The focus on race misses the point

The trial of George Zimmerman touched a very raw nerve in this country. That’s because it was the most racially charged event in recent history, and Americans are less comfortable discussing race than ever before. Any discussions involving race are dangerous, especially if they are public, not only because they are emotionally volatile, but because there are so many ways to get into trouble with the various activist factions, and the penalties for stating the wrong opinion or saying the wrong thing are more than most people want to cope with. Especially for white people who say the wrong thing. Merely expressing a belief in racial blindness is seen in many leftist circles as evidence of racism, and since few white people are willing to run the risk of being called racist, the general rule is to avoid all discussions involving race (except possibly among close trusted friends). I have long wished that race did not matter, but of course that type of thinking is now hopelessly outmoded, and because I am white, I am seen by racial ideologues as not entitled to even have an opinion on the subject.  Debating people who believe in identity politics is a complete waste of time.

So as the wholesale racialization of everything spirals out of control, I find myself having little or nothing to say about it. Why should I? My opinion counts for very little anyway, and what’s the point of starting arguments? Better to upload a YouTube video or write about some goofy detail than attempt to delve into hot button topics that simply piss off every ideologue across the political and cultural spectrum.

The problem is, right now I am perplexed by an odd little detail about a current story shaking the recent news, and the more I think about it, the less I am able to ignore it. It troubled me last night and I hoped it would go away, but it has not. It is a detail that in an ideal world, should not matter at all, and it is a detail that should not matter to me at all. In fact, I find myself irritated over the fact that it matters even though I do not want it to matter, and hence this post.

I refer to the race of one of the three shooting suspects in the cold-blooded murder of Australian baseball player Chris Lane — one Michael Dewayne Jones.

Insane as I might think it is, there is a growing debate over the race of Michael Jones, and the race-obsessed comments here are typical. Liberals are making much over the charge that conservatives tried to make Jones black, and it does appear that one or more careless conservative bloggers (most likely in a hurry to get traffic, and possibly inspired by WorldNetDaily) did in fact post a picture of someone else and say it was Jones.

However, even at this stage at least one blogger is attempting a rather vigorous argument that despite what the police and the DA have said, Jones is actually black.

His race ought not to matter, and much as I don’t want it to matter, it nevertheless does. Too many race-based narratives seem to be at stake.  Lefties seem to think Jones’ whiteness discredits the “right wing narrative,” and some foolish conservatives would seem to agree, and resort to increasingly strained arguments for the position that the thug is black.

Some liberals are already screaming over the disparate treatment that Jones is receiving, and I was initially puzzled over the fact that Jones is not being charged with murder as the other two are. Jones’s status as the driver of the car would make him guilty under the felony murder doctrine, so the failure to charge him with murder made me wonder what was going on until I read this:

Luna, the alleged shooter of a .22 calibre revolver, and Edwards, an alleged passenger in the Focus, were both charged with first-degree murder and face life in prison without parole if convicted. They were both refused bail.

Jones, the alleged driver, was charged with using a vehicle to facilitate the discharge of a weapon and accessory after the fact of murder in the first degree.

He faces a maximum 45-year sentence.

Bail for Jones, who is assisting prosecutors and police, was set at $US1 million ($A1.1 million).

(Emphasis added.) In other words, he’s decided to betray the conspiracy and become a rat.

A white rat.

Again, in an ideal world, his race should not matter, but we do not live in an ideal world, and his race sure as hell matters to a lot of people. This story took off like a rocket and it seems to have lost at least some of its appeal since Jones was reported to be white.

Why? Did it become any less horrifying?

I decided to write this post because the cultural aspects fascinate me, and I think something very important is being overlooked, something that I would think might be at least as important as race.

Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press is a solid MSM liberal, but she is no fool, and I think she came close to touching on the problem in her column today.

When violent thugs, monsters-in-training, commit a crime, and they are black, you are not supposed to think of other young black men. You are supposed to look at those alleged criminals and see what we see: young men who face a 100% chance of going to prison for life or being killed by the State of Oklahoma.

You will not find celebrities wearing shirts in their honor.

You will not see marchers asking for their freedom.

You will not hear the president speak out on their behalf.

Just as we don’t define all white boys by those who commit crimes, you cannot define all young black boys by those two — or by the two who beat to death an 88-year-old World War II veteran Wednesday in Spokane, Wash. Police have arrested one 16-year-old and were looking for a second.

These crimes were so heinous and horrible. Those eventually convicted are the ones for whom prisons were built. But schools were built for them first. It is only when schools don’t work, and we turn our backs on them, that students become criminals. Even then, they do not represent everyone whose skin color is the same as theirs.

A young man named Christopher Lane and a hero named Delbert (Shorty) Belton, were killed by monsters. They were white. The alleged killers were black. The states of Oklahoma and Washington soon will try the monsters, and they will pay for it with their lives.

While she does not mention Jones at all (much less his apparent whiteness), she is right in attributing the problem to thuggery. I am puzzled by her omission, because his race actually appears to strengthen another aspect of her argument — that the real culprit is poverty:

[Christopher Lane] was allegedly killed by two black boys who may never be able to explain why. Color doesn’t determine ferocity; poverty does. Whether it’s economic poverty or mental poverty or social poverty, some boys — and girls — are missing something they need to have.

Let’s focus on fixing the problem early rather than mourning the monsters’ deeds late. Let’s not pretend that there aren’t ways to make things better.

Perhaps we can work together — all of us, regardless of color, at all economic ranks, urban and suburban — to save the 2-year-old black boys we know are not getting the guidance and structure and education and mental health help they need. Because when they do get all those things, the likelihood that they will become monsters lessens.

Or maybe I’m wrong in saying it would have helped her argument. Suppose Riley had said that Lane was “allegedly killed by two black boys and one white boy who may never be able to explain why,” and gone on to cite poverty. Does Jones’ whiteness harm his poverty creds? I have no idea what his economic situation was like growing up, but I am very curious.

Let’s take a look at the face of the young thug in question:

That (IMO) is the face of a mean, trashy-looking excuse for a human being. He is someone I would not want to meet or have anything to do with, nor would most people. I would not want him living on my street, because he is the sort of person who could be relied on to steal, vandalize, and commit all sorts of harm. I would not be at all surprised if his parents were of the same scummy criminal class, and I find myself wondering whether they consume welfare, food stamps, Section 8, and all the benefits that working people are forced to subsidize with their hard-earned money. Instead of feeling gratitude, the people who reap the benefits of this government extortion in the name of redistribution are often resentful in the extreme. Who wouldn’t be? Living off others is not conducive to pride; it generates natural shame which anyone would feel who is dependent on others, but because that shame is intolerable, it easily fosters dishonest feelings of “entitlement,” especially when such feelings are encouraged and emboldened by welfare statists. An culture of sullen, institutionalized, malevolence sets in, and while of course I am only speculating about Jones and his family, if I were from Hollywood central casting and I were looking for a face to portray the face of that angry, ignorant, sneering, contemptuous culture, I would sign Michael Dewayne Jones on the spot.

Hell, he looks for the world as if he was born with a chip on his shoulder.  Pure, resentful, menacing, trash. Race has nothing to do with it.

Sometimes I wonder whether the obsessive focus on race is deliberately designed to avoid looking at the monstrous class of human beings which the system is creating.

To be fair, Jones is only 17. So he is probably not as malevolent-looking as he will be after a few years in the joint. But for the sake of this post, I’m kind of glad he’s white, and for an extremely dishonest reason. If he were black, I would not have said what I just said about him, and I would probably have considered this post not worth the hassle. Sure, I could have said that his race had nothing to do with it and that race did not matter to me, but people would always argue that it did and I was lying.

Which is a way of saying that his race does not matter only because he is white. What an absurdly delicious, marvelously dishonest contradiction that is.

UPDATE: Commenter Randy recommends this post from Ann Althouse who argues (correctly IMO) that conservatives ought to continue making the case for color blindness, and warns conservatives about the hazards of fighting race narratives with race narratives:

Those are the 2 well-defined and socially presentable opinions in this country, and decent, sincere Americans have argued from these positions for decades. Now, we’re seeing some conservatives who seem frustrated by this taking account of race that’s been done on the left. They seem to think it’s a good time to spotlight violence committed by black people. This is not a good idea! It’s fine to mourn Shorty, but these candlelight vigils are intended to stir hearts the way hearts were stirred at the Trayvon Martin demonstrations.

She is absolutely right. (And I think the WND crew couldn’t be more wrong.)