Enablers General and Other Thoughts on Ferguson

My handy online dictionary defines “enabler” as “a person who encourages or enables negative or self-destructive behavior in another.” Another online definition: “one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior … by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior.”

And that’s a fair description of the role the Left is playing, or would like to play, with respect to crime and substance abuse in many African American communities, isn’t it? And this includes, alas, the Attorney General, as the Center for Equal Opportunity’s Linda Chavez discussed in her latest column.

The Left’s preferred approach: Let’s not focus overmuch on criminal and other self-destructive behavior, or talk about out-of-wedlock birthrates and a dysfunctional inner-city culture that romanticizes thugs and disparages “acting white. Let’s talk instead about dubious arrest disparities and ill-defined “institutional racism.”

Now, really, which discussion is more likely to improve the lives of those in these communities, law-breakers and law-abiders alike?

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From Eric Holder’s “open letter” to the people of Ferguson: “And police forces should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.”

Hiring with an eye on race and ethnicity violates the civil-rights laws that Mr. Holder is supposedly enforcing. And such discrimination is not only unfair and divisive; it also means that the less qualified will be hired over the more qualified, which is in no one’s interest, including of course the general public’s interest in being protected.

Should an all-white jurisdiction avoid hiring nonwhites? Do most nonwhites insist on having a sub-optimum police force because of their racial preferences? If they do, should those preferences be catered to? Can and should a police force be trusted only if it has a melanin content that approximates the melanin content of the jurisdiction’s general population? The answers are no, no, no, and no. And it is certainly not a good thing for the Attorney General of the United States to encourage, apparently, the answers of yes, yes, yes, and yes.

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But let’s assume the absolute worst and that it turns out that a policeman has acted with racial malice in killing a young black man. That may be one additional bit of evidence that the Left is justified in some part of its racial agenda, but one incident, no matter how dramatic, is not a universal proof. So it’s important that justice be done in this case, but it won’t tell us anything definitive about what goes on elsewhere. It’s not as if lots of people think that racism is nonexistent so that finding one example of it is really important.

I can see the argument that an incident like this can be appropriately seized upon to force a particular reform in a particular community. But that’s about it. And, of course, you would want to wait until you actually knew what had happened.

And we know it may well turn out that what actually happened was somewhat different, or a lot different, from what the Left believes/hopes happened. In which case the Left’s worldview will not change, because that won’t be universal proof of anything either.

If the shoe were on the other foot, and a young black man was accused of some horrific crime, no one on the Left would concede that one young black man’s guilt made the case for this or that policy that the Left opposed. They would argue, rightly, that one incident can’t bear that much weight. And naturally we would hear a lot about being innocent until proved guilty.

I suppose it is human nature to like drama and, especially, to have a struggle come down to one decisive moment. But that’s not a sane way to view a broader reality or to make political decisions.

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I can understand demonstrating against police racism. But I’ve seen no evidence adduced of police racism in Ferguson beyond this shooting, where the facts are hazy at best and are still being investigated.

And perhaps I’m being too charitable: There are obviously some on the Left who believe they should just seize the moment to advance their agenda — although, even for them, it’s unclear to me just what that agenda is here — because it gives them an excuse to use a threat of unrest and even riots to extort this or that political payment (what would be more clearly seen as the blackmail it is if that excuse were lacking).

Don’t waste a crisis; don’t even waste the opportunity to create a crisis where there really isn’t one.

And the media bear much of the blame here, too. It sells too many newspapers and helps ratings too much not to help create a bigger story than this is, especially when doing so is consistent with the mainstream media’s liberal worldview anyhow.

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One other item, this one not Ferguson-related: Here is a long — painfully, 876-words long — call for “Increasing College Diversity” on Huffington Post. It’s quite unremarkable, the usual pabulum, and not at all worth reading.

I send it only to note that at no point does the author argue that “diversity” will yield educational benefits for white and Asian students by exposing them to random conversations with students having a different melanin content from themselves. Even that is not itself noteworthy, since most defenses of “diversity” likewise fail in this regard. But it is worth noting that even those who defend the use of racial and ethnic preferences don’t seem to think much of the only legal defense the Supreme Court has recognized for such discrimination.

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