The look on Anderson Cooper’s face was taut, anguished, stricken – as though he had just learned that his boyfriend had had an affair with his mother. Actually, it was worse than that. The prosecution in the Trayvon Martin case had just finished another bad day. This spurious tale of white racism, actually involving a Hispanic shooter, was unraveling like a cheap sweater. Nevertheless the liberal media doggedly followed the trial to its predictable conclusion. MSNBC’s website has 375 mentions of Trayvon Martin.
By contrast, Antiq Hennis gets only six MSNBC mentions. Antiq who? He is the sixteen-month old toddler who was gunned down in his stroller while being pushed across a Brooklyn Street. The intended victim was his father Anthony, a 21-year-old with a long rap sheet and alleged gang associations. Anthony refuses to help the cops nail his son’s killer; street etiquette demands silence at NYPD interviews.
Both incidents were tragedies (as is the shooting of a three-year-old on a Chicago playground last night). But to racial aristocrats like Anderson Cooper and the MSNBC crowd, Antiq’s murder merits little notice because it is black on black violence, like 93% of black homicides in America. You can’t spin that into a paternalistic tale of white racism and black victimhood. Racial aristocrats have little interest in addressing the social pathologies implicated in the killing of Antiq Hennis. They would rather strike a pose than solve a problem. They are on a narcissistic quest for progressive authenticity and moral superiority. Fifty years of failed liberal social policies in the inner city do not phase them; it’s the thought that counts, not the results. That’s why they favor failing public schools over charter schools that empower inner city parents.
Trayvon and the “Katrina Effect”
Conservatives are starting to handle the racial aristocrats more effectively. Back in the fall of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, a city with an incompetent black Democratic mayor, located in a state with a clueless white Democratic governor, ALL the blame for the Katrina debacle was heaped on President George W. Bush. He deserved some of the blame, not all of it. But Republicans stood silent while liberals managed to spin Katrina into a case of white racist neglect, while incompetent Democratic officials were let off the hook.
It was different in the Trayvon Martin case. Conservatives demanded to know why this muddled case of self defense gone awry deserved to become a cause célèbre while the liberal media ignored the far more important problem of black on black violence. Good question.
Confront Liberalism’s Failures
Conservatives should confront racial aristocrats, black and white, and hold them accountable for their egregious failures. Consider the Sunday talk shows, where smug liberals regularly sneer at supposedly racist conservatives. More than once on Meet the Press David Gregory has reminded viewers that Colin Powell perceives a “dark vein of intolerance” in the Republican Party. Well, if David Gregory, Colin Powell, George Stephanopolous, Cokie Roberts, Donna Brazile, Candy Crowley, and Bob Schieffer are so “tolerant” and enlightened, why does Washington DC—despite all the Federal dollars pouring into its economy—have terrible schools and the eighth highest murder rate in the nation? Baltimore, at the northern end of the Federal Wealth Belt (it is just a one hour drive from DC), has the second highest murder rate, after Detroit. With “tolerance” like that, who needs racism?
Republicans should constantly remind Americans how Obamanomics and liberalism have failed the inner cities, virtually all of which are controlled by Democrats. The black unemployment rate is now 13.7%; at a similar point in G.W. Bush’s second term it was only 9.0%. Median black household income was 9% lower in 2012 than 2004. The percentage of blacks below the poverty line was 27.1% in 2012 versus 24.7% in 2004. Black conservatives such as Senator Tim Scott, former Congressman Allen West, Dr. Benjamin Carson, and Congressional candidate Mia Love are particularly persuasive in making the case against racial aristocrats. They deserve strong support.
Copyright 2013 Thomas Doerflinger. All Rights Reserved.
