Black-Latino Tensions in Perspective
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a great item up about the need to bring some perspective to the question of whether or not the country is afflicted by a substantial level of animosity between Latinos and African-Americans. He’s responding to Tim Pagett’s idea that Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment “is perhaps the most potent symbol yet of a 21st century rapprochement between the U.S.’s two largest minorities, Latino Americans and African Americans, who in the 20th century could be as violently distrustful of each other as blacks and whites were.”
I have not known Latinos in the 20th Century to perpetrate a Red Summer. I have not known blacks to lynch Latino veterans, returning from war, in their uniforms. The fact is that there was no violent distrust between blacks and whites in the 20th century. Rather there was a one-sided war waged against black people by white terrorists, which government, in the best cases, failed to prevent, in many cases, stood idly by, and in the worst cases actually aided and abetted. [. . .] Leaving aside the differences between how blacks relate to Puerto-Ricans in the Bronx, versus how they relate to Cuban-Americans in Florida, it is borderline delusional to pretend that some beef between some folks in L.A is the equivalent of Martin Luther King. Or even Rodney King. It isn’t. And the fact that we can’t tell the difference is still haunting us.
That’s exactly right. And while the worst of white violence against blacks is in the past, there continues to be a very tangible legacy of this kind of thing. Jefferson Davis was the political leader of an organized insurrection against the United States government, whose aim was to perpetuate the enslavement of black people. And there’s a highway named after him just a few miles from where I type. When I drove back to DC from North Carolina on Tuesday, I passed the Stonewall Jackson Shrine, which is an official National Parks Service site. Black-white racial conflict has always been the racial conflict in the United States and to a pretty shocking extent white America continues to decline to live up to what it’s been all about.
155 Responses to “Black-Latino Tensions in Perspective”
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May 28th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
There is FAR, FAR more violence committed by blacks against whites than the reverse. Just thought I’d throw that out there. Even in that 1930 Marion, Indiana case, the two pieces of shit got what they deserved. Strange fruit, indeed!
May 28th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
The only response we’ll ever get from MattY to the first comment is a brush-off; otherwise the Soros[TM]-brand shock collar would deliver a mighty jolt.
On a related note, what does MattY think of this quote?
Here’s a fun fact: the group that Sonia S. belonged to gave the person who said that an award.
I’d ask MattY for a comment on the group she belonged to awarding someone who’d made such an eliminationist comment, but I can hear the shock collar already charging.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Go back to vdare where you belong racist ass.
You do serve a purpose though, whenever some right wing tool argues that outright racism no longer exists we have your post to prove him wrong.
The fact that you don’t have a single data point to support your BS is telling, of course you couldn’t provide data because your statement is so comically false that I doubt even a racist like Steve Sailor would attempt to peddle it.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
That’s ridiculous. Most victims of black crime are black, just as most victims of white crime are white. Now, if you think any of that mitigates slavery, there’s no point in bringing facts to your attention anyway.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
…to a pretty shocking extent white America continues to decline to live up to what it’s been all about.
Despite that fragment being typically incomprehensible; it is a lie, a libel, and the statement of a hack and a “chickens come home to roost” partisan imbecile.
Didn’t TNC say just yesterday there is no such thing as a monolithic “white America.”
May 28th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Black-white racial conflict has always been the racial conflict in the United States and to a pretty shocking extent white America continues to decline to live up to what it’s been all about.
I don’t know what Matthew means by this. Does Matthew mean that “white America” ought to change the name of the Jeff Davis Highway, or close down the Stonewall Jackson shrine? What does Matthew think about President Barack Obama honoring the Confederate troops on Memorial Day by sending a wreath to the Confederate Memorial? Is that more of “white America” declining to live up to what it’s been all about?
May 28th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Do they teach logic in schools anymore? Your comment doesn’t refute what I said AT ALL.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
LOL.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
This thread was destined to be flooded with assholes. Nothing gets white people’s back up more than the assertion that they’re anything other than history’s innocent victim/knight in shining armor.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Oh, okay. So you’re distorting the truth in order to prove your point.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Uh for starters large swaths of white America could actually acknowledge that this shit happened rather than make asinine comments about how much better we’d have been if segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
If I did, would you accept my “data points” anyway? You think whites commit more violent crime against blacks than white against blacks?
May 28th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
What truth did I distort? And do you acknowledge that you attacked a strawman?
May 28th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
From Al’s link:
Noooooooooo, white America hasn’t had trouble facing up to its racist past, no way.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I think the posts above pretty much prove Matt’s point.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Tao, that’s actually a verifiable statistic – you can take a look at public opinion polls regarding white opinions about the extent of discrimination in housing, employment, credit, etc. versus the reality.
Hell, I’ll give you an easier example: white people in the North generally do not know about the history of Northern segregation. We learn about Little Rock in schools, but we don’t learn about Northern fights over “neighborhood schools;” we learn about Birmingham, but not Levittown. As a result, white people grow up with this conception of “racial innocence,” not understanding how historic patterns of restrictive covenants, red-lining, and white-flight segregated the communities they live in. Tom Sugrue’s Sweet Land of Liberty needs to be on every high school syllabus, post-haste.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Let the record show: James Cameron is pro-lynching, pro-vigilatism, and anti-law.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
“If I did, would you accept my “data points” anyway? You think whites commit more violent crime against blacks than white against blacks?”
by which, of course, I meant something else.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30870505/
May 28th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Or, continue to spout comically false BS about blacks committing more violence against whites than vice versa contrary to 300 years of documented history
May 28th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I… I don’t know. I feel like I’ve stumbled into some bizarro paradise universe, where after 30 years of Democrats doing everything they could to lose to these Southern strategy idiots, now all I see everyday is a foot shooting fest from these supposedly disciplined brigades of the right, doing everything they can to look like the Dixie-worshiping crazies I always knew they were. I love it.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
You are trying to convince white people they should be worried about black criminals and/or trying to diminish the historical impact of racist crimes like lynching.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
No, dummy, that’s not what the record shows. What I said was that when two rapist, robbing murderers end up dead, they got what they had coming. It’s called karma. But then again, here we are back to logic with you.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Seriously, as a white person I’m genuinely shocked and embarrassed that we still have roads named after people who committed treason rather than give up their slaves.
I mean, those guys in charge knew exactly what they were fighting for. They chose their side. They literally chose to kill hundreds of thousands of people rather than free slaves. That’s just sick. Nobody who made that decision should have anything named after him.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Do they teach logic in schools anymore? Your comment doesn’t refute what I said AT ALL.
What you said? You’re the first person in this thread commenting as “klhjh.” The comment you’re complaining about quoted the first comment in the thread, from someone called “James Cameron.” Is this sock puppetry?
Same question to lkjij and tao9, all of whom have as far as I know never commented here before. Not that there’s anything against new people, of course, if that’s what they/you genuinely are, but so many new people saying the same thing could just be one person dishonestly trying to avoid associations with his current identity, and/or to create the illusion of more widespread support than their position actually has.
In brief, why do racists tend to be dishonest?
May 28th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Wow, you want to step into a cesspool? Google “violent crime white victim” or something like that, and see what James Cameron’s friends at places like WorldNetDaily or Ourcivilisation.com are saying.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I’m talking about MODERN times, halfwit. Black males, roughly 6% of the US population, commit more than HALF of all murders. And what’s worse, the vast majority of those murders are committed by black males between the ages of 15 and 30, which means that a tiny sliver of the US population is responsible for a vasly disproportionate amount of the violence in this society.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Wow. This post really brought the cockroaches out into the light in this comment thread.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
A quick search shows Yglesias biased reporting:
Five indictments charged a total of 147 members and associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang, and federal and local agencies arrested 63 of them by early Thursday, U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien said at a news conference.
He called it ”the largest gang takedown in United States history” but did not elaborate.
The indictments detail attempted murder, kidnapping, firearms, narcotics and other charges related to attacks by the gang, which is predominantly Latino and mainly operates in Hawaiian Gardens, a city of about 15,000 in southeastern Los Angeles County.
”(Varrio Hawaiian Gardens) gang members take pride in their racism and often refer to the VHG Gang as the `Hate Gang,”’ the main indictment states. ”VHG gang members have expressed a desire to rid the city of Hawaiian Gardens of all African-Americans and have engaged in a systematic effort to achieve that result by perpetrating crimes against African-Americans.”
May 28th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
They were lynched. If you did not know that, you know that now. If your understanding of that incident was faulty, then my statement was as well.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
“Black-white racial conflict has always been the racial conflict in the United States”
Well, the genocide of Native-Americans helped make that so.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
This is a weird thread. Wow.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
“In 2006 Per every 1,000 persons in that racial group, 32 blacks, 23 whites and 18 persons of other races sustained a violent crime. . . According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, in 2006 about 50% off murder victims were black, 47% were white”
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_v.htm
May 28th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
to decline to live up to what it’s been all about.
No, seriously, what’s the best guess as to what that should have said? Usually I can make an educated guess, but here I’m genuinely lost.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Why does Yglesias get all the racist commenters? You’d think that other liberal blogs would attract them in equal proportion, yet they seem to dwell here in much greater numbers. Is the explanation a more tolerant banning policy here? (Ta-Nehisi, for example, wields the banhammer pretty regularly) Or is there something about Matthew’s blog in particular that attracts their comments?
[Related: Why are Yglesias threads always filled with the worst trolls? And why do I keep reading them?]
May 28th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Apparently, some people will say anything to deny our country’s past.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Black-white racial conflict has always been the racial conflict in the United States
Well, let’s not forget the U.S. vs. Native Americans, though I suppose you could characterize that as a conflict between sovereign nations, and not strictly a racial conflict.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Did you follow the exchange? Did the notorious whatever respond to the point I made?
And if you want me to claim a certain post, I’ll claim it. I’ve not tried to adopt multiple personas. I think it was yesterday I first posted on this site. Usually, when I’m new to a site, I just slap random keys because it doesn’t matter much to me. My post is also the first one under James Cameron.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Maybe because he’s been at this the longest? Just a guess.
And you’re right: I’ve never seen a blogger who issued fewer bannings. In fact I don’t think Matt has ever banned anyone. And if saying that several men who were lynched by a vigilante mob “got what was coming to them” doesn’t get someone banned, what will?
May 28th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
This wasn’t intended to refute what I wrote is it?
May 28th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I’m trying to think of a reason, other than attempting to fuel race-based panic, of saying “more black people kill white people than white people kill black people” in the face of facts saying that most white murder victims are killed by other white people. So far, no luck.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Related: Why are Yglesias threads always filled with the worst trolls? And why do I keep reading them?
Maybe part of it is that Yglesias almost never reads his comments, much less ever do any policing. You know, the whole “race to the bottom” phenomenon.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
From the other side, my parents and their family really do resent African Americans. They feel like they worked together for civil rights but blacks got all the press while latinos got the shaft, and that even where that’s not true blacks have no problem in operating in the system if it helps them even if it still discriminates more against Latinos.
I don’t feel that way, but many of that generation do.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I’m not a troll. I posted on this page for the first time yesterday. You don’t have to “ban” me. I’ll leave if you like. Yglesias can even take down my IP and out me if I ever come back. You can think what you like of me, it doesn’t affect me. But I’ll think what I want of you, and I’m sure you won’t be affected by that.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
And there’s a highway named after him just a few miles from where I type.
There’s also Lee Jackson Memorial Highway in Fairfax Co., Va.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Would one of you good white liberals like to explain to this guy the flaw in his reasoning? I’ve tried but he still doesn’t seem to grasp it.
Look up non-sequitur.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=ee891ec7cb78e2e87e3f42b9764f151d
May 28th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
I mean I can get kind of weird as a commenter but this is an absolute train-wreck. Three people have posted the same story about those Hispanic goons in CA, an issue to which Coates alludes in the quoted passage “beef between some folks in L.A.”
May 28th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
See a shrink, Wacko. It’s the first step to doing something useful with your life.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
NOW IT’S FOUR!!!!!
May 28th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Yglesias very clearly decided that his nominee should get the supreme court based on identity politics, she is Hispanic.
Never mind the rule of law, Yglesias decides he can skip that.
Now, has anyone been willing to comment on Hispanic attacks on black in LA as i this report:
Targeting of black communities by Hispanics ganges is much more common than Yglesias’ dream world would indicate. That he brings up race, then ignores obvious counter-conclusions makes him exactly what he claims to be, a racist.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
What James Cameron asserted is an empirical matter. Who wants to bet with me that more whites have been murdered by blacks than blacks murdered than whites? You can be as expansive in your definition of “lynching” as you wish – it will take me about 2 days to prepare the full post.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Hmm, my comment is showing before Mattyoung’s even though his was up first. Why would that happen? Oh well.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Every time I think that racism in America is an overblown phenomena and maybe you need to reassess some policies, I see a comment thread like this and I feel like an idiot.
Some of the rage that James Cameron and others are throwing at the suggestion that lynching was a bad thing, is insane. Seriously, James Cameron, “they had it coming”.. that is your position?
May 28th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
We can’t focus on black-hispanic racial antogonism because it might divert attention from the REAL problem: white racism. So let’s just say it’s being overhyped and hope it goes away.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
if saying that several men who were lynched by a vigilante mob “got what was coming to them” doesn’t get someone banned, what will?
Impersonating his bosses, sometimes. Apparently. It really is an ongoing disrespect to his regular commenters. To quote Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who knows about this stuff:
May 28th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I think lynching is a terrible thing. As a matter of principle. I am for the rule of law always. Where did I say anything different? All I meant was that not every lynched black guy was innocent. Many, like the two in the 1930 Marion, IN case, committed terrible crimes and I’ll not shed one tear for them–for the justice system, perhaps, but not for them.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I do admit I took this thread off course. But it’s not like you people didn’t need it. Enjoy your echo-chamber.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
You know, thinking of it, the statement “there are more ‘excess’ white people killed by blacks in a single year” than there are total black lynchings, pogroms, or riot murders in the 20th century is probably true.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Cyrus,
I’ve commented here many times — I know I must be truthful with my moral superiors — as tao9 and also as tao9.
Read my post (hint TNC=Ta-Nehisi Coates). My point is how is 2009 “white America” supposed to mitigate 1865 Jeff Effin’ Davis, as a monolithic group (as prescribed by MY the tantrum-enhanced MY)? Maybe Matt can go international, tour Britain and haul down all the Cromwell statues.
And thanks for calling me a racist, its the always first response that pops out of a hack-fanboy brain stem.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
This is too easy.
James Cameron, 5:30pm
James Cameron, 6:23pm
Want to lecture some people on logic and consistency? Go back and hang out with your nice white intellect equals over at vdare.com.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
From Al’s link:
As a compromise, Obama sent a wreath to the African-American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C.
He is the first president to send a wreath to this memorial that honors the 200,000 African-American soldiers who fought for the Union Army.
Noooooooooo, white America hasn’t had trouble facing up to its racist past, no way.
Huh? This statement is just as incomprehensible as Matthew’s.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Matt makes an assertion. He claims “black-white racial conflict has always been the racial conflict in the United States and to a pretty shocking extent white America continues to decline to live up to what it’s been all about…”, which I presume to interpret that to mean that white America is oblivious to its monstrous crimes against another ethnic group. Please, correct me in my interpretation if I am wrong. Some others have offered to present evidence that in totality, black-on-white violence is probably on the order of 2 or 3 magnitudes greater than the reverse throughout the 20th century, and wonder why this particular issue doesn’t present itself to Matt with similar amounts of concern. Are certain racial groups’ lives worth more than other groups? Just present a cogent argument and we can have a “nuanced” discussion.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Benjamin,
No one has presented a shred of evidence that suggests that Black on white violence is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude higher than white on black violence in the 20th century
May 28th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Not that easy for you, however: Opposition to vigilantism is one thing; not minding when a couple of raping murderers get theirs is quite another.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
All I meant was that not every lynched black guy was innocent
Had you bothered to read the post, you’d have realized that in the cases where an accused was lynched, this was generally a pretext for simply lynching anyone who came in the path of the mob, based on rumors, accusation, or jealously of their property, along with a desire to run them out of town and threaten the rest. And while you can argue that not all lynching victims were innocent, we know for a fact that every member of a lynch mob was 100% guilty.
And this was an accepted form of domestic terrorism committed by Americans as a means of keeping blacks “in their place” as well as providing an outlet for whites to vent their anger (to say nothing of the need to divert that anger away from whites holding any wealth or power)
May 28th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
The Tuskegee Institute reports about 5,000 lynchings from 1882. Calculating for one year alone the difference in black-on-white and white-on-black is about 6,000 homicides in the 2008 (0.0279271 homicide rate, 6 to 1 black on white differential in homicides, 300 million Americans). The picture is clear.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Here’s an article by Walter Williams, who used to be the Chair of the Economics Dept. at George Mason University, in which he discusses interracial violent crime. Walter’s, coincidentally, is black, so feel free to refer to him as “Uncle Tom.”
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams081899.asp
Also, I don’t know about the entire 20th century. I know that blacks were subject to much violence earlier in the century so I’m not sure how it balances out over time. However, in the past few decades the crime seems decidedly to have tilted in one direction. And I know that what happened in the past certainly can’t be used to justify what is happening now.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Ah, this is what happens when Steve Sailer lets his less subtle friends out to play.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Benjamin,
Your using homicide rates not black on white homicide.
James,
Walter Williams appears to jump back and forth between stats for all crime and his argument about violent crime.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
I read the post. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really support what you’ve said. He mentioned a few examples among thousands of cases. So your “generally a pretext” is a bit of extrapolation based on a grossly incomplete sample. We don’t know how many of the killed were guilty or innocent. You like to imagine them a sea of Emmitt Tills. Common sense tells me that probably wasn’t the case.
Yeah. But if someone had raped and murdered your daughter and you thought you had him in your hands, you probably wouldn’t mind anyone thinking you 100% guilty, even if the law said you were.
That sounds like a great idea for a Bob Dylan song. But that doesn’t happen anymore. As has been pointed out several times already, the vasy majority of interracial violence is black on white.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Do you do more than heckle?
May 28th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
In threads that aren’t hijacked by Steve Sailer’s less subtle friends? Sure. I don’t waste the good stuff on cretins.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I’d take your word that you are capable of “good stuff” but I’d prefer a link. Do you fancy yourself super smart and funny or something?
May 28th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
But if someone had raped and murdered your daughter and you thought you had him in your hands, you probably wouldn’t mind anyone thinking you 100% guilty, even if the law said you were.
Guess what, dumbass? None of those people in the lynchmob were the father of the victims. They were simply a bunch of violent thugs who saw the event as something they did for fun in order to vent their bloodthirsty urges on people they saw as deserving– in other words, those lynch mobs werre 100% guilty, and we know that for a fact, whereas you’re just pulling stuff out of your ass when try to portray the southern lynching tradition as just casual vigilante justice.
Never thought I’d see the pro-lynching crowd come out in force, but there you go– a bunch of people endorsing Amnerica’s tradition of domestic terrorism. Stunning.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
I specifically did not deny the guilt of those people. Can’t you people argue fairly or are you just too stupid?
You’re a dishonest person.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
“Black-white racial conflict has always been the racial conflict in the United States and to a pretty shocking extent white America continues to decline to live up to what it’s been all about.”
Well, except for anti-Native American conflict (White-perpetrated), which is just as much “the” racial conflict in the United States and which America also continues to decline to admit to.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
I don’t know about you, but I think, or at the very least I hope, that if someone raped and murdered my daughter I wouldn’t retaliate against someone with nothing in common but the rapist-murderer except for skin color. I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
“with nothing in common with the rapist-murderer…” Sorry.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Wow. I have to figure out a way to get Israel into this so the lynch mob supporters and the people who fantasize about mass murder of Iranians can join forces for the ultimate slime thread extravaganza!
May 28th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Re: murder
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
see charts three and four.
most murder is white-on-white or black-on-black by a large margin. however, there is significantly more black-on-white murder than white-on-black murder. This is a pretty big outlier considering the number of whites and blacks in the country.
This does support “lkjh”, or whatever his name is, in a technical way. It does not in any way refute the horror of systemic violence against blacks that has been going on for the last 400 years in America. some of you might want to try and engage with people’s ideas and data before just labeling people as “racists”
ALSO!!!! Native Americans are obviously the biggest victims of violence and murder in the U.S. historically, and even today are 2.5 times more likely to be the victim of violent crime than are blacks.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
If you’re trying to wear me down, it’s working. Implicit in what I wrote was that the hypothetical father sincerely believed he had the person who committed the crime. I don’t care how racist someone is, I doubt they’d rather retaliate against the wrong person than the right one simply because the wrong person shared that person’s skin color. For no other reason than that it allows the guilty party to escape.
I’m sure it’s happened, but so has everything else under the sun.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
James, You said something stupid. Walk it back and figure out what of all the things in the world that could compel you to type your thoughts on the internet, *that* got your dander up and motivated you to action. Just maybe there is something better you could be doing in the world.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Another factor that is rarely discussed is the demographic distribution. There are large swaths of America that are occupied almost exclusively by isolated groups of white people, who kill, rape and rob, almost exclusively, one another. However, there are not any areas of the US where blacks exist in an insular state, where they don’t come in contact with whites. My point is that those numbers include all the white people killing each other into the overall statistics. I think what would be even more lopsided than the numbers that we have would be numbers that dealt with the interracial crime stats in areas where whites and blacks come in frequent contact with one another. For example, what do you think the interracial violent crime stats would say for New York City or Philadelphia? Or even a southern City like New Orleans?
(my apologies for my inarticulate explanation)
May 28th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Re Z at 81: “however, there is significantly more black-on-white murder than white-on-black murder. This is a pretty big outlier considering the number of whites and blacks in the country.”
————-
I’m confused — if blacks are inferior, why do they win most of the fights?
May 28th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I’m stunned you’re able to remember to breathe, nevermind operate a personal computer.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I think I’ve said many things that people will call racist. I don’t care about that. But I would like for you to tell what I said that was stupid and why. If it’s a matter of ideological disapproval, don’t be surprised if I’m not persuaded. Also, to answer your other question, I write about many things. I like to express myself just like most other people who post their opinion on blogs. I’m writing about race and crime because I feel the subject is dishonestly reported in the media, academia etc. The larger culture. I fully expect to be marginalized as a racist, but that has no bearing on the truth or falsity of what I think.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I don’t care how racist someone is, I doubt they’d rather retaliate against the wrong person than the right one simply because the wrong person shared that person’s skin color. For no other reason than that it allows the guilty party to escape.
I’m sure it’s happened, but so has everything else under the sun.
You’re missing the point: they enjoyed violence against black people for the flimsiest of excuses. Whether certain black people did what the mobs accused them of is really irrelevant: this was a system of violent repression that murdered for whatever justification it could find.
You’ll notice that large white mobs didn’t form to lynch white people who were suspected of a rape or murder. (I’m sure it happened once or twice, but lynching of blacks was systematic.)
Starting this thread with “strange fruit, indeed” really is downplaying the seriousness of what happened. And then you go on to try to justify it.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
No hit-and-runs allowed. Be specific. Did you not understand my point? Seems rather common sensical to me. Perhaps you’ve misunderstood.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
I’m not talking about the mindless mob, whether the victims were guilty of the accusations against them or not.
Not only did it happen, it almost happened to the white man who murdered my great grandmother in Atoka, OK in 1923. His name was Sam Watkins and he barely escaped a lynch mob when at the last minute the local law enforcement moved him from his prison cell to another location moments before the lynch mob arrived. (He was eventually executed).
You’re right here. I shouldn’t have made that comment. I didn’t even try to justify it in the case I cited, where the lynched men were undoubtedly guilty. I was just saying I didn’t have any sympathy for them. Just I wouldn;t for a guilty white man.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
No hit-and-runs allowed.
Sorry, trolls don’t get to set the rules.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Just as I suspected. You’ve got nothing.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Not only did it happen, it almost happened to the white man who murdered my great grandmother in Atoka, OK in 1923. His name was Sam Watkins and he barely escaped a lynch mob when at the last minute the local law enforcement moved him from his prison cell to another location moments before the lynch mob arrived. (He was eventually executed).
You cannot seriously be suggesting that lynch mobs were about “fighting crime” as opposed to keeping black people “in their place” and terrorizing them.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I’m not talking about the mindless mob,
They weren’t mindless, they were racist.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Evidently, the Sotomayor nomination was interpreted as an all-clear signal for racists to display their colors, loud and proud.
This is ugly to observe, but it’s also great news. Let it fester in the open in all its horrific, resentful glory.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Some people undoubtedly thought they were dispensing justice; others were just sadists who wanted to kill blacks. Obviously, again, it’s always wrong. I detest mob violence wherever it occurs.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
As Louis Brandeis used to say, let sunlight be the disinfectant.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I want to be clear that I understand how lynching was used as a tool to enforce the existing racial system in the south after the civil war. Like Randy Newman sings.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Is it wrong for me to take such joy in the complete Dixie takeover of the Republican Party? Oh, please let it continue!
May 28th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
You should totally celebrate. The Republican party is history as a national party, a fate it richly deserves.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Some people undoubtedly thought they were dispensing justice; others were just sadists who wanted to kill blacks. Obviously, again, it’s always wrong. I detest mob violence wherever it occurs.
That’s a little too, er, black and white. Most people weren’t sadists, they were average people whose concept of “justice” was built around keeping black people “in their place”, especially in the realm of sexuality and “protecting white women”.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I don’t understand Ta-Nehisi’s comment about black-Cuban relations in Florida. Miami saw 3 separate race riots in the 1980’s largely attributed to black resentment of Cuban refugees. It’s simply not accurate to claim that cultural tensions in the 20th century only existed between whites and blacks or else only existed on the West Coast. Cultural tensions come with multiculturalism. We have to accept it and deal with it. It seems to me that the more strident an individuals cultural identity, the more likely there are to be tensions with others of different cultures. It’s why I hate identity politics.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Why, it’s the rarely stated demi-official motto of the Republican party!
And people wonder why the G.O.P. can’t gain a larger minority vote share.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Good points. Even William Faulkner, who was repulsed by the murder of Emmitt Till, threatened to take to the streets and start killing blacks if pushed far enough by the Fed. Govt. And it’s hard to imagine a more “empathic” writer than Faulkner, to borrow a word in the news of late.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Whew! Glad I’m not a Republican.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
That’s crazy.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
pushed far enough by the Fed.
No matter how they felt, no one was pushed to murder black people.
And it’s hard to imagine a more “empathic” writer than Faulkner, to borrow a word in the news of late.
You’re referring to when George H. W. Bush praised Clarence Thomas for his empathy, right?
May 28th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I am stunned by this thread.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Stupefied is the proper word, I think.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
A lot of people on this thread are just making shit up about the number of whites killed by blacks each year, and what that means historically. Here are some actual, easily Googleable figures from the Bureau of Justice:
Blacks killed 934 white people in 2005. Whites killed 337. So if you’re talking in absolute terms, blacks had a net gain of 600 in the “us vs. them” murder tally.
But that’s skewed because there are more black murderers than white (for a variety of reasons, which I assume you don’t want to attribute to inherent racial differences if you’re the type of person interested in actual data). So there are much more meaningful ways to consider the data.
For example, in a colorblind society, 80% of the people killed by black murderers would be white (80% of the country being white). Instead it’s 17%. Meanwhile, 13% of the people killed by white murderers should be black. Instead it’s 6.5%. This shows that 1) People are overwhelmingly killing within their own races, and 2) Black murderers are less racist against whites (killing at less than a fourth the “colorblind” rate) than white murderers are against blacks (killing at about half the colorblind rate).
So to sum up, when you control for obvious factors, white murderers are more racist than black murderers.
And FWIW, DonkeyBenjamin and others, comparing the total number of whites killed by blacks in a year to the total number of historical lynchings makes absolutely no sense, because 1) You’re ignoring the fact that whites still kill blacks 2) You’re ignoring non-lynching murders throughout American history, including the many slaves killed by masters, and 3) You’re ignoring the fact that these are fundamentally different crimes. The choice of one person to murder another is simply not comparable to entire towns getting together to torture and kill people without trial, all without government reprobation for 100 years. And the argument that some of the victims had it coming is no less appalling than saying that some of the Armenian genocide victims had probably committed capital crimes against Turkey.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
In that situation, then one would hope that the Federal marshalls would have shot Faulkner down first.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Many of you are pathetic. If you can’t engage the provided data or at least craft a false narrative of your own, all you are tossing around is outrage and ad hominem, which I realize you tend to do quite well, but that doesn’t impress anyone when careers aren’t at stake.
How does one believe the Left on its narrative on lynchings when they refuse to apply their vaunted critical reasoning towards the phenomenon? The fact that the previous obvious statistical assertions shocked some here suggests that many who think that lynchings are the most prominent part of black-white violent interaction in this country are obviously innumerate, and further, it casts doubt upon the “malicious” narrative the Left continues to champion. Sifting through the relevant facts in each separate incident probably requires a lifetime of dedication to the history, but I cannot envision a motivation where whites attack blacks for the hell of it purely because of racial animus. Indeed, Emmitt Till’s murder was and still is completely unjustified, but yet there was an identifiable proxy – he whistled at a white woman. That suggests that lynchings had cause, however slight, and were not simply the random orgies of idiot violence that many here are so eager to believe. It’s also clear the disparity in racial offending was not eliminated in this pre-Brown era – if lynching was straightforwardly applied towards murderers and rapists in an overtly race-neutral manner, one would expect to discern a racial disparity in the retold history of those lynchings. Yes, shockingly enough, some of those who died deserved their death – but they also deserved the due process afforded to those who had fuller legal rights. In short, I want the concise facts as specific as possible before leftists manage to guilt trip the entire country on, yes, the nuance of vigilante justice applied within a different era, and certainly before crafting tenuous new theories of needed restitution for those admitted crimes.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Why on Earth would you expect anyone to read such utter tripe and be prompted into a serious discussion?
It even utterly debases the notion of the word “cause” as would be commonly used — I mean, good god, from the very fucking get go, everyone gets that there was a bullshit justification placed upon the whistle in the insane moral code of the idiot Southern racist system.
Colombian paramilitaries massacre entire villages, but not without ’cause’ in this sense. They suspect someone might get in the way of some conservative local politician whom they’re counting on to help them in their narcotrafficking endeavors. Somebody’s kid joined the FARC. Somebody who knew something got one of the paras arrested. We get that. We know some crazy criminal asshole thought some action prompted said horrific response. Everyone gets it.
No one is then forced to conclude that it was either completely formless and unpredictable random violent or that it’s somehow insightful that some asshole saw something as a ’cause’ to slaughter a dozen people in front of witnesses and dump the bodies to rot in a mass grave.
Personally I view lynching as part of the anti-democratic terror campaign systematically waged by the white racist upper class establishment across the South to reverse the political and power gains of the Reconstruction era, including the successful violent coup d’etat of an illegal white mob which overthrew the lawfully elected government of North Carolina’s then largest and wealthiest city, Wilmington, in 1898 — something which Wilmington formally commemorated and worked on putting behind them in 1998 as the hideous anti-democratic crime that it was.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
I believe I made a statistical error and one of my percentages I used in a previous calculation is wrong. However, I have a direct source to quote so I don’t have to pull out the handy TI. See this link here: from 1976 to 2002, blacks murdered 26,727 whites and whites murdered 10,207 blacks, making the ‘excess’ whites killed over that period 16,520 individuals. My calculation was terrifically off because for a very silly reason I simply forgot that black on black and white and white violent crime is the norm and forgot to remove that from the comparison in homicide rate (6 to 1). In any case, that is far larger than the charitable 5,0000 lynchings we find from the data the Tuskegee Institute has on record, over 120 years compared to the 26 year modern figure.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Of course, white terror and white privilege not only operated negatively, on blacks, but positively, to create less competition for whites. The white middle class wouldn’t exist if it weren’t built on centuries of the worst terroristic violence, and that has extended into the present. But, because a segment of the white population and the black population, with exemplary patience, pressed to roll back racist conditions, we are verging on a much better society.
Naturally, the Sheet heads will squawk. But their comments now have that desperation which comes from people who know they are over the moral line – they are not only in minority in this country, their very children, taught real history, despise every word that ocmes out of their mouths. Thus, the KKK faction that thinks, comically, that the story is of blacks murdering whites will become exhibits around their own table of imbecility. It is great! And it causes them no end of dyspepsia. Their day is over, and it couldn’t come soon enough – to free ourself from the yoke of these peckerwood attitudes is one of the glorious side effects of Obama’s presidency. Every day, in every way, the racists lose.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
The black on white vs. white on black is sort of missing the point. It’s called encounter rates.
If I had a hat that had 100 names representing the demographics of america and i pulled out a name, more then likely I’d pick a white person. So all things being equal, i’d expect any crime against white people to be higher than against any other race.
Of course, all things aren’t equal, and even random encounters lean more towards people of your own race. But still the same principle applies. It’s easier to bump into a white person in this country than any other race. Note that the category “other on white” is also typically higher than “white on other.” but that other category is dominated by asians. Same principle applies. It’s easier to run into a white person than a non white.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Or to put it simply. All things being equal, white people should make up 76 percent of black murders and blacks should make up 12 percent of white murders.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Roger, that is a sweeping and radical sexy new theory of middle class formation if I ever heard one. Restrained and credible – it has all the hallmarks of good science. I will be excited to gauge the reaction when the world is exposed to your brilliance in the next issue of Social Text.
Before doing so, we might want to test this theory on yours in nations with different histories of slavery than the United States. Do you suppose that the white middle class of the United Kingdom grew from the substrate of black bondage, even though there was no significant black labor force in the genesis of the Industrial Revolution? Do you also hold that the differential between the two interracial crime rates would be reversed in the famously egalitarian France, or did they too manage to prosper only through slaveholding?
May 28th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Indeed, Emmitt Till’s murder was and still is completely unjustified, but yet there was an identifiable proxy – he whistled at a white woman. That suggests that lynchings had cause, however slight, and were not simply the random orgies of idiot violence that many here are so eager to believe.
Yeah, and sometimes the “cause” was stopping black people from trying to vote, or terrorizing them through church bombings to stop them campaigning for civil rights. The existence of a “cause” doesn’t mean that these weren’t orgies or terror and violence to keep an oppressed population in its place.
And various people have engaged with your numbers and, more importantly, the assumptions behind your interpretation of what they mean.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
There are a lot of places in the world where common violent crimes and murders outnumber targeted assassination campaigns, but this doesn’t make such assassinations (and threats of them) irrelevant or ineffective.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
“Stupefied” is a better word, donkey. Thnx. Floored. I gather from the reaction to Sotomayor’s appointment that race relations in the U.S. are much worse than I thought they were, and I didn’t think everything was hunky-dory.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Anthony, simply put, I don’t believe your narrative. Not without further research of my own. The Left as a rule tends to rely on anecdotes and not appropriate generalizations of their favored topics. I am very willing to believe that an atmosphere of sexual jealousy charged the lynchings, because that comports with my observations of white supremacists as they are today, but then again it’s also a supremely favored leftist narrative, hoping to insinuate a sexual deficit amongst those who claim Southern cultural or political heritage. For example, the very temperate claim posited by James Cameron that some of the lynched were indeed guilty of violent crimes was reacted to as justifying the action, which would be quite uncontroversial in an audience with more historicity. To me, this is an innocent finding of fact – given your reaction, and my politics, is it really prudent for me to swallow wholesale this favored narrative? I think not. Many of you are especially notorious for this behavior in cases like the Duke Lacrosse case and Jena 6, completely coming up with malevolent motivations for the whites involved in both; it turned out when the facts came in that adolescent jocks were only looking for a no-nonsense stripper, and those brave six were not only celebrated heroes of their hometown, but at least 3 of them have assaulted other individuals since.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Wait — it’s now considered pomo & controversial to assess the economic role played by slavery in the development of the U.S. and especially Southern U.S. economic and social system? What?
Well, I would think that West Africa counts as black. I don’t think India does, but there certainly are the occasional voices who think it mattered in UK economic development (I mean, if the British government’s view counts), as did the profit from the colonies in the Americas, partly produced by slavery.
What is this? Weird race theory day?
May 28th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
What is this? This is an argument? I.e., ‘I don’t have much of a clue of what may be the reality of what has happened, but since I’m convinced ‘the left’ inappropriately generalizes then I’ll count as more seriously bullshit irrelevant observations from contemporary white supremacists’?
What the fucking fuck has happened here?
May 28th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Benjamin,
Cameron’s exact words were “those pieces of shit got what they deserved”
If that doesn’t constitute justifying lynching what does it mean?
May 28th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
What the fucking fuck has happened here?
It’s really bad. And scary.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
El Cid,
Let me explain myself slowly and clearly for the benefit of your distractible and vulgar mind.
What was the underlying motivation for the thousands of lynchings that occurred in the post-Reconstruction? Leftists would like me to believe that the vast majority of them were relative trifles like that which lead to Emmitt Till’s death. An example of such a trifle would be the easily repressed sexual jealousy of an interracial nature – an observation that also comports with my experience of modern white supremacists despite the suspiciously suitable narrative in leftist thought.
On the other hand, the Left has a bad habit of simply making stuff up when the facts don’t fit, especially when there is a racial element involved. The Jena 6 story, as breathlessly told in rallies, involved a racist principal enforcing a segregationist tradition against innocent and disadvantaged students. In reality, those six were star football players, adored by the community; the nooses had nothing to do with the events; and the parties were by no means segregated. The story began to look kinda lame when those kids showed up on BET flashing chains and generally looking like thugs they were and eventually were re-arrested for assault offenses yet again. Not so incredibly, the Left had managed to convince themselves that the underhanded gang beat-down of a defenseless kid, the very type they purport to empathize with was…justified.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Donkey Benjamin. Are you real?
You are actually writing that Emmett Til “caused” his own lynching. Mind you it was a “relative trifle” to whistle at a white woman.
If Emmet had made a rude comment to a woman then you and your buddy James Cameron would really have no choice but to torture and string up the little kid. As your fellow racist Cameron observed “those pieces of shit got what they deserved.”
Hope you and Steve Sailer can go enjoy your all Aryan island somewhere.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Because if you believe that the Jena 6 incident was a tempest in a teacup it follows that the history of lynching in the south is also just as likely as not to be much ado about nothing…
Did someone slip some bad acid into my drink this evening?
May 28th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Let me explain myself slowly and clearly for the benefit of your distractible and vulgar mind.
In other words, you don’t know anything of what you speak, you feel fine making shit up, and in place of an actual argument, you’re going to toss off completely irrelevant bullshit based from what you think are anthropological observations. A more hollow pile of redneck pseudo thought no one needs to encounter.
Fuck off you idiot shitbag for even thinking your babbling nonsense constitutes an argument. And please take your bullshit “ha u use curse word i win” and shove it up your ass on the way out.
It doesn’t matter who said or did what about the Jena 6, this in no way strengthens the rest of your word jumble as an argument. If the entirety of ‘the Left’ (however you define that term) had spent the last 30 years protesting any imaginable made up incident or for that matter gathered in a warehouse on the Moon screaming at fruit fly shadows and praising Robert Mugabe’s goat, it still doesn’t back up your awful evidence-free based bullshit speculations about the proximate causes of lynching.
I’m not even sure you could recognize what an argument was, much less make one. And if you don’t like rude language, fuck off and don’t read blogs.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:17 am
Billare, excellent! Your theory is that the apartheid that reigned in America from 1865 to 1965 (officially) and 1975-2000 (in reality) had no economic basis, but was merely an expression of the basic sadism of white people. They enjoy inflicting pain and death, and stealing, kidnapping, robbery, etc. were just incidentals.
But I have a less scarifying view of whites. I obviously don’t hate them like you do. In fact, they weren’t psychotic sadists. Now, the racist remainder, the dixified dregs of the GOP – that I don’t know about. They are seriously disturbed. But – knowing that they are despicable, they will either continue to spiral out of control until they are generationally replaced, or – as I think is very possible – will simply drop the game, realizing that, for the most part, they are being played as suckers by some of the stupidest plutocrats and plutocrat media personalities ever to make a bundle on fooling people all the time.
Enjoy your theory, though, that U.S. history is the endless unfolding of caucasian sadism. Love it!
May 29th, 2009 at 12:28 am
“Order A.P. Hill to prepare for action!”
Old T.J. Love ‘em! Even on his deathbed he was ordering that red-shirted slacker General Hill to get his ass moving.
Thank god Stonewall’s own boys riddled his body with mini-balls, because that traitorous motherfucker was the finest general this continent has produced.
Without his “right arm” the bumbler, Bobby Lee, never stood a chance. It was only a matter of time before his favored strategy of leaving “the fate of the battle in the hands of God” failed him and his magnificent Army of Benidict Arnolds.
Robert E. Lee’s god may have endorsed slavery, but he did take kindly to disloyalty. Only a genius like Jackson could have overcome the Grapes of Wrath.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:28 am
You know, El Cid, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this pissed off….But then again, I’ve never seen the racists feel this free to dump shit in a thread. This makes the whole Jesse Helms death thing seem like a romantic picnic.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:31 am
AlexF,
You completely misinterpreted what I wrote. You are either willfully obtuse, profoundly retarded, and either case deserve no response.
DMonteith,
The argument from incredulity is sophisticated in some circles. But you do realize that stupid creationists employ it too? You wouldn’t want to be like them, would you?
El Cid,
I tried for a long time to parse what you wrote. It’s a remarkably empty, and it’s not particularly good or saucy invective – leave it to better people. Seriously, you spend half of the time insulting someone who doesn’t lose a second from his sleep over profanities exchanged over the Internet.
Your point seems to be: I know nothing of which I speak. I beg to differ. As I explained before, many of those purporting to know much have no accurate idea of the historical scope of white-on-black lynching and refuse to entertain the idea that the method could have been used out of anything other than racial animus, to the point of excluding some of the factual examples of lynched black criminals that James Cameron gave, by whence he uttered “they deserved it”. Their heinous crimes demonstrate they did deserve it, which is also separate from their right to due process. If that drives you crazy with anti-racist fervor, you are beyond help and I pity you.
The substance of your last two paragraphs, outside of insults and profanities, is an indictment of the comparison between the Jena 6 story and the lynchings. Why are they invalid comparisons? Shouldn’t we expect that a modern story with a racial tinge should better grasp the salient facts than combing through time to illustrate an old history? I pointed out clearly that there is a tendency of liberals to divine a malevolent intent in whites in their kind of “dog-whistle” case where it turns out later under rigorous inspection than none exists. You offer little rebuttal, which pleases me.
By the way, I am better than you. At the moment, I feel smug and self-satisfied because you’re reduced to inanities at the slightest of my counter-arguments, which suggests you believe that your position is a weak one. Henceforth I shall retire to bed comforted in this knowledge.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:40 am
I think we need to set a pay per view with Benjamin debating Alan Keys, any topic will do, I think they might actually understand each other.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:41 am
This I believe. I’m impressed that you could actually learn typing.
I’m glad I could help you. I guarantee you, though, that if I weren’t laughing at you, I wouldn’t have wasted a second entertaining myself by showing what a non-argument you have presented by the devious and inane technique of quoting you.
No. This is incorrect. Your point was that you knew noting of what you spake:
Hail, Falstaff, having slain the cur, Thus you take your leave.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:42 am
“They[whites] enjoy inflicting pain and death, and stealing, kidnapping, robbery, etc. were just incidentals.”
For the interested, here is a graph illustrating the multiples of the black-on-white violent crime rates after controlling for likelihood of encounter.
The ratio for homicide is about 3 to 1. The ratio for robbery is about 2 to 1. Kidnapping is not analyzed. The ratio for rape is about 8 to 1. The ratio about sexual assault is about 4 to 1.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:43 am
I would rather see Benjamin’s Ass debate Gary Novak, but they might in fact get along, if not agree with one another. They both have interesting methods of argument and deduction.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:48 am
I don’t rightly know whatever the hell was going on with that there lynchin’ a long time ago, but I figger somebody ort ta be lyin’, seein’ as how the Right lied when they was a tellin’ us that that there Saddam had them BVD’s.
The way I reckon it, I knew these bunch a guys down at the YMCA that was always fightin’ over the racquetball court, and I figger that this bein’ somethin’ I saw, and these fellers bein’ a coupla damn fools, that this done serves me a lot better ta talk about that there lynchin’ stuff a ways back than all sorts a stuff what I don’t know.
Anyway, I win the internetz ’cause I put these here sen-ten-siz together, and that one feller acted like he din’t like it, and from what I heer’t of ta rules of teh intertoobz, this makes me a winner.
And since I figger’s I won somethin’, I’m ‘on get some sleep, and I’ll put on my Vicktree PJ’s and tell the little wo-man that I’m feelin’ the hero tonight!!!
May 29th, 2009 at 12:59 am
The argument from incredulity is sophisticated in some circles.
Y’see, it’s not an argument. I’m actually just incredulous.
You’re going to follow up on “lynching’s not so bad” with a “you’re a creationist” crack? Really? What’s next, the moon landings were faked and the scholarship in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is under-appreciated?
Incredulity doesn’t begin to describe it!
May 29th, 2009 at 1:35 am
I think this thread shows that Matt really just considers the comments as something not to give much of a shit about on his onwards-and-upwards career.
In that spirit, I’d urge visitors to his new condo to take a dump in the corner and see how long it takes for him to notice. Seriously, Matt: your name is at the top of this page: you have title on it.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:59 am
pseudonymous: You don’t want to get in the business of weeding comments. The problem with it is that you own what you choose not to delete. Chasmo from LGF is in this bind. Once you start down this path, you have left a demarcation of what you deem to be unacceptable. Better to let chips lay where they are than be forced to justify every last internet moron you didn’t feel worthy of erasing.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:03 am
The worldwide trend is that East Asians (those of Chinese, Japanese or Korean ancestry) tend to commit less crime than whites.
Some of the possible risk factors include:
- Low MAOA activity leads to increased risk of impulsivity & aggression (this interacts with childhood trauma/maltreatment – see Moffitt’s Dunedin study 2002)
- Testosterone levels (compare men & women’s crime rates)
- Low IQ which can lead to doing badly at school. As a result people can become alienated from school and society and see little prospect of earning a good living by gainful employment.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:33 am
Oh wow….how did this thread become the Bull Connor fanboy thread?
I LOLed at a comment made a few days ago about how someone always looks for pictures of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions laughing when the Selma police turned on those firehoses.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:05 am
Typical divide-and-conquer tactics. There are millions of Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and white allies working to make this country a better, more unified place and it is freaking out the scared close-minded bigots.
I think every year, with the help of advocacy, the internet, etc…. are starting to wise up to the politics of hate and division.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Does anybody know why people say conservatives are racists?
Anyone?
May 29th, 2009 at 7:08 am
The real problem in America today is that the Left fails to appreciate the subtle and complex motivations of those white folk who felt like they had to lynch the black folk.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:22 am
When you put it like that, can you blame him? I mean, the people calling for banning are being just a wee bit self-important here.
There are so many ways this analogy doesn’t work I don’t know where to begin. Ed is right about banning. It isn’t a good option for every blogger.
This site needs more spoofs.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:34 am
What the F*ck? I know that Mr. Yglesias’ site attracts racists, but I always expected the Steve Sailer kind of ‘genteel’ race-monger, but not actual defenders of _lynching_. What’s next? Minstrel shows?
James Cameron and Donkey Benjamin,
The British industrial revolution, and for that matter the French too, were largely built on profits from the sugar and other industries in the West Indies, which were run on, you got it, slave labor. And it will take two good centuries of massive orgies of black violence against White people (not that I’m endorsing this, for the morons who can’t understand satire) to equal the number of black slaves that were hanged, thrown off ships, crammed into holds like so many cattle, castrated, separated from their spouses and children, worked to death, flogged to death, starved to death, or maltreated to death. I mean, get this straight: black slaves were thrown off the sides of ships, bound in chains, when the ship was too heavy. I can’t stop you from being a racist, but I can at least demand that you be honest about just what you are defending.
As for lynching, if whistling at a white woman is grounds for lynching then you should move to Afghanistan, you would love it. (Although there they would probably kill the woman for being whistled at, not the whistler). I suspect that a good number of the Ukrainian kulaks were guilty of crimes of greed and hoarding that were substantially more serious than a bit of whistling. The very term “kulak” implies ‘tight fist’ or something does it not? So, very good, by your logic Stalin was justified in starving the entire Ukrainian population into submission? Gee, perhaps I should use that logic too. There’s very little in the way of atrocities that can’t be justified that way.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Josh,
Funnily enough, black people haven’t ever committed any ‘crimes’ to match in number the Cultural Revolution, the Rape of Nanking, the Khmer Rouge auto-genocide, and the Indonesians purges of communists. Perhaps the Black people are just not smart enough to be good mass murderers, huh?
May 29th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Actually, Hector, I don’t know what the inane goal of that argument is, but just in the most recent decades you’ve had the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing multifocal ethnocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I cringe every time someone lionizes Rodney King as something other than the common criminal that he is. Of course there are crooked/racist cops out there, but that whole incident was blown out of proportion by the media which failed to report the whole story.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
See, we have these things called laws, and they mean that if a bunch of racist cops beat the shit out of you, it is as much of a tragedy whether you were speeding or whether you were doing nothing. There is no “whole story”. The same with lynching—there is no “had it coming” because there is nothing you could do, no amount of looking at white women or anything else, that means you “deserve” to be lynched.
You guys are really disgusting.
May 30th, 2009 at 9:24 am
el cid in the thread is a clear case study of how seemingly reasonable people at first when push comes to shove become raging…. (fill in the blank and it is not thoughtful) then multiply that with a mob mentality and you get a clear picture of what kind of people partook in executing those lynching parties, the holocaust camarough genocide etc…Serious frontal lobe failur.
May 30th, 2009 at 10:34 am
My thanks for a really good morning laugh.
So, on a blog I get verbally pissy (with bad words!) with a nitwit moron making shitty arguments about how the poor lynchers are misunderstood — as though this were some actual researcher’s real life work on the context and facts of lynching — and next I’ll be shoving people into the gas chambers.
OK. Yeah. Fuck off, nitwit.