KLAVAN: Black Americans Are Being Used as Pawns By The Leftist Elite

Of course, America is not a racist country. It is the least racist country, the only country even to attempt such a high level of multi-ethnicity with such comity and compassion. And there is approximately zero percent systemic racism here, if by systemic racism you mean barriers to advancement of a particular race built into our systems. That people dislike and distrust one another on tribal grounds is a fact of human life. That hasn’t stopped Jews, Irish, Jamaicans, Nigerians or anyone else from doing well here.

Why, then, is it a virtue to pretend? Why should I — an absolutely lovely person who has nothing but good will toward anyone who does not annoy me — apologize for anything I have not done? Indeed, I would like to declare right here and now that when you look upon my bald head, you should see, not atonement for some racial sin, but a great, big old imaginary tattoo telling antifas and Black Lives Matter they can both pound sand.

I am told that as a white man I cannot understand another sort of person’s “lived experience.” I am not convinced. I know a fellow who is a racial bigot. He hates black people. We argue. He says: “If I am mugged or robbed, it will be a black man who does it. Why should I not hate them?” I say: “Well, there is a history of prejudice and oppression that has made the black situation difficult.” He says: “What do I care? I just don’t want to be mugged — and in my lived experience, it’s the blacks I have to fear.”

“Lived experience,” is not a proof of anything. Facts, as a friend of mine might say, don’t care about your “lived experience.” “Lived experience” is where you begin the search for truth.

Here is the truth. Seventy-two percent of black Americans are satisfied with the performance of their local police departments, according to a new Monmouth University poll. Researchers at Harvard, University of Maryland, and Michigan State University all similarly, in the words of one researcher, “didn’t find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crimes.” (This was reported by Jason Riley in the Wall Street Journal.)

There are more than 800,000 police officers in the United States: that’s somewhere around the population of San Francisco. Some of those officers are going to be bad guys. Even if it’s only five percent — which would place police officers somewhere between the angels and the saints — that’s over 40,000 villains in blue. Meanwhile, blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime. Thirteen percent of our population committed 53 percent of the murders and 60 percent of the robberies in 2018. (This was reported in the WSJ by Heather Mac Donald.)

In other words, it is only a matter of time before a bad cop has an unpleasant encounter with a black person who is committing a crime. These are the two people least likely to extract a good outcome from the morass of history and sociology. Bad things are going to happen.

But since these bad things are not representative, why do I have to pretend that they are? Why should I think for even a moment that riots and looting are a justifiable response? I understand the anger these awful incidents cause, and I do believe reforms are desirable. But since, according to a Monmouth poll, 73 percent of Americans support the protesters’ cause, whom are they protesting against? And where’s the racism?

Impoverished black people are being used as pawns in the Left’s game of thrones. As Daniel Henninger wrote in the WSJ this week, 55 years of leftist policies have sent trillions of dollars’ worth of “Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, public housing, rent subsidies and federal aid to public schools” into poor neighborhoods governed by the Left, and very little in those neighborhoods has changed.

But those trillions of dollars represent patronage jobs and they create political dependency that keeps the Left in power while keeping poor black Americans poor. If they are not kept poor, Democrats will lose power and money. Why would Democrats help them then? It’s against their own interest. Instead, they inspire them to anger and disorder, creating the sort of crisis the Left will not let go to waste.

So go ahead, white leftists. Kneel down. But if you debase yourself before a child without a father, he still has no father. If you debase yourself before a man without a job, he still has no job. If you debase yourself while destroying charter school programs and defending horrendous public housing — why then, you are a Democrat and well and truly debased. Kneel down.

Russian collusion was a leftist hoax. Brett Kavanaugh hysteria was a leftist hoax. The overlong pandemic lockdown was a leftist hoax. So is systemic racism.

There are surely legacies of Jim Crow in this country. I have a heart for my fellow citizens who suffer from them. I strongly support the charter schools and housing plans and social and religious teaching that will ease their difficulties.

But what’s happening now will do nothing for anyone, except maybe the powerful leftist elites who are using those citizens for their own gain.