If the blackness of black victimizers must be covered up, what about the blackness of black victims?

NBC Washington reports (bold emphasis added):

Flash Mob Shoplifts at Silver Spring 7-Eleven
50 shoplifters hit 7-Eleven at once

About 50 people simultaneously shoplifted from a Silver Spring, Md., 7-Eleven Saturday night.

Officers arriving at the store in the 12200 block of Tech Road after 11:20 p.m. saw several people gathered in surrounding parking lots and on side streets, police said. They began to disperse when police arrived.

The shoplifters—described as teens and young adults—took items including snacks and drinks, police said

Police stopped a group of six people ages 16-18 near Tech Road and Broadbirch Drive. Each had items from the 7-Eleven but no receipts, police said.

Detectives are investigating whether the shoplifters had attended a birthday party in the area, police said.

In August, a flash mob of dozens of young people entered a 7-Eleven in Germantown and took items without paying, police said.

Flash mob crime in the county has prompted lawmakers to consider teen loitering legislation and a teen curfew.

We’ve grown accustomed to the systematic deletion of any racial references from news stories about black-on-white flash mobs, black-on-white wilding gangs, black-on-white rapists, black-on-white murderers, and black-on-white armed robbers. But in the name of simple fairness and logical consistency, if references to blackness must be expurgated from media reports that are almost exclusively about black criminals, shouldn’t references to blackness be eliminated across the board? For example, shouldn’t references to blackness be eliminated from black claims of victimhood, and black demands for equality of outcome? If blacks are not spoken of as blacks when they victimize whites, why should they be spoken of as blacks when they complain of being victimized by whites? To put the question another way, given that whites are forbidden to speak of themselves as whites when it would serve their interests, why should blacks be allowed to speak of themselves as blacks when it serves theirs? What would our society look like if blacks were required to be as voiceless as whites?

I realize that what I’m saying sounds odd. But the current reality, in which the blackness of blacks is relentlessly pushed into our faces when it advances blacks’ interests or blacks’ collective ego, but is covered up when it does not, is also extremely odd, and yet everyone takes it for granted. No one in mainstream America questions it.

Applying this admittedly strange (by contemporary assumptions) line of thought to the single most famous demand for black equality and black racial justice in American history, here is a much-abridged version of Martin Luther King’s August 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech from which all direct references to blackness, and even all indirect references to blackness (such as “slavery” and “segregation”), have been removed and replaced by the sort of bland non-racial language (e.g. “teenagers,” “people”) which today’s media use for black flash mobs, black wilding gangs, and so on:

… Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of youths and adults who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, teenagers, young adults, and older people still are not free. One hundred years later, the life of teenagers and adults is still sadly crippled by the manacles of injustice and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, people live on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, people of all ages are still languishing in the corners of American society and finds themselves exiles in their own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, men as well as men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of various ages are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check—a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. [LA notes: When one remembers the hundreds of billions, maybe trillions, of dollars transferred from the American majority to M.L. King’s people since King spoke these words, the thought occurs that the “promissory note” and the “check to be cashed” on which King dwelt at such length were not just metaphors.] We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy….

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of teenagers’, young adults’ and older people’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that young people needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until teenagers and young adults are granted their citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges….

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream….

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of people and the sons of other people will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood….

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious people, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little boys and girls will be able to join hands with little boys and girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today….

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—youths, teenagers, young adults and older adults—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

- end of initial entry -

Paul Kersey of SBPDL writes:

You wrote:

“I realize that what I’m saying sounds odd. But the current reality, in which the blackness of blacks is relentlessly pushed into our faces when it advances blacks’ interests or blacks’ collective ego, but is covered up when it does not, is also extremely odd, and yet everyone takes it for granted. No one in mainstream America questions it.”

I’ve never read a more succinct sentence that describes the delusions of America better than that. That is the essence of Black-Run America.

Buck O. writes:

It’s also an odd juxtaposition to read the story that refuses to reference race, and to watch the accompanying two videos that show the all black mob.

I live close-by and have passed by this store a thousand times, as I did early that very day. Everyone nearby knows well the adjacent neighborhood. It’s an overwhelmingly black enclave.

I looked at the first page of comments, to see if there might be some local references. There was not. Here is an early sequence of comments:

“This video is racist! Where are the white people?”

“Working.”

“Abiding by the rule of law.”

“At home with their kids..”

“I see black kids shopping … just like their parents taught them!”

Paul K. writes:

I would love to see the media adopt the consistent approach that you put forth. For example, a passage in a recent article in the New York Times on Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, would be rewritten this way:

She has made her main areas of focus the stubborn achievement gap separating some students from some other students, as well as the lack of significant progress for those students who enter public school knowing little or no English.

After all, everyone knows by now which students are not measuring up to which other students, so why mention race?

Your version of the “I Have a Dream” speech made me laugh out loud.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 22, 2011 10:28 AM | Send