HORACE COOPER, Project 21 co-chair and the author of How Trump is Making Black America Great Again — “There is a class of Americans whose entire livelihood is based on the existence of victims. If people got a good education, if people had great jobs, if people controlled their own lives, a whole large number of people [whose income is based on victimization] couldn’t get that new auto, they couldn’t go off to Aspen for their ski trip. There is a strong sentiment among the so-called problem-solving class to keep things as they are. We’ve spent $22 trillion [on social spending] and all we’ve done is enriched the problem-solving class and we’ve not done the basic kinds of things that would be good for Americans black, white or brown. We had a president, a black man, a man who came from circumstances of struggle, rose up and got to be president. He is an example of what’s possible in America. And instead of telling people that, he said, ‘America, it’s a place where you don’t have a chance.’ He said, ‘You can try all you want, but it’s not going to work out for you.’ And that has taken hope away” (Tucker Carlson Tonight, June 9, 2020).
DAVID CLARK, retired sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin — “The biggest losers in all this [the calls for defunding police] will be poor black people in crime-ridden ghettos. The police are the only thing standing between them and violent criminal predators. You’d have to loathe black people to do that to them. It isn’t a serious public policy proposal, it’s buffoonery. Police departments are already underfunded. Why not just turn policing into a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday operation? That is all they’ll have money for. The first thing we need to do is a self-examination of our black community. Leave white men out of this for now. Look at the cultural dysfunction, the growing underclass, the ineffective parenting, the fatherless homes, the school failure, dropping out of school early, joining gangs, drug and alcohol abuse, teenagers having kids. We’re going to burn the United States and call for huge policy changes from an anomaly?” (WorldNetDaily, June 8, 2020).
WALTER E. WILLIAMS, professor of economics at George Mason University — “While it might not be popular to say in the wake of the recent social disorder, the true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called ‘systemic racism.’ Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities. Some of the most dangerous big cities are: St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Newark, Buffalo and Philadelphia. The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by liberal Democrats. Some cities–such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia–haven’t elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century. On top of this, in many of these cities, blacks are mayors, often they dominate city councils, and they are chiefs of police and superintendents of schools. Democratic-controlled cities have the poorest-quality public education despite their large, and growing, school budgets. Consider Baltimore, Maryland. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s math exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. Only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test. That same year in Philadelphia only 19% of eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 16% were proficient in reading. In Detroit, only 4% of its eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 7% were proficient in reading. It’s the same story of academic disaster in other cities run by Democrats. White liberals and black politicians focus most of their attention on what the police do, but how relevant is that to the overall tragedy? According to Statista, this year, 172 whites and 88 blacks have died at the hands of police. To put police shootings in a bit of perspective, in Chicago alone in 2020 there have been 1,260 shootings and 256 homicides with blacks being the primary victims. That comes to one shooting victim every three hours and one homicide victim every 15 hours. Three people in Chicago have been killed by police. If one is truly concerned about black deaths, shootings by police should figure way down on one’s list–which is not to excuse bad behavior by some police officers” (“The True Plight of Black Americans,” Townhall, June 10, 2020).
(Friday Church News Notes, June 19, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)