Get those divisive stereotypes out of your brain!

James P. writes:

In this story, Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn contends that claims that the mob violence was racial must be “challenged” as divisive:

Flynn has called a community meeting to talk to residents in the Riverwest neighborhood at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday about the events of July 3. He said it was important to challenge commentary in some blogs and reader comments on news stories that emphasize the race of the victims and suspects.

“We can’t allow this activity to divide this community because ultimately it’s this community standing together that will identify these individuals and ultimately bring them to justice.”

In Flynn’s world, it is not blacks attacking whites that divides the community, it is whites noticing that blacks are attacking whites that divides the community.

LA replies:

Or, as I have said, the more racially violent the behavior of blacks becomes, the more racist whites are for noticing it and being concerned about it.

This syndrome, as I have discussed many times before, is built into the very structure of modern liberalism. The starting idea is that nonwhites and non-Westerners must all be equal to white Westerners in their fundamental abilities and character, and therefore they must be, or be perceived as being, equal in their outcomes and behavior as well. If they are not equal or perceived as equal, then they must be made equal or be made to appear equal, without having done anything to deserve such equalization. Therefore the more they fall short of equality with whites, or of minimally acceptable behavior and achievements, the more undeserved benefits or puffery they must receive, in order to “close the gap.”

At the same time, a converse dynamic applies to the whites. The more dysfunctional or dangerous the nonwhites’ behavior becomes, the more the whites (naturally) notice it, but the more the whites notice it, the further the nonwhites fall from the obligatory state of perceived equality with the whites. Therefore the worse the truth about the nonwhites becomes, and the more the whites (naturally) see this truth, the more the truth must be suppressed and covered up, and the more racist the whites are accused of being.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 06, 2011 04:51 PM | Send