Good Citizen Solution Starts With You

As the race-hustlers, liberals from academia, left-wing politicos and even the Occupy Wall street and communists join hands to march for “justice for Trayvon”, I’m going to offer up a few links to some excellent commentary on crime in America and the startling facts on the real racial divide in America in the criminal justice system.  At National Review Online, Heather Mac Donald penned, “The Post-Zimmerman Poison Pill”.  Mac Donald brings to the table facts from a long history of writing well-researched pieces on a variety of police issues, the criminal justice system, homeland security, welfare and immigration at the Manhattan Institute think tank.  Her research always deals in reliable statistics and avoids the inflammatory flame-throwing.  Also on National Review Online,  Andrew C. McCarthy, details the fine points of the legal maneuvering by the Obama administration in the Zimmerman case and now in escalating racial tensions in his latest piece, “The Obama Administration’s Race-Baiting Campaign”.  At PJ Media, Rick Moran wrote a very good assessment of the big picture of this trial and how it’s being manipulated by the Obama administration, the far-left political activists, much of the mainstream media and the professional civil rights profiteers, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in a piece titled, “Zimmerman Verdict: Race, Guns, and Baloney.

Even the Huffington Post headlines a take on race relations in America by Howard Fineman titled,  “Far From The Mountaintop: Black America Still Reaching For MLK’s Dream”.  Fineman offers some interesting quotes from US Congressman, Elijah Cummings, who represents a district in Baltimore that has been hard hit by crime, unemployment and social decay.  I know what downtown Baltimore is like, my late mother-in-law and father-in-law lived there (rough neighborhood).  Fineman relates a story that Cummings told of taking his mother, a Pentecostal preacher, to meet President Obama and how this event of having a “black President” (who conveniently ignores his white heritage completely) was the best day in her life.  Fineman delves into Trayvon’s death with this amazingly untrue statement -“The 2012 shooting and the 2013 verdict divided the country, but united Black America around the reasonable fear that no black child — especially no black male — is safe from the assumption that he is somehow a threat to the civil order on any street he walks.”  Really, he thinks it’s a reasonable fear, when every FACT on crime in America indicates exactly the opposite.

The safest places to walk for anyone, black, white and every other ethnic mix you can name, in America are in predominantly white neighborhoods – that’s just a fact.  The crime that decimates our black inner-city neighborhoods stands as a testament to the dismal failures of the liberal social experiments to make life “fair” in America, which Congressman Cummings champions.  It’s always an us vs. them within the professional civil rights industry, which Cummings is a part of.  Now, how they think fomenting anger, racial distrust and encouraging young black men to take to the streets of America, while they fuel more racial resentment is going to change the tenor of race relations in America or really change the grim everyday living conditions for way too many black children being raised in fatherless homes escapes me.  They’re widening the racial divide.

Being the victim of injustice doesn’t give you the right to abdicate your duties as a good citizen in America.  How ridiculous is it for the President of the United States of America (the leader of the free world) to stand there whining about some white women clutching their purses nervously when a black man gets on an elevator, as so horrible for black men to deal with – really some minor ignorance like that causes lasting scars?    Here’s a fact, some people will hold racist views no matter what you do.  This is America and they’re free to believe whatever the heck they want and if some white woman fears black men, well, then so be it.

You can’t eliminate racists, idiots, or ignorant people by more legislation – sometimes you just need to ignore some things.  As long as there are laws to protect equal access to opportunity and equal protection under the law, then the little stuff that President Obama mentioned is just “rise above the ignorance stuff”.   Listening to this President makes me sad for the smallness of his visions on race and yes, I think he’s a racist.  He glories in pegging white people as racists, narrow-minded and intent on keeping the black man down.  So much for uniting America.  Instead of encouraging young black men to take to the streets to demand “justice for Trayvon”, which this President knows he can’t have a redo on the trial to get the outcome he desires,  his definition of “justice” is rather murky and really he’s using this black rage to push his far-left political agenda – just a shallow political ploy on the backs of angry, young black men.

Even white people sometimes fall victim to being wrongfully accused, profiled and having their rights violated.  I’ve experienced injustice in my life and I’m considering writing about something that happened to me many years ago.  I never received justice, that’s for sure, because I couldn’t prove any of the crimes committed against me.  In fact, I couldn’t even get those closest to me to believe me, because what happened seemed  unbelievable.  By sheer luck, I did win the most important legal battle, which was my freedom.   I have had to keep silent, because I still can’t prove it happened. My story is about how lies can snowball out of control and how people with power can go to extremes for political survival.  In the aftermath of this serious injustice I experienced, I know what rage feels like and I know what it feels like to think your rights don’t count.  What helped me survive was to go get a job after being a homemaker for 18 years.  Hard work helps you find a way to release some of that rage – put your anger to something constructive.  And whenever I feel ready to quit, I fall back on the simple lessons that my short Army experience taught me.

Sometimes you have to just ‘”suck it up and drive on”, because other people are counting on you.  And here’s the real key to persevering in life, whenever you are out of hope, and out of options, take a little time to “back up and regroup and then you can fight another day”.  Life is like that too, so never forget everyone is part of a team, whether it’s your family, your school, your church, your country – we need to rebuild the American team and work together.  Now, my job is just an ordinary retail job, which lots of people think is beneath them, but putting your hands to some sort of real work would better serve so many unemployed young black men – it really would.

The solution to not only black Americans’ social problems, but all Americans’ social problems is building bridges of hope, not bridges built by federal programs leading to nowhere.  Strong families and dedication to individual achievement, good citizenship girded by a clear understanding of not only our civil rights, but our civic duties as good citizens will restore American communities and provide real hope and change.  If you really want to help young black men, here’s the answer black men – start being good fathers and sticking around to be a good role model for your sons and yes, this advice goes to all American men – stand up and start being responsible husbands and fathers.  This is the real solution to America’s social decay and to improving racial harmony too.  And you know all this effort is being expended to organize marches and protests, which is of course their right, but imagine what could be achieved if all this anger in young black men was turned to doing actual work in some of the worst neighborhoods in America.  The community-organizer-in-chief should be promoting civic action that gets inner-city young people rebuilding their communities.

At work I observed two women filling up several shopping carts of school supplies and I asked if they were buying for a school.  They told me that their little church from a nearby very small town gives away 350 backpacks filled with schools supplies to children in need.  I observed them handing empty boxes to their kids and telling them, “here count out 300 more erasers and put them neatly in this box” and “we need 100 more of those pencils.” That’s one small church and these two ladies smiled and told me they are blessed to have a very generous congregation.  If you would look at the millions upon millions of federal dollars spent on ineffective federal programs to address the problems within America’s inner-cities, where people like this President gain political power and hold great sway, and instead  expended that energy toward encouraging the residents of inner-cities to begin taking responsibility to help rebuild their own communities, we might see more real change, less violence and offer real hope to these young black men.

Last night I watched Bill O’Reilly talk to a black reverend and from the back and forth, it seemed to me that this black reverend doesn’t much care for white people – that was my perception.  He huffily made some comment that the black inner-city community doesn’t need other people to come in and fix their problems, but he does want tax dollars and lots of federal money from these other people.  I know this angry pride from growing up in a poor, rural area, where the locals looked on city people moving in with distrust and disdain.  Here’s a quote for the reverend: Matthew 7:16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”

We need to move beyond the flying into fits of anger and directing our energy toward dividing people into hostile camps.  Instead of buying into this distrust, perhaps we need to open our hearts a little and try to get to know each other as individuals first, strive to find that common ground.  And truly that saying, success is the best revenge”, puts all those purse-clutching, racist white women in perspective – they aren’t what matters, because now here comes one of those hard lessons in life – you can’t control or change what anyone else thinks or believes, the only person you can control and change is yourself.  Focus on being the best person you can be and you just might inspire a few other people to follow your lead.

“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”- Martin Luther King, Jr. ( I Have A Dream speech, August 28, 1963), I was a toddler and here we are 50 years later still retracing our steps, trying to realize this dream.  Instead of letting our hopes be dashed over a local tragedy of two young men brawling in the street one night, we’ve got to set our sights on getting to that mountaintop where freedom rings for every American child and hope rises above being a political slogan.  Hopefully, in my four children’s lifetime this dream will become reality.