My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash

Pfft. 

This guy, Elie Mystal, is a freakin' dork.

At the Nation, "My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash":

The thought that:
A: The white people who don't know what's been happening.
B: Are going to be the white people to rise up
C: Against fellow whites
D: IS FUCKING STOOPID

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) July 13, 2021

It now appears likely that I will be part of the first generation of Black people to do worse than my parents and leave a crueler world for my children than the one I inherited.

When I say “worse,” I don’t mean by a metric of homes owned or acres plowed or yachts docked or whatever measure white people mean when they bemoan doing worse than their parents. In fact, I’m doing better than my parents economically, as are a visible minority of Black people my age (I’m 43). Instead, I mean that I inherited a legacy of civil rights, a stone of freedom each Black generation since emancipation has pushed relentlessly through peaks and valleys towards the summit of equality, but mine will be the first generation to lose more ground than we’ve gained. We will leave our kids further from the promised land than our parents left us.

White Americans my age are one step removed from their “Greatest Generation.” It was their grandparents who went to Europe to fight the Nazis and then returned and settled right back into the apartheid system that was well-established here. The Black civil rights generation, our greatest generation, fought those forces of fascism and white supremacy here, on the home front, several years later, and in so doing forced America to live up to its empty promises of freedom and equality for all.

Thanks to their efforts, my generation was born into more opportunity than any generation of Black folks in the history of the New World. We haven’t squandered it. My Black generation has enjoyed unprecedented social and cultural influence. Some of us have achieved wild economic success. We even got to see the very first Black president. If you start the clock in April 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball, you’ll see that Black Americans have accomplished one of the most successful nonviolent political and social revolutions in human history.

But my generation has not been the cause of those victories, merely the beneficiaries of our parents’ and grandparents’ successes. Even Barack Obama understood that. When he met Ruby Bridges, the woman who, at the age of 6, integrated the first elementary school in Louisiana, Obama said, “I think it’s fair to say that if it wasn’t for you guys, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Maybe that’s why white people are trying to ban Bridges’s story today. A new Tennessee law bars the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. While there is, obviously, no such teaching going on in Tennessee public schools—Critical Race Theory is, for the 1,000th time, an academic legal discipline—the white parents pushing this know what they’re after. They highlighted four books they wanted taken out of the Tennessee curriculum; Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story, by Ruby Bridges, was one of them.

Bridges’s generation made Obama possible. My generation has lived to see white people try to erase those gains...

Still more.

RELATED: I don't actually believe this story, at Truthout, "Right-Wingers Are Taking Over Library Boards to Remove Books on Racism."

Pfft.

Memorials Come Down at 'George Floyd Square' --- and the Local Are Pissed! (VIDEO)

Yes, and this was where shots were fired last week during live coverage of the anniversary of Floyd's death. 

At the New York Times, "Minneapolis Removes Memorials and Barricades From ‘George Floyd Square’":

MINNEAPOLIS — The bulldozers arrived before dawn on Thursday at the South Minneapolis intersection where the police killed George Floyd. Moving quickly, city workers in neon vests hauled away flowers, artwork and large cement barricades that have allowed the corner to serve as an ever-growing memorial to Mr. Floyd for more than a year.

By the time hundreds of people began flocking to the scene in protest, many of the tributes at the intersection known as George Floyd Square were gone. The large metal fist that sprouts from the middle of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue was still there, but the barriers that activists used to block traffic had been removed and the city had put most of the items honoring Mr. Floyd into storage.

The mayor and other city officials hoped that the effort would let traffic flow through the intersection again, allowing businesses to prosper and cutting down on the violence in the neighborhood. But demonstrators said that the unannounced action was disrespectful to Mr. Floyd’s memory and that the city was trying to force people to move on from his killing.

In the weeks after May 25, 2020, when a police officer knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck as he took his last breaths, the intersection was transformed into a community space that people visited from around the world, to pay their respects or simply to say they had been there. In April, hundreds of people gathered in the intersection and erupted in cheers when Derek Chauvin, the white former officer, was found guilty of murdering Mr. Floyd, a Black father who had recently lost his job as a security guard...

Still more.

 

Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire

Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s.

You Don't Say? Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Has Purchased $1.4 Million Home in Secluded -- All White! -- Topanga Canyon

Woo boy, this story's a doozy, but entirely predictable, sadly. 

From Jonathan Turley, "Twitter Censors Criticism of BLM Founder Buying $1.4 Million Home In Predominantly White Neighborhood":

We have been discussing the expanding censorship on Twitter and social media. The latest example involves the story of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37, and her purchase of a $1.4 million home in a secluded area of Los Angeles whose population is reputedly less than 2% black. The professed Marxist received considerable criticism for the purchase, including from Jason Whitlock, an African-America sports critic who has also been a critic of BLM. When Whitlock called out Khan-Cullors, Twitter promptly censored the tweet — leaving a notice that it was “no longer available.”

Last week, various cites like dirt.com reported, “A secluded mini-compound tucked into L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon was recently sold for a tad more than $1.4 million to a corporate entity that public records show is controlled by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37-year-old social justice visionary and co-founder of the galvanizing and, for some, controversial Black Lives Matter movement.”

It produced a firestorm of critics who noted that Cullors has long insisted that she and her BLM co-founder “are trained Marxists. We are super versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” Critics like Nick Arama of RedState pointed out: “[I]t’s interesting to note that the demographics of the area are only about 1.4% black people there. So not exactly living up to her creed there.”

Jason Whitlock posted a link to a story but was promptly censored by Twitter:

[SCREENSHOT HERE]

The controversy is illustrative of the age of Internet censors. Tweets, and in some cases Twitter accounts, vanish without explanation. Twitter is notorious for not responding to media inquiries over such censorship and even less forthcoming on the decision-making process behind such decisions.

If Whitlock was expressing his contempt for the purchase, it is core political speech.

Even the head of New York City’s Black Lives Matter chapter is calling for an independent investigation into the organization’s finances in the wake of the controversy. This controversy follows an Atlanta-based figure being criminally charged with fraud. According to the Justice Department, Sir Maejor Page, or Tyree Conyers-Page is accused of using a Facebook page called “Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta.”

The New York Post and other publications have reported that Cullors is eyeing expensive properties in other locations, including the Bahamas. However, it is not clear if this money came from BLM which has reportedly raised almost $100 million in donations from corporations and other sources. Indeed, Cullors seems to have ample sources of funds. She is married to Janaya Khan, a leader of BLM in Toronto, and published a best selling memoir of her life and then a follow up book. She also signed a lucrative deal with Warner Bros to develop and produce original programming across all platforms, including broadcast, cable and streaming. She has also been featured in various magazines like her recent collaboration with Jane Fonda.

The issue for me is not the house or claimed hypocrisy. It is the censorship of Twitter of such criticism. Cullors is a public figure who is subject to public scrutiny and commentary. Twitter is rife with a such criticism over the lifestyle choices of figures on the right ranging from Donald Trump Jr. to Rand Paul. That is an unfortunate aspect of being in a high visibility position. I would be equally concerned if criticism of Trump Jr.’s big game hunting exploits or Giuliani’s lavish tastes were censored...

Still more.

And at London's Daily Mail, "BLM founder is branded a 'FRAUD' after buying a $1.4 million home in an upscale mostly white enclave in L.A." 

Personally, I don't care much that this woman bought a ritzy house in "exclusive" Topanga Canyon (good for her!); and the Twitter censorship is par for the course, in any case; and is, perhaps, less interesting to me than it is to Mr. Turley.

It's the hypocrisy and --- the literally satanic --- double-standards. Not only can I not stand "Black Lives Matter," as their movement is, obviously, a sham that's virtually 100 percent responsible for the "B.L.M." riots last summer than burned down darned near every Democrat-run city in the entire country, but this woman, as noted above by Mr. Turley, is a self-declared "Marxist"; that is, she's a real, dyed-in-the-wool communist, and for her to be out there scooping up million dollar properties, not just in L.A., but perhaps in the Caribbean as well, that's a bit rich for me, and I find it absolutely disgusting. (As, for one thing, the wealth-creation derived from such purchases is literally the same anathema that these ideological and partisan ghouls are always yapping about, and, frankly, I often sympathize with these very same "concerns" that they have about "capitalist racist oppression" or "structural racism," or, well, on and on and on, blah blah). 

What is more, as political science professor, at a genuinely "minority-majority" college, a place really filled with the kind of "marginalized" kids that these "B.L.M." hacks and liars constantly say they're "all about," I can't even say how much this pissed me right the f*ck off. But that's life, and honestly, lately I mostly just "get with the program" at my school, because radical leftists already tried to get me fired ("cancelled") 10 years ago, and I have no interest in dealing with any such sort of related campus-based ideological conflicts again, despite the fact that I'm tenured. It's just too much. You become a pariah, and it's even worse, because you become a pariah to a lot of people with whom you'd had perfectly fine and collegial relationships prior to such libelous, illegal, and FUBAR attacks. 

I mean, if you've heard folks online, or in commentary pieces, etc., argue that "it's hard" for conservative faculty members on America's college and university campuses these days, well, you have no idea. And take it from me, because I'm a pretty hardy soul, but also pretty mellow and totally friendly to those with whom I work, but no matter: All that good cheer and outstanding professionalism (and professional relationships) goes out the window should you wind up in the cross-hairs of these truly satanic ideological and partisan monsters. 

While I would never say this to a student of mine, I really don't recommend anyone WHO IS NOT a freakin' Marxist to go into college or university teaching, and that's to say nothing of just recommending graduate training in the humanities or social sciences (or even English literature, etc.) to my students, because as bad as it all is, I'm not one to crush a young person's dreams, and I'll only speak frankly on the cancerous toxicity of "academe" if the student brings it up herself (or himself, or "themselves," or whatever). 

Victim-Blaming D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Dragged for Sharing 'Preventing Auto Thefts' Video While She Stays Mum on (Alleged) Murder of Mohammad Anwar (VIDEO)

I did see the video of the carjacking on Twitter, and I didn't want to jump to conclusions as to the race of the youth suspects, although watching the video in its entirety, it's clear at the end of it, that the two depraved "children" perpetrators were certainly not "white supremacist domestic terrorists" inflicting bloody murder-mayhem on a decent, immigrant family-man making some money, in his own car, delivering food during a pandemic for Uber Eats.

My wife and I were both stunned by this story, and personally, it's one of the worst crime stories I can recall in years, and that's saying a lot, considering how almost all the big Democrat-controlled cities in the U.S. have seen skyrocketing crime rates since the death of George Floyd, and the subsequent "peaceful protests" that burned down police stations, neighborhood shops, and more, during our dreadfully dishonest summer of "racial reconciliation" and "Black Lives Matter" lies.

At Twitchy, "Victim-blaming: Mayor Bowser gets called out by both sides of the political spectrum over VILE tweet on how to prevent carjackings."

And at Fox News, "DC mayor takes heat for sharing 'preventing auto thefts' video amid silence on Mohammad Anwar's death":

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser is taking heat for sharing a video on "preventing auto thefts" amid her silence on the death of Mohammad Anwar, who died just days ago after two teen girls allegedly tasered him to steal his vehicle.

"Auto theft is a crime of opportunity. Follow these steps to reduce the risk of your vehicle becoming a target. Remember the motto, #ProtectYourAuto," Bowser wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

"Carjackings are a senseless act of violence that risk the lives of innocent individuals, and over the course of this month, we have worked to raise awareness about a troubling increase in this violent crime, related arrests and safety tips," a spokeswoman for the mayor told Fox News in a statement. "Today’s prescheduled social media post was part of that effort and should not detract from the tragic death of Mohammad Anwar. Our thoughts and prayers remain with his family and the families of those we have lost to violence."

Bowser's tweet received instantaneous backlash.

"Horrible timing on this clearly scheduled tweet. And even if Mohammed Anwar wasn’t dead, carjackings are a plague in DC — there isn’t a lot you can do [with regard to] risk reduction besides simply not driving a car. This was broad daylight," journalist Natalia Antonova wrote on Twitter.

"Blame the victim huh? How about cracking down on perpetrators to deter this behavior?" Twitter user Jesse Hunt wrote.

"Uber Eats driver Muhammad Anwar was the victim of a carjacking by two teenage girls, who committed felony murder, in DC. He died as a result of injuries. I presume this is a scheduled tweet but it’s extremely tone deaf. Bowser’s silence is deafening," media strategist Gabriella Hoffman wrote on Twitter.

Two teenage girls fought Anwar, a 66-year-old UberEats delivery driver, for control of his car, leaving him dead as he was flung from the vehicle when it wrecked. The suspects, who police say are ages 13 and 15, have been charged with murder.

The suspects, who police say are ages 13 and 15, have been charged with murder in the death of Anwar.

One of the girls told D.C. police officers that they had set out with a stun gun to steal a car on Tuesday, according to court testimony from homicide unit Detective Chad Leo.

The girls got into Anwar’s car around 4:30 p.m. at the Navy Yard Metro Station as he was making deliveries, Leo said.

Anwar drove the girls to Nationals Park where he pulled his car over and a struggle ensued between them. Officials, citing police, said Anwar partially left the car and was pinned between the door and the driver’s seat as the teens allegedly put the vehicle in gear, the New York Post reported.

The car then lurched forward, causing Anwar to be fatally flung out as the car made a sharp right turn, causing it to roll over on its side and crash into two parked cars.

Officials arrived on the scene and found Anwar suffering from "life-threatening injuries," police said. D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services responded to the scene and transported the victim to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead...

Also, at the video above, it turns out one of the youth suspects, not identified, had been arrested for a previous carjacking, so, I mean, what gives? Who's the racists here? The two girls, who (allegedly, as they've still got to face trial), or the court system, which let one of them off, presumably, with a slap on the wrist, not just because minors "have their whole lives in front of them," blah, blah, but, because, obviously, these two suspected murderers are black.  

And, I don't know, Mayor Bowser, she's stayed silent right? Is her team still brainstorming to figure out another way to pin it on this poor Pakistani-born immigrant, driving his own car, and not taking in Jamie Dimon-level wages for his hard work? Dimon is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase, the same bank that delayed the recent pandemic-economic relief checks for two-days after the feds sent the money to his bank branches, so no doubt Chase could reap windfall interest-earning profits, on the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash that sat in their coffers for two days, while regular Americans were scratching out their next meals, and downing anxiety meds like candy, while stressing over whether they'll go totally bankrupt when their rental eviction moratoriums expire, and they'll be on the hook for tens of thousands in unpaid back-rent, and which there's literally no way the average family would be able to afford (including millions of ethnic minority families in "marginalized" communities), unless Congress passes legislation making the rest of us --- the rest of us regular citizens, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender identity, also struggling to make ends meet --- bailout our corporate masters on Wall Street, whose lobbyists meet regularly with Washington D.C. power-brokers, especially Democrat Members of Congress and top Biden administration officials.

So tell me, again, who's the racist in all of this? 

The 'Woke' Takeover at the New York Times Facing Pushback

It's not that big of a "pushback," but it's something to see, nevertheless.

One really interesting development is the role that Nikole Hannah-Jones played in the despicable firing of veteran Times correspondent Donald McNeil (covered here previously). 

For one thing, Hannah-Jones apparently attempted to "dox" Aaron Sibarium, a reporter at Free Beacon. He writes on Twitter: "It was my personal number, actually. And Hannah-Jones left it up for two days after someone 'mentioned it'."

I read the whole Slate piece linked by Sibarium, and while I can't verify a word Hannah-Jones says, she still comes out looking like the awful person she is. (She's the Pulitzer-winning "journalist" who hatched the mindbogglingly dumb "1619 Project," and she's bitter she's taken so much heat for it; and I don't believe for a second that she had "no role" in the firing of Donald McNeil; she's as "woke" as "woke can be, and being "woke" means being intolerant as hell, so you probably should just take her words with some heavy salt, that is, if you even want to read the Slate piece). 

See, "An Exhausting Week at the New York Times: Nikole Hannah-Jones on Donald McNeil’s resignation, what the reporting got wrong, and how she was involved."

And here's a second bit of inside information on what's happening at the Old Gray Lady. It turns out that Bret Stephens, who was formerly editor of the Jerusalem Post, before jumping ship from the Wall Street Journal for the Times (for reasons I guess having to do with his own "woke" evolution), wrote a scathing commentary piece that the totalitarian editors of the Times spiked, obviously because Stephens was hitting too close to home. 

In fact, someone at the Times leaked the Stephens op-ed to the New York Post, where it was published in full (no doubt to the bitter consternation of Nikole Hannah-Jones and her evil black allies working inside the Times' black radical "lynch gang" now despoiling --- even more than the Times could be already be despoiled --- the newspaper's reputation.

See, "Read the column the New York Times didn't want you to see":  

Every serious moral philosophy, every decent legal system and every ethical organization cares deeply about intention.

It is the difference between murder and manslaughter. It is an aggravating or extenuating factor in judicial settings. It is a cardinal consideration in pardons (or at least it was until Donald Trump got in on the act). It’s an elementary aspect of parenting, friendship, courtship and marriage.

A hallmark of injustice is indifference to intention. Most of what is cruel, intolerant, stupid and misjudged in life stems from that indifference. Read accounts about life in repressive societies — I’d recommend Vaclav Havel’s “Power of the Powerless” and Nien Cheng’s “Life and Death in Shanghai” — and what strikes you first is how deeply the regimes care about outward conformity, and how little for personal intention.

I’ve been thinking about these questions in an unexpected connection. Late last week, Donald G. McNeil Jr., a veteran science reporter for The Times, abruptly departed from his job following the revelation that he had uttered a racial slur while on a New York Times trip to Peru for high school students. In the course of a dinner discussion, he was asked by a student whether a 12-year-old should have been suspended by her school for making a video in which she had used a racial slur.

In a written apology to staff, McNeil explained what happened next: “To understand what was in the video, I asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur itself.”

In an initial note to staff, editor-in-chief Dean Baquet noted that, after conducting an investigation, he was satisfied that McNeil had not used the slur maliciously and that it was not a firing offense. In response, more than 150 Times staffers signed a protest letter. A few days later, Baquet and managing editor Joe Kahn reached a different decision.

“We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent,” they wrote on Friday afternoon. They added to this unambiguous judgment that the paper would “work with urgency to create clearer guidelines and enforcement about conduct in the workplace, including red-line issues on racist language.”

This is not a column about the particulars of McNeil’s case. Nor is it an argument that the racial slur in question doesn’t have a uniquely ugly history and an extraordinary capacity to wound.

This is an argument about three words: “Regardless of intent.” Should intent be the only thing that counts in judgment? Obviously not. Can people do painful, harmful, stupid or objectionable things regardless of intent? Obviously.

Do any of us want to live in a world, or work in a field, where intent is categorically ruled out as a mitigating factor? I hope not.

That ought to go in journalism as much as, if not more than, in any other profession. What is it that journalists do, except try to perceive intent, examine motive, furnish context, explore nuance, explain varying shades of meaning, forgive fallibility, make allowances for irony and humor, slow the rush to judgment (and therefore outrage), and preserve vital intellectual distinctions?

Journalism as a humanistic enterprise — as opposed to hack work or propaganda — does these things in order to teach both its practitioners and consumers to be thoughtful. There is an elementary difference between citing a word for the purpose of knowledge and understanding and using the same word for the purpose of insult and harm. Lose this distinction, and you also lose the ability to understand the things you are supposed to be educated to oppose.

No wonder The Times has never previously been shy about citing racial slurs in order to explain a point. Here is a famous quote by the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater that has appeared at least seven times in The Times, most recently in 2019, precisely because it powerfully illuminates the mindset of a crucial political player.

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’ and all that stuff.” Is this now supposed to be a scandal? Would the ugliness of Atwater’s meaning have been equally clearer by writing “n—, n—, n—”? A journalism that turns words into totems — and totems into fears — is an impediment to clear thinking and proper understanding.

So too is a journalism that attempts to proscribe entire fields of expression. “Racist language” is not just about a single infamous word. It’s a broad, changing, contestable category. There are many people — I include myself among them — who think that hardcore anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. That’s also official policy at the State Department and the British Labour Party. If anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and racist language is intolerable at The Times, might we someday forbid not only advocacy of anti-Zionist ideas, but even refuse to allow them to be discussed?

The idea is absurd. But that’s the terrain we now risk entering.

We are living in a period of competing moral certitudes, of people who are awfully sure they’re right and fully prepared to be awful about it. Hence the culture of cancellations, firings, public humiliations and increasingly unforgiving judgments. The role of good journalism should be to lead us out of this dark defile. Last week, we went deeper into it.

 

Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban Ordered Team to Stop Playing National Anthem and No One Noticed (VIDEO)

Of course no one noticed. 

The NBA's a black league and besides the NFL loser Colin Kaepernick, the NBA's been the biggest bastion of BLM-style cheerleading. And the MSM? You think this might have been news before the season's 13th game? Nah. MSM types hate the patriotic anthem just as much as Antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists.

At Bro Bible, "Mark Cuban Ordered the Mavs to Stop Playing the National Anthem This Season and No One Noticed Until After the Team’s 13th Home Game."

Naturally, this Sky News video (from Australia!) was the only one that came up on a YouTube search, probably not because YouTube's censoring any outlets --- there just are no American outlets that are interested in reporting the story. For shame. 

High-Speed Police Chase in Battle Creek, Michigan: Najee Rechelle McGilbray Body Recovered After Fatal Crash (VIDEO)

You gotta read the whole thing, at the Other McCain, "Manufacturing an Atrocity Narrative: How BLM Distorts the Reality of Crime":

Go watch that video again. It’s 3:30 in the morning, and it seems fair to guess that McGilbray had been out partying somewhere. Given how she was weaving all over the road, she was probably drunk. With a prior record and a suspended license, she was almost certainly driving under the influence when Officer Gammons turned on his blue lights.

This is a very common scenario in police pursuits. I’ve watched dozens of them on YouTube in the past couple of months and, based on this extensive research, I know that there is a certain predictability in the answer to the obvious question, “Why do they run?” Having a suspended license is one common answer. Most of the time, the fleeing driver is, like McGilbray, someone with a prior criminal record who fears that being busted for a traffic offense will violate their probation and send them back to prison. In many cases, the police pursuit involves someone driving a stolen car, or someone with drugs and/or guns in the car. In other cases, the driver is wanted on an active arrest warrant.

My point is, fleeing/eluding is not usually about a mere traffic violation. Almost always, there is some more serious underlying crime involved, and guess who knows this? Cops, that’s who.

There are patterns to criminal behavior, and an experienced cop knows that if he blue-lights somebody and they take off, he’s probably dealing with somebody who’s already got criminal record. That’s why, if you watch enough of these videos, you become accustomed to the “felony stop” procedure when the chase finally comes to an end. The officer who initiates the pursuit will call for back-up, and usually there are at least three or four squad cars on the scene at the end of the pursuit. All the cops exit their vehicles with guns drawn, and the command is shouted at the suspect: “Show me your hands!” It’s a tense moment, because the police have reason to suspect they may be dealing with an armed felon.

Anyway, after watching video of this police chase in Battle Creek, I did a Google search and located the information about Najee McGilbray’s prior incident of felony fleeing/eluding. There also was a story about McGilbray’s family reacting to her death..

.

Will Amazon Suppress the True Michael Brown Story?

Interesting. And I'm just learning about this. It's a Shelby Steele joint.

Watch the trailer of Vimeo (here), apparently since YouTube won't host is. 

Jason Riley wrote about it a WSJ (paywall) and City Journal:

Shelby Steele’s new film takes a critical look at the prevailing narrative. It’s now under ‘content review.’

August was the sixth anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the black teenager who was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. The incident, and the nationwide coverage it attracted, marked the beginning of a period of mass protests against police, which culminated (let’s hope) after the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this May.

The fashionable explanation for what happened to Brown, Floyd and others—such as Freddie Gray in 2015 and Philando Castile in 2016—is so-called systemic racism. The activist left and the mainstream media insist that law enforcement targeted these men because they were black—and that if they weren’t black, they would still be alive. The truth is more complicated and less politically correct, and it’s the subject of an engrossing new documentary that is scheduled to premiere Oct. 16.

The film, titled “What Killed Michael Brown?,” is written and narrated by the noted race scholar Shelby Steele and directed by his son, Eli Steele. Readers of these pages probably know the elder Mr. Steele through his best-selling books and occasional Journal op-eds. But earlier in his career, Mr. Steele also won acclaim for his work in television. In 1990 he co-wrote and produced “Seven Days in Bensonhurst,” an Emmy-winning documentary about Yusef Hawkins, the black teenager from Brooklyn who was fatally shot in 1989 after he and some friends were attacked by a white mob.

In an interview this week, Mr. Steele, who is based at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, explained the significance of Brown’s death and what it tells us about race relations today. “Michael Brown represented, even more so than Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and others, the distortion of truth, of reality,” he said. Mr. Steele added that when it comes to racial controversies, liberals have developed what he calls a “poetic truth,” which may be at complete odds with objective truth but nevertheless helps them advance a desirable narrative. In the case of Michael Brown, reality was turned on its head.

“It was almost absolute,” Mr. Steele said. “The language—he was ‘executed,’ he was ‘assassinated,’ ‘hands up, don’t shoot’—it was a stunning example of poetic truth, of the lies that a society can entertain in pursuit of power.” Despite ample forensic evidence, the grand-jury reports and the multiple Justice Department investigations clearing the police officer of any wrongdoing, “there are blacks today, right now in Ferguson, as I point out in the film, who still truly believe that Michael Brown was killed out of racial animus,” he said. “In a microcosm, that’s where race relations are today. The truth has no chance. It’s smothered by the politics of victimization.”

Yet Mr. Steele sees a better future, and the interviews highlighted in “What Killed Michael Brown?” help to explain his optimism. One of the film’s strong suits is showcasing the words and deeds of everyday community leaders in places like Ferguson, St. Louis and Chicago. These people are far more focused on black self-development than on badgering whites or blaming society for problems in poor black communities. They understand and accept objective truth but mostly toil in obscurity while liberal billionaires cut million-dollar checks to subsidize Black Lives Matter activism and antiracism gibberish from “woke” academics.

“It’s easy to say, ‘The white man, the white man,’ and point the finger,” says a pastor in the film whose church is located in one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. “In reality, we have to take a very close look at ourselves.” His focus is on “the transformation of the person. And we’re telling them, hey, educationally, you gotta get it together. Economically, you gotta get it together. Family and spiritually, you gotta get it together. And you have to take responsibility.”

The president of the St. Louis NAACP chapter told Mr. Steele there was no evidence that the Ferguson protests had done anything to help the black people who live there. Property values have fallen, crime has increased, and schools continue to underperform. “Let’s be clear. The progressive agenda is not the black agenda,” he says. “The people in that community are no better off than they were prior to the death of that young black child. They’re no better off, and everybody knows it.”

Amazon, which was scheduled to stream the movie, is now having second thoughts and has placed it under “content review.” Eli Steele, the director, told me that he will resort to other streaming platforms if he has to and is referring people to the film’s website, WhatKilledMichaelBrown.com, for more details on how to view it. The progressive agenda may not be the black agenda, but it is the media’s agenda. Sadly, speaking plain truths about racial inequality in America today remains controversial.

 More here. 

Democrats Are Laying the Groundwork for Revolution Right in Front of Our Eyes

It's Michael Anton, at the American Mind, "The Coming Coup?"

California to Empty Prisons, Dump Convicted Murderers on the Streets

Of course the Times picks the most appealing, sympathetic convict they could find to profile.

This will not turn out well.

See, "California is releasing some murderers due to COVID-19. Some say it should free more":

Although Gov. Gavin Newsom and corrections officials have focused on freeing nonviolent offenders from prisons to slow the spread of coronavirus, they also are letting out people who have committed violent crimes but have serious medical conditions. https://t.co/vB3GUpCLoo

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) August 9, 2020

Terebea Williams was 22 when she shot her boyfriend, drove 750 miles with him bleeding in the trunk of his own car and then dragged him into a Northern California motel, tied him to a chair and left him to die.

Convicted of murder, carjacking and kidnapping, Williams went on to earn a college degree during her 19 years in prison, where she also mentored younger inmates and was lauded by administrators for her “exceptional conduct” while incarcerated.

The contrasting portraits of Williams as stone-cold killer and rehabilitated model prisoner highlight the difficulties in a plan to release thousands of California inmates to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has killed at least 52 of those incarcerated and sickened more than 8,700 others.

This spring, the state expedited the release of 3,500 inmates because of the coronavirus, and in July it freed 2,345 others early. Thousands more are eligible for release, including at least 6,500 deemed to be at high risk because of medical conditions that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

Although Gov. Gavin Newsom and corrections officials have focused on freeing nonviolent offenders, they also are letting out people who, like Williams, have committed violent crimes but have serious medical conditions.

Williams, 44, walked out of a women’s prison in Chowchilla, Calif., on July 29, lopping decades off her 84-years-to-life sentence for killing Kevin “John” Ruska Jr., who died of infection from a gunshot wound to the gut.

Some prisoners’ rights advocates say Williams exemplifies the type of inmate who should be released — one who has already served a lengthy sentence, poses a low risk of reoffending and is particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. Some are also pushing to expand the criteria for early releases to include similar types of inmates now serving life without parole for murder.

But in Williams’ case and others, officials have drawn the ire of prosecutors, victims’ rights advocates and family members amid questions about which and how many inmates are being released — and whether it is being done with enough transparency to protect the public.

“The governor of California, Terebea’s public defender and the politicians of California have used COVID to allow this cold, calculated, lying, unremorseful murderer out of jail 65 years early, without giving the victim, Johnny, a voice,” said Ruska’s cousin, Karri Phillips...

Keep reading.

Viral Video of Abuse

I watched this yesterday.

Story at WaPo, via Memeorandum, "He held a BLM sign in what he called 'America's most racist town.' The result? A viral video of abuse."

😧😧😧 holy crap https://t.co/BWgrRFx9xn

— ErickaAndersen (@ErickaAndersen) July 30, 2020

The Coming Black Crime Bloodbath (VIDEO)

She's one of the most politically incorrect women in America, and she's riding a wave of prescience on Black Lives Matter. Super compelling interview with Epoch Times editor Jan Jekielek.

And at Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

White Privilege

It's the rage right now, or, atoning for it is.

At LAT, "‘Something is not right.’ George Floyd protests push white Americans to think about their privilege":

The police killing of George Floyd and resulting protests have led white Americans to reckon with racism more vigorously than at any moment in recent history. https://t.co/tpRqGetRha

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 28, 2020

GUALALA, Calif. —  Mike Sexton is white and a Republican who lives in an affluent suburb of Fort Worth, where many neighbors back President Trump and some work in law enforcement. Rage wells up in his voice as he says that George Floyd, a Black man, was “basically lynched.” 

Shawn Ashmore is an independent who lives nearby in east Dallas. He’s using Floyd’s killing to teach his young sons uncomfortable lessons about the privileges their family enjoys because they’re white — how, for instance, they’ll never fear for their lives during an encounter with the police the way some Black men do.

Lisa Joakimides lives in rural Northern California and considers herself a well-meaning Democrat. After the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Joakimides, who is white, convinced herself that America was finally making amends for its history of mistreating Black people.

As Joakimides got down on both knees to honor Floyd at a roadside demonstration in early June, she wondered how she could have been so naive.

Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, captured in witness videos showing then-Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, has led white Americans to call out racism against Black Americans more vigorously than at any moment in recent memory. And it’s prompting many white people to think more deeply about the color of their own skin.

Why now? Chicago-based sociology professor Jacqueline Battalora believes that after three wearying months of social isolation and economic upheaval brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Floyd’s killing was yet another blow to the illusions of safety, security and equality that many white people harbor about America.

“The police are fair; institutions are fair — white people have been so happy to believe those things,” said Battalora, a former police officer and author of “Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today.” “What this signals is that a good chunk of white people now have some recognition that something’s not right.”

For Sexton, Ashmore and Joakimides, the killing of Floyd and outpourings of rage have forced them to see that expressions of sympathy and displays of solidarity with Black people are only the beginning. America won’t change its racist ways, they say, unless white people use this period of protest and reflection to change, too.

What’s different this time, Sexton said, is that white people have gained a better sense of where that outrage comes from, and how insulated they are from the racial injustices that provoke it.

Sexton, 45, said he can’t sit on the sidelines of the protest movement, or shy away from the national conversation about racism and police brutality, simply because he votes red instead of blue.

“It’s not right versus left,” he said. “It’s right versus wrong.”

Sexton said he wasn’t oblivious to racial discrimination. Every Black person he knows has shared stories of being followed and stopped for no reason by police.

But the video of Floyd’s killing, which captured him crying out “I can’t breathe” and calling out for his dead mother, made Sexton realize the powerlessness and sheer panic that Black people often experience in the presence of officers.

He said it’s crazy that it took so long for him and other white people to fully grasp that horror of police brutality, “but for us, we wouldn’t have understood were it not for the video.”

“Now,” he said, “we’re listening.”

Sexton, a salesman, recently organized a rally for police accountability in a high school parking lot near where he lives in Grapevine, Texas. It drew about 200 demonstrators, most of them white.

Members of the clergy and Grapevine Police Chief Mike Hamlin attended. One of the speakers was a Trump supporter.

A Black teen told the crowd that she was afraid to bring children into the world because she feared she wouldn’t be able to protect them from law enforcement or the country’s racism.

“That broke my heart into a thousand pieces,” Sexton said.

After weeks of protest, opinions about police violence appear to be shifting, but there’s still a large gap between white and Black people about whether it represents a national crisis.

In an AP-NORC poll taken in mid-June, fewer than half of white respondents — 39% — believe that police violence against the public is either an extreme or very serious problem, compared with 80% of Black respondents.

Those numbers did show a shrinking of the gulf between the way white and Black Americans view the issue. The same poll was taken in the early stages of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2015, and then only 19% of white people said police violence was an extreme or serious problem, compared with 73% of Black people.

“It created this opening for white people,” Battalora said of Floyd‘s killing. “But that’s different from saying we ‘get it.’ That will be more of a process.”

It remains to be seen whether the spectacle in recent days of white people locking hands to protect Black demonstrators from riot police, or taking part in the toppling of monuments to Confederate soldiers and slaveholders, represents a turning point...

Still more.

America's Jacobin Moment

At WSJ, "The cultural putsch in America’s institutions strikes at liberal values":

The Editorial Board: If liberals won’t stop the Jacobin left, expect a political backlash and social fracture that will make Donald Trump’s Presidency look like a tea party. https://t.co/O0A91qmF9f

— WSJ Editorial Page (@WSJopinion) June 23, 2020

Anger at the killing of George Floyd has spurred useful reflection about race and perhaps some important police reform. But the political and cultural forces have transformed in recent weeks into something far less healthy—a ferocious campaign of political conformity sweeping across American artistic, educational, business and entertainment institutions.

This coercive cultural turn threatens to devour what remains of America’s civic comity and push durable social progress on race and politics out of reach.

***

We describe this as a Jacobin moment because it has the fervor and indiscriminate judgment of the revolutionary mind. The guillotine isn’t in use, but the impulse is the same to destroy careers, livelihoods and reputations. The wave of resignations, firings, disavowals and forced apologies at institutions large and small is moving so fast it is difficult to keep track...

Social comity in a polarized society will not be achieved through coercion and struggle sessions. If liberals won’t stop the Jacobin left, expect a political backlash and social fracture that will make Donald Trump’s Presidency look like a tea party.

RTWT.

Interactive Cover

Click through, at the New Yorker:

An early look at next week’s cover, "Say Their Names," by @KadirNelson: https://t.co/Nj3q09OrOL pic.twitter.com/a3w3l1XESb

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) June 14, 2020

Also:

Like men who saw the scroll of #MeToo testimonies & interrogated women, asking “Is it really that bad?,” the shock of Floyd’s death is itself a barometer of inequality, evidence of who has moved through life free of the burden of such terrible knowledge. https://t.co/7Ci2bv3ToO

— jelani cobb (@jelani9) June 14, 2020

It's performative journalism.

Professor William Jacobson on Laura Ingraham's Show (VIDEO)

Professor Jacobson is so mild-mannered it's almost funny. That this man is a "threat" to black lives is hilarious.



And in case you missed it, at Legal Insurrection, "There’s an effort to get me fired at Cornell for criticizing the Black Lives Matter Movement."

BONUS: From Jonathan Turley, "Cornell Professors Declare 'Informed Commentary' Criticizing the Protests as Racism."

The Defund the Police Lies (VIDEO)

A great segment, with Laura Ingraham:

Defund the Police Movement Based on Lies

At NYP, "The movement to defund police is based on nothing but lies."

https://t.co/TpGXVxQ7SY

— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) June 7, 2020

The Systemic Collapse of American Society

Wow.

This is something else, at the Unz Review, "The Systemic Collapse of the US Society Has Begun."

"The systemic collapse of the US society has begun" - the Saker https://t.co/2rbW3ZD36u

— The Unz Review (@UnzReview) June 5, 2020