Interesting article and views. It’s all very rational and explanatory. But your synopsis (at least what is highlighted here) doesn’t even remotely hint at the ongoing “drug war” in America. Comment section is similarly devoid of reality. Poverty. Black “culture”. Violence. “Inner cities”. Crime. Gangster rap. Bad behavior. Etc Etc Etc. As we know it in America, in modern terms (“structural racism”), a lot of this dates back most recently to the beginning of the war on drugs. After civil rights. After Vietnam and the Cold War. It was the new war. But wait- why haven’t other ethnic minorities been affected similarly??! There isnt, and never was, a south central (LA) or south side (Chicago) concentrated with 1,000,000 Asians or Indians or even Hispanics. It has been a self-fulfilling prophecy in America. The current discourse and situation (e.g., BLM vs police) was a set-up from the get go, duh.
I'm an old white male. I must ask: When you look at black culture, is there even one thing that would make a white person want to join it? 70% of blacks are bastards. Have you listened to the words of (c)rap music? Is your life's goal to grow up and be a banger? Do you want to live in a neighborhood and listen to gun fire all night (and day)? If you are successful in school, do you want to be shunned because "You ain't black enough!". Do you want to spend your life on government handouts? Do you want to be admitted to college because you're black, assume astornimical debt and then bomb out? Or, as bad, graduate on a quota then be given a title and a broom at your new woke company?
Every one who wants even one of the above points in your life, raise your hand!
Black people have a lot of culture though, and are lots of fun to be around. Otherwise many poor and rural whites in this country don't have cult-ure so much as they're part of a suicidal death CULT! The GOP doesn't even have any cities for all they like pointing fingers at Democratic ones. What? Jacksonville? Fort Worth, Texas?!? Those are Republicans' "biggest" in the country—but who in the entire world has ever heard of anything or anyone coming from either of those places! And what is it the European colonialists(irony they so often fled Europe for the "less developed" world) said about unwashed uncivilized uncultured backwards savage barbarians who have no cities again!? Oh oops; I think I just said it! That's messed up to be sure, but then it's the white supremacist viewpoint! Irony though is that white supremacy so often it's the losers among white people subscribe to, as well that white supremacy KILLS white people. ESPECIALLY the poor and rural whites! W.E.B. DuBois, MLK, & LBJ all explained it. And from Jefferson Davis to Adolf Hitler to Donald Trump, those evil men all did it! Look at that 2020 Census for a dozen years of the Tea Party & Birtherist & Trump & QAnon crazies; the more power extremist Republicans get, the more they kill their own base! First & only Census in 250 years of US history that whites DE-populated! Yet based on the 7 decades prior to 2010, the white population should have increased by OVER 10 million at minimum, with the average increase over those 70 years being OVER 15 million whites per decade!!! But then, the Wall Street Journal front page headline didn't read "Rural America is the New Inner City" for no reason! Nor is Red State life expectancy YEARS(PLURAL!) worse than the Blue States for no reason either! Y'all like throwing stones, but your kind live in glass houses. & old white men are the most apt to die of heat stroke in those what with the warming climate! And no people in all of American history have ever been as "downwardly mobile" as Trump supporters. Ex: the African American story in this country is one of continual rise. Maybe a lot lower start(they were slaves!), but it's rise nonetheless. Similar for immigrants(FYI immigration from 2010-2020 was the lowest decade we've had in over 50 years, which puts it among the lowest in our history!). Trumpers though their daddies & granddaddies had it better than them. For them the American Dream is DEAD!
PS: Biden won 71% of US GDP by county vs. Trump only got 29%! Who are the "welfare queens" again(as Reagan called 'em) not pulling their own weight!? GOP base are government check cashers! As far as blacks being born out of wedlock, at least black people are having babies! 2016 was the 1st year that white deaths exceeded white births, & now after just 4 years of Trump with the lowest white birth rate in history(including our worst economic crises), it's over 1000 fewer white babies born per day than the over 5000 white Americans that are dying per day! White DE-population! Kicked into high gear under Trump!!! Again too; problem concentrated among the Trump whites vs. the anti-Trump whites are quite immune. "Rural America is the New Inner City" remember? Meanwhile suburbs fled the GOP in droves in 2020, same as 2018, & Biden won 171 out of 202 counties in the country with a Whole Foods! Or "Whole Paycheck" to many. College educated whites voted 40 points more for Biden than non-college whites. It's 2021 son; not 1971! Your old white male Booomer politics are outta touch & 50 years outta time! Whites are 2.6 times more suicidal than blacks today & 1.5 times more likely to die of drug overdoses! And those are Top 10 causes of death in the country with these record breaking skyrocketed "deaths of despair"! Which puts "White America", were it a nation, in the worst 15 most suicidal countries worldwide(half of which are in Africa btw), & "White America" takes the junkie narcotic cake for the most drug abusing! But for those stats are for whites in general, it's not all whites either; it's the Trumpers! You rednecks sold your souls to Satan for Monster Truck rally tickets! And the reason Trump lost is cause Americans, including half of white Americans, don't wanna be like you! The orange troll's the absolute disgrace of the white race & men! Maybe it's why Trump's margin with white men from 2016 to 2020 got cut by 43%! Seriously; how does the Republican Party move forward in the 2020s getting only half of the white vote!?!? Especially when the GOP's whites are dying vs. Democratic ones are growing in number(ex: college educated, young, Millennials now the biggest generation with Gen. Z becoming voters behind them). You RINOS(all Republicans these days as that WAS the party of anti-Know-Nothing anti-racist 1860 Campaign Slogan "Vote Yourself A Farm!" later "Act to Encourage Immigration" Abraham Lincoln!) gone white supremacist nationalist socialists are dinosaurs doomed to extinction! For most all wars & revolutions in human history weren't because of Marxism, including WW1, WW2, & our most horrific Civil War, the "Cold" War has been over now almost as long as it lasted. Reagan was once enormously popular, but no Republican President has first come to power now by popular election since the 1980s! HW Bush the last. Here in the early 2020s though, the majority of Americans(median age 38) aren't old enough to have voted before the Year 2000, let alone 1990! Oh, and 20 years ago, it was only 40% of Republicans were over 50. Today it's over 60% of GOPers have hit the Big 5-0! Your party is DYING! From both a figurative political sense AND in the literal one!
Your ethnocentrism is showing. "White" people have all sorts of culture. It comes from all over the world and mixes in with other cultural artifacts. Maybe get outside of your urban bubble sometime. Travel the "blue" highways a bit and actually get out of your car and meet some people. Of course, you can't be condescending or denigrating. You might also want to listen to what people are actually saying rather than filtering it through your preconceptions.
Your partisanship is blinding you and undermining Any points you may be trying to make.
To state that “poor rural whites don’t have a culture” is so profoundly wrong and ignorant and stereotypical that is really difficult to take you in any way seriously. What would you say if we substituted “rural white” for “urban black.” I feel confident you’d have a real problem with that, probably call it racist, and launch into a tirade or some sort. But having spent plenty of time in both environments personally, I know your statement is as wrongheaded and misguided as my hypothetical substitution sentence.
Is this an opinion formed out of real world experience or through the lens of conservative media? It would be just as disingenuous to paint a picture of white America by describing a trailer park in Appalachia and pretending it describes white culture.
Glenn is often accused of attracting a white audience who wants to hear him disparage black America and confirm their racism. I believe posts like yours only contribute to that notion. Now that I think about it, it seems so stereotypical that I wonder if you aren't trying to discredit Glenn.
People don't listen to Glenn "to hear him disparage black America". Ever since I was young - decades and decades ago - I was curious as to why black America was so dysfunctional. I have read everything I can to try to understand what is going on and I think many people feel this way as well. I am willing to listen to anyone who who can explain the pathologies but, I will not accept the excuses for bad behavior when every other ethnicity behaves otherwise. I have developed my theories about the dysfunctions - there's enough blame to go around including poorly crafted gov't policies a la The Great Society handouts, affirmative actions, etc. etc. But I can't help but come around to simple 'personal responsibility' and that blacks have to own some part of this dysfunction themselves as well.
I have long felt in a subdued, suppressed, vague sort of way (only rarely given form by what I said), what listening to learned, outspoken black thinkers like Shelby Steele, Robert Woodson, Kmele Foster, John McWhorter, GLENN, and more, have liberated, made crystal clear - that "The Great Society handouts, affirmative actions, etc" have really taken us down a twisted, thorny path. That includes what has followed, to date, to keep the myth of their goodness going, to keep them in place and expand upon them.
My husband is a white man who is not a racist - married me (a tribal member), for example. Yesterday, he was scrolling through social somewhere and caught an Instagram post where two black men in a car are having an ordinary conversation as they drive somewhere. A third black man "rolls up" on them and one of the two in the car shoots him dead for "disrespecting" him. I'm sure there's more to the story. My husband, who grew up in a Staten Island neighborhood of mostly black and Puerto Ricans during the bussing era and then spent several years in Ossining (where a lot of brown corrections officers and their families live) is certain there's more to the story too. But that's a view of black urban culture that is often on full display in common culture (and reflects on what Glenn was saying about the prevalence of crime and violence in the black community). And then if you listen to the lyrics of rap music, it's so often focused on the "gangsta" lifestyle - hanging with the hommies, beating your bitches, drivebys, etc. that it's easy to get the impression that this is the majority of black culture. I know it's no more that than country music's concentration on unrequited love and pickup trucks is indicative of white rural Americans' entire culture, but if that's all you know, that's all you know. And, of course, if you're a truly informed person, we've just spent a year watching black people loot (often) black-owned businesses after white wokesters sets nearby businesses on fire, so again -- easy to get that impression unless you seek out broader news sources.
I was in a taxi driving through Times Square (NY) several weeks ago, We stopped at a stop light., I looked out my window and actually witnessed a black guy pop off another black guy and knock him out cold. The guy that was out just drifted to the ground. A few people walked up to him to see if they could wake him - and then we sped off. Who knows if he died or not. You see stuff like this on TV but not in real life...until I did.
Charleyx seems to be referring to ‘black urban culture’….just in the news this week ‘child gang warfare’ in the Bronx where 13 year olds are getting killed. Ditto Chicago, St. Louis etc
Yes, he is speaking some tough truths (that are consigned to the taboo vault in the public square, so they kind of beg to be aired), but they would fly better without using a word like "bastards". Someone else on here used "Negroes"... Using words like this are disrespectful and unkind to black people, and to others as well, but first and foremost to Glenn who has so uniquely given so much of value to our public square.
Negroes need to take a long, hard look at the politics they support and realize the futility of one party politics and the self pity, grievance and victimization that accompany it.
Nobody says “let’s import MILLIONS of non-Blacks into EVERY & ONLY Black countries until Blacks become a minority, FORCE assimilate them into EVERY black community to create a “blended humanity”, give them Affirmative Action & free health care and push miscegenation 24/7 via movies/t.v shows & media(only in black countries)”
THEN, when the Blacks object we call them EVILRACISTNAZI!
Of course not.
They only slam WHITES for objecting to their own White Genocide.
This makes so much sense. Why don’t we hear any mainstream would-be candidates speaking this way? We were told this president was a Moderate who would Unify us, but all we see is more separation, anger, racism, and yes a brewing violent backlash. Very sad.
Not to mention a multi-TRILLION dollar welfare package in the offing. They say they will just tax corporations more but in turn corporations just raise prices which are paid by the middle class. I fear for my kids’ future with this sort of debt in the offing. The Democrats are immoral.
So you really believed what 'you were told' about joe biden? How could a function adult who's lived through the past five years accept what was being to you by the democrat party? Call me amazed, again and again...
I never believed it, all my democrat voting friends told me that's why they were voting for him, he was a moderate and unifier and everything would be fine, and they still can't see that nothing is further from the truth
Interesting piece. It’s hard to accept that you’re a complicated man with a complicated past. The cheating is hard to swallow. It seems like you own it. Where does one go to get a fuller picture of that era of your life?
I enjoyed the piece, Glenn. I liked knowing a European publication is getting a saner, more realistic take on such matters than is often the case.
I think the black crime problem (and I live in a BIG CITY, so it is everyone's problem, really) is much more one of culture than poverty. I am struck by how even conservatives who show up in the media (GOPpers, FOXers...) dont stress that, barely mention it, these days, whereas I thought they used to identify family breakdown as a prime cause of crime and overall negative outcomes. Now they bang away at "lousy schools" as the source of the inner city (black) crime problem, as if school choice is the be-all-end-all silver bullet. As such, they get to knock the unions along w public schools (which sometimes deserve it) in the talking points. And the left is hopeless, of course, when it comes to even brushing up against the periphery of self/family/community responsibility. What makes their sin of omission even worse is that they fill up that void largely with sins of commission: things that distract, enable, and intensify the problem.
Im thinking of the untested Eric Adams, who I had hoped (50/50) might reverse our very disturbing rising crime trajectory (Adams being the NYC Dem mayoral primary candidate I voted for as maybe the best of an unimpressive, sorry bunch). I just heard him tell Jake Tapper that Biden has a great grasp on resolving our crime problem w his gun initiatives. (No, not really, Eric... Yes, I get it - the PRESIDENT invited you to DC to FINALLY talk crime... wow!... and yes, you are a Dem and a politician, but no need to use the whole stick of butter!) Then he said that beyond all that, what counts most in our game plan to end crime (in the black community) is giving kids the chance to shine instead of fail due to a lousy education.
And I groaned.
And then I thought, no wait, he's right! It's just that what's right in what he said is the part he didn't say: Yes, it is how kids are educated... wait for it... and that education starts at birth and is provided by the child's caregivers (preferably 2 parents) in the child's home. No one, but no one, dares to say that essential truth in the mainstream public square these days - except as a fleeting observation once in a while. And yes, schools do matter, but the primary education is from the home, and if that were elevated, we would see those "lousy schools" elevated too.
I keep coming back to how we are a maddeningly stupid society in so many ways: an Emperors' New Clothes on endless loop, but missing the story's shining star: the precocious little boy who, at the end, made it all make sense again.
"I think the black crime problem is much more one of culture than poverty" - seems so. There are poor people in all ethnic groups (the Chinese-off-the-boat in NYC, for example), but none commit murder at the rate blacks do.
Maybe. But white Americans aren't even having babies anymore to be murdered. Of which, the suicide rate is 2.6 times higher for whites than blacks in this country and the drug overdose rate for whites is now 1.5 times higher. That suicides & drugs kill far more people than homicides do. Far more whites in this country are dying from guns and drugs than blacks are. Our murder rate went up under Trump from historic lows under Obama, to it's still pretty low by historical standards. These suicides and substance abuse "deaths of despair" however are record-breaking horror show like nothing this country's ever quite seen these two are among the Top 10 causes of death! And they're far more a white problem than a black problem. That whites are the ones DE-populating already! Red State life expectancy is now YEARS(PLURAL!) worse than the Blue States! The Right likes pointing fingers at Democratic cities, but the GOP doesn't even have any cities! Or none of any consequence anyway. Jacksonville and Fort Worth, Texas are their "biggest", but who in the entire world has ever heard of anything or anyone coming from either of those!?!? Keep in mind that European colonialists(original white supremacists ironically so often fled the "Old World" for "less developed" areas) thought people that had no cities were unwashed uncultured uncivilized backwards savage barbarians who needed to be conquered!
There's roughly 50 homicides per day in this country of all races and genders. There's hundreds more whites males alone killing themselves and overdosing on drugs per day than this. And white males aren't being born at the other end. Keep some perspective.
"But white Americans aren't even having babies anymore to be murdered."
Odd line there, right out of the gate. What am I to think about that? is the implication that whites should be having more babies... "to be murdered"? Would that be a helpful achievement to the equity pushers, since a lot of black babies, kids, are being murdered by black people. Is it the color disparity of victims we need to even out - with MORE murders of whites catching up to the blacks? That's about all Ive got for a line like that. But moving on, let's go with your major theme: white suicide and drug use, more whites than blacks are hurting... themselves.
So... I think it is far more moral and, practically speaking, life saving (of others' lives) to choose suicide over murder. That goes for self abuse (drugs) over abusing others - also way more moral. How about you?
(I mean, it's wrong to even say "more" moral because murder and abuse is simply immoral, but Im working with what Ive got to make the point.)
As for the murder rate, it began to go up noticeably in 2020 and continues to rise in 2021, in city after city, usually Dem run, FOLLOWING the BLM, antiFAed protests, where the mayhem went largely unimpeded by Dems & media allies, NOT TRUMP or GOP. This societal breakdown was often excused, ignored, or enabled by the Dems/Left-Mainstream Media during weeks of aggression, assault, looting, burning, homicides uncorked by reaction to one black man's tragic murder by a white cop.
I follow that with two words that must follow: Tony Timpa. Two more words: He's white. I mean, he was, before he was murdered by cop, in a way eerily similarly to Floyd, even in that it was captured on video. But the publicity, the outrage, the punishment for the cops... well, that's been quite different. Guess how?
Finally, you cant hang this one on Trump. In fact, in part it was the ridiculous knee jerk antipathy of Dems/Media toward Trump (TDS is a real and harmful thing), and his rational efforts to quell the criminality and chaos, that caused crime to increase.
Perhaps when one is convinced throughout their lives that they are
victims of racism and injustice, it gives an excuse for a lack of personal responsibility for one's actions. there is no doubt that both the racism and injustice were (and perhaps still are) present in our society - indeed present for a lot of people regardless of coloro - but the older blacks I have known throughout the years never relied on that excuse.to stop them from advancing. Unfortunately their children and too often their grandchildren drank the kool aid giving fame and glory to the likes of the while fragility movement. and helping to undermine and even destroy their communities.
The "agency" argument is to me the most persuasive. Are we the subjects or the objects of our own narratives? It seems impossible that any group (or individual) could see themselves as the objects of their own narratives and thrive.
That's a great way of phrasing it. I view it from a Native American (I prefer American Indian) perspective. Half my family are "assimilated". We have jobs, went to college, owe a mortgage. The other half still live on the Rez. The Rez cousins see themselves as victims, as if the culture is working against them, but they denigrate education and live too far from jobs to actually be employed. They won't leave the Rez -- where you don't own your own home. So is that them being victimized or them not taking advantage of the opportunities that exist elsewhere? I feel sympathy for their plight but because I took another road, I don't feel victimized. I walk in the "white" world as comfortably as I walk in the Indian world and I almost never experience racism. I'm sure it exists and I would see it if I looked for it, but because I'm not looking for it, I don't experience it. Because I don't approach people with a chip on my shoulder expecting they'll misbehave, thinking I can read their minds, I mostly have comfortable interactions with people who aren't Native American. I actually encounter way more racism from my Rez cousins than I do from any other ethnic group. And, whites -- well, I live in Alaska which is the third most-diverse state in the union and Alaska Natives corporations own the biggest private businesses, so if the whites around me are racists, they've learned to keep it to themselves because they like making incomes.
Wow, I really appreciate you offering such a different perspective (never been to Alaska!). I have some Navaho relatives on and off reservations in the Southwest, so I'm somewhat familiar with the dynamic your talking about specifically, but, yes, generally, you get what you're looking for in life. Maybe similar to you, I walk as comfortably in the black world as the white and the most important thing, to me, is to assume the best about people, until proven otherwise. I've been rewarded 1000 times over with that perspective, and never hurt by it, so far as I know.
Exactly my thoughts, the first Dutch newspaper coming to mind when thinking of promoting general victimhood narrative. Seen in the framing of several questions, but at least they provided the platform.
Well done Glenn!
Interesting article and views. It’s all very rational and explanatory. But your synopsis (at least what is highlighted here) doesn’t even remotely hint at the ongoing “drug war” in America. Comment section is similarly devoid of reality. Poverty. Black “culture”. Violence. “Inner cities”. Crime. Gangster rap. Bad behavior. Etc Etc Etc. As we know it in America, in modern terms (“structural racism”), a lot of this dates back most recently to the beginning of the war on drugs. After civil rights. After Vietnam and the Cold War. It was the new war. But wait- why haven’t other ethnic minorities been affected similarly??! There isnt, and never was, a south central (LA) or south side (Chicago) concentrated with 1,000,000 Asians or Indians or even Hispanics. It has been a self-fulfilling prophecy in America. The current discourse and situation (e.g., BLM vs police) was a set-up from the get go, duh.
I'm an old white male. I must ask: When you look at black culture, is there even one thing that would make a white person want to join it? 70% of blacks are bastards. Have you listened to the words of (c)rap music? Is your life's goal to grow up and be a banger? Do you want to live in a neighborhood and listen to gun fire all night (and day)? If you are successful in school, do you want to be shunned because "You ain't black enough!". Do you want to spend your life on government handouts? Do you want to be admitted to college because you're black, assume astornimical debt and then bomb out? Or, as bad, graduate on a quota then be given a title and a broom at your new woke company?
Every one who wants even one of the above points in your life, raise your hand!
Black people have a lot of culture though, and are lots of fun to be around. Otherwise many poor and rural whites in this country don't have cult-ure so much as they're part of a suicidal death CULT! The GOP doesn't even have any cities for all they like pointing fingers at Democratic ones. What? Jacksonville? Fort Worth, Texas?!? Those are Republicans' "biggest" in the country—but who in the entire world has ever heard of anything or anyone coming from either of those places! And what is it the European colonialists(irony they so often fled Europe for the "less developed" world) said about unwashed uncivilized uncultured backwards savage barbarians who have no cities again!? Oh oops; I think I just said it! That's messed up to be sure, but then it's the white supremacist viewpoint! Irony though is that white supremacy so often it's the losers among white people subscribe to, as well that white supremacy KILLS white people. ESPECIALLY the poor and rural whites! W.E.B. DuBois, MLK, & LBJ all explained it. And from Jefferson Davis to Adolf Hitler to Donald Trump, those evil men all did it! Look at that 2020 Census for a dozen years of the Tea Party & Birtherist & Trump & QAnon crazies; the more power extremist Republicans get, the more they kill their own base! First & only Census in 250 years of US history that whites DE-populated! Yet based on the 7 decades prior to 2010, the white population should have increased by OVER 10 million at minimum, with the average increase over those 70 years being OVER 15 million whites per decade!!! But then, the Wall Street Journal front page headline didn't read "Rural America is the New Inner City" for no reason! Nor is Red State life expectancy YEARS(PLURAL!) worse than the Blue States for no reason either! Y'all like throwing stones, but your kind live in glass houses. & old white men are the most apt to die of heat stroke in those what with the warming climate! And no people in all of American history have ever been as "downwardly mobile" as Trump supporters. Ex: the African American story in this country is one of continual rise. Maybe a lot lower start(they were slaves!), but it's rise nonetheless. Similar for immigrants(FYI immigration from 2010-2020 was the lowest decade we've had in over 50 years, which puts it among the lowest in our history!). Trumpers though their daddies & granddaddies had it better than them. For them the American Dream is DEAD!
PS: Biden won 71% of US GDP by county vs. Trump only got 29%! Who are the "welfare queens" again(as Reagan called 'em) not pulling their own weight!? GOP base are government check cashers! As far as blacks being born out of wedlock, at least black people are having babies! 2016 was the 1st year that white deaths exceeded white births, & now after just 4 years of Trump with the lowest white birth rate in history(including our worst economic crises), it's over 1000 fewer white babies born per day than the over 5000 white Americans that are dying per day! White DE-population! Kicked into high gear under Trump!!! Again too; problem concentrated among the Trump whites vs. the anti-Trump whites are quite immune. "Rural America is the New Inner City" remember? Meanwhile suburbs fled the GOP in droves in 2020, same as 2018, & Biden won 171 out of 202 counties in the country with a Whole Foods! Or "Whole Paycheck" to many. College educated whites voted 40 points more for Biden than non-college whites. It's 2021 son; not 1971! Your old white male Booomer politics are outta touch & 50 years outta time! Whites are 2.6 times more suicidal than blacks today & 1.5 times more likely to die of drug overdoses! And those are Top 10 causes of death in the country with these record breaking skyrocketed "deaths of despair"! Which puts "White America", were it a nation, in the worst 15 most suicidal countries worldwide(half of which are in Africa btw), & "White America" takes the junkie narcotic cake for the most drug abusing! But for those stats are for whites in general, it's not all whites either; it's the Trumpers! You rednecks sold your souls to Satan for Monster Truck rally tickets! And the reason Trump lost is cause Americans, including half of white Americans, don't wanna be like you! The orange troll's the absolute disgrace of the white race & men! Maybe it's why Trump's margin with white men from 2016 to 2020 got cut by 43%! Seriously; how does the Republican Party move forward in the 2020s getting only half of the white vote!?!? Especially when the GOP's whites are dying vs. Democratic ones are growing in number(ex: college educated, young, Millennials now the biggest generation with Gen. Z becoming voters behind them). You RINOS(all Republicans these days as that WAS the party of anti-Know-Nothing anti-racist 1860 Campaign Slogan "Vote Yourself A Farm!" later "Act to Encourage Immigration" Abraham Lincoln!) gone white supremacist nationalist socialists are dinosaurs doomed to extinction! For most all wars & revolutions in human history weren't because of Marxism, including WW1, WW2, & our most horrific Civil War, the "Cold" War has been over now almost as long as it lasted. Reagan was once enormously popular, but no Republican President has first come to power now by popular election since the 1980s! HW Bush the last. Here in the early 2020s though, the majority of Americans(median age 38) aren't old enough to have voted before the Year 2000, let alone 1990! Oh, and 20 years ago, it was only 40% of Republicans were over 50. Today it's over 60% of GOPers have hit the Big 5-0! Your party is DYING! From both a figurative political sense AND in the literal one!
Your ethnocentrism is showing. "White" people have all sorts of culture. It comes from all over the world and mixes in with other cultural artifacts. Maybe get outside of your urban bubble sometime. Travel the "blue" highways a bit and actually get out of your car and meet some people. Of course, you can't be condescending or denigrating. You might also want to listen to what people are actually saying rather than filtering it through your preconceptions.
Your partisanship is blinding you and undermining Any points you may be trying to make.
To state that “poor rural whites don’t have a culture” is so profoundly wrong and ignorant and stereotypical that is really difficult to take you in any way seriously. What would you say if we substituted “rural white” for “urban black.” I feel confident you’d have a real problem with that, probably call it racist, and launch into a tirade or some sort. But having spent plenty of time in both environments personally, I know your statement is as wrongheaded and misguided as my hypothetical substitution sentence.
Is this an opinion formed out of real world experience or through the lens of conservative media? It would be just as disingenuous to paint a picture of white America by describing a trailer park in Appalachia and pretending it describes white culture.
Glenn is often accused of attracting a white audience who wants to hear him disparage black America and confirm their racism. I believe posts like yours only contribute to that notion. Now that I think about it, it seems so stereotypical that I wonder if you aren't trying to discredit Glenn.
People don't listen to Glenn "to hear him disparage black America". Ever since I was young - decades and decades ago - I was curious as to why black America was so dysfunctional. I have read everything I can to try to understand what is going on and I think many people feel this way as well. I am willing to listen to anyone who who can explain the pathologies but, I will not accept the excuses for bad behavior when every other ethnicity behaves otherwise. I have developed my theories about the dysfunctions - there's enough blame to go around including poorly crafted gov't policies a la The Great Society handouts, affirmative actions, etc. etc. But I can't help but come around to simple 'personal responsibility' and that blacks have to own some part of this dysfunction themselves as well.
I have long felt in a subdued, suppressed, vague sort of way (only rarely given form by what I said), what listening to learned, outspoken black thinkers like Shelby Steele, Robert Woodson, Kmele Foster, John McWhorter, GLENN, and more, have liberated, made crystal clear - that "The Great Society handouts, affirmative actions, etc" have really taken us down a twisted, thorny path. That includes what has followed, to date, to keep the myth of their goodness going, to keep them in place and expand upon them.
My husband is a white man who is not a racist - married me (a tribal member), for example. Yesterday, he was scrolling through social somewhere and caught an Instagram post where two black men in a car are having an ordinary conversation as they drive somewhere. A third black man "rolls up" on them and one of the two in the car shoots him dead for "disrespecting" him. I'm sure there's more to the story. My husband, who grew up in a Staten Island neighborhood of mostly black and Puerto Ricans during the bussing era and then spent several years in Ossining (where a lot of brown corrections officers and their families live) is certain there's more to the story too. But that's a view of black urban culture that is often on full display in common culture (and reflects on what Glenn was saying about the prevalence of crime and violence in the black community). And then if you listen to the lyrics of rap music, it's so often focused on the "gangsta" lifestyle - hanging with the hommies, beating your bitches, drivebys, etc. that it's easy to get the impression that this is the majority of black culture. I know it's no more that than country music's concentration on unrequited love and pickup trucks is indicative of white rural Americans' entire culture, but if that's all you know, that's all you know. And, of course, if you're a truly informed person, we've just spent a year watching black people loot (often) black-owned businesses after white wokesters sets nearby businesses on fire, so again -- easy to get that impression unless you seek out broader news sources.
I was in a taxi driving through Times Square (NY) several weeks ago, We stopped at a stop light., I looked out my window and actually witnessed a black guy pop off another black guy and knock him out cold. The guy that was out just drifted to the ground. A few people walked up to him to see if they could wake him - and then we sped off. Who knows if he died or not. You see stuff like this on TV but not in real life...until I did.
Charleyx seems to be referring to ‘black urban culture’….just in the news this week ‘child gang warfare’ in the Bronx where 13 year olds are getting killed. Ditto Chicago, St. Louis etc
Yes, he is speaking some tough truths (that are consigned to the taboo vault in the public square, so they kind of beg to be aired), but they would fly better without using a word like "bastards". Someone else on here used "Negroes"... Using words like this are disrespectful and unkind to black people, and to others as well, but first and foremost to Glenn who has so uniquely given so much of value to our public square.
Negroes need to take a long, hard look at the politics they support and realize the futility of one party politics and the self pity, grievance and victimization that accompany it.
Why do you choose to say Negroes over blacks?
Nobody says “let’s import MILLIONS of non-Blacks into EVERY & ONLY Black countries until Blacks become a minority, FORCE assimilate them into EVERY black community to create a “blended humanity”, give them Affirmative Action & free health care and push miscegenation 24/7 via movies/t.v shows & media(only in black countries)”
THEN, when the Blacks object we call them EVILRACISTNAZI!
Of course not.
They only slam WHITES for objecting to their own White Genocide.
Anti-racism is just a code word for anti-White.
White genocide? Good lord. You can’t be taken seriously after that.
This makes so much sense. Why don’t we hear any mainstream would-be candidates speaking this way? We were told this president was a Moderate who would Unify us, but all we see is more separation, anger, racism, and yes a brewing violent backlash. Very sad.
Not to mention a multi-TRILLION dollar welfare package in the offing. They say they will just tax corporations more but in turn corporations just raise prices which are paid by the middle class. I fear for my kids’ future with this sort of debt in the offing. The Democrats are immoral.
So you really believed what 'you were told' about joe biden? How could a function adult who's lived through the past five years accept what was being to you by the democrat party? Call me amazed, again and again...
I never believed it, all my democrat voting friends told me that's why they were voting for him, he was a moderate and unifier and everything would be fine, and they still can't see that nothing is further from the truth
Unfortunately I have many close family members who swallow the same foul lies, election after election. We are in a sad state of affairs.
Interesting piece. It’s hard to accept that you’re a complicated man with a complicated past. The cheating is hard to swallow. It seems like you own it. Where does one go to get a fuller picture of that era of your life?
The hopefully soon to be release memoire of Glenn, although got the feeling from recent comments there might be some delays.
I enjoyed the piece, Glenn. I liked knowing a European publication is getting a saner, more realistic take on such matters than is often the case.
I think the black crime problem (and I live in a BIG CITY, so it is everyone's problem, really) is much more one of culture than poverty. I am struck by how even conservatives who show up in the media (GOPpers, FOXers...) dont stress that, barely mention it, these days, whereas I thought they used to identify family breakdown as a prime cause of crime and overall negative outcomes. Now they bang away at "lousy schools" as the source of the inner city (black) crime problem, as if school choice is the be-all-end-all silver bullet. As such, they get to knock the unions along w public schools (which sometimes deserve it) in the talking points. And the left is hopeless, of course, when it comes to even brushing up against the periphery of self/family/community responsibility. What makes their sin of omission even worse is that they fill up that void largely with sins of commission: things that distract, enable, and intensify the problem.
Im thinking of the untested Eric Adams, who I had hoped (50/50) might reverse our very disturbing rising crime trajectory (Adams being the NYC Dem mayoral primary candidate I voted for as maybe the best of an unimpressive, sorry bunch). I just heard him tell Jake Tapper that Biden has a great grasp on resolving our crime problem w his gun initiatives. (No, not really, Eric... Yes, I get it - the PRESIDENT invited you to DC to FINALLY talk crime... wow!... and yes, you are a Dem and a politician, but no need to use the whole stick of butter!) Then he said that beyond all that, what counts most in our game plan to end crime (in the black community) is giving kids the chance to shine instead of fail due to a lousy education.
And I groaned.
And then I thought, no wait, he's right! It's just that what's right in what he said is the part he didn't say: Yes, it is how kids are educated... wait for it... and that education starts at birth and is provided by the child's caregivers (preferably 2 parents) in the child's home. No one, but no one, dares to say that essential truth in the mainstream public square these days - except as a fleeting observation once in a while. And yes, schools do matter, but the primary education is from the home, and if that were elevated, we would see those "lousy schools" elevated too.
I keep coming back to how we are a maddeningly stupid society in so many ways: an Emperors' New Clothes on endless loop, but missing the story's shining star: the precocious little boy who, at the end, made it all make sense again.
Parenting and education are the 2 elements that can change the tide. Excellent points.
"I think the black crime problem is much more one of culture than poverty" - seems so. There are poor people in all ethnic groups (the Chinese-off-the-boat in NYC, for example), but none commit murder at the rate blacks do.
Maybe. But white Americans aren't even having babies anymore to be murdered. Of which, the suicide rate is 2.6 times higher for whites than blacks in this country and the drug overdose rate for whites is now 1.5 times higher. That suicides & drugs kill far more people than homicides do. Far more whites in this country are dying from guns and drugs than blacks are. Our murder rate went up under Trump from historic lows under Obama, to it's still pretty low by historical standards. These suicides and substance abuse "deaths of despair" however are record-breaking horror show like nothing this country's ever quite seen these two are among the Top 10 causes of death! And they're far more a white problem than a black problem. That whites are the ones DE-populating already! Red State life expectancy is now YEARS(PLURAL!) worse than the Blue States! The Right likes pointing fingers at Democratic cities, but the GOP doesn't even have any cities! Or none of any consequence anyway. Jacksonville and Fort Worth, Texas are their "biggest", but who in the entire world has ever heard of anything or anyone coming from either of those!?!? Keep in mind that European colonialists(original white supremacists ironically so often fled the "Old World" for "less developed" areas) thought people that had no cities were unwashed uncultured uncivilized backwards savage barbarians who needed to be conquered!
There's roughly 50 homicides per day in this country of all races and genders. There's hundreds more whites males alone killing themselves and overdosing on drugs per day than this. And white males aren't being born at the other end. Keep some perspective.
"But white Americans aren't even having babies anymore to be murdered."
Odd line there, right out of the gate. What am I to think about that? is the implication that whites should be having more babies... "to be murdered"? Would that be a helpful achievement to the equity pushers, since a lot of black babies, kids, are being murdered by black people. Is it the color disparity of victims we need to even out - with MORE murders of whites catching up to the blacks? That's about all Ive got for a line like that. But moving on, let's go with your major theme: white suicide and drug use, more whites than blacks are hurting... themselves.
So... I think it is far more moral and, practically speaking, life saving (of others' lives) to choose suicide over murder. That goes for self abuse (drugs) over abusing others - also way more moral. How about you?
(I mean, it's wrong to even say "more" moral because murder and abuse is simply immoral, but Im working with what Ive got to make the point.)
As for the murder rate, it began to go up noticeably in 2020 and continues to rise in 2021, in city after city, usually Dem run, FOLLOWING the BLM, antiFAed protests, where the mayhem went largely unimpeded by Dems & media allies, NOT TRUMP or GOP. This societal breakdown was often excused, ignored, or enabled by the Dems/Left-Mainstream Media during weeks of aggression, assault, looting, burning, homicides uncorked by reaction to one black man's tragic murder by a white cop.
I follow that with two words that must follow: Tony Timpa. Two more words: He's white. I mean, he was, before he was murdered by cop, in a way eerily similarly to Floyd, even in that it was captured on video. But the publicity, the outrage, the punishment for the cops... well, that's been quite different. Guess how?
Finally, you cant hang this one on Trump. In fact, in part it was the ridiculous knee jerk antipathy of Dems/Media toward Trump (TDS is a real and harmful thing), and his rational efforts to quell the criminality and chaos, that caused crime to increase.
Perhaps when one is convinced throughout their lives that they are
victims of racism and injustice, it gives an excuse for a lack of personal responsibility for one's actions. there is no doubt that both the racism and injustice were (and perhaps still are) present in our society - indeed present for a lot of people regardless of coloro - but the older blacks I have known throughout the years never relied on that excuse.to stop them from advancing. Unfortunately their children and too often their grandchildren drank the kool aid giving fame and glory to the likes of the while fragility movement. and helping to undermine and even destroy their communities.
The "agency" argument is to me the most persuasive. Are we the subjects or the objects of our own narratives? It seems impossible that any group (or individual) could see themselves as the objects of their own narratives and thrive.
That's a great way of phrasing it. I view it from a Native American (I prefer American Indian) perspective. Half my family are "assimilated". We have jobs, went to college, owe a mortgage. The other half still live on the Rez. The Rez cousins see themselves as victims, as if the culture is working against them, but they denigrate education and live too far from jobs to actually be employed. They won't leave the Rez -- where you don't own your own home. So is that them being victimized or them not taking advantage of the opportunities that exist elsewhere? I feel sympathy for their plight but because I took another road, I don't feel victimized. I walk in the "white" world as comfortably as I walk in the Indian world and I almost never experience racism. I'm sure it exists and I would see it if I looked for it, but because I'm not looking for it, I don't experience it. Because I don't approach people with a chip on my shoulder expecting they'll misbehave, thinking I can read their minds, I mostly have comfortable interactions with people who aren't Native American. I actually encounter way more racism from my Rez cousins than I do from any other ethnic group. And, whites -- well, I live in Alaska which is the third most-diverse state in the union and Alaska Natives corporations own the biggest private businesses, so if the whites around me are racists, they've learned to keep it to themselves because they like making incomes.
What you say makes perfect sense to me - I knew it, but then you put it into words - sensible, experienced, thoughtful words. Glad you shared it.
Wow, I really appreciate you offering such a different perspective (never been to Alaska!). I have some Navaho relatives on and off reservations in the Southwest, so I'm somewhat familiar with the dynamic your talking about specifically, but, yes, generally, you get what you're looking for in life. Maybe similar to you, I walk as comfortably in the black world as the white and the most important thing, to me, is to assume the best about people, until proven otherwise. I've been rewarded 1000 times over with that perspective, and never hurt by it, so far as I know.
Exactly my thoughts, the first Dutch newspaper coming to mind when thinking of promoting general victimhood narrative. Seen in the framing of several questions, but at least they provided the platform.