JUNK HISTORY

 

For years now, I've displayed the "Junk Science" badge for "science" assertions that are ridiculous and unscientific. I have a new logo to display: "Junk History". And its first awardee is a surprising one to me... it's the CrashCourse YouTube channel, which on July 10, 2021 posted a disgraceful array of misinformation regarding the Constitution of the United States.

The episode focuses on two clauses of the Constitution... the 3/5 Compromise and the Slave Trade clause. But before we discuss those, let's have a look at the introduction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57xUbch1viI

The narrator (Clint Smith) begins with an analogy that I would not disagree with. In fact, I'd use it myself. However, he uses in a context that has very little to do with historical facts and motivations. The analogy is the difference between wanting to be a wrestler and actually being one. "Sometimes in life, who we say we want to be is not necessarily who we are in that moment." Fair enough, and it does apply to the Constitution at our nation's founding, one hundred percent. And stating that "for millions of people, the aspirations espoused in that document didn't apply to them" is true. But then it runs off the rails slightly more than one minute into the video, with this: "And not only did it not apply to them, but it further entrenched the racial caste system that was already in place." This last part is pure misinformation, as the Constitution did exactly, precisely the opposite with those two aforementioned clauses. But we're not there yet. Let's keep watching. He concludes the intro with "Who America says it is and who America has actually been have not always been neatly aligned." 

Agreed.

We're still less than two minutes into a 10 minute video when we're told that "there were millions of people who called the United States home who, in many ways, became even less free following the ratification of the Constitution." Again this is misinformation. You don't get less free than abject slavery, and the Constitution did nothing to make anyone less free.

Smith notes that "The Constitution was intended to solidify the legal principles of a nation." He goes on to state that in the Constitution the founders "failed to do away with slavery." This isn't exactly misinformation, but it's so horribly incomplete that even the narrator himself appears to be woefully ignorant of the actual purpose of the two clauses he's about to examine. 

Slavery is a shameful institution wherever it exists. And, as noted in the video, the words "slavery" and "slave" don't appear in the Constitution. This isn't because it's just being swept under the rug out of embarrassment; but for two other reasons. 

The first is that it is not a legal principle of this new nation, and never was. It was, however, a legal reality. If it was at all possible to eradicate slavery with the sweep of a pen, many of the Founders would have chosen to do so. But it wasn't possible. Remember, the independence they were fighting for was independence from British rule, and it is this that joined the Colonies into one nation. But they were divided on many other things, thus becoming a rather fragile alliance. 

What's also completely glossed over in the Crash Course is that this fragility was not just suspected, but well known. The Constitutional Convention wasn't our first attempt at unification. It was preceded by the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781. Rather than a truly United States, the Articles established a "league of friendship", but remained independent bodies. Effectively, each colony was a separate country, similar to the situation we see in the European Union today. It is in this context that the word "States" applies. These were independent States joined by what was effectively a treaty. They weren't truly united yet, despite the name. And this was the situation until 1789.

What the delegates to the Constitutional Convention knew was that this fragile alliance was not good enough. It was of paramount importance to create a new nation, united despite their glaring differences. It is exceedingly naive to suppose they could do that without compromise. It's literally impossible as they found out. 

People of modern sensibilities want change, not now, but yesterday, and a hundred years before that. Every crisis is immediate. They don't have a long-term vision of the future. And they have even less vision of the past, being incapable of noticing when the policies of one administration are identical to the previous one. That's not how change happens, especially in the 18th century. Compromises would have to be made with the understanding that the principles espoused for the new nation would come to fruition in the future. And that's where the two clauses come in.

It is true that almost seventy years after the Constitution was written, an abolitionist (William Lloyd Garrison) expressed disgust with the compromises that had to be made. Well guess what? The people who made them didn't like them either. But it was the best they could accomplish. 

To call back to the Smith's analogy: 

wanting to be a wrestler may not make you one, 

but training, hard work and time can.

Smith naively states, "It didn't have to be this way. The Founders could have used this as an opportunity to say, hey, look. Let's start this experiment fresh. You know what, team, we inherited slavery from the British, we just fought a war of independence, and that probably means we should make everyone independent." 

The problem with this is that it's exactly this sentiment that was expressed by the Northern states at the Constitutional Convention. And, as with being a wrestler, saying it doesn't make it so. Without compromise, the Southern States would not agree to join the Union.

Remember... at this time there was. no. union. Each of the Colonies had their own laws and were far more independent than today.  To attempt what Smith suggests would have been to go directly from a War of Independence to another war. And it would not have been a "Civil War" either... there was no single nation. It would have been a war between nascent independent nations. This simply would not have happened.

But what would?

Let's indulge in a little Alternate History speculation. One of two things might have happened if the Constitutional Convention failed. The first is the separate States would remain separate. We wouldn't have a United States, but another Europe broken up into squabbling factions. The European Union is a recent phenomenon... just look at the history of warfare on that continent. The second is that we may have had two unions formed from the Colonies... one with slaves, one without. And in the South they may well have continued slavery to the present day. Without unity, the separate States would be more prone to invasion; and without the United States, the history of the entire world would have suffered greatly. The Founders knew nothing of the future, but they did know their vulnerabilities. We know this because the Constitution wasn't created in a vacuum. We have other documents, including the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, detailing the arguments that were made regarding every little clause. And these arguments are ignored by CrashCourse. It's not a matter of skipping over the unimportant parts. Rather, they're skipping the most important ones.

That leads to the second reason the word "slavery" doesn't appear in the Constitution. The need for unity. The Southern states would not ratify a Constitution that outlawed slavery, while the Northern states wouldn't ratify one that included it. So it isn't mentioned, except indirectly, as the implied opposite of "free persons".

Now let's talk about those two clauses, and especially the motivations for including them.

The Three-Fifths Clause

Smith, with the aid of an mis-infographic, states "The Three-Fifths Compromise: A clause in the Constitution that defined enslaved individuals as 3/5 of a human." This is completely untrue.

Nowhere does the Constitution even imply that a slave is three-fifths of a person. Rather, it states that for the purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, three fifths of non-free people (i.e. slaves) would be counted. That's three-fifths of a number of whole persons. Not that each slave was three-fifths of a person. 

The narrator himself notes that his own interpretation is absurd, but that doesn't stop him from saying it. The Founders didn't put nonsensical clauses in the Constitution. They meant three-fifths of the total, and that's exactly what they wrote. Saying otherwise is misinformation, plain and simple. 

The actual purpose of that clause was to restrict the influence of the wealthy Southern slave owners. Otherwise they would be overly represented in Congress. Remember that there wasn't a single slave that these slave owners truly represented. Rather, they represented their own interests. To pretend that it was to restrict the representation of Black slaves is to pretend that these slaves had any representation at all, and this is a most egregious lie. And on declaring independence, one of the charges levied against King George III was taxation without representation. To have slave owners wield the power of unrepresented persons didn't sit well at all with the Northern delegates.

Further, CrashCourse portrays this as a Northern attempt to restrict representation of Blacks in the South rather than slave owners. This -- honest to God, there's no other way to say this -- is a shameful, despicable, deliberate twisting of the truth. Had this clause not be included, all new territories would have become slave states. The clause was to curb the influence of slave owners and restrict the spread of slavery, plain and simple.

Everything else said about this clause in CrashCourse is based on their lie, and is complete nonsense, such as this:

"Even though the South would have loved for Black people to fully count for political purposes, this legislative compromise, which turned Black people into fractions, came to serve as a larger metaphor for the way that Black people were seen by many as less than human."

It is astonishing to me that CrashCourse found a Black narrator ignorant enough to make that statement. If the South would have loved for Black people to fully count for political purposes, they would have given them the vote. Here he is explicitly siding with Southern White supremacist slaveholders rather than those in the North who opposed slavery in its entirety. With a straight face and a steady voice Smith sides with White supremacists. You usually have to read Orwell to witness that level of twisted, perverted logic.

Smith continues with more nonsense. As for the election of 1800, he claims that "many historians argue" that Thomas Jefferson would not have won without the 3/5 compromise, even though the states that went for Jefferson would not have changed their votes. He already had the support of the Southern states with the compromise, and there is no historical evidence whatsoever that the outcome he actually achieved would have changed had there been even more Southern Whites in the Electoral College. 

Let's repeat: SLAVES HAD NO REPRESENTATION IN GOVERNMENT. Why would any in the abolitionist North be in favor of handing power to their oppressors? The North was against it, not because they thought Blacks were "fractions" of a person, but because they opposed slavery. So they pushed for as good a compromise as they could at the time. Work it out. Do the math. Then ask yourself, what part of what Smith asserts is not completely stupid? Be prepared to back it up, though quite frankly, you'll find that level of preparation impossible to achieve.

The Slave Trade Clause. 

Spoiler: he doesn't do any better here.

The text of the Constitution says, 

"The Migration of Importation of such Persons [meaning slaves] as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars per person."

Smith explains, "This is basically a really fancy way of saying that the Federal government can not limit how many individuals were imported to the United States." 

More accurately, it's a really plain way of saying that the Southern states had until 1808 to end the practice. And that's exactly how it panned out. In 1807 Congress passed a law abolishing the importation of slaves. This took effect in 1808, at the earliest possible moment allowed by the Constitution. Again, not so much as one Black took part in that vote. Were the Founders as racist as depicted, it could not have passed. At all. Ever.

Also If CrashCourse's interpretation was correct, you'd expect a last-minute flood of imported slaves. In actuality, between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. In all that time -- a span of 341 years -- how many were shipped to North America? 

Answer: 388 thousand. Three percent spread over 400 years. (To put this in perspective the Mali emperor, Mansa Musa, took 12,000 slaves with him on a single trip to Mecca. Trading slaves in Africa had a long history among Africans long before Europeans became customers. And some Africans enslave others even to this day.)

388 thousand still too many kidnappings for my taste no matter how long it was spread out, and no matter whether it was imposed or not. But historically, the US slave trade was domestic. Except for that three percent, the rest of the slaves were born and raised here.

So why is that number important? Because Smith states that it "allowed for slavery to exist in the South where it directly sustained the economy, and allowed slavery to remain illegal at the local level where it had already been abolished." 

This is nonsense. Again, slavery by this time was a domestic enterprise. It didn't need that three percent to allow it to exist. Nevertheless, kidnapping human beings from their homeland and transporting them across the Atlantic was abominable, and the Constitution put a date on the end of that practice. CrashCourse's assertion that Southern states relied on the transatlantic slave trade to replenish high death rates is again nonsensical. The numbers simply don't support it. Who did support the Slave trade were the bigoted slave owners, but their excuses for doing so were specious at best. Rather than call them out based on the economic facts, CrashCourse again takes the White supremacists' arguments at face value. 

In his conclusion, Smith continues, speaking of the Founders: "It's important to understand who was and who wasn't included in their vision for this new nation: who would be the beneficiaries of this promise of Democracy, and whose bodies would be used and cast aside in pursuit of them."

Indeed. And it's as important to know that the Founders had a road map for that. It was an actual vision. They limited the influence of slaveholders from Day One. They put a limit on the transatlantic slave trade. And their grandchildren died by the hundreds of thousands to free Black slaves when many of them from the North had never even seen a Black person in their lives. 

In recent years, Black people in this country are taught to embrace victimhood, with arguably reasonable cause. Many of their ancestors were born and bred in captivity. That is not an excuse to do as CrashCourse does and brush aside those who had a vision for a better future as well as those who argued and literally fought and died to make it happen simply because it's convenient to paint everyone, North and South, racist or not, as racists. And it's certainly no excuse for espousing supremacist arguments under the pretense of educating.

This CrashCourse is race-baiting and supports White supremacist arguments. It ascribes the wrong motivations to the wrong people, and misrepresents historical facts. So for blatant historical malfeasance, the CrashCourse channel gets my first "Junk History" badge. 

May they wear it with pride. They've earned it.

Direct Answers to Direct Questions

Chuck Dunning posted this to his Facebook page:

These are good questions, and I welcome the opportunity to respond. Of course, I speak only for myself and whosoever chooses to identify themselves as agreeing. And please understand that I'm not trying to shout you down or "refute" the questions... but you did ask.

So here are some direct answers, respectfully given to these good questions:

--==//oOo\\==--

When you say "Black Lives Matter", I actually don't think you mean they matter more than others, not in the slightest... until and unless you shout down anyone who says "All Lives Matter". It's the shouting down that has created the misunderstanding by communicating that this is intended to mean that Black lives actually do mean more. 

If you really mean to say that they mean no less than others, you should try to be more understanding of those who express the very same message in a less confusing way. And if someone says "Hispanic Lives Matter", or "Asian Lives Matter", etc. then that should be OK, too, because you know what...? They do. 

Members of the Guiding Light Church of Birmingham, AL
Singing All Lives Matter.

I have little advice for the person using "All Lives Matter" other than they do it with respect, without stepping on somebody else's message, so it doesn't look like they're "correcting". But if they're using it in their own context, then they're perfectly fine, because it's not your message, it's theirs. They deserve respect, too.

And that's all that really needs to be done about that particular misunderstanding: just tolerate that not only do other lives matter, too, but that it's not wrong to say it.  AND, that they actually agree with you that Black lives matter! And if someone does defend himself against being dismissed for simply saying the truth, "All Lives Matter", then try to understand that the defense is not intended for you, but for the misguided critic who is using "Black Lives Matter" in a way that you are not. 

And in all of these topics, please remind yourself, just as I have to remind myself, that when someone reflexively answers defensively, they may not be responding directly to what you just said. These same topics of conversation come up often, and based on those previous conversations they may be anticipating a line of argument that you weren't going to offer.

--==//oOo\\==--

I know White privilege is real. I'm going to spare you my life's story because it doesn't matter, except for this little bit, which does: my school's demographics. Today, W.J. Keenan is 96.6% Black. When I attended it wasn't that, for sure... we had some White students, but it was still overwhelmingly Black. At least three quarters, and I'm being conservative. This included some very accomplished people in my homeroom alone[1]. I was very often the only White kid in a class, and usually the only White kid in the locker room. Actually, this was pretty ironic, because my father was Native American and my mother was Jewish. But I look White, so as far as anybody's concerned I'm White. These are the sort of demographics commonplace among Blacks elsewhere in the country, with the colors reversed, Now these were High School demographics, but they were the same kids that I followed from grade school to middle school and on to graduation. This was my environment for twelve of the most formative years of my life. These were my friends. 

Most of my teachers were Black, too. And I saw in my school a far greater diversity among Black people than I have since learned that most White people expect. For instance, I know that Blacks are liberal and conservative on a broad spectrum. My friends liked Country and Rock and Funk. And Blacks are very conscious of skin color among Blacks. These friends and teachers, diverse and interesting people, never once used the phrase "White Privilege" because nobody had invented it. Nevertheless, I did, to some extent, feel it.

For instance, my stepfather was a bigot (and I'll save that talk for another time... it could take all day). And I was bussed to school, so my neighbors were White, although they were mostly old, too. And I never once was surprised when I turned on the television to see someone who looked like me. I was surprised now and again to walk into a classroom and see someone there who looked like me. I was undeniably in the minority there. So although I can't precisely share Whoopi Goldberg's delight at seeing Uhura in Star Trek, I can comprehend it. And I haven't to my knowledge been turned down for a job because of my skin color, but I have been turned down for everything else, so while I can't share that experience, I can comprehend it.

I can actually feel White Privilege when I'm in an unfamiliar White neighborhood and feel safer than in an unfamiliar Black neighborhood. I used to think that this feeling was racist until a Black friend I was with told me she felt safer in a White neighborhood, too. Turns out, fearing for your safety isn't racist, it's survival, and most Whites start off with the privilege of not living in constant fear. They have a hard time when placed in an environment that looks kind of like that to them, and they over-react. And you see that reaction and you say, "Hey, that's racist," except it's not. Racism is hate. This is fear. And getting up in their face isn't going to make it better. Fear is based in ignorance, and that's handled by the very thing you're looking for... better communication. The easiest way to create a racist is to justify someone's fear.

And I know that many of people feel that there can be no such thing as a Black racist, but we both know that there are many Blacks who are fearful of Whites, and just as many Whites who have justified those fears. I don't care what you want to call it. Call it whatever you like, it's still a rose. Some of those Black fears are justified through White privilege, and I started to list a bunch of ways that White Privilege is felt, and how I've felt it personally, but really, you already know them, so that's unnecessary.

Now, you asked where the misunderstanding is coming from. It's not really the fact of White privilege. There are people who deny it exists, and there are plenty of White people who will set them straight. And it's not really that difficult to do. Here's a guy who does it right. 

What some people don't seem to know... or better, what some don't seem to put in practice, is that the genetics of an individual's privilege doesn't say anything about its environment. Many people, though they can't share the Black experience, can leverage their own experiences to comprehend it in principle. And a few comprehend it very well. But you don't know who these people are until you have a deeper conversation, so you can't just diss somebody off the bat because he says, "I know what you're going through."[2]

Of course he doesn't, not exactly. But I can tell you this: having been a poor minority White growing up among Blacks who were often more affluent than I and then having then gone out into the larger world, I have a perspective on White privilege that you probably don't have, and it would probably be informative. And this does not diminish what you say, but enhances it.

The Big Misunderstanding comes from insisting that people who do not share an experience can cannot understand it. They can. And even if they couldn't fully, when someone is trying to comprehend your point of view, it's a poor time to tear them down as though they were incapable of doing so.

For one thing, if that were true, then it would be completely and utterly pointless to bring up the subject at all except as a way of shaming. And since we know that's not what you mean to do, I'd suggest not approaching it in a belligerent or condescending way. Accept that when they say, "I understand", they're at least trying. And if you have to be condescending, then nod your head and smile at the 'idiot'. It'll move the conversation forward, he'll learn as he goes, and soon he won't be an 'idiot'.

--=--=--

While I know that you mean "the understandings" when you ask what to do about "them", I'm going to take a moment to offer at least a suggestion about privilege. It's not big; it doesn't change the world; but I think it can help. you might think it's condescending. That's not my intention. This is a suggestion, take it, leave it, or come back with something better.

First of all, it's by realizing that there are a lot of kinds of privilege, and they all boil down to one basic statement which is this:

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity"

People have been saying this to each other for 2,000 years, ever since the Roman, Seneca the Younger, wrote it down. In this sense White males are the luckiest m***f***s in the country, because there are a lot of opportunities for White males, and they happen to be naturally prepared for them. It ain't fair, it's not something they did or earned; but it's there. That is White privilege in a nutshell.

The proper response, I think, is what Mr. Winningham, my high school Chemistry teacher told us. "There are all kinds of opportunities. If they're not right for you, make yourself right for them." Of course, he meant education (teachers always do). But he was right. Hell, even with White privilege (and I'm working in a multinational corporation in IT dominated by Indians, so that's less of a thing than you might expect), I still have to learn several new programming languages every few years to make myself marketable. I still dress up for interviews, and I still act way more polite and formal in those interviews than I will six months into the job.

But if you're socially conscious it also means making opportunities that fit diverse people. This might mean creating minority businesses, but for a member of a minority often it has meant getting the haircut, putting on a suit, putting on or losing an accent, and doing what's necessary to succeed and be in a position to change the landscape. 

And it can mean accepting that sometimes privilege isn't White or Black; it's just opportunity; and being willing to accept it when it's offered; and accepting that someone else can meet opportunity with preparedness without being an "Uncle Tom" or an "Aunt Jemima". I'm not saying that you are saying this: but it does get said. 

None of this, of course, does anything about White privilege. But it could just possibly put someone in a position where White privilege doesn't matter.

--==//oOo\\==--

On the third item, I don't think we have misunderstanding at all, because I think we DO have a problem with institutionalized racism in our legal system. AND, if I knew someone who thought everyone in our legal system is racist, I'd set him straight quick.

We have many problems with our legal system, but I'm going to limit myself here. A person could write for weeks describing problems with every stage of the system, as you well know. As you didn't list everything you could have, neither will I. Sadly, I won't be as brief, because I want my White friends who read this to understand it completely. Also, I want to make myself understood so that if we do have a misunderstanding, you know where it actually is.

To start with, we incarcerate more of our citizenry than any country in the world. We do so in large part using mandatory sentencing for "victimless crimes", drug charges and the like. One thing you have to understand about me is that I'm a Libertarian, and I'm a big fan of government keeping out of business that the government has no business being in. And just as commerce isn't the Federal government's business unless it crosses State lines, neither Federal nor State law has any business messing with you or me unless we are interacting with someone else. There can be no crime unless someone's rights have been violated... by which I mean that there should be no such thing as a "victimless crime". To my mind, what you think isn't rightly a crime, folks; and what you do is only criminal if it steps on someone else's rights. But we have people in both parties who don't believe that, and as a result, genuine differences of opinion on how to live your life can result in a prison sentence.

I bring this up because most of these convictions are of economically disadvantaged people, and most of them are people of color. Not only should they not have been arrested for their non-crimes; but they should never have been given mandatory sentences that can keep a man in jail for possession longer than for murder. This is institutional, and it could be changed tomorrow if our lawmakers just started repealing bad laws. This isn't about political parties, either. Our Congress has been changing hands back and forth for decades, and they could have done something about this at any time whatsoever. Instead they made it worse.

It is also institutional because the government has an economic interest in jailing people. It's a common myth that the 13th Amendment abolished slavery. It actually left a gigantic exception, and I'll highlight it for you:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation

There is a corporation named UNICOR (also known as "Federal Prison Industries" or "FPI") that is wholly owned by the United States Government. It engages in manufacturing of products for sale to the Government and to the general public, and it outsources labor to private companies. UNICOR was created in 1934 to produce goods and services. They claim that "the whole impetus behind UNICOR is not about business, but about inmate release preparation." In practice, they put inmates to work making products that often are made by no one else, and sold to no one else. Because of UNICOR, some prisons are actually profit centers for the government. They cost nothing to run, at least as far as a prison budget, because they get it from sales charged to the Defense budget. Not only that, but the Federal Government is required by law to purchase from UNICOR before seeking bids from private suppliers. And these are products that are made with labor that can cost anywhere from minimum wage down to as little as $0.23 per hour.  Twenty Three Cents.

Does that sound like slave labor yet? 

If you're not pissed off about this, I didn't explain it well enough.

What do you think would happen if three quarters of a million able-bodied prison laborers had their drug charges commuted tomorrow and they were sent home as free men and women? Would our current government even allow it? Perhaps there's a reason that so many people are put in jail for outrageously long sentences. I say that reason is institutional. I say it's the creation of arbitrary laws to lock up otherwise innocent people for profit. I say it's wrong, and that any White man should be as pissed off about it as any Black man.

My intent in choosing this example wasn't to minimize any problem that is uniquely Black, but to point out that some problems that seem uniquely Black, aren't.

Now... you asked what we can do about it. 

About the perceived misunderstanding... continue the conversation, because institutional racism is not only a White vs. Black problem. Starting with areas of common interest offers a wedge by means of which additional issues that are unique to Blacks are made clear.

About the problem itself... I think we can all start by not voting for the same jackasses we've been voting for year after year (and I address this to ALL readers, Black, White, Left, Right, and everybody else). And I'm talking about from County Council to State legislature, to Congress, to President. Everybody in there has had an opportunity to bring this stuff up, and with very few exceptions they've done nothing about it. And I'm not just talking about "legalize drugs"... that's just a tiny part of it. There are so many ways that the government has fucked you over, and me too, and if 40 years of doing the same shit hasn't worked, I think it's probably time to do some different shit.

And here's where I'm going to get chewed out, but I hope you understand that I have to be honest here: while we are addressing causes of actual institutional racism, we can't reflexively label as institutional racism things that are not. 

Why are there more cops and arrests in Black neighborhoods? Because there's more crime. To a certain extent, this is a "no win" for the police. If they patrol Black neighborhoods they're racist and profiling. If they patrol White neighborhoods, they're racist and looking out for the White man. If they don't patrol at all, they're racist and doing nothing. At the end of the day they have to put on their big-boy pants, ignore the criticism, and go where the crime is.

So we need less crime. And that's not an easy thing by any measure. And it's not something that somebody can impose. So I don't have a good answer for that, except to say that whatever the answer is, it will involve the people who live there being front and center. And here I am, some White guy speaking his mind, so what do I know? But I can tell you this: I firmly believe that no matter who you are or where you live, some ways of living are better and some are worse. And crime is worse. I think that Blacks must share that view. So even though we can't get rid of crime tomorrow, we can stop glorifying it today, and that would be a very good step. And people who are violent today because they care can become non-violent today because they care. And that would be a very good step, too.

And yes, we need to get rid of cops who abuse their authority, and those that commit crimes when they do it shouldn't be immune, they should be jailed. And yes, "Driving While Black" is a real thing, so we need to stop unfounded profiling. And yes, we need to make sure that people of all races (and that means all!) receive similar, fair penalties. And yes, we need to make sure that a "jury of your peers" means one in which the color of the defendant does not put him at an immediate disadvantage. And about a hundred other things. But we also need less Black-on-Black crime. Even if we eliminate all of those stupid things that shouldn't be crimes, we still have to address the fact that too many legitimate Black-on-Black crimes remain: homicide, robbery, assault, domestic violence... crimes with victims.

Because these Black lives matter, too. 

Thanks for reading.

---

[1]  I hesitate to name anyone because I don't want you to think I'm exploiting them for the purpose of a blog post. And besides, I haven't asked permission.

[2] I actually have to be very careful in conversation not to use phrases and idioms that I grew up using among my friends, because people who don't know me and assume they know my background will think that I'm mocking Ebonics. (I'm not... that's just the way folks talked, and even then only in the most informal circumstances. Any one of my Black teachers would have slapped you crosseyed if you tried to speak that way in the classroom) Am I being treated with prejudice? Yes, I think I am. I'm OK with that, because your prejudice is based on what you know of most White people. It's not intentional, and it's not racist. It is an error, but it's one you'd correct yourself in the course of getting to know me.