His editorial, entitled, “The Plight of Black America,” referred to an essay by Heather MacDonald, a renowned Manhattan Institute scholar, that noted that police shootings accounted for only 3% of black homicides. He wrote,
“In 2019, according to Statista, there were 7,484 black homicides in America. Who is killing the other 97 percent of black Americans? Are white civilians intruding into black neighborhoods and killing such a huge percentage of blacks?”
He then provided a five-page listing of actual homicides derived from the essay by Heather MacDonald, “A Grim—and Ignored—Body Count, the Problem in the American Inner City Is Not Racism but Drive-by Shootings of Blacks by other Blacks,” that appeared in the City Journal on November 2, 2020.
Here is a sample of the listings.
“On October 13, a 35-year-old probation officer who was eight months pregnant was fatally shot in the back outside of her home on the far South side of Chicago.”
“On October 10, a 16-year-old boy turned Lake Shore Drive in Chicago into a ‘shooting gallery,’ according to the police, shooting out the eye of a 19-year-old girl in a nearby car.”
“On October 8, a 51-year-old bus driver in Baltimore reprimanded a couple for getting on his bus without paying. The female grabbed the driver’s backpack and ran off. The bus driver gave chase; the male opened fire and continued pumping bullets into the driver as he lay on the ground, killing him.”
“In Sacramento, a 9-year-old girl was killed on October 3 during a family gathering in a park. Her six-year-old cousin and aunt were also shot. Two hours later, a 17-year-old crashed into a pole after being fatally shot. Shortly thereafter, a 17-year-old girl was shot.”
As I said above there are five full pages listing these horrific killings that occurred in just a few months. So far this year the killings in black neighborhoods have increased to record new levels. Just as alarming is the fact that the great majority of the killers are still on the streets. Very few have been arrested, convicted, or sent to jail.
What is the cause of these killings? It can’t be racism, systemic or otherwise, since the killers are black men, who by definition cannot be accused of racism. It might be better to ask, “who are these killers?”
Although the great majority of blacks, like everyone else in this country, are decent law-abiding citizens, there is a criminal underclass, made up primarily of young black gang members, who have been terrorizing black neighborhoods for decades.
Young male sociopaths are not unique to the black community. When the Irish and the Italians first came to this country, they also had their gangs that terrorized the members of their own communities and tarnished the image of decent immigrants. More recent immigrant groups have their own gangs that murderously compete for control of the drug trade.
Over a hundred years ago, a perceptive novelist described these criminals and their world.
You got a sinister impression of a world, sordid, tumultuous, in which these gangsters, dope traffickers, bookies and race-course touts lived their dark and hazardous lives. Dregs of the population of a great city, living on their wits, suspicious of one another, ready to betray their best friends if it could be of advantage to themselves, open-handed, sociable, gaily cynical, even good-humoured, they seemed to enjoy that existence, with all its dangers and vicissitudes, which kept you up to the mark and made you feel that you really were living. Each man’s hand was against his neighbours, but the alertness which this forced upon you was exhilarating. It was a world in which a man would shoot another for a trifle, but was just as ready to take flowers and fruit, bought at no small sacrifice, to a third who was sick in hospital.*
He was writing about the underworld in all-white Paris in the 1930s. It is not the color of one’s skin that makes one a criminal but rather the development of a criminal mentality that starts at a very young age. Teachers in inner city schools notice it in the earliest grades. Even before they get to high school, these children have gone far beyond disrupting classrooms and petty theft. At high school age they join gangs and become heartless murderers.
Last year, they were among the vandals, looters, burners, and shooters who took over and trashed neighborhoods without any fear of the official justice system. They suffered no consequences. Some politicians and commentators even praised them.
Because the victims of these shootings were not killed by a white policeman, their lives really don’t seem to matter to the protestors marching to reform, de-fund, or even eliminate the official criminal justice system. In a June 23 column in the Wall Street Journal, Jason L. Reilly argued that the protestors and their agenda are at variance with the needs and wishes of the black community.
"Current efforts to reduce resources for law enforcement in the name of "social justice" for blacks ignore that blacks have long complained about underpolicing of their communities. In a 1993 Gallup poll, 75% of black respondents said they wanted more cops on the streets, and 82% said that the court system goes too easy on offenders. Blacks today continue to express overwhelming support for the presence of more police in their neighborhoods, which suggests that, unlike the progressive politicians and activists who claim to speak on their behalf, most blacks are more interested in safe communities than they are in the racial composition of the inmate population."
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*Somerset Maugham: Christmas Holiday. pp. 201-2.
Quote of the day:
Churchill: The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deny it, malice may distort it, but there it is.
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