In celebration of Black Alternative History Month, and at Attorney General Eric Holder’s request, the Carlyle Club is pleased to kick off a forthright conversation about the most uncomfortable aspects of race we could think of.
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Contents
- A nation of cowards
- Black governance, then and now: A history of corruption, incompetence, and very expensive furniture. Come on, who spends $1,100 on trash cans? Includes:
- Mulatto History Month: Can someone please explain to me why most successful “black” people are so… pale?
- Black criminality, then and now: From the 19th century to the 21st, an abundantly obvious pattern emerges. Includes:
- Recommended reading: As always, you can learn more about the topics covered in this issue with our extensive reading list.
- Celebrate black history with Radish
A nation of cowards
In February 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder “called the American people ‘essentially a nation of cowards’ in failing to openly discuss the issue of race” (CNN).
Holder urged Americans of all races to use Black History Month as a time to have a forthright national conversation between blacks and whites to discuss aspects of race which are ignored because they are uncomfortable. …
“It’s a question of being honest with ourselves and racial issues that divide us,” Holder told reporters in a hastily arranged news conference. “It’s not easy to talk about it. We have to have the guts to be honest with each other, accept criticism, accept new proposals.”
Well, we at the Thomas Carlyle Club for Young Reactionaries (Students Against a Democratic Society) are just crazy enough to take him up on the offer. Radish will be celebrating Black History Month with forthright conversations about the most uncomfortable aspects of race we can think of!
Armed Black Panthers threaten white voters at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008. Eric Holder declined to prosecute ‘his people.’
But first: what is Black History Month, anyway? Known as ‘Negro History Week’ until three missing weeks of black history were re-discovered in 1976, this special time of year (History.com)
is an annual celebration of achievements by black Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of African Americans in U.S. history.
Now, I’m not going to dispute the merits of devoting one month out of the year to celebrating one of the world’s least accomplished major population groups, particularly when that population is not exactly suffering from a deficit of self-esteem (see, e.g., here, here, and here).
However, anyone who describes the role of blacks in U.S. history, or the history of any other white-majority country, as “central,” is not doing history properly. And it is our responsibility, as students of proper history, to hack away at the weeds of Whig history wherever they may sprout. And they sprout in abundance during the month of February.
It is admittedly easy to confuse this project (of historical weed-whacking) with a different one: that of diminishing the role of black people in U.S. history. No one is working on that project, though many are clearly hard at work embellishing their role.
What you are about to read is a series of hard truths about race in America; of things as they are, not as we would like them to be — a series made necessary by Black History Month itself.
(Credit for much of the research presented here is due to M.G. Miles of Those Who Can See.)
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Black governance, then and now
Exploring Afro-American governance, from Reconstruction to the present day.
(Above: civil rights advocate Thomas Nast’s ‘Colored Rule in a Reconstructed State’ depicts the South Carolina legislature (Harper’s Weekly, 1874).)
In 2009, Politico reported an outrage:
The House ethics committee is currently investigating seven African-American lawmakers — more than 15 percent of the total in the House. And an eighth black member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), would be under investigation if the Justice Department hadn’t asked the committee to stand down. … “It is kind of crazy,” said an aide to one senior black Democrat. “How can it be that the ethics committee only investigates African-Americans? It doesn’t make sense.”
How, indeed, can it be that so many black lawmakers are under investigation for unethical conduct? Well, the lawmakers in question include:
- Charles Rangel, who was convicted in 2010 of “improperly fundraising for a community center in his name, failing to disclose more than a half million dollars in assets…, and failing to disclose financial arrangements for a villa… in the Dominican Republic” (ABC);
- Laura Richardson, who was convicted in 2012 of “improperly pressuring her official staff to campaign for her, destroying evidence and tampering with witness testimony” (The Hill); and
- Maxine Waters, who “intervened with regulators to protect and reward” a bank her husband owned stock in with a $12 million federal bailout. That bank lied about helping the poor get houses and jobs, while “executives rewarded themselves with fancy cars and high salaries” (American Thinker). Her grandson took the fall (The Blaze).
Seven black lawmakers under investigation
Jesse Jackson Jr. may have escaped investigation in 2009, but he will likely serve “significant jail time” for misuse of campaign funds, including a $40,000 Rolex watch for himself (Chicago Sun-Times) and a $5,000 monthly salary for his wife (Sun-Times).
So how can it be that the ethics committee appears to target blacks? The unspeakably obvious answer is that blacks are more likely than whites to abuse their power. In short: blacks are prone to corruption.
My God! Racism! Blatant racism! The mind recoils in horror. Feel free to insert the words “on average,” if that helps. It is, after all, a generalization. Just don’t pretend it’s not an accurate one. Anyway, our ‘racist’ finding is not exactly new, as we are about to see through the racist trickery of primary sources.
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Bridge administrators of Madison County
(Above: ‘The First Colored Senator and Representatives’ (1872).)
From James Wilford Garner’s Reconstruction in Mississippi (1901), pp. 307–308:
Perhaps the most important local officials under the reconstruction constitution were the boards of supervisors and the justices of the peace. … In the Southern type of local government, the county board is a legislative and administrative body of great responsibility. … It was alleged, with more or less truth, that in many counties these officials were incompetent. In some instances the board was composed entirely of illiterate negroes. Although their duties necessitated calculation and computation, there were instances in which no member could do the smallest operation of arithmetic, and their highest mark of erudition was the ability of the president to sign his name to a record, the contents of which he could not read.
In Issaquena County, in 1874, every member of the board was alleged to be an illiterate negro. Several were charged with official dishonesty, and two were forced to resign. The members of the legislature, the sheriff, clerks, justices of the peace, and constables, were all colored. In fact, there were only two white officers in the county.
In Madison County, every member of the board was colored, and the maximum of learning among them was the ability of one to sign his name mechanically. There was not a justice of the peace in the county who could write his name. In the performance of their duties, they imposed but few fines, and shortly before the meeting of the grand jury, they usually got some friendly white neighbor to write up their dockets for presentation at the proper time. They were, of course, almost wholly ignorant of the law, and often unable to read the processes which they issued against persons and property in the name of the law. … It was a standing complaint of the whites that it was impossible to prevent the thefts of seed cotton and live stock, on account of the leniency of the colored magistrates. … Their ignorance of the law sometimes worked hardships on suitors, and caused the attorneys not a little embarrassment.
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“Looking back over the whole bad business”
(Above: black first-time voters (1867).)
From Hilary A. Herbert’s The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences (1912), pp. 225–227 and 229:
The new rulers [during Reconstruction] not only increased taxes and misappropriated the revenues of counties, cities, and States; they bartered away the credit of State after State. …
There were hundreds of negro policemen, constables, justices of the peace, and legislators who could not write their names. Justice was in many localities a farce. Ex-slaves became judges, representatives in Congress, and United States senators. … In communities where negro majorities were overwhelming there were usually two factions, and when political campaigns were on agents for these clans often scoured the fields clear of laborers to recruit their marching bands. In cities these bands made night hideous with shouts and the noise of fifes and drums. The negro would tolerate no defection from his ranks to the whites, and negro women were more intolerant than the men. It sometimes happened that a bloody clash between the races was imminent when white men sought to protect a negro who had dared to speak in favor of the Democratic and Conservative party. In truth, the civilization of the South was being changed from white to negroid. …
Edwin L. Godkin… is thought by some competent judges to have been the ablest editor this country has ever had. After the last of the negro governments set up in the South had passed away, looking back over the whole bad business, Mr. Godkin, in a letter to his friend Charles Eliot Norton, written from Sweet Springs, West Virginia, September 3, 1877, said: “I do not see in short how the negro is ever to be worked into a system of government for which you and I could have much respect. …
Every State government set up under the plan of Congress had wrought ruin, and the ruin was always more complete where the negroes were most numerous, as in South Carolina and Louisiana.
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Sixty-dollar chairs
(Above: ruins of Charleston, South Carolina after the War of Southern Secession.)
From John W. Burgess’ Reconstruction and the Constitution (1902), pp. 261–264:
During the year 1872… there came to the knowledge of Congress and of the people of the North the frightful and scandalous corruption of the “State” governments in the South. … the record of these doings in South Carolina was something as follows. The House of Representatives, the majority of the members of which were negroes, and the presiding officer of which was the notorious F. J. Moses, spent ninety-five thousand dollars to refurnish its assembly hall, where the aristocrats of South Carolina had never spent over five thousand.
Clocks costing six hundred dollars each, sofas two hundred dollars each, chairs at sixty dollars each, desks at a hundred and twenty-five dollars each, mirrors at six hundred dollars each, cuspidors at eight dollars each — such were the items of the bill. In the four years from 1868 to 1872, two hundred thousand dollars were expended for furniture for the legislative chambers alone.
Then came the bills of supplies, sundries and incidentals, amounting in one session to three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one hundred and twenty-five thousand of it for a free restaurant, lunch counter and bar, at which the members and their friends fared most royally, eating, drinking and smoking, and paying not a penny therefor directly, nor indirectly, since many, if not most, of the members of that legislature paid no stiver of the taxes. Then came the printing bills, averaging more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year where ten thousand dollars would have been more than enough to pay every legitimate expense of that kind.
It was the most soul-sickening spectacle that Americans had ever been called upon to behold. Every principal of the old American polity was here reversed. In place of government by the most intelligent and virtuous part of the people for the benefit of the governed, here was government by the most ignorant and vicious part of the population for the benefit, the vulgar, materialistic, brutal benefit of the governing set.
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Thousand-dollar chairs
(Above: Jo Anne Mondowney and Juliet Machie.)
Today, of course, black governance is very different: the chairs cost a thousand dollars, not sixty, and you don’t have to be a legislator to buy them with the public’s money. From the Detroit News (2011):
Detroit Public Library officials say finances have grown so bad they could close most neighborhood branches, but in a few weeks plan to unveil a revamped wing of a main library that even administrators say spares few expenses.
The South Wing is stocked with 20 yellow and orange European lounge chairs that cost $1,092 apiece [as did the trash cans], artistic pendant light fixtures and two alcohol-burning fireplaces. The project morphed from a $300,000 furniture update to a $2.3 million overhaul…
It’s not the only spending to come under question as the system considers closing up to 18 of 23 branches and laying off as many as 191 of 333 workers. [S]ince 2008, the library has paid at least $160,000 to food vendors, including $1,760 at an ice-cream shop, and spent $1 million on 6 percent raises to union workers…
Executive Director Jo Anne Mondowney agreed the South Wing renovation was costly and that too much has been spent on food. But she said she’s only been on the job for about 19 months and isn’t responsible for much of the spending. … But… the $624,000 contract for furniture and shelving was approved under her watch…
And whom did she replace? Who started this massive overhaul? From the Detroit News again:
Members [of the Public Library Commission] voted Tuesday to enter into talks to buy out Deputy Director Juliet Machie’s contract because an investigation found irregularities related to the expansion’s contracts, according to a source with knowledge of the decision. … Machie, who makes $145,000 a year, helped lead the South Wing expansion project between 2007 and much of 2009
(How often does something have to happen before it’s no longer considered an “irregularity”?)
The interested reader may consult:
- ‘Nepotism Rampant at Detroit Libraries’
- ‘Ex-Detroit Library Contractor Indicted’
- ‘Trouble in Motor City’
- ‘Finalists for Library System Director’
That last one is Juliet Machie looking for a new job.
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Worst. Mayor. Ever.
We’re not done with Detroit (though Detroit itself may be): there’s still Kwame Kilpatrick. The “hip-hop mayor” ran City Hall as a criminal enterprise for six years. Pictured above laughing during his first trial (guilty, of perjury and corruption), Kwame:
- “illegally used the nonprofit Kilpatrick Civic Fund like a piggy bank to pay for crisis consultants, a Cadillac, trips — even summer camp for his kids” (Detroit Free Press);
- “threatened witnesses with violence, pocketed a $10,000 kickback in a restaurant bathroom and withheld city funds from firms that wouldn’t pay to play” (Detroit News);
- “charged at least $210,000 for travel, meals, an $85 bottle of champagne and other items on his city-issued credit card” (AP) — “other items” like Super Bowl hotel rooms, for $11,644 (Free Press);
- allowed city pension boards to be looted of tens of millions of dollars in exchange for, e.g., “trips on private chartered jets, massages, golf outings and $50,000 to his civic fund” (Free Press);
- “argued that he could afford only $6 a month [toward the $1 million restitution he owed the city], even though he had moved his family into a luxurious home… near Dallas” (New York Times);
- and now, along with his father and fraternity brother, faces charges including bribery, extortion, racketeering, and fraud (Free Press).
Walter Russell Mead of The American Interest writes:
I honestly don’t know why there is so little national outrage about this despicable crew and the terrible damage they have done. … If a white or Asian Republican pol had looted fire and police pension funds, blighted the lives of a generation of minority kids and helped do more damage to a great American city than Hurricane Katrina, I don’t think this would be primarily a local news story.
Hard to believe that the official press (or ‘mainstream media’), in a country where all races are officially equal, would ignore this story. Note that Mead wrote “if a white or Asian politician had,” not “when a white or Asian politician has,” because, of course, they never have.
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Assorted spectacular incompetence and malfeasance
In Illinois, home to Jesse Jackson Jr. (CBS, 2013):
It’s a dubious distinction for the new class of Illinois lawmakers…. It’s the first time in years that three sitting lawmakers simultaneously face criminal charges. … Smith [above, left] is under federal indictment in a bribery case. Ford [center] is accused of bank fraud. Trotter [right] is charged with trying to bring a gun onto a plane. Last year, Smith was expelled from the House by his colleagues. In November, voters returned him to office.
In Washington, D.C. (Washington Times, 2012):
Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black… The homogeneity… is a proxy to a clubby culture of favoritism in which merit has little to do with promotions, and accountability, such as noting safety violations, is a career death knell. In typical examples… a black man who spent eight years in prison for dealing PCP was promoted to a high-level management position soon after his release, and whites in the same positions as blacks with far less seniority are inexplicably paid less. … It is a culture in which a white male engineer near completion of a Ph.D. was passed over for a management position in favor of a black man who was barely literate, multiple staffers said.
(Do read the whole thing.)
In Atlanta (WSB-TV, 2008), with its black mayors and largely black city councils:
The City of Atlanta wants raise water rates by 15 percent. Customers who’ll be paying more may be interested to know that thousands of water customers don’t bother to pay at all, and many of them are government agencies…. There are at least 36 accounts listed as City of Atlanta with total unpaid bills of nearly $7.9 million.
And in Birmingham, Alabama (NPR, 2012):
The state recently took over the school board because of infighting on the board. … Board members have assaulted each other, police have gotten involved, and now armed security guards are fixtures at meetings…. There are allegations of secret gatherings. And even in public meetings, the infighting is intense.
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Mulatto History Month
What do almost all successful “black” Americans have in common?
First row: Barack Hussein Obama, first “black” President; Colin Powell, first “black” Secretary of State; Condoleezza Rice, first “black” female Secretary of State; Eric Holder, first “black” Attorney General; and Robert C. Weaver, first “black” Cabinet member.
Second row: Thurgood Marshall, first “black” Supreme Court Justice; Joseph Rainey, first “black” elected Congressman (South Carolina); P.B.S. Pinchback, first “black” Governor (of Louisiana, for exactly 35 days); Booker T. Washington, famous “black” writer and spokesman; and W.E.B. Du Bois, another famous “black” writer and spokesman.
Third row: Charles Drew, famous “black” surgeon; Daniel Hale Williams, first “black” cardiologist; Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr., first “black” General; Sarah E. Goode, first “black” woman to earn a patent; and, for comparison purposes, a random black woman holding a white child.
From Edward B. Reuter’s comprehensive The Mulatto in the United States (1918), pp. 314 and 397:
According to the strictness or the looseness of the definition of full-blooded Negro that is used, and the high or low degree of superiority that is accepted as the test, the twenty per cent of mixed-bloods among the American Negroes have produced eighty-five per cent or upwards of the race’s superior men. …
In any study and discussion of the race problem, scientific accuracy as well as a decent regard for simple truth requires that the writer indicates whether his discussion has to do with full-blooded Negroes or with the men of mixed blood. The failure to make this simple and elementary distinction, more than any other one thing, has made the vast bulk of the literature relating to the Negro in America either worthless or vicious.
On a related note, from Winfield H. Collins’ The Truth about Lynching and the Negro in the South (1918), pp. 145–147:
It is even sometimes asserted that the Negro would bring to the white race some qualities which would tend toward the development of a more perfect man. But such an idea has no basis in fact. The following quotation is to the point [William Archer in McClure's, July 1909]:
We have ample experience to go upon in South America, in the West Indies, in the Southern States themselves. The mulatto exists and has existed for generations, not in hundreds or thousands, but in millions; in what respect has he proved himself the superior of the pure Spaniard, or Portuguese, or Anglo-Saxon? Does South American history bear testimony to his political competence? Have his achievements in science, in literature, in music, been superior to the un-Africanized peoples? Or waiving the question of superiority, has he ever in these domains, produced meritorious in any fair proportion to his numbers? I do not say that it is impossible to make out a sort of case for him, by the ransacking of records and the employment of a very indefinite standard of values. But I do most emphatically say that no conspicuous or undeniable advantage has resulted from the blending of bloods, such as can or ought to counteract the instinctive repugnance of the South.
It is said that an investigation of 2200 Negro authors showed that nearly all of them come from the mixed stock [C.A. Ellwood, Sociology and Modern Social Problems, p. 241]. How many of these would take first, second, or even third rank in the literary world? It is needless to answer. Indeed, Negroes and mulattoes have been toilers in the United States for generations but who ever heard of an important labor saving instrument invented by them? The same abilities or characteristics which would make a white man only locally important would make a Negro or a mulatto famous. There were thousands upon thousands of white men intellectually and otherwise superior to Booker T. Washington who gained but little recognition, but because he was a negro, or rather mulatto, Washington’s abilities stood out in striking relief. Mulattoes ought to furnish the leaders of the Negro race for the best white blood runs in the veins of some of them.
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Black criminality, then and now
Speaking of “aspects of race which are ignored because they are uncomfortable”…
(Above: a mob of thousands of blacks takes over Philadelphia.)
Idiocy abounds on the subject of race and crime. For example, the reliably idiotic Touré writes in Time magazine (2012):
[E]ven though more whites commit crimes than blacks, the word [“crime”] is more associated with blacks who have historically been stereotyped as wild, violent, animalistic and immoral.
First, there are almost five times as many whites in America as there are blacks, so it is hardly a point in Touré’s favor if there are more white than black criminals total. Really, though, why waste our time refuting the ideas of a man whose complete job description is have dark (-ish) skin; make up reasons why that’s an inconvenience?
Second, and much more interesting, writers have historically been free to report and attempt to explain the hard truths about race without fear of censure for the thoughtcrime of ‘racism,’ so if they have historically characterized black people (in general) as (relatively) “wild, violent, animalistic and immoral,” then we should pay close attention — particularly if their observations seem to match our own.
For example, in 2007, the police chief of St. Paul, Minnesota discovered that 70% of aggravated assault suspects were black (Minnesota Public Radio). The city itself was only 12% black in 2000; curiously, it was up to 16% by 2010. In any case, quite a disparity. Police Chief Harrington, who is himself black, was “shocked” by the finding, and described his city crime statistics as “out of whack.”
But is shock really an appropriate response? It wouldn’t be for Edward B. Reuter, author of The American Race Problem (1927):
On the first day of January, 1910, the total prison population of the United States was 136,472. … In every section of the country the percentage of Negroes among prisoners and juvenile delinquents was much higher than their percentage in the general population. For the country as a whole the Negroes constituted 10.7 per cent of the total population, while they constituted 30.6 per cent of the prison population. In the South they made up 29.8 per cent of the population and 70.1 per cent of the prisoners; in the North they were 1.8 per cent of the population and 13.1 per cent of the prisoners; in the West 0.7 per cent of the population and 5.9 per cent of the prisoners.
Winfield H. Collins, author of The Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the South (1918), would be even less surprised:
In the Northern and Western States in 1910, one white person was in a penal institution for every 982 of the white population, and one Negro for every 123 of the Negro population; while in the South, the ratio was one to every 2013 for the white, and one Negro to every 308 of the Negro population. Thus in the North Negroes had eight times their proportion in prison, and in the South and six and one-half times.
What else can history teach us about “the American race problem”? We turn now, as always, to the primary sources…
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“Every species of affront and insult”
From Collins’ The Truth About Lynching: a March 30, 1910 article in the Baltimore Sun.
Roanoke, Va., March 29. Drunken Negroes took charge of an excursion train between this city and Winston-Salem last night and as a consequence Sidney Wood of Winston-Salem is dead at Martinsville, and two-score other Negroes are more or less wounded. Knives, razors, and pistols played prominent parts in the melee…. The train was stopped several times by Negroes pulling the bell cord, and the train was cut in two several times, leaving a number of coaches behind with a second section following…. The three coaches which were cut off were filled with white people…. When the train reached Bassetts, in Henry County, every Negro in two coaches was apparently in a fight. The screams of the terror-stricken women added to the excitement.
And an August 18, 1913 letter to the same paper:
I prefer rubbing elbows with them (Negro guano factory laborers) to riding with the so-called respectable Negroes on the Preston Street and other cross-town lines. On the Preston street line in particular conditions have become so unbearable that the writer, who formerly used this line to reach his place of business, has been obliged to adopt a more circuitous route, which takes fully twice as long.
On this line respectable white people and white women especially, are subjected to every species of affront and insult, which they cannot resent without risk of being drawn into a dispute, in which no decent person cares to be involved. The Negroes realize this and it emboldens them still further.
This sort of dreadful racism must be what Touré had in mind when he wrote that blacks “have historically been stereotyped as wild, violent, animalistic and immoral.” Fortunately, we enlightened Americans of the 21st century know better, which is why today we ride the train or bus without fear of affront or insult by emboldened Negroes.
Oh, wait…
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“White girl has an attitude”
From KGW in Portland: ‘4 Arrested in MAX Beating Caught on Video’ (2012).
Portland police have arrested three teen [black] girls, along with the mother of two of them [above, center], on accusations involving the beating of a 14-year-old girl [above, right] on a MAX train. The attack was posted briefly on YouTube. …
Shot by a bystander, the video of the Dec. 26 attack showed three girls slapping and punching a Centennial school district student, who was on her way home from a shopping trip. YouTube later removed the video, citing a policy that forbids hate speech. …
“I’m sitting there and they were all being rowdy to begin with,” the victim said. She tried to avoid eye contact, listening to music with her earbuds, eventually removing them to try and have a conversation with the teens yelling at her. She continued to try and avoid a confrontation.
The victim claimed one of the teens said, “white girl has an attitude, don’t disrespect my sister, don’t roll your eyes.” …
No one else in the video of the crowded MAX train appears to try and help.
On the very same night as those arrests, two more black women were arrested for attacking several people on a Portland bus (KGW, 2012).
Finally, from KATU in Portland — yes, these all happened last year in Portland, which is 6% black: ‘Man Asks Teens on MAX to Quiet Down, Gets Assaulted’ (2012).
A 57-year-old man who asked a group of teenagers to quiet down on a MAX train was assaulted on Friday. Police were called to the Northeast 60th Avenue MAX platform around 5 p.m. on a report that multiple people were assaulting a man.
When officers arrived, they learned the man had asked a large group of around 15 to 20 black male teenagers to keep it down. That apparently didn’t sit well with the teenagers and some of them allegedly attacked the man.
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“I have never been more disgusted”
Eyewitness testimony from Unsuck DC Metro, substantially confirmed by TBD (2011):
I have never been more disgusted or shocked by what I witnessed Saturday night at the Anacostia Metro. I went to pick up a family member at the Metro, and just as she was telling me about the fights (Yes, plural!) that happened on the Green Line train [between L’Enfant and Anacostia], we witnessed a group of 6 to 8 young black teenagers kick, stomp, punch and push a lone teenage girl. …
I had to lay on my car horn for over a minute before the assault stopped. I called 911, and less than a minute later another fight broke out. Another woman was being assaulted. …
On the way home, my cousin told me about her terrifying ride. She told me about young men punching the trains at L’Enfant, yelling at people, and pushing women. At no time did she see any officers step in.
Do bear in mind who’s in charge of the D.C. Metro.
When she got on the train toward Anacostia, a group of teenagers proceeded to verbally and physically assault a group of young women. One of the boys threw a bottle and another threw the contents of a bottle in one of the woman’s face. The assaults got so out of hand that some people landed on a woman and her baby.
The attacking group had the doors to the train blocked so people couldn’t get off the train. My cousin told me she was so scared that she hid behind some seats and pulled out the box cutter she used for work.
I am outraged. I can’t believe a series of assaults would occur between L’Enfant and Anacostia and there would not be a single Metro or D.C. police officer on the scene! This is not the first time I have experienced unruly teens on the Green Line, and it’s not the first time I have heard of assaults at the Anacostia station.
The interested reader may consult see Colin Flaherty’s ‘Black Mobs Take Over Washington Metro’ (World Net Daily, 2012).
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Armed robbery
From W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Philadelphia Negro (1899):
Detectives Bond and O’Leary and Special Policeman Duffy… arrested last night Sylvester Archer…, William Whittington, alias “Piggy”…, and William Carter…, all colored and about twenty-one years of age, on the charge of assault upon and robbery of Mrs. Harrington Fitzgerald, wife of the editor of the Evening Item. The assault occurred on Monday at noon. As Mrs. Fitzgerald was passing Thirteenth and Spruce streets, a purse which she carried in her hand… was snatched from her by one of three colored men. They took advantage of the crowd to strike her after the robbery had been perpetrated and escaped before her outcry was heard.
… Samuel Buckner, a young colored man, was convicted of robbing George C. Goddard of a gold watch and chain and a pocketbook containing $3. He was sentenced to ten years in the Eastern Penitentiary. Mr. Goddard, with his head swathed in bandages, was called to the stand. He said that a few minutes past midnight of November 28 he was returning to his home… after a visit. He placed his hand in his pocket, drew out his key and was about to mount the steps when a dark form appeared from Dean street, a small, poorly-lighted thoroughfare…, and at the same instant he was struck a violent blow full in the face with a brick.
Compare Sarasota, Florida of last year: ‘Shawn Tyson found guilty of murdering British tourists’ (The Telegraph, 2012).
University friends James Cooper, 25, and James Kouzaris, 25 [above, left], had been enjoying a care-free vacation in the popular holiday resort of Sarasota when a drunken mistake brought them into the path of 16-year-old Shawn Tyson [right].
Spotting them stumbling through the notorious estate known as The Courts, Tyson attempted to rob the pair, then shot them each through the heart when they claimed to have no money.
Shawn Tyson… had been released from prison in error the day before, after spraying a car carrying a group of teenage girls with gunfire.
Of course he was.
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Flash mobs
From Collins’ The Truth About Lynching: a July 8, 1909 article in the Baltimore Weekly Herald.
Negroes who live in and around Bridgeville attempted to take the town last night. … About 10 o’clock at night the Negroes began firing among themselves, and Bridgeville being without police protection, was at the mercy of their revolvers, which were being fired in rapid succession. The town seemed to be alive with brawling blacks, and several fights were started in different parts of the town. At the railroad station a large crowd collected and fired shots in every direction. At a colored church another crowd got together, firing desperately among themselves. The citizens being utterly helpless stayed in their houses behind locked doors.
More than a hundred years later, in New York City: ‘Flash Mob Mayhem: Violent Groups Of Teens Leave NYC Businesses In Ruins’ (CBS, 2013).
Violent, thieving mobs [of blacks] have been making headlines across the country for the past few years, and now they have hit New York City. … Judson Bennett, 78, recently ran into a violent group of [black] teens — often described with the once-benign term “flash mob” — as he made his daily trip to buy a newspaper at his favorite news team. “I’m approaching the newsstand, and then suddenly there is a tremendous force behind me,” Bennett said. Bennett ended up with a broken arm.
In New York and across the country, the mobs of [only black] kids — 20, 30, 40 or more — appear out of nowhere and suddenly charge a newsstand or convenience store. They ransack, steal and wreak havoc with no consideration for customers, such as Bennett, who get in their way.
Raj Shmara owns a newsstand at Broadway at 55th Street. Shmara said his newsstand has been targeted seven different times by mobs of [black] teens. During an attack just last week, the kids threw a bottle at an employee who had to be hospitalized.
For more, consult the website Violent Flash Mobs, which unfortunately (but understandably) gave up cataloguing these attacks in mid-August, 2012.
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Crime in unlikely places
From Collins’ The Truth About Lynching: an August 10, 1915 letter to the Baltimore Sun.
As has been the case yearly for a dozen years there was a fatal shooting affray at the Negro [Christian] camp meeting at Friendship last night. Howard Hollis, a Negro of Clayton, Del., was shot in both legs during the fight. … It is not known who shot Hollis as bullets were flying thick and fast during the melee.
Now consider Detroit of last year: ‘Grandmother: 9-Month-Old’s Killing Stems From Fight Over Baby Shower Seating’ (CBS, 2012).
The [black] grandmother of slain baby Delric Miller revealed during an interview… she suspects the 9-month-old was killed over a skirmish about seating at a baby shower. Miller was killed when someone [black] fired an estimated 40 rounds from an AK-47 into his family’s home in Detroit last weekend.
And Memphis: ‘Easter Egg Hunt Ends in Violence’ (UPI, 2012).
A family Easter egg hunt ended in chaos after a [black] mom accused of over-coaching her kids attacked someone with a hammer.
And Los Angeles: ‘Brawl Breaks Out at California Preschool Graduation’ (ABC, 2012; pictured).
A nasty [black] brawl broke out at preschool graduation in California reportedly over a single cap and gown, leaving at least one parent injured and the young graduates wailing.
In the grainy video, a crowd of women can be seen shoving each other, throwing punches and shouting.
Don’t forget Chicago: ‘1 Fatally Shot, 1 Injured Outside Funeral at South Side Church’ (CBS, 2012).
In what appears to be a retaliatory gang attack, two people were shot — one fatally — outside a church funeral on the South Side on Monday.
“Can you imagine 1,200 [black] people in a church and everybody’s running? It was awful. We had babies crying,” witness Deborah Echols Moore told CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker.
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Thomas Carlyle: statistics in self-defense
Those who doubt that these few anecdotes represent a trend, I refer to the following news aggregators:
- American Renaissance
- Colin Flaherty at World Net Daily
- Council of Conservative Citizens
- Stuff Black People Don’t Like
- Unamusement Park
- Occidental Dissent
Those who (somehow…) doubt that these few thousand anecdotes represent a trend, I refer to Thomas Carlyle, who in Chartism explained why statistics, by themselves, teach us little about society and how to govern it:
A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures. … Tables are like cobwebs, like the sieve of Danaides; beautifully reticulated, orderly to look upon, but which will hold no conclusion. Tables are abstractions, and the object a most concrete one, so difficult to read the essence of. There are innumerable circumstances; and one circumstance left out may be the vital one on which all turned.
Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on. Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.
Vain to send the purblind and blind to the shore of a Pactolus never so golden: these find only gravel; the seer and finder alone picks up gold grains there. And now the purblind offering you, with asseveration and protrusive importunity, his basket of gravel as gold, what steps are to be taken with him? —
Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: ‘A judicious man,’ says he, ‘looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him.’
In other words: we practice statistics, but only in self-defense. In particular, a judicious man must peruse the statistics on race and crime to save himself from the massive heaps of ignorance by which he is surrounded:
- “More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities” (here)
- “More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color” (here)
- “African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites” (here)
- “Today people of color continue to be disproportionately incarcerated, policed, and sentenced to death at significantly higher rates than their white counterparts” (here)
- “the assertion that Black disproportionality in incarceration is due solely to differential crime commission rates is inaccurate” (here)
And so on and so forth. As Carlyle put it:
With what serene conclusiveness a member of some Useful-Knowledge Society stops your mouth with a figure of arithmetic! To him it seems he has there extracted the elixir of the matter, on which now nothing more can be said. It is needful that you look into his said extracted elixir; and ascertain, alas, too probably, not without a sigh, that it is wash and vapidity, good only for the gutters.
So let’s look into this elixir of disproportionality. Take arrest rates: according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program, from 2004 to 2008, black people, at 13% of the U.S. population, made up 33% of arrests for rape; 56%, for robbery (mugging); and 34%, for aggravated assault. Disproportionalities abound! But as Carlyle warned:
… alas, is it not as if some zealous scientific son of Adam had proved the deepening of the Ocean, by survey, accurate or cursory, of two mud-plashes on the coast of the Isle of Dogs?
Indeed, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, over the same time period, blacks made up at least 35% of rape offenders, at least 60% of robbery offenders, and at least 30% of aggravated assault offenders; see our lovely graph. By the way, this corrects an erroneous calculation in the fifth source (of ignorance) cited above.
In short, blacks are so frequently arrested because blacks are so frequently guilty — a parsimonious theory, backed up by your precious statistics. We have saved ourselves from having ignorance foisted on us. Huzzah!
There are, of course, many more surveys of two mud-plashes on the coast of the Isle of Dogs, not to mention Useful-Knowledge Societies to cram them down our throats. Thankfully, the New Century Foundation has dealt with all of them at once in ‘The Color of Crime’ (2005). Among its major findings:
- “Police and the justice system are not biased against minorities.”
- “Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.”
- “The single best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of the population that is black and Hispanic.”
- “Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.”
There: enough statistics for one issue, I believe!
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Recommended reading
Want to learn more about the topics covered in this issue of Radish? We highly recommend the following books and articles. (We do not, however, necessarily endorse all opinions expressed in them: some are not nearly extreme enough.)
“A nation of cowards”? Replies to Eric Holder
Those Who Can See
Whence we obtained many of our primary sources.
- ‘The Conundrum of Afro Governance’
- ‘Mulatto History Month’
- ‘Sweet Little Lies’
- ‘African-American Crime, Today and Yesterday’
- ‘Emancipation Provocation’
- ‘In a Word We Suffer on Each Side’
- ‘Ethnic Co-Existence, Yesterday’
- ‘African History in the U.S. — References’
- ‘Statistical Tables of African-American Criminality’
- ‘Hunting the Yeti: Institutional Racism’
- ‘Provisioning… or Mating?’
More great moments in black governance
- ‘Birmingham Fears Bankruptcy Taint’
- ‘Abandoned Gary’ (Indiana)
- ‘Nation’s Capital Wrestles With Budgetary Crisis’
- ‘Tennessee Waltz’
- ‘Dixon Resignation’ (Baltimore)
- ‘Charges to Be Filed in Seattle School Scandal’
- ‘Alabama School Strife Strikes Outside Of Class’
- ‘Largest Schools Takeover’ (Philadelphia)
- ‘East St. Louis Schools Taken Over by State’
- ‘The Takeover Of Camden, N.J., Is Over’
- ‘Harrisburg Vows to Fight State Takeover’
- ‘Flint Emergency Manager Shares Challenges’
- ‘Strapped Milwaukee Schools Want State Takeover’
- ‘Kansas City Schools: State Takeover or Start Over?’
- ‘TN Lt. Gov. Calls for Takeover of City Schools’
- ‘Adler Proposes Takeover Of Camden Schools’
- ‘Baltimore City Schools Takeover’
- Occidental Dissent special report: ‘Macon County’
- American Renaissance collection: ‘Blacks in Charge’
Unqualified Reservations
- ‘The Real Meaning of Diversity’
- ‘A Theory of the Ruling Underclass’
- ‘Race: A Modest Proposal’
- ‘Evidence in Current History’
- ‘South Africa: a Message to Jenny’
Assorted, tangential & miscellaneous
- ‘Black History Month Resources’
- ‘Can’t We All Just Get Post-Racial?’
- Great Minds on Race
- Chartism (Carlyle)
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Celebrate black history with Radish
Thank you for reading Radish! We hope you enjoyed it. Please consider sharing it with friends. Rest assured, our celebration of Black Alternative History Month will continue with forthright conversations about even more uncomfortable aspects of race!
We close with a rare moment of sanity from Conservatism, Inc.: the better-than-average Ann Coulter attempting to have a forthright conversation about gun violence in America, as interpreted by the experienced point-and-sputter progressives at the dreary Huffington Post:
Ann Coulter made a jawdropping claim about gun crime and minorities on Monday’s “Hannity.” The conservative commentator said that she just got back from England, and addressed comparisons of the country’s low rate of gun crime relative to the United States. “If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium,” Coulter said. “So perhaps it’s not a gun problem, it is a demographic problem, which liberals are the ones pushing, pushing, pushing.” She continued sarcastically, “Let’s get more Colin Fergusons and whoever the guy was who shot up Fort Hood. Why are they coming in to begin with?”
Yes, why indeed…
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Advancing to Issue 7? Click here. Retreating to Issue 5? Click here.
White Man’s burden. It looks like whites will carry these [knuckleheads] till the day we die. Can you imagine what this country could be without these knuckleheads dragging us down?
[edited by RadishMag]