An exchange with a black reader

A reader writes:

It is quite painful the way that black people are targeted by police in this county. [LA replies: The reason blacks are arrested far more often than people belonging to other groups is that blacks commit various serious crimes at rates about ten times that of other groups. Thus the reality is that blacks commit far more crime, which you translate into “police are targeting blacks.” You have flipped reality on its head, turning good into bad and bad into good. Meaning that you have turned good (police apprehending criminals) into bad (racist police “targeting” blacks), and bad (criminal black behavior) into good (innocent black victimhood).] My boyfriend routinely drives his old Oldsmobile from college because every time he drives the Mercedes, he gets stopped by police. [LA replies: “Every time”? I don’t believe you.] They try to find any reason to stop him and search the car, because obviously a black man in a Mercedes is up to no good. We are both MBA’s. And we both worked hard to get them without the benefit of generational wealth or familial connections. [LA replies: There’s the black fantasy, that all white people come from some unfair “privilege.” You speak of your own hard work getting you where you are, but you deny that white people have earned what they have. You systematically devalue and trash the achievements of white people. Sounds like racism to me.] The people I went to college with were so disconnected from reality in America, living in their world of nannies and parents who paid their rent. I can recall at least two occasions when I went to parties and was assumed to be “the help.” [LA replies: Have you never been in a department store and someone thought you were a sales person? It’s a routine event, it happens to everyone. Yet whites don’t make this into, “How dare anyone think I was a sales person?” For you to complain about such a trivial occurrence, which, morever, happened only twice in your life, throws into doubt all your other claims of victimization.] I can also recall countless occasions when I was growing up that I was followed around stores, stopped or search by security guards, etc. I used to cry because I didn’t understand why they would always accuse me of stealing. It damages a person’s spirit to always be defending yourself against false accusations. [I don’t believe you. I think that if you were being followed around as much as you say, you were probably behaving in a troublesome way which made the store managers suspicious of you. I have many times seen blacks act out, give store clerks a hard time, create ill will, and then blame it all on racism.] So, I suspect Gates reaction, if he did “overreact”, was a culmination of all of these types of life experiences. [LA replies: instead of dealing with the facts, you, like Obama, start excusing Gates based on some cosmic racial injustice,] You see police coming, and you think to yourself, not again. Can I just live my life in peace? Being arrested is demeaning, and being constantly profiled despite no wrongdoing is stressful. It is a state of being that whites in America will never be able to understand.. As a black person, despite my various accomplishments, I know that I am always in danger of some random police encounter when outside my home. I will always draw suspicion. [This is a black victimization fantasy. I live in New York City, where 25 percent of the population is black. Blacks are doing all the same things that other people are doing, and they are comfortable and at ease. As your complaint about being thought of as the help clearly indicates, you do not live in reality, but in a fantasy in your head. And such fantasizing is evident in your statement, “I am always in danger of some random police encounter when outside my home. I will always draw suspicion.” You say you have an MBA. So obviously you are a product of the professional victimization training that also produced Michelle Obama.] But for black men, it is 10 times worse. [LA replies: Black men commit armed robbery, rape, and murder eight to ten times more than other groups. In many states and cities one quarter to one third of the black men are convicted felons. The black male population is to a large extent a criminal population. So you are falsely blaming on whites the bad consequences that blacks suffer because of blacks’ extremely high criminality.] And then to think that that state of constantly being watched has extended into one’s own home is understandably maddening. [So there you have it. You create this fantasy of ubiquitous oppression of blacks, and this in your mind justifies going berserk at a police officer performing his job.]

I was not there. So I can not definitively say whether or not the arrest was warranted.. I suspect both parties are exaggerating the story. But, I also can’t imagine why an arrest was necessary once it was established that it was Mr. Gates’ own home. At the point, it should have been case closed, assuming Gates didn’t physically attack any officers. [Again it is clear that you haven’t taken in the facts of what happened. Look through my site for the last week and you will see numerous restatements of the events leading to the arrest. Gates was not arrested for being in his house or for initially refusing to cooperate and show his ID. He was arrested for his continued out of control behavior toward the police officer after the officer accepted Gates’s ID and left his house. Just focus on that fact and leave aside all the generalities about supposed white police targetting of black suspects.]

My parents are now the only black people in their neighborhood, so a couple months after the moved in, the neighbors called to police to inform them that there was drug-dealing happening. The police began to search the trash and routinely harass my brother, who is a college engineering student. He has never bought or sold drugs in his young life. But, he has been stopped and searched by police countless times. Once a black male reaches the age of 12, a semi-annual police encounter is inevitable, unless you just don’t leave your house. It is difficult to lead a peaceful life when someone is always questioning or accusing you.

One of my friends, who is an Engineer, said that one of his fellow Engineers discovered that a very expensive pencil was missing from his office. They take their pencils quite seriously. So, he immediately concluded and told his colleagues that he thought the “thug” has stolen it. The “thug” he was describing was the janitor, a young Latino guy. My friend (who is also white) immediately told his colleague that “thugs don’t steal pencils, engineers steal pencils”. Seriously, what would lead you to believe that this kid coveted your fancy pencil above all the other things he could steal if he were so inclined? I’m not even going to discuss the ridiculousness of calling him a “thug”.

And, no, I don’t assume that all white people are racist, or even that most white people are racist. I have friends of all backgrounds. I work for a Fortune 500 company and I feel perfectly safe from random accusations while I am there, because they know me. But it is when you are in those situations where people don’t know you—at amusement parks, stores, etc. In the absence of your resume, they assume the worst. I am not afforded the benefit of the doubt that I am not a thief, or crackhead, or “thug”. [That is not white people’s fault. It is due to the fact that black people misbehave an order of magnitude more frequently than other groups. I realize that that is unfortunate for other black people who don’t misbehave. But at least recognize that the source of the problem is not white racism, but massive black misbehavior and criminality.

[What you don’t understand is that black people like you and Gates are the dangerous racial profilers in this country. Gates saw a police officer at his door and immediately fantasized “white racist police,” and created an incident where there was none. And, as you’ve demonstrated, in your own way you do the same thing over and over in your life. Since so many blacks see everything through the white racism lens and are likely to turn any routine problematic interaction with whites into a racist incident, why should any sane white person want to have any close dealings with blacks? Why should a white police officer want to investigate a break-in in a black home, if he’s likely to run into a maniac like Gates? Your toxic attitude toward whites assures that normal white people—that is, non self-hating, non white-hating whites—will avoid you.]

- end of initial entry -

Randy writes:

Thanks for your excellent response to the black reader. I am going to pass it on.

I suspect the economic depression will raise white consciousness. People are hurting and have more time to reflect. A few more of the “Gates” incidences, together with the certain, coming social disorder, will bring the subconscious to the conscious. Everyone knows that these double standards and “a… kissing” of the “minorities” is ridiculous and harmful but there was no time to dwell on it, as we all had so many other things to do in our busy work and play schedules.

I was at a party over July 4th and my host commented to me that “You used to always talk ‘politics’ and no one wanted to hear, but now everyone is talking ‘politics.’ “

Ken Hechtman, VFR’s leftist Canadian reader, writes:

You could have met your black reader halfway. It wouldn’t have killed you.

I’m going to try and be my usual low-key self here, but I gotta tell you, I think I had a stronger emotional reaction to this piece than anything else of yours I ever read.

You can’t control the actions of millions of whites you don’t know and she can’t control the actions of millions of blacks she doesn’t know. It ain’t right to lay into her as if she can. She can’t control the violent criminal behavior of other people, she can only control her own. [LA replies: I was not laying into her for the behavior of other blacks or saying that she is responsible for their behavior, not at all; I said that it is tough for well behaving blacks to face the problems caused by badly behaving blacks. What I was laying into her for was the fact that she is blaming on some supposed ubiquitous white racism the consequences of blacks’ actual bad behavior, bad behavior the existence and extent of which she does not acknowledge.] By her account (which we have no reason to doubt) she has done this. She is an educated, gainfully-employed, law-abiding citizen and she’s not asking for a medal for it. She’s just asking to be treated as what she is. I think she’s earned it. Why do you think she hasn’t? [LA replies: I didn’t say she hadn’t; I think I acknowledged she had.]

Let me ask you something else. How many times have you personally been arrested? And what was your longest and most unpleasant encounter with the police? It’s the oldest liberal-conservative cliche there is: “A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested”. Myself, I’ve been arrested 40-odd times. I have a wrist injury I got in custody in 1993 that’s never going to go away. I don’t go looking for sympathy for myself, though. I deserved almost all of that. But I can imagine what it feels like to get arrested again and again and again when you haven’t done anything wrong. Can you? [You’re in a left-wing victimological fantasy like her. People who don’t do anything wrong in today’s America don’t get arrested again and again and again.]

You said this to her:

“I don’t believe you. I think that if you were being followed around as much as you say, you were probably behaving in a troublesome way which made the store managers suspicious of you. I have many times seen blacks act out, give store clerks a hard time, create ill will, and then blame it all on racism.”

You don’t get to have it both ways at once. If you’re going to defend racial profiling, you’re defending the claim that race and race alone, absent any component of behavior, constitutes probable cause to suspect that a crime is being committed. Now, if you’re going to defend that proposition then DEFEND it. Don’t say, “Well, you must have done something wrong over and above being black.” [Certainly there are situations when racial profiling is called for. But I certainly wouldn’t defend racial profiling that involves following people around in stores while they’re shopping solely because of their race. They would need to exhibit some other typical characteristics of store thieves to justify that treatment. So, assuming she is telling the truth (though I gave my reasons for not believing her), if she was followed around and made to feel uncomfortable for no reason other than her race, then that is wrong and I condemn that; if she was followed around for exhibiting signs and behaviors that made store personnel reasonably suspicious of her, than that was justified and I support it.]

LA continues:

But my bottom line is, I don’t think she’s telling the truth. Blacks whine about racism all the time, and when they’re asked for examples of this racism that they’ve actually experienced, they go blank or else come up with some vague thing like, “I didn’t like the way people looked at me … I knew it was racism.” That’s it. See Craig Bodeker’s movie, “A Conversation about Race,” where he interviews black and white liberals about the racism they say is everywhere.and he pins them down on what this racism actually is. There’s no there there.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

If Hechtman has been arrested 40-odd times, and all he has to show for it is an enduring wrist injury, then he’s not only a menace who should be on an island prison, but he’s also astonishingly ungrateful, considering he’s 1) a free man, 2) only suffering from one lasting injury (one injury in 40 arrests ought to indicate how humane our arresting officers really are), and 3) a liberal who actually resents and seeks the civilizational doom of the very society that has treated him with such sufferance. If he admits that he “deserved” most of what he got, what makes him think that a black person who gets arrested over and over is any different? Why does he just take at face value the absurd claim that blacks get repeatedly arrested for absolutely no good reason whatsoever?

Answer: Auster’s First Law.

Ken Hechtman writes:

You wrote:

“You’re in a left-wing victimological fantasy like her. People who don’t do anything wrong in today’s America don’t get arrested again and again and again.”

I have to disagree. My experience and the experience of people I know has been different. With respect, I suggest you sound out people outside your usual circles about this. Do it offline. Do it off the record. Do it in a way that you don’t need to publish an immediate response. But hear them out. They will tell you about stuff going on that you haven’t been in a position to see.

I’ll give you a free one here. My anecdotal take is that the police are visibly less racist than 20 years ago when I first started paying close attention to them. And that makes them drastically less racist than they were 20 years before that.

But something else has changed in that time. The relationship between the police and the policed has changed for the worse in 40 years and that’s across the board. Race has nothing to do with it. Forty years ago, only half the states in America had what they called “no-sock” laws. In the rest, it was legal to resist an unlawful arrest, not just verbally but physically. A few states still had a felony on the books called “Assault Under Color of Law.” That’s a crime that only police could be charged with. If I remember right, California still had it on the books 20-odd years ago and the cops in the Rodney King case got charged with that. The police are more federalized now, they’re more militarized now, they’re a lot more detached from the civilians they police, white and black.

The regime that exists today, the one conservatives defend, the one that says “You may have some rights in court, but you have none on the street,” that’s got no connection to the tradition that prevailed even 40 years ago.

LA replies:

I know that police have been federalized and militarized and SWAT team-ized, and this is very bad, but, as you say, that’s an issue apart from the issues we’re discussing here. Beyond that, I don’t know what your point is, except that you acknowledge that the police are much less tough on blacks than they used to be, a point that fortifies my side of the discussion. It remains the case that someone who has been arrested 40 times is doing a lot of bad things.

Ken Hechtman replies to Sage McLaughlin:

I can’t say it any better than Billy Ayers: “Guilty as sin, free as a bird! Is this a great country or what?”

I got nothing to whine or complain or be ungrateful about. I had a good run and I left guys on the other side in much worse shape than I’m in now. But, moving in those circles as I did, I spent a lot of time in a lot of lockups with a lot of guys who weren’t there by choice like I was. And I’d listen to their stories. And living in the Lower East Side, I’d see people I knew arrested for nothing, and once or twice, the exception rather than the rule, I’d get arrested for nothing myself. It happens. Not where you live, but in the unfashionable parts of town it happens.

LA replies:

Sorry, but illegal drug-consuming anarchists living in the East Village tend to get arrested more than the average citizen.

Hannon writes:

Ken Hechtman writes:

“You can’t control the actions of millions of whites you don’t know and she can’t control the actions of millions of blacks she doesn’t know. It ain’t right to lay into her as if she can. She can’t control the violent criminal behavior of other people, she can only control her own.”

But what does “controlling her own” behavior entail exactly? There is a modicum of awareness that we expect of our fellow citizens regarding a wide range of social functions. One of these is to have formed some predictive, if loose, ideas of the general behavior of various ethnicities, races or classes, including our own. Experiences may vary widely (or wildly) but most of us have developed this type of knowledge as part of normal life and sometimes to survive.

The writer of the missive and Mr. Hechtman both appear to have bypassed the process by which this knowledge is imparted. While they were doubtless exposed to it, it just did not sink in, or it was rejected perhaps. But to reject or ignore the prevalence of criminality in the urban black male population, and the dysfunction of the modern black community in general and its effect on larger society, demonstrates a profoundly willful ignorance of American life. There is no defense for this position among otherwise able-minded adults.

LA replies:

That’s a terrific point. Part of good behavior as a citizen is having basic knowledge of your society and not asserting total lies about it, such as the lie that the reason why eight times the percentage of blacks as whites are in jail for murder, rape, and armed robbery is that the police out of anti-black racism are framing innocent blacks and letting guilty whites go free. A person who, implicitly or explicitly, spreads such poisonous lies about his society, including Obama, is not a person who has the right to claim that he is behaving well.

July 27

Ken Kechtman writes:

You asked:

I know that police have been federalized and militarized and SWAT team-ized, and this is very bad, but, as you say, that’s an issue apart from the issues we’re discussing here. Beyond that, I don’t know what your point is, except that you acknowledge that the police are much less tough on blacks than they used to be, a point that fortifies my side of the discussion. It remains the case that someone who has been arrested 40 times is doing a lot of bad things.

My point is that the police see almost all civilians, regardless of race, in a much more adversarial way than they used to, they expect a lot more deference and compliance than they used to and they’re a lot quicker to go Rambo when they don’t get it. In other words, they treat almost everyone the way they used to treat blacks. So if you’re black and it feels like nothing’s changed, your encounters with the police are just as arbitrary and demeaning as ever, you’re probably right. If you think it’s just you, you’re probably wrong.

You may be interested to know some of the best stuff I’ve read on this subject comes from when I was researching the radical right for the (never produced) “Patriot’s Day” documentary in early 2001. I can’t read most of what the radical left has to say about the police. It’s too shrill and ideological (Police Derangement Syndrome?).

J.J. Johnson at Sierra Times (don’t bother looking for it, it’s not there any more) used to have a regular column called “Whack ‘em and Stack ‘em” that documented unjustified police shootings without cherry-picking victims to make a racial point. Most of what I know about the specific Department of Defense programs like “Troops to Cops” that “assist” local police forces comes from far-right sources as well.

Roger Glass writes:

Ken Hechtman wrote:

“I got nothing to whine or complain or be ungrateful about. I had a good run and I left guys on the other side in much worse shape than I’m in now.”

Oh spare me, mighty streetfighting man.

I knew the micks had beer muscles; I didn’t know the yids have marijuana muscles.

LA writes:

Ken Hechtman has argued that police now have an adversarial stance toward everyone, not just to blacks. Two readers have replied, and, since it’s a different topic, I’m putting the comments in a new thread.

Robert C. writes:

From the original exchange:

They try to find any reason to stop him and search the car, because obviously a black man in a Mercedes is up to no good. We are both MBA’s. And we both worked hard to get them without the benefit of generational wealth or familial connections. [LA replies: There’s the black fantasy, that all white people come from some unfair “privilege.”]

Brings to mind the old “White Like Me” skit with Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live.

July 28

Ken Hechtman replies to Roger Glass:

I can’t win though, can I? If I don’t show off my scalp collection, I’m whining and ungrateful. If I do, I’m woofing about my marijuana muscles.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 26, 2009 01:49 PM | Send