As excellent comments often do, Chris’s Comment of the Day prompted an excellent comment in return. This one (actually two that followed on to each other) went well beyond the subject matter in the original post by eventually delving into the soft bigotry of low expectations, Black Lives Matters inner city cultural pathologies, and more.
UPDATE: When I first posted this, I inexplicably included the second part, the follow-up, omitted the main section, which came before. Mu apologies to Chris and Ethics Alarms readers; It’s correct now.
This is Chris Bentley’s Comment of the Day on fellow Chris’s Comment of the Day on “Morning Ethics Warm-Up: 6/14/17”
…That “when we liberals hate someone, it’s because they deserve it.” sentence does bring up some interesting (if not lengthy) thoughts.Most right minded liberals would likely admit that they do hate, at times, republicans and/or conservative ideology. And I’d bet that they’d (like Chris joked) would do so, by justifying that “Right Hate” is bigoted and unjustified, while “Left Hate” is in response to Right Hate, and thus, while ugly, is still justified. This seems to be a prevailing narrative; The Right is hateful for no good reason, the Left is hateful because of the Right. So, no matter how much you can condemn hate, the Left’s hate always seems not quite as bad as the Right’s; more noble, if you will.
And I think this is what frustrates me the most, this narrative. Because rather than the Left seeing the Right as having (at least some) shared goals (security, prosperity, equal opportunity), with radically different paths to achieve those goals, the Left paints the Right’s “hate” as unjustified, ignorant, and without redeeming qualities of any kind.*
At the heart of this frustration is the ignorance most, on the right and definitely on the left, demonstrate towards liberal policies/movements/ideology that are, IMO, every bit as racist/sexist/discriminatory as those on the left claim the right are.
One example: I woke up this morning, and read an article about a mother in Baltimore, who on a particular day, had several times called police to complain about neighborhood thugs trying to steal her kid’s bike, and then, trying to rough up her son; they lived in a very, very bad part of the city. Once the police left the second time, the thugs shot her dead, in front of her kids. It was absolutely heartbreaking to read. And sadly, my first thought, after completing the article, was: “I am certain I will never read about this woman’s murder on a left-run website…ever.” (Followed by: “I am certain BLM will never hold a protest in this woman’s honor”…but that’s an issue for another day)
I am a conservative, who is saddened by, and cares deeply that this (a) black (b) woman’s life was worthless to another human being, and now her (c) children will have to grow up without a mother (a link for her family’s GoFundMe page is here). Those are three topics that I am frequently told that I, as a conservative, care nothing about, as a (self-hating) racist, misogynist, neanderthal, who care nothing about children born into poverty once they are born. However, I am also enraged by the fact that I KNOW that many on the left, who could not talk about the murder of a black teen in Florida often enough (b/c in came at the hands of a “white Hispanic”), will never touch this story, not with a 10′ pole…because her murderers aren’t white, and aren’t cops.
Often, when a white person is responsible for a misdeed towards a black person, they are (usually) held to the historically accepted standards of acceptable conduct, by the court of public opinion on the left. This is appropriate. However, when a black person is responsible for a similar misdeed, especially towards another black person, the perpetrator’s actions are often rationalized, justified, scapegoated, or, as is usually the case, ignored, by the left. The implicit message being sent, is that the left has low expectations of conduct for blacks, and as a result, holds blacks to lower standards than they hold whites to. We are treated with kid gloves across the board; if we yell “appropriation” or “racist”, those claims are given unearned validity. I just finished a road trip through TN and AL, and read a good bit about the list of demands the group inspired by Rosa Parks and led by Dr. King gave to the Montgomery Bus Company, during the bus boycott; compare that appropriate and reasonable list to the insane list of demands provided to, and acquiesced by, Evergreen College, by it’s black student population. It’s f****** laughable to compare the two.
Imagine you are sitting in a class, where you know you are equally as smart as everyone else is, and are eager to prove it, but when your classmates give answers, those answers are held up to scrutiny, whereas your answers are always given a rubber stamp of approval, no matter how half baked they are. Your classmates learn how to construct rational, logical arguments, and how to toss aside reasoning that is incorrect or ineffective, while you….either begin thinking that you’re always right, or, begin feeling insulted that no one trusts your intelligence enough to challenge you. Nether is conducive to self development, and one of them is every bit as demoralizing as bluntly being told of your inferiority because of your skin color…y’know, the overt type of racism that the Right apparently takes pride in daily.
The left is often more offended by the mere mention of “‘black on black crime”, than the violent actions of a black perpetrator towards a black victim. “Not true” you say? Type the phrase “black on black crime” in Google, and then type the names of any actual victim of black on black crime (the woman’s name in the above story is Charmaine Wilson; that’s an easy place to start) and compare the rhetoric of the results you receive. Thats what i often do when I come across a story that flies in the face of the liberal narrative; I Google it, to see which websites are talking about it. I encourage you all to try it sometime. It’s why I tell people that I’d much rather receive my news from the biased Fox News; I trust myself to sort though their BS to dig out the nuggets of valuable info. But at MSNBC, I can’t trust that I’ll even receive the dirt the sift through, if it’s a story they don’t like.
While I can admire and respect parts of the left, and for damn sure see the flaws of the right (not as much with ideology, as with actual Republicans), the above is one of the many, many, many reasons that I am fairly certain I will never align with the left. Which, I now realize, has nothing to do with the original post (you know, the shootings), but, damn, it felt good to write.
…
Chris, thanks for your acknowledgement that you occasionally fall prey to the narrative. I fall prey to narrative and stereotypes about the left, and have to catch myself often.
With regards to Black Lives Matter, I must confess that I don’t have a master grip over the conditions that are typically met, when they do decide to protest. However, they were present in Baltimore, protesting Freddie Gray’s death less that a week after he died, and before the police involved had a chance to be indicted.
As for what they would be protesting, I’d start with the wide spread, unwritten “snitches get stitches” street law. I’d argue that this “law” is more responsible than any white-initiated system for the continuation of black deaths at the hands of black perpetrators, and would conceivably be easier to fight against, as black gangs would seem more likely to listen to blacks who share the same “hate whitey” mindset, than in-power whites would be. But that would require BLM having the same expectations of blacks as they do of whites, that you can equally convince either group that their conduct is wrong, dangerous, and harmful for black people. And I know, one would be preaching to criminals vs preaching to law enforcement; but based on the rhetoric I’ve heard from BLM, they see the police as being the least trustworthy, most despicable groups of people imaginable. So, they still have the expectation they can convince this group (that is predominantly white) to change, but cannot convince a group that is, in their eyes, slightly more trustworthy than cops to change? That is, unless they are holding whites and blacks to two wildly different standards.
Stop the culture of retaliation, you stop the fear of retaliation, which increases witness involvement, which bolsters cops ability to solve crimes, which drives down crime, which makes blacks lives better. Seems simple enough. If the left believes you can teach rapists not to rape, why don’t they believe you can teach gang bangers not to retaliate for snitching? It boggles the mind….
On a completely unrelated note, did you know that the overwhelming majority of rapists are white?
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/43tabledatadecoverviewpdf
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*-For an example of this, see the controversy at Body Blitz, a women’s only spa, that, because it is a clothing optional spa that serves women and girls of all ages, has set a “no male genitalia” policy. Rather than acknowledging the very genuine, very sincere, very obvious reason behind this (even if you find it unfair and discriminatory) and appreciate the incredibly difficult situation it places the business in, most of the quoted responses in articles about the story are 100% against the business, essentially labeling them bigots, and completely failing to see the nuances of the situation.
Ethics Alarms 
Thank you for the honor, Jack…but I think you may have mixed up which of my comments was COTD worthy. The one you responded to (in the other thread) with that honor, began with me commenting about defending Chris’ tongue-in-cheek comment, and cats/dogs sleeping together (though, I now realize that the expression is supposed to be “living together”, not “sleeping together”. Ew.)
The above post of mine that you quoted was part of a later reply to him, after some more back and forth.
If it makes you feel any better, I think your whole string of comments should be seen as a multi part comment of the day.
The full combined comment is up: my mistake.
Understandable!
It’s hard working in conditions when bullets are flying over your head!
Why thank you kindly!
CB—my apologies: I just fixed it. The idea was to include both comments as one, and somehow I messed it up and the first part missed being posted. My screw-up—anyway, it’s the way I meant it to be now.
No apology needed. I cannot tell you how much this blog and the commenters in it has changed, shaped, and informed my worldview, for the better. Plus, it’s a place where I can come to to express my innermost political thoughts, as well as engage with intelligent members of opposing viewpoints (we’ve ll seen the comments sections on most other blogs. It’s a race to see who can out-Neanderthal everyone else). And it’s free! And updated often!
Thank you for your efforts.
Thanks. I need occasional encouragement. Once again, I’ve been discouraged by a drop in traffic, and am seeing every post related to politics cost EA followers: of course, if a reader is going to stop reading because an ethics blog doesn’t march in partisan lockstep, the hell with him (or her). It makes sense that traffic last year and this year through the first couple of months was over-heated. I know ethics is a rarefied niche. Still, when I read a blog post elsewhere that essentially covers territory I covered here three days earlier and better with 1,000 shares, it makes it harder to keep coming back to the keyboard.
I’ve tried to branch out into other discussion groups but none of them can ever hold me.
1) They are all too single topic.
2) Those that aren’t, aren’t very thorough in their analysis.
3) They are all too one sided, in the case of world-view/politics sites.
This blog benefits from maintaining an objective view, a thick skin, and diverse topics, politics, economics, sports, etc.
Hear! Hear!
Where? Where?
They’re their
This is also why i am here, and no where else
See here, where here and why?
Congrats, Mr. Bentley
Thank you!
“And I think this is what frustrates me the most, this narrative. Because rather than the Left seeing the Right as having (at least some) shared goals (security, prosperity, equal opportunity), with radically different paths to achieve those goals, the Left paints the Right’s ‘hate’ as unjustified, ignorant, and without redeeming qualities of any kind.*
Just my opinion, but I think we’re missing the boat to some extent by discussing things in terms of hate or hatred. I think that what we’re dealing with, specifically, is “contempt”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt
A contemptuous person focuses on perceived shortcomings of another person as being the essence of that person, and that makes the contemptuous person feels better about him- or herself. Thus, shared values are discounted, and differences are magnified.
Well said, and thank you for the clarity!
We typically don’t wish for the beheading of those we have contempt for. At least I don’t.
“let them eat cake” comes to mind… and she literally lost her head!
As a woman I feel so honored to be part of this community and as a human.
I am going to share this post on Facebook and encourage each side of friends to read what it sounds like when people from both sides seem truth rather than defending their egoic positions. You all give me hope. I often feel like a misfit because I can see the blind spots on each side so both sides can get challenged by me.
Those in the left have been the most shaming, attacking, and rude to anyone on the right. My friends in the right thank me, agree or disagree but never act like the majority of the left does.
Anyway. We’ll see if anyone cmoes over.
Idea!!!! Jack, how about a post showing more comments going back and forth from different people and we could use that to spread the word and invite people into a safe discussion. So needed. I’d be happy to help facilitate however I can. I’m well connected in some unique circles as I suspect other readers are.
Ok that’s all! Sorry for jumping all over, the idea just popped in my head while posting.
Great COTD! We don’t see enough of you, Chris.
Thank you!
Dittoes joed68! Excellent points, Chris B., excellently written!
I am also certain that this will not incite some members of congress to call for more gun control laws.
In fact, black-on-black violence never seems to incite more calls for gun control from the usual suspects.
I wonder why.
Good job, Chris Bentley. You always give me a lot to think about.
Thanks. You’ve done the same for me.
I looked at your FBI link. I noted that whites have an even higher rate for arson and DUII.
That is ignoring the fact that the percentages are for the total arrests, and the rates for all of the black arrests are highly disproportionate to the share of population. None of them are at 12%.
Matthew,
My inclusion for the FBI link was a toungue-in-cheek jab at Chris, while we were discussing the movement of “teaching men not to rape”, though I realize it wasn’t as clear as I’d have liked. The point was, that for a crime that’s overwhelmingly white, many on the left believe that you can teach the criminal not to commit the crime, and that this will be effective, but the same tactic isn’t used on any crimes where the perpetrators are majority black. I was using this to back up my suspicion that many on the left expect a higher standard of behavior and reasoning of whites (even the criminals) than they do of blacks.
Making race a factor at all is just madness. It shouldn’t impact how we feel about crime one way or another. It sits ill with me to just think about how much people care about the race of the criminal, the victim, etc. And I think it sits ill with a lot of other people too, for a simple reason. It’s racist.
That should include “hate crimes” too, which is just a maddeningly stupid concept. I don’t care if someone shoots me because of my skin color, my religion, my eye color, my weight, my attitude, my driving skills, the way I said hello to their girlfriend, or whatever. I got shot. The punishment should be whatever the punishment is for shooting someone. My logic is inescapable.
Isaac, I agree with all you have said. In addition, I would like to add that race is a valid statistic in that it helps show trends. Are white males committing robbery at a rate out of proportion to their population percentage? What might be causing that drop?
Are Hispanic females ages 20 to 45 reporting rape less than other demographics? Could it be cultural, in that rape is less prevalent? Could it be cultural, in that rape is too taboo to be reported? Could most of that demographic be married, and their husband would rip the ever lovin’ snot out of someone who got out of line? 🙂
Stats are facts, in and of themselves. They can be twisted to fit a bias, or a desired narrative, but get the raw data and this will come out. An example is the faux hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Never was such a big deal, as has lately been admitted.
Jack wants sources for asserted facts, so: http://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/ozone-the-hole-truth