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Truth is Not Relative. On sports, racism, police officers, and the root…
Uncategorized September 19, 2016, 0 Comment 113Truth is Not Relative.
On sports, racism, police officers, and the root…
By Natasja Yonce Esq.
The Seattle Seahawks gained a new fan in me lastSunday night. The Seahawks stood like proud men with linked arms for their country’s anthem. They stood in solidarity to show they are proud of America, unified and patriotic, with American flags on the sidelines and servicemen center stage on the commemoration of 9/11. They even ended the game with a prayer. Truly American. Go, Hawks!
They also stood unified in trying to bring to light what is being described as unfair treatment of African Americans by police officers.
Unfortunately, the political arena has now infiltrated the sports arena we used to enjoy to actually escape all the lunacy in the world. The left-wing sports stations reveled & loved every iota of coverage they could bestow on flailing quarterback (78.5% quarterback rating), Colin Kaepernick, showing – according to them – “courage” for sitting instead of standing during the Star Spangled Banner. Seriously? This is now the litmus test for courage? To sit down?He was protesting the killing of blacks by the police, not healing, but perpetuating the division that has taken root at an alarming rate which has been cultivated by those who want to divide and conquer. The Seahawks fortunately showed him how it was supposed to be done in the first place.
So as a truth seeker in all things, I set out on a journey. All the facts matter. Truth is truth. Truth is not relative. (Although if you believe Snopes, it might have various degrees of relativity and even alternate realities.) It is, however, a very hard commodity to come by in today’s media coverage. Every media outlet is skewed according to political orientation. So, I set out to get to the truth. What is the truth behind the statistics of violence pertaining toAfrican Americans? What are the biggest threats to the African American community and their prosperity and elevation in society? Why are they feeling so passionately that this country has been perpetually racist, no matter what?
So, my first stop in this journey took me to Kaeprnickhimself. After all, he’s the one that interjected this racial issue into sports and enjoyed the most media attention through not standing up for the flag of the country that made him a multi-millionaire. Yes, I personally feel that he should not have used this platform to protest. But that being said, I am all for protesting. This is after all still a free country. Ibelieve it could have been handled with much more wisdom, more effectively, while actually building aplatform that could have made a difference and brought about positive change in society.
There is a brutally honest article written by Matt Walsh for The Blaze. He wrote a personal letter to Kaepernick in which he voiced what many Americans today are thinking:
“I think it could be worthwhile to address your points at face value. As far as that goes, it seems you have only the one point, and it’s a point we’ve heard a million times before, often from wealthy black or biracial athletes like yourself, or from our black president, or from our black attorney general, or from various black congressmen and media members, or from black pop stars, or from black mayors of cities with police departments run by black people. All of these figures — some of them among the richest and most powerful in the world — tell us the same thing: America is a racist country that systematically oppresses its black citizens.
If that’s true, it must be said that America is, without a doubt, the most clumsy and ineffectual racial oppressor in history. When North Korea oppresses its citizens, they starve to death. When African warlords oppress their people, entire villages are butchered and burned. When ISIS oppresses the people it conquers, women and children are raped and killed. When America oppresses racial minorities, they become presidents and NFL quarterbacks. There seems to be a disconnect here.
Hey, now that I think of it, could the disconnect be that “the system” is actually not so dedicated to keeping the black man down? Could it be that police officers are not sent out into the streets on a mission to exterminate the black population? Could it be that there is no other country in the world where ethnic minorities can, through their own initiative and hard work, climb so quickly and so often to the very top of the social, political, and economic ladder? Could it be that the “systematic racism” narrative survives only because it is propagated by the very people who, through their phenomenal success and incredible good fortune, automatically disprove it?”
Biracial himself, Kaepernick had a troubled mother and was adopted & raised by a white couple in a loving home. He has not done anything in his past to stand up as an activist politically, or for that matter – sit down for the Anthem before his multi-million dollar career was in trouble. There are also many articles about the fact that his current Muslim girlfriend is a Black Lives Matter activist. Before all this transpired, he had not been involved in community outreach, nor had he been involved in betterment programs or volunteer work to mentorminority children from underprivileged neighborhoods. On the contrary, he has been living the luxurious, “one percenter” lifestyle, which his leftist constituents deplore. A lifestyle beyond what most Americans could even imagine. If he had made an effort to stand for something before, he might have had a legitimate platform and would not have seen the need to insult his country, its veterans and servicemen and the fallen soldiers who gave their lives for the freedom he enjoys to get paid millions to throw a ball around… I say stand for your principles, but show honor to a country where honor is due; where others died for your freedom. It is ungrateful and selfish. It is blatantly unpatriotic. If there was any sincerity to his activism, he would get informed and know what the biggest killer of blacks in America is today. Truth: black on black crime. Truth: Planned Parenthood built mostly in black neighborhoods, where black babies are the largest demographic being slaughtered by the thousands every year. Blacks that consist of only 13 percent of the population.
If he really wanted to make a difference, he would be in those neighborhoods helping better the community,fighting for school choice, fighting against black on black crime and bringing to light the atrocities of Planned Parenthood being well established in mostly poor, black communities. He would be focusing on the fact that most black children are raised in singleparent households, mostly by single moms and since this phenomenon arose during the sixties in the black communities, the crime rate rose proportionately. He would try to help restore the family unit in these communities and encourage present father figures that he had the privilege of having himself when he was raised. But no, he sits down on a bench, when he could actually stand up for something.
Nonetheless, he is called a “peaceful protester” by many from the leftwing media, activists and also by many in the black community still believing that they are deeply wronged by racism in America. It isheartbreaking. This is not courage. I have to agree with Lil Wayne, I thought racism was dead and gone when I moved here from South Africa 14 years ago. Yes, I experienced racism first hand and I can say, I am proud to have been the generation in South Africa that saw apartheid end in 1994. I have also been a part of the generation that saw the minorities who restored the majority and gave them voting rights, be the exact minorities who experienced – and still experience – severe racism and discrimination through that precise action of selflessness. But the media is silent. This does not fit the narrative.
Life is tough. I have seen terrible atrocities in my lifetime, and I’ve also seen that racism comes in many shapes and sizes. When the minority, and their culture is being destroyed, willfully impoverished by “positive discrimination” and affirmative action and there are no laws to protect them, the international media doesn’t report it, because the minority is white. It does not fit the meme. When the UN plans sanctions against a country for regressing and doing exactly what it had done before – only to the minority this time – the media is silent. It doesn’t fit the narrative. When the majority is protected by law to discriminate and actively seek to destroy the minority economically, then you walk in true oppression. When hundreds of thousands of farmers are brutally murdered and wiped out in at attempted genocidebecause of their skin color, then you are walking in true oppression. When farms are taken from the minority without remuneration and given to the majority, you are walking in true oppression. True racism is from the pit of hell no matter where it comes from. Sin is sin. Time to see truth. Is there oppression in America against minorities like this? No, of course not. On the contrary, the opposite is true.
This American government will never oppress minorities. But they are oppressed in one way of which they are completely unaware. A political party keeps them controlled through hate, division, powerless economic circumstances, but they believe this party is their savior. It has not changed their circumstances, it has not elevated them, it has not made a difference for decades upon decades. And it won’t now, nor has it made a difference with the first black president. These minorities suffer the most at the hands of these politicians. Just go outside of these borders of the United States and you will see. Widespread discrimination is a false meme perpetuated by the media, activists and politicians and unfortunately most Americans have never travelled the world to see what true oppression looks like.
We all live in a western civilization bubble and if we were raised in a society that tells us we are wronged,we believe it. We believe that everything that goes wrong in life has something to do with the fact that we are different or a certain color. This victimhood mentality is very real. We get stuck and paralyzed and feel we can’t get out from under that oppression. But that is a lie. In America, you control your own destiny. A racist fool or an ignorant hate monger doesnot control your destiny. You do. We choose to give the things power over our lives that we want to give power over our lives to. Truth is not relative. Truth is truth.
The problem isn’t racism. The problem is sin. We live in a fallen society and in certain instances, criminal actions are even celebrated. The truth is there are criminal elements in every walk of life. There are criminals in the sports industry. There are criminals in the pharmaceutical industry. There are criminals in the media and also criminals involved in politics. The problem is, in a fallen society, the criminals don’t always face justice. Sin is sin. If it’s legal or not. We have seen the slow death of justice in this land. Criminality is politicized by the media, so wicked people are getting away with awful crimes, even crimes that put this country at risk… And this is part of real life in a fallen society… It is brutal to behold. We all see opposition. It just comes in various forms. We all get treated badly by people, we all get judged for different reasons: by our appearance, our financial prosperity or lack thereof, the car we drive, our background and even our dialect. A book definitely gets judged by its cover in real life and guess what? It’s just life in a fallen world. It’s not racism when we face opposition. It’s life. Tough, but beautiful and full of opportunities.
Americans have the highest standard of living in the world that I have ever beheld. The poor here in America would be considered the wealthy in 98% of the other countries in the world. And if, by chance,we are targeted or abused verbally or emotionally because of those very few that are walking in ignorance and hate, then we can stand firm knowing that their reality is not our reality. We can pity them for the bankrupt life they’re living. We can live free of their ignorance and it has no baring or control over our lives. We know we have the power over our own lives, while America is still free. The truth is, politicians love hate and division, because it gets people motivated to go vote. It’s a vicious cycle thathas escalated terribly over the last 7 years.
I have traveled the globe. I have experienced many cultures first hand. I can unequivocally say that America was light years ahead of the rest of the world in race relations when I arrived here 14 years ago. Not perfect by any means, but light years ahead. Every possible program existed – and still does – to support minorities in America. There is affirmative action in scholarships, affirmative action in college acceptance and employment opportunities, free healthcare, free school lunches, food stamps and unemployment etc. These programs are used as a toolof oppression in other countries to suppress their minorities and control the population.
In communist countries you don’t have free choice. In Muslim countries you don’t have freedom of religion. This is not reality in America. In every instance every opportunity exists to climb to the top. No matter what color or background. America elected her first black president. She has a black attorney general; she has black congressmen and women who have been part of the government for decades. She has black celebrities and athletes from all walks of life who are living the American dreamto the utmost. If you don’t have an exceptional talent, you can work hard and make something of yourself even if you were raised poor. This is still the land of opportunity. The American dream is still alive and well here if you’re willing to see it, but the politicians and activists who divide through hate, drive their constituents to believe lies and live in a perpetual state of victimhood. They are all too happy to keep the fires of division stoked. Truth is not relative.
Are there actual cases of police brutality involving blacks? Absolutely. There are criminals in the police force as well. There are many heinous crimescommitted to this day by the police forces of many,many other countries that will make America’s problems look like a kindergarten playground fight. It is time to see it for what it truly is. Police brutality towards blacks is an exception to the rule. There are more cases of police brutality on whites and on Hispanics (also a minority) than on blacks. I dug through a few facts on the statistics of crime ratios involving police officers and the African American community obtained from the FBI, The Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Justice.
Fact: Nearly twice as many whites as blacks were killed by cops in 2015. Only 26 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were black. 50 percent were white. The majority of these victims had a gun or “were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force.”
But let’s look at all the facts. One has to take into consideration that these statistics must show evidence of racism towards blacks and especially Hispanics, since whites consist of 62 percent of the population and blacks make up 13 percent of the population, right?
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals the following statistics.
Fact: Blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties. Staggering.
The facts are that officers will be disproportionately confronted with a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities and that unfortunately increases the officers’ risk of using lethal force. What is an officer to do when a 13 year old who fit the description of a suspect who just robbed a store, pulls a BB gun on him? Should the police officer have waited to see if the gun was fake? Should he have allowed himself to be killed for fear that he would be deemed racist? No, they have the right to self-defense. These officers were sadly forced to kill this 13 year old boy when he pointed the fake gun at them. Fear plays a huge factor in these incidents.
Fact: In New York, blacks commit 75 percent of all shootings, 70 percent of all robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime, even though they consist of only 23 percent of the city’s population.
When the police interact with violent criminals, armed suspects, or those resisting arrest, the use of force is unavoidable and it is very unfortunate, but it is a fact that it will occur at a higher ratio in black neighborhoods.
Fact: More whites and Hispanics die from police homicides than blacks. 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide deaths were due to police officers, while only 4 percent of black homicide deaths werethe result of police officers.
Fact: Black and Hispanic police officers are more likely to fire a gun at blacks than white officers. This is according to a Department of Justice report in 2015 and a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s criminologist Greg Ridgeway in 2015 that determined black cops were 3.3 times more likely to fire a gun than other cops at a crime scene. They come from these neighborhoods. They understand the danger.
Fact: Unarmed black men are more likely to die by the gun of a cop than an unarmed white man… Let’s look at all the facts a little deeper. In August 2015, the ratio was seven-to-one of an unarmed black man dying from police gunshots compared to an unarmed white man; the ratio was six-to-one by the end of 2015.
Mac Donald, an investigative journalist and the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute, researched police brutality and points out in The Marshall Project to carefully examine the details of the actual incidents that occurred:
The “unarmed” label is literally accurate, but it frequently fails to convey highly-charged policing situations. In a number of cases, if the victim ended up being unarmed, it was certainly not for lack of trying. At least five black victims had reportedly tried to grab the officer’s gun, or had been beating the cop with his own equipment. Some were shot from an accidental discharge triggered by their own assault on the officer. And two individuals included in the Post’s “unarmed black victims” category were struck by stray bullets aimed at someone else in justified cop shootings. If the victims were not the intended targets, then racism could have played no role in their deaths.
In one of those unintended cases, an undercover cop from the New York Police Department was conducting a gun sting in Mount Vernon, just north of New York City. One of the gun traffickers jumped into the cop’s car, stuck a pistol to his head, grabbed $2,400 and fled. The officer gave chase and opened fire after the thief again pointed his gun at him. Two of the officer’s bullets accidentally hit a 61-year-old bystander, killing him. That older man happened to be black, but his race had nothing to do with his tragic death. In the other collateral damage case, Virginia Beach, Virginia, officers approached a car parked at a convenience store that had a homicide suspect in the passenger seat. The suspect opened fire, sending a bullet through an officer’s shirt. The cops returned fire, killing their assailant as well as a woman in the driver’s seat. That woman entered the Post’s database without qualification as an “unarmed black victim” of police fire.
Several other instances are subsequently evaluated, and include unarmed black men in Prince George’s County, MD and San Diego, CA attempting to reach for a gun in a police officer’s holster. The unarmed black man actually “jumped the officer” in the San Diego case and assaulted him, and the cop shot the man since he was “fearing for his life.” There was also an instance in 2015 where “three officers were killed with their own guns, which the suspects had wrestled from them.”
Fact: FBI data: Blacks are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops. 40 percent of cop killers are black. A police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person. Do we hear this in the media?
The Marshall Project has a very interesting article on the rise of “ambush cop killings” in 2016.
Divisive political rhetoric (it is after all an election year) and various activist groups like Black Lives Matter have resulted in what Mac Donald calls the “Ferguson Effect.” It is a vicious circle of violence.
“Murders have spiked by 17 percent among the 50 biggest cities in the U.S. as a result of cops being more reluctant to police neighborhoods out of fear of being labeled as racists. Additionally, there have been over twice as many cops victimized by fatal shootings in the first three months of 2016.”
The Washington Post gathered the following data on fatal police shootings.
For starters, fatal police shootings make up a much larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide deaths than black homicide deaths. According to the Post database, in 2015 officers killed 662 whites and Hispanics, and 258 blacks. (The overwhelming majority of all those police-shooting victims were attacking the officer, often with a gun.) Using the 2014 homicide numbers as an approximation of 2015’s, those 662 white and Hispanic victims of police shootings would make up 12% of all white and Hispanic homicide deaths. That is three times the proportion of black deaths that result from police shootings.
The lower proportion of black deaths due to police shootings can be attributed to the lamentable black-on-black homicide rate. There were 6,095 black homicide deaths in 2014—the most recent year for which such data are available—compared with 5,397 homicide deaths for whites and Hispanics combined. Almost all of those black homicide victims had black killers.
Police officers—of all races—are also disproportionately endangered by black assailants. Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40% of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.
The Black Lives Matter movement claims that white officers are especially prone to shooting innocent blacks due to racial bias, but this too is a myth. A March 2015 Justice Department report on the Philadelphia Police Department found that black and Hispanic officers were much more likely than white officers to shoot blacks based on “threat misperception”—that is, the mistaken belief that a civilian is armed.
The Black Lives Matter movement has been stunningly successful in changing the subject from the realities of violent crime. The world knows the name of Michael Brown but not Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old black child lured into an alley and killed by gang members in Chicago last fall. Tyshawn was one of dozens of black children gunned down in America last year. The Baltimore Sun reported on Jan. 1: “Blood was shed in Baltimore at an unprecedented pace in 2015, with mostly young, black men shot to death in a near-daily crush of violence.”
Those were black lives that mattered, and it is a scandal that outrage is heaped less on the dysfunctional culture that produces so many victims than on the police officers who try to protect them.
These are all the facts. Facts are not relative. Is the media making sure that all facts come to light? No, of course not. They always spread intitial“speculative rumors” that turn out to not be true, but never outright admit that their “facts” did not line up with their coverage. They are activists themselves perpetuating a lie to fit their own agenda.
I recently posted about my disappointment in Kaepernick and I received an interesting reply stating: “but you weren’t even born here.”
I’d like to take the opportunity here to say: exactly. I am proud to be an American today. That makes me in essence an African American in the actual experiential sense of the word. I was born under much different circumstances and I have a very wide panoramic worldview. When a country like America has created all the opportunities that has been bestowed on all people, the majority and minorities, that country deserves to be respected, not hated. I know what true oppression looks like. I know what true racism looks like. I know what it means to sing the Anthem of your country forlast time. America’s Anthem, stands for something bigger than ourselves. Americans are born into a country of endless opportunity. The misfortune the average person faces in their lives here are truly miniscule in comparison to the atrocities and human rights violations I have seen and experienced in my lifetime all over the world. There have been more division and hate sown the last 7 years than what I have ever experienced in this country and most of it has no basis in reality. It’s as if there’s an artificial inferno being set by a false narrative of hate. Darkness feeds on fear and hate.
We need to resist. We need to unite. We need to get informed and choose to not be victims anymore. We need to appreciate the beauty of America. We need to punish criminals no matter what walk of life they come from. The rule of law still matters.We need to see the spiritual root of criminality for what it truly is: sin in a fallen society.
By living in truth we get empowered and help others to see that they are in control of their own destiny. God gave us free choice. We need to turn back to Him. Yes, we absolutely must create platforms for protest that will truly make a difference and change communities for the better. We certainly need not applaud the abuse of entertainment platforms by someone merely sitting down. We should actually applaud those who actually stand up and change the injusticesand darkness through truth and hope. We have many such examples that can be supported and celebrated in America. One such person is Alveda King, niece of the great Martin Luther King Jr. She doesn’t sit down. She stands and fights for the betterment of the black community on every level, including spiritual. We can all learn to stand and actually do something to better our fellow man. We need to see the root of the problem for what it is: spiritual darkness and sin.If our eyes are open, we can lead people to truth…
Yes, we need to stand for The Anthem of the country that was founded on Christian principles;the country that has cultivated a strong foundation for freedom and the American Dream. She’s not a perfect country by any means, but one that God has used to be a beacon of light, hope & justice all over the world. Only if you have stepped outside of this bubble of protection will you truly see the Godly blessing of America. The America that was established by the Founding Fathers deserves to be saluted. She always revered God. She seems to be turning her back on Him now. This root can be healed by giving America back to God. But will America truly turn back to Him again to be healed, united and blessed once more? Only through the divine hand of a Great Awakening, I believe.
God save America.
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