Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Recently an unarmed 29-year-old African American, Tyre Nichols, was brutally beaten to death by five black Memphis police officers. They were charged with murder. All belonged to a special crime unit known as the Scorpions.
Both the victimizers and victim were black. The Memphis police chief is black. The assistant police chief is black.
Nearly 60 percent of the police force is black. The white population of Memphis is about 25 percent.
The now-disbanded Scorpion unit of mostly black officers was created as a response to grassroots appeals to stop spiraling crime in mostly black neighborhoods.
The death of Tyre Nichols could be attributed to many things: a basic lack of humanity on the part of the officers, poor police training, lax administrative supervision, and lowered hiring standards.
Instead, no sooner was the beating death announced than accusations of “systemic racism” surfaced.
Van Jones, the former Obama Administration green czar and recent recipient of Jeff Bezos’ $100 million “courage and civility award,” pronounced on CNN that the black police oppressors were acting out white racism.
Some claimed that charging the five black officers with murder was itself racist. Others alleged that creating the unit in the first place to reduce black-on-black crime was racist.
Yet, when everything becomes racist, then nothing in particular can be racist.
About the same time, the city of San Francisco, along with the state of California, was exploring paying out huge cash reparations to its African-American residents for the ancestral sin of slavery.
That evil institution was abolished some 158 years ago through a Civil War that killed some 700,000 Americans.
Yet California was always a free state with no history of slavery.
No resident of America in six generations has been either a slave or slave owner.
Such multibillion-dollar payouts apparently are to be funded by a nearly bankrupt state facing a $25 billion budget shortfall.
How do we quantify either current eligibility or culpability in multiracial California where 27 percent of the residents were not born in the United States? Whites make up only 35 percent of the state’s population.
College campuses increasingly greenlight racially segregated resident housing.
These reactionaries seem eager to return to “separate but equal” apartheid, supposedly outlawed nearly 60 years ago by the 1964 Civil Right Act.
A recent National Association of Scholars study found that of some 173 schools surveyed, 42 percent provided racially segregated residences. Some 46 percent offered racially segregated orientation programs. An overwhelming 72 percent hosted racially segregated graduation ceremonies.
So-called “safe spaces” on campus exclude students on the basis of race, especially whites who are reduced to stereotyped members of a toxic collective.
Race-based admissions have transmogrified from proportional representation—the entering class should reflect roughly the racial make-up of the nation—to reparatory or compensatory admittance.
So, for example, Stanford University’s incoming class of 2026 lists white students at 22 percent of the enrolled, roughly one-third of their percentage of the nation’s general population.
Ironically, current racial engineering resurrects the old quota systems used in the past to discriminate against Jews.
“Whites”—to the extent we can determine any race in an intermarried, multiracial society—do not fit the now ossified definition of an exploitive majority.
They no longer even compose a majority in most major American cities and in some states.
They rank well behind many nonwhite ethnic groups in terms of per capita income and millions of working-class Americans certainly don’t fit the tired stereotype of “privileged.”
In racist fashion, white males are often smeared as exhibiting collective “white rage.”
Yet they commit suicide at double their demographics—and more than twice as frequently as blacks and Latinos.
They were also killed in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq at twice their numbers in the general population.
In terms of hate-crime offenders, whites are demographically underrepresented. The most overrepresented victims of hate crimes are whites of Jewish background.
Whites commit violent crimes against those of different races at rates below their percentages in the general population.
In sum, class, not race, remains the best litmus test of being underprivileged in America. It is no longer synonymous with race.
No wonder the identity politics industry now strains to attach prefixes such as “systemic” or “implicit” to “racism,” or “micro” to “aggression,” purportedly to ferret out bias that otherwise is not apparent.
Pause to reflect that America is the only successful multiracial constitutional republic in history.
To survive in an increasingly dysfunctional and hostile world abroad, the unique idea of the United States requires concord.
But national cohesion is only possible through citizens subordinating their tribal interests to a common culture. Only then do they cease being automatons of warring tribes and collectives.
As the world becomes ever scarier, Americans must—as Benjamin Franklin once warned—hang together, or most certainly they will soon all hang separately.
If people realized that racism is basically dead, with the exception of anti-white racism which has been en vogue ever since affirmative action, then the race-hustlers lose their source of income.
In my opinion, America was at its most color-blind in the late 90’s to early 2000’s.
There are places (North, South, East, West) where old-school, garden variety, anti-black racism exists. It was emboldened (for whatever reason) when Trump ran for office. The big question is the actual scale. Thinking of the self-consciously racist people I’ve met over the years, I don’t think the number is high, but they do real damage where they can and try to enlist others to their cause. I think it’s these “useful idiots” that are not self-consciously racist that amplify the damage and make the problem bigger than it otherwise would be.
Search the four corners of the earth for every imagined trace of the one indefensible, irrefutable, irredeemable charge — which can only ever be made against Whites, by the way — that being: you’re a racist! And it’s only ever those bitter, deplorable whites who are racist, trust me, and they must be re-educated with endless DIEversity and inclusion brainwashing, from government to NGOs to corporate America to Davos elites. No one ever explains why diversity is a strength, it just is; you cannot question it, you racist people!
Don’t believe your own eyes (or the pounding on your skull, if you were the defenseless little girl engulfed by the mob rule in the video). For here is our rendez-vous with Rwanda, on one of Kamala’s beloved school buses: where black males savagely beat a little girl, while the brown children cheer.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/02/florida-girl-9-beaten-by-two-boys-in-school-bus-attack/?utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=SocialFlow
Can you imagine if the races were reversed what would happen? Prove to me cities wouldn’t burn, riots wouldn’t go on for months, and public monuments to veterans wouldn’t be defaced and destroyed, while police stand by and stand down, with approval, had the races been reversed. How much damage would really have been done? Would those who wish it have received, “space to destroy?”
Dr Hanson, I would refer you to the research of Rupert Brown University of Manchester last I heard) on small group interactions. You will find his work echoed by Dr Peterson as well. We organize ourselves into groups (save that of family with its automatic membership) based on our desires, our goals, our morals, and our ideals. Those members who most closely represent those qualities become the group’s leaders and all others fit into the structural hierarchies top to bottom. Individual groups of various sizes then align themselves in a similar process. The question is whether each successive alignment into larger group size has an upper limit due to the disparity of those qualities which the majority of individuals hold. There was a common cause by which the thirteen colonies came together to act if not in unison at least in closer cooperation to secure what all held as common values and qualities. The return to ‘tribalism’ marks the end, for the moment, of the shared common virtues and qualities members of the now disjointed groups previously held. Shared political and economic values along with shared religious values were the most durable of bonds, now those qualities have changed as religious values and beliefs have gone from the spiritual to the profane while social class distinctions have been replaced but economic ones.
Factually overwhelming–but do the supremely self-righteous attend to facts?
We have two major parties, two opposing belief systems, two recipes for “success” and personal fulfillment.
One side believes that if you work hard, focus, follow the rules, and make good life decisions your likelihood of reaching this “success” is pretty good. Life may not be completely fair, but you can overcome its hurdles by following this simple plan. We will all face tremendous personal challenges, eventually. It is how you deal with these setbacks that counts. It is all based on accepting personal responsibility for your actions. The individual is at the center of everything. The resulting “collective” is comprised of these individual, like-minded operators.
If we all believed in the above concepts, there would be no need for another party or competing faction.
But we do have an opposing party. It believes in the collective more than individuals. That party gets its strength through disparaging the status quo and blaming it for “oppressing” whole swaths of our population. It believes in opposing just about everything that the “hard work” party believes in. In fact, it claims that everybody should be entitled to equal outcomes, whether or not there is any work involved or not. They spend an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to convince its constituents that they are entitled to just about anything. They are entitled because they are all victims of the “work hard” people.
We are stuck and it likely will not change.
It’s my birthday, so I shall try not to be depressed about our current state of affairs lol!
So long as someone is profiting from it, racism will continue to exist in America. You don’t have to believe me, just follow the money and you will understand. Whenever you don’t believe something in the “mainstream” media, just follow the money trail.
Not to negate what Victor said about the $100mm was awarded to Van Jones. Just wanted to point out the $100mm for 2022 was awarded to Dolly Parton.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/dolly-parton-receives-100-million-dollar-award-from-jeff-bezos.html#:~:text=Spend-,Dolly%20Parton%20receives%20%24100%20million%20award%20from%20Jeff%20Bezos%3A%20'I,good%20things%20with%20this%20money'&text=Country%20music%20superstar%20Dolly%20Parton,create%20Moderna's%20Covid%2D19%20vaccine.
A common thread in these cases involving the police “taking things a bit too far” involve a suspect who is suspected of committing a crime; In this case, reckless driving. In just about every case, the suspect attempts to flee the police or resists arrest in some fashion. This is always going to elevate the police response. I’m not making an argument that the officer involved in this case were justified, just making the point that when a suspect attempts to flee the scene, or resists arrest in some manner, they are subjecting themselves to an elevated police response. Had the suspect cooperated, and even possibly surrendered to an arrest without resistance, he would most likely be alive today. I don’t know what prompts someone who has committed a crime (or is suspected of committing a crime) to believe that fleeing and resisting is a good idea.
In many cases the judgement of the suspect is likely impaired by drugs, alcohol, or “too many priors”. Nobody seems to know what the situation was in this particular case. The individual may have been known by the officers ahead of time. We may never know the true causes for the lethal beatdown. Not a good look for Black America, once again. The only thing we know for certain is that it was a direct, indirect, or manufactured result of White Supremacy, according to trusted news outlets.
Phil,
The article you provided r.e. the Bezos award states that Van Jones was last year’s award winner, with DP receiving this year’s award in Nov. 2022. Everybody’s correct!
You’re right Dave. I was just trying to point out Mr. Bezos also gave money to traditionalists like Dolly Parton.
Why hasn’t anyone demanded that MPD Chief Davis resign? They’ve fired all five cops involved and have even gone after paramedics, so why has she been allowed to walk between the raindrops and continue leading the department? If there is systemic rot at the MPD, then shouldn’t we clean house by starting with top brass?
Does anyone truly believe that had Davis been a middle aged white guy instead of a stylish (to quote Dirty Harry) choice to head the department that she would not have been forced to resign almost immediately after the video of Tyre Nichols’ assault appeared on You Tube?
If racial justice charlatans such as Al Sharpton want to be taken seriously then it’s time they stopped demagoguing every incident of police brutality and started calling a failed leader a failed leader.
You beat me to the question.
Evidently, Davis has a strong reformer in pioneering de-escalation methods of police training. Police who have worked in her department and elsewhere have added that what the officers did had absolutely no relation to any form of officer training or police policy. I think, barring further evidence, there’s no evidence that the officers’ actions had anything to do with things Davis could control. Megyn Kelly and Larry Elder do a good job of kicking this issue around at length on her podcast.
Hopefully, the country will find a way to reignite Christianity, for the new age. This religion is at the heart of the American way and the reason for the “concord” between a nation of immigrants.