We’ve read a lot recently about Jena from MSM’s favorite civil rights leaders, the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. “No justice, no peace” and all that.
Now, let’s read some of what another civil rights leader, Thomas Sowell, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Center, has just written in response to events in Jena:
Racial hype has replaced all rational discussion.The politics of condoned law-breaking is certainly part of the moral dry rot of out times.
Moreover, the Jena episode has shown that two can play the racial hype game. Neo-Nazis have published the names and home addresses of all the young blacks involved in the school incident.
The slogan "No justice, no peace" has been used to justify settling legal issues in the streets, instead of in courts of law.
Neo-Nazis have now helped demonstrate what a dangerous slogan that is, since different people have opposite ideas of what "justice" is in a given situation.
Long after the imported demonstrators have left, and the national media have lost interest, the families of the black youngsters involved in the school altercation will have to live with the knowledge that their privacy and security have both been lost in a racially polarized community, with vengeful elements.
The last thing the South needs is a return to lynch-mob justice, whatever the color of whoever is promoting it.
Back in the 1950s, when the federal courts began striking down the Jim Crow laws in the South, one of the rising demands across the country was that the discriminators and segregationists obey "the law of the land."
But, somewhere along the way, the idea also arose and spread that not everybody was supposed to obey "the law of the land."
Violations of law by people with approved victim status like minorities, or self-righteous crusaders like environmentalists, were to be met with minimal resistance -- if any resistance at all -- and any punishment of them beyond a wrist-slap was "over-reacting."
College campuses became bastions of the new and sanctified mob rule, provided that the mobs are from the list of groups approved as politically correct. Otherwise, even an injudicious remark could bring swift and certain punishment under "speech codes."
The politics of condoned law-breaking is part of the moral dry rot of our times. So is settling issues in the streets on the basis of race, instead of in courts on the basis of law.
So is the liberal/leftist MSM’s hyping of Jackson, Sharpton and other such race hustlers as “civil rights leaders.”
Why does MSM pay so much attention to the exploitations of the Jacksons and Sharptons while ignoring genuine and outstanding civil rights leaders such as Sowell and Duke Law School Professor James Coleman?
As the Duke Hoax played out last Spring, Jackson and Sharpton paid no attention to violations of its victims' civil rights. They enabled the lies of Mangum, Nifong and the DPD. And they wound up looking like a pair of self-deluded dopes better suited to wearing dunce caps than the mantle of the late Dr. Martin Luther King.
Meanwhile, Coleman and Sowell, tough-minded, fair and disciplined scholars, paid attention to civil rights issues and helped lead us through the Hoax and to the day when the Attorney General of North Carolina declared its greatest victims innocent.
In response to Jena, the network news programs, the cable talk shows and our major newspapers should be featuring what civil rights leaders like Coleman and Sowell are saying. Instead, they feature the likes of Jackson and Sharpton who self-promote at the expense of justice and peace.
Sowell’s column is titled Law Versus Mob Rule.
Hat tip: BN
4 comments:
Hell, I'd just settle for the MSM researching their facts before they report. The only other major news outlet besides NPR to begin retractions is MTV. This is quickly turning into the Jena 6 Hoax.
A sample: The so-called "white tree" at Jena High, often reported to be the domain of only white students, was nothing of the sort, according to teachers and school administrators; students of all races, they say, congregated under it at one time or another.
Thomas Sowell's wisdom in all matters should be read and honored. His "Random Thoughts" contain more wisdom that everything Jackson and Sharpton have ever said.
Examples:
"In a democracy, why should one group of citizens carry more weight than a similar number of other citizens, just because they are willing to take to the streets and block traffic?"
"Teachers who think that they have a right to use other people's children as guinea pigs for social experiments should be fired."
"As someone who has worked both in private industry and in academia, whenever I hear about academics wanting to teach ethics to people in business, I want to puke."
Buy and enjoy his books.
My three children are male, white, and would be considered to be relatively well off. Race, class, gender are all there. Much like the Duke Lacrosse victims (but without some of the money).
Therefore, my first thought about the incident at Jena was something like, "why in the world should I care about what happens to your (black) children when you (Al Sharpton, North Carolina NAACP, Duke AAS faculty, NCCU student body) do not care what happens to mine?"
Couldn't do it. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere", as someone once said.
Jena is not just about an assault. Nooses hanging from a "whites only" tree suggest something more. Let's withhold judgment until the facts are in.
Jim, you couldn't be more wrong.
This is a case of assault, the nooses are an after-the-fact excuse being used to lend victim status to the six thugs. This beating took place three months after the nooses incident, and the white male who was assaulted had nothing to do with the nooses anyway.
I'm all in favor of waiting til the facts are in, however, now that the narrative has already been fabricated, the facts don't really matter.
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