I'm going to venture a few comments on the Ferguson debacle. It's now become a three-ring circus with the ambulance chasers (Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson) exploiting the situation.
i) I haven't followed the coverage that closely. There are thousands of homicides in the US every year. There's no reason I should be transfixed by this particular homicide.
ii) In general, I have a negative view of our current law enforcement culture. I'll say more about that under #7.
iii) In my observation, black Americans are the only ethnic group that routinely riots in situations like this. Whites, Latinos, and Asian Americans don't normally riot in situations like this.
iv) If protesters were really that concerned about dead black teenagers, why aren't they protesting the homicide rate in Chicago?
v) Apropos (iv), most big cities have been run by Democrats for decades. Why do most blacks keep voting for Democrats if they distrust the law enforcement culture in their city?
vi) I wonder how many black businessmen there are in Ferguson. How is the black business community impacted by crime?
vii) Traditionally, conservatives are law-and-order types who support the police, although libertarians and Tea Partiers are changing that. A common criticism of the Ferguson police dept. response is that this epitomizes the "militarization" of the police. Now, I've read some defenses of the police. Here are some related defenses:
The Ferguson police dept. didn't switch to SWAT team tactics until the riots began. Donning riot gear is a natural response to rioting.
When the criminal element upgrades its firepower, police must upgrade their firepower, lest they be outgunned.
SWAT team tactics seem inappropriate in low crimes areas. But in high crime areas, we'd be upset if the police weren't more aggressive about cracking down on crime and protecting ordinary citizens.
I think these defenses are valid in theory. But in practice, that's not how it works out. For instance, from what I've read, Ferguson police basically let looters ransack local businesses with impunity. Ferguson police use their SWAT team resources, not to restrain the criminal element, but to restraint protestors, ordinary citizens, and businessmen attempting to protect their establishments.
And that's not an isolated incident. Take cities with gun bans and a slow response time from the police. If a homeowner shoots an intruder, it's the homeowner who's at risk of being arrested on a weapons charge.
What happens is that police end up protecting criminals from law-abiding citizens rather than protecting law-abiding citizens from criminals. That's because the police have more to fear from the criminal element, or special interest groups, than they have from ordinary citizens. So it's a lot easier for the police to harass ordinary citizens who pose no threat to them. Not only can you not count on the police to defend you, your home, or your business, you are likely to get into trouble if you defend yourself, your home, or your business.
Now I'm going to comment on some statements by Thabiti Anyabwile:
So I’m watching Ferguson and I’m thinking about Titus. And I’m thinking about the long list of African-American men shot to death for no good reason. And I’m mad as hell.
That epitomizes the problem. Thabiti is locating this event within a preexisting narrative. Instead of judging the event on its own terms, he prejudges the event. It assumes it must part of a pattern. He superimposes that preexisting narrative on the event.
What I care about is the dignity and life-destroying devaluing of his life because in this country he is “black.” And the absurdity of it all is that he’s not “black” in every country. Only his own. In Cayman, he was Titus. In Cayman, he was free to be Titus. In the States, he’s “a little black boy” long before he’s “Titus.” And that calculation, the “racial” attribution that happens at the speed of sight, is deadly. It’s deadly.
What's ironic about this complaint is that Thabiti clearly singling out the race of Michael Brown. He seems to assume the shooting was racially motivated. He accuses other people of (allegedly) seeing the issue through a racial prism, yet he's oblivious to the fact that this is apparently the first thing and the most important thing he thinks of in cases like this: the dead teenager was black.
Deadlier still are the many persons who seem not to recognize it. Who carry on without pause, who empathize with the shooter rather than the shot, who express concern for the family of the living but little to no regard for the family of the deceased, who talk of obeying lawful authority while witnessing the unlawful use of authority, who keep resetting the conversation to call into question the teenage victim while granting the benefit of the doubt to the grown up perpetrator.
Speaking for myself, I'm not giving the policeman the benefit of the doubt or Michael Brown the benefit of the doubt. I don't know the relevant facts. I don't know if the relevant facts will ever come to light.
I hadn't read Anyabwile's muddleheaded screed, it's too bad that he's apparently so blinded by the racial prejudice "out there" that he can't see his own.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to read that he's "mad as hell"; Christians ought to be emotionally moved by the results of the fall that we see all around us. But I don't get the sense that that's the source of his indignation.
I wonder if he would be as incensed if Michael Brown were white, Latino, Asian, etc., and the cop was black. Is he "mad as hell" at the Crips and Bloods killing each other? Where's the consistency in his righteous indignation?
I'm sure his posturing plays well in some circles, but it smacks of hypocrisy to me.
Mark, I echo your thoughts completely. Right now Matt Walsh is trying to infuse a bit of sanity in this situation, but I'm with you in that I just want people to collect all the facts and not make proclamations based on bad information. I'm convinced at this point thought that Brown could have have a hand grenade and a rocket launcher strapped to his back, and people would still be complaining about how the officer unjustly executed him unprovoked and so on and so forth. More and more information is coming to light- autopsy's and videos and other sides of the story that is challenging the narrative of the first few days, and the more info we have, and the more even-headed we can be as we sit back and assimilate the facts and not jump to conclusion as Thabiti has done , the better.
ReplyDeleteSteve, your assessment is right on target. Although Ferguson was probably a smouldering furnace waiting for a spark long before this incident. Any community with a 70 percent minority population and virtually all white police force requires great understanding and restraint by the police when dealing with local problems. There are way too many individuals who will jump at the first chance to throw down the race card at any misstep of authorities. I have blogged about the unfortunate militarization of small town police forces in the past several months. Although it can be understandable in major cities where crime is a daily battle, towns below 30 thousand are arming the local police force with surplus military gear. One can only wonder where it will all lead.
ReplyDeleteHere's what you also need to know about Thabiti Anyabwile that he didn't say, but what was implicit in his confused, disjointed "I'm afraid this country will destroy my boy" post.
ReplyDeleteOn August 14th he tweeted:
Thabiti Anyabwile @ThabitiAnyabwil · Aug 14
"The relationship between black men and police forces is, in fact, the main thing keeping America from becoming "post-racial" in any sense."
If there's some uncertainty in your mind as to exactly what Thabiti meant by that statement, he made his sympathies clear in response to someone who asked him a pertinent question:
Jason M. Kates @JasonMKates Aug 18
.@ThabitiAnyabwil The anger appears legitimate, but the means of expressing it seems off track in #Ferguson. Is there a better way?
Thabiti Anyabwile @ThabitiAnyabwil
.@JasonMKates if the injustice comes from the hands of authorities meant to PROTECT you, then what means are left?
Got that? Thabiti CONDONES the destructive week-long looting and violence committed by rioting blacks in Ferguson, even when it ravages their own neighborhoods. He's already pronounced his verdict on the shooting and the rioting without benefit of having all the facts or waiting for the trial. That's not only foolish, but a highly ironic position for him to take given that in his post Thabiti criticizes those
"...who talk of obeying lawful authority while witnessing the unlawful use of authority, who keep resetting the conversation to call into question the teenage victim while granting the benefit of the doubt to the grown up perpetrator."
So Thabiti proceeds to do his own resetting and reframing of the conversation by reflexively and uncritically taking the other side of this debate. He simply dismisses Brown's criminal behavior by referring to him as merely a "teenager", completely omitting the inconvenient facts of Brown's felony assault against Officer Wilson and the second felony of his going after the policeman's gun, which precipitated the shooting. Thabiti just ignores all that; it doesn't register, it hardly even exists for him through the prism of his barely disguised racial-grievance looking-glass.
Thabiti continues in his post:
"So I’m watching Ferguson and I’m thinking about Titus. And I’m thinking about the long list of African-American men shot to death for no good reason. And I’m mad as hell. And I’m scared to death. For my son. For me."
Thabiti's fears of violence are justified having just moved to 92% black Anacostia, a Washington D. C. suburb known for its prowess in homicide statistics and where, as in most large American cities, blacks commit the OVERWHELMING majority of violent crimes. Statistically, it is far, FAR more likely that a member of Thabiti's black Anacostsa congregation--or his son--would become a victim of black-on-black violence than in any altercation with the police. And if God forbid that should actually happen, where will Thabiti direct his anger then? And what does Thabiti have to say about the scores of young black men, along with women and innocent young children (now mere statistics) that OTHER BLACKS are killing EVERY WEEK in Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit and Washington D.C.? Does he ever wonder about why that is? Or does he just avert his eyes, gloss over, or blame-shift about that as well?
He ended his post with this:
"In our much speaking there’s bound to be sin. Far better to sit with our hands over our mouths, silently thinking deeper thoughts than the soundbites gathered from “news” outlets."
Thabiti should have followed his own advice before getting *his* "news" from leftist sites like the Huffington Post and writing that ill-conceived blog entry. He also needs to "think deeper thoughts" and examine *his own* racial biases that are distorting his views about this subject.
I read Thabiti's latest piece. It's predicated on unargued presuppositions regarding institutional racism.
DeleteIronically, Thabati seems to think white evangelicals need to swoop in to save blacks from themselves. It's remarkably like the white colonialist mentality.
Speaking for myself, it would be very paternalistic of me to think blacks need whites to solve their problems for them. Are we supposed to parachute in and fix their social problems for them?
One of my concerns is that when political correctness meets the militarization of the police, we end up with police protecting criminals from citizens rather than vice versa.
DeleteThe police have so much to lose from cracking down on minority group criminality and their special interest groups that it's politically safer for them to harass law-abiding citizens with speed traps, checkpoints, &c.
What you've described, Steve, is the textbook outworking of "anarcho-tyranny", a central feature of the liberal political regime, which was first conceptualized in the early 1990s by the late Samuel Francis, the leading paleoconservative theoretician. In formulating his thesis, he said:
DeleteQuote:
“Society cannot exist,” wrote the great eighteenth century conservative Edmund Burke, “unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more of it there must be without.” Restraints come from within when a population shares cultural and moral values; when they don’t, external force has to provide the restraints.."
"...What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny—the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through “sensitivity training” and multiculturalist curricula, “hate crime” laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny."
[End quote]
Continued...
Over the last several years I had some correspondence with Lawrence Auster (also now deceased), a traditional conservative thinker who elaborated further on this subject:
DeleteQuote:
"Liberal society condones or approves all kinds of behavior that once were disapproved and suppressed and should be disapproved and suppressed, while it suppresses behaviors which it should be indifferent to or actively approve. For example, it condones and approves massive illegal immigration, homosexual promiscuity, black violence in schools, and many other kinds of outrageous and destructive behaviors. Yet liberals, being human, are not happy with the notion that they don’t believe in right or wrong, that they don’t stand for anything. They need to show moral/social judgement *in some form*. So they forcefully suppress, for example, smoking, or wildly trivial instances of politically incorrect speech, and are extremely self-righteous about this, even as they allow general moral chaos to run riot in society.
"Thus anarcho-tyranny means the moral inversion that has been effected by liberalism, in which things that society should disapprove are allowed, and things that society should be indifferent to (or even approve) are fanatically and inhumanly suppressed .
"It comes down to the fact that liberals do not believe in the good, they believe in freedom. Anarcho-tyranny is their non-normative and bureaucratic substitute for the moral and social order they have destroyed."
[End quote]
Although I myself have certain other political and religious differences with these two men, their understanding of anarcho-tyranny—the social condition that arises when liberalism becomes institutionalized and enforced— is absolutely spot on. It is the seemingly paradoxical condition we now find ourselves in where anarchy and tyranny co-exist.
Sounds sadly familiar:
Delete28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. - Rom. 1:28-32
When men reject the truth of God, they're plunged headlong into error and the judgment of God.
The reprobate are not merely lost in the sense of eternal damnation, although this is certainly true, but they're lost and given over to intellectual futility temporally in the here and now.
Yes, and even worse, because social stability is so radically overturned, even the innocent will eventually be caught up in the convulsion and suffer.
DeleteAs institutionalized liberalism becomes increasingly hard leftist and approaches it logical end point, it gives us the worst consequences of anarchy, and at the same time, the worst consequences of tyranny. It results in the arbitrary exercise of coercion that occurs under tyranny, but without the protection of the social order that even the prototypical "benevolent dictator" could bring.
Steve wrote:
Delete"Ironically, Thabiti seems to think white evangelicals need to swoop in to save blacks from themselves. It's remarkably like the white colonialist mentality.
"Speaking for myself, it would be very paternalistic of me to think blacks need whites to solve their problems for them. Are we supposed to parachute in and fix their social problems for them?"
Yes, in the main that seems to be exactly what the black community expects. Because their social problems are never really their own fault, you see, and they don't believe they are *responsible* for solving them. According to their leadership their problems are due to some sinister outside force like "institutional racism", "segregation", the "legacy of slavery" or some other reason. And if whites refuse to placidly acquiesce to those blame-shifting excuses, they will be subjected to social shaming and belligerent guilt-tripping.
Furthermore, should any white person become a victim of black rioting as on display in the current anarcho-tyranny in Ferguson, they must not talk about it. The burden will be on *them* to put up with it. The government, lawyers and even the police will say that the best thing to do is to keep their mouth shut and let the black community have whatever it wants.
If they fight *that* injustice and have the temerity to speak out publicly shattering that outrageous liberal ideological facade, they may very well have to spend every penny they have and possibly lose their home or other property to pay an attorney to keep them out of prison.
That is the reality we are facing now.
Thabiti bemoans "waiting" for the collective response of his theological peers, and decries the general lack of "speaking out"...but isn't it wisdom to wait until the facts are settled before leaping into the melee in an uninformed, brash, and foolish manner?
ReplyDeleteAnyabwile projects his narrative of white on black racism upon the situation, and then berates "evangelicalism" for not doing things the way he sees fit.
One is tempted to ask Thabiti if he has stopped beating his wife and child yet.
Thabiti is begging key questions every step of the way in his latest post. And you'll notice that his call for repentance is strictly a one-way street. It's white Evangelicals who must repent of their deadness and Phariseeism toward the black community, regardless of the actual facts on the ground in any given case. Even to the extent that his criticism of some Evangelicals may be true, notice that there is nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in either of Thabiti's posts that have a word to say laying bare the moral and social pathologies endemic among lower-class blacks today--including CRIMINAL black behavior-- that has devastated their communities and which THEY are responsible for. No, Thabiti sanitizes all that and by rhetorical sleight-of-hand these folks are transformed into an amorphous group called "the oppressed" whose failures, suffering and criminality OTHERS are somehow guilty of not rectifying.
ReplyDeleteThabiti wrote:
"You [white Evangelicals] want diversity in your membership roles? How about forgetting your membership statistics and further diversifying the picket lines and protests thronged by the disenfranchised in their just fights?"
So Thabiti would have Evangelicals walking shoulder-to-shoulder not only with with the rioting looters and arsonists, but with Al Sharpton, Malik Shabazz and the Black Panthers along with the other imported leftist agitators who were also marching in Ferguson this past week stoking the flames of racial hatred. Is that really who Thabiti thinks the Evangelical church in America should be in solidarity with today? Apparently so.
Thabiti is at it again today, digging in his heels.
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteSome reasons to reconsider your position:
1. "... black Americans are the only ethnic group that routinely riots in situations like this." Inappropriately totalizing language. Most of the protesters engaged in peaceful protests. Furthermore, what statistics back up your "routinely?" Here's an article with a more balanced and detailed view of the protesters.
2. " If protesters were really that concerned about dead black teenagers, why aren't they protesting the homicide rate in Chicago?" Which protesters are you talking about? The ordinary citizens of Ferguson? The hoodlums and activists who traveled there from other cities? Al Sharpton? Jesse Jackson? See here for one of several examples of activists complaining about the relative invisibility of black-on-black crime. When I lived in Philadelphia back in the 1980s several African-American young people -- innocent bystanders -- were killed during drug-related shootouts. These events were heavily covered in the local media and led to several protests and some community action. There were calls to restrict sales of handguns. Guess what happened with the handgun restriction proposals. The issue of black-on-black crime gets no traction in the larger society. Why not? Racist and classist attitudes almost certainly play a role.
3. "Apropos (iv), most big cities have been run by Democrats for decades. Why do most blacks keep voting for Democrats if they distrust the law enforcement culture in their city?" This comment is just out of place. Did you not know that Ferguson's mayor is a Republican, the majority of the town council members are white, as are almost all the town's police officers? How can this be? See this, this, and this for explanations. As for African-Americans voting for Democrats, why not take the time to find out why? There are plenty of articles by African-Americans explaining why they continue to vote for Democratic candidates. There are even a few insightful articles on the topic from political conservatives. Why ask a rhetorical question when you can get a good answer? If nothing else, read this.
Continued in the following comment...
I didn't say Ferguson was run by Democrats.
DeleteHow does the legal availability of hand-guns explain the rate of black-on-black crime? To begin with, you've had high rates of black-on-black crime in cities with gun-bans.
DeleteIn addition, if the availability of hand-guns explains the rate of black-on-black crime, then by parity of argument, there should be equivalent crime rates for other ethnic groups inasmuch as hand-guns are equally accessible to all ethnic groups.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/385518/print
DeleteLet me be clearer about the handgun issue and get that out of the way before dealing with the main issue. I didn't bring it up because the easy availability of handguns increases black-on-black crime. Even I'm not that stupid. The point of the 1980s gun control activism was to make it harder for run-of-the-mill criminals to get their hands on easily-disposable weapons, so that street criminals wouldn't get into gun fights so often and end up killing innocent bystanders. Nobody that I'm aware of proposed (or proposes now) gun control as a way to reduce crime rates. The idea is to reduce the rates of death and serious injury suffered by the victims of crime.
DeleteNo, you didn't say Ferguson was run by Democrats, So, if you were really attempting to tell us something about the protesters in Ferguson, why did you bring up the tendency of African-Americans generally to vote Democratic? What else could have been your point except to fit these protesters into your larger narrative about African-Americans? A "charitable" view would have your narrative fit closely with the National Review article by Kevin Williamson you cite. The protesters have been driven to exasperation by the failures of liberal progressivism but are unable or unwilling to recognize the real cause of their problems and latch on to the easy and politically safe explanation of systemic racism. He's way off, but at least his narrative is not racist.
The burden of my point 4 is that your points 3-5 are classically prejudicial collective judgements typical of racist (or more accurately tribalist) thinking, as much or more so than those of Thabiti or the folks interviewed in Olivette. You may be withholding judgment on Michael Brown and Darren Wilson, but you certainly did not withhold judgment on the African-American community of Ferguson. You can prove me wrong by refining or abandoning those points.
Since many of the demonstrators in Ferguson aren't from Ferguson, the party affiliation of the current mayor is irrelevant.
DeleteIt's ironic that people who love big gov't hate the police. Without law enforcement, gov't is impotent. So there's a basic disconnect between cause and effect.
You're the one, not me, who equates the protesters with the Ferguson community. So you're seeing your own face at the bottom of the well when you attack the "racist" reflection.
DeleteYou've offered no counterevidence to points #3 &5. Keep in mind that point #3 was prefaced by an explicit qualification, which you conveniently ignore.
And you've offered to alternative explanation for point #4.
Then there's the final irony when you accuse me of indulging in "collective judgments," even though your own position is based on collective judgments regarding racial grievances. But thanks for illustrating your self-referential incoherence.
I'm sure black columnist Kevin Williamson will be relieved to learn that you've exonerated him on charges of black racism.
Delete"Since many of the demonstrators in Ferguson aren't from Ferguson, the party affiliation of the current mayor is irrelevant."
DeleteMany? Most likely a small minority. Go back and re-read the link I provided. But hey, at least now you're trying to make some distinctions. This is progress. OK, so the party affiliation of the current mayor of Ferguson is irrelevant. So you were really trying to make a point about the larger African-American community in most places besides Ferguson? Again, what precisely does this have to do with the majority of the protesters in Ferguson, who live there and didn't riot? If Ferguson had a Democratic mayor, a majority black city council and a police department with mostly black officers, the same thing or worse would have happened to Michael Brown, or the police would have handled the protesters the same way or worse? Something else? What?
"Keep in mind that point #3 was prefaced by an explicit qualification, which you conveniently ignore." What was that, "In my observation...?" I didn't ignore it, I pointed you to more info. Now, please go back and reread your point 3. NM, I'll save you the trouble: "In my observation, black Americans are the only ethnic group that routinely riots in situations like this. Whites, Latinos, and Asian Americans don't normally riot in situations like this." So the ethnic group black Americans rioted in this situation, as they do routinely? Funny, no riots broke out in any of the African-American communities where I live. In fact, there were no riots here when Johnny Gammage was killed by police officers in '96, or after any of the other later incidents in which young, unarmed, and innocent black people were killed by police in other parts of the country.. I guess they must not be real "blacks." Your language is totalizting. You didn't say, "In my obserrvation, the black American community is the only one that harbors a small minority of trouble-makers who will riot over what they perceive as racial grievances and too many others of their ethnic community will downplay or ignore their behavior in favor of highlighting the same ethnic grievances." That might be worth a serious discussion.
"And you've offered to alternative explanation for point #4." I did and you've chosen to ignore it. I might add that Ferguson's violent crime rate has been dropping for a number of years and is not much over the national average. Why should citizens of Ferguson be protesting about events in Chicago?
As for your final comment, you are entirely welcome to indulge yourself in insults. I just hope some of my points sink in eventually.
Jim Moore "Many? Most likely a small minority."
DeleteYou're the one who originally said "Which protesters are you talking about? The ordinary citizens of Ferguson? The hoodlums and activists who traveled there from other cities? Al Sharpton? Jesse Jackson?"
Now you're downplaying your own distinctions.
"But hey, at least now you're trying to make some distinctions. This is progress."
You mean, the progress of watching you run away from your own distinctions?
"Again, what precisely does this have to do with the majority of the protesters in Ferguson, who live there and didn't riot?"
How do you know the majority of protesters in Ferguson come from Ferguson? Malik Shabazz fingered "outside infiltrators" and "plants."
"Your language is totalizting."
You mean, like your own totalizing language about the Ferguson community and race relations?
"Why should citizens of Ferguson be protesting about events in Chicago?"
You have a bad habit of repeating the same tendentious equation, as if the demonstrators and the citizens are coextensive.
You swing back and forth between equating the two and distinguishing the two, depending on which serves the pragmatic purposes of your immediate argument. Consistency takes a backseat to your demagogy.
4. "Thabiti is locating this event within a preexisting narrative. Instead of judging the event on its own terms, he prejudges the event. It assumes it must part of a pattern. He superimposes that preexisting narrative on the event." While you are dealing with one person's comments, would I be correct in assuming that you would apply this criticism to any of the many other columnists, bloggers, and officials who have classified Michael Brown's death as one more example of while police officers using excessive force against minority suspects? Are there any legitimate grounds for classifying Michael Brown's death in this category? Check this and this out. Actually, as the first of these two articles indicates, there isn't enough good data out there to tell if minority suspects disproportionately die or are mistreated by police. Most people arrive at their own conclusions based on anecdotal evidence anyway. In many African-American communities the experiences of family, friends, and neighbors tend to get passed around as templates for what to expect from police. Some of these family, friends, and neighbors are lying about what happened during their police encounters, but people believe their versions anyway. Where the bad experiences genuinely happened people may erroneously overgeneralize when in fact police misbehavior is out of the ordinary. This is a potential problem for law enforcement, and wise leadership will take steps to counteract it with efforts such as community policing and independent review boards. Apparently, the leadership in Ferguson didn't do this. But more to the point, you don't like it when an African-American like Thabiti accuses white people of racism. You fault them for overgeneralizing, making category mistakes. Is this a problem unique to African-Americans? ROFL! Consider this collection of comments from a group of white citizens living near Ferguson about recent events there. Avoiding the hateful "R" word, these people are insufferable jerks, devoid of empathy, with one notable exception. They could rescue themselves by being more precise about who and what exactly is bothering them, but apparently they can't be bothered. Now, go back and look at the points you made at the beginning of your post. See the similarity to what these fine citizens of Olivette are doing? See the similarity to what you are accusing Thabiti of? Different narratives, same prejudging.
ReplyDeleteSo you admit that Thabiti is guilty of prejudice, but try to deflect that by citing some prejudiced white folks in Ferguson? How does that have any logical bearing on my post?
Delete