We Don't Need No Stinkin' Responsibility

 Instead of truly speaking to others today,
we are all waiting merely to unload on to others
the words that have collected inside us 
--The World of Silence, Max Picard
 _______________________

Today's Diane Rehm show featured a discussion on the press's latest concatenation on race (Fallout From Freddie Gray’s Death And Underlying Causes of Urban Poverty And Racial Strife In Baltimore And Across the Country).

It provided the usual Public Radio imbalance of 4:1 uber-liberal opinions, everyone talking at cross-purposes to the other's view in the service of advancing his (or more often, her) agenda. Which was particularly amusing considering the rhetoric of the Left was to champion the position of the "Othered". Perhaps only other Others are favored (=patronized) on Rehm's platform.

The rhetoric was getting so thick that the moderator asked the panel if white people suffer from problems of oppression and mobility, too. Does anything indicate naivete and bias more than such a question?

Former Army Lt. Colonel and black State Representative Allen West (FL-R) held up his 20%, but his opening statement was too logical, and he was therefore marginalized. He laid out his and his family's history in segregated Atlanta of the 1950's, and the ways in which the black community thrived then as opposed to its dismal state today. (His opening presentation is impressive, but re-plowing through the other voices on the re-broadcast would be intolerable, so that mission is left for the staunch reader at the above link, if you so choose.)

The impossible female voices which have come to define public radio jumped in with their shrill patter of "Otherness" and how Baltimore and other cities are being "over-policed", and the problems with not being racially-diversified, when Mr. West interrupted by re-stating that the businessmen in Atlanta of his youth were not racially diversified, and that blacks walked amidst positive role models every day.

West continued with the example of Harlem's "Success Academies," public charter schools which have shown outstanding success thus far with traditionally blighted student populations, yet which NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio wants to shut down, caving to the pressure of the teacher's union. 

He used the "R" word: Responsibility, a thing outre on NPR when talking about anything, really. You may simply presume the blame lies with the U.S. government not throwing out enough money, and call it a day.

Someone asked the panelists about "black-on-black" crime in Chicago, the ensuing response eliciting my only laugh during the show. One of the apoplectic females insisted that focusing on personal responsibility was a misbegotten path. 

"We don't need to be saying, 'Mom's need to take responsibility for their babies'!" The 80% refused to even entertain ideas like the welfare state might have entrenched a fractured family unit for many in the black community, or that family cohesion is a bedrock of a sound society. But as Ranger says, "Don't breed 'em if you can't feed 'em," and this goes for all people of course.

The concluding caller, who said that he had grown up in the worst of NYC hoods and yet managed against the odds to get out and get an education, seconded the problem as expressed by West, namely, no examples and no neighborhood opportunities. The moderator gave the final word to one of the shrill panelists as to how this problem might be addressed.

Of course, she would not veer from her well-trod path. "The police should have asked Mr. Gray, 'How can I help YOU, young man?' He's part of our community, our society."

But to that Mr. West had already given a pre-emptory reply.

He said in the Atlanta of his youth, if a policeman approached you, the only possible reply was, "Is there a problem, officer?" As he said, if you're not guilty, why wouldn't that be the first response out of your mouth? Certainly, you would not run. West's brother, who joined the Atlanta police force after returning from service in Vietnam, would expect no less.

Courtesy and civility -- it works both ways.

Going Jihadi

 --Baltimore mother, Toya Graham

The "Mother of the Year" was everywhere yesterday. The hero mom, Toya Graham, is seen delivering a serious whoopin' to her 16-year-old son Michael as he retreats down and across a street. CBS news promised a later feature with the mother and son in their living room. Apparently this was the best feel-good piece the broadcasters could find.

Single mother of six Graham is relentless in her assault, hitting her son repeatedly about the head and face after she says she saw him throwing items at the police trying to quell the riots in Baltimore, and acclaim for her violent reaction is fawning. You go girl, they say.

Turn it around for a moment: say the camera caught a Baltimore policeman hitting the rock-throwing 16-year-old upside the head, all the way across a street. Would the cop be our hero?

What if Ms. Graham began whaling on a policeman in the same way she attacked her son? We would call it, "battery upon an officer". What if a white woman did that to her son? We would think she is crazy, strung out or loveless.

We would ask, "Is it any wonder the young man turned out the way he did?", that is, if we actually cared to know how it is 16-year-old Michael came to be throwing rocks at the cops.

What if a 200-pound white woman charged at the (apparently) smaller young black man, reining her fury down upon him? RACISM, no doubt.

Yet the true racism is revealed by the glee shown uniformly in the news. We accept that these people live in a jungle, and are delighted (as when watching a nature film) the elder member jumps a presumptuous younger member for transgressing the group's mores.

But this is not a nature film, and the younger, smaller member will soon outgrow the family member dispensing jungle justice.

A Philedelphia Times Op-Ed column proclaims with attitude, "Baltimore mother in viral video who beat up her son is my kind of mom." "Who beat up son ..." I wonder if that privileged writer also chose to beat up her children? I wonder what the Department of Children and Families would have to say about that?

If you saw Ms. Graham meting out the punishment to her son in another venue, would it look like child abuse? If your son were involved in mayhem, would pummeling his body be your first reaction?

How about if this were a formative experience of a young President Obama after his mama caught him smoking weed? Would we be reveling in the punishment she exacted, calling it righteous? Would we say, "That is the sort of discipline that allowed Barack to aspire to the White House?

More likely, we would cry foul -- a white woman failing to understand the efforts of the young Barry to fit in. We would chasten ourselves, excusing the lad of simply getting caught in the seine net of hood behavior. We would call his mom a brute, insensitive, surely out of line.

The permutations are many. Look into your heart and decide if this video brings you peace and satisfaction.

This is the soft bigotry of low expectations. 


Prediction: Either young Michael will become an honorary gang member, he will be given no quarter for being p-whipped before he is even a baby daddy, or he will have a conversion and join the ministry, capitalizing on his 15 minutes.