Pick your battles

It always wise to make sure that the battle you’ve chosen is worth it.    

This seems to be lost on race-baiters like Sharpton, Marc Lamont Hill, and Eric Holder.  They’ve all embraced the circumstances surrounding Michael Brown’s death – as they did Trayvon Martin’s – as emblematic of continuing racism in America’s justice system. They’ve waved the bloody shirt to other activists to signal that it’s okay to riot, loot, burn, and destroy in protest when they don’t agree with the results of court decisions. They’re also using these cases to support their narrative that young black males are disproportionally targeted by law enforcement simply for being black.

This is a mistake; it’s likely to be a costly one. It’s the wrong battle, at the wrong time, based on the wrong circumstances, for all the wrong reasons. There’s little to be gained when the facts, the law, and the circumstances are not on your side. 

Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are not Emmett Till.  They are not the four young girls killed in the Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham. They are not Medgar Evers or Dr. King. 

If you want to draw parallels to the civil rights movement, these aren’t your guys. 

Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were not innocents slain by racists. They were both gangsta wannabes; self-styled “tough guys” with a history of petty crimes and violence against others.  They took selfies holding guns and wads of money. They didn’t die simply because they were young black males, but because they stupidly attacked someone who had a gun.     

It was only news because they were shot by someone who wasn’t black. 

Had Michael Brown – or Trayvon Martin – been fatally shot by a black cop, or another black male, there would be no story. He would just be added to the statistics that already show that the overwhelming majority of young black males who are murdered are killed by other black males.

And murder remains the top cause of death for young black males.

Moreover, Brown’s death was not a “tragedy.” He was a criminal and a bully – captured on video committing a strong-arm robbery 10 minutes before he got shot by the cop he attacked. The real tragedy was the destruction of Ferguson businesses and public property by those who used the death of this punk as an excuse to loot, burn and create havoc.

                                                                                                                                           

His parents, step-parents, and other family members can wail on TV all they like about what a “good” kid he was, and how their “child” did nothing that warranted him being “gunned down in cold blood,” or “murdered” by the police.  Sobbing, tearful family members make good TV, as does the staged clip of a mother collapsing in grief into the arms of friends. 

But it’s all for show; parents of thugs like Michael Brown aren’t terribly surprised when their kid gets killed. However, they rarely expect that to happen as a result of a confrontation with police, because, well, it almost never happens.

Between 2010 and 2012 black teens 15-19 were killed by police at a rate of 31.17 per million. Death by homicide among black males in the same age group averages 48.8 per 100,000.  Large numbers of black kids dying at the hands of cops of any color is pure mythology.  

That’s the inconvenient truth.  Here’s more … 

If you’re a young black male, your probability of being a homicide victim is almost 17 times greater than a white male the same age.  (Homicide rates for young white males are about 2.9 per 100,000.) And since for the most part homicides are overwhelmingly between people of the same race, most likely you’ll be killed by another black male.   

Now, critics claim the reason for this has more to do with poverty and proximity than anything else.  Poverty breeds crime, they say, and more blacks live in crime-ridden areas.  Since most homicides regardless of race happen between people who know each other and live near to each other, there’s some merit to this argument. 

But it doesn’t explain why so many in the black community – including race baiters like Sharpton and Hill – turn a blind eye to black on black murder rates, or dismiss these as media distortions. Apparently a black kid killing another black kid is no big deal; but in the extremely rare event that someone who isn’t black kills a black kid, then society doesn’t value black lives.   

No one wants to admit that a growing thug culture embraced and emulated by a lot of young blacks – and some young whites – glorifies violence against others in general and the police in particular. That doesn’t mean it’s a direct line from movies and music to murder, as some suggest. Still, if artists you idolize say that killing or being killed is the path to fame and respect, and right now you feel you have neither, then it’s going to have an effect.     

Black on black murder in some areas is so common that a thriving business is making and selling “RIP” t-shirts with screen-printed pictures of the deceased, often in gangsta gear while holding guns and flashing gang signs. Sadder still is that some black kids collect these like baseball cards, building a wardrobe that brings  a whole new meaning to “fashion to die for.”       

Michael Brown, like Trayvon before him, was a product of this culture.  He was far from a gentle giant who, as one family member said, “wouldn’t hurt nobody.” The video clip of his robbery demonstrates otherwise.  A recent picture posted online shows him with a gun and a wad of money.  So the media can display all the choir-boy images of him they like but it won’t change who and what he was. He was destined to have his face screen-printed on a t-shirt. It was only a matter of time. 

I am sorry, but I can’t find it in me to have a single iota of sympathy for Trayvon, Michael, or their families. To me, Trayvon and Michael were self-absorbed punks, raised by self-absorbed mothers, fathers and step parents who failed in their duties to civilize their offspring. Now, after the fact, they all want to blame someone or something else – the police, the justice system, society, racism, whatever – for the monsters they produced through their own neglect and indifference. 

Am I sorry they died? I suppose – but mainly in a philosophical way.  Trust me, when the verdicts were announced, I neither wept nor celebrated.  Based on what I did know from digging beyond the breathless headlines and talking heads, justice was served. 

What happened to Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin is not evidence of a racially biased justice system, but the opposite – the system worked the way it should, based on evidence instead of emotion. Nor are they martyrs for civil rights; neither of them gave a damn about anything but themselves. 

Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin are the wrong ponies to ride into battle.  And this is the wrong battle to fight at the wrong time. 

The images of rioting and looting in Ferguson, the destruction of black-owned businesses there and Brown’s step father on video telling everyone to “burn this bitch down” are still fresh in everyone’s minds.  So is the media coverage of other acts of violence and mayhem in various cities.  Add the fact that “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened according to testimony from witnesses in the grand jury hearings. And don’t forget the outing of Officer Wilson’s home address and marriage license, and the subsequent threats on his and his pregnant wife’s lives. 

Overall, the Michael Brown case is not likely to sustain sympathy for very long. When more of the facts come out he’ll be just another punk, not a folk hero.

Linking it to the Trayvon Martin debacle does nothing to change that.  That will remind most of us of how the media shamelessly manipulated its coverage to support a false narrative about an innocent young man executed by a white vigilante for the crime of being black and wearing a hoodie. The media manipulation of the Brown case will be seen as more of the same.        

There are only so many times you can play the race card before it starts losing its potency. When you play it all the time, even when it’s not applicable, you decrease its value even faster. 

And this is one of those times. 

The shooting of Michael Brown – like that of Trayvon Martin – had nothing to do with race. The acquittal of Zimmerman, and the decision not to indict Wilson had nothing to do with race, either. Falsely claiming both did may play well in the black community, but that’s only about 13% of the population. Add the big-city liberals and NPR crowd and you add maybe another 20%

The rest of the country isn’t buying it. Been there, done that. Won’t get fooled again.    

Between inflammatory statements by Michele and Barack Obama over the years, and the perpetual animus of Holder, Sharpton, and others who see racism in everything, race relations in this country have already been set back by decades. 

Choosing to rally around the Brown and Martin events to focus America on the need to address distrust among minorities of police and the justice system is a poor decision.  Especially now. 

A better battle would be to address how to prevent crime in minority communities. 

That would make more sense than focusing on what happens after a crime is committed.