Low Expectations

Someone named Benji Hart writing in Salon.com provides us with a look inside the fevered mindset of some on the far-Left when they consider the current rioting in Baltimore, MD, following the suspicious death of a African American man in police custody. Hart writes:

As a nation, we fail to comprehend Black political strategy in much the same way we fail to recognize the value of Black life.

We see ghettos and crime and absent parents where we should see communities actively struggling against mental health crises and premeditated economic exploitation. And when we see police cars being smashed and corporate property being destroyed, we should see reasonable responses to generations of extreme state violence, and logical decisions about what kind of actions yield the desired political results.

I’m overwhelmed by the pervasive slandering of protesters in Baltimore this weekend for not remaining peaceful. The bad-apple rhetoric would have us believe that most Baltimore protesters are demonstrating the right way—as is their constitutional right—and only a few are disrupting the peace, giving the movement a bad name.

Let me be sure I have this straight. Those, including Barack Obama, who suggest that violence is unacceptable are guilty of "pervasive slandering" of the rioters. After all, Benji Hart and many of his fellow travelers would argue that burning down stores that serve their community, rioting, violently attacking police, disrupting their own neighborhoods and terrorizing the law-abiding citizens who live in them, are to be commended—no wait, praised, for reacting violently to their "premeditated economic exploitation" at the hands of white, privileged classes. All of the problems in the black urban community are the fault of old white men, big corporations, a government that doesn't provide enough assistance, and a media that doesn't cover their experience with an appropriately leftist spin.

Many of us who have lived during rioting in Watts, Newark, Detroit, Miami, Ferguson and now, Baltimore, to name only a few cities, have seen all of this before. We've watched as "the man" has been demonized by left wing agitators and activists in the black community. Through our taxes we've funded anti-poverty, housing, welfare assistance and education programs that have spent trillions trying to remedy the problems that we are told lead to rioting. And yet, little changes in the inner city (although much has changed for African Americans elsewhere). The prevailing question is why? And the answer cannot be found in the delusional and intellectually bankrupt accusations of the far Left.

Change can occur only from within the black community. Solutions to pervasive problems can only be identified by looking inward, no matter how unpleasant the view. Playing the victim will solve nothing—the past 70 years of intermittent race riots in major cities seem to indicate that "no justice, no peace" (a favorite phrase of activists) is simply not going to work.

Leaders within the African American community need to be politically incorrect. They need to identify what's wrong at a cultural, educational, and familial level and then start a century-long process of fixing it. Some of what they find won't be pleasant, and assuredly, it will be attacked by those who want to keep one segment of the black population dependent on government. But the problem can only be addressed if leaders properly and accurately describe it.

The soft racism of low expectations, promoted by people like Benji Hart, does an enormous disservice to the black urban community. It promotes a culture of victimization, bitterness, and despair. In its own way, that may be more tragic and have longer lasting effects that the rioting itself.