Urban riots, missed opportunities
The main focus of the protests/riots of the past several months has centered on police, police unions, and (alleged) police racism. Unfortunately, if one is interested in bettering the lives of our fellow Black citizens, these outbursts are missing those targets where advances need desperately to be made.
Where then to begin a more productive discussion of how to move forward? For starters (since family pathologies appear beyond reclamation at this point), the primary focus needs to be, clearly, on our education system.
Start with inner-city, largely Black,
K-12 schools. The academic achievement levels in these schools have been abysmal, not just at present, but for decades.
Although it is well known that charter schools and voucher-assisted parochial schools work marvels in our inner cities, they have been adamantly resisted by teachers’ unions. The crippling “schoolto-prison express,” so common in our inner-city schools, needs to be broken, if graduates are to successfully move on into the work world or for further education. Thus far, public school teachers show zero interest in solving this problem.
The education fiasco does not end with K-12 schools. In our universities, the story is equally bleak. Ever since the 1960s, when the “tenured radicals” hijacked higher education, our students have received an education (more akin to indoctrination) that is woefully skewed. They are exposed unceasingly, in their readings and lectures, to a leftist version of America that views our history and our contemporary situation as irredeemably racist and inimical to the life chances of Black Americans.
The present widespread embrace of the fabulist “1619 Project” materials by universities (and K-12 schools) across the country is symptomatic of this mindset. The repeated exposure to this jaundiced view is a major engine propelling Black Lives Matter enthusiasts into the streets in the current destructive mayhem that we are painfully experiencing all across the nation.
Move now from education to what is a virtual monopoly of political control in most of our major cities by “fiefdom” Democrats. In many cases, this control has been exercised for decades. These politicians are far more interested in maintaining political power than in embracing programs which will improve their communities, many of which have descended into ghetto-like conditions over the past several decades.
The first order of business for these mayors is to take steps to reduce the extraordinary rates of (largely Black-onBlack) crime in their domains. Communities can not prosper where law and order does not prevail. Thus far, these officials have shown little interest in addressing the lawlessness in their cities or in supporting their police forces in this effort.
I now shift the focus to the virtual complete capitulation of our (largely liberal) elites — corporate, political, cultural, media, university, sports, and entertainment, etc. — over the past several months to various BLM manifestoes, e.g. the destruction of the nuclear family, and to their vile rallying chants, e.g. “pigs in a blanket,” “fry ‘em like bacon,” and, more recently, “all police are bastards.”
To say that our elites have shown no backbone is an understatement. They have added fuel to the fire of the current anarchy.
Meanwhile, these same elites have thrust upon us the yoke of a cancerous “cancel culture” regime, wherein opposition voices are cowed into submission from expressing themselves, aware of the enormous price that has been exacted from those fearless few who have spoken out.
In short, then, if one is truly intent on improving the condition of Blacks in our society, one ought to reassess the efficacy of heaving bricks (and far worse) at our police, all the while making unrealistic, utopian, counterproductive proposals regarding police reforms, etc. So, what can be done positively to improve matters?
Enough taking the knee before the start of major sports events, regarding which, consider the following sobering words of distinguished Black sports columnist, Jason Whitlock: “The militant social justice messaging of (Lebron) James and (Colin) Kaepernick serves the interests of … our political left. Kaepernick’s national anthem defiance gave the left an opportunity to politicize pro football and force it into the hands of ‘progressive’ posturing already commonplace in the NBA and Hollywood.”
It’s time to shoulder up to the real work before us: more K-12 charter schools, more ideological diversity in university faculty appointments, less indoctrination in the classroom, more attention to crime control in our inner cities, and, lastly, more responsible behavior on the part of our elites, e.g. scuttle the cancel culture nonsense and divorce yourselves from your present enthusiasm for BLM.
Frank Walsh is a retired adjunct professor at Regis University, where he taught sociology and mathematics for 30 years, including a five-year stint in Colorado prisons.