One week ago, on the heels of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that left 20 children and six adults dead, I made a prediction on my Facebook wall.  Sooner than any of us would like, I predicted, the national mourning that this event has beckoned forth will be regarded by some as the function of racism.

The victims of the mass murder at Sandy Hook were white.  Moreover, they were, as the left would have referred to them had they not been slaughtered, “the children of privilege.”  The Sandy Hook School is a prestigious institution in an affluent, and predominantly white, area.  Indeed, most of Sandy Hook’s students are doubtless the offspring of just those people—Americans making over $250,000 annually—who our President has spent the better part of his term castigating for failing to pay their “fair share” of taxes.

But now, along with the rest of the nation, he sheds tears over these dead white bodies.  Furthermore, he leaves the White House to travel to—of all places!—a prayer service inConnecticut from which he makes a televised address to the country.

Now, none of this would be objectionable if the daily killing of black “children” in “inner city” neighborhoods throughout the land elicited a similar outpouring of concern and attention.  However, no such luck.  You see, when black kids are routinely murdered, no one cares.

This is the line I saw coming.  And this is the line that I first heard yesterday on Sean Hannity’s radio program, and today heard repeated on a local radio station in the Philadelphia,Pennsylvania area. (Incidentally, I also predicted that Sean Hannity would be among the first to give it coverage).

Granted, to my knowledge, no public figure—no politician, celebrity, or professional racial activist—has yet to exploit Sandy Hook in quite this way.  Yet on the December 20th broadcast of Hannity’s show, a regular black caller named “Levi” said that while he does indeed feel for the deceased and their loved ones in Connecticut, he is frustrated that no one appears to care about the suffering that black children daily have to endure.

The black listener that contributed to the discussion on “Power 99” this morning, however, wasn’t nearly as diplomatic. He said that since “no one cares” about the killing of black children, he didn’t care a lick about the deaths of the 20 white children for whom the nation now grieves.  The black hosts of the morning show, as well as at least one other black caller, took him to task for his absence of empathy.  But they agreed with him that there is a racial double standard, and, thus, they claimed to “understand” his position.

There are two things of which we can all be certain. 

First, there are plenty of Americans, blacks, certainly, but white leftists as well, who think this way.  Second, very soon now, a professional race shyster with a microphone and a camera will be screaming from the rooftops the very same thing that these obscure black callers uttered on a couple of radio shows.

In a sense, but only in a sense, there is some truth to this sentiment. It is obviously, painfully, disgracefully true that black “inner city” communities throughout the country are virtual combat zones.  It is also true that, just as it is the residents of any and every other community the world over that are ultimately responsible for the condition of those communities, so too does the responsibility for the desolate condition of black communities fall squarely upon the shoulders of their residents. 

This, though, we can’t say.  When blacks say it, they are derided as “sell outs,” “race traitors,” and “Uncle Toms.”  When whites say it, they are charged with—what else?—“racism.”

Most people, and especially whites, either remain silent on the issue of black pathology, like criminality, or contrive transparently preposterous explanations for it: “racism,” “poverty,” Democratic politicians, “a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow,” and a host of other fashionable—and groundless—“root causes.”

The Land of  Make Believe is often preferable to the real world, and it is always safer.  But as we fortify the former, the latter only deteriorates further.

There is another point that needs to be addressed. 

Most of the black “children” to whose deaths Americans are allegedly indifferent are themselves murderous thugs.  They are not children between the ages of five and ten years of age.  They are gun-toting, gang-banging teenagers.  To be sure, this doesn’t warrant indifference.  It is nothing less than an unadulterated scandal that this state of affairs ever could have been permitted to emerge in the United States of America.  As such, it deserves that we deal with it—truthfully.

Still, it is just dishonest to compare this with what occurred in Connecticut.  In fact, that there is anyone who would think to draw this comparison proves just how far off from dealing with the routine killing of “black children” we remain. 

   

 

 

 

More from Beliefnet and our partners
Close Ad