The College Fix

OPINION: The pre-fabricated narrative, according to which black-on-anybody crime simply does not exist, and the willful ignorance of the federal overseers of this clockwork violence, have opened up a space in the inner cities seemingly free of consequences

By now you’ve heard of the “knockout game,” which has recently reemerged in the headlines after a bit of a hiatus.

Apart from a few intrepid reporters whose sense of outrage remains remarkably intact, from reading the papers one might be excused for thinking that the ghetto-creepers of this country spent most of their free time being stalked by the ubiquitous George Zimmerman. But the opposite is, in fact, true.

Violent, black, inner-city teenagers often prowl the large metropolises of America, and, with greater and greater frequency, amuse themselves by cold-clocking unsuspecting passersby, often women and the elderly.

Our first reaction to watching a gang of punks knock out an innocent person is probably a mixture of anger and disbelief. “What’s wrong with people? Why would someone do such a thing? It’s all so senseless.”

Of course, senseless violence is nothing new. But “senseless” may be the wrong word for this kind of twisted game. “Sensuous” is much better. When Romans watched gladiators and Christians get mauled by jungle animals, or when crowds gathered to watch a bullfight hoping to see a matador hoisted into the air on the horns of a bull, this was done not senselessly, but out of a superabundance of desire.

The knockout game is a shade different still, though.

When blacks raised in ghettos and apprenticed to gangs and drug dealers walk past white, Hispanic, and Asian people (so far, all of the victims that I have been able to chronicle have been non-black) and drop them in broad daylight, just to watch them crumple, this is partly for the sensual thrill of it, for the adrenaline rush that comes with imposing your will on the world.

It is also partly for the highly calculated reason of advancement in a hierarchy of hard-heartedness. And this is very far from senseless. Indeed, it makes perfect sense.

There is also an insidious meta-logic to this chilling game: it happens in reality only after a space has been cleared for it in the media and in government. Blaming the unrelated is big business in America. The farther away you are from the epicenter of a slow-motion disaster, the more it must be your fault. And once you’ve internalized that rhetoric, you’re a New York Times reader and a Democrat voter for life. Open to Page One: Just look at what you’ve done! White people, who used to wear hairshirts but who now listen to Martin Bashir, are reliably made to flagellate themselves at the water cooler with the merest hint of the Eternal Oppression of Blacks. There are geysers in Yosemite that erupt with less predictable regularity than do the highbrow media elites and Democratic factotums, lecturing the hoi polloi on their awful, awful, just awful racism. For shame.

Apart from subscribers to the New York Times and the Washington Post, though, many know there are two sides to every story.

If poor black kids in inner-city projects are sometimes pawns in selling newspapers, they are much more often the recipients of an overwhelming amount of goodwill from the very same Evil White People who are accused, almost instinctively, of forever keeping black folk down.

Walk into your local church or synagogue and ask to sign up to work at a soup kitchen, sort donations at a thrift shop, or bring coffee and sandwiches to the homeless on a cold winter’s night. The odds are that you’ll be able to sign up for all three volunteer duties, and probably many more, besides.

There is an army of saints working in the worst parts of our cities–priests in Camden, pastors in Detroit, rabbis in New York, nuns and brothers in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami–and another reserve force of volunteers, donors, and prayer warriors united to heal the horrors of the projects.

Saints from all walks of like, and all skin colors, offer an ocean of good will in the United States. It flows back and forth between the inner-city project-dwellers, trapped in a hell largely of their own making (albeit with the generous support of the federal government), and the suburbanites, alleged by no lesser a figure than the Vice President to spend their days counting their money, oiling their shackles, waiting for the day when they can once again purchase a slave or two.

Why, then, are inner-city blacks randomly punching out old white ladies and unsuspecting Asian guys? And why do many in the government and the media ignore it? The media is easier to answer for: narrative driven, and blinkered by their biases, they see little that doesn’t fit the newsroom gestalt. Trayvon Martin they saw kaleidoscoped across the fruited plain, a million posterboards emblazoned with his pre-gangbanger close-up. But, black kids in slums… hitting Hispanic people? For no reason? What are you, some kind of a racist?

The political angle is nearly as flat. Politicians in black districts have operated with regal impunity for decades, assured by their political machines that, on Election Day, every single black person in their bailiwick will vote the straight party line. One hundred percent. And on the next day – on the first Wednesday of November every other year – those black masses become invisible to the politicians again, like hologram portraits turned against the grain.

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin perfected this modus operandi in New Orleans: when the levees broke, all the buses that Nagin and his cronies had used to haul their voters to the polls sat empty in fenced-off parking lots while those same voters drowned. (We can’t blame Nagin, though. Katrina did, after all, hit between election years.) And from Harlem, Prince Charlie Rangel returns triumphant to Washington biannually, whereupon his phalanxes of black “voters” melt back into their projects, there to remain in hibernation until voting machine levers need pulling again.

But there is something sinister going on during these interludes.

Forgive my saying so, but the combination of the pre-fabricated narrative, according to which black-on-anybody crime simply does not exist, and the willful ignorance of the federal overseers of this clockwork violence, have opened up a space in the inner cities seemingly free of consequences.

Rape, kill, steal, torture, kidnap, extort, threaten, beat, maim… and then wait for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton to step in if it looks like you’ll be held accountable for what you’ve done.

While there is most certainly no end to God’s grace, there is always a personal decision involved in a violent crime. At some point, one must stop blaming others, and start asking, “Why am I acting this way?”

One might speculate that the heart and mind of each thug is laced with the concertina wire of an imprisoned father, and of a family further atomized and humiliated by the federal institutionalization of poverty. The truth about this is hard to know. When you go out to help the people in these situations, the immediate need is so great that you have very little time–or energy, or patience, for that matter–to ask, “Why?”

Perhaps it is easier to ask, “Why not?” As in, “Why aren’t inner-city blacks visible to the media except when they’re the victims in an impromptu morality play?” Or, “Why does the government pay premium rates for this kind of bloodlust and lawlessness?”

You would not know any of this by watching the mainstream media, though. There’s nothing to see here. Don’t try to help–just close your eyes until it’s over. “We’re going to need a bigger boat” becomes, “My, the ocean in New England is lovely this time of year.” Alas, the hive of federal timeservers and media enablers offers us, not solutions, but rather euphemisms for “racially-motivated violence,” and voodoo-doll sketches of those who dare to demand that blacks step out of the shadows and into the light.

College Fix contributor Jason Morgan earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, his master’s degree at the University of Hawai’i, and is currently earning his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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