George Floyd didn’t change the world. He made a fool of it.
The man who bought a pack of cigarettes with an allegedly counterfeit $20-bill, then refused to return the cigarettes, ended up leaving an estate worth $27 million.
That’s the settlement his family received because Big Floyd didn’t want to give the cigarettes back to the store clerk who then called the police. The “Gentle Giant” (same nickname given to Rodney King) was in his Mercedes SUV preparing to drive away when officers arrived.
The less-famous body cam on the first officer to arrive showed an agitated Floyd already complaining he couldn’t breathe.
The more-famous citizen video showed only the end of the story, so there is now the myth of George Floyd. A guy calling out for his momma while dying under the knee of a cop.
Had he been allowed to drive away, would the Fentanyl drowning his lungs have caused him to crash his vehicle? Would he have died of an overdose later at home? Or would COVID-19 eventually have ended his life? In which case, no $27 million.
“Daddy changed the world,” Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter Gianna was coached to say.
Take a look at this photo of Gianna’s mother, Roxie Washington, posted on TODAY.com and imagine what she might do with her cut of the $27 million. Acrylic fingernails a la Megan Thee Stallion?
George Floyd was six years old, the same age as Gianna, when Ebony magazine published an extraordinary issue devoted entirely to “Black on Black Crime: The Causes, The Consequences, The Cures.”
What is most striking is how conservative many of these black leaders, journalists, educators and government officials sound compared to the black voices often quoted in the media today.
None of Ebony’s leaders and thinkers in 1979 could have imagined that a black man like George Floyd would be held up as a hero. They could not have believed that America – particularly its media – would immediately side with a black criminal suspect over a police officer (of any race).
They could not have anticipated the worst outcome: White Americans, especially those in the major media and in political office, would accommodate black criminals.
In 1979, Ebony Publisher John H. Johnson acknowledged that black-on-black crime was an explosive issue.
“For a long time now, many Black leaders have remained silent on this issue for fear of playing into the hands of men of bad faith who use every Black misdeed to malign all Blacks,” he wrote in his publisher’s statement.
Johnson’s courage stands out especially now. Today political correctness and cancel culture can silence honest discussion of crime committed by anyone who claims membership as a “person of color.”
This special issue of Ebony was filled with details, large and small, about the impact of black-on-black crime. The writing was direct with few euphemisms or attempts to soften the truth. Leafing through this magazine, just the photos and cutlines tell a story that most white editors wouldn’t touch:
A photo of a black man holding a noose wrapped around the neck of a black boy wearing a sign that says: “The pushers are lynching our beautiful children daily!!!”
A photo of a young black man lying face down: “The body of a slain robber lies in the doorway of a Memphis grocery store. In 1977, 53.4 percent of those under 18 arrested for violent crimes were Black.”
A photo of a sterile, high-rise apartment building in Chicago: “Crime has changed the architecture of the ghetto. New housing for senior citizens on Chicago’s South Side has a fortress-like base with narrow windows to keep out invaders.” A companion photo shows another apartment building and the double-locked steel gates that protect front doors.
Today, media and politicians condemn the militarization of police departments – a legitimate concern – but with no consideration for who helped militarize them: Criminals.
The advertisements in Ebony suggest a growing black middle-class ready to assimilate into American society if given a chance.
The magazine lays out “What Must Be Done.” The first step: “We need … a new family understanding, that there are no greater Uncle Toms anywhere than Black men and women who cut, shoot, stab, rape, rob, maim, mug, murder other Black people. We need a new understanding, a new compact, which says, in so many words, that men and women, Black and White, who sell hard dope to our children are greater enemies to Black progress than all of the active and silent supporters of the Ku Klux Klan.”
There is also a call for “an immediate end to the open market in hard drugs in Black America.” And then this astonishing statement: “No American government would tolerate such an open market in White communities. We ask the American governments to extend to decent and law-abiding Black Americans the same rights of protection they extend to decent and law-abiding White Americans.”
That’s how far America has sunk.
Here in Oregon we have not only decriminalized meth and heroin, we recently legalized psilocybin mushrooms. Downtown Portland and many neighborhoods are now home to camps of drug-addicted vagrants and thieves – most of them white. It’s a picture found in other American cities. White folk can’t even take care of themselves now.
The second step on Ebony’s list of what to do in 1979: Hold federal, state and municipal officials responsible for the high crime rates in communities. Today’s reality is that too many officials are labeled racist if they show anything less than sympathy for black criminals. Even Baltimore’s black mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, was denounced a few years ago for calling rioters “thugs” when they burned the city in response to a drug dealer named Freddie Gray who died in police custody. (Although police were acquitted in his death, Rawlings-Blake approved a $6.4 million settlement to his family.)
The media pounce when a black suspect dies in any encounter with police regardless of the specifics in each case. The stories are reduced to “police kill another black,” and the family quickly hires an attorney.
About the same time George Floyd’s family hit it big, in Portland, Ore., the family of Quanice Hayes walked away with a smaller, but still unmerited, pot of gold: $1.5 million. (Another $500,000 went to Hayes’ attorney, no doubt to help finance the next lawsuit against police.)
Hayes was a 17-year-old drug abuser who robbed a homeless man of his food stamp card and threatened to shoot him. He terrorized the man for a half hour before letting him go, warning him he would back and shoot him if he called the cops.
Later Hayes broke into a car and tried to break into two homes. A police officer, who could not have known Hayes’ gun only fired pellets, shot and killed him. A young man destroyed by crime — not cops.
Hayes’ felonies were reduced to a “car prowl” by Anna Griffin, news director for Oregon Public Broadcasting. Media coverage of the settlement was largely sympathetic and cast Hayes as the victim. Nobody questioned what his mother, a drug addict with a criminal history, is likely to do with $1.5 million. (A prediction: At some point in the next year, police will be called to the Hayes’ home to keep the peace.)
What happens to these new black millionaires, who can trace their inheritances to a dead criminal son or dad? The media seem to lose interest in these families once they have been paid off.
Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old black man, was killed in 2009 by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer in Oakland. Grant and some friends got into a gang-related fight on a BART train. Later, when Grant resisted arrest on the platform at the Fruitvale Station, the officer intended to subdue him with his Taser but instead grabbed his gun and shot him. The officer was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sent to prison for two years.
Grant’s family was awarded $2.8 million, and his friends on the train platform received $175,000. The money didn’t appear to change their lifestyle. His aunt was shot dead outside her Oakland home. Two of his friends on the train platform were later shot and killed – Johntue Caldwell in 2011 and Kris Rafferty in 2016.
Since police couldn’t be blamed, there was little publicity and no riots like those that accompanied the death of Grant.
What do young black males, in particular, think when they hear about the sums involved after one of their cohorts fights with police and ends up dead? It pays to resist?
A Washington state judge recently opined out loud about why a young, black man in Clark County would put up a fight over a drug arrest that would have likely ended up resolved with no prison time. Instead Kevin Peterson Jr. resisted and was killed.
District Court Judge Darvin Zimmerman didn’t realize his courtroom microphone was on while talking to a colleague about the case, which was not assigned to him. The judge said what probably a lot of people think, when he referred to Peterson as “the black guy they are trying to make an angel out of.”
Judge Zimmerman had spoken with a chaplain who went to the scene of the shooting and said that Peterson’s father acknowledged his son had a gun.
Referring to the father, the judge said: “The next day he wakes up with dollar signs in his eyes and George Floyd’s attorneys.”
Not a very judicious thing to say, but understandable. Peterson’s family is suing.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
It’s too bad this issue of Ebony wasn’t promoted in the schools like the “1619 Project.”
I looked at some of the essays in the online version. The one by Jesse Jackson is excellent. His saying, “Everybody is somebody” is more inclusive than Black Lives Matter and can help anyone who is struggling.
“Racism and powerlessness require greater self-control.” That’s good advice.
“We must be sober while they are drunk.”
Rev. Jackson could write. I rarely see him quoted like that. When he’s quoted these days, he doesn’t offer that kind of wisdom.
Several of these essays are striking in the insight they offered. In light of the recent mass shootings in Boulder and Atlanta, here is Winston E. Moore, a black psychologist and chief of security for the Chicago Housing Authority. He wrote more than 40 years ago that whites can better afford an occasional serial killer like Charles Manson or Son of Sam.
“Their score of killings is dwarfed to insignificance by that of the Black ghetto brawlers who collectively wipe out more people in bars and in the street during one single weekend.”
Moore blamed what he called “enlightened criminal justice officials” of all skin colors who explain away black violence as part of black culture. Labeling blacks as innately irresponsible because of their history is not only insulting to all blacks, but “it is also dangerous since it gives the Black criminal carte blanche to terrorize the Black law-abiding community without fear of harsh punishment.”
It has been noted in some news accounts that this past weekend’s death toll in Chicago exceeded the two shootings in Boulder and Atlanta.
I’ve always disliked Jackson and have been perhaps too quick to remark his wearing a turtleneck smeared w/King’s blood for two days of post-assassination interviews.
But, I just popped over to an old Frontline interview w/
Andrew Young to shore up my facts. Reading the interview brought me to another time, a time when adult men and women took responsibility and struggled with its weight.
Yes, as the years passes many took their perks and civil rights sinecures. However, many were formally educated
(or not) and assumed the end game was a more equal and better functioning society. Not too many smash and grabbers such as the Floyd’s and many who evaluated the upset calculated political acts can effect in the context of making a better nation. Even Marion Berry started with a concept of honor and justice. And as I prefer to believe for every Berry who degenerated into a doper/grifter cooz hound there are ten men and women from that seminal era who brought us, our nation, incalculable blessings.
This Jerry Springerization of national affairs is so horrifically off of the mark.
In these race payouts I see gold mawed black rap punks chanting simple minded gangster rubbish while fanning out decks of hundred dollar bills – thuggish respec’ but no human dignity.
Check out the Rommellman essay in Reason.
Perhaps Jackson’s blood-smeared turtleneck was the equivalent of Jackie Kennedy’s blood-stained pink suit.
Everybody has regrets in their life. If I were Jackson, I would regret ever joining forces with Al Sharpton, an adjudicated liar, but popular with the media.
My favorite Jackson quote is from a speech he gave in 1993 to a mostly black audience in Chicago: “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps … then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
That quote is now revisited only occasionally by the media and is often dismissed.
I wrote about its history several years ago in “Fear of Black Men.”
If Jackson is afraid of black men, it shouldn’t be surprising that police also tend to be afraid of black men.
Thanks for the tip on Rommelmann. Enjoyed it, but she lets the media off. Portland has a weak media, which has contributed to its deterioration. Recall how The Oregonian immediately urged compromise on “The Red House” property takeover.
I would like to have been privy to the negotiations that arrived at Mr. Floyd’s worth of $27 million. The best job he probably ever had was truck driver. His last job was bouncer. Will Mr. Floyd’s family share their wealth with the families of the two dozen or so people killed in the riots?
A moment’s digression:
11:45 p.m. this evening I’m steaming east on Lombard to hook up w/I-5 and get to work downtown. Traffic is at a standstill. There ain’t no city road crew this late.
I swing out to look ahead. Someone has a white van blocking the westbound lanes at Kenton. The intersection is darker than it should be and
silhouettes can be seen wandering the eastbound lanes. Groups of people along the sidewalk are silhouetted, too. Reminds me of looking across a field to a stand of trees at just past dusk.
All of the mailing people seem short though, the height of junior high girls.
I followed a checker cab a couple blocks south and then got back on Lombard east of the punks.
They were gearing up to attack the PPB union building.
Someone shot a white man to death at the 7-11 there on the 31st. I’m starting to pick up on the new righteous-speak of contemporary life: race matters. He’s not a fellow citizen, a neighbor, a Portlander, a father/son/husband/brother: first and foremost he’s a white man. I still have trouble framing murder in such reductionist terms, but I’ll get there.
As an aside it’s kind of tough to get the demographics of the newly slain. I mean the overage, that per cent killed as a result of activist generated reductions in PPB presence.
On Wednesday a Mexican I work with got a $150.00 dollar ticket for parking in a handicapped spot at 3 a.m.
This Mexican clown has current plates and a safe but older Honda in which he commutes from Salem. He entered the country legally and is legally permitted to work here. Pretty good guy, too. Sweet middle-weight.
Anyhow, up the street at Landsdowne Square the squatters had two separate bonfires going that burned several feet into the air. They’d broken into a little brick building in the square and were using it as a toilet, shooting gallery, and fkpad.
So, this Mexican clown crosses all the T’s and dots all the I’s. You wish local citizen’s would do what he does.
What Portland and Multnomah county see in my co-worker: just a clown ripe for a shakedown.
It’s been interesting watching the new racists and their minions in press and government squirm as they realize it’s the brothers be hating on the orientals.
I mean I’ve been reading of this horrific phenomenon for years while city leaders and journalists ignored it. You’d think our opinion leaders would do a little research as they cast about for new avenues of anti-white hate.
Anyhow I was practicing w/a .38 snub nose in a clear cut above Scappoose before driving home after work. I’m seeing some improvement
Your kicker at the end gave me my first good laugh of the day, and the day was half over.
I knew about the white man who was killed at the convenience store. I did not hear about last night’s disturbance at the PPB building. Perhaps the media now think they can discourage antifa by not reporting on them. It’s like the media think the public won’t notice how racist non-whites can be if certain crimes are ignored.
I’m sure you saw the video last week of the Asian woman who was attacked by a white man. It received wide play, and the man was arrested. The mainstream media were less enthusiastic about a video of an Asian man being badly beaten on the New York subway while bystanders looked on and did nothing. The man doing the beating was black. After beating down the Asian man, the assailant grabbed a package the man was carrying with an Apple insignia and walked off like he had a right to.
A couple of days ago, an Asian woman was stabbed to death in Riverside, Calif. — randomly as the Press-Enterprise put it. While reading about it today, I was surprised I hadn’t heard about it earlier. Then I read further into the story and realized why it hadn’t been more widely publicized. The suspect who killed the Asian woman was a Hispanic woman. The alleged killer had previously been arrested for assaulting someone else with a skateboard. She was not kept in jail earlier because of COVID-19. It would have been unfair to expose her to the virus. That’s looking at justice through an equity lens.
Instead, they let her out, and she killed someone.
Maxine Bernstein has a detailed story in The Oregonian on how “overworked, overwhelmed and burned-out” Portland police officers are leaving in droves. Comments by a black officer named Jakhary Jackson were especially notable. He talked about the hatred he and other officers faced while standing on the police lines.
“He got hit by an explosive one night, felt tingling in his fingertips and heat from the device, and got berated by young white protesters,” Bernstein wrote. “Often when he tried to talk to someone of color at the protests, he said, ‘Someone white comes up and blocks them and tells them not to talk.’ Or yells, ‘Eff the police … don’t talk to him.'”
It’s generally a good story. These problems have been building for a while. I wrote about some of them almost five years ago in “The Tail Wagging the Police Dog.”
This is the shameful equivalent of a Stalinist show trial.
The sleek, millionaire, “volunteer” prosecutors (at least 10 according to the judge in a rare outburst last week) are making ARGUMENTS, not opening statements.
That is grossly improper.
The defense attorney is a young, relatively inexperienced lawyer who was clearly chosen because he works for and is liked by the Minneapolis Police Officers Union. As the character (based on a real famous lawyer) played by Robert Duvall says in the movie “A Civil Action,” a movie about a real trial….”when in doubt, OBJECT…if you fall asleep…OBJECT.”
That’s is not happening.
Most outrageous is the over the top victim impact evidence that so far exceeds allowed federal law, that alone will cause this case to be reversed.
As will the judge’s exclusion to paint a 6’3”, 240 lb violent convicted felon as a kind, sweet loving man who just go jumped by cops. His violent felony conviction will never be heard by the jury, but every lady whose grocery he carried will.
This is “upside down world” legally. Such dispensations are given only to the defense, not the prosecution.
The father of the young officer Jackson used frequently to be on a television show, maybe it was cops. A sturdy and humble man with a remarkably good nature, the old man was. Believe he was anchored by a positive Christian faith, too. Didn’t follow the article because of paywall.
Tonight I walked over to the Square and watched as the incredibly grubby meth-head campers lit bonfires and squabbled noisily among themselves. They fenced of the park areas so that the campers are along the perimeter.
A lone officer circled those park blocks a few times, but took no action. Why get involved?
Yesterday I was online and first learned of the new ICE arson and harassment from a national source. I could find nothing local on the story until late afternoon when it was one among many, including a charter school furious because tear gas residue suffused their lawn.
How did that work, that city agreement for the establishment of an ICE facility? Did Portland let them know that they were on their own when rioting arsonists came to play? What an awful, awful people are Portlanders. People that vote for those that have created this squalid hell or who remain silent forfeit the right to dignified treatment or personal respect.
Rose City, the city that works! A crude cloacal system of the weird.
I first learned of the ICE arson on Twitter in a post by Andy Ngo. Like you, I wondered where the local coverage was — which arrived much later.
On Twitter, a former PPB officer named Don DuPay tweeted: “Why did the officers let them start a fire?”
Well, what could Portland police have done to stop them without generating outrage?
I wonder if the local media figure if they ignore these protests, they will go away. I think antifa will up the ante to get what it wants. You probably saw where the city of Portland is going to spend $150,000 to “restore” Chapman and Lownsdale squares. Who will protect this restoration — the park rangers?
Might give a listen to the Rommelmann and Totten interview at Quilette. No new ground so perhaps the point of interest is in the interviewer’s (a Torontonian?) questions.
My colleague just read out the PPB twitter account of tonight’s Penumbra Kelly attack.
Last night I strolled up to Lownsdale Square. The newfencing would not challenge two eighth grade wrestlers drunk on Heidelberg. Whatever money the city puts in to that square will/has been wasted.
The Hugh Selwyn Mauberly’s remark about Europe just popped into my mind. The bit that precedes,”for a botched civilization.”
It is not difficult to see Portlanders as being much like the English in India before the Sepoy Rising: things are not as they think they are.
Farrell wrote a wonderfully dark comic novel about that colonial interplay: The Site of Krisnapur.
We here in Portland have turned our backs on the law and just as importantly on those that hold back the darker angels of our nature. The problem here? It ain’t gonna fix itself.
The Rommelmann/Totten podcast was entertaining, and I agree with many of their observations. It still bothers me that Rommelmann didn’t hesitate to join the pile-on that drove Saffron Colonial out of business. Her husband’s Ristretto Roasters immediately and publicly cut ties as suppliers to that restaurant (the owners were accused of being colonialists). I have to wonder if Rommelmann only saw the light when her family’s business was later targeted by the social justice mob.
I just finished Zooming in on a subcommittee meeting of the Portland Committee for Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP). This is one of Portland’s police oversight groups. Most Portlanders do not know what this group does. It appears that one of the prerequisites for a majority of the membership on this committee is to have had problems with police. Thus, they have an anti-police bias, which is one of the biases that’s still acceptable. So who will hold back the darker angels of our nature? I guess PCCEP.
“They could not have anticipated the worst outcome: White Americans, especially those in the major media and in political office, would accommodate black criminals.”
I know you used to work for newspapers. I never thought journalists could be this stupid or corrupt. Politicians, yes. The Oregonian wanted to compromise with the terrorists who refused to vacate the house they no longer owned.
Larry’s comments are spot on. No way is this going to be a good ending for America. Portland I no longer care what happens. America is worth saving.
American journalism has changed a lot in the 21st Century. Newspapers used to be profitable. They lost their advertising base to the internet. That doesn’t explain why so many news outlets have become outright advocates for leftist causes.
Many mainstream media will not identify a person as black when he or she is caught behaving in a negative light, e.g. a black man who beats up on an Asian man on the New York subway. Or a doorman in New York who watches as a white man beats up on an Asian female. The white man and the Asian are identified by race, not the doorman.
When I worked in newspapers, the biggest complaint among my colleagues was that management preferred to play it safe instead of tell the whole truth — particularly if some details could offend a significant number of readers.
The Oregonian was never known for sticking its neck out (they sat on the Goldschmidt story, for example). With occasional exceptions, it has become predictable and boring. I would never look to their editorial section for leadership.
The American Spectator article, The Real Reason for Daunte Wright’s Death by Scott McKay amplifies and extends the remarks/observations in your essay.
I’d provide the link but Apple is defeating me. Once again
Yes, it’s a good column, although I suppose McKay had to say Wright’s death was a tragedy. Given the young man’s own violent criminal history, his death was kind of predictable.
It’s not surprising Wright had an outstanding warrant. What’s the downside to not showing up for court? None.
One thing that has not been explored in all the coverage about Wright’s “tragic” death is: How often did Officer Kim Potter, who accidentally shot him, ever use her gun in the 26 years she was on the force?
The media fixate so much on cops shooting people (often justifiably; there’s a reason why cops are allowed to carry guns), we forget that in many police departments, there are officers who have never shot anybody. In some cases, there are officers who have rarely pulled their guns.
Potter clearly panicked. Perhaps she couldn’t rely on “muscle memory” to reach for her Taser instead of her gun, because she seldom used either. Obviously, she had to resign. The only crime she’s likely guilty of, though, is negligent homicide. She didn’t deliberately shoot to kill Wright. He did deliberately resist arrest.
At work now. Flash bangs outside the glass. They’re breaking into the construction area surrounding the property. 5th and Yamhill. Lootinbg combustible materials and now street fires are erupting.
Insofar as I can tell the cops are impotent. The mayor’s blog has admonitions about Covid.
I hadn’t expected this and found myself surrounded as I drove to work. They’d blocked off my retreat. Punks screaming threats in my car window. I pulled a u-turn and drove back out slow. Little car thumping.
Our orders are to retreat and take an emergency exit should they break through the walls which are built of a material guaranteed to draw these violent punks.
And they are punks, Every time I have encountered them nose-to-nose they are dirty, spitting mad, and punks. Candy-ass punks engaged in the theater of violence.
How, why are they allowed to do this? God, I hate this town, its political players, and its voters.
It is all rotten here. Rotten, rotten, rotten.
When I first heard about the latest riots, I figured you were in the thick of it given the time and place. Any contingency plans for when the Chauvin verdict comes in? Personally, I would love to see one brave juror hang the jury. I doubt if that will happen. He will be convicted of something — if for no other reason than that the jury fears a national blowout.
You may have seen still another column by Nicholas Kristof a few days ago on Portland. He still doesn’t get it, but it looks like he’s trying to distance himself from the columns he wrote last summer. As usual, the commenters from Portland often make more sense.
One of them, a woman posting under “Eva,” describes how she used to walk to work in a route that took her by the Justice Center. In October she was assaulted in broad daylight in one of the parks where you have had some of your encounters.
Eva said she had friends who immediately assumed she had been attacked by a Proud Boy or right-winger. Her friends couldn’t understand why she didn’t call the police or pursue prosecution.
“Simply put, my attacker had more rights than I did,” she said.
She moved but still walks to work. Only now, like you, she is always on alert.
I post the following link in reference to an encounter you had at an antifablm demonstration.
https://quillette.com/2021/04/09/podcast-144-james-kirchick-on-the-disintegration-of-the-aclu/
Our house goes on the market Monday. Why would one stay in Portland?
I used to go to speaking events: Mamet, Didion, McKewan, and etc. Hogarth woodcuts at Reed, John Sayles Q & A.
Who would dare say anything honest, insightful, or unconventional in this city?
I had a unique encounter this afternoon. I was picking up some cut-rate crackers that I like at a neighborhood Grocery Outlet. A bipoc in his late 20s/early 30s who was 6’9″ or more made abusive remarks after I had passed him. I looked behind me and after a moment I realized he was railing at me for having stepped too near him, stepped into his space.
I listened for a moment or two and then answered him directly in slightly more polite terms than those in which he addressed me. I moved on to the checkout line and to my surprise he had followed me and stood towering over me calling me a ‘fucking nigger,” and if I kept looking at him he’d kick my ass.
I listened for a moment or two and then again gave him the reply direct. He walked on out the door declaring he’d meet me in the parking lot.
As my mother did not raise a complete fool I called 911 while checking out and going through the door. He came back in and said something about my being a coward and if I was going to call 911, well…”
Anyway, glad to have missed a scrap I carried on to my car and unloaded my things. Then I noted that a Klein phone holder I carried must have dropped when I called 911 (uh, I was a little shaky I guess).
The attitude of staff when I re-entered the store was pretty clearly hostile to me. I reviewed my part and thought that I shouldn’t have answered back when he started his foul mouthed yelling in the aisle. His pursuit of me into the checkout line and really ugly threats, well…
The point to my story is that I felt that the young Portland employees felt a distinct bias in his favor. When I first re-entered the store he was laughing and joking with the people in line and the checker. When I went up to the checker later he denied knowing anything about my lost phone holder. I left but returned a third time and spoke with a young woman manager who was decidedly frosty to me but did indeed have my phone holder.
Loud mouth bullies are thick on the ground in this world, but they seldom are the recipients of instinctive sympathy. My interest is in the response of the young white staff at the store.
If I read things aright and perhaps I have not, they are the real problem with Portland.
Finally, it was a unique experience.
The media are leading the sympathy drive for bullies of color. The young white staff in that store are following along. They probably thought you were a Proud Boy or a sympathizer. We’re all stereotyped now. Some of the staff may not have agreed with the guy who picked a fight with you, but they’re not going to speak up.
It’s hard to believe how unrelenting the American news media have become in their obsession with race. On Monday, there were two stories on “All Things Considered” about the challenges of being black. In one story, a novelist talked about blacks’ fear of being murdered. Whites aren’t murdered? The second story was about young black medical residents who need black doctors to be their mentors. Who says only black doctors can mentor black residents?
Then The Oregonian on Monday had a story about the ACLU suing the Ashland Police for arresting an actor at the Oregon Shakespearean Festival a couple of years ago. An officer found the actor walking in the street late at night. He was extremely drunk.
The body cam footage from the officer confirmed the actor couldn’t care for himself and wasn’t able to give the cop a name of someone who could come and get him.
The officer says he will have to take him to a detox center. The actor resists and turns into a belligerent racist. He tells the cop he’s a brown man and yells repeatedly, “Don’t tell me to shut up, white man!”
How did this incident become about race? The cop was doing his job, helping a man who could have easily been hit by a car.
The Portland you describe that was intellectually curious is gone for now. It’s not coming back anytime soon. Look at Powell’s. They’re afraid to stock Andy Ngo’s book on antifa, but they’re promoting a virtual book tour for Stacey Abrams’ novel.
I can understand wanting to move out of Portland. I can even understand wanting to leave Oregon. The governor thinks reparations for black people is a priority. Apparently she has forgotten about PERS. There is a certain entertainment factor in waiting to see how badly Portland progressives will screw up.
Walking back the cattish, aka meow:
https://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2021/04/how-dare-you-not-defer-to-my-lack-of-self-possession.html
How can it be that our community is shuffling step after step into debasement and catastrophic failure and this,one of the only local forums that I know of goes without a flood of discussion?
Portland is a provincial town, and it’s reflected in its media. Right now it is also a depressing town. Everybody seems to be waiting for something, but they’re not sure what.
Tuesday night I zoomed in on a meeting of the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing. This is one of the city’s police oversight groups. At one point, they agonized over the phrase “conflict resolution” in their bylaws. One of the members was bothered by the phrase and did not believe it was trauma-informed.
Later, Dan Handelman of Portland CopWatch, a long-time police watchdog group, suggested that in the graphics accompanying various presentations speakers not refer to “bullet points” but instead call them “dots.” You know, because of all the shootings.
Then Wednesday The Oregonian had an unbelievable story about — would you believe — the need to create still another police oversight committee. This one would oversee the new investigative team targeting “gun” violence. However, first the city council has to create an advisory group to help select the oversight committee.
Somebody is getting things done, though. Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Happy Valley) got her bill, the Crown Act passed in the House on Wednesday. The Crown Act will prohibit discrimination against certain hair styles worn by minorities. Apparently we will still be allowed to make fun of mullets. I’m guessing the bill will pass in the Senate since nobody wants to be called a racist.
Not to be outdone, Rep. Ricki Ruiz (D-Gresham) is participating in a national conversation on Menstrual Equity.
When I told a friend of mine about this, he wondered if that meant he would have to start bleeding anally.
Who would ever guess that Portland or the state of Oregon had any serious concerns.