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| Will Holder discuss these five racial issues? |
| 2009-02-25 |
| Here are five racial matters Americans must talk about but liberals avoid like leprosy: * The 1965 Moynihan Report: Also known as “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” the report noted the increase in the absence of fathers in the nation’s black households and then predicted, with chilling accuracy, what the consequences would be if the situation got worse. It did: some 25 percent of black children were born out of wedlock; today that figure is close to 70 percent. Black leaders in 1965 dismissed Moynihan and his report. So much for honest, gutsy dialogue. * Affirmative action: In the late 1980s James Farmer, the now deceased former head of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), gave a speech at a Baltimore private school. On the matter of affirmative action, Farmer didn’t give the kneejerk, liberal response, in essence saying that affirmative action is something holy and those opposing it are the second coming of Eugene “Bull” Connor, the notorious Birmingham, Ala. public safety commissioner who in 1963 set police dogs on civil rights demonstrators. “Fighting segregation was easy,” Farmer told the gathering. “That was clearly a case of right vs. wrong. With affirmative action and racial preferences, it’s a case of right vs. right.” What other black leader has had the guts to say that publicly? None. And don’t look for Holder – or even President Barack Obama – to say it. You’d have better luck getting a dead dog to roll over. * The racial disparity in felony murders: According to the FBI’s supplementary homicide reports, from 1976 through 2005 whites were 54.7 percent of felony murder victims. Blacks were 59.3 percent of felony murder offenders. Those figures might explain why those on death row are more likely there for killing whites rather than blacks, but so far only the death-row racial disparity has been discussed. * The racial disparity in interracial homicides: Though the overwhelming majority of homicides are intraracial – mainly whites murdering whites and blacks murdering blacks – when the killing gets interracial, the black-on-white slayings are nearly three times the white-on-black ones. That trend stayed pretty much constant for the years 1976-2005. * The Morelock-Woycio murders: If you’ve never heard of them, then that’s precisely the point. In April of 2006, Jennifer Morelock and Jason Woycio, a white couple from Carroll County in Maryland, were fatally shot in Baltimore. A 17-year-old black youth was caught with a cell phone that had the sent text message “I killed 2 white people around my way 2day & 1 of them was a woman.” What seemed like a slam-dunk, open-and-shut murder case went south when the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office cut the teen loose because the arresting officer had only a consent search to look at the cell phone’s contents, not a warrant. The alleged murderer walked. I think we all know what would have ensued if the races of the suspect and the victims were transposed. When it comes to cowardice about racial issues, Baltimore’s elected officials have it in abundance. Not one has uttered a syllable, much less a word or a complete sentence, about the Morelock-Woycio murders since they happened. That too, would not have been the case if the races of the suspect and victims were reversed. There you have them, Mr. Holder. Start talking. |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #6 when the killing gets interracial, the black-on-white slayings are nearly three times the white-on-black ones. It's 14 to 1. The 3-1 figure includes Hispanics as "white". Lying with statistics. Just as white crime rates are below European levels and educational testing scores match or exceed European levels. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-02-25 13:02 |
| #5 Who is Ty'Sheoma Bethea? Miss Bethea was a poster child at last nights Obama speech before congress. She has three possible strikes against her. 1. Trying to get an education in dilapidated schools. 2. Probable victim of item #1 in the story above. 3. Spending the rest of her life spelling her first name for people, trying to explain how she got it and what it means. |
| Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2009-02-25 12:52 |
| #4 With affirmative action and racial preferences, it's a case of right vs. right. No it isn't. Affirmative action is wrong. It is discrimination plain and simple. If blacks and other minorities in this country ever want real respect, if they ever really want to even respect themselves, affirmative action needs to go. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2009-02-25 12:51 |
| #3 Two Bostons By Steve Bailey, Globe Columnist | January 3, 2007 Last year ended in Boston the way it began: with a black person being shot and killed by another black person. The first victim of 2007, a 14-year-old boy who was on the street (why?) at 5:45 in the morning, was also black. Boston's body count for 2006 fell just one short of the previous year, when the city reached a 10-year high. Behind those numbers, however, the story is depressingly similar year after year -- in Boston and in big cities nationwide: the alarming slaughter of black people by black people. Seventy-four people were murdered in Boston last year, and 63 of them were black, according to the Boston Police Department. By comparison, Boston is a relatively safe place to be white: In all, only six non-Hispanic whites were murdered in the city in 2006. Nationally, blacks are six times more likely to be murdered than whites, according to the US Justice Department. Ninety-four percent of all black murder victims are killed by black people. It is the residents of these communities, almost all of whom are law-abiding, who are the ultimate victims. All of Boston, however, has a stake in what is happening. This killing belongs on the business page because of the destabilizing effect the violence has on communities. Many of those who can leave will leave. Business will go elsewhere. Neighborhoods will deteriorate. It's a destructive cycle that Boston has seen before and can't afford to repeat. Take a walk down Dorchester's infamous Bowdoin Street for a case in point. Six people -- all of them black, male, and between 18 and 25 years old -- were killed within a few blocks there last year. Two men were killed at midday on a street corner. Two others were killed months apart at another nearby corner, part of the epidemic of violence in the Cape Verdean community. Monday morning, 14-year-old Jason Fernandes was killed two blocks off Bowdoin. "This is the Third World within the First World," says Benvindo Barros, who came here from Cape Verde 33 years ago. Barros knows. In October, his 23-year-old nephew, Adilson Barros, was gunned down on Bowdoin Street a block from the corner liquor store where Barros works. His brother was murdered on Harvard Street in Dorchester 15 years ago, and a cashier in Barros' store was killed in 1989 by some young knucklehead over a jar of coins. There is no shortage of reasons to explain the violence. Bowdoin Street is a far outpost on the wrong side of the widening gulf between society's haves and have-nots. Our economy is good at producing jobs, but not nearly so good at producing jobs with a living wage. Too many teenage mothers today will be grandmothers by the time they turn 40. Guns and drugs are everywhere. The high-school dropout rate is a scandal. Rap music, and even the NBA, glorify a gangster culture. White Boston has been mostly immune to the violence. It is Black Boston that is paying the price. Bob Herbert, the black columnist for The New York Times, said it best: "If white people were doing to black people what black people are doing to black people, there would be rioting from coast to coast." What is needed is the same kind of collective, sustained effort that America, black and white, brought to the great civil rights crucible 50 years ago to end segregation. Is there a more basic civil right than the right to walk through your neighborhood without getting shot? Fixing what is broken needs to start in the black community, the community under siege. But white Boston needs to do far more, too, the business community included. Bowdoin Street is a prime example of neighborhood disinvestment: You will not find a bank or hardly a national chain, for instance, anywhere in sight. Have we, in effect, decided the killing doesn't matter for Boston as long as it stays on Bowdoin Street or Blue Hill Avenue? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-02-25 11:58 |
| #2 Add to the list the murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2009-02-25 11:55 |
| #1 Hmmm... yes, we are having the conversation about race that AG Holder seemed to want so desperately. It's just not quite the one he asked for... |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2009-02-25 11:44 |