Posted by
flagwaver on Friday, December 07, 2007 10:16:10 PM
In the immediate aftermath of the tragic murder of Sean Taylor, I chose not to write anything about the subject at either of my blogs, because I did not want to make a fool of myself by writing without any real proof of what happened. That did not stop professional reporters and columnists from doing so, since it is their job to do so and I actually linked to the article written by Jason Whitlock as a fine example of what was being written. While I did not agree with everything that Mr. Whitlock wrote, I saw what he wrote as about as honest an assessment of what happened as anyone would get that close to the event.
What I also knew after reading Mr. Whitlock’s column was that condemnation was going to be quick in coming from certain quarters in the black community. You see, Jason Whitlock has become an easy target of the segment of the black community that sees every problem encountered by blacks as a consequence of racism or societal oppression, and is a strong voice demanding that blacks take responsibility for themselves instead of trying to pass the buck to everyone else. This has earned him the nickname “Uncle Jason” and has caused some to determine that he is a “race traitor” or “sell-out”; I think that he is simply an honest man who is unafraid to give his opinion, even when he knows it will be unpopular.
This past week, former NFL defensive lineman and current ESPN analyst Marcellus Wiley decided to respond to Mr. Whitlock’s last column about the Sean Taylor shooting, and used his forum on ESPN Radio as a guest of Mike and Mike in the Morning to sing the song that Whitlock was wrong to compare the murderous mindset of too many black men to the KKK. He argued that intra ethnic crime is a problem for all ethnicities in this country, and that for Mr. Whitlock to bring up black on black crime was somehow wrong; according to Mr. Wiley, the story was about athletes being targets, not about black on black crime.
But Mr. Wiley’s attempts to gloss over the problem were simply wrongheaded, and ignorant. Just because we do not like the facts we are presented with does not mean we get to ignore them, or to create our own set of facts. And the facts are simply stunning when it comes to this issue.
We all now that blacks make up only about 12% of the American populace, yet according to Department of Justice statistics blacks account for 46.9% of American homicide victims and 52.2% of homicide perpetrators. And from 1976 to 2005, 94% of black homicide victims were killed by other blacks. Also, in 2005 blacks were 6 times more likely to be victims of homicides than whites, while they were simultaneously 7 times more likely to be offenders than whites, so the whole “it happens among all races” line may be true, it is obviously a more pressing problem among blacks.
But instead of making a commitment to do anything about this problem, people like Marcellus Wiley concentrate their efforts on discrediting Jason Whitlock and making him out to be a villain. They are concentrating on killing the messenger, instead of listening to the message. That is shortsighted and is not helping anything. Don’t get mad at Jason Whitlock because he’s saying things you don’t like, get mad because what he’s saying is true. Stop trying to destroy Jason Whitlock and start trying to destroy the very mindsets and sense of victimhood that he rails against.
Because when you get down to it, he’s not lying. He’s just telling a really inconvenient truth