Air Jordan discussion

Below, readers respond to VFR’s entries (here, here, and here) on the sneaker riots.

Tim W. writes:

You noted (correctly) that Nike should have known their marketing plan for these shoes would set off riots as hundreds lined up for the few available pairs. Maybe they did know it and were operating on the principle that no publicity is bad publicity. If people are rioting and firing off weapons to get your product, it must truly be the best, right? A company with a large black customer base would also be aware of media handling of racial matters, so they’d know they could count on the press to sanitize the reports.

Also, can you imagine being at a marketing meeting where this strategy is discussed? Let’s say one lone guy recognizes the danger and speaks up. He says, “Hey, aren’t we risking riots in every black community in America?” He’s immediately given the pink slip for racism as the company’s diversity czars point at him as if he’s the remaining human in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Hannon writes:

Your phrase, “written in the typical bland incurious non-reactive manner of contemporary local journalism,” reminds me of the manner of a liberal friend whose response to most anything I may point out as an example of liberal media bias can be described with those same words.

This devotion to an almost sterile impartiality seems to be peculiar to certain intellectual liberals, who must believe that dispassionately surveying the available evidence absolves them of taking any moral position on a particular issue. There is also a close relationship with the scientific method and the idea that opinions—in light of empirical evidence—are essentially irrelevant. This phenomenon is striking to witness in its more extreme form, where issues of self control are probably more relevant that political orientation. Have you come across anything like this in your reading or in discussions?

Merry Christmas and best of health in the New Year,

LA replies:

I think you’re right about neutrality, but I think that in the present instance and many others it’s beyond and worse than scientific neutrality, though related to it. It’s complete blandness, blankness, lack of any human reaction or evaluation of what one is seeing. It’s beyond scientific or journalistic or legalistic objectivity, it’s liberals organizing their personalities never to notice anything that they’re not supposed to notice.

Roger G. writes:

All Red China has to do is orchestrate a Nike/KFC dual promotion, and they can come waltzing in like Grand Fenwick.

Phil D. writes:

The U.S. is slipping into Third Worldism. With that said, it is entirely possible that—just as the CIA has done in foreign countries—foreign entities may be stoking uncivil behavior within the most vulnerable communities, such as the black community.

U.S. “cultural fabric” is being torn to shreds by self-immolating whites. I believe the 2012 re-election of Obama will confirm the ultimate demise of what used to be the dream called “Americana.”

We are entering an era of “White Guilt” … on steroids.

Penned by an American of a darker hue

Buck O. writes:

You wrote:

A counter-truth to the official American truth is slowly if inchoately building up in our collective consciousness: it is that a large part of the black population are not our fellow citizens in any real sense, are not capable and deserving of bearing the same rights and responsibilities as ourselves, but exist on a whole different level, where different rules, different ideas of rights, different ways of governing human behavior, are appropriate. The liberal American ideal of a single citizenship equally embracing all people of all backgrounds is dead. It has died a thousand times in news stories and videos like this. But it will be a long time before Americans will be ready to grapple with that truth in the privacy of their own minds, let alone to state it explicitly and publicly. Indeed, the latter probably won’t happen until after the current American system has broken down.

The American “system” has already broken down. These fellow citizens are in a real sense citizens of the modern liberal United States. They are born citizens. Their citizenship is set in stone. What they are not is Americans. Citizens aren’t Americans unless they choose to be. The United States of America is a memory. The United States is now just a country made up of citizens and non-citizens who “exist on a whole different level, where different rules, different ideas of rights, different ways of governing human behavior” apply; and then there is the shrinking remnant of the historical American people who survive among them, with a negative replacement value. The United States long ago fell from the rank of a nation. The United States is a collection of alien nations, of which America is just one. People born here now, and people who come here are given citizenship or the “rights” and protections of citizenship. That’s the prize. Citizenship and what it entitles them to is all that they tout and value, not America, and certainly not the historical American nation.

GO writes:

To the liberal mind, the “shoe riots” are just another link in a long chain of exploitation and destruction of what would otherwise be a group far more noble and peaceful than whites. First we put drugs in the ghetto. Then we imported all those guns into their neighborhoods. Then we sent in AIDS. Then it was the colors red and blue, creating crips and bloods. Then it was the website World Star Hip-Hop, which, although owned by a black person, somehow captures black dysfunction with their internet videos on a daily basis (without capturing it on video, it’s a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it … didn’t happen). And for a grand finale … shoes. The black and liberal rhetorical strategy is similar to the Islamist strategy—no matter how deplorable their behavior is, it will always come down to being the fault of white people. And now we’ve stooped really low in trying to destroy black people. Shoes. The horror!

Brandon F. writes:

Subject: Air Jordan Riots, From Sea to Shining Sea; or, The Soles of Black Folk

You should change the title to: Obama Voters Rage For Shoes.

LA replies:

Don’t you like my present title?

I’ll try to use yours somewhere.

Brandon F. replies:

Oh I love it. Just being funny. Merry Christmas LA.

Brandon F. writes:

Hannon wrote:

This devotion to an almost sterile impartiality seems to be peculiar to certain intellectual liberals, who must believe that dispassionately surveying the available evidence absolves them of taking any moral position on a particular issue. There is also a close relationship with the scientific method and the idea that opinions—in light of empirical evidence—are essentially irrelevant. This phenomenon is striking to witness in its more extreme form, where issues of self control are probably more relevant that political orientation. Have you come across anything like this in your reading or in discussions?

This may well be what “certain intellectual liberals” use to justify their so-called impartiality when reporting black crime and behavior but, as we all know, they leave this behind when reporting on conservative politics or culture.

Buck O. writes:

While listening to these two “oh my” “journalist’s” mindless banter about the actions of these kicking, stomping and shooting “customers”, it occurred to me that I’m missing the big picture. These black “yoose” are budding modern liberal entrepreneurs and brokers. They get it. They’re buying low and selling very high, perfectly timing the market and executing sound trades. They know who the real dupes are, the suckas who will pay them a $1000 or more for a $200 pair of shoes. Supply and demand. These young capitalist might raise the ire of OWS if this keeps up. They look somewhat like the panicked traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on any 400 point day.

Timothy A. writes:

I remember purchasing a pair of the original Air Jordans in downtown Pittsburgh. It must have been about 1987. I was trying on a pair of shoes in the back of the store with the sole employee on duty helping me. A couple of black guys ducked in the front door, took a quick look around, grabbed a rack full of sportswear, and ran out of the store.

Merry Christmas!

Jack S. writes:

When I read your headline: ” … the Soles of Black Folk” I nearly fell off my chair. This rises to a Mark Steyn level of zinger. That’s wrong, it goes far beyond a zinger, one little wordplay completely refutes Dubois’s “classic” piece of propaganda, putting the lie to his “thesis for the book: that the blacks of South need the right to vote, a good education, and to be treated with equality and justice.”

Alexis Zarkov writes:

The iPhone mania is the nearest white equivalent to the black lust to Nike shoe products. However white Apple-enthusiasts line up peacefully outside the store (some having camped out overnight), and everything proceeds in an orderly and business-like manner. The Air-Jordan store riots serve as a reminder of the basic incompatibility between whites as a group and blacks as a group. I estimate that between one third to one half of American blacks are responsible for this incompatibility. What is to be done? The city state of Singapore provides one example of a successful policy to force civilized behavior in a multiracial society: judicial caning. The list of caning offenses includes: (1) belonging to a wandering gang of thieves; (2) assembling for the purpose of committing gang robbery; (3) rioting. American liberals sneer at the authoritarian policies of the Singapore government. But they have a stable prosperous society where ours is falling apart. By the way, in Singapore you can receive between three and twenty-four strokes for overstaying your visa, or entering the country illegally.

I think we need to do more than point out uncivilized behavior; we should offer solutions. Otherwise we imitate Mark Steyn who whines about the problem of Islam, but offers no solutions.

LA replies:

Oh, I think we have talked about solutions, though not in detail. Not that any of those solutions are possible in the present order of the U.S., for they would represent the dismantling of the present order of the U.S.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 24, 2011 11:22 AM | Send