Recently, after spending three months in Colorado I returned to North Carolina to a large list of errands. The first of these errands was replacing a lost passport, which meant I had to go to the Post Office in downtown Wilmington. I rarely go downtown, largely because the area is infested with drugs and crime. Unsurprisingly, before I left the downtown area I passed a crime scene. Judging by the number of police cars I could tell it was a murder.
In addition to the things I knew there were some things I merely suspected when I happened upon that crime scene. For example, I suspected that both the perpetrator and the victim were young black males between the ages of 15 and 25. I’m not Sherlock Holmes. You don’t need to be a detective to know that black on black violence is rampant in downtown Wilmington.
It should go without saying that I was unsurprised when I watched the evening news and learned that the victim was a young black male and that a young black male suspect was already in custody. But the following statement made by Police Chief Ralph Evangelous did surprise me: “Where is the outcry in our community? God forbid it would be an officer involved in this situation, we’d have a protest.”
The immediately reaction of most people reading this statement will be to laud the police chief for having the courage to state this usually unspoken truth: That the everyday black on black murder provokes far less outrage than the occasional white cop on black citizen murder.
The fact that many will see such a simple statement of such an obvious truth as somehow courageous says something very bad about our society. It takes little to be seen as courageous in a society plagued by cowardice. That epidemic of cowardice has a lot to do with the climate of intimidation created by today’s so-called civil rights leaders.
After the chief made his statement it took only forty-eight hours for a black civil rights leader named Sonya Patrick to go to the press with this demand: “Stereotyping the black community the way he did … I think he owes us an apology.”
Of course, this is what civil rights leaders do. They are there to constantly remind us of what “we” owe “them.” They are also there to remind us of the dangers of racial stereotyping. Unfortunately, most civil rights leaders have become walking stereotypes and are wholly oblivious to their role in reinforcing negative beliefs about the black community.
As anyone can plainly read, the white police chief went out of his way to place the word “our” before “community.” In so doing, he was trying to evenly spread across racial lines any blame for apathy towards black on black crime. Indeed, I have met many white liberals who are willing to protest when a white cop kills a black suspect but remain mute on the issue of black on black crime.
Ironically, by protesting this obviously racially neutral statement, Patrick simply demonstrates that the chief was correct. Indeed, the assertion that the everyday black on black murder far less outrages many black civil rights leaders than the occasional white cop on black murder actually understates the case. In reality, many black civil rights leaders care more about white on black criticism than black on black murder.
Nor does it seem to matter whether blacks are actually being criticized. Perception of criticism is sufficient justification for outrage because perception trumps reality. It’s a worldview issue. It’s also an ethical issue because it undermines the credibility of those with legitimate civil rights claims.
Unfortunately, the credibility of the current black civil rights movement is suffering at the hands of two sets of imposters. The first are those who parade in the streets wearing assless chaps and doing pelvic thrusts in front of giant inflatable penises. The fact that these gay pride protesters dare to call themselves civil rights activists is an insult to blacks who once marched in the streets while being attacked by cops wielding fire hoses and unleashing attack dogs.
The second set of imposters is made up of those black activists who are dedicated to tearing down whites rather than lifting up blacks. Unfortunately, they are now the rule rather than the exception.
The product of the new anti-white civil rights movement is a sort of drive-by activism that harms many innocent people in the process. Our white police chief is just the latest casualty. The next is the victim of real racism who simply will not be taken seriously.
In the end, Ralph Evangelous was both correct and prescient. And so was Aesop.