What is more, Mac Donald suggested that a so-called Ferguson Effect may actually perpetuate more violence in black communities, as protests have emboldened criminals, inspiring defiance and disrespect, if not outright violence against men who are not paid nearly enough to police dangerous communities. And, in many cases, they are not anymore. Mac Donald noted that “[c]ops are backing off of proactive policing in high-crime minority neighborhoods,” continuing, “Having been told incessantly by politicians, the media and Black Lives Matter activists that they are bigoted for getting out of their cars and questioning someone loitering on a known drug corner at 2 a.m., many officers are instead just driving by.” The result? Many black communities are suffering from even more violence, which claims even more lives.
More current research also supports Mac Donald’s perspective, shattering protestors’ claims that she represents “white supremacist and fascist ideologies,” as was reported by the Washington Post following the cancellation of a 2017 Mac Donald speech that was to be held at Claremont McKenna College.
The FBI’s 2018 data on homicides clearly shows that blacks do not need to be protected from white police officers—they need to be protected from themselves. Of the 2,925 blacks who were killed in 2018, 2,600 of their murderers were other blacks; only 234 were white. I need not point out the fact that even if those 234 white-on-black homicides were all committed by cops (they were not), blacks are still 11 times more likely to be killed by someone within their own community. In fact, in 2016, at the height of Black Lives Matter protesting, black Americans had a higher chance of being struck by lightning than being shot unarmed by a police officer.
Additionally, new research from Michigan State University and the University of Maryland dispels the myth that killings of blacks by white police officers are somehow racially motivated and disproportionate to the number of white people killed by white cops. It finds, instead, that the most relevant data regarding police shootings is the amount of violent criminal behavior within the community—not race.
“Our data show that the rate of crime by each racial group correlates with the likelihood of citizens from that racial group being shot,” said Joseph Cesario, a coauthor of the report and a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. “If you live in a county that has a lot of white people committing crimes, white people are more likely to be shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of black people committing crimes, black people are more likely to be shot. It is the best predictor we have of fatal police shootings.” Even when black people are killed by police officers, Cesario noted that it is more likely to be at the hands of a black officer than a white one. “[T]his is because black officers are drawn from the same population that they police. So, the more black citizens there are in a community, the more black police officers there are.”
For those who believe that cop killings are simply due to excessive force, Cesario’s report contradicts that notion as well, revealing that between 90 and 95 percent of civilians who were killed by police officers were violently attacking either the cop or another person when they were killed. And while the media loves to report that blacks are repeatedly gunned down when their cell phone or another item is mistaken for a gun, these incidents are rare.
So the question is, if Mac Donald’s perspective, Cesario’s report, and the FBI’s data are all true, what does the media gain by presenting an opposing, false narrative? Why would news organizations seek to frighten an entire community with tales of excessive, unprovoked violence? The answer is simple: by portraying blacks as sitting ducks or target dummies for trigger-happy cops, the entire black community is made to feel victimized and, thus, in need of a (Democrat) savior.
Suffice to say that when I present these facts in front of college campuses filled with Black Lives Matter supporters, I am regularly shouted down and booed.
* * *
I am constantly amazed by how much of the Democrat Party’s platform is based on hypocrisy and the suspension of any rational thought. After all, while liberals are up in arms about the environment, using “science” as a justification for shoving statistics on global warming and rising sea levels in the face of every Republican they meet, they conveniently overlook the subject of “science” as it pertains to gender. It seems we can rely on the absoluteness of science when determining whether our planet will be habitable in one hundred years, but if a child is born a boy—with the chromosomes and reproductive organs to match—leftists claim biology becomes optional.
Indeed, the left-wing media has developed something of an obsession with trangender issues over the last few years, but what is alarming is how heavily these ideas are being forced upon the black community. While black families have only 9.5 percent of the median wealth of white families, three out of four black children are born to unmarried parents; and of the 36 percent of blacks aged 18 to 24 who are enrolled in college, only 42 percent will graduate (most of them black women), we are somehow being told to instead focus on murders of black trans women.
Of course, no innocent life should be taken prematurely, but if we are going to look at murders in the black community, should we not prioritize more significant areas, as in Chicago, where from January 1, 2018, to July 31, 2019, 687 black people were murdered, the equivalent of 38 murders per month?
But the media is not designed to empower the black community with truth. Instead, it chooses to honor the twenty-two black trans women killed in 2019 with a newly minted “Transgender Day of Remembrance.” Never mind that CNN pointed out that the twenty-two black trans women who had been killed represented the entirety of the murdered trans population, once again squarely positioning this matter as a black issue. And never mind that, as a whole, the black community is quite socially conservative. This is emblematic of how the Left views and speaks to the black community, pandering to nonexistent struggles while failing to address what matters the most.
The liberal media perceives black Americans as failures. They capitalize on our emotions with content that inspires more hate and more anger, rather than disseminating messages of empowerment. Ultimately, they are the ones empowered; the media is in control.
Whether it be pushing anti-Republican rhetoric (even as they protect their Democrat heroes) or convincing black America of its perpetual victimhood, the end result is still the same. The media is co-opting our right to think for ourselves and form logical, rational deductions about the world around us. At outlets like CNN, ABC, and NBC, reporters and anchors spoon-feed political and racial propaganda that limits our willingness to think, and act, critically. And it is all by design—the manifestation of LBJ’s declaration that his efforts would have blacks voting Democrat for the next two hundred years.
It is comical that the Left brushes off Trump’s accusations of “fake news” as antijournalist drivel when, in fact, it is their LameStream Media (to quote the president) that has been found guilty of suppressing the truth and obstructing countless journalists’ reporting processes. Indeed, my other title for this chapter was going to be “On Hypocrisy.”
8 ON EXCUSES
I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to frame the personality types that fall for the verifiable nonsense of the Left. Who are the people that so quickly arrive at the illogical conclusion that America, which is held in the estimation of most as the greatest provider of opportunity in the world, is somehow wrought with irredeemable injustices? Who are the people that not only want, but need this narrative to be true?
In my experience, they tend to be people who regret their life choices and need to dissolve internal regret via some intangible, external force.
For the last ten years, I have been close friends with a young woman named Alexa. Alexa and I met interning one summer for a fashion magazine. She had come by the position with a bit of luck. She was waitressing in Brooklyn, trying to make ends meet as she pursued a career in acting, when one of the magazine editors sat down for dinner at one of her tables. The two of them got to tal
king, and a few weeks later, Alexa was working in a fashion closet. I had come by the position with a bit of persistence. I spent hours at a coffee shop every day for a week and applied to any and every internship opportunity related to journalism that I could find on the Web.
Alexa and I were natural allies. While most of the other interns were wealthy and connected, with family members who bankrolled their lifestyles, Alexa and I were two broke girls without any clue as to what we were doing, trying to make it in New York City. I envied Alexa’s passion for the arts and her lust for life. I even envied the way she’d nonchalantly smoke cigarettes as we’d sit and chat over our coffee breaks. She seemed to me to be the freest person in the world, untethered by the pesky demands of life.
It did not come as a surprise to me, then, when just a few weeks into the internship, Alexa announced to me that she was going to quit the program. She was too tired, spread too thin, and saw no value in working at a corporation filled with unhappy women who were of no consequence to her life’s ambitions. I remember admiring this act of defiant bravery and wishing that I possessed the same free-bird spirit within me.
The next few years felt like a blur. We remained good friends, living upon what felt like two diametrically opposed planes of reality. I spent my time counting every red cent that I had, desperately seeking any and every available networking opportunity in Manhattan. Alexa spent time partying in Brooklyn, picking up acting gigs, and waiting for her big break. I was consumed with bringing my bank account out of the more than $100,000 debt that I had accrued via student loans. Alexa was consumed with acting classes, indie film producers, and putting together a meaningful reel that she could send around to casting directors.
Eventually, I landed a job in finance and finally began making enough money to pay down my loans, plus store a bit into savings. When Alexa and I would meet to catch up, her lectures to me were always the same; she didn’t understand why I was living such a boring nine-to-six existence. She felt that I was choosing money over happiness. And though secretly still admiring her convictions, I cautioned her against not having more of a plan. We complained to and advised one another in a way that only two broke twenty-two-year-olds, fighting for a place in this world, could do. We had exactly nothing and everything in common.
Almost four years to the day that we met, Alexa called me quite frantically in need of a place to live. She was divorcing her husband, a boyfriend she had married on a whim, because she told me that he was a drug abuser. She didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer and needed someone who could help her sort through the steps. I let her move in with me temporarily, meticulously working with her through all the paperwork, until everything was properly filed.
The entire experience brought Alexa to a reflective point. She was sensing that she needed more structure and was growing tired of trying to make it as an actress in Brooklyn.
By then, I had been promoted to a more senior position at the firm I had worked for, and we were by chance looking to hire assistants. I pleaded with Alexa to take the job. She would no longer have to live paycheck to paycheck, I argued. She could start a savings account. She would have excellent benefits and begin making meaningful network connections. And she didn’t have to give up her beloved acting classes, either—she could simply convert them into a weekend hobby. I could sense a shift in her. I knew that she was at a crossroads and ready for the change. Alexa came in for an interview a few days later and met with our team. They loved her and I was given the clearance to formally offer her the position. I was ecstatic to deliver her the good news and she was overwhelmed to hear it. I only asked that she take the weekend to really consider the position, before committing to it. I didn’t want to jeopardize my professional reputation by recommending someone who would quit a few months later—leaving us on the hook to find a replacement.
When the weekend ended, Alexa called me and told me her answer. She thanked me profusely, but she simply couldn’t give up on her dream. She knew in her heart that she could make it as an actress and now, at the ripening age of twenty-six, she couldn’t squander her last good years being trapped inside an office. Besides, she had a script she had been working on for a series. She was going to dedicate every waking moment of her time and energy into perfecting it. I remember feeling both slightly disappointed but overwhelmingly proud of her for not giving up her passions. I felt that familiar flutter of envy at the beautiful persistence of her dreams.
Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I had committed to a boring life and become a slave to my responsibilities. What had happened to my childhood dream of becoming a writer, anyway? Was I missing out on taking chances in my own life?
Shortly thereafter, Alexa decided to leave Brooklyn for Los Angeles. It was for her a spiritual calling and one that she felt would at long last precipitate the creative successes she was so deserving of. Meanwhile, I stuck to the now familiar beat of Wall Street, inching closer and closer to my debt-free goal. In a world dictated by good intentions, I would pause here to tell you that Alexa did make it in Hollywood, simply because it was what she wanted most. In the idyllic world painted by socialists, our desires ought to be enough. Angelina Jolie (under government instruction, of course) would be made to divvy up the acting roles she earns among all other aspiring actresses, because that would be fair. In a socialist reverie, we all deserve the same outcome. Our individual interests, talents, and choices become meaningless. The same result would be guaranteed for all, no matter how little or how much they put into it.
But the inexorable truth is that no such utopia can exist because it runs counter to the human spirit. Free markets, then, are a natural predicament.
Sometimes people learn this through tough experiences, and Alexa learned it after spending a decade of her life trying to catch that big break.
As it turned out, she wasn’t the only person trying to peddle a script in Los Angeles. As the tough reality of her choices began to manifest, Alexa became increasingly drawn to leftist mantras about the world. Today she tells me that she didn’t make it in Hollywood, not because the odds to do so were implausible, but because of an inherent xenophobia that exists in the industry as a whole. It was because of her accent that she didn’t land certain roles and because of a sexist environment that, as a proud feminist, she could no longer bear. As is true with so many leftists today, Alexa doesn’t just want this dire version of America to be true, she needs it to be. Because if it isn’t, she will be forced to accept the bitter reality of her own poor decision-making.
Alexa gave up stable opportunities in pursuit of the much-storied Hollywood dream, and after failing to make it in Los Angeles, she moved back to her native country.
My dear friend Alexa, once a daring, vivacious twenty-year-old young woman with a world of possibility before her, has now transformed into a thirty-two-year-old whom I struggle to connect with.
There is trace resentment in nearly every sentence she utters, a systemic struggle to which she can point to explain away her every shortcoming. Where once conversation flowed freely between the two of us, it is now mitigated by the trappings of political correctness. There is an unspoken understanding between two old friends to keep honesty dammed, lest it unnecessarily destroy our good friendship.
I share the story of Alexa because she is the avatar of so many leftists whom I come across today. They are as furiously committed to exposing the injustices of society as they are to never honestly assessing their own life choices.
No, they aren’t bitter at their own circumstances, they’re just “woke” to the world’s.
Leftists need to believe that success is evil in order to digest their own failures. It becomes easier to say that Hollywood is somehow racist, xenophobic, or bigoted than it is to accept basic business realities like market oversaturation. There are millions upon millions of aspiring actresses, and only so many blockbuster hits and sitcoms to go around. My guess is that had Alexa dedicated those ten years to becoming a pediatric brain surgeon, she would
not today be alleging discriminations.
THE OTHER PATH
Contrast Alexa’s story with a man whom I recently had the pleasure of interviewing, Dr. Ben Carson. In addition to being raised by an illiterate single mother, Carson grew up in Detroit in the 1960s. Needless to say, racial strife was widespread. Throughout elementary school and most of junior high, Carson attended predominantly white schools, where he became known as a “dummy.” This was no doubt partially due to the racial climate, but his initial pitiful academic performance lent truth to the slander. Carson’s mother, a divorcée working as a domestic in white homes and barely making ends meet, knew that her sons were not doing well in school. Mrs. Carson wanted a better life for Ben and his brother, and because she knew that education was the key ingredient to a brighter future, she chose to implement changes that would prioritize their intellectual development.
She began by limiting her sons’ time in front of the television set, allowing them to watch only two or three programs per week. In the rest of their spare time, they were to read books they’d borrow from the library, and produce weekly book reports. To be clear, these reports were not to be submitted to their teachers at school—they were extracurricular assignments within the Carson household.
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