now as soon as someone on twitter makes noise, governments and corporations go into full censorship mode. The government can't legally do it yet, but they can certainly lean on corporations. After all, no corporation wants an EEOC or DOJ investigation as to why x,y or z "hateful" [enter subject matter here] is still available in their stores or why x,y or z employee is still employed after making a,b or c statement that the "right group" has found upsetting. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who remembers the old "does not mean we endorse...." mantra. Now "guilt by association" is the new normal, even if the associate is not guilty of anything!

The dictionary defines fascism as:

(sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

When I first learned this term, I focused almost entirely on the race angle. At the time, for me it was the central problem of fascism. I could not conceive of fascism divorced from race. Yet if we were to remove the racial angle and the need for a dictator we could easily see that we are in the formative stage (some say "formed") of fascism. If you step out of line on a growing number of ideas you will find yourself in trouble. Your ability to work, even for yourself, will be destroyed with the full cooperation of the business community and a helping from the state.

One could argue that there is in fact Democratic Fascism. Instead of having a dictator you simply have a growing state apparatus, with "justice departments" that can swoop down on any individual, company, town or state and inflict a high tech lynching with real time feedback from Twitter. All a Democratic Fascism needs is for the elected representatives to be believers in the institutional line and willing to enforce them to the death (of those who oppose of course).

Isn't this all what Clarence Thomas told us would come to pass? Clarence Thomas: Prophet?