Showing posts with label race matters. Show all posts

Do The Dumb Thing: A Death In Bayview


San Francisco's Bayview/Hunter's Point neighborhood has been up in arms after a 19 year old kid died in a firefight with police. Kenneth Harding was a parolee who shot first and was from Seattle (i.e. not really a member of the "community"). And, on top of all that, the fatal bullet came from Harding's own weapon (!) as Mr. Thugg Life was apparently firing wildly in all directions. Nonetheless SFPD police chief Greg Suhr finds himself facing hostile questions from community activists and unflattering media portraits from local journalists.

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr faced his first big test as the department's leader when he appeared before hundreds of people in the Bayview on Wednesday night to quell anger over Saturday's fatal shooting of a man by police officers.

But within 30 minutes, the forum fell apart.

More than 300 people packed into the Bayview Opera House to weigh in on the shooting Saturday, when Kenneth Wade Harding, a 19-year-old Washington state parolee, was shot and killed after he allegedly fired at two officers. But Wednesday, people in the opera house booed Suhr and repeatedly interrupted his address. Things didn't improve when the chief gave up and opened up the floor to questions: Those trying to question the officials could barely be heard above the crowd's cries of outrage.

Suhr stepped off to the side for a bit, then returned to the microphone to continue answering questions.

"I get how upset everyone is, but everyone came here to talk to me, and I came here to listen," he said. "I don't care if you disrespect me, but don't disrespect the people who came to talk."

Afterward, he said the reaction was what he expected.

"Everybody is upset. Everybody wants to vent," Suhr said. "They want to see me and have a conversation in their community. Here I am. I love this community, and I'm telling you right now, there are some hurting people in there, and they needed to hear us say, 'Here we are.'

"They shouted me down - that just means I've got to come back again," he added.

There's all sorts of moaning about how young black men are being "murdered" by the police and by one another. No one seems to have thought to educate these mopes that pulling a gun on the police is a bad career move regardless of your age or race. That, of course, is not going to stop ghetto activists/hustlers from whipping up a mob, and it certainly won't stop journalists from following the hoary "Cops Oppressing Minorities" storyline, regardless of how much Harding deserved his sorry fate.


Brown on Black: Hispanic Gangs Target Black Americans


Federal prosecutors have charged an LA-based Latino street gang with a conspiracy to drive African-Americans from the town of Azusa. Among other things, the gang targeted blacks (who were about 4% of the town's population) for robberies, beatings, and property crimes. Things were so bad that Azusas was known as the "hate capital of the valley." How long did this conspiracy last? 20 years! I've heard justice moves slowly, but come on!
Members of a Latino gang affiliated with the Mexican Mafia conspired for nearly 20 years to drive African-Americans out of the Southern California city of Azusa through violence and intimidation, federal authorities alleged Tuesday.

Fifty-one alleged members of the Azusa 13 gang were indicted on racketeering and conspiracy charges; six were accused of conspiring to violate the civil rights of African-Americans. The case marks the second time federal civil-rights laws have been used against a gang, authorities said.

"The Azusa 13 gang waged a campaign of hate during a two-decade crime spree in which African-Americans were harassed and attacked," U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. said in a written statement Tuesday. "We hope that this federal case will signal the end of this racist behavior and will help vindicate all of the victims who have suffered over the years."

Thirty-nine of the defendants were in custody Tuesday. Authorities were still searching for 12 other suspects. Lawyers for some of the defendants couldn't immediately be reached.

While racial tensions among gangs have long been a part of turf wars in Southern California, none of the victims of the Azusa gang's alleged racial harassment were part of any rival gangs or criminal enterprise, authorities said. They were targeted simply because they were black, authorities said.

Unbelievable stuff. What were bedwetting liberals saying about white Tea Partiers? That we were one-sheet removed from a Klan rally? Meanwhile, African-Americans are actually targets of violence by one racial group because they are black, and it takes 20 years (!) to do anything about it? Do I have that straight?

It's a cruel world, but I honestly believe that America has made great strides in racial matters since the 1960's. But just as we are emerging from one font of injustice, we seem to have imported a new group of racist a**holes who are even worse. (can we all assume that a bunch of gang members with ties to the Mexican mafia may not be native-born Americans?) But, even though the victims were American citizens targeted over a period of decades, no one seems to have been spurred to quick action, no doubt because the perpetrators were another minority, rather than part of the supposed "oppressor" class of whites.

Conservatives are at least in favor of enforcing the law and treating everybody equally under the law. It's liberals who are soft on crime, and reluctant to acknowledge the racist behaviors of "oppressed" minorities, not to mention the criminal element among the immigrant community. Yet we are the ones who are labeled as racist. If black Americans ever realize how much they have been abused by their liberal protectors, they will be on the path to true freedom.

Decline Is Good: Blacks Leave Oakland


A surprise from the census: the black population of Oakland declined by 25% over the last decade, and now has nearly as many whites as it does blacks. The reasons for the decline: increased integration and suburbanization as black families seek out better neighborhoods and schools.

Oakland, whose thriving African American community for decades shaped black identity for the nation, lost nearly a quarter of its black population in the past decade, U.S. Census data shows.

Now, Oakland has nearly as many white people as it does African American. It also has nearly as many Latinos.

The exodus left the city with a net loss of 33,000 African American residents and made Oakland one of the few big California cities to decline in size. Oakland, which had the second largest overall population decline in the state, lost about 2 percent of its population, which now stands at 390,724. Only Santa Ana lost more residents.

African Americans have been moving in large numbers from urban areas to the suburbs and beyond for the past two decades in California. But the migration has particular significance in Oakland.

As you might expect, some people find this to be bad news.

Oakland was where the Black Panther Party was founded, the place that produced iconic black politicians, athletes and entertainers. Hall of Fame athletes Joe Morgan, Bill Russell and Rickey Henderson all grew up in Oakland. So did entertainers like the R&B group the Pointer Sisters. Black congressional leaders Ron Dellums and Barbara Lee are both from Oakland.

Oakland's black community "brought African American identity into the mainstream, instead of the margins," said Ishmael Reed, author of "Blues City: a Walk in Oakland" and a longtime resident. "I just hate to see the decline."

Is it part of the SF Chronicle's style guide to lead off a discussion of the glories of Oakland's black community by name checking the Black Panthers?! They were part of the problem, not the solution, and in fact brought about many of the dysfunctions that have blighted Oakland over the last few decades: street crime, drug dealing, ghettoization, racial separatism, and anti-authority antagonism.

Black people haven't bee ethnically cleansed from Oakland. They are leaving voluntarily, often for greener pastures available now because the sort of de facto segregation that was once the rule has been virtually wiped out. You don't need to stay in Oakland to "appreciate" its rich heritage, but there's no rule of racial solidarity that requires people to stay in a crime-ridden neighborhood just to satisfy Ishmael Reed.

Slowly, but surely, we are making progress. That's a good thing.


Sherrod Charade: Updates From the Shirley Sherrod Matter


First, an apology: I was sick last week during the most explosive 72 hours of the Shirley Sherrod controversy. By the time I was back on my feet, she'd gotten her phone call from the President (vindication for progressives!) and declared that Andrew Breitbart wanted to go back to slavery (vindication for Breitbart!) Since then the only thing that has happened in public is something that did not happen: namely that Sherrod did not appear on any of the Sunday talk shows after dominating news coverage for the previous week.

Still, the Conservative Noise Machine has come up with some Sherrod news that - in a non-partisan media environment - would be covered by all of the just-the-fact-ma'am pros in the MSM.

First, Dan Riehl has the scoop of the week by finding a videotape of Charles Sherrod giving a speech castigating "the White Man and his Uncle Toms," just the sort of racial healing we look for from our civil rights leaders. Mr. Sherrod is temperamentally similar to his wife; they both prevent a quiet dignified face. But a dignified facade does not equal a dignified interior life. And, if there's one thing we've learned, the Sherrods public faces conceal simmering resentment that they have turned towards exacting racial spoils from the government. (full video is here, in case you are afraid Dan might have left out some juicy "context").

Next, Tom Blumer was the first person to note that the Sherrods became instant millionaires upon entering into a settlement of a class action suit they brought on behalf of black farmers supposedly victimized by USDA discrimination (during the Clinton administration!). Blumer was also quick to note that Sherrod's job at the USDA followed on the heels of the settlement.

Zombie looks at the numbers and finds that the payouts from the settlement exceeds the number of reasonable claimants:

Let’s accept as a point of fact that some African-American farmers were unfairly denied loans by racists in the USDA during the Clinton and Reagan administrations. I’m not casting any aspersions on the validity of the original lawsuit, nor on the courts’ rulings in the case.

But ponder the numbers.

• There are approximately 40,000 African-American farmers in the country.

• Of that 40,000, not all of them have gotten into financial trouble. Some have successful farms.

• Of those who had financial trouble, not all of them sought out loans. Some tried to stay afloat on their own.

• Of those who sought out loans, not all of them sought out loans from the USDA. Some got loans from banks or friends.

• Of those who sought out loans from the USDA, not all of them were denied loans. Some got the loans as requested.

• Of those who were denied loans, not all of them were denied due to discriminatory racial practices.

In the end, a total much much smaller than 40,000 could legitimately claim to be victims of discrimination.

As shown above, it was originally estimated to be no more than 2,000 possible total plaintiffs.

Somehow, that number quickly swelled to 16,000 wronged claimants.

And now, as of February, the government has announced it plans to hand out at least $50,000 each to over 70,000 more claimants, over and above the original 16,000.

That means that the U.S. may be recompensing at least 86,000 African-American farmers for past racial discrimination. But how could that possibly be true if there are only 39,697 African-American farmers in existence nationwide? And if only some subset of them ever applied for a loan and were then unfairly denied a loan?

Zombie notes that the Senate has repeatedly stripped funding for the settlement from its appropriations, something that also did not come up at all last week when Shirley Sherrod had the country's full attention. It's hard not to see the Sherrods' lawsuit for what it is: an attempt to obtain a kind of shadow reparations for past discrimination. The lawsuit might apply to events occurring between 1983-1997, but in the minds of the litigants it is undoubtedly a means of obtaining "justice" for slavery and segregation. A lot of the welfare state is built around this background goal.

I don't agree with the characterization of the Sherrod tape as showing "racism" in the NAACP. The dialog doesn't advance when conservatives can accuse liberals of being racist. It advances when conservatives can point to all the ways that liberalism is built upon racial and economic grievance. While liberals pull out their green eyeshades whenever the Pentagon wants to buy a $600 toilet seat, they turn a blind eye to the trillions in domestic spending that often goes unreported and unremarked. Shirley Sherrod's job at the USDA provided her with over a billion dollars worth of tax payer dollars to disburse at her discretion. The government is filled with people like her, exercising financial power far beyond their competence. That's the true story of Shirley Sherrod, and it's one that is slowly coming out.




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