The world of woke is rife with incorrect assumptions about racial minorities. First is the assumption that racial minorities are criminals.
That assumption is wrong. It’s true that a disproportionate amount of crime – especially the violent kind – is committed by racial minorities. That’s true even after normalizing the numbers for the increased poverty level of minorities. I suspect this is due to a familial breakdown caused by many complicated factors.
But it’s certainly not true that minorities are all, or even generally, criminals. To the contrary, the great majority of minorities are law-abiding citizens.
Before leaving that first erroneous assumption to move on to the second one, consider the racism of it: The left operates under the assumption that racial minorities are criminals.
The left’s second assumption is that most minorities sympathize with criminals. That assumption is a natural outgrowth of the first assumption. The wokerati think that minorities will sympathize with criminals because they’re criminals themselves.
But there’s also another reason for this second erroneous assumption. To the woke, skin color is everything. They’ll side with a criminal of the “right” skin color over a non-criminal with the “wrong” one, and they naturally think that all people with the “right” skin color will do the same.
Data, polls, and common sense suggest this is not the case. For example, only 28% of blacks support defunding the police.
That’s not hard to understand. The victims of the left’s misguided move to defund the police were mostly racial minorities, because it was in their high-crime neighborhoods that the absence of police protection enabled criminals to run free. We now see the results of that misguided move in skyrocketing crime rates inflicted on blacks in Democrat-controlled cities.
Black opposition to defunding the police comes as a surprise to the left. They assumed that blacks would favor criminals if the criminals were black. They underestimated blacks. It turns out that the content of the criminals’ character is more important to blacks than the color of their skin.
Illegal immigration is another instructive case in point, this time with respect to Hispanics. Democrats have always assumed that Hispanics favor illegal immigration. But they don’t.
Hispanics in Texas by a margin of 51 to 25% say illegal immigrants should be arrested and a plurality support spending state funds to protect the border if the feds won’t spend the necessary federal funds.
This, too, comes as a surprise to the left. They assumed that Hispanics would favor illegal immigration if the illegal immigrants are Hispanic. Just as they underestimated blacks, the left also underestimated Hispanics. It turns out that the content of the illegal immigrants’ character is more important to Hispanics than the color of their skin.
Such is the practical outcome of the left’s obsession with race. The racial minorities who are supposed to benefit from this obsession are decidedly opposed to it. Racial identity politics is increasingly a virtue-signaling hobbyhorse ridden by white liberals around the faculty lounge, all premised on the belief that racial minorities think not individually with their brains but collectively with their skin.
This November the Democrats will get the votes of almost all those white liberal arts professors. But to their dismay, they will discover that the rest of America sees things differently.
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When thinking about the woke left’s motives for their policies — throwing open our borders to a tidal wave of desperate and disparate humanity, doing everything possible to increase crime rates in our urban centers and drug use everywhere else, trying to destroy traditional social roles predicated on biologically determined sexual nature and function, and so forth — it is truly hard to understand the imagined benefits that supposedly will accrue from any of this. As you’re pointing out here, these policies probably won’t even result in their maintaining the social power that they now exert. On top of promoting cultural suicide, they’re committing political suicide. I suppose they only want to do as much damage as possible before they flame out. This is spiritual evil.
>> I suppose they only want to do as much damage as possible before they flame out. << – A mean-spirited and incorrect assumption. The great struggles in the world are not between good and evil but rather, between opposing notions of good.
Even Machiavelli couldn’t find the good in anarchy and chaos, in the wanton destruction of an existing social order without some blueprint for a better one. Steve, below, is correct: these people are like malignant teenagers who haven’t thought much about what happens after “Daddy” is dethroned.
With tens of thousands of illegal aliens coming across the border … where are they all going?
Where are they all going? Some will join family who have already crossed the border, a few will head to places where they have heard there are employment opportunities, but the largest portion will no doubt head towards “sanctuary” cities and states, which incidentally also have the most generous welfare programs.
Any parent of a rebellious adolescent already understands completely the motivation of the left in America. It is the same adolescent rebellion that motivates both. They both have “daddy issues,” i.e., the desire to strike back at what is perceived to be an unfair power relationship, and by destroying the adult, to raise the adolescent rebel to a position of power. To invert the prior relationship as it were. This desire manifests itself in many ways, but culturally, it causes those in the arts and letters crowd to always “push the envelope,” or “epater les bourgeoisie,” as someone else put it. Politically, it is manifest in “woke-ism,” which works itself out in things like ANTIFA and BLM. Culturally, it leads to the “cancel culture” we see on social media and academia. It is all in an attempt to wreak vengeance on the perceived tyrant parent. My mother used to call these types cases of “arrested development,” and she called it with total accuracy. These “arrested” adolescents would rather destroy everything in the supporting culture, whether it is their familial home or the country in which they reside, than tolerate the fact that they are realistically at the bottom of the power totem pole. They are truly those who would prefer to see it all burn down than conform. Thus, they are incapable of understanding or sympathizing with “normal” adults whose goals and desires are for a peaceful milieu in which to live and raise their families. Whereas one can always hope that time and experience will extinguish or at least mollify the rebellious streak in a teenager, that is simply not true of the left. They are stuck in their stage of adolescent rebellion like a prehistoric mosquito in amber. Unfortunately, there is no hope of coming to a resolution and accommodation with these types, for they can never be satisfied as long as “daddy” remains in charge. The only way to deal with them is either physical separation or, ultimately, their destruction, or at least reduction in influence to where their rebellion can be either ignored or tolerated. The alternative is the death of Western Civilization.
The real problem that that the adults in our culture have abdicated their responsibilities and let the immature run amok.
That simple? Whew? Such a relief.
I don’t know if the “adults” have actually abducted their responsibilities, as much as it has simply been TAKEN from them via court fiats, and other assorted govt. proclamations and mandates, almost always behind closed doors. Then, one day, the adults discover what has really happened and they revolt. Terry McAuliffe knows that well at this point! ALL the adults need to vote this Nov. and that MIGHT be a start!
They are stuck in their stage of adolescent rebellion like a prehistoric mosquito in amber. Odd simile.
the death of Western Civilization.
One must be aware that Western Civilization has changed dramatically since its beginning, whenever that may be determined. It’s doubtful that any contemporary Westerner would like to live in a society very similar to that of the Tiberian Roman Empire, that of the Frankish Merovingians or even the British Victorians. all examples of Western Civilization. So, the accepted ideas of the West have changed over time. If Western Civilization is so flimsy and fragile that it’s unable to be maintained, then it, like that of Hellenic Greece, Rome, feudal Europe and the European city-states, will at some point transform into a somewhat different form or disappear altogether. No individual will be able to do anything about this.
Not sure about your last sentence. For example, although Oliver Cromwell ultimately failed in his attempt to impose Puritan reform in 17th- century England, he did actually protect the concept of private property by defeating the Levelers, thus paving the way for future industrial capitalism. Other iconic individuals leap to mind — Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill.
I am not sure that you caught my drift. Perhaps you were put off by what you characterized as my “odd simile,” but it seems you are either rather sanguine about our situation, or perhaps feel that there would be no loss if the current incarnation of Western Civilization should go extinct. My point, should you require additional elucidation was that it is being consciously destroyed with adolescent abandon, not that it was evolving gradually or organically. The agents of this destruction are acting precisely like “spoiled children,” as José Ortega y Gasset first observed in 1932. However, Ortega saw the civilizational threat of his era coming from the “mass man.” Observing the births of both Bolshevism and fascism, Ortega feared an ignoble force rising up from below that maintained no obligations to history. This mass man insisted on “complete freedom.” He was the “spoiled child of human history.” All the while he maintained a “deadly hatred of all that is not [him]self.” Today, the “ignoble force” maintaining no obligations to history are the “woke left,” the “spoiled children” who have now grown into the rebellious adolescents (many of whom are old enough to be my contemporaries), the existence of whom I was bemoaning.
Exactly right, Steve. That’s the reason conservatives and liberals (at least the woke ones) talk right past one another. The libs aren’t looking for a conversation, they’re looking to make a statement of a different sort.
I noticed that the conservative speaker that Yale law students managed to cancel the other day told her cancelers “grow up.” She understood them perfectly.
Everyone who is “normal” need copy your comment to keep for regular review. You have identified the truth of these self-haters. You also have named the fix: destruction. They never will change, destined to remain unsatisfied until their last breath, always while alive looking to destroy that which spawned and supports them, unrelenting nihilist to their destructive cores.
Just so. “Saint Michael the archangel, defend us in battle . . . . By the power of God cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the earth seeking the ruin of souls “ (Leo XIII).
“We now see the results of that misguided move in skyrocketing crime rates inflicted on blacks in high-crime Democrat-controlled cities.”
Just collateral damage for other people’s political vanity.
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These are misfit children looking for meaning in their underachieving lives. But they can’t handle the requirements for being conservative, or even independent thinkers. Modern progressivism is so much easier, and it requires little in the way of accepted ethics, traditional morals, or respect. Here are a few truths:
Equality challenges power, and equity protects it.
The left’s goal is to make people live in fear.
No matter how exhaustively you pander to them, they still won’t respect you.
The Left makes the grand assumption that everyone else is stupid. Minorities are stupid. Straight white males are stupid. Women in every hue are stupid. They have admitted depending on “the stupidity of the American people” (Zeke Emanuel when speaking of foisting Obamacare on we the great unwashed). They literally cannot imagine that they aren’t the smartest people in the room and that we need their largesse as well as brainpower to live our miserable little lives.
I think it’s a mistake to stereotype “the left” (or any other group) It’s a pretty diverse population and most are well aware that minorities are generally law-abiding. “Defunding the Police” is an unfortunate term that should never have been used. What most liberals generally mean by it is “demilitarizing” police and moving the money being spent on military hardware to social services that MIGHT help prevent SOME of the crimes committed by desperate people. For example, our small-town Police Dept. (22 sworn officers for 7k people)) is required to wear two protective vests. The purpose of the second vest is only structural, meaning it serves to help their backs hold up the >20lbs of hardware they have to constantly hang on their bodies while on duty. (Did you know that police experience an outrageous rate of back problems from lugging all that stuff around?)
I know a lot of these officers personally. Many would be happy to demilitarize a bit. Aside from their backs, talking with one of them in uniform can be in intimidating because, no matter how nice the person, and most of them are very nice, all that armor and weaponry can make a citizen feel like she is being approached by a storm trooper before the first word is spoken. Many officers don’t like that any better than civilians do.
I think you’re making light of the defund-the-police movement. The activists explicitly wanted to abolish police departments, not just take away their military equipment, and they said so repeatedly. Indeed, the funding cuts resulted mainly in reducing the number of cops, exactly as the cutters intended. Now that the defunding has run into political headwinds, and only now, the Dems are spinning it into something else.
As for Hispanics being opposed to illegal immigration, I do think this comes as a surprise to the Dems whose focus is always on race. They wrongly have assumed that Hispanics favor illegal immigration because most illegal immigrants are Hispanic. But they’re wrong about that. Hispanics are in fact opposed to illegal immigration. Hispanics generally think with their brains, not their skin.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, police and other enforcement officers were armed with .38 spl revolvers. Bank robbers use the “Tommy guns” (in .45 ACP) that never really made it to WWI. The basic police were outgunned, and, in 1934, NO MORE fully automatic weapons were allowed in the hands of the citizens. SCOTUS decision. (Which is WHY all on the left—the right KNOW bettter– completely wrong when they want to ban “Assault weapons” that simply are NOT in the hands of any civilian legally.) Now, the police are still getting opposed by those who would commit crimes: lasers used to blind officers, body armor, etc. SO, militarizing the police is a SMART thing to do if we want them to be able to actually protect us from a mob. See summer of 2020. As to “Stereotyping the left,” that IS the correct assumption, BECAUSE, no TRUE liberal is ever allowed to have their voices heard, any more than the conservatives. The libtard OWN the media and social media. Like Glenn mentioned; A LAW SCHOOL forbade a conservative speaker advocating FREE SPEECH! ONLY when the “normal left” shuts these morons down will the stereotypes fall.
I thought when the left was saying “defund the police” they were meaning that the policemen should have more social work training and learn to be kind to the criminals. I had a life- long friend who was a social worker in Detroit Michigan. She would go into crack houses and take crack babies away from their mothers and every time she went she had an armed policeman accompany her. So I don’t think that she would have been in favor of defunding the police. She needed their assistance.