Friday, July 19, 2013

Obama is Making an Honest Conversation About Race LESS Likely

President Obama injected race into the acquittal of George Zimmerman despite a year-long FBI investigation that found not a shred of evidence of racial animus, and despite the jury finding Zimmerman not-guilty of any crime. And President Obama has asked his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to see if he can reopen the investigation that it was a hate crime.This is a political witch hunt reminiscent of the Salem witch trials.

Obama used as evidence of non-Blacks being unfair to Blacks that, for example, a woman might hold her breath and her purse tight when in an elevator with a young Black male. Well, fact is, she--whether white, Black, or of any background--has more reason to worry than if, for example, she were in an elevator with an old, Asian, woman. It is indisputable that young, Black males, especially in low-income areas, commit a disproportionate percentage of the violent crime.

In every other context, we not only accept but extol people for making reasonable inferences based on the inevitably limited information available. For example, any good physician deems a patient healthy based on limited data and a probabilistic assessment that ordering more tests is unwise. Indeed, a physician that tested everything to 100% certainty would legitimately be accused of excessively ordering tests and even lose his or her license to practice medicine.

Yet when a woman gets nervous in a low-income, high-crime area upon seeing a young Black male, President Obama denies her even the right to hold her breath and her purse more tightly. Note, we're not talking here about something serious, for example, unfairly denying someone admission to college. Indeed, the opposite is true there. Blacks are admitted to colleges with grades and test scores that would result in whites or Asians being rejected. What Obama is demanding is that we not even think the truth--that young Black males are more likely to commit violent crime than are other groups. He won't even allow us to hold our breath.

Mr. Obama's statements and policies and those of Attorney General Holder, newly appointed Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, etc., reflect a core belief in "redistributive justice," institutional racism," and "Disparate Impact" theory. which requires, for example, employers to spend a fortune on customized statistical data before using a test of thinking ability as a criterion for hiring employees, because it would result in fewer non-Asian minorities to be hired. Of course, the result is that most employers will forgo using a measure of thinking ability in hiring. Somehow, the Obama Administration believes the nation is better if proportionate percentages of races are hired even if employers are severely disincented from testing what often is the most important attribute in a employee: thinking ability.

All this will only make race relations more difficult, an honest conversation about race impossible, and most important, accelerate America's descent into becoming just another struggling nation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I did not realize that President Obama had encouraged AG Holder thusly; this directive angers me. Not only is the president responsible for upholding the laws of this nation but he is also a law school graduate; he knows that the defendant was tried by six of his peers in Florida and found to be innocent. The decision to elevate this case to a higher pitched emotional level is irresponsible.

The public has been activated at least twice and on each occasion the president weighed in. I heard most of his press conference, and evidently not all of it; I felt he was being sincere in demonstrating his concern for young black men. I can remember Bill Cosby using his fame to call out black families to take more responsibility for their families and youngsters of both sexes to be more responsible citizens. I wish he had run for president.

 

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