The other side as I imagine it


I say “as I imagine it” because I haven’t gone out of my way to investigate the views of the demonstrators, but then I didn’t go out of my way to investigate the views expressed in my previous post either. I simply write as someone who flatters himself as being a little more thoughtful, a little better informed, and a little more open to embracing unpopular opinions than the average person. That said, what I do know of the rationale of the demonstrators strikes me as case of demonstrating against a straw man rather than a reality. For instance, much was made of fact that the kid who was killed in Cleveland was only carrying a toy gun, but you look at his gun and tell me if it looks like a toy to you, much less to the cop whom it was pointed at and who had to decide in fraction of a second how to respond.

Even so, I consider it obvious that blacks don’t get an even break before the law. They receive longer prison sentences, are more likely to be executed, and are more likely to be busted for trivial offenses. Despite their gains in Civil Rights, they are still the victims of widespread white prejudice even among those whites who are say they aren’t prejudiced. For example, if you put pulse and respiration monitors on white people, and then place them on an elevator with black people, their pulse and respiration rises above what it would  if the elevator contained other white people, and this is true regardless of their expressed views on race.

Given the seeming universality of prejudice, it is only reasonable to believe that white cops are also prejudiced. Along with whatever prejudices they bring with them into law enforcement, they are often exposed to black people at their worse due the reality of the prevalence of black crime over white crime, and this increases their antipathy toward  black people. Good cops try not to act on such feelings, but they can’t help but have them just as I—and most of you who responded to my last post—can’t help but have them. The line between prejudice and reasonable fear isn’t always clear, but we still have a choice about how we behave.

For instance, I wrote recently about feeling repulsed by transsexuals. I would even say that I’m prejudiced against transsexuals, maybe the moreso because my father was one. Years ago,  a man in
women’s clothes arrived at a contra dance (a kind of folk dance that involves a lot of touching) that I attended. I didn’t know if he was a transsexual or a transvestite, but I assumed transsexual, so I’ll refer to him as a her. Contra dances involve a show of affection even toward strangers, but a chill came over the room when this woman entered. When I saw the coldness with which she was treated, I put extra effort into treating her well. This is how I often try to respond to prejudice within myself, so I’ve no doubt that a lot of white cops who are prejudiced put extra effort into treating black people as they themselves would like to be treated. Others not so much, and some are surely downright mean.
 

While I don’t doubt that black people have a greater reason than white people to fear the police, I think that black hatred for white people is evident among many of these demonstrators. If I thought the white society was giving me a raw deal, I would hate it too, but if I looted, burned, and called for any and every police officer to be murdered, I wouldn’t be working for justice but for revenge, the end result being a complete breakdown of law and order. Such a goal would most certainly alienate most people—whites and blacks—and it was this alienation that I felt when I wrote my last post.

“What do we want?” “Dead Cops!”



You probably won’t see the above video on network news. It won't be Brian Williams who tells you that Michael Brown’s mother and some of her friends are awaiting trial for assaulting people with steel pipes and robbing them, or Scott Pelley who informs you that Michael Brown’s stepfather intiated a night of burning, rioting, and looting by repeatedly shouting, “Burn this motherfucker down! Burn this bitch down!” And while David Muir will  report Al Sharpton's and Jesse Jackson's words of wisdom and inform you solemnly that your president and the mayor of NYC think racism is to blame when a white cop kills a black criminal, no network anchor will suggest that such rhetoric is reckless or tell you that the murders of police officers were up 56% last year. 


I live in a state where only 2% of the population is black, yet there was a movement here by black leaders to dissuade the local media from mentioning that a criminal or fugitive is black or showing his mugshot on the evening news. They took this stance because Oregon blacks commit a disproportionately high percentage of crimes, so their fellow blacks thought it would be better for an occasional fugitive to escape than for white people to be constantly reminded of black criminality. Some might claim that all of these black criminals in this bastion of white liberality are simply the victims of racist cops, racist juries, and racist judges, and I can’t disprove such a claim anymore than I can disprove earlier
claims that a dead space alien was discovered near Roswell, New Mexico.

The network news will tell you that racist white cops go around bullying black people for no reason, but they won't mention that it was blacks who invented rap music with its glorification of criminality, or that upwards of 10,000 blacks a year are murdered in this country, 93% of them by other blacks. Of course, if you’re one of those who blame white people for black people’s problems, you might argue that white cops kill all those blacks and frame other blacks for their murders. Maybe so—I can’t disprove it anymore than I can prove you wrong if you believe 
Jews run the world or that the Mafia killed Kennedy.

 
Given that 61-years have elapsed since the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, yet large numbers of blacks are still blaming white people for their problems, it's my opinion that far too many blacks are damn feckless at taking responsibility for their own lives. While I believe that, in isolated ways, blacks still get a raw deal, the fact remains that a high percentage of them really are criminals, and that far too many blacks choose to voice their complaints regarding police brutality through rioting, looting, and calling for the deaths of police officers. This suggests that they have problems that go well beyond what white people can remedy, and it doesn’t incline me to turn a sympathetic ear to their complaints. Instead, it  increases my perception that an alarmingly high percentage of them are dangerous.

The top video was made during a demonstration in NYC. Several seconds into it, you can  hear the demonstrators demanding that police officers be murdered. A week later, two cops were shot to death while sitting in their car. Regarding the bottom video, please hang in there until the police chief is asked why he was on his phone during a public meeting.