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Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
28:14
Why Rioting Doesn’t Work and Harms the Community | Larry Elder
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Imagine being a business owner in the year 2020, first the coronavirus pandemic, then riots?
Let me get this straight.
The rioting in Minneapolis because George Floyd was killed by an officer who knelt on his neck until he died.
Three other officers stood around and watched.
All four were charged right away.
The principal officer has been arrested and charged with murder.
The others have now also been charged with aiding and abetting.
The vice president of city council is black.
The U.S. Attorney for the state of Minnesota is black.
The U.S. member of the House in that district is black.
The mayor is a left-wing Democrat who's very sympathetic with the people that feel that the police are out to get them.
What makes any of these protesters believe that justice will not be served?
Instead, rioting?
I live in the high-rise right back here, and I seen them as they came down Lake Street.
But then they turned and started coming over here, and I'm sitting out looking out my window.
And they went straight to Office Max, the dollar store, and every store over here that I go to.
I have nowhere to go now.
I have no way to get there because the buses aren't running.
These people did this for no reason.
It's not going to bring George back here.
George is in a better place than we are.
Last night, I'm gonna be honest, I wish I was where George was because this is ridiculous.
These people are tearing up our livelihoods.
This is the only place I could go to shop.
And now I don't have anywhere to go.
I don't have anywhere to get there.
And imagine being the mayor of a city like Atlanta, which saw fires.
So what I see happening on the streets of Atlanta is not Atlanta.
This is not a protest.
This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.
This is chaos.
A protest has purpose.
When Dr.
King was assassinated, we didn't do this to our city.
So if you love this city, this city that has had a legacy of black mayors and black police chiefs, And people who care about this city, where more than 50% of the business owners in Metro Atlanta are minority business owners.
If you care about this city, then go home.
Ice Cube offered this charming observation.
How long will we go for blue and black crime until we strike back?
Before we strike back?
It is rare for the cops to kill anybody, let alone a black person, let alone an unarmed black person.
Look at this from the Washington Post.
U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people, 50 each.
Strike back?
Heather McDonald with the Manhattan Institute says that a cop is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a cop.
Senator Cory Booker says this is all about, quote, deep injustices, end of quote.
I wish we lived in a nation that 30-plus years later, there weren't still hundreds of thousands of parents feeling like they have to teach their black boys about how not to get killed by police.
In other words...
Then you just do it.
You gotta think about your life.
Being a black man in America isn't easy.
The hunt is on.
And you're the prey.
All I'm saying is...
All I'm saying is...
Survive.
But when the police kill an unarmed white person, it's not quite the same news, is it?
What do you think?
What do you think?
Unfortunately, politics involves telling people what they want to hear.
And what people want to hear is that a certain kind of villainy can explain almost all of it.
Now, there's no such thing as a lack of villainy among human beings.
Anytime you take any large group of people, you have an almost inexhaustible source of sins.
And if you want to look into all those sins, you can go on forever looking into them.
The question is whether those sins explain the numbers you're talking about.
To what extent do you find, then, that the welfare state is trying to preserve an ethos which precisely, I understand you, is to say we need to liberate ourselves from?
Yes.
Politics really involves getting people to vote for you, and people vote for you when they think that they can depend on you, when they are dependent on you.
To the extent that people become self-reliant and feel they're perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, to that extent do you lose your hold on their votes.
How do we know politicians frequently lie to advance an agenda to get votes?
Because every now and then you'll get one to admit it.
Jerry Brown served as governor in California twice.
Two terms each.
But in the middle, he was out of the office for a number of years and assumed he was never going to run again.
That is why you got this candid assessment of what politicians really think and what they really believe from Jerry Brown when he was out of office.
Listen to this.
You said something a moment ago that I have to follow up on and I have to draw you out on.
You said you don't have to lie anymore now that you're not a politician.
What did you lie about when you were governor?
It's all a lie.
What did you lie about?
You run for office and the assumption is, oh, I know what to do.
You don't.
I didn't have a plan for California.
Clinton doesn't have a plan.
You said you had a plan for California and you lied because you didn't have a plan.
You say you're going to lower taxes, you're going to put people to work, you're going to improve the schools, the schools are going to stop crime, crime is up, schools are worse, taxes are higher.
I mean, be real.
Now, as for Ice Cube's statement about striking back, at whom Mr. Cube is the president of Cube?
At whom?
Fact.
Blacks kill twice as many whites, 500 as whites kill black, 250.
Fact.
Blacks, 13% of the population, are 50% of the homicide victims.
Fact.
Of the 50% homicide victims, almost all are killed by other blacks.
Fact.
Fact.
This means roughly 3% of the population, that's the population of young black men, and that's the population that's primarily committing the crimes against other blacks, 3% of the population commits nearly 50% of the nation's homicides.
End of quote.
Now, it is true that Martin Luther King did say that riots are the language of the unheard.
But when people quote him, they often quote him out of context.
Here's what else he said about riots.
Now what I'm saying is this.
I would like for all of us to believe in nonviolence, but I'm here to say tonight that if every Negro in the United States turns against nonviolence, I'm going to stand up as a lone voice and say this is the wrong way.
I will never change in my basic idea That nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and justice.
That was September 27, 1966, the following year at Stanford.
Let me say, as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating.
And five months before he was killed.
But I think it is true that the vast majority of Negroes feel that the best way to resolve the problem is to work through peaceful, nonviolent means, and militant nonviolence, but not through violence.
And on the question of whether riots have helped, I've taken the position that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating, and therefore I have to take a stand against them because of my deep commitment To nonviolence.
On the other hand, I do think a riot is the language of the unheard.
And America has failed to hear, for instance, that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last 10 or 15 years.
I think it has also failed to hear that large segments of white society are more Committed to tranquility and the status quo than to justice and humanity and equality.
And in that sense, I think the riots have called attention to something.
Not that they have brought about social transformation, but they've called attention to a very serious problem in our society.
But I couldn't say that they have been helpful in the sense of really bringing about structural change.
I haven't seen any basic change that has come through riots.
The changes that we have made and the changes that we've seen over the last 10 or 12 years have come through powerful watershed nonviolent movements.
Now, the presumptive reason for these riots in the streets is inequality.
Some have more than others.
Here's what Tom Sow said about blacks and slavery and inequality.
Blacks started much, much further behind.
I don't think people realize how much further behind blacks started and how much progress has been made.
There's a distinguished economic historian, Robert Higgs, who has said that for blacks to go from being completely illiterate in the middle of the 19th century to being one half literate, and by 1900, is just an amazing achievement in the history of the world, that you very seldom find that kind of change that quickly.
So it depends on what you're holding as your standard.
The standard is that blacks haven't caught up with whites.
Whites haven't stood still.
So what does explain generational poverty?
Are you saying that in a culturally pluralistic society such as America, are you saying that the variable in success or lack of success is the culture of the particular group?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
I haven't been able to find a single country in the world where the policies that are being advocated for blacks in the United States have lifted any people out of poverty.
I've seen many examples around the world of people who began in poverty and ended in affluence.
Not one of them has followed any pattern at all like what is being advocated for blacks in the United States.
Many groups have remained in poverty for a very long time trying to follow those patterns.
These are permanent indigent classes.
That's right.
Within the blacks there, there's a very diverse movement though.
On the one hand, you have blacks who are getting more education, who are going to college and so on.
Their incomes are rising not only absolutely, but relative to that of whites of the same description.
It's those blacks who have not had, say, nine years of schooling, who have not had six years of experience in the job market.
Their incomes are...
It's declining relative to the incomes of whites over the very same span of time.
So it can't be a matter of the business cycle or something like that.
It's that those blacks who have the advantages relative to others have now still more advantages.
But those who had the very difficult poverty to deal with, that is becoming more difficult.
A higher percentage of all black income is going to the top 20% of blacks over time.
Well, if it's culture, then income redistribution won't work.
Even if the free market system equitably works and everyone progresses an equal amount, that person who started out with a lesser share of the capital is still going to end up with a lesser share of the capital.
And there's nothing in the free market system that's going to enable him to make up for what was a purely arbitrary deficit in the first place.
And given that the kind of people who become successful capitalists do not become that way by giving away their wealth voluntarily, isn't it necessary to forcibly redistribute wealth before you can begin to operate under a capitalist system?
No, it is not.
The only way in which you can redistribute effectively the wealth is by destroying the incentives to have wealth.
And the question is, what is the way, what is the system which will offer those people who are so unlucky as to be born without good positions, what is the system which will offer them the greatest opportunity?
The answer, as Bono discovered, entrepreneurial capitalism.
So some of Africa is rising and some of Africa is stuck.
The question is whether the rising bit will pull the rest of Africa up or whether the other Africa We'll weigh the continent down.
Which will it be?
Stakes here aren't just about them.
Imagine for a second this last global recession, but without the economic growth of China and India.
Without the hundreds of millions of newly minted middle-class folks who now buy American and European goods.
Imagine that.
Think about the last five years.
Rockstar preaches capitalism.
Wow!
Sometimes I hear myself and I just can't believe it.
But commerce is real.
That's what you're about here.
It's real.
Aid is just a stopgap.
Commerce, entrepreneurial capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid.
Of course we know that.
Now, let's talk a little bit about institutional racism.
Speaking of which, do you know that Democrats run almost every single major American city?
Check this out.
New York City Democrat, Los Angeles Democrat, Chicago Democrat, Houston Democrat, Phoenix Democrat, Philadelphia Democrat, San Antonio Independent, San Diego Republican, Dallas Democrat,
San Jose Democrat, Austin Democrat, Jacksonville Republican, San Francisco Democrat, Columbus Democrat, Fort Worth Republican, Indianapolis Democrat, Charlotte Democrat, Denver Democrat, Washington D.C. Democrat, Boston Democrat, you get the point.
And their excuse when things don't go well?
Racism.
Let the plantation called New York City be the city of God, a city set upon the hill.
Are you also blaming racism?
Yeah.
For that failed union vote in Shattanooga.
I'm blaming much more culture than I am race.
I think there was an undercurrent of some race.
Okay, now stop.
To the point where now more than half of white Americans have these anti-black attitudes.
Possibility number one, 12 years a slave wins Best Picture.
Possibility number two, you're all racists.
The mass majority of whites do not want their children to have babies by black.
With the Tea Party, they are mean, racist people.
Take long-time Detroit-area Congressman John Conyers.
He served in Congress for decades.
And when he was asked why it is that this area of Detroit is not doing well, but this area right adjacent to it, which is largely Arab and Muslim, is doing well, Conyers had a ready answer.
This is from a piece in the Orlando Sentinel.
Quote, the few faces that populate these lost streets are African American, referring to the black area.
Detroit's veteran Congressman John Conyers has a ready explanation for the jarring change at Warren and Central.
That's where it changes from black to Muslim and Arab.
He says it's racism, but the black-white divide of 8 Mile, the area in question, the divide between the Muslim area and the downtrodden black area, is really a myth, a convenient crutch.
End of quote.
And of institutional racism.
Remember when Freddie Gray died in police custody in 2015?
After a peaceful start, violence broke out near the end of the Freddie Gray demonstration.
Windows were smashed and vehicles in some downtown buildings.
Some of the worst violence came as baseball fans were arriving at Camden Yards for the Orioles Red Sox game.
Police in riot gear were pelted with bottles and cans that were being tossed and reports say that 12 people were arrested.
Let's see.
At the time of Freddie Gray's death, the number one person in the police department?
Black.
Number two person in the police department?
Black.
The state attorney who brought the charges against six officers?
Black.
Three of the six officers?
Black.
Judge before whom two of the officers decided to try their cases in lieu of a jury?
Black.
The United States Attorney General at the time?
Black.
100% of the Baltimore City Council, Democrat, majority, black.
The President of the United States at the time, black.
All these black people running the institution and we're talking about institutional racism?
Remember the comedian Wanda Sykes after Obama got elected said, how are you going to complain about the man when you are the man?
Now, you remember when Dylann Roof killed all those black churchgoers at that black church in South Carolina?
The following morning on the Morning Joe show on MSNB Heehaw, Martin O'Malley, one of the Democrat candidates for president, was on.
And he was talking about the problem that we have, the legacy that we have of racism in America.
And one of the panelists turned to him and said, what do we do about it?
And here's what Mr.
O'Malley said.
Governor, you've been talking about it in the context of mental health and guns, but the president also talked about it in terms of the history of race and racial violence towards blacks.
To what extent do you think that this was also something that gets at the core of some racial history that we still have?
From the reports I read, and let's...
To be honest with one another, the facts are still evolving here.
It would appear that the racial motivation was certainly a big part of what happened here.
So how do we address things like that?
We do it by acknowledging the racial legacy that we share as Americans.
I don't know exactly how we address this, Walter.
I mean, look, we as Americans all share a very painful racial legacy, and we need to acknowledge it, and we need to take actions to heal it, but I don't think anybody's figured out the magic solution to that.
So you have the former mayor of Baltimore, former governor of the state of Maryland, not having a clue about how to address the institutional racism he just complained about.
Maybe, just maybe, it's because the issue is not the institution, it's the individuals, and we ought to deal with them on a case-by-case basis.
Now, Maxine Waters in 1992 referred to the riots in Los Angeles as a rebellion because of injustice.
Let me tell you what the top 20 problems are in the black community.
Check out my list.
Fatherless homes.
One devastating thing that's happening in black communities is the high illegitimacy rate.
However, that has nothing to do with racial discrimination.
As a matter of fact, the illegitimacy rate among black teenagers in 1918 was less than that than that among white teenagers in 1918.
In fact, there's another big problem, the breakdown of the black family.
And probably, breakdown is not the proper word.
It means, I should say, not forming in the first place.
And this is entirely unprecedented.
That is, only 40% of black kids live in two-parent families.
Now, back in 1925 in Harlem, 85% of black kids lived in two-parent families.
In 1870 and 1880 in cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia, you found numbers like 70 to 85% of black kids living in two-parent families.
Now, how do you explain that?
Can you say that there was not as much racial discrimination in the United States in the late 1800s or the early 1900s?
No, that doesn't cut water.
The discrimination just plain cannot explain.
I think you get the point.
Now, what about the high cost of riots?
This is from Black Enterprise Magazine talking about the Baltimore riots of 2015.
Quote, it was black rioters costing black business owners a lot of money and potentially costing them their businesses.
Nobody tells that story.
End of quote.
Now let's look at some of the financial costs.
In the 1960s, many American cities experienced violent, race-related civil disturbances.
This article examines census data from 1950 to 1980 to measure the riots' impact on the value of central city residential property and especially on black-owned property.
Estimates indicate that the riots depressed the median value of black-owned property between 1960 and 1970 with little or no rebound in the 1970s.
Census track data for a small number of cities suggests relative losses of population and property value in tracks that were directly affected by riots compared to other tracks in those same cities." So this is all about inequality, right?
But think tanks on the left and on the right both offer the same formula to escape poverty.
Finish high school.
Don't have a kid before you get married.
Get married first.
Follow those steps and you will not be poor.
Tom Sowell talks about the way government has made people dependent and therefore less successful, less prosperous.
Blacks, of course, emerging from slavery had enormous disadvantages, even as compared to people emerging from slavery in other parts of the Western Hemisphere.
Because, for one thing, in the United States, blacks were not allowed to have any responsibility under slavery.
One of the key ways of holding blacks in slavery at low cost was to keep the people dependent as much as possible.
Now, people tried to do that in other parts of the Western Hemisphere.
It wasn't as possible, say, in the West Indies, because there weren't enough whites, for example, in the West Indies to matter.
So if blacks were going to be fed in the West Indies, they had to be fed by growing their own food.
Like Angolan and like the Portuguese colonies compared to, say, South Africa.
Yes.
And so therefore the blacks in the West Indies had all sorts of experience brewing their own food, selling the surplus in the market, and in fact being responsible for budgeting what they had.
Blacks in the United States were deliberately kept from having that.
Dependence was seen as the key to holding the slaves down.
It's ironic that that same principle comes up in the welfare state a hundred years later.
I got a question.
Look at this.
Is this going to be deducted from my reparations account?
But then I guess I shouldn't worry because according to Joe Biden, if I voted for Trump, I'm not really black, right?
Now, I've made a lot of fun of Joe Biden.
Come on, anybody can have a bad day.
Anybody can be befuddled.
Even somebody who's considered to be one of the great speakers of the Democratic Party.
For a treatable illness like asthma, they end up taking up a hospital bed.
It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment and a breathalyzer, or an inhalator, not a breathalyzer.
What they'll say is, well, it costs too much money.
But, you know what?
It would cost about the same as what we would spend...
Over the course of ten years, it would cost what it would cost us...
All right.
Okay.
We're going to.
It would cost us about the same as it would cost for about...
Hold on one second.
I can't hear myself.
But I'm glad you're fired up though.
Finally, don't forget, June 19th, my documentary is coming out.
It is called Uncle Tom.
Check out one of the trailers.
I focus on three things.
Belief in God.
Belief in myself.
And my belief in the United States of America.
Being a black conservative is just natural.
It's what my family raises on.
Faith, family, individual responsibility, education, service to the nation, an entrepreneurial mind.
Being a business owner in America is one of the greatest privileges of being an American.
I think black Americans should believe and uphold the ideas of constitutional inherent rights.
I always felt that if I worked hard that I could overcome the circumstances of my life.
I never felt that because I was black or I was poor or a woman that I couldn't do something.
Humans are naturally conservative.
You grow up being taught to work hard for what you got.
You don't grow up being told you're going to get something because you just want it.
Like, you ain't got to work for it.
But Democrats, they say, hey, we give you everything for free.
That ain't reality.
Coming to a home theater near you?
And be sure and check out our trailers on UncleTom.com.
Also check out the Uncle Tom merch.
Be the first in your hood to get your Uncle Tom shirt.
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