Jack Hunter is a former staffer for Rand Paul who once delivered politically incorrect commentary as \u201cthe Southern Avenger.\u201d \u00a0When Hunter\u2019s past came to light, it wasn\u2019t before long that he and Senator Paul parted ways.<\/p>\n
Ever since\u2014perhaps in the hope that the \u201crespectable\u201d will forgive him his transgressions before the 2016 GOP presidential primaries?\u2014Hunter has been relentless in his quest for redemption.<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Right\u2019s Race Deafness,\u201d published in The American Conservative, <\/em>Hunter castigates \u201cconservatives\u201d for \u201cjust not caring what black people think\u201d vis-\u00e0-vis the issue of law enforcement and race.\u00a0 Given \u201cthe right\u2019s\u201d reactions to the \u201cracism\u201d narrative that has sprung up around the Michael Brown and Eric Garner incidents, Hunter admits to suspecting that \u201cmany and perhaps most conservatives\u201d think that \u201cpart of being conservative\u201d is to \u201csimply ignore minority criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n Numerous polls, Hunter insists, show that \u201cstrong majorities of black Americans\u201d\u2014including black police officers\u2014have consistently said that race plays a role in how law enforcement is applied and how the justice system is conducted in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n And statistical data reveal to all with eyes to see just how disproportionately blacks are involved in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n Conservatives, he bluntly asserts, \u201cneed to listen\u201d to blacks, for it seems like \u201cthe right thinks African Americans don\u2019t have a point, an argument, or even a side worth considering when it comes to these controversies.\u201d<\/p>\n It is Hunter who doesn\u2019t have an argument\u2014or at least not a strong one.<\/p>\n When it is said that blacks claim to hold that \u201crace plays a role\u201d in law enforcement, etc. what is being said is that \u201cracism<\/em>\u201d is at work.\u00a0 Yet these two claims are anything but mutually synonymous\u2014and Hunter knows it.\u00a0 Whatever \u201cracism\u201d means, to judge from the fate of those to whom it is ascribed, it must be really bad.\u00a0 Yet allowing race to play a role <\/em>in a decision-making process\u2014like marriage, say\u2014is hardly objectionable.<\/p>\n None of the \u201cconservatives\u201d on whom Hunter sets his sights have ever denied that race is a consideration in policing.\u00a0 Hunter must know this as well, for it is these very same \u201cconservatives\u201d\u2014white, black, and other\u2014who have argued tirelessly in defense of \u201cracial <\/em>profiling\u201d\u2014a practice rooted in the reality of black criminality to which Hunter himself alludes.<\/p>\n So, his claim that \u201cconservatives\u201d seem to delight in ignoring blacks is absurd on its face: Not only do they not ignore blacks on this score; they agree <\/em>with them!<\/p>\n But they disagree <\/em>with the contention that \u201cracism,\u201d some nefarious force or motive, accounts for any of this.<\/p>\n Now, one doesn\u2019t need to enroll in a Logic 101 course to know that it is logically impossible to simultaneously disagree with someone while ignoring them.\u00a0 To disagree with a person is to acknowledge that he\u2019s said something. Only if Hunter means to make the preposterous move of equating \u201cignores\u201d with \u201cdisagrees with\u201d can he sustain his case.<\/p>\n As for his statistics, even though they are without context, what they suggest is that race does indeed play a role in law enforcement practices, and for good reason: blacks are far more likely than whites and every other racial demographic to be involved in crime!\u00a0 As black, \u201cconservative\u201d commentator Larry Elder writes: \u201cThe first rule of duck hunting is: go where the ducks are.\u201d<\/p>\n The difference, though, between Hunter and Elder, the \u201cSage from South Central\u201d (Los Angeles), is that the latter knows the difference between cause and effect: blacks are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated not because police take race into account; police take race into account because blacks are overwhelmingly represented among criminals.<\/p>\n There are other stats that Hunter neglects to mention.\u00a0 Elder informs us that it is \u201cusually young black men\u201d who \u201ccommit nearly half of all street crime, and most<\/em> of certain other categories of crime such as robbery\u201d (italics added). \u00a0\u00a0Moreover, though young black men constitute at most 3 percent<\/em> of America, they are responsible for \u201cnearly 40 percent of violent crimes\u201d like \u201cmurder, attempted murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, and aggravated assault [.]\u201d<\/p>\n Walter Williams, another black \u201cconservative\u201d writer, once remarked that if \u201cwe ignored inner-city violent crime, mostly committed by blacks and Hispanics, America would be a fairly civilized place.\u201d Citing a study conducted by a Princeton University political scientist professor, Williams wrote that while \u201cblacks are 20 percent of the general population of the nation\u2019s seventy-five most populous urban counties,\u201d blacks \u201cwere 54 percent of murder victims and 62 percent of all murder defendants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn Pennsylvania,\u201d Williams continued, \u201c42 percent of the state\u2019s violent crimes\u201d occur \u201cin Philadelphia, which contains only 14 percent of the state\u2019s population,\u201d and most of these crimes transpire \u201cin several predominantly black neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n I met Jack Hunter once.\u00a0 He seemed like a guy both friendly and bright.\u00a0 Yet this piece of his is scandalously bad even by fluff standards. I have my suspicions as to why he wrote it.\u00a0 Rather than elaborate further, though, I will simply warn him that condescension is no substitute for argumentation.<\/p>\n And even when it is \u201cconservatives\u201d whom you target, you are most definitely not going to ingratiate yourself into the graces the leftist inquisitors who have already cast you out of \u201cpolite society.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jack Hunter is a former staffer for Rand Paul who once delivered politically incorrect commentary as \u201cthe Southern Avenger.\u201d \u00a0When Hunter\u2019s past came to light, it wasn\u2019t before long that he and Senator Paul parted ways. Ever since\u2014perhaps in the hope that the \u201crespectable\u201d will forgive him his transgressions before the 2016 GOP presidential primaries?\u2014Hunter…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n