Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   6/16/2020

Some frank thoughts about race

Let’s first set the stage for discussion. From “thenewneo.com” comes a potent summary: “What’s happening now in the United States, at an ever-increasing pace, is rule by mob. But it’s a special sort of mob. The internet and social media, especially Twitter, facilitates the process. Its main practitioners are leftists, mostly but not entirely young. History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes, and this movement bears a resemblance to the Maoist Cultural Revolution’s Red Guards.” (Look it up)

“Democracy” is rightly tagged as “mob-ocracy” for the inherent totalitarianism of majority rule, where 51 percent determine all public action or expression. Either non-threatening speech, thought and activities are universally recognized as part of living in “a free country” (as endlessly proclaimed); Or our liberty has been incompatibly polluted by intolerant despotism.

Witness the intolerance for “wrong think” shown by NFL quarterback Drew Brees’ abject apology for expressing pride in our American flag (with implied criticism for “flag kneelers”).

The once-admired New York Times practically self-flagellated over editor James (now resigned-in-disgrace) Bennet’s publishing a piece by Republican Senator (and combat veteran) Tom Cotton. Cotton defended the right of President Trump to use the Insurrection Act to quell rioting with the military, if local or state authorities prove incapable of restoring order. To Bennet, opinion diversity was once good.

To the young-ish, apparently-entitled New York Times staffers, Cotton’s “Send in The Troops” op-ed was so offensive as to be physically threatening—"running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.” The “woke millennials”—for whom non-progressive thoughts equal violence, but looting, burning, injuring and killing cops and civilians doesn’t—never miss a chance to be “intolerant snowflakes.”

Progressives to Trump during Covid19: Use executive power to force compliance from governors; Now: Trump better not even think about ordering the military to quell riots that governors can’t control. Likewise, “don’t judge all Muslims by the few Islamic terrorists,” but “do condemn all cops for the few bad ones.” Also, “don’t judge all Trump protesters by the few that attack Trump supporters” but “all Trump’s people bear collective guilt for the couple of guys that shove a Trump protester that gave them the finger.”

The discovery of the “buried treasure,” placed in the Rocky Mountains by author Forrest Fenn, recalls our meeting a Native American man and his nephew a few summers ago, camped near West Yellowstone. Some indirect lessons on race emerged as we got to know those treasure-seekers; they took off most mornings with Fenn’s poetic clues and topographical maps in hand. We gave them a large canister of bear spray, gifted to us by a couple who couldn’t take it on their fight back to Oklahoma; advice—never spray into the wind.

The uncle had home remodeling clients around the West and had taken his teenage nephew along as a way to 1) bond with and positively influence a young man coming under malign influences (bad company) on the reservation and 2) show him that there was productive life “off the res.” A phrase we heard, “you’ve got to decide there’s more to life than living on government cheese,” conveyed a hint of what many in the “red” race face in an environment of unemployment, family dysfunction, substance abuse and idleness.

Statistics show the racial disparities in crime: 30 to 50+ percent of crimes are committed by African-Americans who are 13 percent of the population (6 to 7 percent black men). More unarmed white men are shot by police than black men, by 70 percent to 30 percent (again, less than the rate of crime black men commit); white officers are less likely to shoot black men than are Hispanic or black officers. Sorry, that’s not systemic racism.

Then there’s the sad fact that more white people die from black criminals than blacks from white criminals. The Washington Post: 9 “unarmed” black suspects died at the hands of police in 2019 (down 76 percent from 2015 and a fraction of the police killed by criminals). The Post defines “unarmed” to include: “suspects who have grabbed an officer’s gun or who are fleeing from a car stop with a loaded semi-automatic pistol in their vehicle.”

Does race determine the likelihood of a person of color committing crime or violence? Clearly not as African-American women don’t match the men in the crime category. A lesson alluded to in the anecdotes from our Native American friends: Unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, idleness and poverty flourish where homes and children lack fathers.

Upon moving to Red Bluff from LA, there evidently weren’t many African-Americans but there sure was crime, drugs, gangs and welfare. Coming from a city where those activities were associated with black or brown people, the lesson was obvious: poverty and dysfunctional, fatherless families produce social ills among all races.

I believe in my heart that black, brown, yellow, red and white lives matter, but not in “Black Lives Matter” as an organized movement. Their “What We Believe” section of the BLM site contains extensive Marxist psychobabble, expresses the need to “dismantle cisgender privilege” and cites a desire to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” That’s a historically essential building block, key to healthy communities of all races. There’s no systemic racism; few cops murder black men.

I agree with African-American thought leaders like Charles Love, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Candace Owens, Glenn C. Loury and others in supporting guidance and help for those misused and misled by decades of urban, Democrat failed American cities and policies.

“How lovely when we see the police! They are my friends.” So said an elderly black lady attending a police-community meeting in the Bronx.