Barack Obama talks about absentee black fathers

Certain things are inevitable. One is that the "Reverend" Al Sharpton (erstwhile champion of Tawana Brawley) will be a featured speaker at any BLM protest. Another is that when I write an inconvenient truth about a prominent person of colour, a reader will call me a racist, bigot, yada yada yada.

This happened yesterday. Even as the Rev prated in front of the Lincoln Memorial about how whites just love putting their knees on black throats, a reader e-mailed me to complain about my statement, yesterday, of the fact that both ex-President Obama and Veep-wannabe Kamala Harris were raised by their mothers with little or no help from their absent fathers.

She (are you surprised?) accused me of perpetuating the negative stereotype of -- my words now -- irresponsible black dudes who impregnate baby mamas (of all races) and then bail out, leaving the mothers to do the best they can, on their own. Just as Barack Obama's mother did. Just as Kamala Harris's other did.

Dear reader. The "missing black father" is not a mythological creature. He is real, and watching from afar as his kids riot, loot, and shoot or get shot. How many reports have you seen on your local newscast in which the mother of a young black(ish) man who is either the perp or the victim weeps and tells the meeja that "he was a good boy, trying to turn his life around" etc etc, with the father nowhere in sight.

Before resting my case, I wish to put in evidence the chart at left, compiled by the National Center for Fathering. Click here to read "The Extent of Fatherlessness", which explains the issue in detail.

Let me leave you with the words of Barack Hussein Obama himself. On 15 June 2008 (a Father's Day), he addressed a black church in Chicago. According to Dr Randall Kennedy (in The Persistence of the Color Line, recommended yesterday), Senator Obama (as he then was)
"stated that 'in the African American community...more than half of all black children live in single-parent households,' and that 'too many fathers [are] missing from too many lives and too many homes.' Continuing, Obama declared that 'these absent black fathers have abandoned their responsibilities, acting more like boys instead of men.'"

Dr Kennedy (who is black) does not say that Mr Obama was wrong in what he said, nor wrong to say it, although he does suggest that there may have been an ulterior motive. Like what? Like preaching family values to black people to prove to white people that he was not the sort of trashy black who would leave his wife and children... or the country... in the lurch.

The facts about incomplete families in the black community are what they are. So are the facts of the lives of ex-President Obama and Senator Harris. I make no apology for pointing out the facts... just the facts.

It was inevitable: Al Sharpton to eulogize George Floyd

It had to happen. The only strange thing is that it took so long! When I first wrote about the inevitable "protests" (read: race riots) that followed the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop (see "There's gonna be riotin', by George!", WWW 28/5/20), I said "The 'Reverend' Al Sharpton is expected to jet into the Twin Cities today to add his voice of reason to the clamour."

If you don't know who "Reverend Al" is, Google his name + Tawana Brawley. Way back in 1987, Ms Brawley, then a black teenager (no longer a teen but still black), said she had been raped and kidnapped by a group of white men in Dutchess County, NY. Her story of being attacked, scrawled with racial slurs, smeared with feces and left beside a road wrapped in a plastic bag made front pages across the nation, especially after "Reverend Al" took up her case.

Unfortunately for him and for her, a special state grand jury later determined that Ms Brawley had fabricated her claims, perhaps to avoid punishment for staying out late. In 1998, Steven Pagones, who was the county prosecutor at the time, won a defamation suit against Mr Sharpton, Ms Brawley and her attorneys, who had accused Pagones of being among Brawley's attackers.

NPR quotes the Village Voice as saying that "Sharpton has since paid off his [$65,000] debt with money raised by his supporters." Ms Brawley was ordered to pay $190,000, which, with interest, had grown to a debt of more than $430,000 by 2013. By that time, Mr Pagones had received about $3700, less than 1% of what he was owed. How much has been paid since is a mystery.

But I digress. I was talking about the latest appearance of "Reverend Al". I was only wrong about the timing. (Lifetime pct .980.) He is at the top of the card -- chief eulogist -- for the memorial service for George Floyd, which will take place at North Central University in Minneapolis at 1300 CDT. The family's lawyer, Algonquin J. Calhoun, will also speak. Don't miss it.

Book review: Ann Coulter explains racism and reverse racism

Reader's of Walt's previous post (on Bill O'Reilly's interview with President Obama) will gather (correctly) that I've been reading Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (Sentinel, 2012) by best-selling author and conservative darling Ann Coulter. I give it my highest recommendation, but warn those of a conservative and/or libertarian who suffer from high blood pressure to take a chill pill before reading.

Of her book, Ms Coulter says "This isn't a story about black people -- it's a story about the Left's agenda to patronize blacks and lie to everyone else." She writes a fearless and politically incorrect history of race relations in America to demonstrate how guilty white liberals twist that history to accuse the innocent (the Tawana Brawley case), acquit the guilty (O.J. Simpson) and foment racial hatred (Al Sharpton) -- all in order to win politically. And win they have, getting Al O'Bama not just elected but -- in spite of a demonstrably poor record -- re-elected!

Spoiler alert! - Walt tries to avoid posting lengthy quotes from any article or book he recommends, but the conclusion of Mugged is so pithy and substantial that I'm going to defy Ed. and give you the last page, in its entirety. The summary topic is white guilt.

White guilt has never produced anything but catastrophe.

White guilt fuelled the liberal crime policies that resulted in tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of murders, to say nothing of maimings, burnings and rapes. White guilt got us huge tower blocks of public housing that are fortresses of social pathology. It produced the entire entitlement-dominated politics we have now.

It's led the nation to turn a blind eye to the ticking time bomb of exploding illegitimacy rates.

It got an acquittal for OJ as a result of the trial being moved to a venue that would produce more black jurors than the courthouse in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred.

It produced a destructive welfare state that was untouchable for decades. It got us anxiety, anger, fear and a major political party incapable of making an argument more sophisticated than: "You racist!"

And it got us the most left-wing president America has ever seen.

When there were so few cases of white-on-black hate crimes that liberals had to start making them up, wasn't that a clue that the Klan wasn't preventing black progress any more? If white people could be shorn of all racism overnight, it's not clear how that would improve the black condition.

On the other hand, if all black people woke up tomorrow morning with the cultural predilections of Korean Americans, all sociological disparities -- income, crime rates, out-of-wedlock births -- would vanish within ten years. Both thought experiments are unfair, but one at least has a practical resonance to it.

As Shelby Steele has said: "Whites don't think they have the moral authority to ask anything of black people, certainly not to judge them. But there's something wrong with people who have a 70-percent illegitimacy rate. This is a group of people who are lost. But we are surrounded by whites who refuse to tell us that."

The national obsession with racism is a self-inflicted punishment that has resulted in disaster, for everyone, but most of all for black people. The initial lie from which all other lies flow is the idea that black people's condition in America depends on white people's beneficence. It's Bull Connor's last revenge.

Further reading on WWW:
"Obama's Trayvon remark called 'hysterical and exploitative'"
"Race and crime as seen by America's lamestream media"

How about some justice for Antonio West?

Len received a slightly longer version of this message today. I'll append a couple of notes, but, since we're hearing a lot about justice for someone who was (supposedly) shot for no other reason than "being black in a white neighbourhood", I ask you to read this plea for justice for a small white victim of black crime.

Hello. Don’t recognize me? That’s OK; I understand. My name was Antonio West. I was the 13-month old child who was shot in the face at point blank range by two black teens, who were attempting to rob my mother [Sherry], who was also shot.

I think my murder and my mommy’s wounding made the news for maybe a day, and then disappeared.

The black teens who murdered me will not face the death penalty. Too bad it was me who got the death sentence from my killers instead, because Mommy didn’t have the money they demanded.

See, my family made the mistake of being white in a 73% non-white neighborhood, but my murder wasn’t ruled a "hate crime". And President Obama didn’t take a single moment to acknowledge my murder. He couldn’t have any children who could possibly look like me, so why should he care?

I’m one of the youngest murder victims in our great nation's history, but the media didn’t care to cover the story of my being killed in cold blood.

There isn’t a white equivalent of Al Sharpton, because if there was he would be branded a "racist". So no one’s rushing to Brunswick, Georgia to demonstrate and demand "justice" for me. There’s no "White Panther" party, either, to put a bounty on the lives of the two black teens who murdered me.

I have no voice, I have no representation, and -- unlike those who shot me in the face while I sat innocently in my stroller -- I no longer have my life.

Isn’t this a great country?

So while you’re out seeking "justice for Trayvon", please remember to seek justice for me. Tell your friends about me, tell you families, get t-shirts with my face on them, and make the world pay attention, just like you did for Trayvon.

I won’t hold my breath. I don’t have to anymore.

The version I received suggested that a Georgia grand jury had decided that Antonio's killers won't face the death penalty. That's not quite correct. The reason De'Marquise Elkins and Dominique Lang won't get what they richly deserve is that they were 17 and 15, respectively, at the time of their wanton attack on Antonio and his mother.

Nor does it matter that Elkins is under indictment for a similar attempted robbery and shooting which happened 10 days before. The perps were minors so they get to escape with their lives... unlike little Antonio. Is that justice? What a pity George Zimmerman didn't live in Brunswick!

It's also not strictly true to say that the media paid no attention. The story got some coverage, but no more than you'd expect in a country where 100s or 1000s of violent muggings happen every day. The only unusual feature of this one was the age of the victim. Unfortunately there was nothing unusual about the perps, not even their ages. "Young black guy wearing a hoodie" is set in cold type in every newsroom in America.

One final thought. When I wrote "Walmart responsible for social injustice" last week, I was under the impression that Walt had written before about the Tawana Brawley hoax, in which the "Rev" Al Sharpton was one of the main actors -- and I use the word advisedly. Wherever there is "hate crime", you'll find the Rev there denouncing it, as long as it's a black "victim" being unjustly oppressed by a honky. You won't be findin' Sharpton in Sherry Elkins's corner.

For more about Al Sharpton, Tawan Brawley and the knee-jerk demonization of whites by vote-seeking politicians and the lamestream media, Walt recommends Outrage: the Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax, by Robert D. McFadden, Ralph Blumenthal and their colleagues at the New York Times. It was published by Bantam Books in 1990.

Walmart responsible for social injustice!

Just a short note today as we watch the unfolding of the inevitable aftermath of the jury verdict in the Zimmerman case. (Notice Len didn't call it the "Trayvon Martin" case. It was Zimmerman who was on trial, and who was acquitted.)

The usual Forces for Good in the US of A -- the promoters of diversity, civil rights, equality for all yada yada yada -- are baying for the head of... well... someone. They can't attack the jury, who for their own protection are cloaked in anonymity. They can't attack the judge, for the judge didn't make the decision. And they can't attack Zimmerman because that would be, umm, too obvious.

So who's going to take the fall for this gross miscarriage of justice? Why, Walmart of course! The "Rev" Al Sharpton -- one of those responsible for the great Tawana Brawley hoax -- didn't actually mention the Beast of Bentonville by name in his televised call for "social justice", but his followers knew full well who he meant.

That's why, at this very moment, Len is looking at headlines like "Youths rampage through Hollywood stealing cellphones and t-shirts". That's "youths" as in "black youths", and "Hollywood" as in "Hollywood CA", not "Hollywood FL". [Shome mishtake, shurely! Ed.] 

Right. As long as you black, you been denied justice, bro! And the best way to get justice is to rip off da white people... or even better, da white people's store! Yeah, dat'll make it jes fine. Don' get mad, get even!!!

Further reading: "Al Sharpton's Long Bill of Goods, From Tawana Brawley to Primetime", by Stuart Stevens in The Daily Beast.