Since the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, large cities across the U.S. have been rocked with protests degenerating into riots. Mobs of angry people are looting businesses, burning buildings, destroying cars and killing people.
Public demonstrations and the occasional destruction of property have been a part of the American experience since the Boston Tea Party. The right to publicly protest our grievances is enshrined in the very first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We have exercised that right too many times to count since the Founding Fathers put forth our more perfect union.
There is something different about the 21st century flavor of outrage. Labor protests, civil rights demonstrations and the anti-war movement of the 20th century all had something in common that the most recent acts of disobedience and destruction don't have. The 20th century protesters were organized against arguably bona fide systemic injustices that they had no part in creating. Employers set wages and used the force of law to prevent organization of labor to bargain as an co-equal collective. The civil rights movement rose up against a racist political, social and economic system that black Americans demonstrably had no role in building. The anti-war movement protested an undeclared war that sent mostly poor and working middle class young men off to die without their consent.
Despite the creation of The Great Society and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, the percentage of black Americans living in poverty (measured even by Democrats' ever-shifting standards) stands at about 25%. Despite nearly $20 trillion spent on fighting poverty since the mid-1960's, about one out of every four black Americans still lives in squalor. Housing programs failed Black America by pushing them into concentrated inner-city housing projects. Welfare programs failed black America by creating the insidious incentives that has all but destroyed the black American nuclear family headed by a married couple. Thanks to this truly systemic construct, there are multiple generations of black Americans who grew up without the benefit of both male and female role models.
The regulatory schemes created by the myriad of environmental and social engineering laws passed by liberal congresses from 1964 through 1994 severely hindered capital formation in the small business sector, while encouraging manufacturing corporations to move jobs overseas. This disproportionately limited job growth in lower skilled, lower income and entry level positions. This, in turn, disproportionately affected black Americans.
By the mid-1990's, generational poverty and a general sense of hopelessness was hit head on by the shamefully named Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, written by then Senator and current presumptive Democrat Presidential nominee Joe Biden. Then signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
Donna Murch, writing at The New Republic, a liberal blog/opinion/news site, in 2016:
Both Hillary and Bill continue to enjoy enormous popularity among African Americans despite the devastating legacy of a presidency that resulted in the impoverishment and incarceration of hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class black people. Most shockingly, the total numbers of state and federal inmates grew more rapidly under Bill Clinton than under any other president, including the notorious Republican drug warriors Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush.Murch also notes something I'm about to remind you of: the fact that Democrats from Lyndon Johnson through Bill Clinton have enjoyed almost monolithic support from black American voters. From Johnson's Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act all the way through Clinton's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, black Americans have handed control of the levers of power to the same bunch that has sought to divide, impoverish and imprison their brothers and sisters for generations.
Johnson made sure black Americans would find it hard to escape squalid housing projects and impoverished schools. Clinton made sure that those who had survived by any means necessary had room in the new high tech prisons his trust fund paid for.
If black Americans believe their backs are against the wall, then they should ask who built the system that put them there. It wasn't the rich white conservatives. No, the second worst danger a black American faces today is the rich white liberal who has screwed him over at every opportunity. Why do black Americans keep supporting the modern day embodiment of the benevolent plantation owner?
That's not the end of this indictment of liberal "leadership." Nearly all of the large cities in the U.S. have been wracked with violent demonstrations since Floyd's death. The larger the city, it seems the greater the breadth and depth of the anger demonstrated by the people in their streets. With very few exceptions, these cities have Democrats as Mayors, and most have either majority Democrat or super-majority Democrat councils/commissions. Local leadership is responsible for establishing local law, and Mayor & The Gang are also responsible for enforcement. They hire the cops and they establish department policy, including policy on use of force.
Over the same weekend that George Floyd lost his life, 10 of his brothers in Chicago lost theirs. The linked story explains that New York and Los Angeles reported similar numbers. One can safely conclude that cities like Houston, San Francisco, Detroit, Boston, Miami and Baltimore collectively saw scores of violent deaths, mostly black males and mostly by the hands of other black males. While the biggest danger to the average black American is another black American, that threat is the direct and demonstrable result of a political establishment imagined, built, financed and enforced by liberals who could never have been elected without the always reliable votes of black Americans.
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