Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Only the Holiest of Holy Artifacts Need Apply: Director of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History Wants Trayvon Martin's Hoodie

This doesn't need anything else but the story.

Seriously. [Smithsonian director wants Trayvon Martin’s hoodie, Washington Times, July 31, 2013]:
Trayvon Martin's hoodie "belongs in a museum"
Trayvon Martin’s hoodie became a nationwide symbol following his fatal shooting, and now the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History wants the original.
The museum’s director, Lonnie Bunch, said Mr. Martin’s hoodie, the one he was wearing the night of his death on Feb. 26, 2012, represents a unique opportunity to further the discussion about race in America, The Washington Post reported.

“It became the symbolic way to talk the Trayvon Martin case. It’s rare that you get one artifact that really becomes the symbol,” he said. “Because it’s such a symbol, it would allow you to talk about race in the age of Obama.”
Mr. Bunch said he would be very interested in obtaining the hoodie for his collection after the Justice Department finishes its civil rights investigation. He also has his eye on the hoodie that Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, wore in solidarity with protesters, The Post reported.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is set to open in 2015 and will display objects related to the Civil Rights Movement, such as the handcuffs used to restrain Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
 What was it Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones said of precious antiquities in the Indiana Jones movies, when some unscrupulous financier would seek idols for their private collection?

Oh yes: "It belongs in a museum."

The Onion has nothing, nothing on life in Black-Run America (BRA). 

Only The 'Negro Leagues' Can We Celebrate -- Black Members of Birmingham City Council Wield Political Authority, Black-Power Style

It was never about equality. 

It was never about being judged by "the content of character."

No. 

It was about something else. 

Remember what voting actually represents, as Robert Heinlein outlined it succinctly in Starship Troopers
We all live under the shadow of this hegemon
To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives—such as mine to make your lives miserable once a day. Force if you will!—the franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax. Whether it is exerted by ten men or by ten billion, political authority is force.
This is why Eric Holder and Barack Obama happily entertained Al Sharpton at the White House and pledged to do everything possible to strengthen the Voting Rights Act

This is what the victory in Birmingham back in 1963 represents and why the fight must endure, so Black-Run America (BRA) can continue to wield authority. 

Power. 

Force. 

Naked and raw. 

The supreme authority. 

In 2013 Birmingham, we see the end result of this authority play out, where elected council members argue against financially supporting an Indy Grand Prix event for the lack of 'black faces' [Birmingham mayor/council battle of wills kills million-dollar Barber Indy racing contract, Birmingham News, March 26, 2013]. 
It's a 74 percent black city, so those who elect these black individuals to represent their interests must be satisfied, right? 
Well, a recent city council debate (seven of the nine members are black) in Birmingham powerfully showcased Heinlein's axiom, when black council members voiced their opposition to honoring the white Southern League in a proposed museum for the Negro Leagues. [What's in a name? Apparently a lot when it comes to Birmingham's baseball museum, Birmingham News, July 31, 2013]:
The name and scope of Birmingham's planned baseball museum stirred heated debate and speeches on history and racial pride during today's Birmingham City Council meeting.
Controversy erupted over the proposal to add 'Southern League' to the title of the upcoming Negro League baseball museum. It wasn't the $252,000 amount on the agenda, but rather the working title of the project that lit fireworks on the dais.
The facility in its last conception was deemed a Negro League museum, but the listing from Mayor William Bell appeared to reintroduce the Southern League back into project.
Bell said the name was just a working title.
"That's the operational name," he said. "That's not going to be the permanent name."
Bell's staff as early as last fall said the museum would pay special homage to Birmingham's history in the Negro Leagues, but not necessarily exclude all of the Negro Leagues.
However, that wasn't enough for several council members including Council President Roderick Royal, Lashunda Scales and Steven Hoyt, who said the working title brings a changed focus for Birmingham's museum. They said Bell was wrong to renege on the city's commitment to creating a shrine to the Negro Leagues.
Royal, who early on advocated the Negro league museum concept, said the city should hold to its approved scope.
"I'm just saying. Let's just keep our commitment," he said. "I'm not trying to fan flames. I'm just saying that's what we committed and we need to honor that commitment."
Councilwoman Valerie Abbott said the group should cut the mayor "some slack" when it came to the name, after Bell said the council would be involved.
That spurred both a defense of the mayor from Councilman Jay Roberson and more criticism from Hoyt. Roberson said the city was correct in taking time to study the project.
"We have to be open-minded in that process," Roberson said.
Hoyt countered, saying city leaders should be ashamed for shying away from the Negro League concept. He described the inequities of the past and said the black players deserved the honor.
"This is Birmingham," Hoyt said. "I don't know how we correct the wrong until we somehow understand it's ok to celebrate black history in this city."
Today's debate reawakened an old debate going back four years.
Under former Mayor Larry Langford, the proposed museum was set to honor the Negro Leagues and Southern League and be built at Rickwood Field.
That concept came after an original plan for a Negro League museum at the site was expanded to include Birmingham's entire baseball history.
Some former Negro Leagues players then advocated building a museum downtown in the Civil Rights district rather than Rickwood, which was segregated at the time of the dual leagues.
Current Mayor Bell then proposed building the facility next to the new Barons stadium near Railroad Park. The concept, with council pressure, was also narrowed back to the Negro Leagues.
Both Hoyt and Scales called it shameful that a black mayor and a majority black council had to debate the issue.
"It's so unfortunate that you're looked upon as being a racist when you celebrate your race," Scales said. "Charity begins at home."
Finally, Bell distanced himself from the idea of expanding the museum, saying the joint name was simply an old working title.
The fight ended with a history lesson from Roberson and a motion that the working title be changed to the "Negro Southern League," taking the 'and' from the masthead to solidify the commitment to a singular league.

Birmingham is a city where it's city council passed an emergency bill banning the issuing of permits to new title loan, pawn shops, and check cashing stores, because these businesses represented the only growth industry in the 74 percent black city [Birmingham City Council extends ban on new payday lending, title pawn shops, Birmingham News, 10-16-12].

Power. 

Force. 

Naked and raw. 

The supreme authority. 

Used to stop the growth of payday loan stores, because the black residents of Birmingham lack future-time orientation. 

As do those elected to power in the city. 

Fitting, this year celebrates "50 Years Forward" for Birmingham -- a liberation of the city from the hands of evil white rule, to enlightened, noble, and inclusive black rule

THEY SAY IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN. And this has never been more true than in 1963, the height of the Civil Rights Movement. The events of that year revealed the best and worst humanity had to offer, as some of Birmingham’s most courageous citizens fought to release their city from the terrible grip of hatred and discrimination. 
Now, 50 Years Forward, we’re coming together to commemorate “The Movement That Changed The World.” And to celebrate those who sacrificed so much to make it happen, armed with nothing more than hope in their hearts, a prayer on their lips, and the winds of freedom at their backs.
The state of Birmingham in 2013, and the actions of those elected officials in the city council represents the exercising of political force and authority few people wish to acknowledge. 

Black power, pure and simple. "50 Years Forward" is merely the celebration of the enshrining into law universal black power and white acquiescence to this concept.  

White dispossession. 

Let's leave on another Starship Troopers quote, shall we?:
“There is an old song which asserts ‘the best things in life are free.’ Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears. 

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

In Defense of Merritt Landry: Why Would You Fear a Black Male In New Orleans?


Only in a world gone mad would the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) suggestion of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee as the new Secretary of Homeland Security make sense.

It’s a world where the first black district attorney of New Orleans could fire multiple scores of white employees – with extreme prejudice – and that represent only one of the minor offenses of his tenure.
Why would anyone fear black people in New Orleans? Seriously? Why?

A country where nine years prior to Hurricane Katrina unveiling the uncomfortable truth of modern America for all the world to see, calls for the National Guard to patrol the Big Easy and fight rising violence were made.

You see, the levels of violence in the city rose faster than the waters of Lake Pontchartrain; but unlike the water that breeched the levees, this violence hasn’t abated.

It was bad in 2003, two years before the hurricane; it was bad two years after the storm in 2007. It was horrible two years ago in 2011.

Four years ago?

You guessed it – 2009 was a rough year as well.

Why is the Crescent City so violent? A look at the type of community the almost entirely black occupants of public housing create in the city offers that answer [2 Crime Busters for New Orleans, New York Times, 12-5-1996]:
And the consultants have calculated that the murder rate in the city's public housing developments is about twice the rate for the city as a whole, which was 76 per 100,000 people last year. That makes the public-housing murder rate roughly 18 times the nation's.
In a city of 369,000 (60 percent black, 30 percent white), New Orleans is the epicenter for black crime in America.

This is an indisputable fact.

It’s a city where one natural disaster ripped open the simple, indisputable fact that the democratically elected black government was hopelessly inadequate and incapable of maintaining a 1st World civilization.

And this is why Merritt Landry, a building inspector for the Historic District Landmarks Commission, was suspicious of 14-year-old Marshall Coulter.

Coulter, a black youth already in trouble with the law, had gotten past a locked gate to Landry’s property and was fooling around near his car around 2 a.m. when Landry shot him.

In a sane world, it would be obvious why Landry shot Coulter, but in our world he is the criminal. Though the presence of black people makes any situation one fraught with ‘imminent danger’, we live in a world where Trayvon Martin is perpetually an angelic two-year-old in the minds of his fans.  [Legal experts say Landry will have to prove 'imminent danger' in Marigny home shooting, NOLA.com, July 30, 2013]:
The shooting of a 14-year-old boy has raised many questions, but legal experts say that in a court of law the case will boil down to whether the homeowner who pulled the trigger felt that his life was in "imminent danger," even though the victim had come past a locked gate and was on private property when he was shot. 
Merritt Landry, 33, a building inspector for the Historic District Landmarks Commission, was arrested Friday morning after police said he shot Marshall Coulter, 14, while the teen was inside the fenced-in area outside Landry's home in the 700 block of Mandeville Street about 2 a.m. Detectives determined that Coulter, who was not armed, was not posing any "imminent threat" to Landry. Police booked Landry with attempted second-degree murder. 

"We are in New Orleans where people are being purse-snatched and shot at on a pretty regular basis -- the only defense here is that he was truly fearing for his life. The question remains: Why exactly did he fear for his life?" said Jeffrey Smith, a New Orleans criminal defense attorney.
Almost every year, a call is made by leaders in New Orleans (to stop black crime) for the National Guard to patrol the city

Why exactly would anyone fear for his or her life in New Orleans? It couldn’t be due to the wanton criminality and lawless on display during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which was just the publicizing of what life is like in all-black areas of the city on a daily basis… could it?

The violence was so bad in ‘certain’ (black) parts of the city, residents were forced to sleep on the floor so as to dodge errantly fired bullets [High Homicide Rate Leaves New Orleans Fearful, New York Times, 5-31-1994]:
The casual visitor here sees the city's beguiling facades, but, like the rows of boarded-up houses only a few blocks from the elegant ones, fear lurks nearby. Murder is booming in New Orleans. 
In 1993, with nearly 80 homicides per 100,000 people, the city's homicide rate led Detroit and Washington, two other high-crime cities, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the first quarter of this year, the homicide rate for the city of New Orleans was up 36 percent over last year, and it was still leading the other two cities' rates. The homicide rate of the New Orleans metropolitan area led all others in 1992, the last year for which Federal figures are available. 
The new Mayor, Marc Morial, devoted his first big initiative to a series of crime-fighting measures, including a tough curfew for youths 17 and under. 
In a Central City neighborhood where houses need paint and boards sag, behind the barbed wire and "Bad Dog" sign of her aunt's house, Jessie Mae Brady, a neighbor of the 9-year-old shooting victim, said: "Here in New Orleans, you never know when they're going to strike. It pays to be afraid." 
Fear has helped double the number of burglar-alarm companies operating in the city since 1980. New Orleans has lost over 130,000 residents since 1960, many of them whites who have fled to the safety of the suburbs. 
Fear has also put guns in the pockets and desk drawers of merchants along Magazine Street, made Uptown residents circle the block before emerging from their cars if a stranger is spotted and forced residents of housing projects to sleep on the floor when gunfire is heard. 
"Sometimes you think if it's less shots, no one got killed. If it's a whole lot, somebody got messed up," said Emma Brown, who lives in the grim St. Thomas Housing Development. Unjustified Fear?

No, Merritt Landry was correct to fear 14-year-old Marshall Coulter, just all white citizens of New Orleans are correct to lock their doors and procure extra security.

As long as the black population remains substantial in New Orleans, the city will not be able to shake free of being the Murder Capital of America.

Hilariously, white Mayor Mitch Landrieu, speaking to the McDonald’s 365 Black Awards in 2012, labeled the black-on-black violence in New Orleans ‘unnatural’ -- sadly, no one can equate white fear of this violence with why such rates of segregation exist in the city.
Mayor Landrieu told the 365 Black Awards attendees:
“If 199 white guys killed each other the world would stop. If the Klu Klux Klan killed 199 black guys the world would stop and people would still be talking about it. But for some reason because it’s young guys killing young guys, they want to put their heads in the sand and don’t want to talk about it. I’m telling you it’s unnatural and it’s not something that we’re supposed to tolerate in this country.”
It could be considered ‘unnatural’ if the same thing wasn’t happening in Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Milwaukee, Houston, Dallas, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and New York City.

So, no, the black violence in New Orleans is quite natural. No one blinks an eye at symposiums held to combat black-on-black violence in, not only New Orleans, but also any of those cities mentioned above – that’s how ‘natural’ this violence is.

What’s unnatural is our cowardice at discussing this reality.

Illegal immigrants, who flocked to New Orleans (doing the job black people wouldn’t do) and helped rebuild a city black residents of the Big Easy looted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, weren’t cowards in admitting racial violence [Day Laborers Are Easy Prey in New Orleans, New York Times, 2-15-2009]:

With resignation but no visible anger, more than half told of being threatened or robbed. One man, Armando Cruz, from Honduras, asserted flatly, to nods of assent, “Most of us here have been robbed.”

Many bluntly assigned a racial component, saying that it was “los morenos” — their colloquial term for blacks — who were after them. “When we are leaving here after work, we have to go on foot,” Mr. Billado said, speaking through an interpreter. “The blacks are waiting for us. They’ll beat you up. They’ll take your money.”

Such incidents can occur more than once a week, Mr. Billado said.

The police, the men said, either ignore their calls, admonish them for being in the country illegally or arrive too late at a crime scene to do any good.

“The blacks know when we have cash,” said Juan Guillermo Medina, another waiting worker. “Yes, it’s dangerous. But we have to be here. It’s the risk we run.”
“Los morenos.”

Only in a world gone mad would the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) suggestion of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee as the new Secretary of Homeland Security make sense.

Only in a world gone mad would the defense of ones property, life, and family – from the ravages of “los morenos” – be considered a crime.

Free Merritt Landry. 

Monday, July 29, 2013

What the Winner Don't Know, the Gambler Understands

Hope Yen, a writer for the Associated Press, publishes a sob story about how to best uplift non-whites in America from the poverty and economic stagnation of their community (without mentioning how their community is to blame), while letting slip one unfortunate data metric demolishing contemporary sociology and those who wish to stymie the uncontrollable flow of black males to prison [EXCLUSIVE: SIGNS OF DECLINING ECONOMIC SECURITY, AP, July 29, 2013]:
As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused - on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of race. 
AP reports: "19 million whites fall below the poverty line, nearly double the number of poor blacks."
Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor." 
Nationwide, the count of America's poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population, due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white. 
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks. 
Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains. 

Going back to the 1980s, never have whites been so pessimistic about their futures, according to the General Social Survey, a biannual survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Just 45 percent say their family will have a good chance of improving their economic position based on the way things are in America. 
The divide is especially evident among those whites who self-identify as working class. Forty-nine percent say they think their children will do better than them, compared with 67 percent of nonwhites who consider themselves working class, even though the economic plight of minorities tends to be worse.

The AP’s Hope Yen and many in her peer group are under the impression the only role left for most white Americans to fulfill is the peaceful transition of both government power and eventually their bank accounts to the growing population of non-whites in their country.

Well, that and die off (with many in her peer group seemingly waiting for such orders from on high to be issued).

The key quote, though, from Hope Yen’s story was this:
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
Shouldn’t our jails be teeming with white people, since it’s a well-known fact “poverty is the origin of criminality?”

Right?

No.

‘Teeming’ is the wrong word.

Overflowing is the better one.

But that’s not the case.

Remember your James Q. Wilson and his book "Crime and Human Nature,” and you’ll get your answer:
During the 1960s, one neighborhood in San Francisco had the lowest income, the highest unemployment rate, the highest proportion of families with incomes under $4,000 per year, the least educational attainment, the highest tuberculosis rate, the highest proportion of substandard housing of any area of the city.

That neighborhood was called Chinatown. Yet in 1965, there were only five persons of Chinese ancestry committed to prison in the entire state of California.
The Chinese were for many years denied access to public schools of California, not allowed to testify against whites in trials, and made the object of discriminatory taxation. (p. 473) 
The experience of the Chinese and Japanese suggests that social isolation, substandard living conditions, and general poverty are not invariably associated with high crime rates among racially distinct groups. (p. 474) 

Hope Yen and members of her coterie can put up a calendar in their offices (perhaps a reminder on their Outlook Calendar?) counting down the days until the day white people are supplanted as the majority population group.

They can have a party, complete with a piñata, fried chicken, purple drank, and refried beans.

But all they celebrate is Detroit 2013.

All they celebrate is Los Angeles 2013.

The real lesson from Yen’s story is that a growing number of white people across America know something is wrong with not just the present, but terminally wrong with the future of this nation.

Every day, those who profit by peddling the lies for Black-Run America (BRA) must secure a victory for their side, in convincing the population that up is down, black is white, and left is right.

We only have to win once.

Once. 

Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Roots of the Term 'Killadelphia' Go back Two Centuries: Why Philadelphia is the Next Detroit

 The historic bankruptcy of Detroit has municipalities across the nation worried the fate of the Arsenal of Democracy is on staring them directly in the face.

Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, is at the top of the watch-list for the next America city to succumb to the truism that "demography is destiny." [Avoiding Detroit's crash Once a boomtown, the Motor City now is a sad warning. But Phila. and others don't have to follow in its path, Philadelphia Daily News, July 28, 2013]

You can't avoid an economic crash when the people responsible for making a city a 'boomtown' have decided to vacate their metropolis because it is no longer conducive to raising a family and protecting wealth.

In reading Case Study of a Riot: The Philadelphia Story, by Lenora E. Berson (a story of the black riot of 1964) we are witness to an admission of the Visible Black Hand of Economics from which no city can escape:
In 1950 the Negro population of Philadelphia was 380,000 - 18 percent of the city's. By 1960 the number had jumped to 535,000 or 27 percent. One hundred and seventy-five thousand, or almost one-third, lived in North Central Philadelphia; 22,000 whites lived alongside them. By 1964 more whites had left than had been replaced. Philadelphia had suffered a population decline of a million; North Central Philadelphia's share of the loss was 25,000. 

By 1960 the Negroes had completely occupied the last of the old North Philadelphia white neighborhoods. Most of the new residents sought to shape a decent life for themselves and their families under extremely difficult circumstances. Unlike the groups that preceded them, however, they had brought with them few mercantile or entrepreneurial skills, little tradition of family solidarity, scant preparation for academic schooling and little feeling of self or group worth. North Central Philadelphia became an unrelieved community of poor Negroes resting on the commercial infrastructure of the old Jewish quarter. (p. 25-26)
 The "Great Society" so many people blame for destroying the black community was years from being implemented; why then, were the black inhabitants of Philadelphia incapable of producing a community where social capital flourished?

Why were the black residents of Philadelphia incapable of producing a community where individual entrepreneurial activity could set in, like frost on a cold fall morning?

Could it be the violence found almost exclusively in the black community, itself caused by (as we are told) poverty and hopelessness? 

Mayor Michael Nutter, Philadelphia's current black mayor, has an op-ed in Time, where he discusses black-on-black violence and how his city produces a 'Trayvon Martin' on a daily basis -- though no one cares [Stopping the Slaughter, Time, July 29, 2013]:
Every death is a tragedy in this nation, whether in Pennsylvania, Connecticut or Florida. We all have suffered a great tragedy with the death of Trayvon Martin. But Trayvon's story is only the latest in our epidemic of violence, compounded by race, that must be addressed in America.
Why is it that African-American males are so disproportionately both the victims and the perpetrators of violence, more often than not against one another? In Philadelphia, where I am mayor, 75% of our homicide victims are black men. About 80% of the people we arrest for homicide are black men. Black men across the country are killing one another, yet that epidemic is rarely part of any national conversation.

Our priorities are askew. Our leaders talk a lot about international terrorism. I often talk about domestic terrorists, by which I mean not foreign nationals plotting violence on these shores but the day-to-day crime that is even more devastating to our cities than the episodic threats from overseas. My focus comes from my experiences and the buildup of living all my life in West Philadelphia and Wynnefield, and as a city-council member and then later as mayor, attending numerous funerals and talking to moms and dads who have lost their children and other loved ones to senseless acts of violence.
What's missing are the fundamentals. It's about jobs. It's about education. It's about economic investment and job retraining. It's about getting benefits to people who need them. We know that in Philadelphia, thousands of people are not even signing up for the available benefits to take care of themselves and their families. We know clearly that there are a few things that work: investing more in Head Start programs, summer jobs and programs for teens and community-development block grants for cities to put people to work. Those three areas have been cut significantly over the past few years.
The U.S. seems to be more invested in nation building in other countries around the world, Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, than in nation building--or rebuilding--here at home.
 Shouldn't the black inhabitants of a city - after all, they are "Americans" - be capable of building their own communities? Wait, we learned from Case Study of a Riot that black people in Philadelphia, despite inheriting the abandoned infrastructure left behind by white flighters, couldn't replicate the same economic conditions of those who preceded them.

They couldn't produce the social capital required to build an economy, though wherever white flighters landed, they could reproduce it (even when they engaged in reverse white flight, what some call gentrification, they reproduce it)

For those wondering, the roots of black violence in Philadelphia go back to the 1800s. In Violent Death in the City: Suicide, Accident, and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia by Roger Lane, we learn:
The black population of Philadelphia was never so larges as the Irish, but its experience with homicide was at least as significant. No major group had a higher rate of indictment, as the 147 identifiably black persons indicted between 1839 and 1901 may be computed at 7.5 per 100,000 - itself an understatement - or close to three times the rate for whites. 

What makes this rate significant is not merely that it is high, but that is direction and the patterns behind it were, unlike those for the Irish, markedly different than the rest of the population. 

While poverty and discrimination pervaded virtually all aspects of life in black neighborhoods, the method of handling of homicide cases in the criminal justice system does not seem in itself  to have been an important instrument of oppression. The rate of conviction for a ll identifiable blacks accused of homicide was somewhat higher, 58 percent, than the conviction rate for whites, which was 48 percent. But since the majority of indictments, as with most others, were for killings within the group, what this indicates is that unlike the situation int he South during the same period, black-on-black homicide was treated as a serious matter in Philadelphia. (p. 104)
But Roger Lane doesn't stop there:
The existence of a weapons culture clearly had an impact on many aspects of the habit of violence in general, go back before the beginning of this study; the black homicide rate was already considerably higher than the white in 1839-1845 and remained higher eve in terms of killings without weapons.

But it would seem that to explain this pattern in terms of family or indeed anything internal to the community is to reverse cause and effect. Forced out to the margins of the urban economy, living in or close to the centers of criminal activity, subject to harassment outside of their own neighborhoods and sometimes to invasion, even armed mob invasion, inside of them, many blacks found internal battle-readiness an essential survival mechanism.

What cheap handguns did to this cultural pattern was simply to intensify  it, enabling an escalation in the rate of violence directed inside as well as outside of the group. And, what is critically important, there was nothing at work within the black community - unlike the white - to check the upward curve. While homicide rates in the city as a whole were dropping late in the century, the rate among the black community continued to rise, even though that community became larger, more nearly self-contained, and less threatened from without. The rate from 1839-1859, already high at 6.1 per 100,000, grew to 7.2 per 100,000 during the 1860-1880, and to 9.3 during 1881-1901.

Most strikingly this rise during the nineteenth century may be projected ahead into the late twentieth. As demographic change has made Philadelphia an increasingly black city, the black homicide rate in itself is enough to account for the differences between the overall official rates for 1839-190, 1948-1952, and 1972-1974. Indeed the rising black homicide rate has obscured the contrary trend among whites, perhaps the most significant of all comparisons over time. Within the white population over the last two decades, escalating sales of handguns and the flight from the city of the richer, more educated, and less violent have combined to drive up the rates. (p. 112 - 113)
Lane's book notes the black homicide was in Philadelphia in 1839-1901 was 7.5 per 100,000; in 1948-1952, it was 24.6 per 100,000; from 1972-1974, it was 64.2 per 100,000.

Conversely, Lane notes the white homicide in Philly in 1839-1901 was 2.8 per 100,000; in 1948-1952, it was 1.8 per 100,000; from 1972-1974, it was 2.8 per 100,000.

Why doesn't Mayor Nutter acknowledge this in his Time essay? 

The same reason we can't acknowledge the growth in the black population of a city correlates directly to its inevitable decline. Roger Lane wrote another book, carrying the title William Dorsey's Philadelphia & Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in America. In the concluding chapter, Prospects For the Black City, Lane writes:
In city after city, in fact, including Philadelphia, the winning political power typically symbolized by election of the first black mayor has been greeted with high hopes, and followed quickly by disillusion, as the condition of the African-American community has not improved in any comparably dramatic way, and instead, together with the condition of the city itself, has usually continued to slide. It is obvious to any observer with a long view - if not to many white residents - that the deterioration of urban life is far older than the achievement of black power, and due more to fundamental economic change than to the complexion of municipal politics. Philadelphia, typically, reached its peak in terms of both population and manufacturing jobs in the census of 1950, at a time when politics was till int he hands of unreconstructed Republicans; the most cynical way of looking at later developments is simply that white residents, in the course of abandoning it for the suburbs, simply tossed the keys to the city over their shoulders on the way out. (p. 394)
That's not a cynical way to look at it at all.

Philadelphia continues to see its white share of the population plummet, while the black share rises.

And with it, the delicate balance of civilization in a multiracial society slides into the status of disorder, economic collapse, chaos, and near homogeneous state of Detroit in 2013.

Yes Philadelphia, you are on the short-list of seeing a situation like the one Detroit encountered in 2013 happening to you very, very soon.

And just as in Detroit, it's black political power driving the city over the economic cliff.

But then again, as noted above, black people have been behind the bulk of homicides and economic destabilization in Philadelphia for more than two centuries.


Saturday, July 27, 2013

Merritt Landry: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in a Post-Trayvon Martin World

In a post-Trayvon Martin world, defending our property is against the law. From the black crime capital of the world, a white man found a young black male - a habitual criminal constantly in trouble with the law- snooping around his property.
14-year-old Marshall Coulter, a habitual criminal in New Orleans, is shot by a white man defending his property. Guess who gets arrested?

In opening fire on him, he became the criminal. [Unarmed teen shot inside homeowner's fenced yard, but not breaking into home, NOPD warrant says, New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 27, 2013]:
A 14-year-old boy remained in critical condition Friday after being shot in the head by a homeowner who said he thought the teen was trying to break into his house. But police said the teen was unarmed and did not pose an "imminent threat" when he was shot and have charged the owner with attempted second-degree murder. 
The family of Marshall Coulter said the teenager could move only the right side of his body a little, but not the left. Doctors told the family that if Coulter survives, he would likely be severely brain damaged.
Coulter's family acknowledged the teen's history of burglary arrests but said he had never used a gun.
Police said that Coulter did not pose a threat to the homeowner, Merritt Landry, who works as a building inspector for the Historic District Landmarks Commission. 

Police said the teen was near Landry's vehicle when he was shot about 2 a.m. Landry's friends said the vehicle was in the driveway behind a gate just a few feet from the house's backdoor.
According to an NOPD arrest warrant, Landry shot Coulter from 30 feet away, evidenced by the distance between the blood found on the ground and the single bullet casing outside Landry's house in the 700 block of Mandeville Street.
Landry told police that he approached the boy from his front yard, near his vehicle. As he grew closer, he said, the boy made a "move, as if to reach for something" -- possibly a weapon -- so Landry shot him, the warrant states.
NOPD Detective Nicholas Williams spoke with an unidentified witness who gave an account that differed from Landry's, though the detective did not specify how.
Williams wrote in the warrant that Coulter was not trying to enter Landry's house and did not pose an "imminent threat" to Landry.
Judge Franz Zibilich set Landry's bond at $100,000. Landry posted a property bond and was released late Friday.
Landry's attorneys, Michael Kennedy and Miles Swanson, issued a statement after the arrest saying, "This incident is terrible, and Mr. Landry feels terrible about how things have occurred. Nevertheless, we remain convinced our client has done nothing wrong, and we are sure -- as facts come to light -- it'll become clear that Mr. Landry will be fully exonerated of any wrongdoing."
A spokesman for the City of New Orleans said Landry has been placed on emergency suspension without pay, pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, Coulter's mother would not leave his hospital bedside. His grandmother and older brother sat outside the family's home on Elysian Fields Avenue on Friday afternoon, grieving and upset.
Coulter is the seventh of eight children. Coulter's 23-year-old brother, David Coulter, said he had largely raised the children after their father died three years ago of stomach cancer. David said he and his mother did his best to keep Marshall out of trouble.
Marshall Coulter, who had been on medication for attention deficit hyperactive disorder, was awaiting trial for "stealing stuff," his brother said.
"He would steal -- he was a professional thief, sure," David Coulter said. "But he would never pick up a gun, not in a million years. He was too scared to aim a gun at the grass, let alone aim it at a person. No way. Before he'll ever pick up a gun, he'll be your friend first.
"He's still a little boy," the brother said. "Who pulls a trigger on a 14-year-old? What if it was your little brother or your sister? How would you feel?"
 Maybe this shouldn't be so surprising, considering that black individuals have collectively turned large portions of the city into war zones -- recall before Hurricane Katrina touched down, the New Orleans Police Department hired the Nation of Islam's head security chief to provide "sensitivity training" to the department:
A plan to pay $15,000 to a Nation of Islam leader to give “sensitivity training” to New Orleans police officers is under fire from members of the force and local religious leaders.
Chief Eddie Compass announced the plan as he sat next to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whose fiery sermons and pronouncements have been criticized as racist and anti-Semitic.
But Compass argues the Nation of Islam’s security chief, Capt. Dennis Muhammad, has successfully implemented the program in other cities, including Buffalo, reported WWL-TV in New Orleans.
Compass said he decided to take action after hearing complaints about police officers during his recent tour of the city’s high-crime neighborhoods.

“The people in the community who are anti-police, who really need to hear our message, who [we] really need to build the bridges with — members of the Nation of Islam have some type of relationship with these people,” said Compass.
The New Orleans Times Picayune reported Compass initiated regular community walks through low-income housing developments in order to listen to the people’s concerns, reduce tensions and allow “mutual trust” to flourish.
Never forget: this is also a city where the first black District Attorney, Eddie Jordan, fired 43 employees upon taking office, with 42 being white. In total, 56 people would lose their jobs -- 53 were white. Of 68 hires within his new administration, 92 percent were black.

This was in 2003.
 
In the post-Trayvon Martin world, daring to defend your property, your life, or your community from black crime is tantamount to aligning oneself with the Klan.

Just ask Mr. Merritt Landry. 

Rush Limbaugh, Ze'ev Chafets, and "Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit" -- Yes, Detroit's Bankruptcy is a Story of Race

Ze'ev Chafets book on Detroit, Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit, is in the news more than 20 years after its publication.
A Rosetta Stone in understanding the truth behind Detroit's collapse

On his massive influential radio show, Rush Limbaugh discussed Chafets book and broke the unofficial embargo on discussing the racial role in the decline of the city of Detroit (Note to the Daily Mail: 'The future left Detroit behind' left the Motor City behind, because white people fled the city upon the democratically elected black rule).

He said [America Discovers Zev Chafets' Book on the Role of Race in Detroit's Demise, RushLimbaugh.com, July 24, 2013]:
By the way, I've gotta tell you something.  I talked about Zev Chafets' book about Detroit yesterday, what really explains Detroit's bankruptcy.  Zev Chafets published a book in 1990 called "Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit"   And I reviewed some of the book. "
 
I skimmed it, a little book report for you yesterday, and the book focuses on the Mayor Coleman Young as the real culprit in what happened to Detroit, and the fact that, yeah, you can't deny that liberalism played a large role in Detroit's failure, unchecked Democrat power, unions as well, the decline of the auto industry, all those are factors, but Zev Chafets' point in his book is that it was Coleman Young, the mayoralty of Coleman Young single-handedly is responsible -- well, nothing is single-handedly, but largely responsible for what happened to Detroit.

By the way, don't misunderstand, folks.  I'm not trying to deemphasize liberalism as a cause for what happened in Detroit, because racial tension is liberalism.  Race wars are liberalism.  Race wars happen because of liberalism, and if they're not caused by, they certainly are encouraged. The flames of race wars are fanned by liberals.  The two are inseparable.  But the point of Zev's book is it would be to miss the point just to chalk it all up to liberalism.  You have a card-carrying communist as a mayor who wanted a black nationalist, separatist city that was really done in by his leadership, and that was all brought about by the riots in 1967.
Read the full transcript at Mr. Limbaugh's site, but stay here for a candid look at Ze'ev Chafets book and some of the key excerpts from Devil's Night.

Unlike Rush, I've read the whole book.

Liberalism - that ubiquitous enemy - didn't bring down Detroit, it was simply blacks that did.

The key quotes from Chafets book:
Detroit's shift from a prosperous white city to a poor black one was extraordinarily fast; within six years of the riot [PK Note: 1967], it had a black majority and a black administration. And the change was far more complete than in other major America cities. Chicago maintained stable white ethnic neighborhoods and a vital business district; Washington D.C. , remained anchored by the federal government, which provided jobs; in Atlanta, mayors from the civil rights movement built economic and political alliances with white suburbia. 

For the two and half million whites who lived in America's most segregated suburbs, Detroit became the The Corner writ large- an alien, threatening wreck, a place to drive through, if at all, with the windows rolled up and the doors securely locked. Whites not only left the city physically, they abandoned it emotionally as well. 

... Detroit today is a genuinely a fearsome-looking place. May of its neighborhoods appear to be the victims of a sadistic aerial bombardment - houses burned and vacant, buildings twisted and crumbling, whole city blocks overrun with wees and the carcases of discarded automobiles. Shopping streets are depressing avenues - banks converted into Fundamentalists churches, party stores with bars and boards on their windows and, here and there, a barbecue joint or saloon. The decay is everywhere, but it is is especially noticeable on the east side, which has lost roughly half its residents in the past thirty years - the most extreme depopulation of any urban area in America. 

Suburban whites are dismayed by the physical degeneration of what was once their city; but they are truly terrified by its racial composition, and the physical threat they associate with blacks, who constitute between 70 and 80 percent of the population. Some, mostly elderly, whites still live in the extremities of the city, and municipal employees are required to reside there by law (although many have fictitious addresses). But in most parts of town, most of the time, Detroit is as black as Nairobi. (p. 23-24)
So pretty quickly into the book, it should be glaringly obvious the reality behind Detroit's unprecedented collapse. Sadly, Chafets book was published in the late 1980s, meaning Detroit has limped along for 23 more years before declaring the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

Here's a sickening prediction from Chafet's book about how what happened to Detroit will soon happen to all of America. That's a point Charlie LeDuff, author of Detroit: An American Autopsy, concedes in a recent piece at the New York Times.

Chafet's wrote:
A few days after the election, [Detroit] News columnist Chauncey Bailey, a thoughtful man who Coleman Young once branded an Uncle Tom, explained why.
"Observes miss the point when they suggest that Young is lesss of a historical figure because he does not come across as "moderate" as do other African-American leaders now making inroad in less black cities, and is therefore out ofstep with a "new generation" of leadership. 

Only New York City and Chicago have more African-American residents than Detroit. new York is 25 percent African-American and has just elected its "first Black" mayor. Chicago is 40 percent African-American but lost power when African-Americans showed disunity. Due to their racial makeups, leaders in those cities must be more moderate to win. But Detroit is where more big cities will be in the coming decades. Young's legend will be the model, not a myth, that many will turn to."
Bailey's prediction reminded me of something I had heard more than a year earlier from Father William Cunningham, a very savvy white priest who has worked in the inner city for twenty years. "Detroit is the center of an American revolution," he had told me. "We're twenty years ahead of Chicago, forty years ahead of New York City. God knows where we are in comparison to San Diego. In terms of civil rights, this is Broadway. There's no place else where black power has spoken like it has in this city. And what happens here will eventually happen in the rest of the country. (p. 231 - 232)
Mr. Limbaugh... do you get it yet?

Do you?

Here's more:
But most black Detroiters do not measure their lives, or their city, by the yardsticks of the American middle class. [Mayor Coleman Young -- the first black mayor of Detroit; elected in 1973] Young may not have provided them with the safest streets or most efficient services; nor has he been able to raise their standard of living. But he has given his constituents something even more valuable: a feeling of empowerment and personal worth. Detroit is one of the few places in the country where blacks can live in a sympathetic, black-oriented milieu.  
"Detroit is an environment where you can forget about being black," said Cassandra Smith-Gray, who heads the city's welfare department. (p. 178)
 The conditions of the city don't matter, as long as black people are in charge and running things.

Do you get it now Mr. Limbaugh?

Do you?

Here's more, Mr. Limbaugh. Please, be sure to read this passage to your audience on Monday:
Coleman Young is the black mayor of a black city, a fact never from his consciousness. 
As Arthur Johnson observed, in no other place in the country have blacks succeeded in gathering so much political power into their own hands; specifically, the hands of the mayor. After four terms, he has cast the city government in his own image. Five of the nine members of the City Council are black [this book was published in 1990; now, all members are Black]. So were the chief of police, the fire chief, all four police commissioners, and the heads of most city departments (and, although Young does not appoint them, both congressmen, the superintendent of the schools and a majority of the city’s judges).

In city departments, where they are a minority, white often feel like outsiders. One senior official told me that she received bomb threats from colleagues because she was not part of the “black political mafia.”

But Young has done more than broaden access to the pork barrel. Under him, Detroit has become not merely an American city that happens to have a black majority, but a black metropolis, the first major Third World city in the United States. The trappings are all there – showcase projects [Renaissance Center], black-fisted symbols [Joe Louis Statue], an external enemy and the cult of personality. Detroit has even developed a quasi-official ideology that regards the pre-Young era as a time of white colonialism, ended by the 1967 insurrection and its aftermath. An official city publication describes the police department as having been a “hostile white army, entrusted by white authorities with the job of keeping nonwhites penned up in ghettos.” (p. 176-177)
Do you get it now Mr. Limbaugh?

Do you?






Friday, July 26, 2013

'American Idol'... Pulling a Zimmerman?

PK NOTE: Tomorrow night, Paul Kersey will appear as a guest on The Political Cesspool with James Edwards. The topic will be Escape From Detroit: The Collapse of America's Black Metropolis. If you can, listen to the show online. If you haven't bought a copy of the book, as a favor to SBPDL, please do so. For a donation of $25 (PayPal account in right-hand sidebar), we'll send you a signed copy. 

A 2nd Edition of the book is being worked on right now (completely updated, heavily edited, and turned into a narrative like Second City Confidential), with a new title -- If Obama Had a City, It Would Look Like Detroit: Why America's Black Metropolis Went Bankrupt. 


The long-awaited Guns, Blacks, and Steel is set to publish August 19 and The Day After Katrina:    New Orleans, Race, and Violence is set for September 1


Thanks for all your support. Whatever impact this site makes is all because you deem it worth visiting. 

Since when did Eric "My People" Holder add American Idol judge to his resume? We already know the Federal Government is suing companies that run background checks on potential applicants, because such checks have the undesired effect of disqualifying black people who have been erroneously found to be criminals (one day soon, it will just be declared illegal to arrest black suspects); so now the target of disparate impact is on the back of Simon Cowell's baby. ['American Idol' socked with racial discrimination suit
You can't check arrest histories of black people anymore...
pretty soon, you won't be able to even arrest black people.
, Philly.com, July 26, 2013]:

 Ten one-time contestants on American Idol, all male African Americans, have sued the Fox singing contest, claiming they were unfairly kicked off the show because of their race. The men are each seeking $25 million in damages.  
 Only hardcore Idol fans may recognize the names of the plaintiffs. (Let’s face it: only hardcore fans can remember even the names of the Idol winners). 
Bringing the suit are Corey Clark, Jaered Andrews and Jacob John Smalley (all from Season 2), Donnie Williams (Season 3), the Brittenum twins, Terrell and Derrell (from Season 5), Thomas Daniels and Akron Watson (both of Season 6), Ju'Not Joyner (Season 8), and Chris Golightly (Season 9). According to TMZ, the contestants’ attorney, James H. Freeman maintains that Idol has only publicly disqualified 10 contestants in the show’s history, all of whom are African-American. 
He also alleges that the show illegally looked into the arrest histories of the Idol 10 and used that information to humiliate the contestants. The suit holds that only African American singers were questioned about having criminal records. 
Freeman termed the policies of the show “cruel and inhumane,” and accused Idol producers of painting his clients as “violent criminals, liars, and sexual deviants.” Some of the ten men made it as far as the Hollywood rounds. 
Clark is the only one to have made the Final Ten, He filed a separate suit earlier this year against the show for, among other things, defamation and false light invasion of privacy. Clark, who had a brief and controversial affair with Idol judge Paula Abdul while he was on the show, maintains in the suit that he was cast as “the villain” in a “scripted” reality show. 
All 10 contestants publicly disqualified have been black, with background checks engaged by the show to determine a criminal history... what, is George Zimmerman moonlighting as a producer for American Idol now? 

Considering that the EEOC wants to make it illegal for companies to check criminal background checks, because such investigations by employers have a tendency to disqualify black applicants, the actions by American Idol must be the basis for a case of civil rights infringement/violations taken up by the Department of Justice.

Instead of funding rallies against Zimmerman, perhaps the Department of Justice can fund a program to call in hundreds of thousands of votes for only black contestants on American Idol?