For the most part, there is no educating conservatives.
The former will go to their grave cursing their whiteness (blaming it for all the world's ills); the latter will go their grave wishing they could have found a 'Michael Oher' to adopt and rehabilitate (praising their altruism for all the world's hope).
Reading about Indianapolis and it's horrific decline under almost a century of continuous Republican leadership is enough to forever make the flaccid the hard-on any young white conservative had for Ronald Reagan and the GOP.
Back in 2010, one of the resident white liberal columnists for the Indianapolis Star, Matthew Tully, expressed frustration with the mass shooting at the Indiana Black Expo (subsequently, each successive Black Expo has required near a martial law atmosphere to keep attendees safe from the privations of blackness).
More so, he was upset anonymous white people took to the Internet to vent against the near all-black violence in the city of Indianapolis (remember: Mayor Greg Ballard launched an campaign exclusively against black-in-origin violence in the early part of 2014 [Black on black crime on Mayor Ballard’s agenda, WISHTV, 3-8-14]), which he compared to a "KKK" rally.
What's so funny is this: a black person would probably be safer at a Klan rally than in some parts of Indianapolis,where fellow black people would have no problem firing at them (since, black-on-black violence is so frequent in Indianapolis).
Here's what the Captain Tully, the avenger against noticing, wrote [Tully: Time to talk about problems linked to Expo, Indy Star, 7-21-10]:
Let's be honest.
If the shootings that occurred Downtown last weekend had been tied to the Indiana Plumbers Expo, or one of a thousand other conventions, the follow-up discussion wouldn't be so difficult.
We all respect plumbers, of course. But if their annual convention required hundreds of city cops patrolling our compact Downtown on a Saturday evening, and if shootings and fights and other incidents outside the convention had become all too common, we would question whether the plumbers expo was worth the trouble.
But we're talking instead about Indiana Black Expo and its annual Summer Celebration. So any discussion about the monumental problems tied to it gets bogged down in the treacherous issue of race.
It's a hard issue to discuss. I've ticked off an endless stream of readers during five years of writing columns about all sorts of issues, but even I got queasy at the idea of diving into this one.
It doesn't help that moronic and simplistic racists thrive on this kind of thing. They turn anonymous online forums into a 21st century version of KKK meetings and make it even harder to have an adult conversation.
That said, we can't let the delicate nature of this subject, or the words of a few racists, prevent us from finally having an honest, and perhaps painful, discussion about the ongoing problems related to Black Expo. Fear of having a blunt conversation, and fear of being labeled a racist, likely has prevented the city from adequately addressing this ongoing problem before now. And so we are subjected to national headlines about the 10 young people shot in the very Downtown that Indy's leaders so often point to as the thing that makes this city special.Well, it would be nice to have a blunt, adult conversation about crime in Indianapolis (and, for that matter, all of America), but when race is involved honesty is always the first casualty.
Better to be on the side of the anointed angels (blacks) than those evil white demons who earn their honorary Klan robes just by mentioning "race" in the same sentence as "crime."
Or, in the case of the Indianapolis Star, something that is covered-up as editorial policy. Only three years earlier, the paper basically bragged about its social justice platform of covering up the injustices against civilization committed by almost exclusively black people. [A caution on suspect descriptions, Indy Star, 3-24-2007]:
Last week we faced one of the more challenging decisions editors ever face, and we didn't handle it well.
It involved the carjacking/robbery/rape of a young woman after she entered her car in a Downtown parking ramp. Police said the assailant was a black male in his late teens, small thin build, approximately 5 foot 8 with medium complexion and short hair. He was wearing a blue polo shirt with thin yellow and white stripes, and blue pants.
We didn't publish that description.
Why?
Lacking, to my surprise, a written approach for dealing with such matters we operated under the common newspaper standard to be wary of all such descriptions because they most often are so vague as to be meaningless.
Does it really help to know that an assailant was, say, a 6-foot-2 blond, upper middle-age white male? Not really. Those guys are everywhere. I'm one of them. But at least when somebody of that description is mentioned, every one of the huge selection of men in my universe isn't thought of as a potential criminal.
Now substitute a black male with black hair. All of a sudden all black men of that description are considered suspect.
That's an injustice from my perspective and from the perspective of most other editors. Most Americans, when they think of crime, fall victim to a racial stereotype.
Let's be honest. When black men commit crimes there is an unfair tendency to blame all black men. Not so with whites.
Here's another truth: When The Star doesn't print a description of a black suspect alleged to have been involved in a crime, my phone will ring and my e-mails will pile up with messages that angrily accuse us of bowing to the evil forces of political correctness.
When the authorities seek a white suspect and we don't print the description, I don't hear a peep. That speaks volumes, don't you think?
That doesn't mean we should have a blanket prohibition against using suspect descriptions. After reviewing policies of several newspapers and discussing the matter with colleagues, including our public safety team, we decided on this policy:
"We will publish descriptions of suspects from public officials or eyewitnesses only when the descriptions are distinct enough to differentiate the person from all but a narrow group of people. The description would likely include a combination of physical characteristics and other identifiers such as age, race, height, weight, hair color, haircut, tattoos, scars, clothing, jewelry, glasses, getaway cars, etc. The use of such descriptions is likely to be rare and must be approved by a senior editor."
Every situation is different, which is why the above statement is inadequate without some discussion points, which we are providing in question form:
Is racial identification relevant to the story and if so can we explain why? Remember that ethnicity isn't necessarily an indication of skin color and that race often is not easily definable. There are black Latinos, and white Latinos, for example.
What is the potential of our decision adding to unfair stereotypes?
Most important, is a description of a suspect so sketchy that a suspect could not be identified in a crowd of people, or is it specific enough to be useful? A 5-foot-10 white male wearing glasses and a knit golf shirt doesn't offer much. A 5-foot-10 white male with a blond crew cut, a tattoo on his left arm, a diamond earring in his left ear, and wearing glasses and a green knit golf shirt provides much more to go on.
My gut tells me that we should have provided the police description of the suspect last week. Bystanders who may have seen the suspect and, learning of that description, may have been able to provide helpful information to the police. (And we should have given the story stronger play in the paper.)
We also shouldn't have confused the situation by printing, later in the week, a police sketch of what appeared to be a black suspect, without mentioning in the adjoining story the suspect's race.
Using the guidelines and questions above, we want to have a more thorough discussion of these kinds of things in the future so we don't repeat the inconsistency we showed last week.
So, Mr. Matthew Tully, the policy of the Indianapolis Star (your employer) is to hide from race, just as name-calling is your policy when it comes to "adult" conversations about race.Thanks for reading The Star.
This entire scheme (Black-Run America) is nothing more than the foundation of religion, from which we are heretics if we dare question the authenticity of the myth.
Better to practice heresy than find common cause with a theology peddled by the likes of Tully, the Indy Star, and those believing every neglected black male is a budding Michael Oher (with only the right, white... prodding and upbringing).
There is no educating liberals.
For the most part, there is no educating conservatives.
There is only surviving.
