“Anti-snitching” black man with criminal record hired as assistant D.A. in Philadelphia

Andrew W. writes:

You’ve written in the past about how high rates of black criminality mean that a significant proportion of even non-criminal acc have criminal relatives and friends, and how this creates an anti-law enforcement mentality in black communities.

There was a post at the Vdare blog this morning about a black man, Kevin Harden, who has been hired as an assistant district attorney by the black D.A. of Philadelphia, Seth Williams, despite Harden’s ample criminal record and his well publicized opposition to “snitching,” i.e., his opposition to blacks providing evidence to police and prosecutors about crimes committed by blacks.

As a Philadelphia resident in 2007, Harden was featured by Anderson Cooper on CNN concerning his “anti-snitching” views:

KEVIN HARDEN, PHILADELPHIA RESIDENT: The cops can’t take care of me. I snitch on that man, and somebody come after my family. Then everybody going to be dead. You saw what I’m saying? So it ain’t even no point you going there. The streets can handle themselves. Survival of the fittest. That’s the philosophy of the streets that I grew up on.

COOPER: Kevin Harden says it’s a problem that’s been woven into his social fabric of his neighborhood.

HARDEN: This the problem people don’t understand about Philly. Everybody is amidst in this. Everybody got a son, or a daughter, or a sister or a cousin that is the murderer, was the murderer, was the drug dealer, is the drug dealer. So I understand the problem. I understand what the epidemic is. I realize. That’s a whole other social structure going on with our people. This thing didn’t develop over years and years and years. [Emphasis added.]

COOPER: Even when you’re the victim.

HARDEN: Look, it’s a realistic thing, like I didn’t go to court when I got shot.

Even if it were possible to set aside the anti-law enforcement mentality that Harden supports, does he sound anywhere near articulate and intelligent enough to be working as a district attorney?

LA replies:

Note Harden’s argument. He does not say that blacks should not snitch on black criminals because the criminals are one’s relatives. Rather, he says (1) that the “snitcher” might get killed for snitching; and (2) that the probability of getting killed for snitching is greatly enhanced by the fact that the criminal has many relatives in the community who (Harden implies) will kill the snitcher even if the criminal himself is behind bars.

But the point remains as I said: the black population is a largely criminal and pro-criminal population.

Now here is part of what I said as a caller to the Bob Grant problem in 1995 about blacks’ joy at the O.J. Simpson acquittal:

We know that between 1/4 and 1/3 of black men are convicted felons. That means that a very large part of the black population are either criminals, or are the relatives and friends of criminals. That means you have a pro-criminal population. Now, how do criminals feel toward the police? They regard them as their enemies. So naturally the black population is anti-police.

The “cultural attitude,” the “racial experiences” that blacks have supposedly had, and that we whites don’t understand, simply comes down to the fact that blacks are a pro-criminal population that sees the police as their enemies, and that will decry any policy work as “police brutality,” and then uses this “police brutality” as an excuse to rationalize any further criminal acts by blacks against whites.

But here’s a further problem that results from the existence of a pro-criminal black population. Cities need, among other things, police officers and prosecutors. A largely black city must (by contemporary thinking) have a largely black police force, so that the racially sensitive black population will not feel that they are being ruled over by whites. For the same reason, such a city will also go out of its way to hire black prosecutors. But, given the pro-criminal mentality of most blacks, these cities will inevitably be hiring police officers and prosecutors who are pro-criminal.

Further, it has repeatedly occurred that when there is unhappiness at the relative paucity of black police officers in a city, more black police are hired, which is done by dropping standards. And the inevitable result of the expanded hiring of blacks is a huge increase, not just of pro-criminal black police officers, but of criminal black police officers.

Please note: I am not saying that all black police and prosecutors are pro-criminal. I am saying that a significant portion of them are. And in the story of the hiring of Kevin Harden by a black D.A., we have undeniable proof of the pro-criminal mentality of black prosecutors.

- end of initial entry -

James P. writes:

Based on the interview Andrew W. quoted, Kevin Harden is totally unable to express himself correctly in English. Evidently when the DA’s office hired him, they thought his familiarity with the colorful patois of the ghetto was a plus.

I am stunned that someone with his criminal record and lack of language skills was ever admitted to law school (what was his Verbal LSAT score, I wonder?), let alone that he was hired as a prosecutor.

LA replies:

Look at it this way. If a city is largely black, then inevitably many of its officials will be black. And since the black population is largely criminal or pro-criminal, and since the black population is largely low-IQ, inevitably many of the officials in that city will be criminal and low-IQ.

This, by the way, is the dimension of minority racial preferences that mainstream conservatives never touch. Even that small remnant of mainstream conservatives who still oppose racial preferences on the grounds that they are unjust, NEVER oppose racial preferences on the grounds that they put incompetent people in responsible positions and so lower the functioning of the entire society.

The solution? Society must (1) return to traditional morality and authority; (2) acknowledge the truth about racial differences, thus freeing itself of the destructive lie of racial sameness which drives minority racial preferences and white guilt; (3) eliminate all minority racial preferences; (4) eliminate most anti-discrimination laws; (5) allow for normal segregation at the local level; and (6) reject white guilt as the false and evil thing it is. If we did these things, blacks could make acceptable lives for themselves in communities and institutions geared to their abilities and aspirations, and whites would stop destroying civilization in the insane effort to make blacks equal to themselves.

From a conservative (or rather traditional liberal) American perspective based on belief in the individual and the idea that people should be judged by the content of their character, this is not a radical proposal, this is not a radical proposal. When white people perform in life at a less than ideal level, society doesn’t particularly worry about that. But when black people perform at a less than ideal level, the entire society bends itself out of shape in a hysterical effort to improve blacks’ abilities and outcomes, to “close the gap.” If we simply accepted that people’s lives are a reflection of their abilities, qualities, and interests, then we could let individuals of any race perform at their natural level and not sweat the results. If some black people do very well in life, fine. If other black people perform at a mediocre or below average level, well, that’s just the way it is. That is the American approach to the problem, as contrasted with the racial Marxism that now dominates our thinking and policies.

Chuck Ross writes:

I’m reminded of another Anderson Cooper interview where he spoke with a rapper named “Cam’Ron” about his relationship with the police. Cooper posited a hypothetical about the rapper knowing that a serial killer lived next door. When asked if he would tell police about the serial killer, Cam’Ron said that he wouldn’t “snitch” but that he would move. This is the mentality of most of the black community. For criminals, they look to rappers like Cam’Ron who are heroes in their community. There is also collateral impact on the rest of the community who hedge their behavior away from managing crime. Anti-snitch is pervasive from the bottom to the top of the black community. And it is sent back down by the people who shape their culture and teach them how to think.

LA replies:

Remember that hostility to the police is so endemic in the black community that many black “leaders” have publicly advised their fellow blacks not to speak to police when police approach them to ask them questions, but to avoid them and run away from them. In other words, black “leaders” advise blacks to adopt the suspicious and threatening behavior of Amadou Diallo which got him killed.

Such is the intellectual and moral level of a certain population we have in our midst, whom we insist on regarding, without qualification, as our fellow citizens and as our equals.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 05, 2011 12:56 PM | Send