Commenting on my post “Abortion funding and blacks“, a visitor by the name of Michelle commented:
Wow… I am amazed at the ignorance of these comments. When you start listing the black on white crimes, think back in history the enumerate amount of crimes that whites have committed against blacks. You people are ridiculous. Your grandparents would go hang a black person at night and then get up and go to church the next morning like nothing had happened. They’re probably burning in hell as I type.
It never seems to occur to such people that they have been fed a distorted version of history all their lives. For example, it never occurs to them that many of the “victims” of lynchings were rapists whom the official justice system had failed to punish. It’s easy to blame those who lynched but more of a challenge to put oneself in the shoes of the rape victims or their families. I would be willing to wager that most, if not all, of those who refer to lynchings as “racist crimes” are the same people who, when asked what they would do if anybody ever harmed their daughters, reveal a willingness to administer justice themselves. If the perpetrator turned out to be black, would they let him go for fear of appearing “racist”? But let us assume, for our purpose, that every black who was lynched was innocent. What kind of numbers are we looking at?
According to Wikipedia:
Nearly 3,500 African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968.
Let us be generous and compare the number of black victims, during those 86 years, with the number of white murder victims of black murder for just 26 recent years. From The Color of Crime:
The Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) include the race of the victim and offender, and make it possible to calculate rates of interracial murder. In 2002, blacks were 16 times more likely to murder W&H than the reverse. SHR statistics from 1976 to 2002 tell us blacks murdered 26,727 W&H during those 26 years, and W&H murdered 10,207 blacks, making the black-on-W&H murder rate 17 times that of the W&H-on-black murder rate.
If we subtract the number of blacks murdered by Hispanics and whites for that period, we find a disparity of 36,934 non-blacks murdered by blacks for those years. That’s 1,421 per year. At that rate, it takes less than 2.5 years for blacks to “make up” for the lynchings of those 86 years. As brutal as some of the lynchings were, the murders perpetrated by blacks are often just as brutal and sometimes even more so.
When slavery was practiced in the United States, it was also practiced throughout most of Africa and the Middle East. It was an ancient, and international, institution. To single out white Americans, while ignoring the multitude of black slave owners (and dealers) in Africa, is a typical anti-white double standard. One wonders how many of the “African refugees” allowed into the United States and Europe are descended from slave-owners. One wonders how many of them are descended from both slave-owners and slaves. I wonder if the commentator above would consider a black American, who has both slave-owning ancestors and slave ancestors, as sharing culpability for slavery or as deserving of reparations. This is a problem we run into when we look at injustices of the distant past and try to make up for them in the present.
Indeed, if we look at the victims who leftists point to, as they describe “traditionally disadvantaged minorities”, those victims are almost always seen in hoary black and white photographs. Their descendants could be almost anybody – or they might have no descendants at all. It would not surprise me if some Stormfronters have black slaves in their distant ancestry. This would mean that leftists must be sensitive to those Stormfronters and that they must be careful to avoid offending them – so as to avoid being considered a “racist”.
Overall, leftists are past-oriented. They look to the past for the events that shape their racial ideology. This is why we hear them speak so frequently of “the legacy of this” or “the legacy of that”. A “legacy” is something that happened in the past. They speak of “historically” disadvantaged groups. “History” refers to the past. It’s actors are usually dead and gone.
White advocates are present-oriented. The statistics we cite are reflections of reality as we experience it today, not a hundred years ago. If we look at photos of white victims – murdered, raped, robbed, discriminated against due to their white race – we notice that the photos are all in color. White people are the true “people of color”.
In trying to understand racial disparities, we look to science and technology. We explore genetics, current culture and trends. We examine the facts as they truly are, not as the MSM depicts it in order to advance their own agenda. In other words, we avail ourselves of the latest tools to understand racial dynamics.
But the anti-white, leftist, crowd also has a distorted view of the present. They see statistics, such as black incarceration rates, and view them through the filter of their version of the past. Thus, it is not even the “present” that they see; instead of seeing higher frequencies of black criminals, they see “the legacy of slavery”. They are stuck in the past and, like a broken record, they cannot get past it. If an anti-white leftist considers science or technology at all, in the realm of race, it is only to try to discredit the work of real scientists. Once they feel the task is done, they wash their hands of science and go back to their “doctrine of legacies”.
Jewamongyou's Blog 
http://www.shorpy.com/node/10653
Notice this was the Union Army doing this.
I had a funny conversation with a fairly smart but quite out-of-touch older lady today. She distantly remembered affirmative action but was sure it had been done away with long ago. She believed 50% of the US population were black, and 10% were gay. It was sad that such a sweet lady had such silly notions in her head.
But you’re right. In general, leftists generally believe something that happened in some rural county that had no electrical lighting is way more important than something ten times as bloody that happened last week right up the street. One of the knock-on effects of crime is that people who insulated themselves from it particularly well can convince themselves it’s no big deal.
As much as I love the high-trust environment of overwhelmingly white areas, the people in these areas are freakishly, frighteningly naïve.
Hey, I linked to this post over at Mangan’s. I am waiting to see if there will be a trackback.
Warning: Olave knows diddly-squat about Trackbacks.
P.S. Did Lewis Black inspire your pseudonym? My wife and I were watching him t’other night.
As far as I know, my pseudonym was not inspired by anybody in particular – but there might have been some subconscious factors at work I am not aware of. Lewis Black is hilarious!
I was thinking of part of a sketch he did where he made fun of Christians trying to interpret the Old Testament. He said something like, “That’s our book. You guys call it “old”! But never fear. If you need help understanding it, there are Jews who walk among you.”
He’s a lot of fun, especially when he gets going on Dick Cheney.
Historically, an outlaw was someone from whom legal protection had been withdrawn for some serious transgression. An “outlaw” was literally outside the protection of the law. Since an outlaw no longer enjoyed legal protection he was fair game for “lynching”. And I have no objection to that.
Those who do generally fall into two categories. First, those who simply object to capital punishment on the grounds that it’s “cruel and unusual” or “inhumane”. But I don’t care if it’s inhumane. In fact, the more brutal and barbaric the better. Why not burn them alive and flay the flesh from their bones? People SHOULD be scared sh!tless to commit rape and murder.
The second category are those who object out of their own prejudices. I wrote about jury nullification on my blog a few months ago. To put it bluntly — some people simply won’t convict members of their own race even when they’ve committed horrific crimes against members of another. When faced with this prospect the only option one has is to either start lynching the offenders or allow them to rape and murder your friends and family with impunity.
Now, I would prefer to let men in black dresses oversee an orderly process in which the guilty are punished. It just seems like there is less chance of an innocent person being wrongly executed. But its still better to execute an innocent person than to allow rampant rape and murder. After all, the real murderer isn’t going to stand up and say they got the wrong person. And so the deterrent will remain.
It’s hard to prove when jury nullification has taken place. But the number of hung juries as more than quadrupled in many areas to more than 20% particularly in mixed areas. If things don’t change then it may become necessary to start exercising that option again. For those who don’t like it, I would offer the following…
I turns out that Emmett Till’s father raped and killed two young women in Italy when he was stationed there during the war. Really puts things into perspective doesn’t it.
Society can’t function normally if people constantly seek revenge on eachother for things eachothers ancestors did. Everyone has ancestors who were robbed or oppressed in some way and everyone also has ancestors who did the robbing and oppressing. Eventually people have to move past that and learn to live with eachother in some ofrm of peace. They don’t have to forget or even forgive but if they want to live in a civilized society they at least have to learn to live in peace with eachother.
Several thoughts:
The left’s obsession with the past is a cover for their lack of argument for the present. If they looked at the present objectively, they would have to admit that blacks are a privileged group de jure (affirmative action, black studies programs, government programs of every type, etc.), and de facto (the media-academic agitprop machine giving them a “pass” for pathologies).
If “race is just a construct,” why would something that someone did to someone of a certain “skin color” a century ago have any relevance today? But to the PC left, race is a driving reality which transcends all other politics. Consider how the left today has largely abandoned support for the working class and replaced it with race hustling. PC itself is a real obsessive pathology.
It would be interesting to examine the lynching issue more thoroughly. How much of it was white people taking defensive action against black violent crime?
Most of the lynchings of blacks in the past were (apparently) of people who committed actual crimes. In most of the black-on-white violence today, the victims are of people who have committed no crimes. This is a major moral difference.
Today we have such phenomenon as violent flash mobs which, I am given to understand, are mainly perpetrated by blacks. And since the 1960s, virtually every major urban race riot in the USA has been initiated by blacks. And look at the amount of black (and Hispanic) gang violence. For half a century, the trend towards major urban violence has been driven by “people of color.” Does this mean that whites today — by the same logic of the Michelles of the world — have a right to use similar violence in return?
In any event, Michelle’s argument is reflects a pathology which is common among blacks (or perhaps, their liberal handlers): refusing to take responsibility for their own criminality. By their own verbalizations, they admit that blacks can not be morally responsible. It’s as if the PC have taken up the old racialist argument that blacks are but overgrown children and turned it into a virtue.
Society can’t function normally if people constantly seek revenge on each other for things each others ancestors did.
Indeed. Look at parts of the world where centuries old vendettas are continually refought, such as the Balkans. It leads to societal self-destruction.
Another thing: Muslims enslaved Europeans for centuries. And occupied much of Europe. Now, do Europeans have a claim against Muslims for, say, reparations? Jews and Christians in Muslim occupied lands were frequently treated as second class citizens. Should European-descended people in Muslim countries get affirmative action? The list goes on, but once again we can see PC being one more expression of the suicidal trend of Western civilization.
Maybe you might also want to consider what was causing those riots. Certainly here in the UK, there were a lot of ‘race riots’ back in the early ’80s, which actually stemmed from the way the police were treating the black community.
Of course this does not excuse things, and you are right to say we ought to forgive people for the sins of their ancestors (I do not go so far as to say those do not matter) and we likewise need to seek that forgiveness. (I do not claim, however, that people should be held legally culpable- each man is responsible for his own sin, not that of his ancestors. And yes, I say sin- I am a Christian).
Have you gone so far as to research why the police were treating the black community in this way? Have you considered that everywhere blacks congregate in large numbers, whether in the U.S., Britain, Thailand, China, or Africa, they have the same problems?
Before seeking forgiveness, for the sins of one’s ancestors, at least try to get all the facts – and from BOTH sides. As it stands, it is very difficult to get the white perspective; all you hear is the black perspective, that blacks were the victims of baseless racism.
You wrote “there were a lot of ‘race riots’ back in the early 80’s…” How did you learn of these riots? Were you there, and if so, did you interview the police who were involved in the alleged abuse? You say that the riots stemmed from the way the police were treating the black community. Did you actually live in that community?
Society can’t function normally if people constantly seek revenge on each other for things each others ancestors did.
That’s what diversity is.
Even though I am white pride I am very much pro-diversity. Sos I have to disagree with your sentiments regarding racial diversity.
S.O.J., you should read Jared Taylor’s new book, “White Identity”. He speaks, at length, about racial diversity.
I hear good things about that book. Maybe I will check it out. Thus far though the experiment in racial diversity in America seems to be going well.
“Thus far though the experiment in racial diversity in America seems to be going well.”
Not sure if trolling….
If you had chosen a different name for yourself than “Annoyed” I might have decided to address that uncertainty in your mind you just expressed.
I would be completely color blind if I did not have to hear about race from the ultra nationalists or multiculturalists but tame white nationalists like Jared Taylor are less race concious than CRT people like Tim Wise.
Can anyone seriously tell me that lynching people just because they’ve been let off by the justice system is excusable? I’m pretty sure that then, as now, there was such a thing as the rule of law. That means, amongst other things, that offenders can only be punished in accordance with the law by means of proper judicial process. So even if these lynchings were of people who really committed serious crimes such as rape (and that (de jure) cannot be proven without a court of law) it is still unlawful killing- i.e. murder.
Trying to correct the sillinesses of PC is one thing. Trying to justify murder (or al but do so) is quite another.
You’re assuming there is a “justice system” to speak of. When black jurors, black judges and black politicians routinely acquit black criminals when they victimize whites, then what we have is a state of persecution. In this situation, it is not only justified to rise up against one’s oppressors, but it is a duty.
During the days of “Reconstruction”, the South was clearly being persecuted by the North and blacks were a tool of oppression against them.