Race: from the eye of the beholder

Stop The Washington Post presses! One of their race-obsessed scribblers—their intrepid columnist Lonnae O'Neal—has begrudgingly admitted in print that she was wrong! She who previously has seen absolutely every black-white human interaction through that divisive prism—might have had a moment of clarity. A real rarity in political terms: a "come to Jesus" epiphany. Don't expect it to last as habitual race-baiting pays the bills. After all, unlike 93 million able-bodied Americans who can't find a job, Ms. O'Neal doesn't want to inadvertently find herself the latest casualty of Mr. Obama's “5%” unemployment rate.

Her new column, 'Why can’t we agree on what we see when we see race?' addresses her previous one: 'Was classroom arrest a case of excessive force? Just imagine it was a white girl.' Regarding the latter, the reader has not even gotten to body of the article (or the objective details of the situation) and Ms. O'Neal's bias is already in full flower in the title.

Fast-forward two weeks. Suddenly, that which she was so adamant about—that race was the causal factor—perhaps, after all, was incidental to the greater issue of a bullying cop wrongly manhandling an intransigent student. Although Ms. O'Neal is very late to the party of evolved and generally tolerant 21st century race relations, it is a real pleasure to extend a welcoming hand. If she lounges, she will find the waters more than fine.

Today, she sensibly sees video cop incidents, such as the above, as “'racial Rorschach test[s,]' [d]ifferent people seeing the same thing but drawing different conclusions.” In other words, scientifically, one's internal belief system automatically filters physical stimuli into a unique point of view. Therefore, by definition, a “racist” has nothing to do with skin color, but with a mindset that sees every societal ill as framed by a racial cause or consequence.

Is it any wonder 7 years into the most polarizing president in U.S. history who subverts the social order (“The cops acted stupidly”) and engages in race (“If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon”) and class warfare (“You didn't build that”) at every opportunity that attitudes would not be hardened? Indeed, how could they not be? Obama and the abetting MSM (which, of late, Ms. O'Neal has been an active participant) have spawned the Black Lives Matter Frankenstein monster.

Ms. O'Neal has finally seen the enemy that she acknowledges threatens to tear our divided republic asunder from within. Yet, same as our chronically responsibility-phobic president, she has still not realized she was looking in the mirror at the time.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog
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MLK's way, not Obama's or hatemongers

With the ever more violent and mutating 'Black Lives Matter' movement which began its faceless reign of terror by looting and burning American cities (Ferguson, MO; Baltimore, MD) to its latest permutation as an anarchist mob that incites targeting unprovoked police officers (NYC: Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos) because of their uniforms — and celebrates a cop's assassination (Houston, TX: Darren H. Goforth) — there is no doubt that the person directly responsible for lighting the racial powder keg back in 2009 was our first black, Sal Alinsky community-organizing president who mischaracterized Boston cops as “acting stupidly” in arresting a black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. for the latter's belligerence.  Mr. Obama further stoked the flames of discontent in his knee-jerk sympathy (before all facts were known) with a violent perpetrator ('If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon') who reportedly uttered gay slurs at attack victim, neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.  On the other hand, when the perpetrator is black (Roanoke, VA: Vester Lee Flanigan II) and/or illegal (SF: Francisco Sanchez) the victims white (Alison Parker/Adam Ward; SF: Kathryn Steinle, respectively), Mr. Obama atrocious public silence is deafening.  But when the "leader of the free world" declares public ignorance of events (and reportedly reads only half of  his presidential daily briefings) by laughably claiming he gets his information from the MSM, do you really expect a guy like that to be responsible for anything at all?

Zachary Wood is correct both in his support of the common sense sentiment that "all lives matter" and that every person must not blame his innocent neighbor for his troubles.  Indeed, his laser-like article, in most respects, shows a sensitivity and an instructive personal insight into the underlying problem in the black community from Mr. Obama on down: the widespread lack of the expression of MLK's definition of character that transcends superficial biological considerations. Put simply, that means accepting individual responsibility for one's behavior regardless of the feeble excuses of skin color, obliviousness of the law, common decency or youthful exuberance.  Where Mr. Wood unfortunately falls short is a critical reality he apparently is hesitant to fully disclose: the lion's share of deaths in the black community — approximately 90% per  2013 FBI crime reports are the result of black-on-black homicide.  While vague (but technically true), stating only that "more" (rather than the factually supported term that fits: "almost all") men are killed by other black men than by white police offers ultimately undercuts his other valid assessments.  Similarly, Mr. Wood rightly credits Democratic presidential hopeful, former MD governor Martin O'Malley for his inclusive "all lives matter" statement, but ignores the fact that Mr.  O'Malley   almost immediately publicly recanted his truthful statement with a spineless apology to an outspoken proponent of the before-mentioned 'Black Lives Matter' crew who obviously only values "black" lives to the ridiculous exclusion of all others.  In any case, when out-of-their-depth presidential candidates like he and Bernie Sanders (who fled a public forum so as not to offend, once again, belligerent 'Black Lives Matter' militants), how are either one of these guys to be trusted to handle any "real" problems that any U.S. president must face?

Above all, MLK knew that worldly success for the black community depends on the steadiness of individual good character, racial understanding between whites and blacks, and peaceful coexistence.  That is the polar opposite of what Obama and the 'Black Lives Matter' folks are doing: misusing their visible positions in our society to divide, manipulate, punish or instill fear.  This is an unnecessary reopening of ancient wounds that re-traumatize the American psyche of today for mistakes made in the past by one people upon another, all now long gone.  All lives do matter and the only way forward in dark days is together.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/2/zachary-wood-blaming-white-racism-for-violence/?page=all

Hillary and Obama's war on cops, civil society

These Democratic leaders have the blood of many innocents on their hands.  Mr. Obama lit the racial powder keg back in 2009 with his mischaracterization that Boston cops “acted stupidly” in arresting a black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., for being belligerent with law enforcement at the man's home. At the time, Mr. Obama said, “I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played.”  Indeed, Democrats never wait for the “facts” before making their rabble-rousing pronouncements.  In true Democratic fashion of politically “never letting a crisis go to waste,” Mr. Obama, at every opportunity, indulges his knee-jerk anti-cop and anti-American rhetoric.  In this, it is Orwellian that a U.S. president, charged with the principle duty to enforce the Constitution and the law, instead subverts that selfsame law in favor of promoting the politics of racial victimization and its direct consequence of faceless, mob violence. Hence the fiction that Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are innocent targets of “white racism” and the tragic reality of burning cities like Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD.

Abetted by the hard left MSM, the anarchist elements in our society have been whipped into a frenzied, lawless horde.  Over the weekend, the Black Lives Matter protesters spewed their hate-speech “Pigs [cops] In A Blanket, Fry ‘Em Like Bacon” just hours after Harris County, Texas sheriff's deputy Darren H. Goforth was ambushed and executed by a black assailant, suspect Shannon J. Miles, at a Houston-area gas station.  Similarly, last December in New York, two uniformed police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, sitting in their marked squad car, were assassinated gangland style by lone gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsley.  Once again, “black lives matter“ advocates had also demonstrated, chanting “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!”  Mr. Brinsley's rationalization for his unprovoked, barbarous acts: revenge killings for Eric Garner (who died in police custody) and the before-mentioned Michael Brown. Of this, Brinsley wrote: “I’m Putting Wings on Pigs Today,” and “They Take 1 Of Ours . . . Let’s Take 2 of Theirs.”  In reaction, Police Commissioner William Bratton said, “No warning, no provocation—they were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniform.”

Therefore, the “white hat elements” of our society—lawmen, the law-abiding, legal gun owners, conservatives and tea party proponents—have been outrageously and nonsensically demonized by Mr. Obama as domestic terrorists.  Drawing from the same “divide [society] and conquer” Democratic political playbook, Hillary Clinton implies pro-law enforcement Republicans are “boxcar Nazis” for wanting to impose legitimate immigration laws and expel illegal aliens from our sovereign nation.  Ironically, the “black lives matter” folks even heckle black, Democratic leaders who promote common sense, anti-crime measures, as DC Mayor Muriel Bowser recently did in response to 105 slayings in the District of Columbia so far this year (a 43 percent increase over this point last year matching all of 2014).  This statistic is no surprise: why should cops actively do their jobs in dangerous parts of town when they are constant targets of ill-founded racial blame, bureaucratic second-guessing and random, unprovoked threats to life and limb because they wear a badge?  As any civilian accused of a crime is “presumed innocent,” don't rank-and-file police officers deserve that same consideration?

It seems that everyone else, except for Obama and Hillary, pays the price for the divisive, political whirlwind they have wrought. Notice the philosophical hypocrisy: Mr. Obama doesn't order the Secret Service to disarm yet he actively strives to restrict legal gun-ownership and undermine the Second Amendment.  After all, if firearms are so terrible, why does he allow himself and his family to be surrounded by them 24/7/365?

Any reasonable person who objects to this insanity is marginalized by Democrat's word-burning political correctness and wrongly smeared by them as a racist, misogynist or Uncle Tom.  Indeed, this societal nerve has been rubbed so raw for the last 6 years as an expedient political distraction to Obama's multitude of domestic and international failures, we now have the emergence of a true bogeyman in the form of former reporter Vester L. Flanagan II, who vented his paranoid, mentally unhinged, homicidal rage on two innocent colleagues.  Even the heavily partisan Washington Post begrudgingly acknowledged that Mr. Flanagan's older colleagues tried to mentor him and even his harshest critics wanted him to succeed.  Further, his unfounded complaints of discrimination were taken seriously by management and his two lawsuits claiming racism, sexual harassment and wrongful termination ended quietly with undisclosed terms.   As this scenario does not fit the false straw-man narrative of the white, racist, rich (read: Republican) caricature, notice the deafening silence of Democrats and the Black Lives Matter crowd whenever the situation is black-on-white or nine times out of ten, black-on-black murder.

America cannot be defeated by forces outside of herself.  Our greatest difficulty isn't the Democrat's “weather” or the Republican's legitimate fear of Iranian nukes.  Her fundamental problem is an insidious cancer much closer to home: the lawless, lying, big government, anti-American Democratic Party.  Aided by their fawning humpback, blind-eye creature, the liberal MSM intentionally blows up unfortunate and otherwise isolated human tragedies into full-scale black-white societal crises.  Obama, Hillary and their ilk have also spawned a  21st century Frankenstein monster: the radical Black Lives Matter movement which cares nothing for non-black lives (or lives not taken by white hands regardless of mitigating  circumstances).  While Obama and Hillary “lead,” as American cartoonist Walt Kelly famously wrote, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

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Michael Brown: Today’s Trayvon Martin

Regardless of color, every loss of life to gun violence is a calamity.  This is especially true of Chicago, the home city which Barack Obama represented politically and supposedly “organized” before rapidly ascending to the White House as our first African-American president.  Despite Chicago having the strictest gun control laws in the United States, the Fourth of July weekend’s explosive sounds of celebratory fireworks were tragedy augmented by eruptions of gunfire in which 82 people were shot, 14 fatally.  Shockingly, these events did not warrant front page treatment like the demise of one young man, Michael Brown: a recent high school graduate reportedly too timid to play football or have fisticuffs who had a physical altercation with a white police officer which resulted in his shooting death.

At 6-foot-4 and 292 pounds “Big Mike,” as he was known to his intimates, must have been an intimating figure.  In any case, he certainly stood out on convenience store surveillance video when he brashly stole $48.99 worth of Swisher Sweets cigars and shoved a much smaller store clerk out of the way who attempted to block his departure.  Minutes later, he and his partner in crime, friend Dorian Johnson, were found foolishly walking down the center line of a main thoroughfare when approached by Darren Wilson’s police cruiser.  Through his attorney-spokesman, Mr. Johnson claimed that Big Mike’s actions were a “prank” and that Officer Wilson attempted to grab his friend by the throat through the window of his police car.  The logistics of a presumably seated police officer reaching Big Mike’s neck through an open car window frankly defies me.  On the other hand, if the officer was standing, I still don’t understand the purpose of reaching for a suspect with a car door as a barrier.  Indeed, despite the boiler-plate facts of a shooting death of a black teen by a white cop, many aspects of this situation remain unclear.
  
What started out as store looting in Ferguson, MO has mutated into full-on civil unrest due to the young man’s tragic death.  To this violent hotspot basking in the soft glow of mass media cameras, the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson—who like Mr. Obama habitually ignore Chicago’s greater number of shooting fatalities which just this past weekend as an example amounted to 7 deaths and 29 injured—have made appearances.  Ironically, Mr. Brown’s parents have hired the attorneys that represented Trayvon Martin; another supposed victim of white prejudice by volunteer neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, a man of mixed race.  As with the Trayvon Martin case, President Obama has weighed in “deepest condolences.”  Interestingly, he remains silent on the war zone that his hometown has become.  Indeed, why are the deaths of these particular two young men so much more important to the president than the deaths of scores of other young men who ‘look like him and could be his sons?’  As the first black president with vast powers at his disposal, why doesn’t he do something to stem the tide of gun violence in the black community?

The truth lies, I suspect, in a few political calculations.  Firstly, Chicago is run politically by the Democratic machine and to highlight the ongoing problems of inner community minority violence would be a grave political embarrassment.  Secondly, as the black vote is already statistically in the bag—and the vast majority of African Americans support the president no matter what he does or doesn’t do—he  doesn’t feel the need to be proactive in their interests by addressing deep-seeded cultural problems like the obscenely high dropout, unemployment or abortion rates.  Therefore, Michael Brown—the Trayvon Martin of today—serves as a political pawn to keep the populace divided against itself along racial lines.  This dynamic distracts from true societal problems like a corrupt, highly dysfunctional federal government that lies and spies against its citizens.  After all, it is said that a happy, prosperous nation votes Republican and an unhappy one votes Democrat.  In the final analysis, how racist could an America be who has elected a black man to the U.S. presidency twice?

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