#CrimingWhileWhite

Mr. Dragonofski requested a report on #CrimingWhileWhite. As always, friends, your wish is my command. Just so long as it doesn't involve anything too obscene or boring.

While it should come as no surprise to you that I do not possess, do not want to possess, and will not possess a Twitter account, I grudgingly acknowledge it's place in our society as the teeming collective unconscious of the Millennial generation. Its 140 character limit on speech mirrors exactly the average American's shallow engagement on the issues. 

By it's nature, all dialectic is pared away, leaving raw tribalist rhetoric, which is, realistically, the best you can expect people to offer on any discussion of public import. Some may admire Laconic wit, but after considering that its originators built their society around child abuse, one should foster in themselves a healthy distrust for the Lakedaimonians.

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#CrimingWhileWhite seems to offer a sight subversion to this trend. While the evidence offered is, of course, anecdotal, taken in the collective it does show the disparity in police treatment between blacks and whites. One can go on to argue the causes for such a disparity, but that such disparity exists is certainly something that everyone should be aware of. The truth is beyond politics and should receive the full support of everyone involved.

One would expect pushback against #CrimingWhileWhite to come from the right. To justify the difference in treatment, they might point out higher rates of criminality within the black community, or, more delicately, that black populations tend to be distributed more heavily in urban, crime-prone areas. Given these facts, they could posit that more hands-off treatment of the white population is justified in order to allocate resources where they may best stop the most serious, life-threatening crimes.  

Of course, one should then go on to extrapolate that if police resources are so strained that they are unable to deal with the most blatant of white offenders, we may just have too many useless laws. The fact that there are somewhere around 3-4 thousand federal crimes listed in the US Code should give us pause. Remember, this is just the highest, most remote level of government! Imagine how many state and local level laws can be added to this, and just how arbitrary these can be.

Additionally, if targeted harassment of the black community is justified, then let it be justified in the open. The point of being a country of laws is that the actions of the government should be transparent and constant. To do otherwise is tyranny and cowardice. Not holding the discussion at all, as we shall see, is the province of the left, and the right should be better.

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One expects #CrimingWhileWhite to be attacked from the right: if not from the establishment politicians zealous to maintain a bland respectibility on any issues of controversy, than maybe from the alternate right, or possibly from the mythical Klansmen that were supposed to show up in Ferguson. One would not expect the left to seek to undermine their own argument. That would just be be crazy, right?

Oh, but we know how the left loves to deal in crazy. As Drew Harwell and Danielle Paquette of the Washington Post tell us,

"By Thursday morning, the online campaign that some saw as a show of solidarity had become another source of division. Many African Americans on Twitter began to see it as a belittling, self-serving failure to grasp the daily discriminations confronting blacks."

Because, of course, pointing out how whites get treated differently than non-criminal blacks, even in the midst of committing crimes, shows that one doesn't understand that blacks are treated differently, ignoring the fact that such ignorance would make these statements pointless.

Kara Brown from Jezebel asks, missing the point,

"Who is this helping? How is this helping? These are questions that all allies should be asking themselves. Because really, what are black people supposed to do with these stories? They don't really make us feel better. They don't embolden us with knowledge or tactics that we can use to fight the system. And they simply confirm what we already know: white privilege is fucking amazing."

So just, "what are black people supposed to do with these stories"? Nothing, because blacks aren't their target! Shouldn't it be obvious that any attempt to expose "white privilege" wouldn't be? Wasn't that the point of all those "It's not minorities' job to enlighten ignorant whites" articles? It should be clear to everyone that #CrimingWhileWhite is targeted from whites, to whites.

Ms. Brown then goes on to praise the counterfactual,

"In response to #CrimingWhileWhite, Ebony.com editor Jamilah Lemieux started the hashtag #AliveWhileBlack for black people to share stories of their interactions with the cops—not while committing crimes, but just while living—where they were treated with violence, carelessness and general inhumanity. 

See, now, this is helpful. It amplifies the voices of the exact people being disproportionally targeted by police. It helps those who might be less familiar understand the breadth of this epidemic, and perhaps some white people will be able to see how many of their blacks friends have personally experienced injustice at the hands of cops. These experiences are often invisible to the privileged, where the extent of white privilege is—or should be—lost on no one."

Certainly, #AliveWhileBlack is valuable for just the reasons she states. It serves to show the other side of the coin. But without showing the ways in which whites are treated better, the argument of #AliveWhileBlack cannot be "blacks are treated worse" but merely "cops are dicks." Without the evidence that whites are treated better provided by #CrimingWhileWhite, Ms. Brown and her ilk have failed to prove their case.

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However, none of that is important because, as we are told, "in times like these, your voice is not the one that needs to be heard." The left doesn't want you to be a vocal proponent of their views. That presumes that there is a discussion to be had. They don't want a discussion, they don't want multiple viewpoints acknowledged. They just want the one voice, the one viewpoint: theirs.

This confusion you feel about what are the correct thoughts? This inability to figure out what to say? THAT is what they want. They don't want your voice, they want your silent, ashamed acquiescence to whatever they might require, no matter how it may contradict one or another of their stated principles. You are the bad guy, no matter what you do, and you must do as they say. Jerking you around isn't a bug, it's a feature. If you are frightened and tentative, guilty and defensive, you are easy to control.

The left isn't about principles, it is about power. It is an alliance of those who are willing to put aside all questions of morality and all concern for the outsider for power. If you still care about those outside of your group, you are not the left, you are its useful idiot. You will never win by playing their games, you will never win by accepting their frame.

Justice is important; whether directed towards our own, or out towards the other, whomever he may be. "The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 19:34) We must never sink to the same zero sum game as the left - the results of that would be unfathomably ugly. However, in so doing, we must now and forever understand that the left is not a partner in this task. If we want justice in the world, we must have the courage to create it ourselves.