As an observer from Central Europe, it seems to me that the long-term work of the liberal left is finally starting to bear fruit. For years, they have been very intensively promoting the culture of victimhood, cultural, linguistic and moral relativism, racism (against white people) and in short, everything that these idiots are now drawing from.
The fact that no social media moderates racism at the expense of whites, does not monitor it in any way and does not ban it is blatant. I'm not in favor of censoring it and having some biased journalist then "translate" what they say (and what suits his/hers narrative). Just let their crap be seen, but the double standard is simply unreal and then the audacity to pretend that they don't know why people are becoming more radicalized...
Great piece. The habits of 'thinking' among a significant percentage of the 'community' is cause for alarm. As I have been saying for years now. There is a strident difference in how black and white process the world around them. I do not want to believe this, but it is the truth.
As I understand it, 'black fatigue' originates with blacks who are tired of having to deal with 'whiteness.' Whites took back the term to mean sick of dealing with black grievance.
A Japanese researcher (this can be googled) discovered high rates of narcissism in the black population. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Dr. Stacey Patton's essay vilifying Jeff Metcalf for not teaching his sons that "black boys have boundaries" is the perfect example of malignant narcissism.
Narcissists have boundaries. But they don't respect anyone else's.
Deny / Attack / Reverse Victim / Offend. DARVO. That's Patton's essay to a T.
In academia, I am privy to this manipulation. I joined the Faculty of Color group and much of what they discuss is about whether THEY are being treated with the proper amount of respect, with the assumption that they would not be according to the color of their skin. And around and around this goes.
Insofar as this is concerned: "Yes, we can acknowledge the real wounds in black communities, the legitimate grievances, the history of racism blacks have long suffered in this country, the litany of ways our justice system has historically failed our black brothers and sisters, all of it, everything, without having to pretend that this celebration of a child’s death flows from anything resembling moral clarity."
I propose that we stop acknowledging "real wounds in black communities" as something whites caused. I no longer believe that. There is too much evidence to support that segregation was necessary. That the propensity for violence and laziness was there all along. And the more attention paid to their so-called "grievances" the more these narcissists will hold our society hostage.
I'm done.
I was done a long time ago. See my essay "A Buck-Fifty: A Harsh Lesson in Race Relations." Imagine being told by an (all black) administration that a man who has threatened people in your class to the point where people are afraid to come to class still has a right to an education.
Well stated. Matt Walsh and John Doyle have been deconstructing historical events and people and discovered that things were not quite as we had always been advertised.
Your description of the origin of the terminology is accurate, but the meaning of BF has indeed drifted into the phenomenon of black people becoming resentful of their fellows' behaviour (whether for reasons of objective standard or merely self-preservation). This is good - because any white voice is automatically deprecated whenever addressing such subjects - hence the back community needs to be the prime mover on the issue.
There are many such voices I'm seeing and they need to be supported, Amala Epkunobi for example.
Yes, I have supported them for a long time. It's a similar phenomenon to what I experienced in my essay "A Buck-Fifty" -- a bona fide complaint over a black male student threatening other students received a shrug from the non-white admin because I and the student complaining are white.
It wasn't until a black female student complained that anyone would listen.
Lynching was a real thing. Black men were really tortured and murdered by white mobs including, in some cases, the local police, judges, even members of Congress. I just looked it up, and the most recent unambiguous case was 1981, which is easily within living memory.
So yeah, whatever problems and moral rot black people may display, they have genuinely suffered severe injustice at the hands of white people, and recently. Both things can be true--and are true--at the same time.
Oh, I know that. But we were talking about whether or not blacks had really suffered injustice at the hands of whites in America. And the answer is yes, unambiguously so. A lynching is an injustice. Blacks have been lynched, in some cases horribly tortured while large populations of “respectable people” looked on and celebrated. This happened, and within living memory.
And other people have also been lynched. Blacks have meted out cruelty and injustice to whites, I know that well.
And of course, Jews have suffered immense injustice at the hands of white and blacks and Arabs and others.
It so happens to be the case that all these things are true at the same time.
I take umbrage with your emphasis on WHITES. People of all stripes have meted out all kinds of injustice. But the people who dish out the most injustice are blacks against other blacks.
This is not an opinion. It is a fact.
It is also very unlikely that they were lynched no reason.
I am amused at your inability to understand that I was responding to the claim. As for your defense of lynching, that tells me nothing about lynching, and everything about you.
"I propose that we stop acknowledging "real wounds in black communities" as something whites caused. I no longer believe that. There is too much evidence to support that segregation was necessary. That the propensity for violence and laziness was there all along."
Everything the dissent right states is always "stop DEI", "stop affirmative action", their social policy is just, I am more curious what alternatives should fuel black people instead, since you were there, (I am a black South African, so I don't know shit), I am more curious in that in my opinion, its easy saying "stop grievence culture", but what to replace it with exactly
You acknowledge the problem in your question … they have decided to adopt a separate culture (in this case a grievance culture), that keeps them separate &, in this case, dependent.
If they joined the American culture they would be fine & examples of black’s who decide to shed a separatist culture & thrive in America at large abound.
To be clear, “fine” does not mean they would wake up and all financial or other problems would miracle away, but the anger & self pity that fuels them now, would be used to stop finding reasons someone else is causing employment problems or educational problems, or looking at what other people have & what they think is owed, & instead used to work on getting a better education, monitoring children, fixing family problems, working on getting a better job & building their own success.
IOW, removing the angry, yet dependent, toddler psyche & becoming an adult who understands everything in life isn’t fair, hard work is necessary, responsibility & accountability matters, & thinking everything is someone else’s problem or responsibility is a losing philosophy.
Let me get this straight. They want white Americans to be mortally afraid that black Americans might kill us on a whim, but cry racism when we remove ourselves from their ghettos and dread them showing up in our communities? Make it make sense.
I am a nurse and 40 years ago I remember an ER resident who was in disbelief that he had spent hours that night trying to save the lives of 2 black men who were fighting over 5 dollars and end up stabbing each other almost to death…..over $5. He couldn’t get over it. It was unheard of. Now we have highly respected educated people cheering this sort of thing on. No respect for the sanctity of human life. If you feel disrespected you can kill someone? Really? This happened to a white child so it is getting attention, but this attitude transcends black & white. Many black youths are being killed and it is driven by this attitude. You don’t get to kill someone because they made you feel bad, they said something you don’t like, didn’t give you the respect you thought you deserved. This is crazy!
This kind of behavior is absolutely present across many groups, not just blacks. But not all groups. And not at the same rates. And the glorification and defense of it, that’s rare to see within a population. But there are examples of groups that celebrate or at least widely condone killing innocent people: Palestinians and Russians are two examples. Once upon a time, it was Germans, Japanese, white Southerners.
I agree. The behavior is seen in other groups, and was prevalent in many groups. As an Italian, this was very prevalent among us. I huge difference, and perhaps the reason the behavior declined over time, was that many Italians were appalled and ashamed by it. No one condemned the mafia and their ways more than good honest Italians. My parents railed against them and felt they were a black eye for all Italians. That said, this child is not the mafia by any means, but it is the same mentality and lack of respect for life that drives both. So many more black people would never live like this than do, but they defend the behavior and that just feeds it. They are not helping black youth by excusing this.
It makes sense when you realize it is an honor culture.
Honor cultures have no problem inflicting violence on their own members for violations of the "honor code" no matter how trivial and how strange the code looks to outsiders. But the minute an outsider attacks an insider (even if it's justified) the honor culture unites behind their own and demands vengeance.
You missed zionists and Banderite Ukrainians. By singling out Russians and Palestinians and not those attacking and genociding them, you reveal your prejudices.
I will add that most of your examples are about situations where people find themselves in a war. During peacetime, those groups are pretty civilized.
There is only one group on the planet that uses violence as its first and only response to almost any situation.
Karnelo Anthony is a prime example of which I speak.
I don't disagree with anything you say but note that on X, where I spend far too much time, and where I follow a lot of conservative people including many black conservatives - there is universal loathing for the thugs, most acutely expressed by the black conservatives. They HATE this Anthony kid and they HATE even more the insane reactions from those who say Metcalf in any way shape or form deserved to be murdered.
They (these black conservatives on X) cheered the conviction. They detest the assumption of some (crazy white liberals, crazy blacks like Patton) that black parents can't raise law-abiding children or that black teens are powerless to control their impulses.
Please do not in your justifiable loathing for people like Patton and, sadly, many others - ever fear that the world is lacking in decent people of all colors who want creeps like Anthony off the streets forever.
I have read - don't know if it's accurate but FWIW have read in a couple of places on X - that Anthony came from an intact middle class family (notwithstanding the dumb comments they've made) and that he chose to act like a gangsta - also, that the stabbing (think it is clear he came to the meet intending or at least quite willing to stab someone) may have been some kind of gang initiation. Imagine coming from a nice family and CHOOSING to hurt a stranger just to impress bad people who you had no obligation to interact with but nonetheless sought out and chose to seek to please.
I think a couple of good things will come from the *horrendous response* to Anthony's conviction, specifically, that might not have happened if there had simply been the murder. First, if people weren't aware before that a significant minority of our population seeks out confrontation in the hope of being able to overreact - well, now you know. And second, hopefully it will motivate all parents to have unpleasant awkward blunt talks with their children. Avoid certain environments, and know that what's a safe response in one environment might not be safe in another.
I am fairly certain that Anthony's intention was to "jump in" to a gang with a slashing that went too far. Hence entering a tent where he knew he didn't belong. Hence refusing to leave. Hence ratcheting the belligerence. Hence provoking Metcalf to shove him in order to justify what turned out to be murder.
That's why his mother says he didn't intend to murder Metcalf. No, he just intended to slash him.
Someone called me a "racist" for pointing this out...of course they did. Why do a significant percentage of white people protect this thuggery? Why?
This is an important essay. Josh of Disaffected podcast also notes this problem.
As someone with some direct black slave ancestry (Barbados) I can say that anyone (blacks too) has a choice about how they choose to think and behave. Booker T had it right. The black Marxists from the 50s and 60s that created this current mess, had it wrong.
The grave damage was done by making George Floyd into a saint. Members of Congress standing on their knees. Talk of reparations - from people who never had slaves to people who have never been slaves. It distorted the reality for blacks and has been escalating. The progressive left are the only ones to blame. I don’t truly see how it can be undone. A few black people acknowledging “ black fatigue” will not move the needle fast enough and far enough I am afraid.
Of course, it is not new but has been taken so much further. To my knowledge, never before we have claimed that hard work, merits of education, and family values are signs of white supremacy. And from liberal artsy minds it had actually traveled into everyday life when SAT scores were abandoned and introduced into jurisprudence by progressive judges when violent criminals are not prosecuted because of their unfortunate background.
none of this is new. the left have always coddled the blacks. simple example: in the movie annie hall, his parents talk about their black house keeper. the mother accuses her of stealing. the father makes excuses the theft because of slavery. that was in a scene set in the 40ies from a movie made in the 70ies. its still the same.
“These examples come from random people commenting on social media.”
We D E S P E R A T E L Y have to start asking ourselves if these are psy ops.
I can’t help but notice that the person who commented on this piece in favor of a light sentence for Anthony, presuming racism without evidence on behalf of not just Metcalf but his whole team, and calling the piece “racist” has no avatar, a flag for a kind of Substack account that tends to pop up out of nowhere and have particularly risible opinions.
It might be comforting for you to think that this is all just some foreign destabilization attempt, but it is simply true that there is a portion of the black community that feels this way.
The fact that greater than zero black people feel this way does not in any way preclude the possibility that somebody is exaggerating the number who do, in order to foment racial division. This isn't about comfort, it's about applying the proper amount of skepticism to internet discourse. It's about not being a dupe and chasing shiny objects.
Obviously it does not preclude the possibility. But these are prominent black figures and they are *very* comfortable expressing these views. It's not "being a dupe" to notice that a sitting black Congresswoman supports the murderer because he killed a white person. It's just reality. It's been reality for decades. OJ Simpson was not a psyop to foment racial division either.
I would add importantly that as the Chekhov line goes that knife being carried around was likely to be used and who was it likely to be used on- probability wise more likely another African American and then this presumably would’ve been ok. I am mortified by the response a smart talented young man w a loving family and twin brother who held him as he died brutally stabbed because he went to remove someone who wouldn’t leave from a place they didn’t belong and challenged him to do it menacingly. What exactly do people think an older adult at the meet would’ve done?
but let’s not pretend decades of race baiting and huckstering even before social media exploded didn’t lay a foundation for this. The pocket of sanity I’ve seen has come from the black Christian community on substack and one person wrote does this look like the face of someone who meant every inch of it. His life is ruined. His toughness facade lasted a short short time. So while a community looks upon him saintly he’s going to jail for a long time and may not learn the right lesson to come out and restart his life straight one day. With so many programming him to believe this is in ANY way a race issue. No one has the privilege of avoiding daily life friction no one and no one has the privilege of responding to typical life friction with murder.
“He’s going to jail for a long time and may not learn the right lesson to come out and restart his life straight one day.”
The odds that this boy comes out at all are extremely thin. It’s far more likely that he winds up dead within the first year. I know a lot of people will say, “Good, fuck that monster.” And yes, that would be just in a certain moral sense, but there's a difference between something being just and justice. And that would not be justice.
But I think it’s his most likely fate for several reasons. First, the last thing you want to be in prison is high profile. The entire Texas state system knows this boy is rich. The guys in there have contraband cell phones and access to the internet. So either his family keeps putting bribe money on the books to keep him alive until all that 630k is gone, or he’s dead. And don’t forget, there are images of him online flashing gang signs. Crip, by my lights. But I’m no expert. Still, even if he was just joking around, the men in TDCJ are going to take that as seriously as a shanking. The Aryan Brotherhood is going to want to murder this boy for obvious reasons. The Crips, if that’s who takes him based on his stupid decision to LARP as one of them, will probably only protect him against the AB if he can provide some value, which brings us back to that 630k.
But even if his family forks all that money over, 35 years is a long time. And even if he gets out early on parole, how many years do you think he lasts before the AB finally gets a man close enough? It ain’t hard.
And given what you said about how Anthony is not the hard man he thinks he is, but just a sociopathic child, there is a deep sadness to his fate despite what he did because it breaks your heart to think he might have had a different life, the Metcalf family would still be whole, and our nation would not have yet one more reason for blacks and whites to harbor animosity toward each other.
P.S. I always appreciate a good Chekhov reference. And yeah, I’ve seen the sane commentary from black Christian Substack too.
I can’t speak to what will or won’t happen in prison. It’s a gruesome place a max prison and it dispenses the worst type of justice. Ironically there’s a place where sadly you’d want to carry a knife. A while ago I was laughing reading a Dear Abby type article where someone had written about their failing relationship with a stepchild they were close to before some family discord. The response was full of heart and was good advice as it cautioned the person to take it easier to wait namely bc teenagers are pretty much selfish narcissists on the whole and down the line she speculated it would be easier to rebuild the connection. I don’t know if Carmelo Anthony is a sociopath. Most teens are narcissists and very caught up in themselves and their feelings and it’s not a great state of mind and being for empathy. That said I believe sociopathy exists on a spectrum and can be entirely genetic but also entirely learned. The community responding to this incident with vile shallow indefensible drivel are teaching sociopathy. Headlining it with why YOU are a bad parent is the utmost of projection. I didn’t love the film dead man walking. It was a powerful movie and fair, but i think for me it came down to the locus of the film centering around a version of redemption that I can’t sign on to. Redemption from my perspective doesn’t guarantee forgiveness or freedom from specific punishment. I thought the movie got confused in this regard- is his life worth saving because all life is worth saving even the most miserable of violent sociopaths or because at the end he experienced remorse which is not something one can prove one can believe it or not believe it. Redemption is using the faculties that exalt us above other animals and allow us to deeply understand good and evil on more than an instinctive level. It can’t hinge on what it gives you back from others. Suffice to say it’s barbaric to confer redemption onto someone for entirely superficial reasons or by referencing incidents that are truly in no way related and the charlatans posting their hideous flimsy creed are not in any way endowed to offer exoneration or redemption regardless because someone is dead they’ll never kiss their parents again or do all the things that people do in life and they didn’t deserve it full stop. What type of clique and what type of environment leads a young man to believe that he can always act tough even menacing because he has a weapon and that he can even every minimal score with a knife and it’s somehow self defense. That’s the sickness. Inherently it’s no different than honor killings because it begins with the disturbing idea that you can murder someone for reasons entirely unrelated to self defense and the provocation is often going to be minimal and it’s often going to be someone threatening someone, not having the person fall in line, and then you get to step in with control and end them. And who gets harmed most by this objectively? African Americans.
Well said. I wanted to also write about how there is a theory that mental disorders like sociopathy or narcissism can become prevalent within a population given certain environmental conditions. Think of Nazi Germany or East Germany. The sociopathy rate is usually 1-3% but in those places at those times it was probably upwards of 30%. But I didn’t add that to the essay because I wanted to keep the argument more focused.
“I don’t know if Carmelo Anthony is a sociopath.”
He murdered someone for touching him so I think one can make a pretty good case for sociopathy. But you’re right to be careful here. It could just be extremely low IQ or brain damage leading to lack of impulse control. Or PTSD if he was brutally abused as a child. Or schizophrenia. Or a personality disorder like borderline. But the evidence suggests to me sociopathy.
He didn’t impulsively murder someone for touching him. I look at it differently. I have no reason to think he had an abnormally low IQ or in any similar way lacked capacity and I know people who I would say are at the highest percentile for poor impulse control but would never stab someone frivolously or likely ever. It’s impossible to label this an impulse control issue since he was clearly planning the move because he was significantly smaller than the guy he stabbed. I know it seems alien but is it really that alien a cultural ill where young men are triggered even homicidally by the wrong look or wrong move and this truly defines toxic masculinity that no one is going to mess with you no one is going to cross you and this ends up including the simplest slights. You might graduate into antagonizing someone to slight you. You’ll have huge people constantly wanting to prove themselves and smaller men constantly trying to level up with weapons. We’ve seen this dynamic at work in high crime broken neighborhoods and its de riguer in jail but the maladaptive status seeking behavior filters down into the greater culture and puts black men at much greater risk. Remember how 8 mile ended- the black rapper is not authentic because he attended private school and presumably got a decent education. I broadly have concern for teen boys and young men in groups. You see it sometimes in girls too it’s mortifying and looks bizarrely like prison culture but boys and young men are at much higher risk. Puberty makes you whack. It’s a lot of hormones and emotions and even though it is over years it feels like an instantaneous ton of bricks. Suddenly you’re a proto adult. But of course the real adults around you are all morons who don’t get it. As it turns out real life Lord of the Flies situations tend to breed cooperation bc people want to survive but the lesson is instructive- what happens when immature emotional hormonal self centered young people are socializing each other when almost none of them have anything to offer in this regard. Tough guy gangster aspirations can be peer amplified. The boy isn’t an idiot but he genuinely asked this is self defense. To you and me it looks insanely idiotic but observe the adults in some version or other from ignorant to highly educated (the only difference is peppering the same doltish inconsistent morally obscene material with useless academic jargon and evoking false history or painful history irrelevant to this event, never mind the smear to real victims of the past) validating this behavior, one can only imagine what his peers would say. I don’t necessarily think he’s a sociopath even though he’s clearly exhibiting traits. I believe he’s more likely a victim of a deeply pathologic idea about male status and strength. I think in the case you described you might consider if it’s possible for people to be selectively psychopathic, sociopathic, sadistic and truly meet this criteria in a selective way in situations where out groups have been demonized. But I do think you might find that the most disturbing human behavior is often very selective and technically it might be difficult to label people broadly because their behavior is not broad. For me it doesn’t lessen the gravity of their evil but it definitely requires a different framework. Of course in every single situation of human depravity you are going to find purely psychopathic people but how this spreads and holds people captive is a different model than someone who their whole life has exhibited deeply disturbing anti social and or violent behavior.
As a church historian I remember reading a complaint from the 1560s that the village elites dont come to church - "and since poor folk put a lot of stock into what the mighty do" they dont come too. If we in the US celebrated crudeness, vulagarity, nastiness - this is what we get. Our two most vocal moral forces are MAGA and WOKE LETFT. Horseshoe effect. We reap what we sow - unfortunately. We need to provide better role models to eachother: white, black, everyone - than the ones we have now.
I agree with you. The one caveat though is that white people who would cheer on a murderer out of racial solidarity would not be referred to as a civil rights leader or an anti-racist leader. That's what makes the toxicity on the left more disturbing to me. Nobody expects the far right to behave in ways that are respectful towards everybody. Those who have been to fight for civil rights, equality, freedom and justice for everybody have exploited people's trust in them. If you look at the attitude of so many black people in these movements they're really no different than the far right but of course the far right doesn't believe in affirmative actions, reparations or canceling people for anti-black racism so that is why they gravitate to the left and for no other reason.
I agree with the sentiment here, but I’d frame it in a different way, perhaps to be less inflammatory but more specifically because I am interested in this as a general phenomenon not one specific to American black culture. I have a feeling what we’re seeing here is no different in phenomena than the Trumpers or extreme left in the USA, or really any group of people regardless of demographic subdivision, who seem on the face of things, fucking idiots. The causes are multifactorial, but what you end up with is a subsection of the left side of the bell curve, not the political spectrum, who feel aggrieved about something, and have been radicalized by media into taking a cloistered, tribal ideological position. The details might be different across groups, the specific detail of the grievance may be different, but the pattern of the pathology seems similar. I will say, the liberal/academic tendency towards cultural relativism has allowed untenable cultural technologies—like honor culture—to exist uncriticized. We should be shouting down primitive honor cultures like we shout down toxic masculinity or sexism—retributive violence is uncivilized.
I’d like to see the actual granular data on this opinion, broken down by demographic. Choosing from the louder voices may over-represent the pervasiveness of the sentiment. This may just be the unfortunate side effect of social media elevating-rather-than-gatekeeping the opinions of all the angry dumb cunts. This may not indicate any unique rot to one demographic, but rather the result of giving voice to the demos in general.
One way to understand how racism corrodes society is to understand that there is no black without white and no white without black. So it stands to reason that some amorphous 'white community' will be alarmed by criminal or antisocial dysfunctions in some amorphous 'black community'. One of the consequences is observations like this one that tells simple truths with loaded terms. The terms of race are always loaded. That is the point of racialism, to rid the grey from sociology, politics, psychology and anthropology.
It is also not coincidentally the point of Frankfort School Marxism to inject multiculturalism into academia and politics which hardens into essential racialism. Of course 'the hard but necessary part is naming this without indicting an entire community for the sins of its worst members.' But if you insist on using racial terms, then you are stuck forever. The sins of any Kulak are the sins of all Kulaks, as long as you're calling them in those Stalinist terms.
The appropriate solution here would be, as the Negro did, to invert the terminology rather than to indict the nation. That is to say, don't use 'black', use the Woke term 'BIPOC' which only makes sense in the Woke context. BIPOC stands for 'black indigenous people of color', and to a certain extent that was the Black Lives Matter terminology. Remember that it was the BLM highly funded and highly corrupted organization that incited fools of all sorts to riot in the streets.
The trick is to identify the culprits in their cults. They will tell you who they are and what they want, just as we identify the IRGC separately from Iranian people. Revolutionaries don't know how to shut up. Misdirected missiles that hit innocents always betrays faulty intelligence.
"BIPOC" is a false label - as is the entire racial dichotomy between "white" and "of color".
The fact is that if a color-line exists in American society it is between black people and everybody else vs between whites and everybody else. The left trying to cobble an alliance between minorities is an example of what is labelled in psychology of abusive relationships as "forced teaming". This is very visible in the way the prog leviathan is trying to blame black-on-asian victimization on "white supremacy".
What you say is true, but it won't be heard or accepted as true by most black Americans, I think, until MANY prominent black Americans say it also, and say it publicly and frequently...and work to change the culture that embraces such thinking and acceptance.
It’s starting to happen. When you start to see prominent figures express black fatigue then things will really shift. But that’s a tall order because the term sounds racist on its face.
Why is it a 'tall order'? If the 'prominent' class of black Americans cannot admit that black Americans are entirely equal in their propensity for bullshit, self-indulgence, anti-social narcissism, greed, and good ol fashioned lack of integrity, then I'd propose they are not only a part of the issue, but purveyors of such. Fatigue, indeed.
Ultimately, how many is enough depends on if you can be satisfied with those people who share your concerns. If you want to change an entire race, then you won't be satisfied until you have a final solution. So who represents black America to you?
Michael, no one person represents black America to me.
I am not sure what you are implying in saying that "a final solution" is needed in order for other folks to be satisfied, but I don't think any rational or moral person is asking for the elimination of black folks in America, as the solution to violence and lawlessness by so many black folks.
But the crime statistics seem clear that a much greater percentage of black Americans (more so than other racial or ethnic or cultural groups in America) resort to physical violence--either initiating or reacting with it or justifying it--in dealing with other folks and everyday problems.
Folks like me are just asking that black youth--and all American youth--be taught to respect others and not resort to stealing from or hurting others, and that their elders and teachers, and all adults, lead the way in modeling appropriate, civilized, respectful behavior to others--as all Americans (and people everywhere) should act with others.
America and the world will never be perfect, but seeing oneself as a victim or perceiving other ethnic groups as the enemy, as so many American blacks apparently feel and do, especially vis-a-vis white folks, is not good for anyone.
It's so depressing. My middle class neighborhood is about 40% black and I have nevr had a problem with anyone in 10 years. But now I am considering finding as white a neighborhood as I can and I went and got my concealed carry permit. Is that racist? I don't think so--that's called sanity.
If you have watched The Sopranos you saw the Italian-American community begin to distance itself from the crime ridden Mafia. When does the apparent tolerance for crime within the black community along with the acceptance by black school administrators of the disruption of classrooms by out of control individuals begin to end? When will black fathers who fail to care for and love their children and especially their boy children be openly censured by black leadership? The young Chris Rock joked about these issues but he clearly now censors himself.
On X, now without censorship thanks to Elon Musk, out of control violence has become standard fodder for ridicule with blacks typically being the most violent group depicted. Unfortunately, the stereotype of black violence is rooted in reality.
Where white people decide to live, shop, vacation and even if they are willing to use public transit (especially women) has been for decades largely based on avoiding large groups of black people because of their perceived and actual tendency to engage in violence. The term white flight has always been used as a slur when, in truth, it means white common sense.
Why do the Democrats always appear to be on their back foot on the issue of black violent crime? Why do they allow Trump to take the lead on this issue while they hem and haw? Why not make fighting murderers, car jackers and rapists a top priority of the Democratic Party and especially of Democratic mayors? There is simply no political logic to being seen as soft on crime when the majority of crime victims are the very minorities the Democrats are supposed to champion. The single most important thing Democrats could do to save the lives of young black men would be to reinstitute the police policy of “stop and frisk” in black neighborhoods to stop the carrying of illegal guns. This would stem the tide of murders of blacks that fill the nightly news in every major city in America and yet is hidden in plain sight. These kids would quickly get the message and quit carrying illegally. Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and yet commit about half of the nation’s homicides. A rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. They are the nation’s gun violence problem. They are also the primary victims of these murders with about 6,000 killed every year. We need to save their lives in spite of the insane ACLU and its bullshit niceties.
I think you nailed it. Italians fathers didn’t abandon their kids and that’s the difference. One of the strongest predictors of male violence is not having a father or father figure in your life. And yes, I am not the first to say it but the American real estate market is largely based on two factors: proximity to work and distance from crime.
As an observer from Central Europe, it seems to me that the long-term work of the liberal left is finally starting to bear fruit. For years, they have been very intensively promoting the culture of victimhood, cultural, linguistic and moral relativism, racism (against white people) and in short, everything that these idiots are now drawing from.
The fact that no social media moderates racism at the expense of whites, does not monitor it in any way and does not ban it is blatant. I'm not in favor of censoring it and having some biased journalist then "translate" what they say (and what suits his/hers narrative). Just let their crap be seen, but the double standard is simply unreal and then the audacity to pretend that they don't know why people are becoming more radicalized...
Great piece. The habits of 'thinking' among a significant percentage of the 'community' is cause for alarm. As I have been saying for years now. There is a strident difference in how black and white process the world around them. I do not want to believe this, but it is the truth.
As I understand it, 'black fatigue' originates with blacks who are tired of having to deal with 'whiteness.' Whites took back the term to mean sick of dealing with black grievance.
A Japanese researcher (this can be googled) discovered high rates of narcissism in the black population. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Dr. Stacey Patton's essay vilifying Jeff Metcalf for not teaching his sons that "black boys have boundaries" is the perfect example of malignant narcissism.
Narcissists have boundaries. But they don't respect anyone else's.
Deny / Attack / Reverse Victim / Offend. DARVO. That's Patton's essay to a T.
In academia, I am privy to this manipulation. I joined the Faculty of Color group and much of what they discuss is about whether THEY are being treated with the proper amount of respect, with the assumption that they would not be according to the color of their skin. And around and around this goes.
Insofar as this is concerned: "Yes, we can acknowledge the real wounds in black communities, the legitimate grievances, the history of racism blacks have long suffered in this country, the litany of ways our justice system has historically failed our black brothers and sisters, all of it, everything, without having to pretend that this celebration of a child’s death flows from anything resembling moral clarity."
I propose that we stop acknowledging "real wounds in black communities" as something whites caused. I no longer believe that. There is too much evidence to support that segregation was necessary. That the propensity for violence and laziness was there all along. And the more attention paid to their so-called "grievances" the more these narcissists will hold our society hostage.
I'm done.
I was done a long time ago. See my essay "A Buck-Fifty: A Harsh Lesson in Race Relations." Imagine being told by an (all black) administration that a man who has threatened people in your class to the point where people are afraid to come to class still has a right to an education.
Well stated. Matt Walsh and John Doyle have been deconstructing historical events and people and discovered that things were not quite as we had always been advertised.
I read your excellent essay!
Your description of the origin of the terminology is accurate, but the meaning of BF has indeed drifted into the phenomenon of black people becoming resentful of their fellows' behaviour (whether for reasons of objective standard or merely self-preservation). This is good - because any white voice is automatically deprecated whenever addressing such subjects - hence the back community needs to be the prime mover on the issue.
There are many such voices I'm seeing and they need to be supported, Amala Epkunobi for example.
Yes, I have supported them for a long time. It's a similar phenomenon to what I experienced in my essay "A Buck-Fifty" -- a bona fide complaint over a black male student threatening other students received a shrug from the non-white admin because I and the student complaining are white.
It wasn't until a black female student complained that anyone would listen.
Lynching was a real thing. Black men were really tortured and murdered by white mobs including, in some cases, the local police, judges, even members of Congress. I just looked it up, and the most recent unambiguous case was 1981, which is easily within living memory.
So yeah, whatever problems and moral rot black people may display, they have genuinely suffered severe injustice at the hands of white people, and recently. Both things can be true--and are true--at the same time.
I looked up lynching years ago. It wasn't just blacks who were lynched, but that's what the propaganda masters want you to believe.
Oh, I know that. But we were talking about whether or not blacks had really suffered injustice at the hands of whites in America. And the answer is yes, unambiguously so. A lynching is an injustice. Blacks have been lynched, in some cases horribly tortured while large populations of “respectable people” looked on and celebrated. This happened, and within living memory.
And other people have also been lynched. Blacks have meted out cruelty and injustice to whites, I know that well.
And of course, Jews have suffered immense injustice at the hands of white and blacks and Arabs and others.
It so happens to be the case that all these things are true at the same time.
I take umbrage with your emphasis on WHITES. People of all stripes have meted out all kinds of injustice. But the people who dish out the most injustice are blacks against other blacks.
This is not an opinion. It is a fact.
It is also very unlikely that they were lynched no reason.
I am amused at your inability to understand that I was responding to the claim. As for your defense of lynching, that tells me nothing about lynching, and everything about you.
No one "defended" lynching. That stupid assertion tells me a lot about you, Mr. Ad Hominem Straw Man.
Back in the day, criminals got lynched. That is a fact.
"I propose that we stop acknowledging "real wounds in black communities" as something whites caused. I no longer believe that. There is too much evidence to support that segregation was necessary. That the propensity for violence and laziness was there all along."
What is your proposition?
Stop fueling the narcissistic b.s. for starters. Lock up the criminal element.
Everything the dissent right states is always "stop DEI", "stop affirmative action", their social policy is just, I am more curious what alternatives should fuel black people instead, since you were there, (I am a black South African, so I don't know shit), I am more curious in that in my opinion, its easy saying "stop grievence culture", but what to replace it with exactly
You acknowledge the problem in your question … they have decided to adopt a separate culture (in this case a grievance culture), that keeps them separate &, in this case, dependent.
If they joined the American culture they would be fine & examples of black’s who decide to shed a separatist culture & thrive in America at large abound.
To be clear, “fine” does not mean they would wake up and all financial or other problems would miracle away, but the anger & self pity that fuels them now, would be used to stop finding reasons someone else is causing employment problems or educational problems, or looking at what other people have & what they think is owed, & instead used to work on getting a better education, monitoring children, fixing family problems, working on getting a better job & building their own success.
IOW, removing the angry, yet dependent, toddler psyche & becoming an adult who understands everything in life isn’t fair, hard work is necessary, responsibility & accountability matters, & thinking everything is someone else’s problem or responsibility is a losing philosophy.
Let me get this straight. They want white Americans to be mortally afraid that black Americans might kill us on a whim, but cry racism when we remove ourselves from their ghettos and dread them showing up in our communities? Make it make sense.
I am a nurse and 40 years ago I remember an ER resident who was in disbelief that he had spent hours that night trying to save the lives of 2 black men who were fighting over 5 dollars and end up stabbing each other almost to death…..over $5. He couldn’t get over it. It was unheard of. Now we have highly respected educated people cheering this sort of thing on. No respect for the sanctity of human life. If you feel disrespected you can kill someone? Really? This happened to a white child so it is getting attention, but this attitude transcends black & white. Many black youths are being killed and it is driven by this attitude. You don’t get to kill someone because they made you feel bad, they said something you don’t like, didn’t give you the respect you thought you deserved. This is crazy!
This kind of behavior is absolutely present across many groups, not just blacks. But not all groups. And not at the same rates. And the glorification and defense of it, that’s rare to see within a population. But there are examples of groups that celebrate or at least widely condone killing innocent people: Palestinians and Russians are two examples. Once upon a time, it was Germans, Japanese, white Southerners.
I agree. The behavior is seen in other groups, and was prevalent in many groups. As an Italian, this was very prevalent among us. I huge difference, and perhaps the reason the behavior declined over time, was that many Italians were appalled and ashamed by it. No one condemned the mafia and their ways more than good honest Italians. My parents railed against them and felt they were a black eye for all Italians. That said, this child is not the mafia by any means, but it is the same mentality and lack of respect for life that drives both. So many more black people would never live like this than do, but they defend the behavior and that just feeds it. They are not helping black youth by excusing this.
It makes sense when you realize it is an honor culture.
Honor cultures have no problem inflicting violence on their own members for violations of the "honor code" no matter how trivial and how strange the code looks to outsiders. But the minute an outsider attacks an insider (even if it's justified) the honor culture unites behind their own and demands vengeance.
Chechnya and Afghanistan are examples of this.
You missed zionists and Banderite Ukrainians. By singling out Russians and Palestinians and not those attacking and genociding them, you reveal your prejudices.
I will add that most of your examples are about situations where people find themselves in a war. During peacetime, those groups are pretty civilized.
There is only one group on the planet that uses violence as its first and only response to almost any situation.
Karnelo Anthony is a prime example of which I speak.
https://i.imgur.com/Wb8RpS5.png
I don't disagree with anything you say but note that on X, where I spend far too much time, and where I follow a lot of conservative people including many black conservatives - there is universal loathing for the thugs, most acutely expressed by the black conservatives. They HATE this Anthony kid and they HATE even more the insane reactions from those who say Metcalf in any way shape or form deserved to be murdered.
They (these black conservatives on X) cheered the conviction. They detest the assumption of some (crazy white liberals, crazy blacks like Patton) that black parents can't raise law-abiding children or that black teens are powerless to control their impulses.
Please do not in your justifiable loathing for people like Patton and, sadly, many others - ever fear that the world is lacking in decent people of all colors who want creeps like Anthony off the streets forever.
I have read - don't know if it's accurate but FWIW have read in a couple of places on X - that Anthony came from an intact middle class family (notwithstanding the dumb comments they've made) and that he chose to act like a gangsta - also, that the stabbing (think it is clear he came to the meet intending or at least quite willing to stab someone) may have been some kind of gang initiation. Imagine coming from a nice family and CHOOSING to hurt a stranger just to impress bad people who you had no obligation to interact with but nonetheless sought out and chose to seek to please.
I think a couple of good things will come from the *horrendous response* to Anthony's conviction, specifically, that might not have happened if there had simply been the murder. First, if people weren't aware before that a significant minority of our population seeks out confrontation in the hope of being able to overreact - well, now you know. And second, hopefully it will motivate all parents to have unpleasant awkward blunt talks with their children. Avoid certain environments, and know that what's a safe response in one environment might not be safe in another.
I am fairly certain that Anthony's intention was to "jump in" to a gang with a slashing that went too far. Hence entering a tent where he knew he didn't belong. Hence refusing to leave. Hence ratcheting the belligerence. Hence provoking Metcalf to shove him in order to justify what turned out to be murder.
That's why his mother says he didn't intend to murder Metcalf. No, he just intended to slash him.
Someone called me a "racist" for pointing this out...of course they did. Why do a significant percentage of white people protect this thuggery? Why?
This is an important essay. Josh of Disaffected podcast also notes this problem.
As someone with some direct black slave ancestry (Barbados) I can say that anyone (blacks too) has a choice about how they choose to think and behave. Booker T had it right. The black Marxists from the 50s and 60s that created this current mess, had it wrong.
This recent book by a Canadian author goes into the victim mindset quite deeply: https://markmilke.com/the-victim-cult
The grave damage was done by making George Floyd into a saint. Members of Congress standing on their knees. Talk of reparations - from people who never had slaves to people who have never been slaves. It distorted the reality for blacks and has been escalating. The progressive left are the only ones to blame. I don’t truly see how it can be undone. A few black people acknowledging “ black fatigue” will not move the needle fast enough and far enough I am afraid.
Of course, it is not new but has been taken so much further. To my knowledge, never before we have claimed that hard work, merits of education, and family values are signs of white supremacy. And from liberal artsy minds it had actually traveled into everyday life when SAT scores were abandoned and introduced into jurisprudence by progressive judges when violent criminals are not prosecuted because of their unfortunate background.
Pretty sure Woody Allen included the scene with a tongue-in-cheek.
none of this is new. the left have always coddled the blacks. simple example: in the movie annie hall, his parents talk about their black house keeper. the mother accuses her of stealing. the father makes excuses the theft because of slavery. that was in a scene set in the 40ies from a movie made in the 70ies. its still the same.
Bingo
“These examples come from random people commenting on social media.”
We D E S P E R A T E L Y have to start asking ourselves if these are psy ops.
I can’t help but notice that the person who commented on this piece in favor of a light sentence for Anthony, presuming racism without evidence on behalf of not just Metcalf but his whole team, and calling the piece “racist” has no avatar, a flag for a kind of Substack account that tends to pop up out of nowhere and have particularly risible opinions.
Is Jasmine Crockett a psyop? Dr Patton?
It might be comforting for you to think that this is all just some foreign destabilization attempt, but it is simply true that there is a portion of the black community that feels this way.
The fact that greater than zero black people feel this way does not in any way preclude the possibility that somebody is exaggerating the number who do, in order to foment racial division. This isn't about comfort, it's about applying the proper amount of skepticism to internet discourse. It's about not being a dupe and chasing shiny objects.
Sweet jeez am I glad Crockett lost that primary.
Obviously it does not preclude the possibility. But these are prominent black figures and they are *very* comfortable expressing these views. It's not "being a dupe" to notice that a sitting black Congresswoman supports the murderer because he killed a white person. It's just reality. It's been reality for decades. OJ Simpson was not a psyop to foment racial division either.
I would add importantly that as the Chekhov line goes that knife being carried around was likely to be used and who was it likely to be used on- probability wise more likely another African American and then this presumably would’ve been ok. I am mortified by the response a smart talented young man w a loving family and twin brother who held him as he died brutally stabbed because he went to remove someone who wouldn’t leave from a place they didn’t belong and challenged him to do it menacingly. What exactly do people think an older adult at the meet would’ve done?
but let’s not pretend decades of race baiting and huckstering even before social media exploded didn’t lay a foundation for this. The pocket of sanity I’ve seen has come from the black Christian community on substack and one person wrote does this look like the face of someone who meant every inch of it. His life is ruined. His toughness facade lasted a short short time. So while a community looks upon him saintly he’s going to jail for a long time and may not learn the right lesson to come out and restart his life straight one day. With so many programming him to believe this is in ANY way a race issue. No one has the privilege of avoiding daily life friction no one and no one has the privilege of responding to typical life friction with murder.
“He’s going to jail for a long time and may not learn the right lesson to come out and restart his life straight one day.”
The odds that this boy comes out at all are extremely thin. It’s far more likely that he winds up dead within the first year. I know a lot of people will say, “Good, fuck that monster.” And yes, that would be just in a certain moral sense, but there's a difference between something being just and justice. And that would not be justice.
But I think it’s his most likely fate for several reasons. First, the last thing you want to be in prison is high profile. The entire Texas state system knows this boy is rich. The guys in there have contraband cell phones and access to the internet. So either his family keeps putting bribe money on the books to keep him alive until all that 630k is gone, or he’s dead. And don’t forget, there are images of him online flashing gang signs. Crip, by my lights. But I’m no expert. Still, even if he was just joking around, the men in TDCJ are going to take that as seriously as a shanking. The Aryan Brotherhood is going to want to murder this boy for obvious reasons. The Crips, if that’s who takes him based on his stupid decision to LARP as one of them, will probably only protect him against the AB if he can provide some value, which brings us back to that 630k.
But even if his family forks all that money over, 35 years is a long time. And even if he gets out early on parole, how many years do you think he lasts before the AB finally gets a man close enough? It ain’t hard.
And given what you said about how Anthony is not the hard man he thinks he is, but just a sociopathic child, there is a deep sadness to his fate despite what he did because it breaks your heart to think he might have had a different life, the Metcalf family would still be whole, and our nation would not have yet one more reason for blacks and whites to harbor animosity toward each other.
P.S. I always appreciate a good Chekhov reference. And yeah, I’ve seen the sane commentary from black Christian Substack too.
I can’t speak to what will or won’t happen in prison. It’s a gruesome place a max prison and it dispenses the worst type of justice. Ironically there’s a place where sadly you’d want to carry a knife. A while ago I was laughing reading a Dear Abby type article where someone had written about their failing relationship with a stepchild they were close to before some family discord. The response was full of heart and was good advice as it cautioned the person to take it easier to wait namely bc teenagers are pretty much selfish narcissists on the whole and down the line she speculated it would be easier to rebuild the connection. I don’t know if Carmelo Anthony is a sociopath. Most teens are narcissists and very caught up in themselves and their feelings and it’s not a great state of mind and being for empathy. That said I believe sociopathy exists on a spectrum and can be entirely genetic but also entirely learned. The community responding to this incident with vile shallow indefensible drivel are teaching sociopathy. Headlining it with why YOU are a bad parent is the utmost of projection. I didn’t love the film dead man walking. It was a powerful movie and fair, but i think for me it came down to the locus of the film centering around a version of redemption that I can’t sign on to. Redemption from my perspective doesn’t guarantee forgiveness or freedom from specific punishment. I thought the movie got confused in this regard- is his life worth saving because all life is worth saving even the most miserable of violent sociopaths or because at the end he experienced remorse which is not something one can prove one can believe it or not believe it. Redemption is using the faculties that exalt us above other animals and allow us to deeply understand good and evil on more than an instinctive level. It can’t hinge on what it gives you back from others. Suffice to say it’s barbaric to confer redemption onto someone for entirely superficial reasons or by referencing incidents that are truly in no way related and the charlatans posting their hideous flimsy creed are not in any way endowed to offer exoneration or redemption regardless because someone is dead they’ll never kiss their parents again or do all the things that people do in life and they didn’t deserve it full stop. What type of clique and what type of environment leads a young man to believe that he can always act tough even menacing because he has a weapon and that he can even every minimal score with a knife and it’s somehow self defense. That’s the sickness. Inherently it’s no different than honor killings because it begins with the disturbing idea that you can murder someone for reasons entirely unrelated to self defense and the provocation is often going to be minimal and it’s often going to be someone threatening someone, not having the person fall in line, and then you get to step in with control and end them. And who gets harmed most by this objectively? African Americans.
Thanks for speaking out without veneer.
Well said. I wanted to also write about how there is a theory that mental disorders like sociopathy or narcissism can become prevalent within a population given certain environmental conditions. Think of Nazi Germany or East Germany. The sociopathy rate is usually 1-3% but in those places at those times it was probably upwards of 30%. But I didn’t add that to the essay because I wanted to keep the argument more focused.
“I don’t know if Carmelo Anthony is a sociopath.”
He murdered someone for touching him so I think one can make a pretty good case for sociopathy. But you’re right to be careful here. It could just be extremely low IQ or brain damage leading to lack of impulse control. Or PTSD if he was brutally abused as a child. Or schizophrenia. Or a personality disorder like borderline. But the evidence suggests to me sociopathy.
He didn’t impulsively murder someone for touching him. I look at it differently. I have no reason to think he had an abnormally low IQ or in any similar way lacked capacity and I know people who I would say are at the highest percentile for poor impulse control but would never stab someone frivolously or likely ever. It’s impossible to label this an impulse control issue since he was clearly planning the move because he was significantly smaller than the guy he stabbed. I know it seems alien but is it really that alien a cultural ill where young men are triggered even homicidally by the wrong look or wrong move and this truly defines toxic masculinity that no one is going to mess with you no one is going to cross you and this ends up including the simplest slights. You might graduate into antagonizing someone to slight you. You’ll have huge people constantly wanting to prove themselves and smaller men constantly trying to level up with weapons. We’ve seen this dynamic at work in high crime broken neighborhoods and its de riguer in jail but the maladaptive status seeking behavior filters down into the greater culture and puts black men at much greater risk. Remember how 8 mile ended- the black rapper is not authentic because he attended private school and presumably got a decent education. I broadly have concern for teen boys and young men in groups. You see it sometimes in girls too it’s mortifying and looks bizarrely like prison culture but boys and young men are at much higher risk. Puberty makes you whack. It’s a lot of hormones and emotions and even though it is over years it feels like an instantaneous ton of bricks. Suddenly you’re a proto adult. But of course the real adults around you are all morons who don’t get it. As it turns out real life Lord of the Flies situations tend to breed cooperation bc people want to survive but the lesson is instructive- what happens when immature emotional hormonal self centered young people are socializing each other when almost none of them have anything to offer in this regard. Tough guy gangster aspirations can be peer amplified. The boy isn’t an idiot but he genuinely asked this is self defense. To you and me it looks insanely idiotic but observe the adults in some version or other from ignorant to highly educated (the only difference is peppering the same doltish inconsistent morally obscene material with useless academic jargon and evoking false history or painful history irrelevant to this event, never mind the smear to real victims of the past) validating this behavior, one can only imagine what his peers would say. I don’t necessarily think he’s a sociopath even though he’s clearly exhibiting traits. I believe he’s more likely a victim of a deeply pathologic idea about male status and strength. I think in the case you described you might consider if it’s possible for people to be selectively psychopathic, sociopathic, sadistic and truly meet this criteria in a selective way in situations where out groups have been demonized. But I do think you might find that the most disturbing human behavior is often very selective and technically it might be difficult to label people broadly because their behavior is not broad. For me it doesn’t lessen the gravity of their evil but it definitely requires a different framework. Of course in every single situation of human depravity you are going to find purely psychopathic people but how this spreads and holds people captive is a different model than someone who their whole life has exhibited deeply disturbing anti social and or violent behavior.
As a church historian I remember reading a complaint from the 1560s that the village elites dont come to church - "and since poor folk put a lot of stock into what the mighty do" they dont come too. If we in the US celebrated crudeness, vulagarity, nastiness - this is what we get. Our two most vocal moral forces are MAGA and WOKE LETFT. Horseshoe effect. We reap what we sow - unfortunately. We need to provide better role models to eachother: white, black, everyone - than the ones we have now.
Than you for the piece.
I agree with you. The one caveat though is that white people who would cheer on a murderer out of racial solidarity would not be referred to as a civil rights leader or an anti-racist leader. That's what makes the toxicity on the left more disturbing to me. Nobody expects the far right to behave in ways that are respectful towards everybody. Those who have been to fight for civil rights, equality, freedom and justice for everybody have exploited people's trust in them. If you look at the attitude of so many black people in these movements they're really no different than the far right but of course the far right doesn't believe in affirmative actions, reparations or canceling people for anti-black racism so that is why they gravitate to the left and for no other reason.
I agree with the sentiment here, but I’d frame it in a different way, perhaps to be less inflammatory but more specifically because I am interested in this as a general phenomenon not one specific to American black culture. I have a feeling what we’re seeing here is no different in phenomena than the Trumpers or extreme left in the USA, or really any group of people regardless of demographic subdivision, who seem on the face of things, fucking idiots. The causes are multifactorial, but what you end up with is a subsection of the left side of the bell curve, not the political spectrum, who feel aggrieved about something, and have been radicalized by media into taking a cloistered, tribal ideological position. The details might be different across groups, the specific detail of the grievance may be different, but the pattern of the pathology seems similar. I will say, the liberal/academic tendency towards cultural relativism has allowed untenable cultural technologies—like honor culture—to exist uncriticized. We should be shouting down primitive honor cultures like we shout down toxic masculinity or sexism—retributive violence is uncivilized.
I’d like to see the actual granular data on this opinion, broken down by demographic. Choosing from the louder voices may over-represent the pervasiveness of the sentiment. This may just be the unfortunate side effect of social media elevating-rather-than-gatekeeping the opinions of all the angry dumb cunts. This may not indicate any unique rot to one demographic, but rather the result of giving voice to the demos in general.
Either say something of substance or apologize
One way to understand how racism corrodes society is to understand that there is no black without white and no white without black. So it stands to reason that some amorphous 'white community' will be alarmed by criminal or antisocial dysfunctions in some amorphous 'black community'. One of the consequences is observations like this one that tells simple truths with loaded terms. The terms of race are always loaded. That is the point of racialism, to rid the grey from sociology, politics, psychology and anthropology.
It is also not coincidentally the point of Frankfort School Marxism to inject multiculturalism into academia and politics which hardens into essential racialism. Of course 'the hard but necessary part is naming this without indicting an entire community for the sins of its worst members.' But if you insist on using racial terms, then you are stuck forever. The sins of any Kulak are the sins of all Kulaks, as long as you're calling them in those Stalinist terms.
The appropriate solution here would be, as the Negro did, to invert the terminology rather than to indict the nation. That is to say, don't use 'black', use the Woke term 'BIPOC' which only makes sense in the Woke context. BIPOC stands for 'black indigenous people of color', and to a certain extent that was the Black Lives Matter terminology. Remember that it was the BLM highly funded and highly corrupted organization that incited fools of all sorts to riot in the streets.
The trick is to identify the culprits in their cults. They will tell you who they are and what they want, just as we identify the IRGC separately from Iranian people. Revolutionaries don't know how to shut up. Misdirected missiles that hit innocents always betrays faulty intelligence.
May I suggest how to channel outrage starts with understanding that we are not racial people as I explain here. https://mdcbowen.substack.com/p/my-black-fatigue
"BIPOC" is a false label - as is the entire racial dichotomy between "white" and "of color".
The fact is that if a color-line exists in American society it is between black people and everybody else vs between whites and everybody else. The left trying to cobble an alliance between minorities is an example of what is labelled in psychology of abusive relationships as "forced teaming". This is very visible in the way the prog leviathan is trying to blame black-on-asian victimization on "white supremacy".
What you say is true, but it won't be heard or accepted as true by most black Americans, I think, until MANY prominent black Americans say it also, and say it publicly and frequently...and work to change the culture that embraces such thinking and acceptance.
It’s starting to happen. When you start to see prominent figures express black fatigue then things will really shift. But that’s a tall order because the term sounds racist on its face.
Why is it a 'tall order'? If the 'prominent' class of black Americans cannot admit that black Americans are entirely equal in their propensity for bullshit, self-indulgence, anti-social narcissism, greed, and good ol fashioned lack of integrity, then I'd propose they are not only a part of the issue, but purveyors of such. Fatigue, indeed.
Ultimately, how many is enough depends on if you can be satisfied with those people who share your concerns. If you want to change an entire race, then you won't be satisfied until you have a final solution. So who represents black America to you?
Michael, no one person represents black America to me.
I am not sure what you are implying in saying that "a final solution" is needed in order for other folks to be satisfied, but I don't think any rational or moral person is asking for the elimination of black folks in America, as the solution to violence and lawlessness by so many black folks.
But the crime statistics seem clear that a much greater percentage of black Americans (more so than other racial or ethnic or cultural groups in America) resort to physical violence--either initiating or reacting with it or justifying it--in dealing with other folks and everyday problems.
Folks like me are just asking that black youth--and all American youth--be taught to respect others and not resort to stealing from or hurting others, and that their elders and teachers, and all adults, lead the way in modeling appropriate, civilized, respectful behavior to others--as all Americans (and people everywhere) should act with others.
America and the world will never be perfect, but seeing oneself as a victim or perceiving other ethnic groups as the enemy, as so many American blacks apparently feel and do, especially vis-a-vis white folks, is not good for anyone.
Sickening and appalling, yes, but not surprising to many of us who have known this for some time. It's just now coming out into the light.
It's so depressing. My middle class neighborhood is about 40% black and I have nevr had a problem with anyone in 10 years. But now I am considering finding as white a neighborhood as I can and I went and got my concealed carry permit. Is that racist? I don't think so--that's called sanity.
If you have watched The Sopranos you saw the Italian-American community begin to distance itself from the crime ridden Mafia. When does the apparent tolerance for crime within the black community along with the acceptance by black school administrators of the disruption of classrooms by out of control individuals begin to end? When will black fathers who fail to care for and love their children and especially their boy children be openly censured by black leadership? The young Chris Rock joked about these issues but he clearly now censors himself.
On X, now without censorship thanks to Elon Musk, out of control violence has become standard fodder for ridicule with blacks typically being the most violent group depicted. Unfortunately, the stereotype of black violence is rooted in reality.
Where white people decide to live, shop, vacation and even if they are willing to use public transit (especially women) has been for decades largely based on avoiding large groups of black people because of their perceived and actual tendency to engage in violence. The term white flight has always been used as a slur when, in truth, it means white common sense.
Why do the Democrats always appear to be on their back foot on the issue of black violent crime? Why do they allow Trump to take the lead on this issue while they hem and haw? Why not make fighting murderers, car jackers and rapists a top priority of the Democratic Party and especially of Democratic mayors? There is simply no political logic to being seen as soft on crime when the majority of crime victims are the very minorities the Democrats are supposed to champion. The single most important thing Democrats could do to save the lives of young black men would be to reinstitute the police policy of “stop and frisk” in black neighborhoods to stop the carrying of illegal guns. This would stem the tide of murders of blacks that fill the nightly news in every major city in America and yet is hidden in plain sight. These kids would quickly get the message and quit carrying illegally. Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and yet commit about half of the nation’s homicides. A rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. They are the nation’s gun violence problem. They are also the primary victims of these murders with about 6,000 killed every year. We need to save their lives in spite of the insane ACLU and its bullshit niceties.
I think you nailed it. Italians fathers didn’t abandon their kids and that’s the difference. One of the strongest predictors of male violence is not having a father or father figure in your life. And yes, I am not the first to say it but the American real estate market is largely based on two factors: proximity to work and distance from crime.