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| Mother and daughter killed in Prince George’s County |
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The Other (Endless) Massacre By Ralph Peters
Since Saturday, our media have reveled in the aftermath of the avoidable slaughter in Tucson, where a young madman--ignored by “tolerant” social, educational and law-enforcement systems—gunned down, among others, a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl, while gravely wounding a Congresswoman reaching out to her constituents.
Caught out in his incompetence, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona, railed against conservatives, who the “lawman” blamed for the massacre on his turf. Other leftists rushed to blame the Tea Party (conveniently overlooking the murderer’s internet claim that The Communist Manifesto was one of his favorite books—oops!).
The fact is that the shooter wasn’t a political creature, but a psychopath. And a hyper-liberal social climate allowed him to go unchecked, despite no end of warning signs and documented complaints from his fellow citizens.
Meanwhile, another massacre occurred on the doorstep of our nation’s capital, but the media and left-wing activists ignored it: In the first eleven days of 2011, eleven people were gunned down in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Their deaths were irrelevant to the political discourse—because they were black.
We do, indeed, have a violence problem and an intolerable culture of the gun in this country. But it has nothing to do with honest citizens who go hunting every autumn. It’s a creation of the Democratic Party, which will take no serious measures to impose the rule of law and foster quality education systems in minority-populated districts, preferring to keep blacks and Latinos down on their electoral plantations.
Prince George’s County should be a shining success story. Bordering the District of Columbia, it has the highest per capita income of any black-majority county in the country, thanks largely to federal jobs. Yet, its levels of violence are breathtaking, the last county executive and his wife have been charged with whopping corruption, the police are dysfunctional (and frequently indicted), and the schools are third-rate. It’s a poster community for the effects on minorities of leftist policies designed by white elites.
How did county officials respond to eleven dead in eleven days? By telling citizens not to worry, since the killers and victims mostly knew each other and at least six of the crimes were drug-related. That made it okay.
Want to see racism in action? You don’t have to call up images of Selma five decades ago. The media weep for white victims in Tucson, but turn up their collective noses at the ongoing slaughter in minority communities. Intolerable drop-out rates from incompetent school systems exacerbate a multi-generational cycle of poverty and culture of violence. Wherever Democrats rule, minorities get the scraps from the overseer’s table, while the party’s professional blamesters tell them their problems stem from slavery that ended a century and a half ago, from lack of opportunity ascribed to prejudice, and from old-fashioned white bigotry.
Whites aren’t killing blacks. Blacks are. But facts are inconvenient.
To be fair, the apostles of blame are historically correct. The problem is that correct history isn’t taught. The racist Democratic Party gave this country the Confederacy, which fought a four-year war to preserve slavery, resulting in over a half-million deaths. When war failed to keep blacks chained, Democrats created the Ku Klux Klan and preserved Southern segregation into the 1960s. Lack of opportunity? Look at the union-ravaged schools where minority students aren’t expected to learn (and where they’re certainly not taught the history of “their” Democratic Party). Then the Democrat-spawned Great Society robbed black communities of their pride, addicting them to hand-outs. It’s a blot on our nation’s conscience—on all of us, liberal or conservative—that we have tolerated policies that left once-thriving minority communities with less promise and social integrity than they enjoyed in the years of segregation. Dead young blacks don’t count in Washington politics or for the media. And that is a position so immoral and repugnant that future generations will excoriate our callousness and bigotry as savagely as we castigate the records of Bull Connor and Lester Maddox. The shocking human wastage among minorities in this country should mobilize us all to demand safe streets, disciplined schools and the dignity of achievement for our fellow citizens debased by leftist policies.
It’s up to conservatives to push for reforms with bite, since leftists never will. They thrive on the alienation of their own victims.
As we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, our country needs all the educated, hard-working talent we can generate. At present, we seek it from immigrants, while ignoring the politically segregated and willfully marginalized fellow citizens in our ghettos, barrios—and Democratic Party strongholds, such as Prince George’s County.
This column doesn’t stem from political bias, but from outrage. I’m ashamed of the terrorist act committed by a psychopath in Tucson—a young killer unleashed by a combination of do-your-own-thing-no-matter-what tolerance and a local bureaucracy conditioned to avoid responsibility. But I am far more ashamed of the media’s and society’s willingness to write off minority Americans—except when it’s politically convenient to pander to them.
Responsible journalism? Consider one more nauseating example of media racism (despite the rise of minority anchors and reporters): For years we’ve been treated to breathless reporting about a missing middle-class teenager, Natalee Holloway, who was white, blond and photogenic. Does any reader of this column believe that, had that girl been black and poor, she would have gotten a single prime-time mention? Social justice? Don’t make me laugh. If she ain’t white and cute, networks don’t give a hoot.
The Tucson tragedy was inexcusable. But it also was an anomaly. The slaughter in minority communities is 24/7. Meanwhile, even our first minority president perpetuates the culture of failure essential to Democratic politics: Instead of crusading vigorously for safe, quality schools in minority neighborhoods—schools for the benefit of their students, not unionized teachers--he debased the prestige of his office by phoning a sports hustler to praise him for giving an abusive criminal and overpaid sports star a “second chance.”
The children of millions of parents who voted for Obama won’t get a first chance.
We all pray that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will recover. But will our minority fellow citizens ever recover from leftist policies thrust upon them by white ideologues?
We’ll bury the dead of the Tucson tragedy with fanfare. But the dead of Prince George’s County will go ignored.
It’s un-American. ________________________
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer (and former enlisted man), and an author. The latest of his 26 books, The Officers’ Club, a novel set in the post-Vietnam Army, will be published on January 18th.
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