A recent article outlined what the Binghamton Human Rights Commission, (BHRC) described as a “trust gap” they say exists between the Binghamton Police Department and the minority community.  The commission outlined proposed legislation that outlaws racial profiling, requires more data collection and analysis, mandates training in anti-racism and cultural competency and compels a plan for diversifying the police department.

A speaker in favor of the legislation at the city council meeting said, “It’s about preparing our police force to be more fair and more just…”  Fairness and justice are absolutes, there is no such context as “more fair” or “more just”, you’re either fair and just or you’re not.    Another attendee, stating she has a black, 6 year-old son and said, “ ..it is sad to think about having to sit him down to explain how to interact with the police. When you see a police officer, it should be a sign of safety, a sign of comfort, a sign of someone’s here to help me, not a sign of being tense and being nervous and not understanding what to do.”  That’s right and it’s a conversation every decent parent has with their kids, black or white, as they describe the enlarging world around them as they grow up.  It’s called responsible parenting

Existing federal law has outlawed racial profiling for years.  For the BHRC to suggest a redundant local law needs to reinforce existing federal law betrays the unstated yet undeniable assertion by the BHRC that the Binghamton Police Department must be currently violating federal law.  The BHRC should retract that portion of their proposed legislation or go on record and make the specific allegations that demonstrate this alleged offense.  As for data collection and analysis, the department has already begun to outfit officers with cameras as funding permits.  This should go a long way in showing the public exactly what a night out in the streets of Binghamton really looks like.  The BHRC might not like what they see from a camera focused closely on those folks suffering from this so-called “trust gap.”

Cultural understanding and anti-racism training is currently a large part of every officers training at the academy.  Perhaps BHRC members ought to consider attending the academy as interested citizens to become better informed.  And finally, a plan for diversifying the police department.  How is it that hundreds of individuals somehow manage to find this well publicized information already?  Perhaps the commission might better spend their time doing recruitment drives on their own if they think that’s productive.

The undercurrent of the proposed BHRC legislation smacks of accusing the Binghamton police of racism and cultural insensitivity.  I think the commission would be more productive by educating the minority community on how to affirmatively adjust their behaviors and their attitudes about police, authority and acceptable social norms.  Quit breaking the law, stop challenging authority and assimilate into normal, working-class, law-abiding, family centered society and this “trust gap” issue magically vanishes.

The BHRC legislation has the tail wagging the dog.

Fear and Loathing in America

The fire-ready-aim crowd was dead wrong about Trevon Martin and now Michael Brown.  While reasonable, rational people waited for answers and legal processes to sort through the issues before reaching their conclusions, felonious thugs were burning, looting and shooting cops in protest.  Doubling down on wrong, they rushed to judgment; small minds so filled with hatred that they lack the capacity to accept fact over emotion, even when a fellow-traveler and down with the struggle black US Attorney General serves reality and truth to them on a silver platter, concluding that no laws were broken, no rights denied.

In other words, justifiable homicide.

I don’t hear any apology.  I see no sign of shame, remorse, or culpability.  To which social services office should police officer Darren Wilson report in order to get his life, job and good reputation back?

These situations are really about issues of crime, punishment, criminals and their contempt for authority.  Martin and Brown were convenient excuses for criminals and their sympathizers to go on a rampage.

The majority of those so enraged by the justifiable homicides of Martin and Brown are  criminals or their apologists, sharing in common a deep hatred for police, the law and authority.  In Martin and Brown they see themselves and it’s a wakeup call they hoped was really just a bad dream, not quite the one Dr. King had in mind.

Blacks overwhelmingly commit more crimes than whites, (according to the NAACP,  blacks are imprisoned at a rate of 6 times that of whites).  Instead of being embarrassed and ashamed, seeking answers and solutions, race-baiting mouth organs like felon and tax-cheat Al Sharpton devise clever phrases like, “hands-up, don’t shoot” as a diversion from the undeniable facts that ironically keeps blacks in a sort of bondage, now of their own making; that mistaken belief that embracing the criminal element is a part of their culture, a sign of their genuineness, in spite of the fact that the scenario, “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened.

Is this what it means to be, “Keepin it real” and is it worth the price?

The black men who have ran away from their families and their obligations are only outnumbered by those who were perp-walked away to prison in shackles. Black crime is almost always black-on-black especially involving homicides.  Blacks are overwhelmingly killing each other.  This undercurrent of self-loathing is the direct result of liberal ideology that fosters the premise that certain members of our society just can’t make do on their own without help.  Unfortunately, the ploy may have worked.

Facts and statistics can be difficult things.  These are fundamental problems with hard answers that require unprecedented changes in mind-sets.  The most important truism to be dispelled is the heretofore undisputed notion that the instances of arrest and incarceration need to mirror image the percentage of a population’s representation in society.  This assumption is flat out false.  For example, men overwhelmingly out-number women in prison populations yet are about evenly divided in society.  Does this mean that thousands of criminal women are on the loose, or does it mean that men are more likely to commit crime?  Blacks make up over 87% of professional basketball players even thou they are only representative of 14% of the overall population.  Does this mean that whites are being denied their places in the game because of racism, or because blacks perform this particular skill at a higher level?

In a complex world, full of choices, opportunities, struggles and unknowns, it is a misguided, utopian notion to believe everything, (or anything) can be controlled.  Societal decisions cannot logically be attached to mathematical expectations of congruency based on statistical expectations of a one-to-one correlation.  That is not how our complex, free-will society is constructed but liberals like to think they can control everything as if life was a consensus building project in a group therapy session.

Statistical facts do not constitute racism, but they do stifle the truth at the sacrificial alter of the politically correct.  Black’s commit more crimes than whites but saying so brands you a racist, even in the face of the fact that blacks occupy prison cells at a rate of over six times their representation in society.  Black’s are twice as likely to disobey traffic laws and are at twice the risk of traffic accident death than are whites, this according to the National Transportation Safety Board.  Facts and statistics can be difficult things, but this explains why blacks are more likely than whites to be stopped for traffic violations; because they are more likely to disobey the traffic laws.  To simply make this observation of fact should not qualify the speaker as a racist and in the effort, seek to silence the truth, but in most cases it does just that and in the face of that fear of being labeled and marginalized, these observations go unstated and henceforth no furtherance of the issue is made.

It is a fallacy to accept the premise that crime rates correlate with groups based on their representation in the greater community.  In other words, it is erroneous to believe that because blacks represent 14% of the population, they should also automatically represent 14% of the criminal activity as well.  There is no basis in fact for assuming this.  There is no direct, mathematically or socially constructed theorem that validates this, yet it is accepted as proof of racism when the rates of crime exceed those ratios.

Perhaps solutions are not even possible anymore.  Maybe we have allowed the supposed acts of salvation-through-social-services to continue for so long that we have successfully dismantled and eradicated the black family.  If so, thank President Lyndon B. Johnson, (LBJ) and the Great Society for making the black man inconsequential to the family, which may be in fact the welfare states strategy to remaining in power for ever.  Here is LBJ, in his own words, according to Ron Kessler’s book, “Inside the Whitehouse.”, speaking with several governors about the effects of providing welfare and housing benefits for inner-city blacks in the 1960’s.

“I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

That quote, from the lips of the father of the Great Society, bastion of salvation to the black community.

Blacks were duped and continue to be duped by liberal ideology.  It appears LBJ was right, as 90% or more of blacks vote Democrat in every national election.  Conservative principles align properly with men and women of character, not of reliance, learned helplessness and self-pity.  The soft bigotry of low expectations, practiced so honorably by liberals, ought to be the stuff of scandal and distain, a clear insult to all people.  Truth be told, the historical, early struggles of blacks align more closely with the self-reliance and fortitude of traditional conservative values.

Change is only possible from within the community through self-awareness and a reset in thinking about the obligation individuals have for taking care of their own affairs.  As long as the black family continues to self-inflict the injuries created by missing fathers, unacceptable rates of criminal activity and the rejection of education and main stream societal values in exchange for “gangsta idolatry”, nothing will change.  That truth, once embraced, and then the poisonous impediments finally discarded will once again set people free, this time from the tyranny of liberal condescension and decades of low expectations that have, unfortunately for many become a self-fulfilling prophesy.