One of the most irritating moments during last night’s Democratic debate came when a young black man posed the question, “Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?”, because it was a trap whose either\/or form precluded a nuanced, thoughtful response.<\/p>\n
As most longtime readers know, my first freelance pieces were true crime features for the old tabloid crime rags, and one of the very first things I learned is that features about black people killing each other are not salable. I tried. If a scary-looking minority rapes and kills a white Sunday School teacher its a story; if a scary-looking minority rapes and kills a black Sunday School teacher it’s … too bad. That’s the bald commercial fact.<\/p>\n
If you doubt that, just visit the true crime section of your local Barnes & Noble store, or scan Ann Rule’s or Joe McGinniss’ or Gregg Olsen’s output: No black people. Check the televised true-crime shows, too; No black people.<\/p>\n
So, make no mistake: blacks do<\/I> have a legitimate grievance; white America isn’t<\/i> very interested in black lives or deaths.<\/p>\n
I believe that’s chiefly a cultural effect, rather than racism per se<\/I>. The legacy racism of the Jim Crow laws inhibited assimilation of blacks into the mainstream of American life, and conduced toward the development of a separate, co-existing, all but immiscible culture — and it’s that cultural barrier that works against the empathy that makes victims sympathetic.<\/p>\n
If there were nothing to know about the subject of race in America but racism-racism-racism, then Barack Obama would never have been elected president and Condoleezza Rice would never have been Secretary of State. Never.<\/p>\n
I would probably have felt honor-bound to answer that all lives matter, and looked as hopelessly dopey as Jim Webb did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the most irritating moments during last night’s Democratic debate came when a young black man posed the question, “Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?”, because it was a trap whose either\/or form precluded a nuanced, … Continue reading