Luke Ford

Robert Weissberg writes:

Reaction to the recent Milwaukee riot has followed a predictable script and for liberals this requires insisting that that blacks themselves are largely blameless for the “uprising.” But, even if liberals admit that some Milwaukee residents were guilty, they will nevertheless claim that these miscreants, typically unemployed school dropouts, are only a minuscule element in an otherwise law-abiding, peaceful population. In other words, we should not smear an entire community by the actions of a tiny untypical handful.

This “only a few bad apples” view is factually incorrect—the pathologies are far more extensive than a few attention-getting rioters. To be sure, thousands of Milwaukee inner-city residents did not take to the streets and a few residents did denounce the mayhem. Nevertheless, the penchant for disorderly behavior, and this includes criminality, is more deeply ingrained in these black neighborhoods than the liberal-dominated mainstream media admits.

This unflattering assessment rests on a dog that does not bark: if the overwhelming majority of ordinary ghetto residents—as liberals usually claim– are so opposed to the thuggery punctuated by occasional rioting, where are the ambitious local politicians anxious to capitalize on this supposed thirsting for law and order? After all, it is rare office-seeker who will shun any type of pandering almost guaranteeing electoral victory.

Indeed, if, as many liberals allege, the trouble-makers are exclusively poorly educated youngsters who almost never vote, why would black office-seekers pay them any attention? Why should elected black officials traffic in responsibility escaping justification—white racism, oppression, rotten schools, years of financial neglect, bigoted cops—when, supposedly, thousands of law-abiding residents dread neighborhood predators? How many votes can Black Lives Matter deliver? If economic self-interest motivated voters, the Hobbesian inner-city should be the ideal place for a black Rudi Giuliani. It would not take much for this black Rudy to woo ghetto residents with the benefits of tough policing: more tax-paying businesses, more convenient shopping, more jobs, safer public parks and, most of all, enhanced personal freedom. Why don’t all those African American preachers who organize anti-violence rallies run for office? If the bad guys are just a small minority, surely these Reverends would win in a landslide.

Why the absence of black law and order Giulianis? Let me hypothesize two probably over-lapping possibilities, both of which, if true, bode poorly for future efforts at reducing criminality and rioting. First, and most obviously, is the ghetto culture that permeates black neighborhoods in cities like Milwaukee. This culture rejects anything “white” and nothing is more quintessentially “white” than law and order. In fact, the very phrase “law and order” and “crime” have now widely viewed by self-designated community spokesmen as the code word for racism.

This aversion even applies to the small stuff like eliminating graffiti or cracking down on public drinking. In an electoral contest between a fire-breathing black nationalist (a good “race man” to use an older terminology) who denounces white privilege as the root of black misery and a mild- mannered rival who modestly calls for making parks drug-free, the firebrand will almost always win. Hard to even imagine a black Rudy Giuliani campaigning in the Hood. Recall the long successful career of Washington DC’s Marion Berry, a dissolute crackhead whose popularity among blacks totally baffled law-and-order whites.

A second explanation is more rational: even many upright inner-city blacks personally have more to lose than to gain by electing a black Giuliani. Though it is impossible to admit in public, many inner-city blacks at least occasionally engage in petty drug dealing, prostitution, public intoxication, shoplifting, misusing EBT cards, fencing stolen goods (including guns), small-time gambling, and similar unsavory behaviors. Strict law and order will thus invariably restore mass incarceration which in practice means imprisoning family members (especially teenage children), boyfriends/girlfriends and neighbors, a situation that many whites find unimaginable given their minimal contact with criminals. Put another way, a “broken windows” campaign is perhaps the most disparate policy imaginable and a costly one, too, given fines and lawyer fees. In a sense, the damage done by the corner drug dealers or burning down the local CVS pharmacy (as occurred in the Baltimore riot) is a tolerable alternative to locking up these miscreants, all of whom are blood relatives of other community residents. Again, this trade-off is unthinkable to middle class whites watching the mayhem on TV.

Taken together, this bodes poorly for government-based efforts to ameliorate black slums of Milwaukee, East St. Louis, Detroit and Camden, NJ and elsewhere. It is delusional to believe that millions of black inner-city residents are silently waiting to be rescued by a black Giuliani who refuses to be intimidates by Black Lives Matter and street gangs. After all, these cities have been festering for decades, more than sufficient time for a black law and order Messiah to arrive. Read on.

Steve Sailer writes: We’re always being told that white flight occurred because whites succumb to irrational Stereotypes about blacks being crime prone, so, logically, these black families are saving a bundle by living by in safe yet low rent neighborhoods. You could, for example, save your money on housing and send your kids to private school.

I guess, however, because the NYT describes black neighborhoods as “segregated” it mean it’s a bad thing. “Segregated” is the mirror image of “diverse,” which is a good thing. NFL starting cornerbacks are “diverse,” while East St. Louis is “segregated.”…

For example, there’s no quality housing in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. It’s been falling apart ever since blacks started moving in 49 years ago.

Sure, the original housing stock in Austin wasn’t all that different from across the Austin Avenue in Oak Park, but that’s not what we mean by “quality.” What we mean by “quality” is that the people living in the housing have enough wealth and determination to be able to get away from poor people. The working definition of a poor person in modern America is somebody who can’t afford to get away from other poor people.

In Oak Park, they stayed away from poor people, so that’s “quality.” In Austin they didn’t so that’s “not quality.”

…In other words, blacks tend to be bad for property values, just like all those horrible racists told my in-laws in the Austin neighborhood in 1967. They didn’t believe them, but when they finally moved out in 1970 after three felonies against their family, losing half their net worth, they admitted that maybe the bigots had had a point…

White Flight is the main form of ethnic cleansing in which we all agree to blame the victims…

Milwaukee itself, which is nearly two-thirds nonwhite, has never elected a black mayor.

Whereas cities that elected a long stream of black mayors, like Detroit and New Orleans, have worked out well for blacks.

“At school, the Sabir children have heard a teacher play down slavery, and classmates stereotype black neighborhoods as bad and drug infested. On their block, where the sidewalks are cracked and some empty lots have been turned into gardens, they occasionally see drugs and fights.”

In other words, the stereotypes are truthful, which just makes them more hateful hate-filled.

Truth Is Hate.

Thus, as our Presidential frontrunner explains in her ongoing Conversation, it is the duty of all good Americans to hate the truth.

COMMENTS:

* One hears a lot about how residents in Ferguson righteously rioted in response to systemic injustices like racking up lots of civil fines (could have a point) to the black majority failing to elected very many blacks to the school board and town council (so what). Same thing with Milwaukee , Baltimore and elsewhere.

Unmentioned is that the behavior of these young revolutionaries destroyed what little appeal their neighborhoods had to start with and millions of dollars of whatever homeowner equity existed. Therefore there are thousands of people who cannot sell their properties at a price that makes sense so the option is to stay and try and ride it out or leave and rent elsewhere and rent out their homes to people willing to live in a high crime/high social dysfunction neighborhood.

This process has played out much more slowly in urban areas across the country – the societal tolerance of cultural dysfunction in black neighborhoods that is unlike any other segment of society means that high concentrations of working to lower class blacks means property values will drop off a cliff as surely as the sun sets in the west. The left has for decades demanded non-judgment of dysfunctional behavior from its most treasured part of its base, and we can see the results. Now they are trying to peddle the narrative that it’s a collection of racist policies that haven’t existed for half a century or more that has made black neighborhoods hellholes, but even the most ardent black political voices (TNC, Spike Lee) don’t want to live in “real” black neighborhoods either if they can help it.

* Money does not mean successful real estate investments. Black athletes and the homes they build are a case in point. Michael Jordan’s 56,000 sq.ft estate in Chicago featured wrought iron gates with his uniform number embedded in them, an indoor basketball court, a beauty salon and 19 bathrooms but had to be auctioned off.

Michael Vick spent $5 million on his Atlanta mansion and it sold for $500,000 at his bankruptcy auction.

In St. Petersburg, a retired NFL players home had to torn down as its vintage early 1990′s accoutrements made it unsaleable at any price.

The homes of black superstars may have been impressive to hoodrats but what a hoodrat finds impressive and in good taste and what other luxury housing buyers do may not be the same. You can’t buy class.

* The problem with Michael Jordan’s mansion is that he made it so much about Michael Jordan that, when he decided to sell it, he was shocked to discover that there wasn’t another Michael Jordan to buy it at the price that Michael Jordan wanted to sell it for.

* My most liberal friends have never lived in a black neighborhood in their lives and witnessed what goes on day to day, and they would never consider it. They are very proud of their “solidarity” or “allyship” with oppressed minorities, though.

I did have one liberal couple I am friends with get randomly assaulted by some justice-involved youth downtown once – they couldn’t seem to understand why these young black males decided to beat up a hip white couple and not even try to take their money or iPhones. “Why” indeed.

* The Talented Tenth want to live lives separate from Negro trash, in elite Talented Tenth neighborhoods, with elite Talented Tenth clubs and schools and service organizations. They don’t want to be dragged back down into the steaming hot mess of Negro dysfunction. But they also don’t want to live surrounded by white middle class and upper middle class folks.

Milwaukee has no Talented Tenth neighborhoods, clubs, or organizations. It has been unable to create, whole cloth, Talented Tenth neighborhoods that are both segregated from Negro trash AND from white folks as well..

Young Talented Tenths move to Atlanta, Chicago and LA instead. There is no solutions to the Milwaukee Problem. White folks can’t solve it and black folks with talent and ability don’t want to.

* The reality is that there has never been a better time in America for blacks to be successful. If you have a reasonable level of reliability and presentability and decent language skills, all you need is a Bachelor’s degree from a mid-tier school in something marketable — finance, marketing, accounting, “management” — and you will have all the major U.S. corporations fighting one another to give you a job. Similarly, you can get a gig at a city/state/federal bureaucracy with no problem. If you prefer to get a degree in say history or literature, you will find the most lilly white suburban school districts desperate to hire you as a teacher. Publishing companies, magazines, etc. will also push you to the front of the list, to say nothing of media companies like Vox.

Simply put, it’s dead simple to get a well paying, middle class job as a black person in America in this year, thanks to massive reverse-discrimination, codified into law and company hiring policies everywhere. Yet it still doesn’t happen at scale. Journalists of America, I invite you to explore why this is the case.

* I personally witnessed Negro influxes destroy two beautiful residential areas in New Jersey; East Orange in the mid 1970s and Trenton’s many White ethnic neighborhoods a decade later. It starts with a few “middle-class” Negro households; they are seldom families in the traditional sense. These harbingers usually bring with them obnoxious habits, e.g., destruction of foliage, failure to maintain property, noise and loitering until nearly dawn, etc., and an ever-changing retinue of thuggish relatives and acquaintances.

As a result life becomes intolerable for their White neighbors. Then the less savory Negro element starts replacing the first White refugees. The escalating levels of theft, vandalism, and violence soon cause local businesses to shut down and eventually drive out any remaining Whites families and individuals who can afford to leave. Even those who can’t eventually are in such fear for their lives that they leave regardless of the cost.

In East Orange I saw the process from beginning to end. In my particular neighborhood it played out over the course of a year. In Trenton the process was just as inevitable but took several years. Those who haven’t observed or experienced the process cannot imagine the horror its brutal inevitability instills in those who have.