Social Degeneration

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/ ... mas-sowell

"--- Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Someone at long last has had the courage to tell the plain, honest truth about race.

After mobs of young blacks rampaged through Philadelphia committing violence -- as similar mobs have rampaged through Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, and other places -- Philadelphia’s black mayor, Michael A. Nutter, ordered a police crackdown and lashed out at the whole lifestyle of those who perpetrate these crimes.

#ad#“Pull up your pants and buy a belt, ’cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt,” he said. “If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you? They don’t hire you ’cause you look like you’re crazy,” the mayor said. He added: “You have damaged your own race.”

While this might seem like common sense, what Mayor Nutter said undermines a whole vision of the world that has brought fame, fortune, and power to race hustlers in politics, the media, and academia. Any racial disparities in hiring can be due only to racism and discrimination, according to the prevailing vision, which reaches from street-corner demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Just to identify the rioters and looters as black is a radical departure, when mayors, police chiefs, and the media in other cities report on these outbreaks of violence without mentioning the race of those who are doing these things. The Chicago Tribune even made excuses for failing to mention race when reporting on violent attacks by blacks on whites in Chicago."

How did I miss the "rampaging mobs" in Denver?????

AspenValley wrote: How did I miss the "rampaging mobs" in Denver?????

There have been attacks in downtown Denver on people leaving bars at closing time. Most of the attackers have been African American men.

"You don't rob the people after they leave the bar, they have no money after they leave the bar."

So how does a couple of robberies turn into "rampaging mobs"????

One person's mob is another person's gang. But striking most Fridays and Saturdays makes it seem like more than a robbery. Plus most of the people attacked have been white and Hispanic, and violence seemed as big a part of it as robbing people

SS109 wrote: One person's mob is another person's gang. But striking most Fridays and Saturdays makes it seem like more than a robbery. Plus most of the people attacked have been white and Hispanic, and violence seemed as big a part of it as robbing people

I haven't followed this closely, but unless these "gangs" included at least dozens of people attacking at once, the use of the word "mob" was completely overblown in this instance. A mob is generally considered to be a large group. 2 or 3 or even 10 people would not be considered a mob in ordinary usage.

The author was dealing in deliberate hyperbole by using that term. It does seem that in other cities there may have been groups large enough to be described as "mobs" but he should have left Denver out of it.

It would appear that these crimes have an element of racial hatred in them, but describing them as "rampaging mobs" is pure and simple fear-mongering.

The only rampaging mobs I've heard about in Denver lately were at the Ikea store.

AspenValley wrote: [

It would appear that these crimes have an element of racial hatred in them, but describing them as "rampaging mobs" is pure and simple fear-mongering.

Or it could be the result of editing for size. Ether way it is just a distraction from the thrust of the op-ed.

Then perhaps the author should have restricted the scope of his story to Philadelphia.

neptunechimney wrote:

AspenValley wrote: [

It would appear that these crimes have an element of racial hatred in them, but describing them as "rampaging mobs" is pure and simple fear-mongering.

Or it could be the result of editing for size. Ether way it is just a distraction from the thrust of the op-ed.

On the contrary, by exagerating to the point where the author would have the reader believe that "rampaging mobs" were in fact breaking out in numerous cities (and counting on the laziness of those readers not to fact check his claims) the author demonstrates the essential dishonesty of his argument. It wasn't just an editing issue or a "distraction", by choosing those words, and the inclusion of all those cities as sites of the alleged "rampaging mobs" the author quite deliberatly paints a hysterically overblown falsehood.

The occurence of a few gang-banger crimes in Denver - or elsewhere - does not justify the condemnation of an entire culture or race. Far from "telling the truth about race" as you claim, the author deliberately distorts the truth to pander to racist undercurrents in our society. In fact, he's made a career of it.