Y'know why some of say the GOP now sounds like completely and totally racist? It's because they do as exampled by this scene from American History X with Ed Norton.
Ed Norton as Neo-Nazi "Derek": The fact that these people ripped off stores in their own neighborhoods shows that they have no respect for the law at all, and certainly no concept for community or civil responsibility.
His Mom's Boyfriend: White people commit crimes against white people too.
Derek: Yeah, but their not offing each other in record numbers all over America. Look at the statistics for crissakes. One in every three black males is in some phase of the correctional system, is that like a coincidence or do these people have like a racial commitment to crime?
Why that's sounds an awful lot like someone we all know quite well, doesn't it?
Being willing to admit to genius where I find it, this particularly juxtaposition didn't come from me, it came from Chris Hayes on All In.
http://www.rawstory.com/...
“For people like Bill O’Reilly,” Hayes said, “there is a zero sum of concern, here. For him, this really isn’t about his interest in helping the actual human beings being killed on Chicago’s South Side. No. It’s about making a point. A point about the propensity of black people to commit violence, and then tossing them aside as violent people with ‘little discipline’ who are ‘unsupervised’ and ‘prone to imitate bad behavior.’”
Hayes said, “There are about 200 million white people in America, making up about 63% of the population. In 2010, 1,179 white people were killed by black people. Compare that number to the roughly 20,000 white people who died from accidental poisoning, 16,000 who died from accidental falls that year, or the 2,000 or so white people estimated who died from accidental drowning. In other words, Bill O’Reilly, you have more reason to be afraid of your own swimming pool than any young black man you see in a hoodie.”
I have more from Martin Bashir.
As Toure' points out in the segment in answer to O'Reilly, being unmarried doesn't necessary mean that the father is completely uninvolved in the raising of their children. Many fathers and mothers are unmarried, but still responsible. Black's may be at 72.3%, but native American's are at 66%, Hispanics are still at a 53.3% and Whites are at 29%. Only Asians are at the low, low rate of 17.2% for out-of-wedlock births.
So why isn't O'Reilly talking about the devastation this is heaping on the Native-American and Hispanic Communities? Because it's NOT. Not by itself.
Also unlike O'Reilly claims, it's not like Chicago Crime and Gun Violence isn't an issue or a subject that Rev. Jackson has failed to address. It just isn't a simple issue the way Billy would like to proclaim.
Jackson's own Operation Push which was founded in the 70's was designed to focus on and address issues such as teen pregnancy. http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/...
In 1971, Jackson broke with SCLC, and Operation Breadbasket became Operation PUSH. Despite precarious finances, Operation PUSH was active. It held rousing weekly meetings at its Hyde Park headquarters to energize its supporters, which included both black and white Chicagoans. It pressured major companies to hire more African Americans and to extend business ties with the black community. And in 1976 it launched PUSH-Excel, a program designed to inspire inner-city teenagers across the country to work hard and to stay out of trouble.
[Why this sounds amazingly like what
Ted Nugent says Jesse Jackson doesn't do - except of course that
he does, and has for decades. Not the Theodore would know that, or ask.]
Bill O'Reilly says Al Sharpton doesn't talk about this issue, yet look what I found linked on Al Sharpton's National Action Network Page in under 1 minute. http://newsone.com/...
Black women are hurting.
Our backs are being broken, and it’s time we stand up and fight for ourselves. Our men don’t have jobs, our children don’t receive a fair shot at the American dream, our communities are in trouble, gun violence is tearing families apart, obesity and diabetes are far too rampant, the prison industrial complex is taking away our youth, and too much is on our shoulders.
Far too often, we tackle everything without taking proper care of both our physical and mental well-being. We’re drinking more, popping more pills,, and doing whatever to cope with the stress, when we should be uniting, supporting one another more, and finding solutions together.
And is the Congressional Black Caucus is silent on the issue as O'Reilly claims? not really.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
As the national debate over gun violence escalates, the Congressional Black Caucus came to Chicago on Friday promising to put together a plan to curb violence in urban areas.
But at the end of the daylong event, many of the solutions they came up with were nothing new to people in neighborhoods hard-hit by crime: They need jobs. They need more educational opportunities. They need after-school programs.
Acknowledging that they did not have all the answers, the legislators said they hoped to leave with fresh ideas to take back to Washington. But they also acknowledged that funding for anti-violence initiatives is scarce, and it remains up to community groups and others to see that any programs are carried out.
And guess who was also there to talk about Chicago Violence?
Jesse Jackson
Y'know who didn't get invited? Bill O'Reilly.
The point made at that Violence Summit is that there is a legitimate argument that poverty and hopelessness does have a link to crime.
http://www.poverties.org/...
Starting from the 1970s, studies in the US pointed more and more at the link between unemployment, poverty and crime. After that other connections with income level, time spent at school, quality of neighborhood and education were revealed as well. Fresh research from the UK even indicates that economic cycles may affect variations in property and violent crimes.
But most importantly, what reveals the unmistakable connection between poverty and crime is that they’re both geographically concentrated - in a strikingly consistent way. In other words, where you find poverty is also where you find crime. Of course this doesn't include "softer" crimes such as corruption which causes massive damage to people's lives but in a more indirect type of violence.
...
In the countries where the social discrimination factor isn't very strong, results have shown that less education meant more criminal offenses ranging from property crime to “casual” theft and drug-related offenses (again, mostly theft). But not violence. It appears that in fact, poverty itself is more tied with violence, criminal damage and also drug use - as a catalyst for violence.
There are huge consequences of this kind of research for public policy and the positive impact of keeping children in school and reducing poverty. But for that we would need governments to actually read the research their universities produce! It shouldn't seem like too much of a stretch to argue that having kids actually graduate from school will in itself contribute to reduce poverty, no?
Education is indeed a pathway out, but then after a near decade of No Child Left Behind, we shouldn't be surprised at the current situation since that program alone shoved nearly
60-70% of minority youth out onto the streets without a diploma.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/...
By analyzing data from more than 271,000 students, the study found that 60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate within five years. The researchers found an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent. The researchers also found that NCLB is directly contributing to these unusually high dropout rates.
What Bill O'Reilly ignores is that the economic crash has hit already impoverished Black Communities like an ANVIL.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/...
Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland.
...
The jobless rate for young black men and women is 30.5 percent. For young blacks -- who experts say are more likely to grow up in impoverished racially isolated neighborhoods, attend subpar public schools and experience discrimination -- race statistically appears to be a bigger factor in their unemployment than age, income or even education. Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than upper-income black teens, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, and even blacks who graduate from college suffer from joblessness at twice the rate of their white peers.
More recent studies have shown that poverty is even more dangerous than being born addicted to crack.
http://www.nydailynews.com/...
This past June, after 25 years of following people born at the height of the city’s crack epidemic, Hurt unveiled the results of her study, which concluded that, in terms of overall negative health effects, a mother’s crack use was not as harmful as whether or not the child grew up in poverty.
So with no educational future and no job future and the direct damage that the stress of malnutrition and poverty is it really a big surprise that those most desperate and most vulnerable in the midst of an economic monsoon have turned to the underground economy of prohibited products just as they did during the Great Depression and the Reign of Chicago's Al Capone?
If you think Capone was bad just imagine having 50 to 100 guys running around Chicago who all want to BE him, who worship the legend of "Scarface Al" like some people think of Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth. People who think of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre as a great Instruction Manual to "cleaning house."
Let's be realistic, this diversion to the boogey-man of "Black-On-Black" crime is simply a ruse. What we're really talking about here is a Gang War, just as we saw during the time of Capone. The truth is that all the things that aid in this situation, such as better access to preventive Health Care and contraceptives, accurate and complete sex education, better quality and funded schools and Student Loans, and better access to Jobs are all things that Republicans are doing their damndest to Block.
They are doing everything in their power to make situations like those in Chicago or Detroit worse not better.
This isn't to say that teen pregnancy isn't a problem, but rather it is simply one problem among many. Young black girls who've grown up in a broken or dysfunctional home may seek a child simply because it will be the only unconditional love they can reasonably expect. Young black men who don't see any future for themselves beyond their 20's aren't likely to see the value in making a life-long commitment to a family they can't expect to survive and watch grow up.
This happens to be one problem that people like Bill O'Reilly can stand up and shout 'Isn't White People's Fault". So he does, loudly, because the last thing Billy wants - is be asked to lift a finger, or spend a dime to help those who clearly need help the most. Waiting until the boat is sinking is not the best time to shut off all the water pumps, unless you want and plan on it sinking.
Saving the boat isn't the plan if you can profit on the entire ship going down in order to support more and more Security, Police and Prison funding to the tune of Hundreds of $ Billions. If we want to truly talk about "Race Profiteers" and "Hustlers" - that's where they are. Selling the guns. Building the Prisons. http://www.thedailybeast.com/...
Vyan
While you're pondering that Join Color of Change Campaign to Repeal Stand Your Ground Laws and get your asses Registered to Vote [Share the QR below], because at certain point - as I said before - we have to start thinking what happens #AfterTrayvon
8:57 AM PT: Poverty Rates by Race from the Kaiser Foundation:http://kff.org/...
White 13%
Black 35%
Hispanic 33%
Just for the record.
9:00 AM PT: Unemployment by Race for last 45 Years