Every once in a while you read something so wrong, so biased, so grossly misleading that you have no choice but to try and rebut it. But then you find out that you weren’t the only one that felt that way and that someone else has already rebutted it, and better than you ever could have.
And thus today I would like you to first read this drivel by the Houston Chronicle’s Lisa Falkenberg, in which the opinion columnist continues to display her utter lack of understanding of the black community today.
I begin looking around for a more sympathetic character, somebody without the taint of the criminal label, somebody more normal, somebody more worthy. It’s a hard thing to admit. And it’s why the message of Ohio State law professor Michelle Alexander‘s best-selling book hit me so hard: Criminals, as she suggests, are the one social group that even we compassionate Americans have given ourselves “permission to hate,” or at least, ignore.
And, this is OK, right? Because hating criminals, even those on parole, isn’t unfair; they chose their fate. It isn’t illogical; it’s a form of self-defense. It isn’t racist; our justice system is colorblind.
But what if all of these assumptions are wrong? What if our system of justice picks and chooses which people to make criminal? What if our system of mass incarceration, fueled by the war on drugs, doesn’t make us safer, but practically guarantees that millions of “ex-cons” forever marginalized by the criminal label are left so desperate they return to crime to survive.
And then I beg you to click over to Unca Darrell and read the cold, hard truth – the problems within the black community today are the result of the very policies that white-guilt-ridden liberals like Ms. Falkenberg promote.
Why are young black men in trouble? Ms. Alexander and her PR lady, Ms. Falkenberg, happily indict America, with a special emphasis on Texas.
I would suggest that progressives look in a mirror. Their decades-long war on tradition, family, marriage, religion, and the market economy has hurt no one so much as the intended beneficiaries of their good intentions — poor black Americans.
More than 70 percent of black children are born to unmarried mothers. In neighborhoods within eyesight of Houston’s skyscrapers, the rate approaches 100 percent.
Millions of black children are being reared without a permanent male presence in the home. The only male role models for many black boys are gangsta rappers and dealers down on the corner.
Deviancy has been defined down to the point that these behaviors cannot be criticized or even mentioned.
Deviancy has been defined down to the point that academic and journalistic careers are made by distracting attention from the real problem and its true causes.
If “progressives” or any other group want to fix the problems in the black community, they need to face the honest truth.
