Readers’ comments on the black mobs in Peoria and elsewhere

Karl D. writes:

Re the item, “Mob intimidation questioned”:

“A group of 50 or so young people was walking down Thrush Avenue toward Sheridan Road about 10:50 p.m. Friday, concerning some residents.”

As well they should be. Still, no one explains why a mob of 50 or so blacks were walking down the street in a white neighborhood at night and coming onto peoples property? Even if we were to be PC about this, why would ANY group of 50 people be doing this?

Leonard D. writes:

The Peoria Journal Star article you posted asserted this: “A police report on the incident does not even mention the word race.”

I would not expect the word “race” in a police report. If the alleged event was as Wilkinson reported, the police report would probably mention the word “black” or the phrase “African American”. One wonders if the police report is publicly available.

James N. writes:

Re Peoria:

“”They were doing a show of force,” he said, “to show everybody, ‘Hey, this is their hood.’”

You know, the 1950s-1960s “movement” really highlights, in retrospect, your dictum that the “civil rights” struggle is “good” whites vs. “bad” whites, with Negroes as morally inert objects to be pushed around on the chessboard.

There was very little discussion at the time of what would become of black culture and black society once those concepts and their associated reality were destroyed.

Well, now we know.

Mark Jaws writes:

There is no doubt a national conspiracy of silence with regard to these racist attacks against whites. As you know, I am an activist on the front lines going toe-to-toe with liberals, staking claims and taking bullets. So, the big question I have for you is: Do folks like me have to resort to being mean, in-their-face attack dogs to demonstrate our anger and frustration to get the attention of liberals because being nice to them certainly isn’t working?

LA replies:

The question of what will ultimately make liberals drop their fantastic lies and face reality is one of the most difficult questions there is. I do not dismiss the option of getting angry with liberals. The other day I got angry with a liberal said that while he thinks he’s the embodiment of reason and tolerance, he’s actually a totalitarian. I think it did get him to listen a bit and realize the way he was coming across.

David P. writes:

You might like to read this:

“The Race War of Black Against White”

By Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald, May 20, 1995

Nik S. writes:

Under slavery, nearly every able-bodied black man contributed to his community. An overwhelming number of black children grew up with their genetic mother and father. Violence and theft was a microscopic fraction of what it is in the black community today. Except for the small percentage of black elites who have managed to integrate with white America, most blacks living under slavery were probably happier and better off than they would be today. In fact, one could make the argument that blacks living under slavery in America were the most harmonious and economically productive group of blacks ever. Low unemployment. Low out-of-wedlock rates. Low crime. They had jobs, they had places to sleep, they had family nearby. What a far cry from the sad state of black America today.

LA replies:

I wholeheartedly reject Nik S.’s apologia for slavery. But I have posted it because it shows how black America under conditions of liberal equality and freedom has become so toxic and dangerous that reasonable people start to think the way Nik is thinking.

Nik S. continues:

But since we can never go back to slavery, separation is the only way forward. I shudder to think of it, but is South Africa the future of America? What a horrible thought. And yet, a hundred years ago, who in South Africa would have predicted the current state of affairs there? Let’s hope white liberals wake up before it is too late. Being a former liberal myself, I know that it is possible for. However, in my experience, giving up one’s “liberalness” requires nothing short of a spiritual or religious epiphany. Hard to see that happening on a massive scale anytime soon. But stranger things have happened—revolutions do happen, and when they do, all bets are off. My general advice for my friends these days is to not go anywhere where there will be any significant numbers of black people, which is a tall order for anyone living in a major city or the South.

My friend and I have a saying: “It’s all right ‘cause it’s all white!”

Here in paradisal Santa Barbara, a club owner decided to host a rap concert the other night (read: out-of-towners), and of course shots were fired and brawls broke out and the cops shut the place down…. such events are very rare here in Santa Barbara, because there are no black people here! ;-)

Hannon writes:

Is it my imagination or are the victims selected by feral youth of indeterminate race only young, solitary white men and women? These attacks strike me as decidedly cowardly—a dozen or more violent young males of indeterminate race setting upon someone caught unawares, alone. What will happen when they mistakenly pick a white man, or a group of white men, who will have none of it? Will they ever meet their match in the white population? They know already that they mess with Hispanics at their own peril.

It looks like most non-blacks living in these areas have become extraordinarily adept at avoiding the wrong places at the wrong times, while the black feral youth have become sophisticated in selecting their victims and avoiding situations and people they cannot control through force and intimidation.

LA replies:

I don’t think “cowardice” is the right concept here—we’re way beyond such civilized considerations as bravery and cowardice. The essence of the black savage violence, seen over and over again, is the frenzied destruction of the helpless victim: a person not previously known to a black mob, but being of the wrong race and careless enough to have placed himself in the mob’s vicinity, is knocked to the ground, and then the mob proceeds to kick or otherwise bash him repeatedly in the head and face while he lies there helpless or unconscious. The aim is not necessarily to kill him, but to destroy him as a human being.

This behavior pattern is so primal, so primitive that, as the blogger OneSTDV pointed out the other day, even strong words like “feral” or “savage” are inadequate to describe it. A more accurate word is “sub-human.” Bravery or cowardice are qualities that pertain to human beings. Therefore sub-human behavior cannot be cowardly. It belongs to a different category.

Kilroy M. writes from Australia:

I cannot agree with Nik S.’s view. While negroes in the ante bellum U.S. may have not suffered the same social pathologies that plague their “communities” today, the fact remains that they were nevertheless deprived of human dignity. It’s really as simple as that. Relative peace and prosperity is of little value when you know that you are chattel. By comparison, contemporary black culture reduces its members to be slaves of their own passion (which is unbridled and bestial, evidently). Thus, despite the outwardly bravado, blacks today are psychologically “on their knees.” But I understand why they would prefer this state of affairs to working in chains while being well fed and housed. It’s better to be unsafe and with dignity, then living in a cage.

However, I find Mr. Auster’s conceptual assessment of cowardice and bravery as human traits very interesting: the levels of savagery displayed by the black subjects of this thread is so far beyond the typical understanding of “the savage,” that their attitude cannot be seen as falling within broadly human conduct—and thus it cannot be said that they are honouring the dignity that they have as human beings. Some would say that this is mere sophistry designed to veil a racist sentiment. This is not correct. Only the dimwitted would deny the extreme and unique levels of frenzied hatred on display in these pack attacks. In romantic literature, nobility was often attributed to the savage. No such thing could be done with these beasts—which is not to say that slavery is somehow morally ambiguous, as Nik. S seems to suggest.

June 28

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Nik S. has lost his senses. Describing American blacks under slavery as “harmonious and economically productive” is morally deranged. It is akin to Muslims and their apologists who always cite how “harmonious” the kufir’s life was under Andalusian dhimmitude, where the threat of the scimitar hung always overhead and was not infrequently employed to maintain that blessed “harmony.” American blacks after Reconstruction and before the civil rights era made fantastic progress in terms of education, productivity, and overall well-being. While not producing the sort of civilizational achievement that was typical of whites, American blacks had intact families, communities built around a healthy Christian religious tradition, and unique cultural expressions that were fully a part of a vibrant American society (especially in the realms of spiritual and improvisational musical styles). The notion that free blacks were more retrograde and unproductive than black slaves is offensive and ignorant.

Post-Great-Society black communities have been devastated, and the gains they made in education have been completely reversed. It is true that the present state of blacks in American society is more culturally degraded than it ever was during slavery, but only in the very uninteresting sense that black slaves were not permitted any culture of their own in the first place. It is simply not the case that there are only two options before us—to keep blacks in a bondage that deprives both them and their keepers of dignity, or to encourage their lowest tendencies while discouraging all their best tendencies as is done under liberalism. To suggest otherwise is to deny that blacks are capable of living as dignified human beings in reasonably productive communities, and that is observably false even in the narrow and unique case of the American experience.

American agriculturalists enslaved Africans and deprived them of their due dignity in the grossest, most direct way. American liberals have worked to create anarchic, amoral conditions under which real dignity can never be expected to obtain. Neither of those options is befitting a just Christian people.

James P. writes:

Kilroy M. wrote

I cannot agree with Nik S.’s view. While negroes in the ante bellum U.S. may have not suffered the same social pathologies that plague their “communities” today, the fact remains that they were nevertheless deprived of human dignity. It’s really as simple as that. Relative peace and prosperity is of little value when you know that you are chattel. By comparison, contemporary black culture reduces its members to be slaves of their own passion (which is unbridled and bestial, evidently). Thus, despite the outwardly bravado, blacks today are psychologically “on their knees.” But I understand why they would prefer this state of affairs to working in chains while being well fed and housed. It’s better to be unsafe and with dignity, then living in a cage.

Blacks today are also slaves deprived of dignity. Instead of individual masters, they are owned by the state, which provides them with food, housing, medical care, and other largesse. In exchange for this the slaves do no useful work, and are merely asked to vote occasionally. In contrast to the old system of slavery, under which the master was personally responsible for the conduct or misconduct of his slaves, nobody is held responsible when the slaves of the state misbehave. The master lacks the obligations of a master, and consequently, the slaves frequently misbehave.

Whether or not “it’s better to be unsafe and with dignity, then living in a cage” actually depends on the quality of the cage. While it is true that some slaves in the antebellum South were mistreated, the majority were not. Under the modern system in which blacks are “slaves without masters,” a great many blacks have neither safety nor dignity. Therefore whether or not blacks are better off now than before 1860 is not as open and shut as it might seem. Ultimately, of course, this question is moot, since slavery as it existed in 1860 has been abolished. What needs to be abolished today is the system in which the political elite uses the masterless slaves as a vote bank.

I simply don’t care about the “lack of dignity” blacks experienced before 1860. Nobody alive today was alive in 1860, and increasingly fewer people alive today had any direct personal experience of the Jim Crow era. Most blacks today have been stroked and cosseted their entire lives, told how special they are, and told that modern whites—none of whom were personally responsible for pre-1965 injustices to blacks—owe them everything, including their lives if blacks demand it of them. What concerns me today is that blacks should be forced to obey the law and to behave in an orderly fashion. References to past injustice and “lack of dignity” can no longer be permitted to stand as an excuse for today’s black savagery.

Nik S. writes:

My comments about blacks’ social harmony and economic productivity under slavery were meant to be partly tongue-in-cheek. Kilroy M. is right in that blacks have inalienable rights just like everyone else, and therefore are better off being free, even if their “communities” are in shambles. The problem is, blacks seem incapable of governing themselves—case in point, the continent of Africa. Asians suffered under white colonialism, but many Asian countries are doing quite well today; the same cannot be said for even a single country in black Africa. Until the ivory tower “experts” acknowledge that there are real and significant differences between the races, and that perhaps black underachievement is not entirely due to poverty and institutional racism, all we are really doing is shooting the breeze….

James P. writes:

Sage McLaughlin wrote:

To suggest otherwise is to deny that blacks are capable of living as dignified human beings in reasonably productive communities, and that is observably false even in the narrow and unique case of the American experience.

Blacks are capable of living as dignified human beings in reasonably productive communities only when whites demand it of them and only when whites provide the economic, legal, and political basis for the black productive community to exist. What we observe when whites do not demand civilized behavior of blacks, and when whites do not underwrite the black community, is chaos, corruption, poverty, violence, and death. This is as well-nigh universally true in the American inner cities as it is in the Caribbean as it is in Africa. Can Mr. McLaughlin name a black community that is civilized, orderly, productive, and independent of whites economically and politically? I am hard pressed to name a single example. Middle class blacks in America are largely an artifact of government employment (which only exists due to white subsidy) not black private enterprise.

It is all very well to argue that blacks are theoretically capable of living civilized and productive lives, but the reality of what we observe everywhere in the world when blacks are left to their own devices is very different. Since we cannot isolate ourselves from American blacks, we must insist that they behave. It is clear that they are not going to behave unless we force this upon them.

Leonard D. writes:

I disagree with Mr. Auster and OneSTDV on the matter of the human quality of those attacks. The behavior of these “youths” is the innate form of human tribal warfare. That is: a tribe’s youths organize themselves into a war band, then they sneak into the enemy territory and attack individual targets of opportunity (usually males) in a many-on-one fashion, with unlimited violence. They do not confront the organized enemy: if faced with substantial opposition, they retreat to their own territory. This is ancient behavior, at least partly innate—chimpanzees do it. Calling it “savage” is exactly right: it is how savages act; indeed carrying out warfare in this manner marks a group as savages. But sadly, it is human, so I cannot agree that it is subhuman.

Now, I certainly know what you and One mean when you call it “subhuman”; we are talking about the same thing. Does the word used here matter? I think it does. To call something “subhuman” is to suggest that normal humans aren’t like that, regardless of their socialization. Whereas “savage” merely suggests that normal civilized humans aren’t like that. The difference is the matter of socialization: can youths be socialized not to act like savages? We know they can; youth society before the Great Society era was quite civilized.

If youths are subhuman, the only safe way to deal with them is complete separation. If they are merely savage, then we can live with them after civilizing them. (Re-civilizing, really.)

LA replies:

I didn’t say that the youths are subhuman. I said that the particular behavior is subhuman.

However, Leonard makes good points, and I will think about them further.

LA writes:

Leonard D. may be correct that the behavior in question is more accurately described as “savage” than “subhuman.” At the same time, I cannot gainsay those who call it subhuman, animalistic, or other similar words

Consider the behavior of blacks in the South Africa courtroom during the trial of Amy Biehl’s murderers, as recounted by VFR reader Kevin V. in a July 2008 entry:

I remember when I was in college hearing of a Stanford student named Amy Biehl who had been killed by a black crowd in one of the townships in South Africa. She had gone there to help. Since my roommate at the time was a South African graduate student, I had been receiving a great education about current events there. Even though he was a liberal, he explained to me why Biehl’s activities were near suicidal in nature.

It was the television reports that got to me. I remember very clearly watching the ABC News reports on the trial of the men who had stoned and stabbed Biehl to death as she begged for her life. The courtroom was packed with the relatives and friends of the accused, who had to be admonished by the judge over and over to maintain order during the proceedings. The ABC newsman focused on one dramatic event during that day’s testimony. As a witness for the prosecution described in detail Biehl’s begging while a knife was being driven into her chest down to the hilt, the black women in the crowd began to laugh and perform a mocking ululating while a few performed mock begging motions. The black men yowled in glee and the entire courtroom broke out into hysterics as the black crowd mocked this white girl’s final moments.

People of any race can act like savages. In The Iliad, Achilles, the greatest of all men, a man who is half-divine, behaves like a savage when, in a state of insane fury, he drags the body of the slain Hektor behind his chariot around and around the city of Troy. But, other than blacks, there is no other race or ethnic group that exhibits the kind of behavior Kevin V. describes, and that we keep seeing over and over again.

Dan R. writes:

Excellent work on these stories. What do you think the odds are of National Review covering this?

LA replies:

Once enough mainstream columnists have touched on the issue to make it safe to touch on it, NR will touch on it, but very superficially.

While Obama “leads from behind,” the boys of NR “follow from behind.”

Paul K. writes:

Years ago, I heard the first black Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall profiled on National Public Radio upon his retirement. Marshall told the story of the time he stopped in a restaurant in a Southern town for a few hours. While there, he was approached by a white man who asked him what he was doing, and when he told him he was waiting for a train, the man answered, “You’d better be on it, because the sun is never going down on a live nigger in this town.”

Certainly that’s a disturbing incident, but it was already 40 or 50 years in the past at the time Marshall told it. He wasn’t knocked down and kicked repeatedly in the head, he was insulted and threatened. Still, you could almost hear the interviewer audibly shudder. That story had the power to draw upon the well of white guilt, to make whites feel shame, to ask, “Forgive us.” (Certainly it would not have occurred to the interviewer to ask Marshall if he was the one who should forgive his antagonist.)

But what relevance does that story have to today’s America? Who is in more physical danger now, a black man surrounded by whites or a white man surrounded by blacks? When will whites rise up in defense of their own dignity as a race, their own right to be free from intimidation and assault? Will they ever demand of blacks that they take collective responsibility for the suffering their race inflicts on others? Can we imagine our president, the one elected to bring racial healing, expressing the same outrage about black flash mobs that he did about the mild indignity inflicted upon his friend Henry Louis Gates?

You observed of the Philadelphia columnist Erica Palan, whose friend was seriously injured by a black mob, that she admits that she has nothing to say. I think it’s worse than that: she declares that there is, in fact, nothing to say, not by her nor by anyone less constrained than her.

Mark Jaws writes;

Paul K. asks, “Who is in more danger—a black man in an all-white town or a white person in all black neighborhood?” That is a gimme. In today’s America a white person is ALWAYS in danger being in a black neighborhood. Period. At least the black in the Jim Crow South had at least sundown to beat feet. Could anyone imagine a black gang in contemporary America giving warning to an unfortunate white who has unwisely wandered into “No White Man’s Land” to get out of “duh hood” before the sun goes down? Not now, not ever.

Mark A. writes:

I doubt the future of the United States is South Africa. I think the future is Mexico or Brazil. As I’ve noticed when travelling through Mexico, when you see valuables, you see men with guns. I would expect to see a lot more of that in the United States. In Philadelphia, bank robbery is such a problem that every downtown bank has a Philadelphia police officer inside at all times. In Brazil, businesses hire policemen under the table to go into the ghetto and kill ghetto thieves. I’m not advocating such lawlessness, but we must not thumb our nose at our South American neighbors. They’ve been dealing with “diversity” far longer than we have. We’re slowly learning that it’s not an easy job. I recall reading Hunter S. Thompson’s account of his trip to Colombia in the early 1960s. He described the Colombian police method of dealing with unruly mobs. It consisted of a policeman firing a submachine into the mob until it dispersed. Ammunition is cheap. It looks like life in America is getting cheaper by the day, too.

Kilroy M. writes:

James P. misunderstands my post. I acknowledged that blacks today have no liberty because of their degenerate culture and their dependence on the State. As I said, “despite the outwardly bravado, blacks today are psychologically “on their knees’” and as a consequence “it cannot be said that they are honouring the dignity that they have as human beings.”

Nevertheless, I dispute the notion that it is ever good to live in a cage if that cage is of good “quality.” To suggest that dignity can be forfeited so long as the tyranny is benevolent is dangerously silly. Liberals and other materialist-determinists will have you believe that so long as you’re kept fat and entertained, you can be a Delta serf for the State, and that’s perfectly OK. Of course, it is not. That is something that only traditionalist conservatives and those with a religious inclination understand. This is because we comprehend the transcendent in human nature. A human chattel, albeit a well-off well-fed and well-entertained human chattel, remains a chattel, his transcendent aspect is denied and his dignity is denied. It matters not whether he is “happy” with his lot.

I was certainly not using the past denial of their dignity as an excuse for their present behaviour. My comments about dignity were aimed to refute Nick S.’s earlier comments in relation to the moral ambiguity of the institution of slavery—which I do not believe is morally ambiguous at all (noted: his comments were “tongue in cheek”). Historic injustices, however, cannot be so easily written-off or ignored. As traditionalists we understand that our present culture is part of a greater continuity that harks back into time immemorial. Black are different from us in many ways, but they are similar insofar as their past has also played a role in molding their present. This does not mean that we are liable for what happened to them prior to the War for Southern Independence, but to suggest that there is no link is wrong. Having said that, our approach to rectify these injustices has done more damage than good: the fruits of liberalism are proof enough.

If African-Americans are to be included in the contemporary American nation, then there will have to be some form of reconciliation between (a) the legacy of the past which offends them on a subconscious level, and (b) the present safety of whites. Truism: this will require the repudiation of liberalism in white culture as well as blacks taking responsibility for their present actions. Thus James P is correct in stating that “Blacks are capable of living as dignified human beings in reasonably productive communities only when whites demand it of them and only when whites provide the economic, legal, and political basis for the black productive community to exist.” But if he is “hard pressed to name a single example” of “a black community that is civilized, orderly, productive, and independent of whites economically and politically,” he should consider Botswana. I believe that small state is doing rather well. Perhaps it’s because its elite and citizen class have never been disconnected from their land, don’t have the legacy of being human chattel and are therefore spared the psychological burdens common among U.S. blacks today? I am only speculating.

June 29

OneSTDV writes:

I would also add to your contention that the direct aim of this attack is to degrade the victim as a human being. The leftist response—either covering it up completely or, even worse, censuring conservatives who understand the racial pattern—degrades the humanity of the victim. To liberals, the leftist narrative of black helplessness and white oppression supersedes the actual harm inflicted upon the actual person.

I have a post on this today (Wednesday).

A reader writes:

With regard to your recent comments on the Incorporation Doctrine, it is useful to connect them to your slightly less recent observation of the evils that slaveowners have visited upon their ancestors in the United States. Without slavery, no Fourteenth Amendment. Thanks, slaveowners.

LA replies:

Yes. More specifically, without the draconian Black Codes after the Civil War, no Fourteenth Amendment.

Also, without slavery and its aftermath, segregation and Jim Crow, no Civil Rights movement, no conversion of the American mind to the belief that America is a guilty country that must make amends by destroying itself.

I hope a certain reader doesn’t write to me again arguing that slavery was peachy keen and that I am unfairly imposing the moral standards of 2011 on the people who brought black slavery to America.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 27, 2011 08:18 PM | Send