Walter Williams: Still racist!

While that may seem like a fairly judgmental title, it's really just an attempt to accurately translate Walter's own title, "Media Dishonesty and Race Hustlers". How does that count as a 'translation'? Here's a fun exercise - try to imagine someone who isn't a racist non-ironically using the term 'race hustler'. Can you do it? Thought not. So, let's see what this racist has to say for himself!

"When NBC's "Today" show played the audio of George Zimmerman's call to a Sanford, Fla., police dispatcher about Trayvon Martin, the editors made him appear to be a racist who says: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." What Zimmerman actually said was: "This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining, and he's just walking around, looking about." The 911 officer responded by asking, "OK, and this guy -- is he black, white or Hispanic?" Zimmerman replied, "He looks black." NBC says it's investigating the doctoring of the audio, but there's nothing to investigate; its objective was to inflame passions."

Absolutely, Walter, you're completely right. NBC shouldn't have edited the tape to remove the context, it was an utterly dishonest and scumbaggy move. Just like you shouldn't have used the term 'doctored' to prejudice your audience against their actions, also manipulative and scumbaggy. And Zimmerman shouldn't have said 'fucking coons' soon after the exchange that was played on TV. Can we all just agree that mistakes were made? Wait, of course we can't, because compromise is anathema to you, isn't it?

"In his Associated Press article titled "Old photos may be deceptive in Fla. shooting case," Matt Sedensky pointed out that the photos carried by the major media were several years old and showed Zimmerman looking fat and mean and Martin looking like a sweet young kid."

There you go again, assigning malicious motives without any basis for your assumptions. And again, just as your dislike of black people isn't a reasonable cause for assuming they're all trying to steal your Lexus, your dislike of 'the media' isn't evidence that they're trying to pull a fast one on people. Isn't it possible that they were using the only photo of Zimmerman they had available?

Have you seen a current photo of Zimmerman? In that mugshot he looks fat and mean, but also kind of schlubby, maybe even the kind of out-of-shape lout that a 17-year-old kid might have been able to successfully threaten the life of. That's not what he looked like on the night of the attack. Now that we've all seen the police station security camera footage, we know that the current, gun-firing Zimmerman is lean and muscular, with a shaved head. The kind of guy who puts on a leather jacket but leaves it unzipped, so as to better show off his tight T-shirt. The old Zimmerman looks mean. The new one looks scary. If the media was truly trying to bias people against the shooter, wouldn't they have gone through hell and high water to get a current photo?

"Jesse Jackson told the Los Angeles Times that "blacks are under attack" and that "targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business," adding that Martin is "a martyr." President Barack Obama chimed in by saying, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.""

Walter presents this without comment, so I'd like to congratulate him. For once, he didn't make the world dumber by adding his two cents! In fact, I'm going to go one step further and applaud him for so openly indicting the private prison system! Kudos, Walt!"

Walt then lists a few cases of black-on-white violence that he feels were underreported in the media. I'm not going to list them all here, since every conservative news outlet has already done that work for me a thousand times over. The tactic being used is to shock people with the idea that black people occasionally kill white people, and then indict the media for not running with those stories day and night for weeks on end the way they (eventually) did in the Martin case. Two things, Walter: A) Since you were able to name-drop those crimes pretty quickly, I'd suggest they probably were covered adequately in the media. 2) None of the cases you mention has the kind of narrative that can be spun out over weeks of broadcasts - in every one, the stories follow the tradional crime reporting structure - Horrible crime - search for perps - perps are caught - move on to next horrible crime. The reason the Martin case continues to captivate people worldwide is the unusual narrative structure - Horrible crime - police let criminal go - outcry over injustice - authorities humiliated into taking action. Do you have such a poor understanding of storytelling that you can't understand that this is a more interesting tale?

Of course, there's one other possible reason - the 'man bites dog' scenario. To explain, Walter and people like him (specifically the KKK) have so effectively put forth the idea that the natural state of black people is to be marauders constantly on the prowl for white victims to sate their brutal, unnatural lusts that it's no longer 'news' when a crime fitting those parameters actually happens. After all, Walter, if you spend years telling America that black people are monsters, and then a black person does something monstrous, do you really expect America to be surprised?

"None of those black-on-white atrocities made anywhere near the news that the Trayvon Martin case made, and it's deliberate. Editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons, in an effort to "guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion.""

I'm not saying you're a liar, Walter, but wow, is this the kind of statement you should really be sourcing. Also, I've got to say, those editors are doing a terrible job of keeping an entire race from having suspicion heaped upon them. I mean, isn't that basically all you do?

"One doesn't have to be a liberal, conservative, Democrat or Republican to see the danger posed by America's race hustlers, who are stacking up piles of combustible racial kindling and ready for a racial arsonist to set it ablaze."

Hey, you've made a mistake there - let me fix it for you. "-America's race hustlers, who are racially stacking up racial piles of racially combustible racial kindling and are racially getting racially ready for a racial arsonist to racially set it rablaze." Isn't that better, and more representative of your theories?

"Recruiters for white hate groups-"


Hold on there... I thought white racism was a thing of the past! Didn't you write a whole article about how it's basically impossible to be a racist any more? Anyhoo, now that you've invalidated most of your opinions, I'll let you continue.

"Recruiters for white hate groups must love President Obama's demagoguery in saying that a son of his would look like Trayvon but not saying that Melissa Coon's 13-year-old son, who was set on fire, could have looked like a son of his. After all, the president is just as much white as he is black."

Okay, now you've just crossed the line into flat-out dishonesty. Why am I saying 'crossed the line'? You live on the other side of that line. Be truthful for one second in your life, Walter - do you really think the president is as white as he is black? Anyone who isn't baldly misrepresenting the current state of race relations in America for their own purposes will freely admit that isn't how it works. Why don't you check in with one of those white supremacist groups (whose opinions you agree with an uncomfortable amount of the time) on the subject. Ask them what percentage a person has to be black before they stop qualifying as white in America. Ten bucks says the answer is 'any'. And then they'll hurl some racial epithets your way, because they don't care that you agree with them about most everything - they'll be judging you by the colour of your skin, as opposed to the content of your character.

"Even if the president and his liberal allies in the media and assorted civil rights hustlers don't care much about blacks murdering whites, what about blacks murdering blacks? During a mid-March weekend in Chicago, 49 people were shot, 10 fatally, including a 6-year-old black girl, making for more than 100 murders this year. Philadelphia isn't far behind, with murder clipping along at one a day since the beginning of 2012. Have we heard Obama make a statement about this carnage or that most homicide victims are black and that their murderers are black? No, and we won't, because black-on-black crime, like black-on-white crime, does not fit the liberal narrative of the continuing problem of white racism."

So Walter comes to his closing argument - because blacks are murdering blacks, racism isn't a thing any more! I won't spend too much time on this one, since we covered this exact territory just two weeks ago, and I don't want to come across like a broken record - not that doing so bothers Walter.

So I'll just remind Walter that, disgustingly, the news is a business. Novelty sells. Is it both disgusting and an absolutely disgrace that so many Americans shoot each other every year? Yes. Is it surprising? No. Not even close. I don't know how to solve the problem, and I'm pretty sure Walter's (and America's!) solution of 'lock up as many black men as possible' has been a demonstrable failure.

One thing I'm sure won't help all the black people being killed every year in America? Attempting to use their deaths as proof that white racism isn't a problem any more.

Walter Williams has some choice words for his critics!

"Public misunderstanding, ignorance and possibly contempt for liberty play into the hands of people who want to control our lives."

That's right folks, never let it be said that Walter Williams is a man unafraid of demonizing his opposition. Oh, so you disagree with his opinions? That's probably just because you hate liberty, which is just what the evil authoritarians want! It's impossible for someone to have an honest disagreement with him about the role of government in people's lives - they're uninformed, a synonym for uninformed, or possibly evil.

Never let it be said that Walter Williams is a man unafraid of redundancy.

The theme of this week's missive from Walter is 'settling scores'. It seems that some of the people who read his thoughts a few weeks back were able to poke enough holes in his logic to get under Walter's skin, necessitating a whole new article designed to answer those critics. The subject?

"I argued that the anti-tobacco movement became the template and inspiration for other forms of government intrusion, such as bans on restaurants serving foie gras, McDonald's giving Happy Meals with toys, and confiscating a child's home-prepared lunch because it didn't meet Department of Agriculture guidelines. A few responses read like this: "Smoking is different because that actually affects other people. We should be living by the notion that you should be able to do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt other people. Smoking hurts other people."

That seems reasonable enough, doesn't it? Not according to Walter!

"If we banned or restricted all activities that affect, harm or have the possibility of harming other people, it wouldn't be a very nice life. Let's look at what can affect or harm other people. Non-obese people are harmed by obesity, as they have to pay more for health care, through either higher taxes or higher insurance premiums. That harm could be reduced by a national version of a measure introduced in the Mississippi Legislature in 2008 by state Rep. W.T. Mayhall that in part read, "An act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state Department of Health." The measure would have revoked licenses of food establishments that violated the provisions of the act. Fortunately, the measure never passed, but there's always a next time."

This is the danger of being conspiracy-obsessed. You become so desperate to prove those obsessions that you'll grab onto any random bit of fact that backs up your improbable beliefs. Walter can't actually find any evidence of ludicrous laws impinging on people's freedoms, so he flails around until he finds a crazy law, proposed by a nobody, that was taken seriously by no one. Anyone else would look at that law and think 'hey, that's funny. Politics are dumb, sometimes, huh?' but to the conspiracy-obsessed, it becomes just another piece of the mosaic depicting all the ways the big scary government is trying to take away his freedom! The fact that the proposed law was laughed out of the state house is a meaningless footnote - after all, next time we might not be so lucky! Which is, of course, why we need heroic freedom fighters like Walter Williams, the only man brave enough to protect your right to weigh over five hundred pounds.

"The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that in 2010, nearly 33,000 people were killed in auto crashes. That's a lot of harm that could be reduced by lowering the speed limit to 5 or 10 miles an hour. You say, "Williams, that's ridiculous!" What you really mean to say but don't have the courage to is that to save all of those lives by making the speed limit 5 or 10 miles per hour is not worth the inconvenience. Needless to say -- or almost so -- there are many activities we engage in that either cause harm to others or have the potential for doing so, but we don't ban all of these activities."

I'm done saying that you're ridiculous, Walter. I used to say it a lot, but by now I've realized that ridiculous is your natural state, so calling your that - even at your behest - would be like constantly referring to you as 'alive' or 'male'. Accurate, but self-evident, and therefore redundant. So, from now on, let's take 'everything you say is laugh-out-loud stupid' as read, shall we?

Now, for your actual point - Walter is so bad at arguing his positions that his only recourse is to always go straight to the most extreme possible position when describing opposition to his point. Of course anyone would think an 8KPH speed limit would be crazy, so natural we have to eliminate all government regulation, right? In Williams' manichean world, there exists only complete freedom or absolute tyranny. Thank god the rest of us don't actually have to live in this fantasy land. We're capable of seeing the degrees in between, and deciding just which tradeoffs and compromises are important to us.

Also, it's weird that Walter missed a good talking point here - since studies have shown that highways without speed limits are safer than those with them, the argument can be made that those limits are being kept in place by governments solely so that they can fine (or... tax!) innocent leadfeet! I don't know if it really would have fit into this article, but its seems like his kind of talking point. Although, come to think of it, consistency has never really been the man's strong point anyhow...

"One of the least-understood functions of private property rights is that of determining who may harm whom in what ways. In a free society, it is presumed that the air in a person's house, restaurant, hotel, car or place of business is his property. That means that if you own a restaurant and don't want your air polluted by tobacco smoke, it is your right."

Look at the one he tried to sneak by us just then! This is another favorite tactic of his - assert something absurd, then immediately build an argument on it as if the absurdity was a matter already settled. Here's the thing, Walter - I don't concede that you own the air in your house. Air is common property, owned by every one of us. While you may own the airspace inside your own home, and choose to not allow me to throw paper airplanes through it, you don't own that air, and you can't legally prevent me from breathing it. The question of cigarette smoke in a restaurant isn't 'I, the restaurant owner, get to decide whether or not I fill the air with poison', it's 'I, as the owner of a business designed to serve the public, don't get to decide whether I want to poison the people whose patronage allows me to continue running a small business - because it's poison.' Air needs to be clean, because all of our health is dependant on that. While it's fine for people to smoke in their own homes, where there's minimal transfer of smoke to people outside, or to smoke outdoors, where the worst parts of the fumes dissipate quickly, in an enclosed environment with relatively little circulation, public health becomes an issue. I know that Walter thinks any call to public health is a secret plot by the Illuminati (see below), so I don't expect him to be able to wrap his head around this point. This is the limitation of Walter's concept of 'freedom' - it's entirely selfish. The only freedom he really wants is the freedom to never think about anyone else, unless they have something he wants.

The crazy part about this is that Walter is old enough to remember leaded gasoline. I only know of the terrible toll it took on people based on the theme song from Seasame Street (or at least my mishearing thereof), but Walter must have experienced the lung-clogging, asthma-triggering hell that was the smoggy downtown core of most major American cities. Does he really want to go back to those days solely because people should be 'free to put whatever they want in their cars'? I'm not suggesting that Walter actually holds this opinion - but the leaded gas situation is the closest analog to secondhand smoke (although obviously more serious), so it's certainly a fair comparison.

"The emerging tragedy is our increased willingness to use the coercive powers of government, in the name of health or some other ruse, to forcibly impose our preferences upon others. In the whole scheme of things, the tobacco issue itself is trivial. Far more important is its template for massive government disrespect for private property."

God damn it, Walter. Don't you realize how you sound when you write these things? Public health is a 'ruse'? See, in Wlater's mind it's impossible that anyone actually does anything to help other people - he can't even muster up an acknowledgment of the existence of good intentions before reminding people what was used to pave the road to hell. According to Walter there's no such thing as empathy - all claim of human concern is simply pretext.

What a sad and lonely place the inside of your head must be. Hey, at least you've got that sweet Lexus to comfort you, right? Must be a sweet ride, huh? Or it will be, up until Obama's Traffic Tsar makes it illegal to drive faster than walking speed!

"John Adams said, "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.""

I can understand Walter's desire to tie his beliefs to something a founding father said (well, wrote, anyhow) - tenuous as that connection may be - but let's not forget that John Adams is the man who signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law. He was a great man, but like most great men, he had a lot of bad days. It's always dangerous to attribute equal respect to everything that a brilliant man said.

Conversely, it's pretty safe to attribute equal derision to everything that Walter Williams says.

Walter Williams doesn't understand rhetorical questions, apparently.

Or, more specifically, he doesn't seem to understand that some issues are so complicated that they can't be boiled down to an easy yes or no. Take, for example, his recent article on the subject of racial profiling - a hot-button subject of late, due to the Martin shooting. Speaking of, here's Walter's take on the subject!


"Right now, there isn't enough known about the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a black, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old part-Hispanic, during his neighborhood watch tour in an Orlando, Fla., suburb. If evidence emerges that Zimmerman's actions were not justified, he should be prosecuted and punished; however, there's a larger issue that few people understand or have the courage to acknowledge, namely that black and young has become synonymous with crime and, hence, suspicion. To make that connection does not make one a racist. Let's look at it."


Yes, Walter, let's. Note how Walter opens with a completely disingenuous call to 'let the facts come out before judging'. How do we know it's completely disingenuous? The rest of the article is about how it's completely fine to assume that all young black men are criminals. By that logic (Walter's logic), Zimmerman had every right to assume the kid had criminal intent, and that good-faith assumption is apparently all that's required to get away with murder in many U.S. states. I exaggerate, of course - but only about the laws in question, not Walter's opinion of young black men.


He has an awfully high opinion of himself though, doesn't he? Look at the way he frames his article as if he's the lone bold figure speaking truth to power - as if there isn't an entire television network, hundreds of radio hosts, and literally thousands of print and online columnists all rushing to defend racial profiling. Yes, Walter, in the conflict between a self-deputized law enforcement groupie and the unarmed teenager he shot, you're far from the only person to line up behind the guy who brought the gun to the not-a-fight.


Then the article continues by offering a few examples of people who are either in favour of racial profiling, or troubled by their own history of using it.


"Twelve years ago, a black Washington, D.C., commissioner warned cabbies, most of whom were black, against picking up dangerous-looking passengers. She described "dangerous-looking" as a "young black guy ... with shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, unlaced tennis shoes." She also warned cabbies to stay away from low-income black neighborhoods. Did that make the D.C. commissioner a racist?"


Not entirely - she wasn't describing racial profiling, but rather behavioural profiling, telling cabbies to avoid people who wore the traditional clothes of criminality in that area. The only reason she was talking about black people was because Washington DC is a majority-black city, which means that by extension the poorest and most criminal sections are going to be black. I'm sure if she was a Laredo, TX commissioner she'd have warned about gang-affiliated Latino youths. Perhaps you can attribute a little racism to her statement, but honestly, who can blame cabbies for whatever prejudices they hold? They do the most dangerous job in America - let's cut the guys some slack, huh?


"The Rev. Jesse Jackson once remarked, "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- (and) then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." Does that make the reverend a racist?"


Yes, it does. And he knows it - that's why it was a painful thing for him to think. This is a man who's spent his whole life trying to better the condition of black people in America, and even he's not free from the effects of the stereotyping that his peer group suffers. Everyone has racist thoughts from time to time, Walter - look at you, like ten percent of your articles about your own racist beliefs. But that kind of incidental racism isn't the only defining characteristic that we use to judge people. While Jesse was thinking that, he was a racist, which he acknowledges, and laments. What does it say about you that you're unable to admit your own racism when you believe all the time the things that only cross the Reverend's mind when his brain is awash with fear-based endorphins?


"The former Charleston, S.C., black chief of police, Reuben Greenberg, said the problem facing black America is not racial profiling. He said, "The greatest problem in the black community is the tolerance for high levels of criminality." Former Los Angeles black police Chief Bernard Parks, defending racial profiling, said: "It's not the fault of the police when they stop minority males or put them in jail. It's the fault of the minority males for committing the crime. In my mind, it is not a great revelation that if officers are looking for criminal activity, they're going to look at the kind of people who are listed on crime reports." Are former police Chiefs Greenberg and Parks racist?"


Oh my god, yes. They're really, really racist. I'm not going to get into the long tirade here about how police use harassment of black youth to marginalize an entire race of people, essentially keeping Jim Crow going by using minor charges to deprive black males of their civil rights, let's suffice to say that the majority of those arrests the cops are talking about are drug-related, and many of them being simple possession. Hey, Walter, is it racism that the per capita drug use among black and white youth is essentially the same, but black men are five times more likely to get charged for drug possession than their white counterparts? Or is it racist that people holding the kinds of drugs preferred in black communities can be charged with 'intent to distribute' for carrying one-tenth the amount of white-identified drugs it would take to warrant the same charge? Spoiler Alert: The answer to both those questions is 'yes'.


"According to the Uniform Crime Report for 2009, among people 18 or younger, blacks were charged with 58 percent of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, 67 percent of robberies, 42 percent of aggravated assaults and 43 percent of auto thefts. As for murder, more than 90 percent of the time, their victims were black. These statistics, showing a strong interconnection among race, youth and crime, are a far better explanation for racial profiling and suspicion than simple racism."


Was anyone arguing this point? Walter is now using evidence that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. When a black person is murdered in a black neighbourhood the cops look for a black suspect. This doesn't even count as racial profiling, let alone racism. All people tend to commit crimes within their own social group - that's just a basic fact, and has nothing to do with Walter's overall point (that his racist beliefs are true, so stop making him feel bad about himself). Notice that Walter goes out of his way to leave out 'poverty' from the intersection of elements that lead to crime. In Walter's head the statistics seem to prove that young black men are inherently criminal. I'm sure he imagines that even if they all had ample money and employment opportunities they'd still be out prowling the streets in their hoodies, looking for purses to snatch.


"Black Americans have spoken out against racial profiling by police. They've been insulted by store personnel who might give them extra scrutiny. There's the insult of the sound of a car door being locked when a black approaches. It's insulting to have taxi drivers pass up a black person and pick up white people down the street. In a similar vein, I'm sure that a law-abiding Muslim is insulted when given extra scrutiny at airports or listening to Fox News reporter Juan Williams, who was fired by National Public Radio in 2010 for publicly saying that he gets nervous when he sees people on a plane with clothing that identifies them as Muslim. Blacks and Muslims who face the insults of being profiled might direct their anger toward those who've made blacks and crime synonymous and terrorism and Muslims synonymous."


What? Seriously, let's pause for a second and just consider what Walter Williams just actually said. Allow me to precis it if you were too distracted by vomiting when getting near the end. "You don't have a right to complain about being discriminated against because someone who shares your skin colour did a bad thing once." How could someone write this in this day and age? How could someone else agree to print it? How did Walter's word processor allow him to type it? At some point shouldn't Clippy have popped up with a helpful "Hey, it looks like you're writing a racist screed! Do you want me to wipe your hard drive and then buy you a bus ticket to 1954 Alabama?"


More to the point, that last sentence proves that Walter is completely cut-off from anyone outside of his tiny little circle of right-wing extremists. He can't imagine that any black people, Muslims, or liberals exist beyond the straw-man constructions that exist inside his head. Can he really believe that those people are (even passively) accepting of terrorism and street crime? Does he really think that by standing up to the FBI's attempts to frame random brown people for acts of terrorism the Muslim community is acting in favour of terrorists? Can Walter really be this hateful and out of touch?


"For most blacks to own up to the high crime rate among blacks is a source of considerable discomfort. Beyond that, it creates suspicions and resentment, which are destructive of good race relations, and it's devastating to the black community, which is its primary victim."


This is the end of Walter's article, and it serves as a microcosm of the whole thing - in that it makes absolutely no sense. What is he basing this 'discomfort' statement on? When you're talking about 'most' blacks it seems like you'd want to have some basis for your huge sweeping generalizations. Then there's the second statement, which is just maddeningly unclear. What creates 'suspicions and resentment' - the crime rate? Owning up to it? The rest of the sentence suggests that you're talking about the crime rate, but that almost seems to horrible to contemplate - by saying that it's 'destructive of good race relations' it almost seems like you're implying that black people don't deserve to be taken seriously by any other race until they get their act together in re: their pervasive criminality. I don't know why I'm pretending to be shocked that this is your conclusion - after all, how could a Walter Williams article all about how racial profiling isn't actually racism end other than with the statement that it's hunky-dory to marginalize an entire race of people based on the actions of the worst of them?


Oh, and Walter, for the record, Blacks and Muslims actually have "direct(ed) their anger toward those who've made blacks and crime synonymous and terrorism and Muslims synonymous."


They're directing it exactly where you instructed them to: at you, and all your cohorts in the right-wing media.