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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 142

WRONG PICTURE

What is wrong with the pictures coming out of Ferguson, Missouri? Is that what middle America is? Are we a racist nation?

Last question first. No, America is not a racist nation. How can a nation be racist when the president, the attorney general, the national security adviser, and several other prominent officials are black? There are prominent blacks in every profession, stars in every professional sport and other entertainment areas. Blacks with military honors serve in every branch of the Armed Forces. Graduating students from our universities are black, as were some of their professors. No, we are not a racist nation nor are we a nations of cowards. In America, if you can walk the walk and talk the talk you can make it, no matter the color of your skin. While words are important, actions and real circumstances tell us more.

The words coming out of the president and attorney general do not help to calm the situation in Ferguson any more than the words coming out of the professional race manipulators who circle every possible injustice like a group of vultures swirling around the spot light of public attention. The shooting in Ferguson calls out for a real investigation of the facts, not political speeches crying racism is the cause. Shouldn’t the rush to racist statements on the part of our president and attorney general wait for the investigations to be completed before making racist pronouncements.

Didn’t we learn anything from the Treyvon Martin case? Too many bright young black teenagers, especially males, are being killed by senseless acts. The nation needs these young people. We need to give them time to live and contribute. Let the Ferguson situation play out, but deal severely with looters. Peaceful demonstrations must always be allowed but not street violence. Peaceful demonstrators of any color do not come to demonstrate with Molotov cocktails and guns. The police have a duty to protect the citizens of Ferguson from the violence of rioters and looters. And the attorney general and our president need to deal with the mass killing of young black teenagers by black on black violence.

Mr. President, tell your attorney general to go to Chicago with his legions of investigators. Give the young blacks of our inner cities a chance to live. Give them jobs and hope. So far you have done nothing to help them. Making them dependent on government money is not the answer. Give them real jobs, a chance to raise a family and give back to the community. Show them real justice is color blind. Your first step should be to remove your current attorney general who has said we are a nation of cowards when it comes to race. He is not an example that justice is color blind. We are not a nation of cowards and we are not, today, a racist nation. The pictures coming out of Ferguson fill the media’s appetite for sensational news but do not describe America.

Written by the author of “Insights: Transforming America — Is This What We Fought For?” available now as an ebook, in paperback or hardcover on Amazon.com or BN.com. Follow the author on Twitter @factsfictions80

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 113

PROFILING: A SURVIVAL INSTINCT

Profiling is not a politically correct law enforcement policy in today’s world. Most liberals and even George W. Bush, a Republican president, spoke against profiling as part of a counter-terrorism program. Profiling doesn’t need to be defined. Everyone knows exactly what it is because everyone does it.

The act of profiling is as old as the beginning of life. Isn’t profiling simply looking for indicators of a danger to survival? Like any other activity, profiling can be misused. But when used properly it can save lives and diminish day-to-day threats.

People who live and work in active war zones quickly sharpen up their profiling skills. In Danang, Vietnam, in 1968 one of the best Viet Cong assassins was a young boy, probably not yet in his teens. His modus operandi was to carry a pistol in a paper bag and on a crowded street walk casually up to his selected target and shoot through the paper bag from inside three feet. How long do you think it took for those of us walking in the markets of Danang to profile any young boy carrying a paper bag? Not long. It wasn’t because we were discriminating against young boy or paper bags. It was the awakening of an old survival instinct. All living creatures have the ability to recognize dangers to their survival. Ask anyone who has ever hunted crows. They will tell you that the crows can recognize if you are carrying anything looking like a rifle or shotgun. The crows profile hunters.

In the world of counter-terrorism, all Arab Muslims are not terrorists but most terrorists are Arabs and Muslims. It is insane for law enforcement officers to not give special scrutiny to Arab-looking men and women traveling by air. How many elderly non-Arabs have been pulled out of line for extra scrutiny just to show no one is being profiled? If you resemble a rational threat description, you should be profiled. Not many blue-haired grandmothers have been terrorists.

Profiling has been attacked by people perpetuating racism. Black male teenagers have reported they hear car door locks clicking when they cross streets. Our president has said he has heard the doors locking when he was a young man crossing streets. Of course, and it is not because they are black or young. It’s because nearly all urban street crime is by young black males. Most of it black on black violence. You have to be nearly mindless if you do not profile a group of young black men approaching. Remember the wave of people injured in the “knockout game” on urban streets. Weren’t all the victims white and the attackers black?

Profiling can be abused and profiling policies need to be routinely reviewed. Profiling is a natural instinct. Don’t confuse it with racism.

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Filed under Intelligence & Politics

Tagged as arabs, blacks, muslims, Obama, profiling, racism, survival, whites

by Barry Kelly | April 26, 2014 · 9:33 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 111

THE CHANGING FACE OF RACISM

Eight decades is a long time. Fortunately as we age, and I am very close to 83, our long-term memory remains vivid. The short-term is another story. I have seen the face of racism in the south and the north. It was very real in 1938 when I was a transplanted Yankee in the third grade in Jackson, Mississippi, an early learning experience. In case there was any doubt about how whites and blacks lived in the deep south, there were signs to help and firm comments from white residents making sure Yankees knew the rules.

My first venture into the deep south only lasted a little over a year. My family moved back to Jeannette, PA. Jeannette was then a small tough town of mills and manufacturing, primarily glass factories set in the soft coal region. Racism was far less visible. While neighborhoods were mostly segregated, all the schools were integrated. The president of my senior class was a black student and captain of the football team. A few years later I was in a Navy boot camp. The camp was integrated but the black sailors in my company did not have the same choice of navy schools or occupations. Black recruits mostly ended up in the navy’s version of service industries. The navy was behind the army and air force in integrating. Racism was still alive but was definitely giving ground.

I took full advantage of the G.I. Bill and went to the University of Pittsburgh. While there I became a member of the NAACP. By that time a very high percentage of my peer group and fellow students knew that skin color was not linked to abilities in anything from sports to scholastic achievement. I think that single awareness, that skin color meant only skin color, contained the destruction of the elaborate trappings of racism, mostly then, held by an aging population, both white and black.

My awareness and exposure to racism had another chapter. While studying for my master’s degree in political science at Duke University, I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Martin Luther King when he came to Durham in 1960 to guide the “sit in movement.” I didn’t realize at the time how lucky I was to participate briefly in picketing, attending church to hear him preach, and to meet the black college students who were the mainline troops on the street.

Twenty odd years later after retiring from the CIA and while working in the Reagan White House, my wife got me to join with her in a church sponsored part of the “I Have A Dream” program in the inner city of Washington, DC. A wonderful experience. The sixth-grade kids we were closely involved with over the next seven years taught us all more than we able to teach them. Years later we are still in touch with some of them.

All the above is just to establish some background for what I want to say.

We have arrived at the point in America where few whites admit to being racists. It is a bad thing and none of us want to be known as racists. If you’re white there is no upside to being a racist. I think American blacks are expected to have some anti-white feelings. It’s part of the inner city culture. No black wants to be labeled an “Uncle Tom” or an “Oreo.” While there are hundreds of thousands of blacks that do not carry racist baggage, it does not help that the President and his Attorney General never miss a chance to suggest racism is alive and well in America and use it as an excuse for their failures.

The President and his AG are unpopular with a growing segment of our population not because they are black but because of their actions, non-actions, speeches delivered, and those that should have been delivered but weren’t. Entrenched black political leadership never misses a chance to hoist the flag of racism. It is the tool they use to justify their roles and to motivate their followers. Sadly, they are the primary guarantors of the continued presence of racism. Our black citizens have done their share in the building and defending of America. Let’s bury racism and rejoice in our diversity. Racism can only exist if it has victims who search for it and find it where it doesn’t exist. Progressivism needs class warfare and racism to carry its message of transformation and destruction.